Pass PK5<^\r 8ook_J£z.^ / /^ SIR J-SH-A R-N-LDS IN A DOMINO. — DR. G-LDSM-TU IN AN OLD ENGLISH DRESS. Carton CMtian. (FULLY ILLUSTRATED.) ROUNDABOUT PAPERS (FROM THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE) TO WHICH IS ADDED THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPALEON THE FOUR GEORGES THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CRITICAL REVIEWS and SELECTIONS {FROM PUNCH.) BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR NEW YORK CAXTON PUBLISHING CO. Tribune Building. ?^% \1 ,982797 1929 CONTENTS. ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. PAGB. On a Lazy Idle Boy 7 On two Children in Black 12 On Ribbons 19 On some late Great Victories 29 Thorns in the Cushion 35 On Screens in Dining-Rooms 42 Tunbridge Toys 48 De Juventute 54 On a Joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood 67 Round about the Christmas Tree. ... 76 On a Chalk-Mark on the Door. 83 On being Found Out. - 94 On a Hundred Years Hence 99 Small-Beer Chronicle 106 Ogres 113 On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write 120 A Mississippi Bubble 130 On Letts's Diary. . . 138 Notes of a Week's Holiday 146 ►^Nil Nisi Bonum 165 On Half a Loaf — A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and Co., of New York, Bankers. 1 72 The Notch on the Axe.— A Story k la Mode. Part 1 179 « « « Part II 185 « « '• Part I.I 193 De Finibus 200 On a Peal of Bells 208 On a Pear-Tree 216 Desseio's., .,,,,,,,...,,,, 223 vi CONTENTS, PAGB. On some Carp at Sans Souci 233 Autour de mon Chapeau 239 On Alexandrines — A Letter to some Country Cousins 248 On a Medal of George the Fourth 255 " Strange to say, on Club Paper " 263 The Last Sketch 268 THE FOUR GEORGES. George the First 275 George the Second 298 George the Third 319 George the Fourth 343 THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS. Swift 371 Congreve and Addison 401 Steele 439 Prior, Gay, and Pope 460 Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding 494 Sterne and Goldsmith 521 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. L On the Disinterment of Napoleon at St. Helena 553 IL On the Voyage from St. Helena to Paris 564 in. On the Funeral Ceremony 575 CRITICAL REVIEWS. George Cruikshank 595 John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character 631 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ON A LAZY IDLE BO Y. I HAD occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little old town of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* who founded the Church of St. Peter, on Cornhill. Few people note the church nowadays, and fewer ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears surrounded by other sainted persons of his family. With tight red breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown and sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image : and, from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to Corn- hill, I beheld this figure of St. Lucius with more interest than I should have bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, superiors. The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world — of the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways, and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the iron road stretches away to Ziirich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. From the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, the road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Rhine, through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the Spliigen to the shores of Como. • Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, " from the table fast chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill ; " and says, "he was after some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried at Glowcester " — but, oh 1 these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the " Lives of the- Saints," v. xii., and Murray's " Handbook," and the Sacri» tstn at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb with my own eyes I 8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to build summer- houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry on them ? No enemies approach the great moulding gates : only at morn and even the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever- voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with half-a-dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's nobody at the book-shop. " If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour," says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o'clock, " you can have the money." There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is in the Protestant church — (oh ! strange sight, the two confessions are here at peace !) — nobody in the Catholic church : until the sacristan, from his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller eyeing the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his cathedral, and comes out (with a view to remunera- tion possibly) and opens the gate, and shows you the venerable church, and the queer old relics in the sacristy, and the ancient vestments (a black velvet cope, amongst other robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that notorious " pervert," Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of St. Lucius who built St, Peter's Church, on Cornhill. What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town ! Has It been asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, and is the brisk young Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his screaming car drawn by his snorting steel elephant coming to waken it ? Time was when there must have been life and bustle and com- merce here. Those vast, venerable walls were not made to keep out cows, but men-at-arms, led by fierce captains, who prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders as they passed in and out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and their wains. Is the place so dead that even the clergy of the dif- ferent denominations can't quarrel .'' Why, seven or eight, or ON A LAZY IDLE BOY. 9 a dozen, or fifteen hundred years ago (they haven't the register at St. Peter's up to that remote period. I dare say it was burnt in the fire of London) — a dozen hundred years ago, when there was some life in the town, St. Lucius was stoned here on ac- count of theological differences, after founding our church in Cornhill. There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take in the evening and mark the mountains round glooming with a deeper purple ; the shades creeping up the golden walls ; the river brawling, the cattle calling, the maids and chatterboxes round the fountains babbling and bawling ; and several times in the course of our sober walks we overtook a lazy slouching boy, or hobbledehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers not too long, and big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large lazy hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands, a little book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I dare say so charmed and ravished him, that he was bUnd to the beautiful sights around him ; unmindful, I would venture to lay any wager, of the lessons he had to learn for to-morrow; for- getful of mother waiting supper, and father preparing a scold- ing ; absorbed utterly and entirely in his book. What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he stood by the river shore ? Not the Pons Asmortim. What book so delighted him, and blinded him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not care to see the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve) the pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round the fountain ! What was the book ? Do you suppose it was Livy, or the Greek grammar } No ; it was a Novel that you were reading, you lazy, not very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy ! It was D'Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First's head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'lf cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best myself — novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and rescuing) — cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte Cristo. O Dumas ! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre ! I hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours. I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day, and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. Be assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so far as to let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the name of I o RO UNDABO UT PAPERS. his favorite author) ; and as for the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow cold — I don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No ! Figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter. Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of " Antar " or the " Arabian Nights ? " I was once pres- ent when a young gentleman at table put a tart away from him, and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son (with rather a fatu- ous air), " I never eat sweets." " Not eat sweets ! and do you know why ? " says T. "Because I am past that kind of thing," says the young gentleman. " Because you are a glutton and a sot ! " cries the Elder (and Juvenis winces a little). " All people who have natural, healthy appetites, love sweets ; all children, all women, all East- ern people, whose tastes are not corrupted by gluttony and strong drink." And a plateful of raspberries and cream disap- peared before the philosopher. "» You take the allegory ? Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them — almost all women ; — a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in England said to me only yesterday, " I have just read So-and-So for the second time" (naming one of Jones's exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers ; as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night when he was not at whist ? As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether he will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking too great a glut of them now. He is eating jelly until he will be sick. He will know most plots by the time he is twenty, so that he will never be surprised when the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl, — when the old waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of his vari- ous orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the novelist's same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps and ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to grow, for I have done growing some little time myself, A LAZY IDLE BOY. ON A LAZY IDLE BOY. 1 1 and the practice may have ended too) — as private schoolboys used to grow tired of the pudding before their mutton at dinner. And pray what is the moral of this apologue ? The moral I take to be this : the appetite for novels extending to the end of the world ; far away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them to one another during the endless night ; — far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales ; far away in the Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to 's tales, or 's, after the hot day's march ; far away in little Chur yonder, where the lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his eyes ; — the demand being what we know it is, the merchant must supply it, as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Calcutta. But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will disagree with him ; and so surely, dear youth, will too much novels cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel-writers themselves read many novels ? If you go into Gunter's, you don't see those charming young ladies (to whom I present my most respectful compliments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper even-tide they have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. Can anybody tell me does the author of the " Tale of Two Cities " read novels ? does the author of the " Tower of London " de- vour romances ? does the dashing " Harry Lorrequer " delight in " Plain or Ringlets " or " Sponge's Sporting Tour ? " Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the books which delighted our young days, " Darnley," and " Richelieu," and " Delorme," * relish the works of Alexander the Great, and thrill over the " Three Musqueteers ? " Does the accomplished author of the " Caxtons " read the other tales in Blackwood? (For example, that ghost-story printed last August, and which for my part, though I read it in the public reading-room at the " Pa- vilion Hotel " at Folkestone, I protest frightened me so that I scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does " Uncle Tom " ad- mire " Adam Bede ; " and does the author of the " Vicar of Wrexhill " laugh over the " Warden " and the " The Three Clerks ? " Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenu- ous pudor ! I make no doubt that the eminent parties above named all partake of novels in moderation — eat jellies — but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast and boiled. Here, dear youth aforesaid ! our Cornhill Magazine owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction ; and though • By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the veteran novelist ! He was appointed her majesty's Consul-General in Venice, the only city in Europe where the famous " Two Cavaliers" cannot by any possibility be seen riding together. 1 2 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. it does not become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table" where thou shalt sit in good company. That story of the " Fox " * was written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful Arctic Night : that account of China f is told by the man of all the em- pire most likely to know of what he speaks : those pages regard- ing Volunteers % come from an honored hand that has borne the sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British guns in the greatest siege in the world. Shall we point out others ? We are fellow-travellers, and shall make acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. In the At- lantic steamers, on the first day out (and on high and holy days subsequently), the jellies set down on table are richly orna- mented ; mcdioque infonte leporum rise the American and British flags nobly emblazoned in tin. As the passengers remark this pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt improves the occasion by expressing a l.ope, to his right and left, that the flag of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float side by side in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously com- pared to jellies — here are two (one perhaps not entirely sac- charine, and flavored with an amari aliquid very distasteful to some palates) — two novels § under two flags, the one that an- cient ensign which has hung before the well-known booth of " Vanity Fair ; " the other that fresh and handsome standard which has lately been hoisted on " Barchester Towers." Pray, sir, or madam, to which dish will you be helped ? So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain Corn- stock press their guests to partake of the fare on that memor- ab'e " First day out," when there is no man, I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his voyage, and the good ship dips over the bar, and bounds away into the blue water. ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. Montaigne and " Howel's Letters " are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don't • "The Search for Sir John Franklin. (From the Private Journal of an Officer of the * Fox.') " t " The Chinese and the Outer Barbarians." By Sir John Bownng. X " Our Volunteers." By Sir John Burgoyne. $ " Level the Widower " and " Framley Parsonage." ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. 13 weary me, I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half re- member them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse stories. I don't heed them. It was the custom of their time, as it is of Highlanders and Hottentots, to dispense with a part of dress which we all wear in cities. But people can't afford to be shocked either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time they meet an individual who wears his national airy raiment. I never knew the " Arabian Nights " was an improper book until I happened once to read it in a " family edition." Well, qui s* excuse. * * * Who, pray, has accused me as yet ? Here am I smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, before she has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarce ever tire of hearing, the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles's Council. Their egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men, in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better.? If I stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine — he confounds my clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about himself, and expressing his motion of grief or pain in a manner perfectly authentic and veracious. I have a story of my own, of a wrong done to me by somebody, as far back as the year 1838 : whenever I think of it, and have had a couple glasses of wine, I cannot help telling it. The toe is stamped upon : the pain is just as keen as ever : I cry out, and perhaps utter imprecatory language. I told the story only last Wednesday at dinner : — *' Mr. Roundabout," says a lady sitting by me, " how comes it that in your books there is a certain class (it may be of men, or it may be of women, but that is not the question in point) — how comes it, dear sir, there is a certain class of persons whom you always attack in your writings, and savagely rush at, goad, poke, toss up in the air, kick, and trample on ? " I couldn't help myself. I knew I ought not to do it. I told her the whole story, between the entrees and the roast. The wound began to bleed again. The horrid pang was there, as keen and as fresh as ever. If I live half as long as Tithonus,* that crack across my heart can never be cured. There are wrongs and griefs that can't be mended. It is all very well of you, my dear Mrs. G., to say that this spirit is unchristian, and that we ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I forget at will ? How forgive ? I can forgive the occasional * " Tithonus," by Tennyson, had appeared in the preceding (the 2d) number of tho Cornhill Magazine. 14 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. waiter who broke my beautiful old decanter at that very dinner. I am not going to do him any injury. But all the powers on earth can't make that claret-jug whole. So, you see, I told the lady the inevitable story. I was egotistical. I was selfish, no doubt ; but I was natural, and was telling the truth. You say you are angry with a man for talking about himself. It is because you yourself are selfish, that that other person's Self does not interest you. Be in- terested by other people and with their affairs. Let them prattle and talk to you, as I do my dear old egotists just mentioned. When you have had enough of them, and sudden hazes come over your eyes, lay down the volume ; pop out the candle, and dormcz bien. I should like to write a nightcap book — a book that you can muse over, that you can smile over, that you can yawn over — a book of which you can say, " Well, this man is so and so and so and so ; but he has a friendly heart (although some wiseacres have painted him as black as Bogey), and you may trust what he says." I should like to touch you sometimes with a reminiscence that shall waken your sympathy, and make you say, lo anchh have so thought, felt, smiled, suffered. Now, how is this to be done except by egotism ? Li?iea recta brevis- sima. That right line " I " is the very shortest, simplest, straightforwardest means of communication between us, and stands for what it is worth and no more. Sometimes authors say, " The present writer has often remarked ; " or, " The un- dersigned has observed;" or " Mr. Roundabout presents his compliments to the gentle reader, and begs to state," &c. : but " I " is better and straighter than all these grimaces of modesty : and although these are Roundabout Papers, and may wander who knows whither, I shall ask leave to maintain the upright and simple perpendicular. When this bundle of egotisms is bound up together, as they may be one day, if no accident pre- vents this tongue from wagging, or this ink from running, they will boreyou very likely ; so it would to read through " HowePs Letters" from beginning to end, or to eat up the whole of a ham : but a slice on occasion may have a relish : a dip into the volume at random and so on for a page or two : and now and then a smile ; and presently a gape ; and the book drops out of your hand ; and so, boti soir, and pleasant dreams to you. I have frequently seen men at clubs asleep over their humble servant's works, and am always pleased. Even at a lecture I don't mind, if they don't snore. Only the other day A'hen my friend A. said " You've left off that Roundabout busi- ness, I see ; very glad you have," I joined in the general roaf ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. IS of laughter at the table. I don't care a fig whether Archilochus likes the papers or no. You don't like partridge, Archilochus, or porridge, or what not ? Try some other dish. I am not going to force mine down your throat, or quarrel with you if you re- fuse it. Once in America a clever and candid woman said to me, at the close of a dinner, during which I had been sitting beside her, *' Mr. Roundabout, I was told I should not like you ; and I don't." " Well, ma'am," says I, in a tone of the most unfeigned simplicity, " I don't care." And we became good friends immediately, and esteemed each other ever after. So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and say, " Fudge ! " and pass on to another, I for one shall not be in the least mortified. If you say, " What does he mean by calling this paper Oti Two Children in Black, when there's noth- ing about people in black at all, unless the ladies he met (and evidently bored) at dinner, were black women ? What is all this egotistical pother ? A plague on his I's ! " My dear fellow, if you read " Montaigne's Essays," you must own that he might call almost any one by the name of any other, and that an essay on the Moon or an essay on Green Cheese would be as appro- priate a title as one of his on Coaches, on the Art of Discours- ing, or Experience, or what you will. Besides, if I have a subject (and I have) I claim to approach it in a roundabout manner. You remember Balzac's tale of the Peau de Chagrin, and how every time the possessor used it for the accomplishment of some wish the fairy Peau shrank a little and the owner's life correspondingly shortened ? I have such a desire to be well with my public that I am actually giving up my favorite story. I am killing my goose, I know I am. I can't tell my story of the children in black after this ; after printing it, and sending it through the country. When they are gone to the printer's these little things become public property. I take their hands. I bless them. I say, " Good-by, my little dears." I am quite sorry to part with them : but the fact is, I have told all my friends about them already, and don't dare to take them about with me any more. Now every word is true of this little -anecdote, and I sub- mit that there lies in it a most curious and exciting little mys- tery. I am like a man who gives you the last bottle of his '25 claret. It is the pride of his cellar ; he knows it, and he has a right to praise it. He takes up the bottle, fashioned so slenderly — takes it up tenderly, cants it with care, places it be- fore his friends, declares how good it is, with honest pride, and l6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. wishes he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine in his cellar. Si quid novisti. &c., I shall be very glad to hear from you. I protest and vow I am giving you the best I have. Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall never probably know to my dying day. They were very pretty little men, with pale faces, and large, melancholy eyes ; and they had beautiful little hands, and little boots, and the finest little shirts, and black paletots lined with the richest silk ; and they had picture-books in several languages, English, and French, and German, I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking little men I never set eyes on. They were travelling with a very handsome, pale lady in mourning, and a maid-servant dressed in black, too ; and on the lady's face there was the deepest grief. The little boys clambered and played about the carriage, and she sat watching. It was a railway-carriage from Frankfort to Hei- delberg. I saw at once that she was the mother of those children, and going to part from them. Perhaps I have tried parting with my own, and not found the business very pleasant. Perhaps I recollect driving down (with a certain trunk and carpet-bag on the box) with my own mother to the end of the avenue, where we waited — only a few miruutes — until the whirring wheels of that " Defiance " coach were heard rolling towards us as certain as death. Twang goes the horn ; up goes the trunk ; down come the steps. Bah ! I see the autumn evening : I hear the wheels now : I smart the cruel smart again : and, boy or man, have never been able to bear the sight of people parting from their children. I thought these little men might be going to school for the first time in their lives ; and mamma might be taking them to the doctor, and would leave them with many fond charges, and little wistful secrets of love, bidding the elder to protect his younger brother, and the younger to be gentle, and to remember to pray to God always for his mother, who would pray for her boy too. Our party made friends with these young ones during the little journey ; but the poor lady was too sad to talk except to the boys now and again, and sat in her corner, pale, and silently looking at them. The next day, we saw the lady and her maid driving in the direction of the railway-station, without the boys. The parting had taken place, then. That night they would sleep among strangers. The little beds at home were vacant, and poor mother might go and look at them. Well, tears flow, and friends part, and mothers pray every night all over the world. ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK. 17 I dare say we went to see Heidelberg Castle, and admired the vast shattered walls, and quaint gables ; and the Neckar running its bright course through that charming scene of peace and beauty ; and ate our dinner, and drank our wine with relish. The poor mother would eat but little Abendessen that night ; and, as for the children — that first night at school — hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing, and jarring you with their hateful merriment — as for the first night at a strange school, we most of us remember what that is. And the first is not the worst, my boys, there's the rub. But each man has his share of troubles, and, I suppose, you must have yours. From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden : and, I dare say, saw Madame de Schlangenbad and Madame de la Cruche- casse'e, and Count Punter, and honest Captain Blackball. And whom should we see in the evening, but our two little boys, walking on each side of a fierce, yellov/-faced, bearded man ! We wanted to renew our acquaintance with them, and they were coming forward quite pleased to greet us. But the father pulled back one of the little men by his paletot, gave a grim scowl, and walked away. I can see the children now looking rather frightened away from us and up into the father's face, or the cruel uncle's — which was he ? I think he was the father. So this was the end of them. Not school, as I at first had imagined. The mother was gone, who had given them the heaps of pretty books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and the pretty silken clothes, and the tender — tender cares ; and they were handed to this scowling practitioner of Trente et Quarante. Ah ! this is worse than school. Poor little men ! poor mother sitting by the vacant little beds ! We saw the children once or twice after, always in Scowler's company ; but we did not dare to give each other any marks of recognition. From Baden we went to Basle, and thence to Lucerne, and so over the St. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we went to Venice ; and now comes the singular part of my story. In Venice there is a little court of which I forget the name ; but in it is an apothecary's shop, whither I went to buy some remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice. Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying animals ; all three will have at you at once ; and one night nearly drove me into a strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming out of the apothecary's with the bottle of spirits of hartshorn in my hand (it really does do the bites a great deal of good), whom should I light upon but one of my little Heidelberg-Baden boys ! l8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long as they were with their mother. *\Vhen I saw the boy at Venice, who perfectly recognized me, his only garb was a wretched yellow cotton gown. His little feet, on which I had admired the little shiny boots, were wiihout shoe or stocking. He looked at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his hand ; and with her he disappeared down one of the thronged lanes of the city. From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railway at that time was only opened as far as Laybach, and the magnificent Semmering Pass was not quite completed). At a station be- tween Laybach and Graetz, one of my companions alighted for refreshment, and came back to the carriage saying : — " There's that horrible man from Baden, with the two little boys." Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the little boy at Venice, and his strange altered garb. My companion said they were pale, wretched-looking, and dressed quite shabbily. I got out at several stations, and looked at all the carriages. I could not see my little men. From that day to this I have never set eyes on them. That is all my story. Who were they ? What could they be ? How can you explain that mystery of the mother giving them up ; of the remarkable splendor and ele- gance of their appearance while under her care ; of their bare- footed squalor in Venice, a month afterwards ; of their shabby habiliments at Laybach ? Had the father gambled away his money, and sold their clothes.-' How came they to have passed out of the hands of a refined lady (as she evidently was, with whom I first saw them) into the charge of quite a common woman like her with whom I saw one of the boys at Venice } Here is but one chapter of the story. Can any man write the next, or that preceding the strange one on which I happened to light ? Who knows ? the mystery may have some quite simple solution, I saw two children, attired like little princes, taken from their mother and consigned to other care ; and a fort- night afterwards, one of them barefooted and like a beggar. Who will read this riddle of The Two Children in Black ? ON RIBBONS. 1 9 ON RIBBONS. The uncle of the present Sir Louis N. Bonaparte, K.G., &c., inaugurated his reign as Emperor over the neighboring nation by establishing an Order, to which all citizens of his country, military, naval, and civil — all men most distinguished in science, letters, arts, and commerce — were admitted. The emblem of the Order was but a piece of ribbon, more or less long or broad, with a toy at the end of it. The Bourbons had toys and ribbons of their own, blue, black, and all-colored ; and on their return to dominion such good old Tories would nat- urally have preferred to restore their good old Orders of Saint Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel ; but France had taken the ribbon of the Legion of Honor so to her heart that no Bourbon sovereign dared to pluck it thence. In England, until very late days, we have been accustomed rather to pooh-pooh national Orders, to vote ribbons and crosses, tinsel gewgaws, foolish foreign ornaments, and so forth. It is known how the Great Duke (the breast of whose own coat was plastered with some half-hundred decorations) was averse to the wearing of ribbons, medals, clasps, and the like, by his army. We have all of us read how uncommonly distinguished Lord Castlereagh looked at Vienna, where he was the only gentleman present without any decoration whatever. And the Great Duke's theory was, that clasps and ribbons, stars and garters, were good and proper ornaments for himself, for the chief officers of his distinguished army, and for gentlemen of high birth, who might naturally claim to wear a band of garter blue across their waistcoats ; but that for common people your plain coat, with- out stars and ribbons, was the most sensible wear. And no doubt you and I are as happy, as free, as comfort- able ; we can walk and dine as well ; we can keep the winter's cold out as well, without a star on our coats, as without a feather in our hats. How often we have laughed at the absurd mania of the Americans for dubbing their senators, members of Congress, and States' representatives. Honorable ! We have a right to call our Privy Councillors Right Honorable, our Lords' sons Honorable, and so forth : but for a nation as numerous, well educated, strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare to give its distinguished citizens titles of honor — monstrous 20 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. assumption of low-bred arrogance and parvenu vanity ! Out titles are respectable, but theirs absurd. Mr. Jones, of London, a Chancellor's son, and a tailor's grandson, is justly Honorable, and entitled to be Lord Jones at his noble father's decease : but Mr. Brown, the senator from New York, is a silly upstart for tacking Honorable to his name, and our sturdy British good sense laughs at him. Who has not laughed (I have myself) at Honorable Nahum Dodge, Honorable Zeno Scudder, Honora- ble Hiram Boake, and the rest ? A score of such queer names and titles I have smiled at in America. And, mutato nojuine f I meet a born idiot, who is a peer and born legislator. This drivelling noodle and his descendants through life are your natural superiors and mine — your and my children's superiors. I read of an alderman kneeling and knighted at court : I see a gold-stick waddling backwards before Majesty in a procession, and if we laugh, don't you suppose the Americans laugh too ? Yes, stars, garters, orders, knighthoods, and the like, are folly. Yes, Bobus, citizen and soap-boiler, is a good man, and no one laughs at him or good Mrs. Bobus, as they have their dinner at one o'clock. But who will not jeer at Sir Thomas on a melting day and Lady Fobus, at Margate, eating shrimps in a donkey-chaise ? Yes, knighthood is absurd : and chivalry an idiotic superstition : and Sir Walter Manny was a zany : and Nelson, with his flaming stars and cordons, splendent upon a day of battle, was a madman : and Murat, with his crosses and orders, at the head of his squadrons charging victorious, was only a crazy mountebank, who had been a tavern-waiter, and was puffed up with absurd vanity about his dress and legs. And the men of the French line at Fontenoy, who told Messieurs de la Garde to fire first, were smirking French dancing-masters ; and the Black Prince, waiting upon his royal prisoner, was act- ing an inane masquerade : and chivalry is naught ; and Honor is humbug ; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly ; and Ambi- tion is madness; and desire of distinction is criminal vanity ; and glory is bosh ; and fair fame is idleness ; and nothing is true but two and two ; and the colour of all the world is drab ; and all men are equal ; and one man is as tall as another ; and one man is as good as another — and a great dale betther, as the Irish philosopher said. Is this so ? Titles and badges of honor are vanity ; and in the American Revolution you have his Excellency General Washington sending back, and with proper spirit sending back, a letter in which he is not addressed as Excellency and General. Titles are abolished ; and the American Republic swarms with ON RIBBONS. 21 men claiming and bearing them. You have the French soldiel cheered and happy in his dying agony, and kissing with frantic joy the cliief's hand who lays the little cross on the bleeding bosom. At home you have the Dukes and Earls jobbing and intriguing for the Garter; the Military Knights grumbling at the Civil Knights of the Bath ; the little ribbon eager for the collar ; the soldiers and seamen from India and the Crimea marching in procession before the Queen, and receiving from her hands the cross bearing her royal name. And, remember, there are not only the cross wearers, but all the fathers and friends ; all the women who have prayed for their absent heroes ; Harry's wife, and Tom's mother, and Jack's daughter, and Frank's sweetheart, each of whom wears in her heart of hearts afterwards the badge which son, father, lover, has won by his merit ; each of whom is made happy and proud, and is bound to the country by that little bit of ribbon. I have heard, in a lecture about George the Third, that, at his accession, the King had a mind to establish an order for literary men. It was to have been called the Order of Minerva — I suppose with an Owl for a badge. The knights were to have worn a star of sixteen points, and a yellow ribbon ; and good old Samuel Johnson was talked of as President, or Grand Cross, or Grand Owl, of the society. Now about such an order as this there certainly maybe doubts. Consider the claimants, the difficulty of settling their claims, the rows and squabbles amongst the candidates, and the subsequent decision of pos- terity ! Dr. Beattie would have ranked as first poet, and twenty years after the sublime Mr. Hayley would, no doubt, have claimed the Grand Cross. Mr. Gibbon would not have been eligible, on account of his dangerous freethinking opinions ; and her sex, as well as her republican sentiments, might have interfered with the knighthood of the immortal Mrs. Catharine Macaulay. How Goldsmith would have paraded the ribbon at Madame Cornelys's, or the Academy dinner ! How Peter Pindar would have railed at it ! Fifty years later, the noble Scott would have worn the Grand Cross and deserved it ; but Gifford would have had it ; and Byron, and Shelly, and Hazlitt, and Hunt would have been without it ; and had Keats been proposed as officer, how the Tory prints would have yelled with rage and scorn ! Had the star of Minerva lasted to our present time — but I pause, not because the idea is dazzling, but too awful. Fancy the claimants, and the row about their preced- ence ! Which philosopher shall have the grand cordon ? — which the collar 1 — which the little scrap no bigger than a butter-cup } 22 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Of the historians — A, say — and C, and F, and G, and S, and T, — which shall be Companion and which Grand Owl ? Of the poets, who wears, or claims, the largest and brightest star? Of the novelists, there is A, and B and C D ; and E (star of first magnitude, newly discovered), and F (a magazine of wit), and fair G, and H, and I, and brave old J, and charming K, and L, and M, and N, and O (fairtwinklers), and I am puzzled between three P's — Peacock, Miss Pardoe, and Paul Pry — and Queechy, and R, and S, and T, mere et Jils, and very likely U, O gentle reader, for who has not written his novel now-a-days ? — who has not a claim to the star and straw-colored ribbon ? — and who shall have the biggest and largest ? Fancy the struggle ! Fancy the squabble ! Fancy the distribution of prizes ! Who shall decide on them ? Shall it be the sovereign ? shall it be the Minister for the time being? and has Lord Palmerston made a deep study of novels ? In this matter the late Ministry,* to be sure, was better qualified ; but even then, grumblers who had not got their canary cordons, would have hinted at professional jealousies entering the Cabinet ; and, the ribbons being awarded. Jack would have scowled at his be- cause Dick had a broader one ; Ned been indignant because Bob's was as large : Tom would have thrust his into the drawer, and scorned to wear it at all. No no : the so-called literary world was well rid of Minerva and her yellow ribbon. The great poets would have been indifferent, the little poets jealous, the funny men furious, the philosophers satirical, the historians supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes — and take for granted the Order of Minerva is established — who shall have it ? A great philosopher ? no doubt we cordially salute him G.C.M. A great historian ? G.C.M. of course. A great engineer ? G.C.M. A great poet ? received with acclam- ation G.C.M. A great painter ? oh ! certainly, G.C.M. If a great painter, why not a great novelist ? Well, pass, great nov- elist, G.C.M. But if a poetic, a pictorial, a story-telling or music-composing artist, why not a singing artist ? Why not a basso-profondo ? Why not a primo tenore ? And if a singer, why should not a ballet-dancer come bounding on the stage with his cordon, and cut capers to the music of a row of decor- ated fiddlers ? A chemist puts in his claim for having invented a new color ; an apothecary for a new pill ; the cook for a new sauce ; the tailor for a new cut of trousers. We have brought * That of Lord Derby, in 1859, which included Mr. Disraeli and Sir Edward Bulwel Lytton. ON RIBBONS. 23 the star of Minerva down from the breast to the pantaloons. Stars and garters ! can we go any farther ; or shall we give the shoemaker the yellow ribbon of the order for his shoetie ? When I began this present Roundabout excursion, I think I had not quite made up my mind whether we would have an Order of all the Talents or not : perhaps I rather had a hanker- ing for a rich ribbon and gorgeous star, in which my family might like to see me at parties in my best waistcoat. But then the door opens, and there come in, and by the same right too, Sir Alexis Soyer ! Sir Alessandro Tamburini ! Sir Agostino Velluti ! Sir Antonio Paganini (violinist) ! Sir Sandy McGuf- fog (piper to the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh) ! Sir Alcicle P'licflac (premier danseur of H.M. Theatre) ! Sir Harley Quin and Sir Joseph Grimaldi (from Covent Garden) ! They have all the yellow ribbon. They are all honorable, and clever, and distinguished artists. Let us elbow through the rooms, make a bow to the lady of the house, give a nod to Sir George Thrum, who is leading the orchestra, and go and get some champagne and seltzer-water from Sir Richard Gunter, who is presiding at the buffet. A national decoration might be well and good : a token awarded by the country to all its bene-7ncren- tibus : but most gentlemen with Minerva stars would, I think, be inclined to wear very wide breast-collars to their coats. Suppose yourself, brother penman, decorated with this ribbon, and looking in the glass, would you not laugh ? Would not wife and daughters laugh at that canary-colored emblem ? But suppose a man, old or young, of figure ever so stout, thin, stumpy, homely, indulging in looking-glass reflections with that hideous ribbon and cross called V. C. on his coat, would he not be proud ? and his family, would not they be prouder ? For your nobleman there is the famous old blue garter and star, arrd welcome. If I were a marquis — if I had thirty — forty thousand a year (settle the sum, my dear Alnaschar, according to your liking), I should consider myself entitled to mv seat in Parliament and to my garter. The garter belongs to the Orna- mental Classes. Have you seen the new magnificent Pavo Spicifcr at the Zoological Gardens, and do you grudge him his jewelled coronet and the azure splendor of his waistcoat 1 I like my Lord Mayor to have a gilt coach ; my magnificent mon- ' arch to be surrounded by magnificent nobles : I huzzay respect- fully when they pass in procession. It is good for Mr. Briefless (50, Pump Court, fourth floor) that there should be a Lord Chancellor, with a gold robe and fifteen thousand a year. It is good for a poor curate that there should be splendid bishops at 24 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS Fulham and Lambeth : their lordships were poor curates once, and have won, so to speak, their ribbon. Is a man who puts into a lottery to be sulky because he does not win the twenty thousand pounds prize ? Am I to fall into a rage, and bully my family when I come home, after going to see Chats- worth or Windsor, because we have only two little drawing- rooms? Welcome to your garter, my lord, and shame upon him qui fnal y pe7ise ! So I arrive in my roundabout way near the point towards which I have been trotting ever since we set out. In a voyage to America, some nine years since, on the seventh or eighth day out from Liverpool, Captain L came at eight bells as usual, talked a little to the persons right and left of him, and helped the soup with his accustomed politeness. Then he went on deck, and was back in a minute, and operated on the fish, looking rather grave the while. Then he went on deck again ; and this time was absent, it may be, three or five minutes, during which the fish disappeared, and the entrees arrived, and the roast beef. Say ten minutes passed — I can't tell after nine years. Then L came down with a pleased and happy counten- ance this time, and began carving the sirloin : " We have seen the light," he said. " Madam, may I help you to a little gravy, or a little horse-radish 1 " or what not .'' I forget the name of the light; nor does it matter. It was a point off Newfoundland for which he was on the look-out, and so well did the " Canada " know where she was, that, between soup and beef, the captain had sighted the headland by which his course was lying. And so through storm and darkness, through fog and mid- night, the ship had pursued her steady way over the pathless ocean, and roaring seas, so surely that the officers who sailed her knew her jDlace within a minute or two, and guided us with a wonderful providence safe on our way. Since the noble Cunard Company has run its ships, but one accident, and that through the error of a pilot, has happened on the line. By this little incident (hourly of course repeated, and trivial to all sea-going people) I own I was immensely moved, and never can think of it but with a heart full of thanks and awe. We trust our lives to these seamen, and how nobl}^ they fulfil their trust ! They are, under heaven, as a providence for us. Whilst we sleep, their untiring watchfulness keeps guard over us. All night through that bell sounds at its season, and tells how our sentinels defend us. It rang when the " Amazon * ON RIBBONS. 25 was on fire, and chimed its heroic signal of duty, anu courage and honor. Think of the dangers these seamen undergo for us : the hourly peril and watch ; the familiar storm ; the dreadful iceberg; the long winter nights when the decks are as glass, and the sailor has to climb through icicles to bend the stiff sail on the yard ! Think of their courage and their kind- nesses in cold, in tempest, in hunger, in wreck ! " The women and children to the boats," says the captain of the " Birken- head," and, with the troops formed on the deck, and the crew obedient to the word of glorious command, the immortal ship goes down. Read the story of the " Sarah Sands : " — "SARAH SANDS. " The screw steam-ship ' Sarah Sands,' 1,330 registered tons, was chartered by the East India Company in the autumn of 1S58, for the conveyance of troops to India. She was commanded by John Squire Castle. Slie took out a part of the 54th Regiment, upwards of 350 persons, besides tlie wives and cliildren of some of tlie men, aud the families of some of the officers. All went well till the nth November, when the ship had reached lat. 14 S., long. 56 E., upwards of 400 miles from the Mauritius. " Between three and four p.m. on that day a very strong smell of fire was perceived arising from the after-deck, and upon going below hito the hold, Captain Castle found it to be on fire, and immense volumes of smoke arising from it. Endeavors were made to reach the seat of the fire, but in vain ; the smoke and heat were too much for the men. There was, however, no confusion. Every order was obeyed with the same coolness and courage with which it was given. The engine was immediately stopped. All sail was taken in, and the ship brought to the wind, so as to drive the smoke and fire, which was in the after-part of the ship, astern. Others were, at the same time, getting fire-hoses fitted and passed to the scene of the fire. The fire, however, continued to increase, and attention was directed to the ammunition contained in the powder-magazines, which were situated one on each side the ship immediately above the fire. The starboard magazine was soon cleared. But by this time the whole of the after-part of the ship was so much enveloped in smoke that it was scarcely possible to stand, and great fears were entertained oh account of the port magazine. Volunteers were called for, and came immediately, and, under the guidance of Lieutenant Hughes, attempted to clear the port magazine, which they succeeded in doing, with the exception, as was supposed, of one or two barrels. It was most dangerous work. The men became overpowered with the smoke and heat, and fell ; and several, while thus engaged, were dragged up by ropes, senseless. " The flames soon burst up through the deck, and running rapidly along the various cabins, set the greater part on fire. " In the meantime Captain Castle took steps for lowering the boats. There was a heavy gale at the time, but they were launched without the least accident. The soldiers were mustered on deck ; — there was no rush to the boats ; — and the men obeyed the word of com- mand as if on parade. The men were informed that Captain Castle did not despair of sav- ing the ship, but that they must be prepared to leave her if necessary. The women and children were lowered into the port lifeboat, under the charge of Mr. Very, third officer, who had orders to keep clear of the ship until recalled. " Captain Castle then commenced constructing rafts of spare spars. In a short time, three were put together, which would have been capable of saving a great number of those on board. Two were launched overboard, and safely moored alongside, and then a third was left across the deck forward, ready to be launched. " In the meantime the fire had made great progress. The whole of the cabins were one body of fire, and at about 8.30 p.m. fiames burst through the upper deck, and shortly after the mizen rigging caught fire. Fears were entertained of the ship paying off, in which case the flames would have been swept forwards by the wind; but fortunately the after-braces were burnt through, and the main-yard swung round, which kept the ship's head to wind. About nine p.m., a fearful explosion took place in the port magazine, arising, no doubt, from the one or two barrels of powder which it had been impossible to remove. By this time the ship was one body of flame, from the stem to the main rigging, and thinking it scarcely possible to save her. Captain Castle called Major Brett (then in command of the troops, for the Colonel was in one of the boats) forward, and, telling him that he feared the ship was lost, requested him to endeavor to keep order amongst the troops till the last, but» 26 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. at the same time, to use every exertion to check the fire. Providentially, the iron bulkhead in the after-part of the ship withstood the action of the flames, and here all efforts were con- centrated to keep it cool. " ' No person,' says the captain, ' can describe the manner in which the men worked to keep the fire back ; one party were below, keeping the bulk-head cool, and when several were dragged up senseless, fresh volunteers took their places, who were, however, soon in the same state. At about ten p.m., the rnaintopsail-yard took fire. Mr. Welch, one quartermaster, and four or five soldiers, went aloft with wet blankets, and succeeded in extin- guishing it, but not until the yard and mast were nearly burnt through. The work of fighting the fire below continued for hours, and about midnight it appeared that some impression was made ; and after that, the men drove it back, inch by inch, until daylight, when they had completely got it under. The ship was now in a frightful plight. The after-part was literally burnt out — merely the shell remaining — the port quarter blown out by the explosion : fifteen feet of water in the hold.' "The gale still prevailed, and the ship was rolling and pitching in a heavy sea, and tak- ing in large quantities of water abaft : the tanks, too, were rolling from side to side in the hold. " As soon as the smoke was partially cleared away. Captain Castle got spare sails and blankets aft to stop the leak, passing two hawsers round the stern, and setting them up. The troops were employed baling and pumping. This continued during the whole morning. " In the course of the day the ladies joined the ship. The boats were ordered alongside, but they found the sea too heavy to remam tliere. The gig had been abandoned during the night, and the crew, under Mr. Wood, fourth officer, had got into another of the boats. The troops were employed the remainder of the day baling and pumping, and the crew secur- ing the stern. All hands were employed dunng the following night baling and pumping, the boats being moored alongside, where they received some damage. At daylight on the 13th, the crew were employed hoisting the boats, the troops were working manfully baling and pumping. Latitude at noon, 13 deg. 12 min. south. At five p.m., the foresail and foretop- sail were set, tlie rafts were cut away, and the sliip bore for the Mauritius. On Thursday, the 19th, she sighted the Island of Rodrigues, and arrived at Mauritius on Monday the 23d." The Nile and Trafalgar are not more glorious to our country, are not greater victories than these won by our merchant- seamen. And if you look in the Captains' reports of any maritime register, you will see similar acts recorded every day. I have such a volume for last year, now lying before me. In the second number, as I open it at hazard, Captain Roberts, master of the ship " Empire," from Shields to London, reports how on the 14th ult. (the 14th December, 1859), he, " being off Whitby, discovered the ship to be on fire between the main hold and boilers : got the hose from the engine laid on, and succeeded in subduing the fire ; but only apparently ; for at seven the next morning, the ' Dudgeon ' bearing S.S.E. seven miles' distance, the fire again broke out, causing the ship to be enveloped in flames on both sides of midships : got the hose again into play and all hands to work with buckets to combat with the fire. Did not succeed in stopping it till four p.m., to effect which, were obliged to cut away the deck and top sides, and throw overboard part of the cargo. The vessel was very much damaged and leaky : determined to make for the Hum- ber. Ship was run on shore, on the mud, near Grimsby harbor, with five feet of water in her hold. The donkey-engine broke down. The water increased so fast as to put out the furnace fires and render the ship almost unmanageable. On O.V RIBBONS 27 the tide flowing, a tug towed the ship off the mua, ana got her into Grimsby to repair." On the 2nd of November, Captain Strickland, of the "Pur- chase "brigantine, from Liverpool to Yarmouth, U.S., " encount- ered heavy gales from W.N.W. to W.S.W., in lat. 43° N., long. 34" W., in which we lost jib, foretopn:iast, staysail, topsail, and carried away the foretopmast stays, bobstays and bowsprit, headsails, cut-water and stern, also started the wood ends, which caused the vessel to leak. Put her before the wind and sea, and hove about twenty-five tons of cargo overboard to lighten the ship forward. Slung myself in a bowline, and by means of thrusting 2 5^ inch rope in the opening, contrived to stop a great portion of the leak. " December i6ih. — The crew continuing night and day at the pumps, could not keep the ship free ; deemed it prudent for the benefit of those concerned to bear up for the nearest port. On arriving in lat 48° 45' N., long. 230 W., observed a vessel with a signal of distress flying. ]\Iade towards her, when she proved to be the bark ' Carleton,' water-logged. The captain and crew asked to be taken off. Hove to, and received them on board, consisting of thirteen men : and their ship was abandoned. We then proceeded on our course, the crew of the abandoned vessel assisting all they could to keep my ship afloat. We arrived at Cork harbor on the 27th ult.' Captain Coulson, master of the brig " Othello," reports that his brig foundered oft" Portland, December 27 ; — encountering a strong gale, and shipping two heavy seas in succession, which hove the ship on her beam-ends. " Observing no chance of saving the ship, took to the long boat, and within ten minutes of leaving her saw the brig founder. We were picked up the same morning by the French ship ' Commerce de Paris,' CSptain Tombarel." Here, in a single column of a newspaper, what strange, touching pictures do we find of seamen's dangers, vicissitudes, gallantry, generosity ! The ship on fire — the captain in the gale slinging himself in a bowline to stop the leak — the French- man in the hour of danger coming to his British comrade's res- cue — the brigantine, almost a wreck, working up to the barque with the signal of distress flying, and taking oft" her crew of thirteen men. "We then proceeded on our course, the crew oj the abandoned vessel assisting all they could to keep 7ny ship afloat. ^^ What noble, simple words ! What courage, devotedness, brotherly love ! Do they not cause the heart to beat, and the eyes to fill ? 28 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. This is what seamen do daily, and for one another. One lights occasionally upon different stories. It happened, not very long since, that the passengers by one of the great ocean steamers were wrecked, and after undergoing the most severe hardships, were left, destitute and helpless, at a miserable coal- ing port. Amongst them were old men, ladies, and children. When the next steamer arrived, the passengers by that steamer took alarm at the haggard and miserable appearance of their unfortunate predecessors, and actually 7'e77ionstrated with their own captaiji, Jirging hi?fi fiot to take the poor a-eatures on board. There was every excuse, of course. The last-arrived steamer was already dangerously full : the cabins were crowded ; there were sick and delicate people on board — sick and delicate people who had paid a large price to the company for room, food, comfort, already not too sufficient. If fourteen of us are in an omnibus, will we see three or four women outside and say, " Come in, because this is the last 'bus, and it rains ? " Of course not : but think of that remonstrance, and of that Samari- tan master of the " Purchase " brigantine ! In the winter of '53, I went from Marseilles to Civita Vecchia, in one of the magnificent P. and O. ships, the " Val- etta," the master of which subsequently did distinguished service in the Crimea. This was his first Mediterranean voy- age, and he sailed his ship by the charts alone, going into each port as surely as any pilot. I remember walking the deck at night with this most skilful, gallant, well-bred and well-educated gentleman, and the glow of eager enthusiasm with which he assented, when I asked him whether he did not think a ribbon or ORDER would be welcome or useful in his service. Why is there not an Order of Britannia for British sea- men ? In the Merchant and the Royal Navy alike, occur almost daily instances and occasions for the display of science, skill, bravery, fortitude in trying circumstances, resource in danger. In the first number of the Corn hill Magazine, a friend contributed a most touching story of the M'Clintock expedition, in the dangers and dreadful glories of which he shared ; and the writer was a merchant captain. How many more are there (and, for the honor of England, may there be many like him !) — gallant, accomplished, high-spirited, enterprising masters of their noble profession ! Can our fountain of Honor not be brought to such men ? It plays upon captains and colonels in seemly profusion. It pours forth not illiberal rewards upon doctors and judges. It sprinkles mayors and aldermen. It bedews a painter now and again. It has spurted a baronetcy ON SOME LA TE ORE A T VICTORIES. 29 Upon two, and bestowed a coronet upon one noble man of letters. Diplomatists take their Bath in it as of right ; and it flings out a profusion of glittering stars upon the nobility of the three kingdoms. Cannot Britannia find a ribbon for her sailors ? The Navy, royal or mercantile, is a Service. The command of a ship, or the conduct of her, implies danger, honor, science, skill, subordination, good faith. It may be a victory, such as that of the " Sarah Sands ; " it may be discovery, such as that of the " Fox ; " it may be heroic disaster, such as that of the "Birkenhead;" and in such events merchant seamen, as well as royal seamen, take their share. Why is there not, then, an Order of Britannia? One day a young officer of the " Euryalus " * may win it ; and, having just read the memoirs of Lord Dundonald, I know who ought to have the first Grand Cross, ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES. On the i8th day of April last I went to see a friend in a neighboring Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld a group something like that here depicted. A newsboy had stopped in his walk, and was reading aloud the journal which it was his duty to deliver ; a pretty orange-girl, with a heap of blazing fruit, rendered more brilliant by one of those great blue papers in which oranges are now artfully wrapped, leant over the railing and listened : and opposite the nympha7n discentem there was a capering and acute-eared young satirist of a crossing- sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little newsboy. That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as he read it out to his audience, was saying : — "And — now — Tom — coming up smiling — after his fall — dee — delivered a rattling clinker upon the Benicia Boy's — potato-trap — but was met by a — punishei on the nose — which," &c., &c. ; or words to that effect. Betty at 52 let me in, while the boy was reading his lecture ; and, having been some twenty minutes or so in the house and paid my visit, I took leave. The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and * Prince Alfred was serving on board the frigate " Euryalus " when this was written. 30 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. his audience had scarcely changed their position. Having read every word of the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay to listen further ; but if the gentleman who expected his paper at the usual hour that day experienced delay and a little disap- pointment I shall not be surprised. I am not going to expatiate on the battle. I have read in the correspondent's letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the midst of the company assembled the reader's humble servant was present, and in a very polite society, too, of " poets, clergy- men, men of letters, and members of both Houses of Parlia- ment." If so, I must have walked to the station in my sleep, paid three guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction, and returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly woke there about the time when history relates that the fight was over. 1 do not know whose colors I wore — the Benician's, or those of the Irish champion ; nor remember where the fight took place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is bound to recollect. Ought Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or punished for being naughty ? By the shade of Brutus the elder, I don't know. In George II. 's time there was a turbulent navy lieutenant (Handsome Smith he was called — his picture is at Greenwich now, in brown velvet, and gold and scarlet ; his coat handsome, his waistcoat exceedingly handsome ; but his face by no means the beauty) — there was, I say, a turbulent young lieutenant who was broke on a complaint of the French ambassador, for oblig- ing a French ship of war to lower her topsails to his ship at Spithead. But, by the King's orders, Tom was next day made Captain Smith. Well, if I were absolute king, I would send Tom Sayers to the mill for a month, and make him Sir Thomas on coming out of Clerkenwell. You are a naughty boy, Tom ! but then, you know, we ought to love our brethren, though ever so naughty. We are moralists, and reprimand you ; and you are hereby reprimanded accordingly. But in case England should ever have need of a few score thousand champions, who laugh at danger ; who cope with giants ; who, stricken to the ground, jump up and gayly rally, and fall, and rise again, and strike, and die rather than yield — in case the country should need such men, and you should know them, be pleased to send lists of the misguided persons to the principal police stations, where means may some day be found to utilize their wretched powers, and give their deplorable energies a right direction. Suppose, Tom, that you and your friends are pitted against an immense invader — suppose you are bent on holding the ground, and dying there, if need be — suppose it is life, freedom. ON SOME LA TE GREA T VICTORIES. 31 honor, home, you are fighting for, and there is a death-dealing sword or rifle in your hand, with which you are going to resist some tremendous enemy who challenges your championship on your native shore ? Then, Sir Thomas, resist him to the death, and it is all right : kill him, and heaven bless you. Drive him into the sea, and there destroy, smash, and drown him ; and let us sing Laudamiis. In these national cases, you see, we override the indisputable first laws of morals. Loving your neighbor is very well, but suppose your neighbor comes over from Calais and Boulogne to rob you of ypur laws, your liber- ties, your newspapers, your parliament (all of which soine dear neighbors of ours have given up in the most self-denying man- ner) : suppose any neighbor were to cross the water and pro pose this kind of thing to us ? Should we not be justified in humbly trying to pitch him into the water ? If it were the King of Belgium himself we must do so. I mean that fighting, of course, is wrong ; but that there are occasions when, &c. — I suppose I mean that that one-handed fight of Sayers is one of the most spirit-stirring little stories ever told : and, with every love and respect for Morality — my spirit says to her, " Do, for goodness' sake, my dear madam, keep your true, and pure, and womanly, and gentle remarks for another day. Have the great kindness to stand a leetle aside, and just let us see one or two more rounds between the men. That little man with the one hand powerless on his breast facing yonder giant for hours, and felling him, too, every now and then ! It is the little 'Java' and the 'Constitution ' over again." I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave Heenan, who has acted and written since the battle with a true warrior's courtesy, and with a great deal of good logic too, that the battle was a drawn one. The advantage was all on Mr. Sayers' side. Say a young lad of sixteen insults me in the street, and I try and thrash him, and do it. Well, I have thrashed a young lad. You great, big tyrant, couldn't you hit one of your own size ? But say the lad thrashes me ? In either case I walk away dis- comfited : but in the latter, I am positively put to shame. Now, when the ropes were cut from that death-grip, and Sir Thomas released, the gentleman of Benicia was confessedly blind of one eye, and speedily afterwards was blind of both. Could Mr. Sayers have held out for three minutes, for five minutes, for ten minutes more ? He says he could. So we say we could have held out, and did, and had beaten off the enemy at Waterloo, even if the Prussians hadn't come up. The opinions differ pretty much according to the nature of the opinants. I 32 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. say the Duke and Tom could have held out, that they meant to hold out, that they did hold out, and that there has been fistifying enough. That crowd which came in and stopped the fight ought to be considered like one of those divine clouds which the gods send in Homer : " Apollo shrouds The god-like Trojan in a veil of clouds." It is the best way of getting the god-like Trojan out of the scrape, don't you see ? The nodus is cut ; Tom is out of chancery \ the Benicia Boy not a bit the worse, nay, better than if he had beaten the little man. He has not the humiliation of conquest. He is greater, and will be loved more hereafter by the gentle sex. Suppose he had overcome the god-like Trojan ? Suppose he had tied Tom's corpse to his cab-wheels, and driven to Farnham, smoking the pipe of triumph ? Faugh ! the great hulking conqueror ! Why did you not hold your hand from yonder hero ? Everybody, I say, was relieved by that oppor- tune appearance of the British gods, protectors of native valor, who interfered, and " withdrew " their champion. Now, suppose six-feet-two conqueror, and five-feet-eight beaten ; Would Sayers have been a whit the less gallant and meritorious .'' If Sancho had been allowed really to reign in Barataria, I make no doubt that, with his good sense and kind- ness of heart, he would have devised some means of rewarding the brave vanquished, as well as the brave victors in the Bara- tarian army, and that a champion who had fought a good fight would have been a knight of King Don Sancho's orders, what- ever the upshot of the combat had been. Suppose Wellington overwhelmed on the plateau of Mont St. John ; suppose Wash- ington attacked and beaten at Valley Forge — and either sup- position is quite easy — and what becomes of the heroes ? They would have been as brave, honest, heroic, wise ; but their glory, where would it have been ? Should we have had their portraits hanging in our chambers ? have been familiar with their his- tories? have pondered over their letters, common lives, and daily sayings ? There is not only merit, but luck which goes to making a hero out of a gentleman. Mind, please you, I am not saying that the hero is after all not so very heroic ; and have not the least desire to grudge him his merit because of his good fortune. Have you any idea whither this Roundabout Essay on some recent great victories is tending? Do you suppose that by those words I mean Trenton, Brandywine, Salamanca, Vittoria, ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES. 33 and so forth ? By a great victory I can't mean that affair at Farnham, for it was a drawn fight. Where, then, are the victories, pray, and when are we coming to them ? My good sir, you will perceive that in this Niceean discourse I have oiily as yet advanced as far as this — that a hero, whether he wins or loses, is a hero ; and that if a fellow will but be honest and courageous, and do his best, we are for paying all honor to him. Furthermore, it has been asserted that Fortune has a good deal to do with the making of heroes ; and thus hinted for the consolation of those who don't happen to be engaged in any stupendous victories, that, had opportunity so served, they might have been heroes too. If you are not, friend, it is not your fault, whilst I don't wish to detract from any gentleman's reputation who is. There. My worst enemy can't take objection to that. The point might have been put more briefly perhaps ; but, if you please, we will not argue that question. Well, then. The victories which I wish especially to com- memorate in this paper, are the six great, complete, prodigious, and undeniable victories, achieved by the corps which the editor of the Cornhill Magazine has the honor to command. When I seemed to speak disparagingly but now of generals, it was that chief I had in my I (if you will permit me the expres- sion). I wished him not to be elated by too much prosperity ; I warned him against assuming heroic imperatorial airs, and cocking his laurels too jauntily over his ear. I was his con- science, and stood on the splashboard of his triumph-car, whispering, " Homi7iem memento te." As we rolled along the way, and passed the weathercocks on the temples, I saluted the symbol of the goddess Fortune with a reverent awe. "We have done our little endeavor," I said, bowing my head, " and mortals can do no more. But we might have fought bravely, and not won. We might have cast the coin, calling ' Head,' and lo ! Tail might have come uppermost." O thou Ruler of Victories ! — thou Awarder of Fame ! — thou Giver of Crowns (and shillings) — if thou hast smiled upon us, shall we not be thankful ? There is a Saturnine philosopher, standing at the door of his book-shop, who, I fancy, has a pooh-pooh expres- sion as the triumph passes. (I can't see quite clearly for the laurels, which have fallen down over my nose.) One hand is reining in the two white elephants that draw the car ; I raise the other hand up to — to the laurels, and pass on, waving him a graceful recognition. Up the Hill of Ludgate — around the Pauline Square — by the side of Chepe — until it reaches our- 34 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. own Hill of Corn — the procession passes. The Imperator is bowing to the people ; the captains of the legions are riding round the car, their gallant minds struck by the thought, " Have we not fought as well as yonder fellow, swaggering in the chariot, and are we not as good as he ? " Granted, with all my heart, my dear lads. When your consulship arrives, may you be as fortunate. When these hands, now growing old, shall lay down sword and truncheon, may you mount the car, and ride to the temple of Jupiter. Be yours the laurel then. iSfcgue me myrtus dedecet, looking cosily down from the arbor where I sit under the arched vine. I fancy the Imperator standing on the steps of the temple (erected by Titus) on the Mons Frumentarius, and addressing the citizens : " Quirites ! " he says, " in our campaign of six months we have been engaged six times, and in each action we have taken near upon a hundred thousand p?-isoners. Go to ! What are other magazines compared to our magazine ? (Sound, trumpeter ') What banner is there like that of Cornhill ? You, philosopher yonder ! " (he shirks under his mantle.) " Do you know what it is to have a hundred and ten thousand readers ? A hundred thousand readers ? a hundred thousand buyers ! " (Cries of " No ! "— " Pooh ! " " Yes, upon my honor ! " " Oh, come ! " and murmurs of applause and derision") — " I say more than a hundred thousand purchasers — and I bc'ieve as much as a 77iillwn readers ! " (Immense sensation.) " To these have we said an unkind word .'' We have enemies ; have we hit them an unkind blow ? Have we sought to pursue party aims, to forward private jobs, to advance selfish schemes ? The only persons to whom wittingly we have given pain are some who have volunteered for our corps — and of these volunteers we have had thousands." (Murmurs and grumbles.) " What com- mander, citizens, could place all these men — could make offi- cers of all these men ? " (cries of " No — no ! " and laughter) — " could say, ' I accept this recruit, though he is too short for our standard, because he is poor, and has a mother at home who wants bread ? ' could enroll this other, who is too weak to bear arms, because he says, ' Look, sir, I shall be stronger anon.' The leader of such an army as ours must select his men, not because they are good and virtuous, but because they are strong and capable. To these our ranks are ever open, and in addition to the warriors who surround me " — (the generals look proudly conscious) — " I tell you, citizens, that I am in treaty with other and most tremendous champions, who will inarch by the side of our veterans to the achievement of fresh THORNS IN THE CUSHION. ^e victories. Now, blow trumpets ! Bang, ye gongs ! and drum- mers, drub the thundering skins ! Generals and chiefs, we go to sacrifice to the gods." Crowned with flowers, the captains enter the temple, the other Magazines walking modestly behind them. The people huzza ; and, in some instances, kneel and kiss the fringes of the robes of the warriors. The Philosopher puts up his shut- ters, and retires into his shop, deeply moved. In ancient times, Pliny (aptid Smith) relates it was the custom of the Imperator " to paint his whole body a bright red ; " and, also, on ascend- ing the Hill, to have some of the hostile chiefs led aside " to the adjoining prison, and put to death." We propose to dis- pense with both these ceremonies. THORNS IN THE CUSHION In the Essay with which this volume commences, the Corn- hill Afagazine was likened to a ship sailing forth on her voyage, and the Captain uttered a very sincere prayer for her prosperity. The dangers of storm and rock, the vast outlay upon ship and cargo, and the certain risk of the venture, gave the chief officer a feeling of no small anxiety ; for who could say from what quarter danger might arise, and how his owner's property might be imperilled ? After a six months' voyage, we with very thankful hearts could acknowledge our good fortune : and tak- ing up the apologue in the Roundabout manner, we composed a triumphal procession in honor of the Magazine, and imagined the Imperator therefore riding in a sublime car to return thanks in the Temple of Victory. Cornhill is accustomed to grandeur and greatness, and has witnessed, every ninth of November, for I don't know how many centuries, a prodigious annual pageant, chariot, progress, and flourish of trumpetry ; and be- ing so very near the Mansion House, I am sure the reader will understand how the idea of pageant and procession came nat- urally to my mind. The imagination easily supplied a gold coach, eight cream-colored horses of your true Pegasus breed, huzzaing multitudes, running footmen, and clanking knights in armor, a chaplain and a sword-bearer with a muff on his head, scowling out of the coach-window, and a Lord Mayor all crimson, fur, gold-chain, and white ribbons, solemnly occupying the place 36 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. of state. A playful fancy could have carried the matter farther, could have depicted the feast in the Egyptian Hall, the Minis- ters, Chief Justices, and right reverend prelates taking their seats round about his lordship, the turtle and other delicious viands, and Mr. Toole behind the central throne, bawling out to the assembled guests and dignitaries : " My lord So-and-so, my Lord What-d'ye-call-'im, my Lord Etcetera, the Lord Mayor pledges you all in a loving-cup." Then the noble proceedings come to an end ; Lord Simper proposes the ladies ; the com- pany rises from the table, and adjourns to coffee and muffins. The carriages of the nobility and guests roll back to the West. The Egyptian Hall, so bright just now, appears in a twilight glimmer, in which waiters are seen ransacking the dessert, and rescuing the spoons. His lordship and the lady Mayoress go into their private apartments. The robes are doffed, the collar and white ribbons are removed. The Mayor becomes a man, and is pretty surely in a fluster about the speeches which he has just uttered ; remembering too well now, wretched creature, the principal points which he didn't make when he rose to speak. He goes to bed to headache, to care, to repentance, and, I dare say, to a dose of something which his body-physician has prescribed for him. And there are ever so many men in the city who fancy that man happy ! Now, suppose that all through that 9th of November his lordship has had a racking rheumatism, or a toothache, let us say, during all dinner-time — through which he has been obliged to grin and mumble his poor old speeches. Is he enviable ? Would you like to change with his lordship ? Suppose that bumper which his golden footman brings him, instead i'fackins of ypocras or canary, contains some abomination of senna ? Away ! Remove the golden goblet, insidious cup-bearer ! You now begin to perceive the gloomy moral which I am about to draw. Last month we sang the song of glorification, and rode in the chariot of triumph. It was all very well. It was right to huzza, and be thankful, and cry, Bravo, our side ! and besides, you know, there was the enjoyment of thinking how pleased Brown and Jones, and Robinson (our dear friends)would be at this announcement of success. But now that the performance is over, my good sir, just step into my private room, and see that it is not all pleasure — this winning of successes. Cast your eye over those newspapers, over those letters. See what the critics say of your harmless jokes, neat little trim sentences, and pet waggeries ! Why, you are no better than an idiot ; THORNS IN THE CUSHION. 37 you are drivelling ; your powers have left you ; this always overrated writer is rapidly sinking to, &c. This is not pleasant ; but neither is this the point. It may be the critic is right, and the author wrong. It may be that the archbishop's sermon is not so fine as some of those discourses twenty years ago which used to delight the faithful in Granada. Or it may be (pleasing thought !) that the critic is a dullard, and does not understand what he is writing about. Everybody who has been to an exhibition has heard visitors discoursing about the pictures before their faces. One says, " This is very well ; " another says, " This is stuff and rubbish ; " another cries, " Bravo ! this is a masterpiece," and each has a right to his opinion. For example, one of the pictures I admired most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes. This picture is No. 346, "Moses," by Mr. S. Solomon. I thought it had a great inten- tion, I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly rep- resented, to my mind, the dark children of the Egyptian bond- age, and suggested the touching story. My newspaper says : " Two ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object ; " and so good-by, Mr. Solomon. Are not most of our babies so in life } and doesn't Mr. Robin- son consider Mr. Brown's cherub an ugly, squalling little brat ? So cheer up, Mr. S. S. It may be the critic who discoursed on your baby is a bad judge of babies. When Pharaoh's kind daughter found the child, and cherished and loved it, and took it home, and found a nurse for it, too, I dare say there were grim, brickdust-colored chamberlains, or some of the tough, old, meagre, yellow princes at court, who never had children them- selves, who cried out, " Faugh ! the horrid little squalling wretch ! " and knew he would never come to good ; and said, " Didn't I tell you so ? " when he assaulted the Egyptian. Never mind then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, because a critic pooh-poohs your work of art — your Moses — your child — your foundling. Why, did not a wiseacre in Blackwood'' s Magazine lately fall foul of " Tom Jones ? " O hypercritic ! So, to be sure, did good old Mr. Richardson, who could write novels himself — but you and I, and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree in giving our respect, and wonder, and admiration, to the brave old master. In these last words I am supposing the respected reader to be endowed with a sense of humor, which he may or may not possess ; indeed, don't we know many an honest man who can no more comprehend a joke than he can turn a tune. But I 38 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, take for granted, my dear sir, that you are brimming over with fun — you mayn't make jokes, but you could if you would — ■ you know you could : and in your quiet way you enjoy them extremely. Now many people neither make them, nor under- stand them when made, nor like them when understood, and are suspicious, testy, and angry with jokers. Have you ever watched an elderly male or female — an elderly " party," so to speak, who begins to find out that some young wag of the com- pany is " chaffing " him .'' Have you ever tried the sarcastic or Socratic method with a child .-• Little simple he or she, in the innocence of the simple heart, plays some silly freak, or makes some absurd remark, which you turn to ridicule. The little creature dimly perceives that you are making fun of him, writhes, blushes, grows uneasy, bursts into tears, — upon my word it is not fair to try the weapon of ridicule upon that inno- cent young victim. The awful objurgatory practice he is ac- customed to. Point out his fault, and lay bare the dire con- sequences thereof : expose it roundly, and give him a proper, solemn, moral whipping — but do not attempt to castigare ridendo. Do not laugh at him writhing, and cause all the other boys in the school to laugh. Remember your own young days at school, my friend — the tingling cheeks, burning ears, bursting heart, and passion of desperate tears, with which you looked up, after having performed some blunder, whilst the doctor held you to public scorn before the class, and cracked his great clumsy jokes upon you — helpless, and a prisoner ! Better the block itself, and the lictors, with their fasces of birch-twigs, than the maddening torture of those jokes ! Now, with respect to jokes — and the present company of course excepted — many people, perhaps most people, are as infants. They have little sense of humor. They don't like jokes. Raillery in writing annoys and offends them. The coarseness apart, I think I have met very, very few women who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears .'' Fi dofic, k vilai?i monstre, with his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs ? Let him go and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull them over those horrid shanks ; put a large gown and bands over beard and hide ; and pour a dozen of lavender-water into his lawn handkerchief, and cry, and never make a joke again. It shall all be highly distilled poesy, and perfumed sentiment, and gushing eloquence ; and the foot sha'n't peep out, and a plague THORNS IN THE CUSHION. 39 take it. Cover it up with the surplice. Out with your cambric, dear ladies, and let us all whimper together. Now, then, hand on heart, we declare that it is not the fire of adverse critics which afflicts or frightens the editorial bosom. They may be right ; they may be rogues who have a personal spite ; they may be dullards who kick and bray as their nature is to do, and prefer thistles to pineapples ; they may be conscien- tious, acute, deeply learned, delightful judges, who see your joke in a moment, and the profound wisdom lying underneath. Wise or dull, laudatory or otherwise, we put their opinions aside. If they applaud, we are pleased : if they shake their quick pens, and iiy off with a hiss, we resign their favors and put on all the fortitude we can muster. I would rather have the lowest man's good word than his bad one, to be sure ; but as for coaxing a compliment, or wheedling him into good-humor, or stopping his angry mouth with a good dinner, or accepting his contributions for a certain Magazine, for fear of his barking or snapping elsewhere — alloti doficf These shall not be our acts. Bow-wow, Cerberus ! Here shall be no sop for thee, unless — unless Cerberus is an uncommonly good dog, when we shall bear no malice because he flew at us from our neighbor's gate. What, then, is the main grief you spoke of as annoying you — the toothache in the Lord Mayor's jaw, the thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair ? It is there. Ah ! it stings me now as I write. It comes with almost every morning's post. At night I come home, and take my letters up to bed (not daring to open them), and in the morning I find one, two, three thorns on my pillow. Three I extracted yesterday ; two I found this morning. They don't sting quite so sharply as they did ; but a skin is a skin, and they bite, after all, most wickedly. It is all very fine to advertise on the Magazine, " Contributions are only to be sent to Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., and not to the Editor's private residence." My dear sir, how little you know man- or woman-kind, if you fancy they will take that sort of warning ! How am I to know, (though to be sure, I begin to know now,) as I take the letters off the tray, which of those envelopes contains a real bo7id fide letter, and which a thorn ? One of the best invitations this year I mistook for a thorn-letter, and kept it without opening. This is what I called a thorn- letter : — " Camberwell, June 4. " Sir, — May I hope, may I entreat, that you will favor me by perusing the enclosed lines, and that they may be found worthy of insertion in the Cornhill Alagazine. We have known better days, sir. I have a sick and widowed mother to maintaiuj and little brothers 40 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. and sisters who look to me. I do my utmost as a governess to support them. I toil at night when they are at rest, and my own hand and brain are alike tired. If 1 could add but a little to our means by my pen, many of my poor invalid's wants might be supplied, and I could procure for her comforts to which she is now a stranger. Heaven knows it is not for want of will 01 for want oi energy on my part, that she is now in ill-health, and our little household almost without bread. Do — do cast a kind glance over my poem, and if you can help us, the widow, the orphans will bless you! I remain, sir, in anxious expectancy, " Your faithful servant, " S. S. S." And enclosed is a little poem or two, and an envelope with its penny stamp — heaven help us ! — and the writer's name and address. Now you see what I mean by a thorn. Here is the case put with true female logic. " I am poor ; I am good ; I am ill ; I work hard ; I have a sick mother and hungry brothers and sisters dependent on me. You can help us if you will." And t'len I look at the paper, with the thousandth part of a faint hope that it may be suitable, and I find it won't do ; and I knew it wouldn't do ; and why is this poor lady to appeal to my pity and bring her poor little ones kneeling to my bedside, and calling for bread which I can give them if I choose ? No day passes but that argument ad misericordiajn is used. Day and night that sad voice is crying out for help. Thrice it appealed to me yesterday. Twice this morning it cried to me : and I have no doubt when I go to get my hat, I shall find it with its piteous face and its pale family about it, waiting for me in the hall. One of the immense advantages which women have over our sex is, that they actually like to read these letters. Like letters ? O mercy on us ! Before I was an editor I did not like the postman much : — but now ! ■• A very common way with these petitioners is to begin with a fine flummery about the merits and eminent genius of the person whom they are addressing. But this artifice, I state publicly, is of no avail. When I see that kind of herb, I know the snake within it, and fling it away before it has time to sting. Away, reptile, to the waste-paper basket, and thence to the flames ! But of these disappointed people, some take their disap- pointment and meekly bear it. Some hate and hold you their enemy because you could not be their friend. Some, furious and envious, say : " Who is this man who refuses what I offer, and how dares he, the conceited coxcomb, to deny my merit ? " Sometimes my letters contain not mere thorns, but blud- geons. Here are two choice slips from that noble Irish oak, which has more than once supplied alpeens for this meek and unolfendins: skull : — THORNS IN THE CUSHION. 41 " Theatre Royal, Donnybrook. " S:k, — I have just finished reading the first portion of your Tale, Lovel the Widower, and am much surprised at the unwarrantable strictures you pass thereon on the corps de ballet. " I have been for more than ten years connected with the theatrical profession, and I beg to assure you that the majority of the corps de ballet are virtuous, well-conducted girls, and, consequently, that snug cottages are not taken for them in the Regent's Park. " I also have to inform you that theatrical managers are in the habit of speaking good English, possibly better English than authors. " You either know nothing of the subject in question, or you assert a wilful falsehood. " I am happy to say that the characters of the corps de ballet, as also those of actors and actresses, are superior to the snarlings of dyspeptic libellers, or the spiteful attacks and brutum jfuhnen of ephemeral authors. " I am, sir, your obedient servant, "The Editor cf the Cornhill Magazine. "A. B. C." " Theatre Royal, Donnybrook. " Sir, — I have just read in the Cornhill Magazifie for January, the first portion of a Tale written by you, and entitled Lovel the Widower. " In the production in question you employ all your malicious spite (and you have great capabilities that way) in trying to degrade the character of the corps de ballet. When you imply that the majority of ballet-girls have villas taken for them in the Regent's Park, 1 say you tell a deliberate falsehood. Having been brought up to the stage from infancy, and, though nowan actress, having been seven years principal dancer at the opera, I am competent to speak on the subject. I am only surprised that so vile a libeller as yourself should be allowed to preside at the Dramatic Fund dinner on the 22d instant. I think it would be much better if you were to reform your own life, instead of telling lies of those who are immeasurably your superiors. " Yours in supreme disgust, "A. D." The signatures of the respected writers are altered, and for the site of their Theatre Royal an adjacent place is named which (as I may have been falsely informed) used to be famous for quarrels, thumps, and broken heads. But, I say, is this an easy chair to sit on, when you are liable to have a pair of such shillelaghs flung at it .-' And, prithee, what was all the quarrel about? In the little history of "Lovel the Widower" I de- scribed, and brought to condign punishment, a certain wretch of a ballet-dancer, who lived splendidly for a while on ill-gotten gains, had an accident, and lost her beauty, and died poor, deserted, ugly, and every way odious. In the same page, other little ballet-dancers are described, wearing homely clothing, doing their duty, and carrying their humble savings to the family at home. But nothing will content my clear correspon- dents but to have me declare that the majority of ballet-dancers have villas in the Regent's Park, and to convict me of " de- liberate falsehood." Suppose, for instance, I had chosen to introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story ? I might get an expostulatory letter saying, " Sir, in stating that the majority of washerwomen are red-haired, you are a liar ! and you had best not speak of ladies who are immeasurably your superiors." Or suppose I had ventured to describe an illiterate haber- dasher ? One of the craft might write to me, " Sir, in describing haberdashers as illiterate, you utter a wilful falsehood. Haber- 42 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. dashers use much better English than authors." It is a mis take, to be sure. I have never said what my correspondents say I say. There is the text under their noses, but what if they choose to read it their own way } " Hurroo lads ' Here's for a fight There's a bald head peeping out of 'the hut. Iheres a bald head! It must be Tim Malone's." And whack ! come down both the bludgeons at once. Ah me ! we wound where we never intended to strike ; we create anger where we never meant harm ; and these thoughts are the thorns in our Cushion. Out of mere malignity, I sup- pose, there is no man who would like to make enemies. But here, in this editorial business, you can't do otherwise : and a queer, sad, strange, bitter thought it is, that must cross the mind of many a public man : " Do what I will, be innocent or spiteful, be generous or cruel, there are A and B, and C and D, who will hate me to the end of the chapter— to the chapter's end— to the Finis of the page— when hate, and envy, and for- tune, and disappointment shall be over." ON SCREENS IN DINING-ROOMS. A GRANDSON of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, vicar) wrote me a little note from his country living this morn- ing, and the kind fellow had the precaution to write " No thorn " upon the envelope, so that, ere I broke the seal, my mind might be relieved of any anxiety lest the letter should contain one of those lurking stabs which are so painful to the present gentle writer. Your epigraph, my dear P., shows your kind and artless nature j but don't you see it is of no use 1 People who are bent upon assassinating you in the manner mentioned will write " No thorn " upon their envelopes too ; and you open the case, and presently out flies a poisoned stiletto, which springs into a man's bosom, and makes the wretch howl with anguish. When the bailiffs are after a man, they adopt all sorts of disguises, pop out on him from all conceivable corners, and tap his miserable shoulder. His wife is taken ill ; his sweetheart, who remarked his brilliant, too brilliant appearance at the Hyde Park review, will meet him at Cremorne, or where you will. The old friend who has owed him that money these five years will meet him at so-and-so and pay. By one bait or ON SCREENS IN DINING-ROOMS. 43 Other the victim is hooked, netted, landed, and down goes the basket-lid. It is not your wife, your sweetheart, your friend, who is going to pay you. It is Mr. Nab the bailiff. You know you are caught. You are off in a cab to Chancer}' Lane. You know, I say .'' Why should you know ? I make no manner of doubt you never were taken by a bailiff in your life. I never was. I have been in two or three debtors' prisons, but not on my own account. Goodness be praised ! I mean you can't escape your lot ; and Nab only stands here metaphor- ically as the watchful, certain, and untiring officer of Mr Sheriff Fate. Why, my dear Primrose, this morning along with your letter comes another, bearing the well-known superscription of another old friend, which I open without the least suspicion, and what do I find ? A few lines from my friend Johnson, it is true, but they are written on a page covered with feminine handwriting. " Dear Mr. Johnson," says the writer, " I have just been perusing with delight a most charming tale by the Archbishop of Cambray. It is called ' Telemachus ; ' and I think it would be admirably suited to the Corn/nil Magazine. As you know the Editor, will you have the great kindness, dear Mr. Johnson, to communicate with him personally (as that is much better than writing in a roundabout way to the Publishers', and waiting goodness knows how long for an answer), and state my readiness to translate this excellent and instructive story. I do not wish to breathe a word against ' Lovel Parsonage,' * Framley the Widower,' or any of the novels which have appeared in the Cornhill Magazifie, but I am sure ' Telemachus ' is as good as new to English readers, and in point of interest and morality, y^r," &c., &c., &c. There it is. I am stabbed through Johnson. He has lent himself to this attack on me. He is weak about women. Other strong men are. He submits to the common lot, poor fellow. In my reply I do not use a word of unkindness. I write him back gently, that I fear ' Telemachus ' won't suit us. He can send the letter on to his fair correspondent. But however soft the answer, I question whether the wrath will be turned away. Will there not be a coolness between him and the lady .? and is it not possible that henceforth her fine eyes will look with dark- ling glances upon the pretty orange cover of our Magazine ? Certain writers, they say, have a bad opinion of women. Now am I very whimsical in supposing that this disappointed candidate will be hurt at her rejection, and angry or cast down according to her nature ? " Angry, indeed ! " says Juno, gather- 44 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ing up her purple robes and royal raiment. " Sorry, indeed ! " cries Minerva, lacing on her corselet again, and scowling undei her helmet. (I imagine the well-known Apple case has just been argued and decided.) " Hurt, forsooth ! Do you suppose we care for the opinion of that hobnailed lout of a Paris ? Do you suppose that I, the Goddess of Wisdom, can't make allowances for mortal ignorance, and am so base as to bear malice against a poor creature who knows no better ? You little know the goddess nature when you dare to insinuate that our divine minds are actuated by motives so base. A love of justice in- fluences us. We are above mean revenge. We are too mag- nanimous to be angry at the award of such a judge in favor of such a creature." And rustling out their skirts, the ladies walk away together. This is all very well. You are bound to believe them. They are actuated by no hostility : not they. They bear no malice — of course not. But when the Trojan war occurs presently, which side will they take ? Many brave souls will be sent to Hades. Hector will perish. Poor old Priam's bald numskull will be cracked, and Troy town will burn, because Paris prefers golden-haired Venus to ox-eyed Juno and gray-eyed Minerva. The last Essay of this Roundabout Series, describing the grief and miseries of the editoral chair, was written, as the kind reader will acknowledge, in a mild and gentle, not in a warlike or satirical spirit. I showed how cudgels were applied \ but surely, the meek object of persecution hit no blows in return. The beating did not hurt much, and the person as- saulted could afford to keep his good-humor ; indeed, I ad- mired that brave though illogical little actress, of the T. R. D-bl-n, for her fiery vindication of her profession's honor. I assure her I had no intention to tell 1 — s — well, let us say, monosyllables — about my superiors : and I wish her nothing but well, and when Macmahon (or shall it be Mulligan ?) Rot d'Irlande ascends his throne, I hope she may be appointed pro- fessor of English to the princesses of the royal house. Nuper in former days — I too have militated ; sometimes, as I now think, unjustly ; but always, I vow, without personal rancor. Which of us has not idle words to recall, flippant jokes to re- gret ? Have you never committed an imprudence ? Have you never had a dispute, and found out that you were wrong } So much the worse for you. Woe be to the man qui croit toujours avoir raison. His anger is not a brief madness, but a permanent mania. His rage is not a fever-fit, but a black poison inflaming him, distorting his judgment, disturbing his rest, embittering his ON SCREENS TN DINING-ROOMS. 45 cup, gnawing at his pleasures, causing him more cruel suffering than ever he can inflict on the enemy. O la belle morale I As I write it, I think about one or two little affairs of my own. There is old Dr. Squaretoso (he certainly was very rude to me, and that's the fact) ; there is Madame Pomposa (and certainly her ladyship's behavior was about as cool as cool could be). Never mind, old Squaretoso : nevermind, IVfadame Pomposa! Here is a hand. Let us be friends, as we once were, and have no more of this rancor. I had hardly sent that last Roundabout Paper to the printer (which, I submit, was written in a peaceable and not unchristian frame of mind), when Saturday came, and with it, of course my Saturday Review. I remember at New York coming down to breakfast at the hotel one morning, after a criticism had ap- peared in the New York Herald^ in which an Irish writer had given me a dressing for a certain lecture on Swift. Ah ! my dear little enemy of the T. R. D., what were the cudgels in your little billet-doux compared to those noble New York shil- lelaghs ? All through the Union, the literary sons of Erin have marched alpeen-%\.oc^ in hand, and in every city of the States they call each other and everybody else the finest names. Having come to breakfast, then, in the public room, I sit down, and see — that the nine people opposite have all got New York Heralds in their hands. One dear little lady, whom I knew, and who sat opposite, gave a pretty blush, and popped her paper under the tablecloth. I told her I had my whipping already in my own private room, and begged her to continue her reading. I may have undergone agonies, you see, but every man who has been bred at an English public school comes away from a private interview with Dr. Birch with a calm, even a smiling face. And this is not impossible, when you are prepared. You screw your courage up — you go through the business. You come back and take your seat on the form, showing not the least symptom of uneasiness or of previous unpleasantries. But to be caught suddenly up, and whipped in the bosom of your family — to sit down to breakfast, and cast your innocent eye on a paper, and find, before you are aware, that the Saturday Monitor or Black Monday Instructor has hoisted you and is laying on — that is indeed a trial. Or per- haps the family has looked at the dreadful paper beforehand, and weakly tries to hide it. " Where is the Instructor, or the Monitor 1 " say you. " Where is that paper ? " says mamma to one of the young ladies. Lucy hasn't it. Fanny hasn't seen it. Emily thinks that the governess has it. At last, out 46 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. it is brought, that awful paper ! Papa is amazingly tickled with the article on Thomson ; thinks that show up of Johnson is very lively ; and now — heaven be good to us ! — he has come to the critique on himself : — " Of all the rubbish which we have had from Mr. Tomkins, we do protest and vow that this last cartload is," &c. Ah, poor Tomkins ! — but most of all, ah ! poor Mrs. Tomkins, and poor Emily, and Fanny, and Lucy, who have to sit by and see paterfamilias put to the torture ! Now, on this eventful Saturday, I did not cry, because it was not so much the Editor as the Publisher of the Corrihill Magazine who was brought out for a dressing ; and it is wonderful how gal- lantly one bears the misfortunes of one's friends. That a writer should be taken to task about his books, is fair, and he must abide the praise or the censure. But that a publisher should be criticized for his dinners, and for the conversation which did not take place there, — is this tolerable press practice, legitimate joking, or honorable warfare ? I have not the honor to know my next-door neighbor, but I make no doubt that he receives his friends at dinner ; I see his wife and children pass constantly ; I even know the carriages of some of the people who call upon him, and could tell their names. Now, suppose his servants were to tell mine what the doings are next door, who comes to dinner, what is eaten and said, and I were to publish an account of these transactions in a newspaper, I could assuredly get money for the report ; but ought I to write it, and what would you think of me for doing so 'i And suppose, Mr. Saturday Reviewer — you censor morum, you who pique yourself (and justly and honorably in the main) upon your character of gentleman, as well as of writer, — sup- pose, not that you yourself invent and indite absurd twaddle about gentlemen's private meetings and transactions, but pick this wretched garbage out of a New York street, and hold it up for your readers' amusement — don't you think, my friend, that you might have been better employed ? Here, in my Saturday Reviezv, and in an American paper subsequently sent to me, I light, astonished, on an account of the dinners of my friend and publisher, which are described as " tremendously heavy," of the conversation (which does not take place), and of the guests assembled at the table. I am informed that the pro- prietor of the Cornhill, and the host on these occasions, is " a very good man, but totally unread ; " and that on my asking him whether Dr. Johnson was dining behind the screen, he said, " God bless my soul, my dear sir, there's no person by the name of Johnson here, nor any one behind the screen," ON SCREENS IN DTNING-RGOMS. 47 and that a roar of laughter cut him short. I am informed by the same New York correspondent that I have touched up a contributor's article ; that I once said to a literary gentle- man, who was proudly pointing to an anonymous article as his writing, " Ah ! I thought I recognized your hoof in it." 1 am told by the same authority that the Cornhill Magazine " shows symptoms of being on the wane," and having sold nearly a hundred thousand copies, he (the correspondent) " should think forty thousand was now about the mark." Then the graceful writer passes on to the dinners, at which it appears the Editor of the Magazine " is the great gun, and comes out with all the geniality in his power." Now suppose this charming intelligence is untrue ? Suppose the publisher (to recall the words of my friend the Dublin actor of last month) is a gentleman to the full as well informed as those whom he invites to his table .'' Suppose he never made the remark, beginning — " God bless my soul, my dear sir," &c., nor anything resembling it .•* Suppose nobody roared with laughing.? Suppose the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine n^v^x "touched up " one single line of the contribution which bears "marks of his hand? " Suppose he never said to any literary gentleman, " I recognized your hoof" in any periodical what- ever ? Suppose the 40,000 subscribers, which the writer to New York " considered to be about the mark," should be between 90,000 and 100,000 (and as he will have figures, there they are) .? Suppose this back-door gossip should be utterly blundering and untrue, would any one wonder ? Ah ! if we we had only enjoyed the happiness to number this writer among the contributors to our Magazine, what a cheerfulness and easy confidence his presence would impart to our meetings I He would find that "poor Mr. Smith " had heard that recondite anecdote of Dr. Johnson behind the screen ; and as for " the great gim of those banquets," with what geniality should not I " come out " if I had an amiable companion close by me dotting down my conversation for the New York Times J Attack our books, Mr. Correspondent, and welcome. They are fair subjects for just censure or praise. But woe be to you, if you allow private rancors or animosities to influence you in the discharge of your public duty. In the little court where you are paid to sit as judge, as critic, you owe it to your employers, to your conscience, to the honor of your calling, to deliver just sentences ; and you shall have to answer to heaven for your dealings, as surely as my Lord Chief Justice on t'e Bench. The dignity of letters, the honor of the literary calling, the 48 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. slights put by haughty and unthinking people upon literary men, — don't we hear outcries upon these subjects raised daily ? As dear Sam Johnson sits behind the screen, too proud to show his threadbare coat and patches among the more prosperous brethren of his trade, there is no want of dignity in hitn, in that homely image of labor ill-rewarded, genius as yet unrecognized, independence sturdy and uncomplaining. But Mr. Nameless, behind the publisher's screen uninvited, peering at the company and the meal, catching up scraps of the jokes, and noting down the guests' behavior and conversation, — what a figure his is ! Allans, Mr. Nameless ! Put up your notebook ; walk out of the hall ; and leave gentlemen alone who would be private, and wish you no harm. TUNBRIDGE TOYS. I wonder whether those little silver pencil-cases with a movable almanac at the butt-end are still favorite implements with boys, and whether pedlars still hawk them about the countr}' ? Are there pedlars and hawkers still, or are rustics and children grown too sharp to deal with them .? Those pencil- cases, as far as my memory serves me, were not of much use. The screw, upon which the movable almanac turned, was constantly getting loose. The i of the table would work from its moorings, under Tuesday or Wednesday, as the case might be, and you would find, on examination, that Th. or W. was the 23^ of the month (which was absurd on the face of the thing), and in a word your cherished pencil-case an utterly unreliable time-keeper. Nor was this a matter of wonder. Consider the position of a pencil-case in a boy's pocket. You had hard-bake in it ; marbles, kept in your purse when the money was all gone ; your mother's purse, knitted so fondly and supplied with a little bit of gold, long since — prodigal little son ! — scattered amongst the swine — I mean amongst brandy- balls, open tarts, three-cornered puffs, and similar abominations. You had a top and string ; a knife ; a piece of cobbler's wax ; two or three bullets; a Little Warbler; and I, for my part, remember, for a considerable period, a brass-barrelled pocket- pistol (which would fire beautifully, for with it I shot off a TUNBRIDGE TOYS. 49 button from Butt Major's jacket) ; — with all these things, and ever so many more, clinking and rattling in your pockets, and your hands, of course, keeping them in perpetual movement, how could you expect your movable almanac not to be twisted out of its place now and again — your pencil-case to be bent — your liquorice water not to leak out of your bottle over the cobbler's wax, your bull's-eyes not to ram up the lock and barrel of your pistol, and so forth. In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I bought one of those pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and who was in my form. Is he dead ? Is he a millionaire ? Is he a bankrupt now ? He was an immense screw at school, and I believe to this day that the value of the thing for which I owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in reality not one-and-nine. I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused myself with twiddling round the movable calendar. But this pleasure wore off. The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and violent boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor. His constant remark was, "When are you going to pay me that three-and-sixpence ? What sneaks your relations must be ? They come to see you. You go out to them on Saturdays and Sundays, and they never give you anything ! Don't tell me, you little humbug! " and so forth. The truth is that my relations were respectable ; but my parents were making a tour in Scotland ; and my friends in London, whom I used to go and see, were most kind to me, certainly, but somehow never tipped me. That term of May to August, 1S23, passed in agonies then, in consequence of my debt to Hawker. What was the pleasure of a calendar pencil-case in comparison with the doubt and torture of mind occasioned by the sense X)i the debt, and the constant reproach in that fellow's scowling eyes and gloomy, coarse reminders .'' How was I to pay off such a debt out of sixpence a week ? ludicrous ! Why did not some one come to see me, and tip me ? Ah ! my dear sir, \i you have any little friends at school, go and see them, and do the natural thing by them. You won't miss the sovereign. You don't know what a blessing it will be to them. Don't fancy they are too old — try 'em. And they will remember you, and bless you in future days ; and their gratitude shall accompany your dreary after life ; and they shall meet you kindly when thanks for kindness are scant. O mercy ! shall I ever forget that sovereign you gave me. Captain Bob ? or the agonies of being in debt to Hawker ? In that very term, a relation of 4 50 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. mine was going to India. I actually was fetched from school in order to take leave of him. I am afraid I told Hawker of this circumstance. I own I speculated upon my friend's giving me a pound. A pound ? Pooh ! A relation going to India, and deeply affected at parting from his darling kinsman, might give five pounds to the dear fellow ! * * * There was Hawker when I came back — of course there he was. As he looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage. He mut- tered curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy. My re- lation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment, asked me with much interest about my progress at school, heard me construe a passage of Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I was then engaged ; gave me a God bless you, and sent me back to school ; upon my word of honor, without so much as a half-crown ! It is all very well, my dear sir, to say that boys contract habits of expecting tips from their parents' friends, that they become avaricious, and so forth. Avaricious ! fudge ! Boys contract habits of tart and toffee ^eating, which they do not carry into after life. On the con- trary, I wish I did like 'em. What raptures of pleasure one could have now for five shillings, if one could but pick it off the pastrycook's tray ! No. If you have any little friends at school, out with your half-crowns, my friend, and impart to those little ones the fleeting joys of their age. Well, then. At the beginning of August, 1823, Bartlemy- tide holidays came, and I was to go to my parents, who were at Tunbridge Wells. My place in the coach was taken by my tutor's servants — " Bolt-in-Tun," Fleet Street, seven o'clock in the morning, was the word. My tutor, the Rev. Edward P , to whom I hereby present my best compliments, had a partin'g interview with me : gave me my little account for my governor: the remaining part of the coach-hire; five shillings for my own expenses ; and some five-and-twenty shillings on an ' old account which had been overpaid, and was to be restored to my family. Away I ran and paid Hawker his three-and-six. Ouf ! what a weight it was off my mind ! (He was a Norfolk boy, and used to go home from Mrs. Nelson's "Bell Inn," Aldgate — but that is not to the point.) The next morning, of course, we were an hour before the time. I and another boy shared a hackney-coach; two-and-six : porter for putting luggage on •coach, threepence. I had no more money of my own left. Rasherwell,my companion, went into the " Bolt-in-Tun " coffee- iroom, and had a good breakfast. I couldn't; because, though TUNBRIDGE TOYS. 51 I had five-and-twenty shillings of my parents' money, I had none of my own, you see. I certainly intended to go without breakfast, and still re- member how strongly I had that resolution in my mind. But there was that hour to wait. A beautiful August morning — I am very hungry. There is Rasherwell " tucking " away in the coffee-room. I pace the street, as sadly almost as if I had been coming to school, not going thence. I turn into a court by mere chance — I vow it was by mere chance — and there I see a coffee-shop with a placard in the window, Coffee, Twopence. Round of buttered toast. Twopence. And here am I, hungry, penniless, with five-and-twenty shillings of my parents' money in my pocket. What would you have done ? You see I had had my money, and spent it in that pencil-case affair. The five-and- twenty shillings were a trust — by me to be handed over. But then would my parents wish their only child to be actually without breakfast .'' Having this money, and being so hungry, so very hungry, mightn't I take ever so little ? Mightn't I at home eat as much as I chose ? Well, I went into the coffee-shop, and spent fourpence. I remember the taste of the coffee and toast to this day — a pe- culiar, muddy, not-sweet-enough, most fragrant coffee — a rich, rancid, 3'et not-buttered enough, delicious toast. The waiter had nothing. At any rate, fourpence I know was the sum I spent. And the hunger appeased, I got on the coach a guilty being. At the last stage, — what is its name ? I have forgotten in seven-and-thirty years, — there is an inn with a little green and trees before it ; and by the trees there is an open carriage. It is our carriage. Yes, there are Prince and Blucher, the horses ; and my parents in the carriage. Oh ! how I had been count- ing the days until this one came ! Oh ! how happy had I been to see them yesterday ! But there was that fourpence. All the journey down the toast had choked me, and the coffee poisoned me. I was in such a state of remorse about the fourpence, that I forgot the maternal joy and caresses, the tender paternal voice. I pull out the twenty-four shillings and eightpence with a tremb- ling hand. "Here's your money," I gasp out, "which Mr. P owes you, all but fourpence. I owed three-and-sixpence to Hawker out of my money for a pencil-case, and I had none left, and I took fourpence of yours, and had some coffee at a shop." 52 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. I suppose I must have been choking whilst uttering this confession. " My dear boy," says the governor, " why didn't you go and breakfast at the hotel ?"" " He must be starved," says my mother. I had confessed ; I had been a prodigal ; I had been taken back to my parents' arms again. It was not a very great crime as yet, or a very long career of prodigality ; but don't we know that a boy who takes a pin which is not his own, will take a thousand pounds when occasion serves, bring his parents' gray heads with sorrow to the grave, and carry his own to the gal- lows ? Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon whom our friend Mr. Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began by playing pitch-and-toss on a tombstone : playing fair, for what we know : and even for that sin he was promptly caned by the beadle. The bamboo was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out of him. From pitch-and-toss he proceeded to man- slaughter if necessary : to highway robbery ; to Tyburn and the rope there. Ah ! heaven be thanked, my parents' heads are still above the grass, and mine still out of the noose. As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge Wells Common and the rocks, the strange familiar place which I remember forty years ago. Boys saunter over the green with stumps and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop by on the riding-master's hacks. I protest it is Cramps Kidiiii:^ Master, as it used to be in the reign of George IV., and that Centaur Cramp must be at least a hundred years old. Yonder comes a footman with a bundle of novels from the library. Are they as good as our novels? Oh! how delightful they were! Shades of Valan- cour, awful ghost of Manfroni, how I shudder at your appear- ance ! Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, how often has this almost infantile hand tried to depict you in a Polish cap and richly embroidered tights ! And as for Corinthian Tom in light blue pantaloons and Hessians, and Jerry Hawthorn from tlie country, can all the fashion, can all the splendor of real life which these eyes have subsequently beheld, can all the wit I have heard or read in later times, compare with your fashion, with your brilliancy, with your delightful grace, and sparkling vivacious rattle ? Who knows ? They mixy have kept those very books at ' the library still — at the well-remembered library on the Pan- tiles, where they sell that delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. I will go and see. I went my way to the Pantiles, the queer little old-world Pantiles, where a hundred years since, so much TUNB RIDGE TOYS. 53 good company came to take its pleasure. Is it possible, that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as I read lately in a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine) as- sembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing, fiddling, and tea ? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but. where is the fine company.? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent embroidered gamesters ? A half- dozen of children and their nurses are listening to the musi- cians ; an old lady or two in a poke bonnet passes, and for the rest, I see but an uninteresting population of native tradesmen. As for the library, its window is full of pictures of burly theolo- gians, and their works, sermons, apologues, and so forth. Can I go in and ask the young ladies at the counter for '• Manfroni, or the One-Handed Monk," and " Life in London, or the Ad- ventures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, Esq., and their friend Bob Logic ? " — absurd. I turn away abashed from the casement — from the Pantiles — no longer Pantiles, but Parade. I stroll over the Common and survey the beautiful purple hills around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas, which have sprung up over this charming ground since first I saw it. What an admirable scene of peace and plenty! What a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows the cloud shadows across it, and murmurs through the full clad trees ! Can the world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful .-' I see a portion of it when I look up from the window at which I write. But fair scene, green woods, bright terraces gleaming in sunshine, and purple clouds swollen with summer rain — nay, the very pages over which my head bends — disappear from be- fore my eyes. They are looking backwards, back into forty years off, into a dark room, into a little house hard by on the Common here, in the Bartlemy-tide holidays. The parents have gone to town for two days : the house is all his own and a grim old maidservant's, and a little boy is seated at night in the lonely drawing-room, poring over " Manfroni, or the One- Handed Monk," so frightened that he scarcely dares to turn round. 54 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. DE yUVENTUTE. Our last paper of this veracious and roundabout series re- lated to a period which can only be historical to a great number of readers of this Magazine. Four I saw at the station to-day with orange-covered books in their hands, who can but have known George IV. by books, and statues, and pictures. Elderly gentlemen were in their prime, old men in their middle age, when he reigned over us. His image remains on coins ; on a picture or two hanging here and there in a Club or old-fash- ioned dining-room ; on horseback, as at Trafalgar Square, for example, where I defy any monarch to look more uncomfortable. He turns up in sundry memoirs and histories which have been published of late days ; in Mr. Massey's " History ; " in the *' Buckingham and Grenville Correspondence : " and gentle- men who have accused a certain writer of disloyalty are re- ferred to those volumes to see whether the picture drawn of George is overcharged. Charon has paddled him off ; he has mingled with the crowded republic of the dead. His effigy smiles from a canvass or two. Breechless he bestrides his steed in Trafalgar Square. I believe he still wears his robes at Madame Tussaud's (Madame herself having quitted Baker Street and life, and found him she modelled t'other side the Stygian stream). On the head of a five-shilling piece we still occasionally come upon him, with St. George, the dragon- slayer, on the other side of the coin. Ah me ! did this George slay many dragons ? Was he a brave, heroic champion, and rescuer of virgins ? Well ! well ! have you and I overcome all the dragons that assail us? come alive and victorious out of all the caverns which we have entered in life, and succored, at risk of life and'limb, all poor distressed persons in whose naked limbs the dragon Poverty is about to fasten his fangs, whom the dragon Crime is poisoning with his horrible breath, and about to crunch up and devour ? O my royal liege ! O my gracious prince and warrior ! Vo7( a champion to fight that monster ? Your feeble spear ever pierce that slimy paunch or plated back .-• See how the flames come gurgling out of his red-hot brazen throat ! What a roar ! Nearer and nearer he trails, with eyes flaming like the lamps of a railroad engine. How he squeals, rushing out through the darkness of his tun- nel ! Now he is near. Now he is /leu. And now — what ? — - DE JUFENTUTE. 55 lance, shield, knight, feathers, horse and all ? O horror, hor- ror ! Next day, round the monster's cave, there lie a few bones more. You, who wish to keep yours in your skins, be thankful that you are not called upon to go out and fight dragons. Be grateful that they don't sally out and swallow you. Keep a wise distance from their caves, lest you pay too clearly for approaching them. Remember that years passed, and whole districts were ravaged, before the warrior came who was able to cope with the devouring monster. When that knight does make his appearance, with all my heart let us go out and wel- come him with our best songs, huzzas, and laurel wreaths, and eagerly recognize his valor and victory. But he comes only seldom. Countless knights were slain before St. George won the battle. In the battle of life are we all going to try for the honors of championship ? If we can do our duty, if we can keep our place pretty honorably through the combat, let us say, Laus Deo ! at the end of it, as the firing ceases, and the night falls over the field. The old were middle-aged, the elderly were in their prime, then, thirty years since, when yon royal George was still fight- ing the dragon. As for you, my pretty lass, with your saucy hat and golden tresses tumbled in your net, and you, my spruce young gentleman in your mandarin's cap (the young folks at the country-place where I am staying are so attired), your parents were unknown to each other, and wore short frocks and short jackets, at the date of this five-shilling piece. Only to-day I met a dog-cart crammed with children^children with mus- taches and mandarin caps — children with saucy hats and hair- nets — children in short frocks and knickerbockers (surely the prettiest boy's dress that has appeared these hundred years) — • children from twenty years of age to six ; and father, with mother by his side, driving in front — and on father's counten- ance I saw that very laugh which I remember perfectly in the time when this crown-piece was coined — in his time, in King George's time, when we were school-boys seated on the same form. The smile was just as broad, as bright, as jolly, as I re- member it in the past — unforgotten, though not seen or thought of, for how many decades of years, and quite and instantly fam- iliar, though so long out of sight. Any contemporary of that coin who takes it up and reads the inscription round the laurelled head, " Georgius IV. Britan- niarum Rex. Fid: Def. 1823," if he will but look steadily enough at the round, and utter the proper incantation. I dare say may conjure back his life there. Look well, my elderly friend, and 56 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. tell me what you see ? First, I see a Sultan, with hair, beauti- ful hair, and a crown of laurels round his head, and his name is Georgius Rex. Fid. Def., and so on. Now the Sultan has dis- appeared ; and what is that I see .'' A boy, — a boy in a jacket. He is at a desk ; he has great books before him, Latin and Greek books and dictionaries. Yet, but behind the great books, which he pretends to read, is a little one, with pictures, which he is really reading. It is — yes, I can read now — it is the *' Heart of Mid Lothian," by the author of " Waverley " — or, no, it is " Life in London, or the adventures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, and their friend Bob Logic," by Pierce Egan ; and it has pictures — oh, such funny pictures ! As he reads, there comes behind the boy, a man, a dervish, in a black gown, like a woman, and a black square cap, and he has a book in each hand, and he seizes the boy who is reading the picture- book, and lays his head upon one of his books, and smacks it with the other. The boy makes faces, and so that picture dis- appears. Now the boy has grown bigger. He has got on a black gown and cap, something like the dervish. He is at a table, with ever so many bottles on it, and fruit, and tobacco ; and other young dervishes come in. They seem as if they were singing. To them enters an old moollah, he takes down their names, and orders them all to go to bed. What is this .'' a car- riage, with four beautiful horses all galloping — a man in red is blowing a trumpet. Many young men are on the carriage — one of them is driving the horses. Surely they won't drive into that ? ah ! they have all disappeared. And now I see one of the young men alone. He is walking in a street — a dark street — presently a light comes to a window. There is the shadow of a lady who passes. He stands there till the light goes out. Now he is in a room scribbling on a piece of paper, and kissing a miniature every now and then. They seem to be lines each pretty much of a length. I can read heart, S7nart, dart ; Mary, fairy ; Cupid, stupid ; true, you ; and never mind what more. Bah ! it is bosh. Now see, he has got a gown on again, and a wig of white hair on his head, and he is sitting with otiier dervishes in a great room full of them, and on a throne in the middle is an old Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a desk, and he wears a wig too — and the young man gets up and speaks to him. And now what is here ? He is in a room with ever so many children, and the miniature hanging up. Can it be a likeness of that woman who is sitting before that, copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from which she is pouring DE yUVENTUTE. 57 hot liquor into cups ? Was she ever a fairy ? She is as fat as a hippopotamus now. He is sitting on a divan by the fire. He has a paper on his knees. Read the name of the paper. It is the Snpet'Jine Rcvieiv. It inclines to think that Mr. Dickens is not a true gentleman, that Mr. Thackeray is not a true gentle- man, and that when the one is pert and the other is arch, we, the gentlemen of the Superfine Revieiv^ think, and think rightly, that we have some cause to be indignant. The great cause why modern humor and modern sentimentalism repel us, is that they are unwarrantably familiar. Now, Mr. Sterne, the Super- fine Reviewer thinks, " was a true sentimentalist, because he was above all things a true gentleman." The flattering inference is obvious : let us be thankful for having an elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if not too old, to imitate his high- bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace. If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not. If we repel by pertness, wa know who never does. If our language offends, we know whose is always modest. O pity 1 The vision has disappeared off the silver, the images of youth and the past are vanishing away ! We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world. In how many hours could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with a light carriage built expressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop the next stage ? Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coach- man of the Age, who took our half-crown so affably ? It was only yesterday ; but what a gulf between now and then'! Then was the old world. Stage coaches, more or less swift, riding- horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth— all these belong to the old period. I will con- cede a halt in the midst of it. and allow that gunpowder and printing tended to modernize the world. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We are of the time of chivalry as well as the Black Prince or Sir Walter Manny. We are of the age of steam. We have stepped out of the old world on to " Bru- nei's " vast deck, and across the waters ingcns patet telliis. Towards what new continent are we wending ? to what new laws, new manners, new politics, vast new expanses of liberties unknown as yet, or only surmised } I used to know a man who had invented a flying-machine. " Sir," he would say, "give me but five hundred pounds, and I will make it. It is so simple of construction that I tremble daily lest some other person should light upon and patent my discovery." Perhaps faith was want- 58 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ing ; perhaps the five hundred pounds. He is dead, and some- body else must make the flying-machine. But that will only be a step forward on the journey already begun since we quitted the old world. There it lies on the other side of yonder em- bankments. You young folks have never seen it ; and Waterloo is to you no more than Agincourt, and George IV. than Sar- danapalus. We elderly people have lived in that pra3-railroad world, which has passed into limbo and vanished from under us. I tell you it was firm under our feet once, and not long ago. They have raised those railroad embankments up, and shut off the old world that was behind them. Climb up that bank on which the irons are laid, and look to the other side — it is gone. There is no other side. Try and catch yesterday. Where is it ? Here is a Times newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is Tuesday 27th. Suppose you deny there was such a day as yesterday ? We who lived before railways, and survive out of the an- cient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the ark. The children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us, grandpapa, about the old world." And we shall mumble our old stories ; and we shall drop off one by one ; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. There will be but ten prae-railroadites left : then three — then two — then one — then o ! If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide or his face); I think he would go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come up again. Does he not see that he be- longs to bygone ages, and that his great hulking barrel of a body is out of place in these times ? What has he in common with the brisk young life surrounding him ? In the watches of the night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their chatter, — he, I mean the hippopotamus, and the elephant, and the long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and have a colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which they remember, where mighty mon- sters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked on the banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before men were made to slay them. We who lived before railways are antediluvians — we must pass away. We are growing scarcer every day ; and old — old — very old relicts of the times when George was still fighting the Dragon. Not long since, a company of horse-riders paid a visit to our watering-place. We went to see them, and I bethought DE JUVENTUTE. 59 me that young Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might like also to witness the performance, A pantomime is not always amusing to persons who have attained a certain age ; but a boy at a pantomime is always amused and amusing, and to see his pleasure is good for most hypochondriacs. We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that he might join us, and the kind lady replied that the boy had already been at the morning performance of the equestrians, but was most eager to go in the evening likewise. And go he did ; and laughed at all Mr. Merryman's remarks, though he remembered them with remarkable accuracy and insisted upon waiting to the very end of the fun, and was only induced to retire just before its conclusion by representations that the ladies of the party would be incommoded if they were to wait and undergo the rush and trample of the crowd round about. When this fact was pointed out to him, he yielded at once, though with a heavy heart, his eyes looking longingly towards the ring as we retreated out of the booth. We were scarcely clear of the place, when we heard " God save the Queen," played by the equestrian band, the signal that all was over. Our companion entertained us with scraps of the dialogue on our way home — ■ precious crumbs of wit which he had brought away from that feast. He laughed over them again as we walked under the stars. He has them now, and takes them out of the pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it with a senti- mental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school by this time ; the holidays are over ; and Doctor Birch's young friends have reassembled. Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to grin ! As the jaded Merryman uttered them to the old gentleman with the whip, some of the old folks in the audience, I dare say, indulged in reflections of their own. There was one joke — I utterly forget it — but it began with Merryman saying what he had for dinner. He had mutton for dinner, at one o'clock, after which " he had to come to business" And then came the point. Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch's, Market Rodborough, if you read this, will you please send me a line, and let me know what was the joke Mr. Merryman made about having his dinner ? You remember well enough. But do I want to know? Suppose a boy takes a favorite, long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket, and offer you a bite ? Merci! The fact is I don't care much about knowing that joke of Mr. Merryman's. But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, 6o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. and his landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about Mr. M. in private life — about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and general history, and I dare say was forming a picture of those in my mind : — wife cooking the mutton ; children waiting for it ; Merryman in his plain clothes, and so forth ; during which contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed at, and Mr. M., resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over head and heels. Do not suppose I am going sicut est mos, to indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking. Nay, Prime Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare and polish them ; Tabernacle preachers must arrange them in their minds before they utter them. All I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these performers thoroughly and out of his uniform : that preacher, and why in his travels this and that points truck him ; wherein lies his power of pathos, humor, eloquence ; — that Minister of State, and what moves him, and how his private heart is working ; — I would only say that, at a certain time of life certain things cease to interest : but about some things when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight, hearing ? Poems are written, and we cease to admire. Lady Jones invites us, and we yawn ; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned. The last time I saw a ballet at the opera — oh ! it is many years ago — I fell asleep in the stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I hope affording amusement to the compan)^, while the feet of five hundred nymphs were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces' distance. Ah, I remember a different state of things ! Credite posteri. To see those nymphs — gracious powers, how beautiful they were ! That leering, pamted, shrivelled, thin-armed, thick- ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers, coming thumping down on her board out of time — tJiat an opera-dancer ? Pooh ! My dear Walter, the great difference between my time and yours, who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that now the dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and out of tune ; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am •surprised how anybody can like to look at them. And as for laughing at me for falling asleep, I can't understand a man of sense doing otherwise. In my time, c^ la bonne heiire. In the reign of George IV., I give )^ou my honor, all the dancers at the opera were as beautiful as Houris. Even in William IV.'s time, when I think of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadere, — I say it was a vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can't see novr-a-days. How well I remember the tune to which she used DE yUVENTUTE. 6 1 to appear ! Kaled used to say to the Sultan, " My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurls called Bayaderes ap- proaches," and, to the clash of symbals, and the thumping of my heart, in she used to dance ! There has never been anything like it — never. There never will be — I laugh to scorn old people who tell me about your Noblet, your Montessu, your Vestris, your Parisot — pshaw, the senile twaddlers ! And the impudence of the young men, with their music and their dancers of to-day ! I tell you the women are dreary old creatures. I tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and they send all rational creatures to sleep. Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely one ! Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel ! Ah, Malibran ! Nay, I will come to modern times, and acknowledge thatLablache was a very good singer thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy for me) : and then we had Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer. But what is more certain and lamentable is die decay of stage beauty since the days of George IV. Think of Sontag ! I remember her in Othello and the Donna del La^o in '28. I remember bein^; behind the scenes at the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulder previous to her murder by Donzelli. Young fellows have never seen beauty like that^ heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell me ! A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing ? The deterioration of women is lamentable ; and the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours. Bless me ! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels, who sang, acted, and danced. When I remember the Adelphi, and the actresses there : when I think of Miss Ches- ter, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious pupils — of the Opera and Noblet, and the ex- quisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more ! One much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the chief male dancer — a very important per- sonage then, with a bare neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door for ever. And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twad- dling laudator temporis acti — your old fogey who can see no good except in his own time. 62 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much improved since the days of my monarch — of George IV. Fas- try Cookery is certainly not so good. I have often eaten half-a- crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school pastrycook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now ? I passed by the pas- trycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school. It looked a very clingy old baker's ; misfortunes may have come over him — those penny tarts certainly did 7iot look so nice as I remember them : but he may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost its cunning. Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's house — which on my conscience I believe was excellent and plentiful — and how we tried once or twice to eat him out of house and home. At the pastrycook's we may have over-eaten ourselves (I have admitted half-a-crown's worth for my own part, but I don't like to mention the real figure for fear of per- verting the present generation of boys by my ov/n monstrous confession) — we may have eaten too much, I say. We did ; but what then ? The school apothecary was sent for : a couple of small globules at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the morning, and we had not to go to school, so that the draught was an actual pleasure. For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty much in old times as they are now (except cricket, par exeinplc — and I wish the present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose Armstrong and Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces next), there were novels — ah ! I trouble you to find such novels in the present day ! O Scottish Chiefs, didn't we weep over you! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said .'' Efforts, feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our friends. ** I say, old Boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition," or, " Draw us Don Quixote and the windmills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys, who had love of drawing. " Pere- grine Pickle " we liked, our fathers admiring it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun ; but I think I was rather bewildered by it, though " Roderick Random " was and remains delightful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school library, no doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for young people. Ah ! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say a word DE JUVENTUTE. 63 ifn disrespect. But I am thankful to live in times when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call blushes on women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions to honest boys. Then, above all, we had Walter Scott, the kindl}', the generous, the pure — the companion of what countless delightful hours ; and purveyor of how much happiness ; the friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of our youth ! How well 1 remember the type and the brownish paper of the 64 ROUNDABOUT PACERS. old duodecimo "Tales of My Landlord ! " I have never dared to read the "Pirate," and the "Bride of Lammermoor," or " Kenihvorth," from that day to this, because the final is un- happy, and people die, and are murdered at the end. But " Ivanhoe," and " Quentin Durward ! " Oh ! for a half-holiday, and a quiet ccrner, and one of those books again ! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read them ; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes ! It may be the tart was good ; but how fresh the appetite was ! If the gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen of centuries. The boy-critic loves the story : grown up, he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life. I meet people now who don't care for Walter Scott, or the " Arabian Nights." I am sorry for them, unless they in their time have found Mr/z-romancer — their charming Scherazade. By the way, Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the favorite novelist in the fourth form now ? Have you got anything so good and kindly as dear Miss Edgeworth's Fraiik ? It used to belong to a fellow's sisters generally ; but though he pretended to despise it, and said, " Oh, stuff for girls ! " he read it ; and I think there were one or two passages which would try my eyes now, were I to meet with the little book. As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on purpose to get it ; but somehow, if you will press the question so closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I had supposed it to be. The pictures are just as fine as ever ; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry Haw- thorn and Corintliian Tom with delight, after many years' absence. But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me ; I even thought it a little vulgar — well ! well ! other writers have been considered vulgar — and as a description of the sports and amusements of London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing. But the pictures ! — oh ! the pictures are noble still ! First, there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for the career of pleasure and fashion. The park ! delicious ex- citement ! The theatre ! the saloon ! ! the green-room ! ! ! Rap- turous bliss — the opera itself ! and then perhaps to Temple Bar, to knock down a Charley there ! There are Jerry and DE yUVENTUTE. 65 Tom, with their tights and little cocked hats, coming from the opera — very much as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now. There they are at Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with the Duke of Clarence himself looking at them dancing. Now, strange change, they are in Tom Cribb's parlour, where they don't seem to be a whit less at homiC than in fashion's gilded halls : and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' legs previous to execution. What hardened ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches ! What com- punction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain ! Now we haste away to merrier scenes : to Tatter- sail's (ah gracious powers ! what a funny fellow that actor was who performed Dicky Green in that scene at the play !) ; and now we are at a private party, at which Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and very gracefully, too, as you must confess), with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is playing on the piano ! "After," the text says, '■'' the Oxonian had played several pieces of lively music, he requested as a favor that Kate and his friend Tom would perform a waltz. Kate without any hesi- tation immediately stood up. Tom offered his hand to his fascinating partner, and the dance took place. The plate conveys a correct representation of the ' gay scene ' at that precise moment. The anxiety of the Oxonian to witness the attitudes of the elegant pair had. nearly put a stop to their movements. On turning round from the pianofore and pre- senting his comical mug, Kate could scarcely suppress a laugh." And no wonder ; just look at it now (as I have copied it to the best of my humble ability), and compare Master Logic's countenance and attitude with the splendid elegance of Tom ! Now every London man is weary and blase. There is an en- enjoyment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which contrasts strangely with our feelings of i860. Here, for instance, is a specimen of their talk and walk. '" If,' says Logic — ' if enjoy' vient is your motto, you may make the most of an evening at Vauxhall, more than at any other place in the metropolis. It is all free and easy. Stay as long as you like, and depart when you think proper.' — ' Your description is so flattering,' replied Jerry, 'that I do not care how soon the time arrives for us to start.' Logic proposed a ^ bit of a stroll' in order to get rid of an hour or two, which was immediately accepted by 66 ROUAWABOUT PAPERS. Tom and Jerry. A turn or two in Bond Street, a x/r(?// through Piccadilly, a look in at Tattersall's, a ramble through Pall Mall, and a strict on the Corinthian path, fully occupied the time of our heroes until the hour for dinner arrived, when a few [-.lasses of Tom's rich wines soon put them on the qui vive. Vauxhall was then the object in view, and the Trio started, bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so amply affords." How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capi- tals, bring out the writer's wit and relieve the eye 1 They are as good as jokes, though you mayn't quite perceive the point. Mark the varieties of lounge in which the young men indulge — now a stroll, then a look in, then a ramble, and presently a strut. When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have read in an old Magazine, " the Prince's lounge " was a peculiar manner of walking which the young bucks imitated. At Windsor George III. had a cat's path — a sly early walk which the good old king took in the gray morning before his household was astir. What was the Corinthian path here recorded } Dees :any antiquary know? And what were the rich wines which our friends took, and which enabled them to enjoy Vauxhall ? Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which could occasion such a delightful perversion of the intellect as to enable it to enjoy ample pleasures there, what were they? So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the rustic, is fairly knocked up by all this excitement and is forced to go home, and the last picture represents him getting into the coach at the "White Horse Cellar," he being one of six inside ; whilst his friends shake him by the hand ; whilst the sailor mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang round with oranges, knives, and sealing-wax : whilst the guard is closing the door. Where are they now, those sealing-wax vendors ? where are the guards ? where are the jolly teams ? where are the coaches ? and where the youth that climbed inside and out of them ; that heard the merry horn which sounds no more ; that saw the sun rise over Stonehenge ; that rubbed away the bitter tears at night after parting as the coach sped on the journey to school and London ; that looked out with beating heart as the milestones flew by, for the welcome corner where began home and holidays ? It is night now : and here is home. Gathered under the quiet roof elders and children lie alike at rest. In the midst of a great peace and calm, the stars look out from the heavens. The silence is peopled with the past; sorrowful remorses for ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 67 sins and shortcomings — memories of passionate jo3^s and griefs rise out of their graves, both now alike calm and sad. Eyes, as I shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased to shine. The town and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight, wreathed in the autumn mists. Twinkling among the houses a light keeps watch here and there, in what may be a sick chamber or two. The clock tolls swee ly in the silent air. Here is night and rest. An awful sense of thanks makes the hearr swell, and the head bow, as I pass to my room through the sleeping nouse, and feel as though a hushed blessing were upon it. ON A yOKE I ONCE HEARE> FROM THE LATE THOMAS HOOD. H E good-natured reader who has perused some of these rambling papers has long since seen (if to see has been worth his trou- ble) that the writer belongs to the old-fashioned classes of this world, loves to re- member very much more than to prophesy, and though he can't help being carried onward, and down- ward, perhaps, on the hill of life, the swift milestones marking their forties, fifties — how many tens or lustres shall we say? — he sits under Time, the white- wigged charioteer, with his back to the horses, and his face to the past, looking at the receding landscape and the hills fading into the gray distance. Ah me ! those gra)', distant hills were green once, and here^ and covered with smiling people ! As we came jip the hill there was difficulty, and here and there a hard pull to be sure, but strength and spirits, and all sorts of cheery incident and com- panionship on the road ; there were the tough struggles (by 68 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. heaven's merciful will) overcome the pauses, the faintings, the weakness, the lost way, perhaps, the bitter weather, the dreadful partings, the lonely night, the passionate grief — towards these I turn my thoughts, as I sit and think in my hobby-coach under Time, the silver-wigged charioteer. The young folks in the same carriage meanwhile are looking forwards. Nothing escapes their keen eyes — not a flower at the side of a cottage garden, nor a bunch of rosy-faced children at the gate : the landscape is all bright, the air brisk and jolly, the town yonder looks beautiful, and do you think they have learned to be diffi- cult about the dishes at the inn ? Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journey with his wife and children in the sociable, and he passes an ordinary brick house on the road with an ordinary little garden, in the front, we will say, and quite an ordinary knocker to the door, and as many sashed windows as you please, quite common and square, and tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others; or suppose, in driving over such and such a common, he sees an ordinary tree, and an ordinary donkey browsing under it, if you like — wife and daughter look at these objects without the slightest particle of curiosity or interest. What is a brass knocker to them but a lion's head, or what not ? and a thorn- tree with a pool beside it, but a pool in which a thorn and a jackass are reflected ? But you remember how once upon a time your heart used to beat, as you beat on that brass knocker, and whose eyes looked from the window above. You remember how by that thorn-tree and pool, where the geese were performing a prodigious evening concert, there might be seen, at a certain hour, somebody in a certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to be coming from a village yonder, and whose image has flickered in that pool. In that pool, near the thorn ? Yes, in that goose-pool, never mind how long ago, when there were reflected the images of the geese — and two geese more. Here, at least, an oldster may have the advantage of his young fellow-travellers, and so Putney Heath or the New Road may be invested with a halo of brightness invisible to them, because it only beams out of his own soul. I have been reading the " Memorials of Hood " by his chil- dren,* and wonder whether the book will have the same interest for others and for younger people, as for persons of my own age and calling. Books of travel to any country become interesting to us who have been there. Men revisit the old school though * Memorials of Thomas Hood. Moxon, iS6o. 2 vols. ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 6g hateful to them, with ever so much kindliness and sentimental affection. There was the tree under which the bully licked you ; here the ground where you had to fag out on holidays, and so forth. In a word, my dear sir, Yoii are the most inter- esting subject to yourself, of any that can occupy your worship's thoughts. I have no doubt, a Crimean soldier, reading a his- tory of that siege, and how Jones and the gallant 99th were ordered to charge or what not, thinks, " Ah, yes, we of the 1 00th were placed so and so, I perfectly remember." So with this memorial of poor Hood, it may have, no doubt, a greater interest for me than for others, for I was fighting, so to speak, in a different part of the field, and engaged a young subaltern, in the Battle of Life, in which Hood fell, young still and cov- ered with glory. " The Bridge of Sighs " was his (."orunna, his heights of Abraham — sickly, weak, wounded, he fell in the full blaze and fame of that great victory. What manner of man was the genius who penned that famous song ? What like was Wolfe, who climbed and con- quered on those famous heights of Abraham 1 We all want to know details regarding men who have achieved famous feats, whether of war, or wit, or eloquence, or endurance, or knowl- edge. His one or tv/o happy and heroic actions take a man's name and memory out of the crowd of names and memories. Henceforth he stands eminent. We scan him : we want to know all about him ; we walk around and examine him, are curious, perhaps, and think are we not as strong and tall and capable as yonder champion ; were we not bred as well, and could we not endure the winter's cold as well as he .'' Or we look up with all our eyes of admiration ; will find no fault in our hero : declare his beauty and proportions perfect ; his critics envious detractors, and so forth. Yesterday, before he performed his feat, he was nobod}'. Who cared about his birth-place, his parentage, or the color of his hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or by a series of great actions to which his genius accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians are busy finding out under what schoolmaster's ferule he was educated, where his grandmother was vaccinated, and so forth. If half-a-dozen washing-bills of Goldsmith's were to be found to-morrow, would they not inspire a general interest, and be printed in a hundred papers ? I lighted upon Oliver, not very long since, in an old Town and Country Magazine, at the Pantheon masquerade " in an old English habit." Straightway my imagination ran out to meet him, to look at him, to follow him about. I forgot the names of scores of fine gentlemen of 70 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. the past age, who were mentioned besides. We want to see this man who has amused and charmed us ; who has been our friend, and given us hours of pleasant companionship and kindly thought, I protest when I came, in the midst of those names of people of Fashion, and beaux, and demireps, upon those names " Sir jf. Ji-yii-lds, in a domino ; Mr. Cr-d-cJz and Dr. G-Idsm-ih, in tioo old English dresses " I had, so to speak, my heart in my mouth. What, you here, my dear Sir Joshua ? Ah, what an honor and privilege it is to see you ! This is Mr. Goldsmith .'' And very much, sir, the ruff and the slashed doublet become you ! O doctor ! what a pleasure I had and have in reading the Afiimated Nature. How did you learn the secret of writing the decasyllabic line, and whence that sweet wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song ? Was Beau Tibbs a real man, and will you do me the honor of allow- ing me to sit at your table at supper } Don't you think you know how he would have talked ? Would you not have liked to hear him prattle over the champagne ? Now, Hood is passed away — passed off the earth as much as Goldsmith or Horace. The times in which he lived, and in which very many of us lived and were young, are changing or changed. I saw Hood one ) as a young man, at a dinner which seems almost as ghostly now as that masquerade at the Pan- theon (1772), of which we were speaking anon. It was at a dinner of the Literary Fund, in that vast apartment which is hung round with the portraits of very large Royal P'reemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts. There at the end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were our companions. I quite remember his pale face ; he was thin and deaf, and very silent ; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he made one pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood said, ***** (the Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. Cuff in those days, not by its present proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked for, and Cuff (remember that name) being the name of the landlord, Hood opened his silent jaws and said * * * Shall I tell you what he said ? It was not a very good pun, which the great punster then made. Choose your favorite pun of " Whims and Od- dities," and fancy that was the joke which he contributed to the hilarity of our little table. Where those asterisks are drawn on the page, you must know, a pause occurred, during which I was engaged with " Hood's Own," having been referred to the book by this life of the author which I have just been reading. I am not going ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 71 to dissert on Hood's humor ; I am not a fair judge. Have I not said elsewhere that tliere are one or two wonderfully old gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips when I was a boy ? I can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of that sovereign, Jhat rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my young daj^s happy. Those old sovereign-contributors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall laugh ; they may commit mur- der, and I shall believe it was justifiable homicide. There is my friend Baggs, who goes about abusing me, and of course our dear mutual friends tell me. Abuse away, mon bon ! You were so kind to me when I wanted kindness, that you may take the change out of that gold now, and say I am a cannibal and negro, if you will. Ha, Baggs ! Dost thou wince as thou readest this line ? Does guilty conscience throbbing at thy breast tell thee of whom the fable is narrated \ Puff out thy wrath, and, when it has ceased to blow, my Baggs shall be to me as the Baggs of old — the generous, the gentle, the friendly. No, on second thoughts, I am determined I will not repeat that joke which I heard Hood make. He says he wrote these jokes with such ease that he sent manuscripts to the publishers faster than they could acknowledge the receipt thereof. I won't say that they were all good jokes, or that to read a great book full of them is a work at present altogether jocular. Writing to a friend respecting some memoir of him which had been published. Hood says, " You will judge how well the author knows me, when he says my mind is rather serious than comic." At the time when he wrote these words, he evidently undervalued his own serious power, and thought that in pun- ning and broad-grinning lay his chief strength. Is not there something touching in that simplicity and humility of faith? " To make laugh is my calling," says he ; " I must jump, I must grin, I must tumble, I must turn language head over heels, and leap through grammar;" and he goes to his work humbly and courageously, and what he has to do that does he with all his might, through sickness, through sorrow, through exile, poverty, fever, depression — there he is, always ready to his work, and with a jewel of genius in his pocket ! Why, when he laid down his puns and pranks, put the motley off, and spoke out of his heart, all England and America listened with teaTrs and wonder ! Other men have delusions of conceit, and fancy themselves greater than they are, and that the world slights them. Have we not heard how Liston always thought he ought to play Hamlet ? Here is a man with a power to touch the heart almost unequalled, and he passes 72 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. days and years in writing, " Young Ben he was a nice young man," and so fortli. To say truth, 1 have been reading \\\ a book of " Hood's Own " until I am perfectly angry. " You great man, you good man, you true genius and poet," I cry out, as I turn page after page. " Do, do make no more of these jokes, but be yourself, and take your station." When Hood was on his death-bed, Sir Robert Peel, who only knew of his illness, not of his imminent danger, wrote to him a noble and touching letter, announcing that a pension was conferred on him : " I am more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the personal satisfnction which I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and characteristic acknowledgments. " You perhaps thinlc that you are known to one with such multifarious occupations as myself, merely by general reputation as an author ; but I assure you that there can be little, which you have written ai.d acknowledged, which I have not read ; and tliat there are few who can appreciate and admire more than myself, the good sense and good feeling which have taught you to nifuse so much fun and merriment into writings correcting folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very often confined. You may write on v.ith ihe consciousness of independence, as free and unfettered, as if no communication had ever passed between us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the names of those whose claims have been admitted on account of their lite- rary or scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of my statement. " One return, indeed, I shall ask of you — that you will give me the opportunity of making your personal acquaintance." And Hood, writing to a friend, enclosing a copy of Peel's letter, says, " Sir R. Peel came from Burleigh on Tuesday night, and went down to Brighton on Saturday. If he had written by post, I should not have had it till to-day. So he sent his servant with the enclosed on Saturday night ; another mark of considerate attention." He is frightfully unwell, he continues : his wife says he looks quite green ; but ill as he is, poor fellow, " his well is not dry. He has pumped out a sheet of Chistmas fun, is drawing some cuts, and shall write a sheet more of his novel." Oh, sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain ! How noble Peel's figure is standing by that sick bed ! how generous his words, how dignified and sincere his compassion ! And the poor dying man, with a heart full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn to him and say — " If it be well to be remembered by a Minister, it is better still not to be for- gotten by him in a ' hurly Burleigh ! ' " Can you laugh } Is not the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips } As dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his bow — as one reads of Catholics on their death-beds putting on a Capuchin dress to go out of the world — here is poor Hood at his last hour putting on his ghastly motley, and uttering one joke more. ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 73 He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his chil- dren, wife, friends \ to the former especially his whole life had been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, and affection. In going through the record of his most pure, modest, honorable life, and living along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affec- tionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been brought into communion. Can we say as much of the lives of all men of letters ? Here is one at least without guile, without preten- sion, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted. And what a hard work, and what a slender reward ! In the little domestic details with which the book abounds, what a simple hfe is shown to us ! The most simple little pleasure and amusements delight and occupy him. You have revels on shrimps j the good wife making the pie ; details about the maid, and criticisms on her conduct ; wonderful tricks played with the plum-pudding — all the pleasures centring round the little humble home. One of the first men of his time, he is appointed editor of a Magazine at a salary of 300/. per annum, signs himself exultingly " Ed. N. M. M.," and the family rejoice over the income as over a fortune. He goes to a Greenwich dinner — what a feast and a rejoicing afterwards ! — • "Well, we drank 'the Boz' with a delectable clatter, which drew from him a good warm-hearted speech. * ♦ * He looked very well, and had a younger brother along with him. » » * Then we had songs. Bnrham chanted a Robin Hood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord H ; and somebody, unknown to me, gave a capital imitation of a French showman. Then we toasted Mrs. Hoz, and the Chairman, and Vice, and tlie Traditional Priest sang the ' Deep deep sea,' in his deep deep voice ; and then we drank to Proctor, who wrote the said song ; also Sir J. Wilson's good health, and Cruikshank's, and Ainsworth's : and a INIanchester friend of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have been not composed but manu- factured. Jordan, as Jerdanishas usual on such occasions — yon know how paradoxically he is quite at houfj in dining- out. As to myself. I had to make my second maiden speech, for Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms my modesty might allow me to repeat to you, b>it my memory won't. However, I ascribed the toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured them that their wishes had already improved it— that I felt a brisker circulation — a more genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a certain trembling of my hand was not from palsy, or my old ague, but an inclination in my liand to shake itself with every one present. Whereupon 1 had to go through the friendly ceremony with as many of the company as were within reach, besides a few more who came express from the other end of the table. rVrc gratifyinr, wasn't it? Though I cannot go quite so far as Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserv'ed ni spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go out, because I am so d(M,icstic and steady, and was down at the door before I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage. Poor girl ! what uioidd she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame one ? " And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and fondles the hand which has been shaken by so many illustrious men ! The little feast dates back only eighteen years, and yet somehow it seems as distant as a dinner at Mr. Thrale's, or a meeting at Will's. 74 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Poor little gleam of sunshine ! very little good cheer enlivens that sad simple life. We have the triumph of the Magazine : then a new Magazine projected and produced : then illness and the last scene, and the kind Peel by the dying man's bedside speaking noble words of respect and sympathy, and soothing the last throbs of the tender honest heart. I like, I say, Hood's life even better than his books, and I wish, with all my heart. Monsieur d chcr confrere, the same could be said for both of us, when the inkstream of our life hath ceased to run. Yes : if I drojD first, dear Baggs, I trust you may find reason to modify some of the unfavorable views of my character, which you are freely imparting to our mutual friends. What ought to be the literary man's point of honor nowadays ? Suppose, friendly reader, you are one of the craft, what legacy would you like to leave to your children ? First of all (and by heaven's gracious help) you would pray and strive to give them such an endowment of love, as should last certainly for all their lives, and perhaps be transmitted to their children. You would (by the same aid and blessing) keep your honor pure, and trans- mit a name unstained to those who have a right to bear it. You would, though this faculty of giving is one of the easiest of the literary man's qualities — you would, out of your earnings, small or great, be able to help a poor brother in need, to dress his wounds, and, if it were but twopence, to give him succor. Is the money which the noble Macaulaygave to the poor lost to his family ? God forbid. To the loving hearts of his kindred is it not rather the most precious part of their inheritance ? It was invested in love and righteous doing, and it bears interest in heaven. You will, if letters be your vocation, find saving harder than giving and spending. To save be your endeavor, too, against the night's coming when no man can work ; when the arm is weary with the long day's labor ; when the brain perhaps grows dark ; when the old, who can labor no more, want warmth and rest, and the young ones call for supper. I copied the little galley-slave who is made to figure in the initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which we purchased in a curiosity-shop at the Hague. It is one of the gift spoons so common in Holland, and which have multi- plied so astonishingly of late years at our dealers' in old silver- ware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words : "Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen^' — " In the year ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD. 75 1609 I went thus clad." The good Dutchman was released from his Algerine captivity (I imagine his figure looks like that of a slave amongst the Moors), and in his thank-offering to some godchild at home, he thus piously records his escape. Was not poor Cervantes also a captive amongst the Moors? Did not Fielding, and Goldsmith, and Smollett, too, die at the chain as well as poor Hood ? Think of Fielding going on board his wretched ship in the Thames, with scarce a hand to bid him farewell ; of brave Tobias Smollett, and his life, how hard, and how poorly rewarded ; of Goldsmith, and the physi- cian whispering, " Have you something on your mind ? " and the wild dying eyes answering, " Yes." Notice how Boswell speaks of Goldsmith, and the splendid contempt with which he regards him. Read Hawkins on Fielding, and the scorn with which Dandy Walpole and Bishop Hurd speak of him. Galley- slaves doomed to tug the oar and wear the chain, whilst my lords and dandies take their pleasure, and hear fine music and disport with fine ladies in the cabin ! But stay. Was there any cause for this scorn ? Had some of these great men weaknesses which gave inferiors advantage over Ihem ? Men of letters cannot lay their hands on their hearts, and say, " No, the fault was fortune's, and the indiffer- ent world's not Goldsmith's nor Fielding's." There was no reason why Oliver should always be thriftless ; why Fielding and Steele should sponge upon their friends ; why Sterne should make love to his neighbors' wives. Swift, for a long time, was as poor as any wag that ever laughed : but he owed no penny to his neighbors : Addison, when he wore his most threadbare coat, could hold his head up, and maintain his dignity : and, I dare vouch, neither of those gentlemen, when they were ever so poor, asked any man alive to pity their condition, and have a regard to the weaknesses incidental to the literary profession. Galley-slave, forsooth ! If you are sent to prison for some error for which the law awards that sort of laborious seclusion, so much the more shame for you. If you are chained to the oar as a prisoner of war, like Cervantes, you have the pain, but not the shame, and the friendly compassion of mankind to re- ward you. Galley-slaves, indeed ! What man has not his oar to pull ? There is that wonderful old stroke-oar in the Queen's galley. How many j'^ears has he pulled ? Day and night, in rough water or smooth, with what invincible vigor and surpris- ing gayety he plies his arms. There is the same GaVere Capi- taine, that well-known, trim figure, the bow-oar ; how he tugs, and with what a will ! How both of them have been abused in 76 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. their time ! Take the Lawyer's galley, and that dauntless octogenarian in command; when has he ever complained or re- pined about his slavery ? There is the Priest's galley — black and lawn sails — do any mariners out of Thames work harder? When lawyer, and statesman, and divine, and writer are snug in bed, there is a ring at the poor Doctor's bell. Forth he must go, in rheumatism or snow ; a galley-slave bearing his galley-pots to quench the flames of fever, to succor mothers and young children in their hour of peril, and, as gently and sooth- ingly as may be, to carry the hopeless patient over to the silent shore. And have we not just read of the actions of the Queen's galleys and their brave crews in the Chinese waters ? Men no*" more worthy of human renown and honor to-day in their victory, than last year in their glorious hour of disaster. So with stout hearts may we ply the oar, messmates all, till the voyage is over, and the Harbor of Rest is found. EOUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle reader has pulled a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I am writing, and sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season. You young ladies, may you have plucked pretty giftlings from it ; and out of the cracker sugar-plum which you have split with the captain or the sweet young curate may you have read one of those delicious conundrums which the confectioners introduce into the sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion of love. Those riddles are to be read at your age, when I dare say they are amusing. As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are standing at the tree, they don't care about the love- riddle part, but understand the sweet-almond portion very well. They are four, five, six years old. Patience, little people ! A dozen merry Christmases more, and you will be reading those wonderful love-conundrums, too. As for us elderly folks, we watch the babies at their sport, and the young people pulling at the branches : and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties in the packets which we pluck off the boughs, we find enclosed Mr. Carnifex's review of the quarter's meat ; Mr. Sartor's com- pliments, and little statement for self and the young gentlemen; and Madame de Sainte-Crinoline's respects to the young ladies, ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 77 who encloses her account, and will send on Saturday, please ; or we stretch our hand out to the educational branch of the Christinas tree, and there find a lively and amusing article from the Rev. Henry Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's ex- ceedingly moderate account for the last term's school ex- penses. The ^ree yet sparkles, I say. I am writing on the day before Twelfth Day, if you must know ; but already ever so many of the fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone out. Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with us for a week (and who has been sleeping mysteriously in the bath-room), comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of the holidays with his grandmother — and I brush away the manly tear of regret as I part with the dear child. " Well, Bob, good-by, since you will go. Compliments to grandmamma. Thank her for the turkey. Here's " (^A slight peamiary transaction takes place at this juncture^ and Bob nods a?id 7vijiks, and puts his hand in his waistcoat pocket^ "You have had a pleasant week .'' " Bob. — " Haven't I ! " {And exit, anxious to know the amount of the coin which has just changed hands ^ He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door (behind which I see him perfectly), I too cast up a little account of our past Christmas week. When Bob's holidays are over, and the printer has sent me back this manuscript, I know Christmas will be an old story. All the fruit will be off the Christmas tree then ; the crackers will have cracked off ; the almonds will have been crunched ; and the sweet-bitter riddles will have been read ; the lights will have perished off the dark green boughs ; the toys growing on them will have been dis- tributed, fought for, cherished, neglected, broken. Ferdinand and Fidelia will each keep out of it (be still, my gushing heart !) the remembrance of a riddle read together, of a double-almond munched together, and the moiety of an exploded cracker * * * The maids, I say, will have taken down all that holly stuff and nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and looking-glasses, the dear boys will be back at school, fondly thinking of the pan- tomime-fairies whom they have seen ; whose gaudy gossamer wings are battered by this time ; and whose pink cotton (or silk is it ?) lower extremities are all dingy and dusty. Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will have cracked on the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin. When you read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue out of his ^8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. mouth, and saying, " How are you to-morrow ? " To-morrow, indeed ! He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the absurd question. To-morrow, indeed ! To-morrow the diffugient snows will give place to Spring ; the snow-drops will lift their heads ; Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar to that feast ; in place of bonbons, trees will have an eruption of light green knobs ; the whitebait season will bloom * * * as if one need go on describing these vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here, though ending, and the subject of my discourse ! We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time. What wassail-bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of Christmas song ! And then to think that these festivities are prepared months before — that these Christmas pieces are pro- phetic ! How kind of artists and poets to devise the festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time ! We ought to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at midnight and sets the pudding a boiling, which is to feast us at six o'clock. I often think with gratitude of the famous Mr. Nelson Lee — the author of I don't know how many hundred glorious pantomimes — walking by the summer wave 3t Margate, or Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea of some new gorgeous spectacle of faerj^, which the winter shall see com- plete. He is like cook at midnight {siparva licef). He watches and thinks. He pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums of fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of — well, the figs of fairy fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the seething cauldron of imagination, and at due season serves up THE Pantomime. Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see all the pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of my life I shall never forego reading about them in that delicious sheet of 77^1? Times which appears on the morning after Boxing- day. Perhaps reading is even better than seeing. The best way, I think, is to say you are ill, lie in bed, and have the paper for two hours, reading all the way down from Drury Lane to the Britannia at Hoxton. Bob and I went to two pantomimes. One was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I don't know which we liked the be-^t. At the Fancy, we saw " Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's Ghost and Nunky's Pison," which is all very well — but, gentle- ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 79 men, if you don't respect Sliakspeare, to whom will you be civil ? The palace and ramparts of Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg's finest efforts. The ban- queting hall of the palace is illuminated : the peaks and gables glitter with the snow : the sentinels march blowing their fingers with the cold — the freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and dexterously arranged : the snow-storm rises : the wind howls awfully along the battlements : the waves come curling, leaping, foaming to shore. Hamlet's umbrella is whirled away in the storm. He and his two friends stamp on each other's toes to keep them warm. The storm-spirits rise in the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the rocks. My eyes ! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurling through the air ! As the storm reaches its height (here the wind instruments come in with prodigious effect, and I compli- ment Mr. Brumby and the violoncellos) — as the snow-storm rises, (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which sends a shiver into your very boot-soles,) the thunder-clouds deepen (bong, bong, bong, from the violoncellos). The forked light- ning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins — and look, look, look ! as the frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges howling into the water again. Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look for her son. The storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and she retires screaming in pattens. The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore are seen to drive off, and several people are drowned. The gas-lamps along the street are wrenched from their foundations, and shoot through the troubled air. Whist, rush, hish ! how the rain roars and pours ! The darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the power of the music — and see — in the midst of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air and wave — what is that ghastly figure moving hither 1 It becomes bigger, bigger, as it advances down the platform — more ghastly, more horrible, enormous ! It is as tall as the whole stage. It seems to be advancing on the stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with terror, as the Ghost of the late Hamlet comes in, and begins to speak. Several people faint, and the light- fingered gentry pick pockets furiously in the darkness. In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the 8o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest spectator must have felt frightened. But hark ! what is that silver shimmer of the fiddles ! Is it — can it be — the gray dawn peeping in the stormy east ? The ghost's eyes look blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly agony. Quicker, quicker j)ly the violins of Phoebus Apollo. Redder, redder grow the orient clouds. Cockadoodledoo ! crows that great cock which has just come out on the roof of the palace. And now the round sun himself pops up from behind the waves of night. Where is the ghost .-' He is gone ! Purple shadows of morn " slant o'er the snowy sward," the city wakes up in life and sunshine, and we confess we are very much relieved at the disappearance of the ghost. We don't like those dark scenes in pantomimes. After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into Columbine was to be expected ; but I confess I was a little shocked when Hamlet's mother became Pantaloon, and was instantly knocked down by Clown Claudius. Grimaldi is getting a little old now, but for real humor there are few clowns like him. Mr. Shuter, as the gravedigger, was chaste and comic, as he always is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves. " Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings," at the other house, is very pleasant too. The irascible William is acted with great vigor by Snoxall, and the battle of Plastings is a good piece of burlesque. Some trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of pantomime permit himself ? At the battle of Hastings, William is on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco Sharp- shooter), when a shot from the Normans kills Harold. The fairy Edith hereupon comes forward, and finds his body, which straightway leaps up a live harlequin, whilst the Conqueror makes an excellent clown, and the Archbishop of Bayeux, a diverting pantaloon, &c., &c., &c. Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw ; but one description will do as well as another. The plots, you see, are a little intricate and difficult to understand in pantomimes ; and I may have mixed up one with another. That I was at the theatre on Boxing-night is certain — but the pit was so full that I could only see fairy legs glittering in the distance, as I stood at the door. And if I was badly off, I think there was a young gentleman behind me worse off still. I own that he has good reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind my back, and hereby beg his pardon. Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Picca- ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 8 1 dilly, who had slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on his back, uttering energetic expressions ; that party begs to offer thanks, and compliments of the season. Bob's behavior on New Year's day, I can assure Dr. Holy- shade, was highly creditable to the boy. He had expressed a determination to partake of every dish which was put on the table; but after soup, fish, roast-beef, and roast-goose, he re- tired from active business until the pudding and mincepie made their appearance, of which he partook liberally, but not too freely. And he greatly advanced in my good opinion by praising the punch, which was of my own manufacture, and which some gentlemen present (Mr. O'M — g — n, amongst others) pronounced to be too weak. Too weak ! A bottle of rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a bottle of brandy, and two bottles and a half of water — can this mixture be said to be too weak for any mortal ? Our young friend amused the company during the evening, by exhibiting a two-shilling magic-lantern, which he had purchased and likewise by singing " Sally, come up ! " a quaint, but rather monotonous melody, which I am told is sung by the poor negro on the banks of the broad Mississippi. What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child's amuse- ment during the Christmas week ? A great philosopher was giving a lecture to young folks at the British Institution, But when this diversion was proposed to our young friend Bob, he said, " Lecture "i No, thank you. Not as I knows on," and made sarcastic signals on his nose. Perhaps he is of Dr. John- son's opinion about lectures : " Lectures, sir ! what man would go to hear that imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a book ? " I never went, of my own choice, to a lecture ; that I can vow. As for sermons, they are different \ I delight in them, and they cannot, of course, be too long. Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides pantomime, pudding, and pie. One glorious, one delightful, one most unlucky and pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, with a famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly than any of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron ; through suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, in which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan ; by pond after pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hob-nailed shoes flew up in the air ; the air frosty with a lilac haze, through which villas, and commons, and churches, and; 6 82 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. plantations glimmered. We drive up the hill, Bob and I ; we make the last two miles in eleven minutes ; we pass that poor, armless man who sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes. I don't give anything, and Bob looks disappointed. We are set down neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the brougham door. I don't give anything ; again disappointment on Bob's part. I pay a shilling apiece, and we enter into the glorious building, which is decorated for Christmas, and straight- way forgetfulness on Bob's part of everything but that magnifi- cent scene. The enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and Christmas. The stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts, statues, splendors, are all crowned for Christmas. The deli- cious negro is singing his Alabama choruses for Christmas and Bob. He has scarcely done, when, Tootarootatoo ! Mr. Punch is performing his surprising actions, and hanging the beadle. The stalls are decorated. The refreshment-tables are piled with good things ; at many fountains " Mulled Claret " is written up in appetizing capitals. " Mulled Claret — oh, jolly ! How cold it is ! " says Bob ; I pass on. " It's only three o'clock," says Bob. "No, only three," I say, meekly. "We dine at seven," sighs Bob, " and it's so-o-o coo-old." I still would take no hints. No claret, no refreshment, no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls for Bob. At last I am obliged to tell him all. Just before we left home, a little Christmas bill popped in at the door and emptied my purse at the threshold. I forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half a crown from John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of de- light. Ncnv you see. Bob, why I could not treat you on that second of January when we drove to the palace together; when the girls and boys were sliding on the ponds at Dulwich ; when the darkling river was full of floating ice, and the sun was like a warming-pan in the leaden sky. One more Christmas sight we had, of course ; and that sight I think I like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all seasons. We went to a certain garden of delight, where, what- ever your cares are, I think you can manage to forget some of them, and muse, and be not unhappy ; to a garden beginning with a Z, which is as lively as Noah's ark ; where the fox has brought his brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the elephant has brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought his bag, and the condor his old white wig and black satin hood. On this day it was so cold that the white bears winked their pink eyes, as they plapped up and down by their pool, and seemed to say, "Aha, this weather reminds us of dear home J " ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR 83 "Cold! bah! I have got such a warm coat," says brother Bruin, " I don't mind ; " and he laughs on his pole, and clucks down a bun. The squealing hyenas gnashed their teeth and laughed at us quite refreshingly at their window ; and, cold as it was. Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, glared at us red-hot through his bars, and snorted blasts of hell. The woolly camel leered at us quite kindly as he paced round his ring on his silent pads. We went to our favorite places. Our dear wambat came up, and had himself scratched very affably. Our fellow-creatures in the monkey-room held out their little black hands, and piteously asked us for Christmas alms. Those darling alliga- tors on their rock winked at us in the most friendly way. The solemn eagles sat alone, and scowled at us from their peaks ; whilst little Tom Ratel tumbled over head and heels for us in his usual diverting manner. If I have cares in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass the gate. I recog- nize my friends, my enemies, in countless cages. I entertained the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated, crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou stork yesterday at dinner ; and when Bob's aunt came to tea in the evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her gravely, and said — " First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black, Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back. Children I ^'^^" ^ ^^^ ''^^ camel with a hump upon his back! Then I saw the gray wolf, with mutton in his maw; Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw ; Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk, Then I saw the monkeys — mercy, how unpleasantly they smelt ! " There. No one can beat that piece of wit, can he, Bob ? And so it is all over ; but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with us, hadn't we 1 Present my respects to the doctor ; and I hope, my boy, we may spend another merry Christmas next year. ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. On the door-post of the house of a friend of mine, a few inches above the lock, is a little chalk-mark, which some sport- ive boy in passing has probably scratched on the pillar. The 84 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. door-steps, the lock, handle, and so forth, are kept decently enough ; but this chalk-mark, I suppose some three inches out of the housemaid's beat, has already been on the door for more than a fortnight, and I wonder whether it will be there whilst this paper is being written, whilst it is at the printer's, and, in fine, until the month passes over? I wonder whether the servants in that house will read these remarks about the chalk- mark ? That the Cortihill Magazine is taken in in that house I know. In fact I have seen it there. In fact I have read it there. In fact I have written it there. In a word, the house to which I allude is mine — the " editor's private residence," to which, in spite of prayers, entreaties, commands, and threats, authors, and ladies especially, will send their communications, although they won't understand that they injure their own interests by so doing ; for how is a man who has his own work to do, his own exquisite inventions to form and perfect — Maria to rescue from the unprincipled Earl — the atrocious General to confound in his own machinations — the angelic Dean to pro- mote to a bishopric, and so forth — how is a man to do all this, under a hundred interruptions, and keep his nerves and temper in that just and equable state in which they ought to be when he comes to assume the critical office ? As you will send here, ladies, I must tell you you have a much worse chance than if you forward your valuable articles to Cornhill. Here your papers arrive, at dinner-time, we will say. Do you suppose that is a pleasant period, and that we are to criticise you between the ovum and malum, between the soup and the dessert ? I have touched, I think, on this subject before, I say again, if you want real justice shown you, don't send your papers to the private residence. At home, for instance, yesterday, having given strict orders that I was to receive nobody " except on business," do you suppose a smiling young Scottish gentleman, who forced himself into my study, and there announced himself as agent of a Cattle-food Company, was received with pleasure ? There, as I sat in my arm-chair, suppose he had proposed to draw a couple of my teeth, would I have been pleased ? I could have throttled that agent. I dare say the whole of that day's work will "be found tinged with a ferocious misanthropy, occasioned by my clever young friend's intrusion. Cattle-food, indeed ! As if beans, oats, warm mashes, and a ball, are to be pushed down a man's throat just as he is meditating on the great social problem, or (for I think it was my epic I was going to touch up) just as he was about to soar to the height of the empyrean ! ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 85 Having got my cattle-agent out of the door, I resume my consideration of that little mark on the door-post, which is scored up as the text of the present little sermon ; and which I hope will relate, not to chalk, nor to any of its special uses or abuses (such as milk, neck-powder, and the like), but to serv- ants. Surely ours might remove that unseemly little mark. Suppose it were on my coat, might I not request its removal ? I remember, when I was at school, a little careless boy, upon whose forehead an ink-mark remained, and was perfectly recog- nizable for three weeks after its first appearance. May I take any notice of this chalk-stain on the forehead of my house ? Whose business is it to wash that forehead ? and ought I to fetch a brush and a little hot water, and wash it off myself? Yes. But that spot removed, why not come down at six, and wash the door-steps ? I dare say the early rising and exercise would do me a great deal of good. The housemaid, in that case, might lie in bed a little later, and have her tea and the morning paper brought to her in bed : then, of course, Thomas would expect to be helped about the boots and knives ; cook about the saucepans, dishes, and what not ; the lady's- maid would want somebody to take the curl-papers out of her hair, and get her bath ready. You should have a set of servants for the servants, and these under-servants should have slaves to wait on them. The king commands the first lord in waiting to desire the second lord to intimate to the gentleman usher to request the page of the ante- chamber to entreat the groom of the stairs to implore John to ask the captain of the buttons to desire the maid of the still-room to beg the housekeeper to give out a few more lumps of sugar, as his Majesty has none for his coffee, which probably is getting cold during the negotiation. In our little Brentfords we are all kings, more or less. There are orders, gradations, hierarchies, everywhere. In your house and mine there are mysteries unknown to us. I am not going into the horrid old question of ''followers." I don't mean cousins from the country, love-stricken policemen, or gentlemen in mufti from Knightsbridge Barracks ; but people who have an occult right on the premises ; the uncovenanted servants of the house ; gray women who are seen at evening with baskets flitting about area railings ; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curt- seys in your neighborhood ; demure little Jacks, who start up from behind boxes in the pantry. Those outsiders wear Thomas's crest and livery, and call him " Sir ; " those silent wo- men address the female servants as " Mum," and curtsey before them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons. 86 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS Then, again, those servi servorum have dependents in the vast, silent, poverty-stricken vi^orld outside your comfortable kitchen fire, in the world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, and dank, flagged cellars, and huddled straw, and rags, in which pale children are swarming. It may be your beer (which runs with great volubility) has a pipe or two which communi- cates with those dark caverns where hopeless anguish pours the groan, and would scarce see light but for a scrap or two of candle which has been whipped away from your worship's kitchen. Not many years ago — I don't know whether before or since that white mark was drawn on the door — a lady occupied the confidential place of housemaid in this " private residence," who brought a good character, who seemed to have a cheerful temper, whom I used to hear clattering and bumping overhead or on the stairs long before daylight — there, I say, was poor Camilla, scouring the plain, trundling and brushing, and clattering with her pans and brooms, and humming at her work. Well, she had established a smuggling communication of beer over the area frontier. This neat-handed Phyllis used to pack up the nicest baskets of my provender, and convey them to somebody outside — I believe, on my conscience, to some poor friend in distress. Camilla was consigned to her doom. She was sent back to her friends in the country ; and when she was gone we heard of many of her faults. She expressed herself, when displeased, in' language that I shall not repeat. As for the beer and meat, there was no mistake about them. But apres'i Can I have the heart to be very angry with that poor jade for helping another poorer jade out .of my larder ? On your honor and conscience, when you were a boy, and the apples looked temptingly over Farmer Quar- ringdon's hedge, did you never ? When there was a grand dinner at home, and you were sliding, with Master Bacon, up and down the stairs, and the dishes came out, did you ever do such a thing as just to — ? Well, in many and many a respect servants are like children. They are under domination. They are subject to reproof, to ill temper, to petty exactions and stupid tyrannies not seldom. They scheme, conspire, fawn, and are hypocrites. " Little boys should not loll on chairs." " Little girls should be seen, and not heard ; " and so forth. Have we not almost all learnt these expressions of old foozles : and uttered them ourselves when in the square-toed state ? The Eton Master, who was breaking a lance with our Pater- familias of late, turned on Paterfamilias, saying, He knows not the nature and exquisite candor of well-bred English boys. UN A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. g-j Exquisite fiddlestick's end, Mr. Master ! Do you mean for to go for to tell us that the relations between )'Oung gentlemen and their schoolmasters are entirely frank and cordial ; that the lad is familiar with the man who can have him flogged ; never shirks his exercises ; never gets other boys to do his verses ; never does other boys' verses ; never breaks bounds ; never tells fibs — I mean the fibs permitted by scholastic honor ? Did I know of a boy who pretended to such a character, I would forbid my scapegraces to keep company with him. Did I know a school- master who pretended to believe in the existence of many hundred such boys in one school at one time, I would set that man down as a baby in knowledge of the world. " Who was making that noise ?" "I don't know, sir." — And he knows it was the boy next him in school. " Who was climbing over that wall ? " "I don't know, sir." — And it is in the speaker's own trousers, very likely, the glass bottle-tops have left their cruel scars. And so with servants. " Who ate up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this morning ? " " O dear me ! sir, it was John, who went away last month ! " — or, " I think it was Miss Mary's canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and is so fond of pigeons, it never can have enough of them." Yes, it was the canary-bird ; and Eliza saw it ; and Eliza is ready to vow she did. These statements are not true ; but please don't call them lies. This is not lying ; this is voting with your party. You mus^ back your own side. The servants'-hall stands by the servants'-hall against the dining-room. The schoolboys don't tell tales of each otjier. They agree not to choose to know who has made the noise, who has broken the window, who has eaten up the pigeons, who has picked all the plovers'-eggs out of the aspic, how it is that liqueur brandy of Gledstane's is in such porous glass bottles — and so forth. Suppose Brutus had a footman, who came and told him that the butler drank the Cura^oa, v.'hich of these servants would you dismiss ? — the butler, perhaps, but the footman certainly. No. If your plate and glass are beautifully bright, your bell quickly answered, and Thomas ready, neat, and good- humored, you are not to expect absolute truth from him. The very obsequiousness and perfection of his service prevents truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or body, and he must go through his service — hand the shining plate, replenish the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork — never laugh when you yourself or your guests joke — be profoundly attentive, and yet look utterly impassive — exchange a few hurried curses 8 8 ROUND ABO UT PAPERS. at the door with that unseen slavey who ministers without, and with you be perfectly calm and polite. If you are ill, he will come twenty times in an hour to your bell ; or leave the girl of his heart — his mother, who is going to America — his dearest friend, who has come to say farewell — his lunch, and his glass of beer just freshly poured out — any or all of these, if the door-bell rings, or the master calls out " Thomas " from the hall. Do you suppose you can expect absolute candor from a man whom you may order to powder his hair.? As between the Rev. Henry Holyshade and his pupil the idea of entire unreserve is utter bosh ; so the truth as between you and Jeames or Thomas, or Mary the housemaid, or Betty the cook, is relative, and not to be demanded on one side or the other. Why, respectful civility is itself a lie, which poor Jeames often has to utter or perform to many a swagger- ing vulgarian, who should black Jeames's boots, did Jeames wear them and not shoes. There is your little Tom, just ten, ordering the great, large, quiet, orderly young man about — shrieking calls for hot water — bullying Jeames because the boots are not varnished enough, or ordering him to go to the stables, and ask Jenkins why the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought his pony round — or what you will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid, jind little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five-pair of stairs in the nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha, from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing service. My dear good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask for your newspaper, and Jeames says, " I'm reading it, and jest beg not to be disturbed ;" or suppose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks, " You great, big, 'ulking fellar, ain't you big enough to bring it hup yoursulf ? " what would your feelings be ? Now, if you made similar proposals or requests to Mr. Jones next door, this is the kind of answer Jones would give you. You get truth habitually from equals only ; so my good Mr. Holyshade, don't talk to me about the habitual candor of the young Etonian of high birth, or I have my own opinion of your candor or discernment when you do. No. Tom Bowling is the soul of honor and has been true to Black-eyed Syousan since the last time they parted at Wapping Old Stairs ; but do you suppose Tom is perfectly frank, familiar, and above-board in his conversation with Admiral Nelson, K. C. B. } There are secrets, prevarica- tions, fibs, if you will, between Tom and the Admiral — between your crew and their captain. I know I hire a worthy, clean, ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 89 agreeable, and conscientious male or female hypocrite, at so many guineas a year, to do so and so for me. Were he other than hypocrite I would send him about his business. Don't let my displeasure be too fierce with him for a fib or two on his own account. Some dozen years ago, my family being absent in a distant part of the country, and my business detaining me in London, I remained in my own house with three servants on board wages. I used only to breakfast at home ; and future ages will be interested to know that this meal used to consist, at that period, of tea, a penny roll, a pat of butter, and, perhaps, an ^b?>- ^y weekly bill used invariably to be about fifty shillings, so that, as I never dined in the house, you see, my breakfast, consisting of the delicacies before mentioned, cost about seven shillings and threepence per diem. I must, therefore, have consumed daily — s. d, A quarter of a pound of tea (say) A penny roll (say) . ■ . One pound of butter (say) One pound of lump sugar . A new-laid egg . . . Which is the only possible way I have for making out the sum. Well, I fell ill while under this regimen, and had an illness which, but for a certain doctor, who was brought to me by a certain kind friend I had in those days, would I think, have prevented the possibility of my telling this interesting anecdote now a dozen years after. Don't be frightened, my dear madam ; it is not a horrid, sentimental account of a malady you are coming to — only a question of grocery. This illness, I say, lasted some seventeen days, during which the servants were admirably attentive and kind ; and poor John, especially, was up at all hours, watching night after night — amiable, cheerful, untiring, respectful, the very best of Johns and nurses. Twice or thrice in the seventeen days I may have had a glass of emc siicree — say a dozen glasses of eau sucree — certainly not more. Well, this admirable, watchful, cheerful, tender, af- fectionate John brought me in a little bill for seventeen pounds of sugar consumed during the illness — " Often 'ad sugar and water ; always was a callin' for it," says John, wagging his head quite gravely. You are dead, years and years ago. poor John — so patient, so friendly, so kind, so cheerful to the invalid in the fever. But confess, now, wherever you are, that seventeen pounds of sugar to make six glasses of eau sucree was a little too strong, wasn't it, John ! Ah, how frankly, how trustily, 90 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. how bravely he hed, poor John ! One evening, being at Brigh- ton in the convalescence, I remember John's step was unsteady, his voice thick, his laugh queer — and having some quinine to give me, John brought the glass to me — not to my mouth, but struck me with it pretty smartly in the eye, which was not the way in which Dr. Elliotson had intended his prescription should be taken. Turning that eye upon him, I ventured to hint that my attendant had been drinking. Drinking ! I never was more humiliated at the thought of my own injustice than at John's reply. "Drinking! Sulp me ! I have had only one pint of beer with my dinner at one o'clock ! — and he retreats, holding on by a chair. These are fibs, you see, appertaining to the situation. John is drunk. " Snip him, he has only had an 'alf-pint of beer with his dinner six hours ago ; " and none of his fellow-servants will say otherwise. Polly is smuggled on board ship. Who tells the lieutenant when he comes his rounds ? Boys are playing cards in the bedroom. The outlying fag announces master coming — out go candles — cards popped into bed — boys sound asleep. Who had that light in the dormitory } Law bless you ! the poor dear innocents are every one snoring. Every one snoring, and every snore is a lie told through the nose ! Suppose one of your boys or mine is engaged in that awful crime, are we going to break our hearts about it ? Come, come. We pull a long face, waggle a grave head, and chuckle within our waistcoat. Between me and those fellow-creatures of mine who are sitting in the room below, how strange and wonderful is the partition ! We meet at every hour of the daylight, and are indebted to each other for a hundred offices of duty and comfort •)f life ; and we live together for years, and don't know each other. John's voice to me is quite different from John's voice when it addresses his mates below. If I met Hannah in the street with a bonnet on, I doubt whether I should know her. And all these good people with whom I may live for years and years, have cares, interests, dear friends and relatives, mayhap schemes, passions, longing hopes, tragedies of their own, from which a carpet and a few planks and beams utterly separate me. When we were at the seaside, and poor Ellen used to look so pale, and run after the postman's bell, and seize a letter in a great scrawling hand, and read it, and cry in a corner, how should we know that the poor little thing's heart was breaking ? She fetched the water, and she smoothed the ribbons, and she laid out the dresses, and brought the early cup of tea in the morning, just as if she had had no cares to keep her awake. ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 91 Henry (who lived out of the house) was the servant of a friend of mine who lived in chambers. There was a dinner one day, and Henry waited all through the dinner. The champagne was properly iced, the dinner was excellently served ; every guest was attended to j the dinner disappeared ; the dessert was set ; the claret was in perfect order, carefully decanted, and more ready. And then Henry said, " If you please, sir, may I go home 1 " He had received word that his house was on fire ; and, having seen through his dinner, he wished to go and look after his children, and little sticks of furniture. Why, such a man's livery is a uniform of honor. The crest on his button is a badge of bravery. Do you see — I imagine I do myself — in these little instances, a tinge of humor ? Ellen's heart is breaking for handsome Jeames of Buckley Square, whose great legs are kneeling, and who has given a lock of his precious powdered head, to some other than Ellen. Henry is preparing the sauce for his mister's wild ducks, while the engines are squirting over his own little nest and brood. Lift these figures up but a story from the basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone. We may be en pleine tragcdie. Ellen may breathe her last sigh in blank verse, calling down blessings upon Jeames the profligate who deserts her. Henry is a hero, and epaulettes are on his shoul- ders. Atqid sciebat, &c., whatever tortures are in store for him, he will be at his post of duty. You concede, however, that there is a touch of humor in the two tragedies here mentioned. Why ? Is it that the idea of persons at service is somehow ludicrous ? Perhaps it is made more so in this country by the splendid appearance of the liveried domestics of great people. When you think that we dress in black ourselves, and put our fellow-creatures in green, pink, or canary-colored breeches ; that we order them to plaster their hair with flour, having brushed that nonsense out of our own heads fifty years ago ; that some of the most gen- teel and stately among us cause the men who drive their car- riages to put on little Albino wigs, and sit behind great nose- gays — I say I suppose it is this heaping of gold lace, gaudy colors, blooming plushes, on honest John Trot, which makes the man absurd in our eyes, who need be nothing but a simple reputable citizen and in-door laborer. Suppose, my dear sir, that you yourself were suddenly desired to put on a full dress, or even undress, domestic uniform with our friend Jones's crest repeated in varied combinations of button on your front and back ? Suppose, madam, your son were told, that he could 92 ROUN-DABOUT PAPERS. not get out except in lower garments of carnation or amber- colored plush — would you let him ? * * * But as you justly say, this is not the question, and besides it is a question fraught with danger, sir ; and radicalism, sir ; and subversion of the very foundations of the social fabric, sir. * * * Well, John, we won't enter on your great domestic question. Don't let us dis- port with Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge-tools about his knife-board : but with Betty and Susan who wield the playful mop, and set on the simmering kettle. Surely you have heard Mrs. Toddles talking to Mrs, Doddles about their mutual maids. Miss Susan must have a silk gown, and Miss Betty must wear flowers under her bonnet when she goes to church if you please, and did you ever hear such impudence ? The servant in many small establishments is a constant and end- Jess theme of talk. What small wage, sleep, meal, what end- less scouring, scolding, tramping on messages fall to that poor Susan's lot ; what indignation at the little kindly passing word with the grocer's young man, the pot-boy, the chubby butcher ! Where such things will end, my dear Mrs. Toddles, I don't know. What wages they will want next, my dear Mrs. Doddles, &c. Here, dear ladies, is an advertisement which I cut out of The Times a few days since, expressly for you : n A LADY is desirous of obtaining a SITUATION for a very respectable young -'*■ woman as HEAD KITCHEN-MAID under a man-cook. She has lived four years under a very good cook and housekeeper. Can make ice, and is an excellent baker. She will only take a place in a very good family, where she can have the opportunity of improving herself, and, if possible, staying for two years. Apply by letter to," &c., &c. There, Mrs. Toddles, what do you think of that, and did you ever ? Well, no, Mrs. Doddles. Upon my word now, Mrs. T., I don't think I ever did. A respectable young woman — as head kitchen-maid — under a man-cook, will only take a place in a very good family, where she can improve, and stay two years. Just note up the conditions, Mrs. Toddles, mum, if you please, mum, and then let us see : — 1. This young woman is to be head kitcnen-maid, that is to say, there is to be a chorus of kitchen-maids, of which Y. W. is to be chief. 2. She will only be situated under a man-cook. (A) Ought he to be a French cook ; and (B), if so, would the lady desire him to be a Protestant ? ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR. 03 3 She will only take a place in a very good family. How old ought the family to be, and what do you call good ? that is the question. How long after the Conquest will do ? Would a banker's family do, or is a baronet's good enough ? Best say what rank in the peerage would be sufficiently high. But the lady does not say whether she would like a High Church or a Low Church family. Ought there to be unmarried sons, and may they follow a profession ? and please say how many daughters ; and would the lady like them to be musical ? And how many company dinners a week ? Not too many, for fear of fatiguing the upper kitchen-maid ; but sufficient, so as to keep the upper kitchen-maid's hand in. [N.B. — I think I can see a rather bewildered expression on the countenances of Mesdames Doddles and Toddles as I am prattling on in this easy bantering way.] 4. The head kitchen-maid wishes to stay for two years, and improve herself under the man-cook, and having of course sucked the brains (as the phrase is) from under the chef's nightcap, then the head kitchen-maid wishes to go. And upon my word, Mrs. Toddles, mum, I will go and fetch the cab for her. The cab .'' Why not her ladyship's own car- riage and pair, and the head coachman to drive away the head kitchen-maid ? You see she stipulates for everything — the time to come ; the time to stay ; the family she will be with ; and as soon as she has improved herself enough, of course the upper kitchen-maid will step into the carriage and drive off. Well, upon my word and conscience, if things are coming to this pass, Mrs. Toddles and Mrs. Doddles, mum, I think I will go up stairs and get a basin and a sponge, and then down stairs and get some hot water ; and then I will go and scrub that chalk-mark off my own door with my own hands. It is wiped off, I declare ! After ever so many weeks ! Who has done it ? It was just a little round-about mark, you know, and it was there for days and weeks, before I ever thought it would be the text of a Roundabout Paper, 54 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS ON BEING FOUND OUT. At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's rei^n, when I was a boy at a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I remember the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, to march into a little garden at the back of the house, and thence to proceed one by one into a tool or hen-house, (I was but a tender little thing just put into short clothes, and can't exactly say whether the house was for tools or hens,) and in that house to put our hands into a sack which stood on a bench, a candle burning beside it. I put my hand into the sack. My hand came out quite black. I went and joined the other boys in the school-room ; and all their hands were black too. By reason of my tender age (and there are some critics who, I hope, will be satisfied by my acknowledging that I am a hun- dred and fifty-six next birthday) I could not understand what was the meaning of this night excursion — this candle, this tool- house, this bag of soot. I think we little boys were taken out of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We came, then, and showed our little hands to the master ; washed them or not — most probably, I should say, not — and so went bewildered back to bed. Something had been stolen in the school that day ; and Mr. Wiseacre having read in a book of an ingenious method of find- ing out a thief by making him put his hand into a sack (which, if guilty, the rogue would shirk from doing), all we boys were subject to the trial. Goodness knows what the lost object was, or who stole it. We all had black hands to show to the master. And the thief, whoever he was, was not Found Out that time. I wonder if the rascal is alive — an elderly scoundrel he must be by this time ; and a hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old school-fellow presents his kindest regards — parenthetically re- marking what a dreadful place that private school was ; cold, chilblains, bad dinners, not enough victuals, and caning awful ! — Are you alive still, I say, you nameless villain, who escaped discovery on that day of crime ? I hope you have escaped often since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you and me, my man, that we are not found out in all our peccadil- loes ; and that our backs can slip away from the master and the cane ! Just consider what life would be, if every rogue was found ON BEING FOUND OUT. 95 out, and flogged coram populo ! What a butchery, what an in- decency, what an endless swishing of the rod ! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good friend Mealymouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church ? When there, do you say, or do you not, tliat you are a miserable sinner ? and saying so, do you believe or disbelieve it ? If you are a M. S., don't you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are to be let off ? I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we are not all found out ! Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found out, and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school being whipped ; and then the assistants, and then the head master (Dr. Badford let us call him). Fancy the pro- vost-marshal being tied up, having previously superintended the correction of the whole army. After the young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr. Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults in his Essay and Review. After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up a bishop, and give him a couple of dozen ! (I see my Lord Bishop of Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the Minister who appointed him ? My Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have to use personal correc- tion to a boy of your age ; but really * * * Sisfe ta7uiem^ car- nifex ! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops power- less, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again ; and protest, my dear brethren, against our having our deserts. To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough ; but imagine all women found out in the distinguished social circle in which you and I have the honor to move. Is it not a mercy that a many of these fair criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered } There is Mrs. Longbow, who is forever practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too ; when you meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wicked- ness she has done, and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter — what a little haughty prude she is ; and yet we know stories about her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me, g6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. what would life be if we were all found out, and punished for all our faults ? Jack Ketch would be in permanence ; and then who would hang Jack Ketch ? They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. Psha ! I have heard an authority awfully competent vow and declare that scores and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is the wiser. That terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing murder, which he maintained were quite common, and were scarcely ever found out. A man, for in- stance, comes home to his wife, and * * * but I pause — I know that this Magazine has a very large circulation. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands — why not say a million of people at once ? — well, say a million, read it. And among these count- less readers, I might be teaching some monster how to make away with his wife without being found out, some fiend of a woman how to destroy her dear husband. I will not then tell this easy and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a most respectable party in the confidence of private inter- course. Suppose some gentle reader were to try this most simple and easy receipt — it seems to me almost infallible — and come to grief in consequence, and be found out and hanged "i Should I ever pardon myself for having been the means of do- ing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers } The prescription whereof I speak — that is to say, whereof I don^t speak — shall be buried in this bosom. No, I am a humane man. I am not one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my wife, " My dear ! I am going away for a few days to Brighton. Here are all the keys of the house. You may open every door and closet, except the one at the end of the oak-room opposite the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakspeare on the mantel- piece (or what not)." I don't say this to a woman — unless, to be sure, I want to get rid of her — because, after such a caution, I know she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about the closet at all. I keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom I love, lut who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's way. You toss up your head, dear angel, drub on the ground with your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry, *' Oh, sneerer ! You don't know the depth of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel us so ! " Ah, Delia ! dear, dear Delia ! It is because I fancy I do know some- thing about you (not all, mind — no, no ; no man knows that) — Ah, my bride, my ringdove, my rose, my poppet — choose, in fact, whatever name you like — bulbul of my grove, fountain of ON BEING FOUND OUT. 97 my desert, sunshine of my darkling life, and joy of my dun- geoned existence, it is because I do l<:now a little about you that I conclude to say nothing of that private closet, and keep my key in my pocket. You take away that closet-key then, and the house-key. You lock Delia in. You keep her out of harm's way and gadding, and so she never can be found out. And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we are being found out every day. You remember that old story of the Abbe Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one night how the first confession he ever received was — from a murderer let us say. Presently enters to supper the Marquis de Croquemitaine. " Palsambleu, abbe ! " says the brilliant marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, " are you here ? Gentlemen and ladies ! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made him a confession which I promise you astonished him." To be sure how queerly things are found out ! Here is an instance. Only the other day I was writing in these Round- about Papers about a certain man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me to my friends, who of course told me. Shortly after that paper was published another friend — Sacks let us call him — scowls fiercely at me as I am sitting in perfect good-humor at the club, and passes on without speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks thinks it is about him that I was writing: whereas, upon my honor and conscience, I never had him once in my mind, and was pointing my moral from quite another man. But don't you see, by this wrath of the guilty-conscienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me too ? " He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused. He has winced when nobody thought of hitting him, I did but put the cap out, and madly butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes to put his head into it ! Never mind, Sacks, you are found out ; but I bear you no malice, my man. And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the in- ward vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women ; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two with it : brag of the images which I break at the shooting-gallery, and pass amongst my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor dragon. Ah me ! Suppose some brisk little chap steps up, and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with all the heads, of my friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputa- 7 ^8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. tion is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily-liver, and expected that I should be found out some day. That certainty of being found out must haunt and depress many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let us say it is a clergj'man, who can pump copious floods of tears out of his own eyes and those of his audience. He thinks to himself, " I am but a poor swindling, chattering rogue. My bills are unpaid. I have jilted several women whom I have promised to marry. I don't know whether I believe what I preach, and I know I have stolen the very sermon over which I have been snivel- ling. Have they found me out ? " says he, as his head drops down on the cushion. Then your writer, poet, historian, novelist, or what not } The Beacon says that "Jones's work is one of the first order." The Zrt-w/ declares that "Jones's tragedy surpasses every work since the days of Him of Avon." The Ci?;//^/ asserts that " J.'s ' Life of Goody Twoshoes ' is a xrrj/ia tq as), a noble and en- during monument to the fame of that admirable Engiish- woman," and so forth. But then Jones knows that he has lent the critic of the Beacon five pounds ; that his publisher has a half share in the Lamp ; and that the Comet comes re- peatedly to dine with him. It is all very well. Jones is im- mortal' until he is found out ; and then down comes the ex- tinguisher, and the immortal is dead and buried. The idea {dies ircB f) of discovery must haunt many a man, and make him uneasy, as the trumpets are puffing in his triumph. Brown, who has a higher place than he deserves, cowers before Smith, who has found him out. What is a chorus of critics shouting "Bravo?" — a public clapping hands and flinging garlands ? Brown knows that Smith has found him out. Puff, trumpets ! Wave, banners ! Huzza, boys, for the immortal Brown ! " This is all very well," B. thinks (bowing the while, smiling, laying his hand to his heart) ; " but there stands Smith at the windows : he has measured me ; and some day the others will find me out too." It is a very curious sensation to sit by a man who has found you out, and who, as you know, has found you out ; or, vice versd, to sit with a man whom you have found out. His talent ? Bah ! His virtue ? We know a little story or two about his virtue, and he knows we know it. We are thinking over friend Robinson's antecedents, ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. 99 as we grin, bow and talk ; and we are both humbugs together. Robinson a good fellow, is he ? You know how he behaved to Hicks ? A good-natured man, is he ? Pray do you remember that little story of Mrs. Robinson's black eye ? How men have to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed, and try and sleep, with this dread of being found out on their consciences ! Bar- dolph, who has robbed a church, and Nym, who has taken a purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with their companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appears, and says " Oh, Bardolph ! I want you about that there pyx business ! " Mr. Bardolph knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his hands to the little steel cuffs, and walks away quite meekly. He is found out. He must go. " Good-by, Doll Tearsheet ! Good-by, Mrs. Quickly, ma'am ! " The other gentlemen and ladies de la societe look on and exchange mute adieux with the departing friends. And an assured time will come when the other gentlemen and ladies will be found out too. What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature it has been that, for the most part, our womankind are not endowed with the faculty of finding us out ! They don't doubt, and probe, and weigh, and take your measure. Lay down this paper, my benevolent friend and reader, go into your drawing- room now, and utter a joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence the ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's house, and tell Mrs. Brown and the young ladies what you think of him, and see what a welcome you will get ! In like manner, let him come to your house, and tell your good lady his candid opinion of you, and fancy how she will receive him Would you have your wife and children know you exactly for what you are, and esteem you precisely at your worth ? If so, my friend, you will live in a dreary house, and you will have but a chilly fireside. Do you suppose the people round it don't see your homely face as under a glamor, and, as it were, with a halo of love round it ? You don't fancy you are^ as you seem to them ? No such thing, my man. Put away that monstrous conceit, and be thankful that they have not found you out. ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE, Here have I just read of a game played at a country house ? The party assembles round a table with pens, ink, and paper. Some one narrates a tale containing more or less lOO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. incidents and personages. Each person of the company then writes down, to the best of his memory and ability, the anec- dote just narrated, and finally the papers are to be read out I do not say I should like to play often at this game, which might possibly be a tedious and lengthy pastime, not by any means sa amusing as smoking a cigar in the conservatory ; or even listening to the young ladies playing their piano-pieces ; or to Hobbs and Nobbs lingering round the bottle and talking over the morning's run with the hounds ; but surely it is a moral and ingenious sport. They say the variety of narratives is often very odd and amusing. The original story becomes so changed and distorted that at the end of all the statements you are puzzled to know where the truth is at all. As time is of small importance to the cheerful persons engaged in this sport, perhaps a good way of playing it would be to spread it over a couple of years. Let the people who played the game in '60 all meet and play it once more in '61, and each write his story over again. Then bring out your original and compare notes. Not only will the stories differ from each other, but the writers will probably differ from themselves. In the course of the year incidents will grow or will dwindle strangely. The least authentic of the statements will be so lively or so mali- cious, or so neatly put, that it will appear most like the truth. I like these tales and sportive exercises. I had begun a little print collection once. I had Addison in his nightgown in bed at Holland House, requesting young Lord Warwick to remark how a Christian should die. I had Cambronne clutching his cocked-hat, and uttering the immortal /c? Garde meiirt et ?te se re?id pas. I had the " Vengeur " going down, and all the crew hurrying like madmen. I had Alfred toasting the muffin; Curtius (Haydon) jumping into the gulf; with extracts from Napoleon's bulletins, and a fine authentic portrait of Baron Munchausen. What man who has been before the public at all has not heard similar wonderful anecdotes regarding himself and his own history } In these humble essaykins I have taken leave to egotize. I cry out about the shoes which pinch ^me, as I fancy, more naturally and pathetically than if my neighbor's corns were trodden under foot. I prattle about the dish which I love, the wine which I like, the talk I heard yesterday — about Brown's absurd airs — Jones's ridiculous elation when he thinks he has caught me in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is that Jones will read this, and will perfectly well know that I mean him, and that we shall meet and grin at each other with ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. joi entire politeness). This is not the highest kind of speculation, I confess, but it is agossip which amuses some folks. A brisk and honest small-beer will refresh those who do not care for the frothy outpouring of heavier taps. A two of clubs may be a good, handy little card sometimes, and able to tackle a kind of diamonds, if it is a little trump. Some philosophers get their wisdom with deep thought and out of ponderous libraries ; I pick up my small crumbs of cognition at a dinner-table ; or from Mrs. Mary and Miss Louisa, as they are prattling over their five-o'clock tea. Well, yesterday at dinner Jucundus was good enough to tell me a story about myself, which he had heard f .-om a lady of his acquaintance, to whom I send my best compliments. The tale is this. At nine o'clock on the evening of the 31st of November last, just before sunset, I was seen leaving No. 96 Abbey Road, St. John's Wood, leading two little children by the hand, one of them in a nankeen pelisse, and the other having a mole on the third finger of his left hand (she thinks it was the third finger, but is quite sure it was the left hand). Thence I walked with them to Charles Boroughbridge's, pork and sausage man, No. 29 Upper Theresa Road. Here, whilst I left the little girl innocently eating a polony in the front shop, I and Borough- bridge retired with the boy into the back parlor, where Mrs. Boroughbridge was playing cribbage. She put up the cards and boxes, took out a chopper and a napkin, and we cut the little boy's little throat (which he bore with great pluck and resolution), and made him into sausage-meat by the aicl of Purkis's excellent sausage-machine. The little girl at first could not understand her brother's absence, but, under the pretence of taking her to see Mr. Fechter in Hamlet., I led her down to the New River at Sadler's Wells, where a body of a child in a nankeen pelisse was subsequently found, and has never been recognized to the present day. And this Mrs. Lynx can aver, because she saw the whole transaction with her own eyes, as she told Mr. Jucundus. I have altered the little details of the anecdote somewhat. But this story is, I vow and declare, as true as Mrs. Lynx's. Gracious goodness ! how do lies begin ? What are the averages of lying ? Is the same amount of lies told about every man, and do we pretty much all tell the same amount of lies ? Is the aver- age greater in Ireland than Scotland, or vice versa — among women than among men ? Is this a lie I am telling now ? If I am talking about you, the odds are, perhaps, that it is. I look back at some which have been told about me, and speculate on them with 102 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. thanks and wonder. Dear friends have told them of me, have told them to me of myself. Have they not to and of you, dear friend ? A friend of mine was dining at a large dinner of clergy men, and a story, as true as the sausage story above given, was told regarding me, by one of those reverend divines, in whose frocks sit some anile chatterboxes, as any man who knows this world knows. They take the privilege of their gown. They cabal, and tattle, and hiss, and cackle comminations under their breath. I say the old women of the other sex are not more talk- ative or more mischievous than some of these. " Such a man ought not to be spoken to," says Gobemouche, narrating the story — and such a story ! "And I am surprised he is admitted into society at all." Yes, dear Gobemouche, but the story wasn't true ; and I had no more done the wicked deed in question than I had run away with the Queen of Sheba. I have always longed to know what that story was (or what collection of histories), which a lady had in her mind to whom a servant of mine applied for a place, when I was breaking up my establishment once, and going abroad. Brown went with a very good character from us, which, indeed, she fully deserved after several years' faithful service. But when Mrs. Jones read the name of the person out of whose employment Brown came, "That is quite sufficient," says Mrs. Jones. "You may go. I will never take a servant out of that house." Ah Mrs. Jones, how I should like to know what that crime was, or what that series of villanies, which made you determine never to take a servant out of my house. Do you believe in the story of the little boy and the sausages t Have you swallowed that little minced infant ? Have you devoured that young Polonius ? Upon my word you have maw enough. We somehow greedily gobble down all stories in which the characters of our friends are chopped up, and believe wrong of them without inquiry. In a late serial work written by this hand, I remember making some pathetic remarks about our propensity to believe ill of our neighbors — and I remember the remarks, not because they were valuable, or novel, or ingenious, but because, within three days after they had appeared in print, the moralist who wrote them, walking home with a friend, heard a story about another friend, which story he straightway believed, and which story was scarcely more true than that sausage fable which is here set down. O mea culpa, mea maxima culpa I But though the preacher trips, shall not the doctrine be good ? Yea, brethren ! Here be the rods. Look you, here are the scourges. Choose me a nice long, swishing, buddy one, light and well-poised in ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. 103 the handle, thick and bushy at the tail. Pick me out a whip- cord thong with some dainty knots in it — and now — we all de- serve it — whish, whish, whish ! Let us cut into each other all round. A favorite liar and servant of mine was a man I once had to drive a brougham. He never came to my house, except for orders, and once when he helped to wait at dinner so clumsily that it was agreed we would dispense with his further efforts. The (job) brougham horse used to look dreadfully lean and tired, and the livery-stable keeper complained that we worked him too hard. Now, it turned out that there was a neighbor- ing butcher's lady who liked to ride in a brougham ; and Tom- kins lent her ours, drove her cheerfully to Richmond and Put- ney, and, I suppose, took out a payment in mutton-chops. We gave this good Tomkins wine and medicine for his family when sick — we supplied him with little comforts and extras which need not now be remembered — and the grateful creature re- warded us by informing some of our tradesmen whom he hon- ored with his custom, " Mr. Roundabout ? Lor' bless you ! I carry him up to bed drunk every night in the week." He, Tomkins, being a man of seven stone weight and five feet high ; whereas his employer was — but here modesty interferes, and I decline to enter into the avoirdupois question. Now, what was Tomkins' motive for the utterance and dis- semination of these lies .'' They could further no conceivable end or interest of his own. Had they been true stories, Tom- kins' master would still, and reasonably, have been more angry than at the fables. It was but suicidal slander on the part of Tomkins — must come to a discovery — must end in a punish- ment. The poor wretch had got his place under, as it turned out, a fictitious character. He might have stayed in it, for of course Tomkins had a wife and poor innocent children. He might have had bread, beer, bed, character, coats, coals. He might have nestled in our Uttle island, comfortably sheltered from the storms of life ; but we were compelled to cast him out, and send him driving, lonely, perishing, tossing, starving, to sea — to drown. To drown .-" There be other modes of death where- by rogues die. Goodby, Tomkins. And so the nightcap is put on, and the bolt is drawn for poor T. .Suppose we were to invite volunteers amongst our respected readers to send in little statements of the lies which they know have been told about themselves ; what a heap of correspond- ence, what an exaggeration of malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods, might we not gather together ! I04 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. And a lie once set going, having the breath of life breathed into it by the father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolical little course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say, " Magna est Veritas et prcevalebit." Psha! Great lies are as great as great truths, and prevail constantly, and day after day. Take an instance or two out of my own little budget. I sit near a gentleman at dinner, and the conversation turns upon a certain anonymous literary performance which at the time is amusing the town. " Oh," says the gentleman, " everybody knows who wrote that paper : it is Momus's." I was a young author at the time, perhaps proud of my bantling: "I beg your pardon," I say, " it was written by your humble servant." " Indeed !" was all that the man replied, and he shrugged his shoulders, turned his back, and talked to his other neighbor. 1 never heard sarcastic incredulity more finely conveyed than by that "Indeed." "Impudent liar," the gentleman's face said, as clear as face could speak. Where was Magna Veritas, and how did she prevail then ? She lifted up her voice, she made her appeal, and she was kicked out of court. In New York I read a newspaper criticism one day (by an exile from our shores who has taken up his abode in the Western Republic), commenting upon a letter of mine which had appeared in a contemporary volume, and wherein it was stated that the writer was a lad in such and such a year, and, in point of fact, I was, at the period spoken of, nineteen years of age. " Falsehood, Mr. Rounda- bout," says the noble critic : " you were then not a lad ; you were then six-and-twenty years of age." You see he knew better than papa and mamma and parish register. It was easier for him to think and say I lied, on a twopenny matter connected with my own affairs, than to imagine he was mis- taken. Years ago, in a time when we were very mad wags, Arc- turus and myself met a gentleman from China who knew the lan- guage. We began to speak Chinese against him. We said we were born in China. We were two to one. We spoke the man- darin dialect with perfect fluency. We had the company with us ; as in the old, old days, the squeak of the real pig was voted not to be so natural as the squeak of the sham pig. O Arc- turus, the sham pig squeaks in our streets now to the applause of multitudes, and the real porker grunts unheeded in his sty ! I once talked for some little time with an amiable lady : it was for the first time : and I saw an expression of surprise on her kind face, which said as plainly as face could say, " Sir, do you know that up to this moment I have had a certain opinion of you, and that I begin to think I have been mistaken or mis« ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE. I OS led ? " I not only know that she had heard evil reports of me, but I know who told her — one of those acute fellows, my dear brethren, of whom we spoke in a previous sermon, who has found me out — found out actions which I never did, found out thoughts and sayings which I never spoke, and judged me accordingly. Ah, my lad ! have I found you out ? O ristim teneatis. Perhaps the person I am accusing is no more guilty than I. How comes it that the evil which men say spreads so widely and lasts so long, whilst our good, kind words don't seem some- how to take root and bear blossom ? Is it that in the stony hearts of mankind these pretty flowers can't find a place to grow ? Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite ; whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat. Now, such being the case, my dear worthy Mrs. Candor, in whom I know there are a hundred good and generous qualities : it being perfectly clear that the good things which we say of our neighbors don't fructify, but somehow perish in the ground where they are dropped, whilst the evil words are wafted by all the winds of scandal, take root in all soils, and flourish amazingly — seeing, I say, that this conversation does not give us a fair chance, suppose we give up censoriousness altogether, and decline uttering our opinions about Brown, Jones, and Robinson (and Mesdames B., J., and R.) at all. We may be mistaken about every one of them, as, please goodness, those anecdote-mongers against whom I have uttered my meek pro- test have been mistaken about me. We need not go to the extent of saying that Mrs. Manning was an amiable creature, much misunderstood ; and Jack Thurtell a gallant, unfortunate fellow, not near so black as he was painted ; but we will try and avoid personalities altogether in talk, won't we ? We will range the fields of science, dear madam, and communicate to each other the pleasing results of our studies. We will, if you please, examine the infinitesimal wonders of nature through the micro- scope. We will cultivate entomology. We will sit with our arms round each other's waists on the pons asinorum, and see the stream of mathematics flow beneath. We will take refuge in cards, and play at "beggar my neighbor," not abuse my neighbor. We will go to the Zoological Gardens and talk freely about the gorilla and his kindred, but not talk about people who can talk in their turn. Suppose we praise the High Church ? Io6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. we offend the Low Church. The Broad Church ? High and Low are both offended. What do you think of Lord Derby as a pohtician ? And what is your opinion of Lord Pahnerston ? If you please, will you play me those lovely variations of " In my cottage near a wood ? " It is a charming air (you know it in French, I suppose ? Ah ! te dirai-je 7naniaii !) and was a favorite with poor Marie Antoinette. I say "poor," because I have a right to speak with pity of a sovereign who was renowned for so much beauty and so much misfortune. But as forgiving any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was good or bad, or indifferent, goodness forbid ! We have agreed we will not be censorious. Let us have a game at cards — at e'carte, if you please. You deal. I ask for cards. I lead the deuce of clubs. * * * What ? there is no deuce ! Deuce take it ! What ? People will go on talking about their neighbors, and won't have their mouths stopped by cards, or ever so much microscopes and aquariums ? Ah, my poor dear Mrs. Candor, I agree with you. By the way, did you ever see anything like Lady Godiva Trotter's dress last night ? People 7i)ill go on chattering, although we hold our tongues ; and, after all, my good soul, what will their scandal matter a hundred years hence ? SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. Not long since, at a certain banquet, I had the good fortune to sit by Doctor Polymathesis, who knows everything, and who, about the time when the claret made its appearance, mentioned that old dictum of the grumbling Oxford Don, that "All Claret would be port if it could .f'' Imbibing a bumper of one or the other not ungratefully, I thought to myself, " Here surely, Mr. Roundabout, is a good text for one of your reverence's sermons." Let us apply to the human race, dear brethren, what is here said of the vintages of Portugal and Gascony, and we shall have no difficulty in perceiving how many clarets as- pire to the ports in their way ; how most men and women of our acquaintance, how we ourselves, are Aquitanians giving our- selves Lusitanian airs ; how we wish to have credit for being stronger, braver, more beautiful, more worthy than we really are. SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. 107 Nay, the beginning of this hypocrisy — a desire to excel, a desire to be hearty, fruity, generous, strength- imparting — is a virtuous and noble ambition ; and it is most difficult for a man in his own case, or his neighbor's, to say at what point this ambition transgresses the boundary of virtue, and becomes vanity, pretence, and self-seeking. You are a poor man, let us say, showing a bold face to adverse fortune, and wearing a confi- dent aspect. Your purse is very narrow, but you owe no man a penny ; your means are scanty, but your wife's gown is decent ; your old coat well brushed ; your children at a good school ; you grumble to no one \ ask favors of no one ; truckle to no neighbors on account of their superior rank, or (a worse, and a meaner, and a more common crime still) envy none for their better fortune. To all outward appearances you are as well to do as your neighbors, who have thrice your income. There may be in this case some little mixture of pretension in your life and behavior. You certainly do put on a smiling face whilst fortune is pinching you. Your wife and girls, so smart and neat at evening-parties, are cutting, patching, and cobbling all day to make both ends of life's haberdashery meet. You give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but are content yourself with a glass of whiskey-and-water. You avoid a cab, saying that of all things you like to walk home after dinner (which you know, my good friend, is a fib). I grant you that in this scheme of life there does enter ever so little hypocrisy ; that this claret is loaded, as it were ; but your desire to fortify your- self is amiable, is pardonable, is perhaps honorable : and were there no other hypocrisies than yours in the world we should be a set of worthy fellows ; and sermonizers, moralizers, satiri- zers, would have to hold their tongues, and go to some other trade to get a living. But you know you will step over that boundary line of virtue and modesty, into the district where humbug and vanity begin, and there the moralizer catches you and makes an exam- ple of you. For instance, in a certain novel in another place my friend Mr. Talbot Twysden is mentioned — a man whom you and I know to be a wretched ordinaire, but who persists in treating himself as if he was the finest '20 port. In our Britain there are hundreds of men like him ; forever striving to swell beyond their natural size, to strain beyond their natural strength, to step beyond their natural stride. Search, search within your own waistcoat, dear brethren — you know in your hearts, which of your ordinaire qualities you would pass off, and fain consider as first-rate port. And why not you yourself, Io8 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Mr. Preacher? says the congregation. Dearly beloved, neither in nor out of this pulpit do I profess to be bigger, or cleverer, or wiser, or better than any of you. A short while since, a certain Reviewer announced that I gave myself great preten- sions as a philosopher. I a philosopher ! I advance preten- sions ! My dear Saturday friend, And you ? Don't you teach everything to everybody .-' and punish the naughty boys if they don't learn as you bid them ? You teach politics to Lord John and Mr. Gladstone. You teach poets how to write ; painters, how to paint; gentlemen, manners ; and opera-dancers, how to pirouette. I was not a little amused of late by an instance of the modesty of our Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than the Athenians, and a propos of a Greek book by a Greek author, sat down and gravely showed the Greek gentleman how to write his own language. No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all ; but offer in these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at iSj. per doz. let us say, grown on my own hill-side, and offered de bon cceur to those who will sit down under my tojitielle, and have a half-hour's drink and gossip. It is none of your hot porto, my friend. I know there is much better and stronger liquor else- where. Some pronounce it sour : some say it is thin ; some that it has wofully lost its flavor. This may or may not be true. There are good and bad years ; years that surprise everybody ; years of which the produce is small and bad, or rich and plentiful. But if my tap is not genuine it is naught, and no man should give himself the trouble to drink it. I do not even say that I would be port if I could ; knowing that port (by which I would imply much stronger, deeper, richer, and more durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not relished by all palates, or suitable to all heads. We will as- sume then, dear brother, that you and I are tolerably modest people ; and, ourselves being thus out of the question, proceed to show how pretentious our neighbors are, and how very many of them would be port if they could. Have you never seen a small man from college placed amongst great folk, and giving himself the airs of a man of fashion .? He goes back to his common room with fond remi- niscences of Ermine Castle or Strawberry Hall. He writes to the dear countess, to say that dear Lord Lollypop is getting on very well at St. Boniface, and that the accident which he met with in a scuffle with an inebriated bargeman only showed his spirit and honor, and will not permanently disfigure his lordship's nosef He gets his clothes from dear Lollypop's SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. [09 London tailor, and wears a mauve or magenta tie when he rides out to see the hounds. A love of fashionable people is a weakness, I do not say of all, but of some tutors. Witness that Eton tutor t'other day, who intimated that in Cornhill we could not understand the perfect purity, delicacy, and refine- ment of those genteel families who sent their sons to Eton. usher, mon ami! Old Sam Johnson, who, too, had been an usher in his early life, kept a little of that weakness always. Suppose Goldsmith had knocked him up at three in the morn- ing and proposed a boat to Greenwich, as Topham Beauclerc and his friend did, would he have said, " What, my boy, are you for a frolic? I'm with you!" and gone and put on his clothes 1 Rather he would have pitched poor Goldsmith down stairs. He would have liked to be port if he could. Of course we wouldn't. Our opinion of the Portugal grape is known. It grew very high, and is very sour, and we don't go for that kind of grape at all. " I was walking with Mr. Fox " — and sure this anecdote comes very pat after the grapes — " I was walking with Mr. Fox in the Louvre," says Benjamin West {apud some paper I have just been reading), " and I remarked how inany people turned round to look at me. This shows the respect of the French for the fine arts." This is a curious instance of a very small claret indeed, which imagined itself to be port of the strongest body. There are not many instances of a faith so deep, so simple, so satisfactory as this. I have met many who would like to be port ; but with few of the Gascon sort, who absolutely believed they were port. George III. believed in West's port, and thought Reynolds' overrated stuff. When 1 saw West's pictures at Philadelphia, I looked at them with astonishment and awe. Hide, blushing glory, hide your head under your old nightcap. O immortality ! is this the end of you } Did any of you, my dear brethren, ever try and read " Black- more's Poems," or the " Epics of Baour-Lormian," or the "Henriade," or — what shall we say? — Pollok's "Course of Time ! " They were thought to be more lasting than brass by some people, and where are they now ? And our masterpieces of literature — our ports — that, if not immortal, at any rate are to last their fifty, their hundred years — oh, sirs, don't you think a very small cellar will hold them ? Those poor people in brass, on pedestals, hectoring about Trafalgar Square and that neighborhood, don't you think many of them — apart even from the ridiculous execution — cut rather a ridiculous figure, and that we are too eager to set up our ordin no ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. aire heroism and talent for port ? A Duke of Wellington or two 1 will grant, though even of these idols a moderate supply will be sufficient. Some years ago a famous and witty French critic was in London, with whom I walked the streets. I am ashamed to say that I informed him (being \\\ hopes that he was about to write some papers regarding the manners and customs of this country) that all the statues he saw represented the Duke of Wellington That on the arch opposite Apsley House ? the Duke in a cloak, and cocked-hat, on horseback. That behind Apsley House in an airy fig-leaf costume .'' the Duke again. That in Cockspur Street .'' the Duke with a pigtail — and so on. I showed him an army of Dukes. There are many bronze heroes who after a few years look already as foolish, awkward, and out of place as a man, say at Shoolbred's or Swan and Edgar's. For example, those three Grenadiers in Pall Mall, who have been up only a few months, don't you pity those unhappy household troops, who have to stand frowning and looking fierce there ; and think they would like to step down and go to barracks ? That they fought very bravely there is no doubt ; but so did the Russians fight very bravely ; and the French fight very bravely ; and so did Colonel Jones and the 99th, and Colonel Brown and the looth ; and I say again that ordinaire should not give itself port airs, and that an honest ordinaire would blush to be found swaggering so. I am sure if you could consult the Duke of York, who is impaled on his column between the two clubs, and ask his late Royal High- ness whether he thought he ought to remain there, he would say no. A brave, worthy man, not a braggart or boaster, to be put upon that heroic perch must be painful to him. Lord George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of the family park in Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to remain in his place. But look at William of Cumberland, with his hat cocked over his eye, prancing behind Lord George on his Roman-nosed charger ; he, depend on it, would be for get- ting off his horse if he had the permission. He did not hesi- tate about trifles, as we know ; but he was a very truth-telling and honorable soldier : and as for heroic rank and statuesque dignity, I would wager a dozen of '20 port against a bottle of pure and sound Bordeaux, at \Zs. per dozen (bottles included), that he never would think of claiming any such absurd distinc- tion. They have got a statue of Thomas Moore at Dublin, I hear. Is he on horseback ? Some men should have, say, a fifty years' lease of glory. After a while some gentlemen now in brass should go to the melting furnace, and reappear in some SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE. m Other gentleman's shape. Lately I saw that Melville column rising over Edinburgh ; come, good men and true, don't you feel a little awkward and uneasy when you walk under it? Who was this to stand in heroic places ? and is yon the man whom Scotchmen most delight to honor ? I must own deferen- tially that there is a tendency in North Britain to over-esteem its heroes. Scotch ale is very good and strong, but it is not stronger than all the other beer in the world, as some Scottish patriots would insist. When there has been a war, and stout old Sandy Sansculotte returns home from India or Crimea, what a bagpiping, shouting, hurraying, and self-glorification takes place round about him ! You would fancy, to hear Me Orator after dinner, that the Scotch had fought all the battles, killed all the Russians, Indian rebels, or what not. In Cupar- Fife, there's a little inn called the " Battle of Waterloo," and what do you think the sign is ? (I sketch from memory, to be sure.) " The Battle of Waterloo " is one broad Scotchman laying about him with a broadsword. Yes, yes, my dear Mac, you are wise, you are good, you are clever, you are handsome, you are brave, you are rich, &c. ; but so is Jones over the border. Scotch salmon is good, but there are other good fish in the sea. I once heard a Scotchman lecture on poetry in London. Of course the pieces he selected were chiefly by Scottish authors, and Walter Scott was his favorite poet. I whispered to my neighbor, who was a Scotchman (by the way, the audience were almost all Scotch, and the room was All- Mac's — I beg your pardon, but I couldn't help it, I really couldn't help it) — " The professor has said the best poet was a Scotchman : I wager that he will say the worst poet was a Scotchman, too." And sure enough that worst poet, when he made his appearance, was a Northern Briton. And as we are talking of bragging, and I am on my travels, can I forget one mighty republic — one — two mighty republics, where people are notoriously fond of passing off their claret for port ? I am very glad, for the sake of a kind friend, that there is a great and influential party in the United, and, I trust, in the Confederate States,* who believe that Catawba wine is better than the best Champagne. Opposite that famous old White House at Washington, whereof I shall ever have a grate- ful memory, they have set up an equestrian statue of General Jackson, by a self-taught American artist of no inconsiderable genius and skill. At an evening-party a member of Congress seized me in a corner of the room, and asked me if I did not ■ •'Written in July, 1861. 1 1 2 ROUND ABO UT PAPERS. think this was the finest equestria7i statue in the world 1 How was I to deal with this plain question, put to me in a corner? I was bound to reply, and accordingly said that I did not think it was the finest statue in the world. " Well, sir," says the member of Congress, " but you mu^ remember that Mr. M had never seen a statue when he made this ! " I suggested that to see other statues might do Mr. M no harm. Nor was any man more willing to own his defects, or more modest regarding his merits, than the sculptor himself, whom I met subsequently. But oh ! what a charming article there was in a Washington paper next day about the impertinence of criticism and offensive tone of arrogance which Englishmen adopted towards men and works of genius in America ! " Who was this man, who," &c., «&c. .'' The Washington writer was angry because I would not accept this American claret as the finest port-wine in the world. Ah me ! It is about blood and not wine that the quarrel now is, and who shall fortell its end ? How much claret that would be port if it could is handed about in every society ! In the House of Commons what small- beer orators try to pass for strong ? Stay : have I a spite against any one 1 It is a fact that the wife of the Member for Bungay has left off asking me and Mrs. Roundabout to her evening-parties. Now is the time to have a slap at him. I will say that he was always overrated, and that now he is lamentably falling off even from what he has been. I will back the member for Stoke Poges against him ; and show that the dashing young member for Islington is a far sounder man than either. Have I any little literary animosities ? Of course not. Men of letters never have. Otherwise, how I could serve out a competitor here, make a face over his works, and show that this would-be port is very meagre ordinaire indeed ! Nonsense, man ! Why so squeamish .^ Do they spare you f Now you have the whip in your hand, won't you lay on ? You used to be a pretty whip enough as a young man, and liked it too. Is there no enemy who would be the better for a little thonging ? No. I have militated in former times, not with- out glory ; but I grow peaceable as I grow old. And if I have a literary enemy, why, he will probably write a book ere long, and then it will be his turn, and my favorite review will be down upon him. My brethren, these sermons are professedly short ; for I have that opinion of my dear congregation, which leads me to think that were I to preach at great length they would yawn, stamp, make noises, and perhaps go straightway out of church ; and yet OGRES. "3 with this text I protest I could go on for hours. What multi- tudes of men, what multitudes of women, my dears, pass off their ordinaire for port, their small beer for strong ! In litera- ture, in politics, in the army, the navy, the church, at the bar, in the world, what an immei:^se quantity of cheap liquor is made to do service for better sorts! Ask Sergeant Roland his opinion of Oliver, Q. C. " Ordinaire, my good fellow, ordinaire, with a port-wine label ! " Ask Oliver his opinion of Roland. " Never was a man so overrated by the world and by himself." Ask Tweedledumski his opinion of Tweedledeestein's perform- ance. " A quack, my tear sir ! an ignoramus, I geef you my vort .-* He gombose an oioera! He is not fit to make dance a bear 1 " Ask Paddington and Buckmister, those two "swells" of fashion, what they think of each other? They are notorious ordinaire. You and I remember when they passed for very small wine, and now how high and mighty they have become. What do you say to Tomkins' sermons ? Ordinai'^e, trying to go down as orthodox port, and very meagre ordinaire too ! To Hopkins' historical works 1 — to Pumpkin's poetry ? Ordinaire, ordinaire again — thin, feeble, overrated; and so down the whole list. And when we have clone discussing our men friends, have we not all the women ? Do these not advance absurd pretensions ? Do these never give themselves airs .'' With feeble brains, don't they often set up to be esprifs forts ? Don't they pretend to be women of fashion, and cut their bet- ters ? Don't they try and pass off their ordinary-looking girls as beauties of the first order.-' Every man in his circle knows women who give themselves airs, and to whom we can apply the port-wine simile. Come, my friends. Here is enough of ordinaire and port for to-day. My bottle has run out. Will anybody have any more ? Let us go up stairs and get a cup of tea from the ladies. OGRES. I DARE say the reader has remarked that the upright and independent vowel, which stands in the vowel-list between E and O, has formed the subject of the main part of these essays. How does that vowel feel this morning? — fresh, good-humored, 8 H4 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. and lively ? The Roundabout lines, which fall from this pen, are correspondingly brisk and cheerful. Has anything, on the contrary, disagreed with the vowel ? Has its rest been dis- turbed, or was yesterday's dinner too good, or yesterday's wine not good enough ? Under such circumstances, a darkening, misanthropic tinge, no doubt, is cast upon the paper. The jokes, if attempted, are elaborate and dreary. The bitter temper breaks out. That sheering manner is adopted, which you know, and which exhibits itself so especially when the writer is speaking about women. A moody carelessness comes over him. He sees no good in anybody or thing : and treats gentlemen, ladies, history, and things in general, with a like gloomy flippancy. Agreed. When the vowel in question is in that mood, if you like airy gayety and tender gushing benevo- lence — if you want to be satisfied with yourself and the rest of your fellow-beings : I recommend you, my dear creature, to go to some other shop in Cornhill, or turn to some other article. There are moods in the mind of the vowel of which we are speaking, when it is ill conditioned and captious. Who always keeps good health, and good humor ? Do not philosophers grumble .-' Are not sages sometimes out of temper ? and do not angel-women go off in tantrums ? To-day my mood is dark. I scowl as I dip my pen into the inkstand. Here is the day come round — for everything here is done with the utmost regularity : — intellectual labor, sixteen hours ; meals, thirty-two minutes ; exercise, a hundred and forty-eight minutes ; conversation with the family, chiefly literary, and about the housekeeping, one hour and four minutes ; sleep, three hours and fifteen minutes (at the end of the month, when the Magazine is complete, I own I take eight minutes more); and the rest for the toilette and the world. Well, I say, the Roundabout Paper Z>rty being come, and the subject long since ■settled in my mind, an excellent subject — a most telling, lively, and popular subject — I go to breakfast determined to finish that meal in 93^ minutes, as usual, and then retire to my desk • and work, when — oh, provoking! — here in the paper is the very subject treated, on which I was going to write ! Yester- day another paper which I saw treated it — and of course, as I need not tell you, spoiled it. Last Saturday, another paper had an article on the subject ; perhaps you may guess what it was — but I won't tell you. Only this is true, my favorite sub- ject, which was about to make the best paper we have had for ■a long time : my bird, my game that I was going to shoot and ■serve up with such a delicate sauce, has been found by other OGRES. 1^5 sportsmen ; and pop, pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have banged at it, mangled it, and brought it down. " And can't you take some other text ! " say you. All this is mighty well. But if you have set your heart on a certain dish for dini r, be it cold boiled veal, or what you will, and thev bring you turtle and venison, don't you feel disappointed ? During your walk you have been making up your mind that that cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be a very sufficient dinner : you have accustomed your thoughts to it ; and here, in place of it, is a turkey, surrounded by coarse sausages, or a reeking pigeon-pie or a fulsome roast-pig. I have known many a good and kind man made furiously angry by such a contrdemps. I have known him to lose his temper, call his wife and servants names, and a whole household made miserable. If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is too danger- ous to baulk a man about his dinner, how much more about his article .-' I came to my meal with an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee, faw, fum ! Wife, where is that tender little Princekin ? Have you trussed him, and did you stuff him nicely, and have you taken care to baste him and do him, not too brown, as I told you ? Quick ! I am hungry ! I begin to whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest like a gorilla ; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little princes have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the paste to bake them in ! I pause in tlie description. I don't condescend to report the bad lan- guage, which you know must ensue, when an ogre, whose mind is ill regulated, and whose habits of self-indulgence are notori- ous, finds himself disappointed of his greedy hopes. What treatment of his wife, what abuse and brutal behavior to his children, who, though ogrillons, are children ! My dears, you may fancy, and need not ask my delicate pen to describe, the language and behavior of a vulgar, coarse, greedy, large man with an immense mouth and teeth, which are too frequently employed in the gobbling and crunching of raw man's meat. And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my pres- ent subject, which is Ogres. You fancy they are dead or only fictitious characters — mythical representatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity, and lust for blood ? Though they haa seven-leagued boots, you remember all sorts of little whipping- snapping Tom Thumbs used to elude and outrun them. They were so stupid that they gave in to the most shallow ambuscades and artifices : witness that well-known ogre, who, because Jack cut open the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open his own Il6 ROUN-DABOUT PAPERS. Stupid waistcoat and interior. They were cruel, brutal, dis- gusting, with their sharpened teeth, immense knives, and roar- ing voices ! but they always ended by being overcome by little Tom Thumbkins, or some other smart little champion. Yes ; they were conquered in the end there is no doubt. They plunged headlong (and uttering the most frightful bad language) into some pit where Jack came with his smart couteau de chasse and whipped their brutal heads off. They would be going to devour maidens, " But ever when it seemed Their need was nt tlie sorest, A knight, in armor bright, Came riding through the forest." And down, alter a combat, would go the brutal persecutor, with a lance through his midriff. Yes, I say, this is very true and well. But you remember that round the ogre's cave the ground was covered, for hundreds and hundreds of yards, 7vith the Iwnes of the victims whom he had lured into the castle. Many knights and maids came to him and perished under his knife and teeth. Were dragons the same as ogres ? monsters dwell- ing in caverns, whence they rushed, attired in jDlate armor, wielding pikes and torches, and destroying stray passengers who passed by their lair ? Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as they were, doubtless they ended by being overcome. But, before they were destroyed, they did a deal of mischief. The bones round their caves were countless. They had sent many brave souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling out of their rascal carcasses, to the same place of gloom. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, champions, distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres, have ceased to exist. It may not be ogreable to them (pardon the horrible pleasantry, but as I am writing in the solitude of my chamber, I am grinding my teeth — yelling, roaring, and curs- ing — brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and, as it were, have become an ogre). I say there is no greater mistake than to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. We all hnow ogres. Their caverns are round us, and about us. There are the castles of several ogres within a mile of the spot where I write. I think some of them suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not; but I know they are. I visit them. I don't mean to say that they take a cold roast prince out of the cupboard, and have a cannibal feast before me. But I see the bones lying about the roads to their houses, and in the areas and gardens. Polite- ness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks ; but I OGRES. "7 know them well enough. One of the ways to know em is to watch the scared looks of the ogres' wives and children. They lead an awful life. They are present at dreadful cruelties. In their excesses those ogres will stab about, and kill not only strangers who happen to call in and ask a night's lodging, but they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own kin. We all know ogres, I say, and have been in their dens often. It is not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer their guests the peculiar dish which they like. They cannot always get a Tom Thumb family. They eat mutton and beef too ; and I dare say even go out to tea, and invite you to drink it. But I tell you there are numbers of them going about in the world. And now you have my word for it, and this little hint, it is quite curious what an interest society may be made to have for you, by your determining to find out the ogres you meet there. What does the man mean ? says Mrs. Downright, to whom a joke is a very grave thing. I mean, madam, that in the com- pany assembled in your genteel drawing-room, who bow here and there and smirk in white neck-cloths, you receive men who elbow through life successfully enough, but who are ogres in private : men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering ; cruel hec- tors at home, smiling courtiers aloroad ; causing wives, children, servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and bow- ing as they bid strangers welcome into their castles. I say, there are men who have crunched the bones of victim after victim ; in whose closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. When these ogres come out into the world, you don't suppose they show their knives, and their great teeth ? A neat simple white neck- cloth, a merry rather obsequious manner, a cadaverous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful grin ; but I know ogres very considerably respected : and when you hint to such and such a man, " My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom you appear to like, is, I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal ;" the gentleman cries, " Oh, psha, nonsense ! Dare say not so black as he is painted. Dare say not worse than his neighbors." We condone everything in this country — private treason, false- hood, flattery, cruelty at home, roguery, and double dealing. What ! Do you mean to*say in your acquaintance you don't know ogres guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and that knowing them you don't shake hands with them ; dine with them at your table ; and meet them at their own ? De- pend upon it, in the time when there were real live ogres in real caverns or castles, gobbling up real knights and virgins, when Ilg ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. they went into the world — the neighboring market-town, let us say, or earl's castle — though their nature and reputation were pretty well known, their notorious foibles were never alluded to. You would say, " What, Blunderbore, my boy ! How do you do ? . How well and fresh you look ! What's the receipt you have for keeping so young and rosy ? " And j'^our wife would softly ask after Mrs. Blunderbore and the dear children. Or it would be, " My dear Humguffin ! try that pork. It is home-bred, home-fed, and, I promise you, tender. Tell me if you think it is as good as yours ? John, a glass of Burgundy to Colonel Humguffin ! " You don't suppose there would be any unpleasant allusions to disagreeable home-reports regard- ing Humguffin's manner of furnishing his larder .'' I say we all of us know ogres. We shake hands and dine with ogres. And if inconvenient moralists tell us we are cowards for our pains, we turn round with a /// quoque^ or say that we don't meddle with other folk's affairs ; that jDCople are much less black than they are painted, and so on. What! Won't half the county go to Ogreham Castle ? Won't some of the clergy say grace at dinner ? Won't the mothers bring their daugliters to dance with the young Rawheads } And if Lady Ogreham happens to die — I won't say to go the way of all flesh, that is too revolting — I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you aver, on your conscience and honor, that mothers will not be found to offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady's place ? How stale this misanthropy is ! Something must have dis- agreed with this cynic. Yes, my good woman. I dare say you would like to call another subject. Yes, my fine fellow ; ogre . at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham gayety to con- ceal thy terror, lest I should point thee out : — thou art prosper- ous and honored, art thou ? I say thou hast been a tyrant and a robber. Thou hast plundered the poor. Thou hast bullied the weak. Thou hast laid violent hands on the goods of the innocent and confiding. Thou hast made a prey of the meek and gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast been hard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, mon- ster ! Ah, when shall little Jack come and drill daylight through thy wicked cannibal carcase ? I see t^e ogre pass on, bowing right and left to the company ; and he gives a dreadful sidelong glance of suspicion as he is talking to my lord bishop in the corner there. Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In former times, and in children's books, where it is necessary to paint OGRES. it9 your moral in such large letters that there can be no mistake about it, ogres are made witli that enormous mouth and }-aie- lier which you know of, and with which they can swallow down a baby, almost without using that great knife which they always carry. They are too cunning nowadays. They go about in society, slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no especially great appetite. In my own young days there used to be play ogres — men who would devour a young fellow in one sitting, and leave him without a bit of flesh on his bones. They were quite gentlemanlike-looking people. They got the young fellow into their cave. Champagne, pate-de-foie-gras, and num- berless good things, were handed about ; and then, having eaten, the young man was devoured in his turn. I believe these card and dice ogres have died away almost entirely as the hasty- pudding giants whom Tom Thumb overcame. Now, there are ogres in City courts who lure you into their dens. About our Cornish mines I am told there are many most plausible ogres, who tempt you into their caverns and pick your bones there. In a certain newspaper there used to be lately a whole column of advertisements from ogres who would put on the most plausible, nay, piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their victims. You would read, " A tradesman, established for seventy years in the City, and known, and much respected by Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has pressing need for three pounds until next Saturday. He can give se- curity for half a million, and forty thousand pounds will be given for the .use of the loan," and so on ; or, " An influential body of capitalists are about to establish a company, of which the business will be enormous and the profits proportionately prodigious. They will require a secretary, of good address and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum. He need not be able to write, but address and manners are abso- lutely necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to deposit," &c. ; or, " A young widow (of pleasing manners and appearance) who has a pressing necessity for four pounds ten for three weeks, offers her Erard's grand piano valued at three hundred guineas ; a diamond cross of eight hundred pounds ; and board and lodging in her elegant villa near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in return for the loan." I suspect these people are ogres. There are ogres and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, one-eyed, notorious ogre, fetching his victims out of a hole, and gob- bling them one after another. There could be no mistake about him. But so were the Sirens ogres — pretty blue-eyed I20 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the water, and singing their melodious wheedles. And the bones round their caves were more numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh- bones round the cavern of hulking Polypheme. To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the dapper champion of the pen ; puffs boldly upon the horn which hangs by the chain ; enters the hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking within. We defy him to combat, the enormous roaring rufifian ! We give him a meeting on the green plain before his castle. Green ? No wonder it should be green : it is manured with human bones. After a few grace- ful wheels and curvets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. 'Tis but to kiss the locket of our lady-love's hair. And now the vizor is up : the lance is in rest (Gillott's iron is the point for me). A touch of the spur in the gallant side of Pegasus, and we gallop at the great brute. " Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, m}'' squire ! " And who are these who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned maidens, the maltreated widows, the poor old hoary grand- fathers, who have been locked up in the dungeons these scores and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny of that ruffian ! Ah ye knights of the pen ! May honor be your shield, and truth tip your lances ! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and have at him. ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS WHICH I INTENDED TO WRITE* We have all heard of a place paved with good intentions : — a place which I take to be a very dismal, useless and unsatis- factory terminus for many pleasant thoughts, kindly fancies, gentle wishes, merry little quips and pranks, harmless jokes which die as it were the moment of their birth. Poor little children of the brain I He was a dreary theologian who hud- dled you under such a melancholy cenotaph, and laid you in the vaults under the flagstones of Hades ! I trust that some * The following paper was written in 1861, after the extraordinary affray between Major Murray and the money-lender in a Iiouse in Northumberland Street, Strand, and subse- quent to the appearance of M. Du Chaillu's book on GorillaE. ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 121 of the best actions we have all of us committed in our lives have been committed in fancy. It is not all wickedness we are thinking, que (liable ! Some of our thoughts are bad enough I grant you. Many a one you and I have had here below. Ah mercy, what a monster ! what crooked horns ! what leering eyes ! what a flaming mouth ! what cloven feet, and what a hideous writhing tail ! Oh, let us fall down on our knees, repeat our most potent exorcisms, and overcome the brute. Spread your black pinions, fly — fly to the dusky .realms of Eblis, and bury thyself under the paving-stones of his hall, dark genie ! But all thoughts are not so. No — no. There are the pure : there are the kind : there are the gentle. There are sweet unspoken thanks before a fair scene of nature : at a sun-setting below a glorious sea; or a moon and a host of stars shining over it : at a bunch of children playing in the street, or a group of flow- ers by the hedge-side, or a bird singing there. At a hundred moments or occurrences of the day good thoughts pass through the mind, let us trust, which never are spoken ; prayers are made which never are said ; and Te Deum is sung without church, clerk, choristers, parson or organ. Why, there's my enemy : who got the place I wanted ; who maligned me to the woman I wanted to be well with ; who supplanted me in the good graces of my patron, I don't say anything about the matter: but, my poor old enemy, in my secret mind I have movements of as tender charity towards you, you old scoun- drel, as ever I had when we were boys together at school. You ruffian ! do you fancy I forget that we were fond of each other ? We are still. We share our toffy ; go halves at the tuck-shop ; do each other's exercises ; prompt each other with the word in construing or repetition ; and tell the most frightful fibs to pre- vent each other from being found out. We meet each other in public. Ware a fight ! Get them into different parts of the room ! Our friends hustle round us. Capulet and Montague are not more at odds than the houses of Roundabout and Wrightabout, let us say. It is, " My dear Mrs. Buffer, do kindly put yourself in the chair between those two men ! " Or, My dear Wrightabout, will you take that charming Lady Blanc- mange down to supper? She adores your poems; and gave five shillings for your autograph at the fancy fair." In like manner the peace-makers gather round Roundabout on his part : he is carried to a distant corner, and coaxed out of the way of the enemy with whom he is at feud. When we meet in the Square at Verona, out flash rapiers, and we fall to. But in his private mind Tybalt owns that 122 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Mercutio has a rare wit, and Mercutio is sure that his adver- sary is a gallant gentleman. Look at the amphitheatre yonder. You do not suppose those gladiators who fought and perished, as hundreds of spectators in that grim Circus held thumbs down, and cried, "Kill, kill ! " — you do not suppose the com- batants of necessity hated each other ? No more than the celebrated trained bands of literary sword-and-buckler men hate the adversaries whom they meet in the arena. They en- gage at the given signal ; feint and parry ; slash, poke, rip each other open, dismember limbs, and hew off noses : but in the way of business, and, I trust, with mutual private esteem. For instance, I salute the warriors of the Superfine Company with the honors due among warriors. Here's at you, Sparta- cus, my lad. A hit, I acknowledge. A palpable hit! Ha! how do you like that poke in the eye in return ? When the trumpets sing truce, or the spectators are tired, we bow to the noble company : withdraw ; and get a cool glass of wine in our rendezvous des braves gladiateiirs. By the way, I saw that amphitheatre of Verona under the strange light of a lurid eclipse some years ago : and I have been there in spirit for these twenty lines past, under a vast gusty awning, now with twenty thousand fellow-citizens looking on from the benches, now in the circus itself, a grim gladiator with sword and net, or a meek martyr — was I ? — brought out to be gobbled up by the lions ? or a huge, shaggy, tawny lion myself, on whom the dogs were going to be set } What a day of excitement I have had to be sure ! But I must get away from Verona, or who knows how much farther the Roundabout Pegasus may carry me? We were saying, my Muse, before we dropped and perched on earth for a couple of sentences, that our unsaid words were in some limbo or other, as real as those we have uttered ; that the thoughts which have passed through our brains are as actual as any to which our tongues and pens have given cur- rency. For instance, besides what is here hinted at, I have thought ever so much more about Verona : about an early Christian church I saw there ; about a great dish of rice we had at the inn ; about the bugs there ; about ever so many more details of that day's journey from Milan to Venice ; about lake Garda, which lay on the way from Milan, and so forth. I say what fine things we have thought of, haven't we, all of us ? Ah, what a fine tragedy that was I thought of, and never wrote! On the day of the dinner of the Oystermongers' Company, what a noble speech I thought of in the cab, and broke down — I ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 123 don't mean the cab, but the speech. Ah, if you could but read some of the unwritten Roundabout Papers — how you would be amused ! Aha ! my friend, I catch you saying, " Well, then, I wish this was unwritten with all my heart." Very good. I owe you one. I do confess a hit, a palpable hit. One day in the past month, as I was reclining on the bench of thought, with that ocean The Times newspaper spread before me, the ocean cast up on the shore at my feet two famous sub- jects for Roundabout Papers, and I picked up those waifs, and treasured them away until I could polish them and bring them to market. That scheme is not to be carried out. I can't write about those subjects. And though I cannot write about them, I may surely tell what are the subjects I am going not to write about. The first was that Northumberland Street encounter, which all the papers have narrated. Have any novelists of our days a scene and catastrophe more strange and terrible than this which occurs at noonday within a few yards of the greatest thoroughfare in Europe ? At the theatres they have a new name for their melo-dramatic pieces, and call them " Sensation Dramas." What a sensation Drama this is ! What have people been flocking to see at the Adelphi Theatre for the last hundred and fifty nights .? A woman pitched overboard out of a boat, and a certain Miles taking a tremendous " header," and bringing her to shore ? Bagatelle ! What is this compared to the real life-drama, of which a midday representation takes place just opposite the Adelphi in Northumberland Street? The brave Dumas, the intrepid Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene Sue, the cold-shudder-inspiring " Woman in White," the as- tounding author of the " Mysteries of the Court of London," never invented anything more tremendous than this. It might have happened to you and me. We want to borrow a little money. We are directed to an agent. We propose a pecuniary transaction at a short date. He goes into the next room, as we fancy, to get the bank-notes, and returns with " two very pretty, delicate little ivory-handled pistols," and blows a portion of our heads off. After this, what is the use of being squeamish about the probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fic- tion ? Years ago I remember making merry over a play of Dumas, called Kean, in which the " Coal-Hole Tavern " was represented on the Thames, with a fleet of pirate-ships moored alongside. Pirate-ships ? Why not ? What a cavern of terror was this in Northumberland Street, with its splendid furniture covered with dust, its empty bottles, in the midst of which sits a c24 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. grim " agent," amusing himself by firing pistols, aiming at the unconscious mantel-piece, or at the heads of his customers ! After this, what is not possible ? It is possible Hungerford Market is mined, and will explode some day. Mind how you go in for a penny ice unawares. " Pray, step this wa}^," says a quiet person at the door. You enter — into aback room: — a quiet room ; rather a dark room. " Pray, take your place in a chair." 7\nd she goes to fetch the penny ice. Malhcurcux ! The chair sinks down with you — sinks, and sinks, and sinks — a large wet flannel suddenly envelopes your face and throttles you. Need we say any more ? After Northumberland Street, what is improbable ? Surely there is no difficulty in crediting Bluebeard. I withdraw my last month's opinions about ogres. Ogres? Why not? I protest I have seldom contemplated anything more terribfy^ ludicrous than this " agent " in the dingy splendor of this den, surrounded by dusty ormolu and piles of empty bottles, firing pistols for his diversion at the mantel-piece until his clients come in I Is pistol-practice so common in Northumberland Street, that it passes without notice in the lodging houses there ? We spake anon of good thoughts. About bad thoughts ? Is there some Northumberland Street chamber in your heart and mine, friend : close to the every-day street of life : visited by daily friends : visited by people on business ; in which affairs are transacted ; jokes are uttered ; wine is drunk ; through which people come and go ; wives and children pass ; and in which murder sits unseen until the terrible moment v.'hen he rises up and kills ? A farmer, say, has a gun over the mantel-piece in his room where he sits at his daily meals and rest : caressing his children, joking with his friends, smoking his pipe in his calm. One night the gun is taken down ; the farmer goes out : and it is a murderer who comes back and puts the piece up and drinks by that fireside. Was he a murderer yesterday when he was tossing the baby on his knee, and when his hands were playing with his little girl's yellow hair ? Yesterday there was no blood on them at all : they were shaken by honest men : have done many a kind act in their time very likely. He leans his head on one of them, the wife comes in with her anxious looks of welcome, the children are prattling as they did yesterday round the father's knee at the fire, and Cain is sitting by the embers, and Abel lies dead on the moor. Think of the gulf between now and yesterday. Oh, 3'esterday ! Oh, the days when those two loved each other and said their prayers side by side 1 He goes to sleep, per- ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 125 haps, and dreams that his brother is alive. Be true, O dream ! Let hirn live in dreams, and wake no more. Be undone, O crime, O crime ! But the sun rises : and the officers of con- science come : and yonder lies the body on the moor. I hap- pened to pass, and looked at the Nor:;humberland Street house the other day, A few loiterers were gazing up at the dingy windows. A plain ordinary face of a house enough — and in a chamber in it one man suddenly rose up, pistol in hand, to slaughter another. Have you ever killed any one in your thoughts ? Has your heart compassed any man's death ? In your mind, have you ever taken a brand from the altar, and slain your brother.^ How many plain ordinary faces of men do we look at, unknowing of murder behind those eyes ? Lucky for you and me, brother, that we have good thoughts unspoken. But the bad ones.'' I tell you that the sight of those blank windows in Northumberland Street — through which, as it were, my mind could picture the awful tragedy glimmering behind — set me thinking, " Mr. Street-Preacher, here is a text for one of your pavement sermons. But it is too glum and serious. You eschew dark thoughts : and desire to be cheerful and merry in the main." And, such being the case, you see we must have no Roundabout Essay on this subject. Well, I had another arrow in my quiver. (So, you know, had William Tell a bolt for his son, the apple of his eye ; and a shaft for Gessler, in case William came to any trouble with the first poor little target.) And this, I must tell you, was to have been a rare Roundabout performance — one of the very best that has ever appeared in this series. It was to have con- tained all the deep pathos of Addison : the logical precision of Rabelais ; the childlike playfulness of Swift ; the manly stoi- cism of Sterne : the metaphysical depth of Goldsmith ; the blushing modesty of Fielding ; the epigrammatic terseness of Walter Scott ; the uproarious humor of Sam Richardson; and the gay simplicity of Sam Johnson ; — it was to have combined all these qualities, with some excellences of modern writers whom I could name : — but circumstances have occurred which have rendered this Roundabout Essay also impossible. I have not the least objection to tell you what was to have been the subject of that other admirable Roundabout Paper. Gracious powers ! the Dean of St. Patrick's never had a better theme. The paper was to have been on the Gorillas, to be sure. I was going to imagine myself to be a young surgeon-apprentice from Charleston, in South Carolina, who 126 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ran away to Cuba on account of unhappy family circumstances, with which nobody has the least concern ; who sailed thence to Africa in a large, roomy schooner with an extraordinary vacant space between decks. I was subject to dreadful ill treatment from the first mate of the ship, who, when I found she was a slaver, altogether declined to put me on shore. I was chased — Vv-e were chased — by three British frigates and a seventy-four, which we engaged and captured ; but were obliged to scuttle and sink, as we could sell them in no African port : and I never shall forget the look of manly resignation, combined with considerable disgust, of the Eritish Admiral as he walked the plank, after cutting off his pigtail, which he handed to me, and which I still have in charge for his family at Boston, Lincoln- shire, England. We made the port of Bpoopoo, at the confluence of the Bungo and Sgglolo rivers (which you may see in Swammerdahl's map) on the 31st April last year. Our passage had been so extraordinarily rapid, owing to the continued drunkenness of the captain and chief officers, by which I was obliged to work the ship and take her in command, that we reached Bpoopoo six weeks before we were expected, and five before the cofTres from the interior and from the great slave depot at Zbabblo were expected. Their delay caused us not a little discomfort, because, though we had taken the four English ships, we knew that Sir Byam Martin's iron-cased squadron, with the " Warrior," the "Impregnable," the " Sanconiathon," and the " Berosus," were cruising in the neighborhood, and might prove too much for us. It not only became necessary to quit Bpoopoo before the arrival of the British fleet, or the rainy season, but to get our people on board as soon as might be. While the chief mate, with a detachment of seamen, hurried forward to the Pgogo lake, where we expected a considerable part of our cargo, the second mate, with six men, four chiefs. King Fbumbo, an Obi man, and myself, went N.W. by W., towards King Mtoby's- town, where we knew many hundreds of our between-deck passengers were to be got together. We went down the Pdodo river, shooting snipes, ostriches, and rhinoceros in plenty, and I think a few elephants, until, by the advice of a guide, who I now believe was treacherous, v/e were induced to leave the Pdodo, and march N.E. by N.N. Here Lieutenant Larkins, who had persisted in drinking rum from morning to night, and thrashing me in his sober moments during the whole journey, died, and I have too good reason to know was eaten with much ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 127 relish by the natives. At Mgoo, where there are barracoons and a depot for our cargo, we had no news of our expected freight ; accordingly, as time pressed exceedingly, parties were despatch- ed in ad\'ance towards the great Washaboo lake, by which the caravans usually come towards the coast. Here we found no caravan, but only four negroes down with the ague, whom I treated, I am bound to say, unsuccessfully, whilst we waited for our friends. We used to take watch and watch in front of the place, both to guard ourselves from attack, and get early news of the api^roaching caravan. At last, on the 23d September, as I was in advance with Charles Rogers, second mate, and two natives with bows and arrows, Vv^e were crossing a great plain skirted by a forest, when we saw emerging from a ravine what I took to be three negroes — a very tall one, one of a moderate size, and one quite little. Our native guides shrieked out some words in their lan- guage, of which Charles Rogers knew something. I thought it was the advance of the negroes whom we expected. " No ! " said Rogers (who swore dreadfully in conversation), " it is the Gorillas ! " And he fired both barrels of his gun, bringing down the little one first, and the female afterwards. The male, who was untouched, gave a howl that you might have heard a league off ; advanced towards us as if he would attack us, and then turned and ran away with inconceivable celerity towards the wood. We went up towards the fallen brutes. The little one by the female appeared to be about two years old. It lay bleating and moaning on the ground, stretching out its little hands with movements and looks so strangely resembling human, that my heart sickened with pity. The female, who had been shot through both legs, could not move. She howled most hideously when I approached the little one. " We must be off," said Rogers, " or the whole Gorilla race may be down upon us." " The little one is only shot in the leg," I said. "I'll bind the limb up, and we will carry the beast with us on board." The poor little wretch held up its leg to show it was wounded, and looked to me with appealing eyes. It lay quite still whilst I looked for and found the bullet, and, tearing off a piece of my shirt, bandaged up the wound. I was so occupied in this business, that I hardly heard Rogers cry " Run ! run ! " and when I looked up When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I ever heard — a roar ? ten thousand roars — a whirling army of dark 128 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. beings rushed by me. Rogers, who had bullied me so fright* fully during tlie voyage, and who had encouraged my fatal passion for play, so that I own I owed him 1500 dollars, was overtaken, felled, brained, and torn into ten thousand pieces; and I dare say the same fate would have fallen on me, but that the little Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms round my neck (their arms, you know, are much longer than ours). And when an immense gray Gorilla, with hardly any teeth, brandishing the trunk of a goUyboshtree about six- teen feet long, came up to me roaring, the little one squeaked out something plaintive, which of course I could not under- stand ; on which suddenly the monster flung down his tree, sqiiatted down on his huge hams by the side of the little pa- tient, and began to bellow and weep. And now, do you see whom I had rescued ? I had rescued the young Prince of the Gorillas, who was out walking with his nurse and footman. The footman had run off to alarm his master, and certainly I never saw a footman run faster. The whole army of Gorillas rushed forward to rescue their prince, and punish his enemies. If the King Gorilla's emotion was great, fancy what the Queen's must have been when she came up ! She arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with wattled branches, on which she lay, with her youngest child, a prince of three weeks old. My little protege, with the wounded leg, still persisted in hugging me with its arms (I think I mentioned that they are longer than those of men in general), and as the poor little brute was immensely heavy, and the Gorillas go at a prodigious pace, a litter was made for us likewise ; and my thirst much refreshed by a footman (the same domestic who had given the alarm) running hand over hand up a cocoanut-tree, tearing the rinds off, breaking the shell on his head, and handing me the fresh milk in its cup. My little patient partook of a little, stretching out its dear little unwounded foot, with which, or with its hand, a Gorilla can help himself indiscriminately. Relays of large Gorillas relieved each other at the litters at intervals of twenty minutes, as I calculated by my watch, one of Jones and Bates's, of Boston, Mass., though I have been unable to this day to ascertain how these animals calculate time with such surprising accuracy. We slept for that night under And now, you see, we arrive at really the most interesting part of my travels in the country which I intended to visit, viz. : the manners and habits of the Gorillas c/iez eux. I give the ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 129 heads of this narrative only, the full account being suppressed for a reason which shall presently be given. The heads, then, of the chapters, are briefly as follows : — The author'' s arrival in the Gorilla country. Its geographical positiofi. Lodgings assigned to him 7i/> a gum-tree. Constant attachment of the little prince. His royal highnesses gratitude. Anecdotes of his wit, playfulness, and extraordinary precocity. Am offered a portion of poor Larkins for my supper, but decline with horror. Footma?i brings me a young crocodile : fishy but very palatable. Old crocodiles too tough : ditto rhinoceros. Visit the queen mother — an enormous old Gorilla, quite white. Prescribe for her majesty. Meetifig of Gorillas at what appears a parliament amongst them : presided over by old Gorilla in cocoa-nutfibre wig. Their sports. Their customs. A privileged class amongst them. Extraordinary likeness of Gorillas to people at ho7nc, both at Charleston, S. C, my native place ; atid London, Eiigland, which I have visited. Flat-nosed Gorillas and blue-nosed Gorillas ; their hatred, and wars betweeji them. Ln a part of the country (its geographical position described) L see several ?iegroes lender Gorilla domination. Well treated by their inastcrs. Frog-eating Gorillas across the Salt Lake. Bull-headed Gorillas — their mutual hos- tility. Green Island Gorillas. More quarrelsome than the Bull- heads, and howl much louder. I am called to attend one of the princesses. Evident partiality of H. R. H. for me. jfealousy and rage of large' red-headed Gorilla. How shall I escape ? Ay, how indeed ? Do you wish to know ? Is your curiosity excited ? Well, I do know how I escaped. I could tell the most extraordinary adventures that happened to me. I could show you resemblances to peojDle at home, that would make them blue with rage and you crack your sides with laughter, * * * # * ^^,-,(-1 ^vhat is the reason I cannot write this paper, having all the facts before me ? The reason is, that walking down St. James Street yesterday, I met a friend who says to me, " Roundabout my boy, have you seen your picture ? Here it is ! " And he pulls out a portrait, executed in photog- raphy, of your humble servant, as an immense and most un- pleasant-featured baboon, with long hairy hands, and called by the waggish artist " A Literary Gorilla." O horror ! And now you see why I can't play off this joke myself, and moralize on the fable, as it has been narrated already de me. 9 130 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. ^^^^^'^^s*-^ This group of dusky children of the captivity is copied out of a little sketch-book which I carried in many a roundabout journey, and will point a moral as well as any other sketch in the volume. Yonder drawing was made in a country where there was such hospitality, friendship, kindness shown to the humble designer, that his eyes do not care to look out for faults, or his pen to note them. How they sang ; how they laughed and grinned ; how they scraped, bowed, and complimented you and each other, those negroes of the cities of the Southern parts .of the then United States ! My business kept me in the towns ; I was but in one negro-plantation village, and there were only women and little children, the men being out a-field. But there was plenty of cheerfulness in the huts, under the great trees — I speak of what I saw — and amidst the dusky bondsmen of the • cities. I witnessed a curious gayety ; heard amongst the black .folk endless singing, shouting, and laughter ; and saw on holi- A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 131 days black gentlemen and ladies arrayed in such splendor and comfort as freeborn workmen in our towns seldom exhibit. What a grin and bow that dark gentleman performed, who was the porter at the colonel's, when he said, " You write your name, mas'r, else I will forgot." I am not going into the slavery question, I am not an advocate for " the institution," as I know, madam, by that angry toss of your head, you are about to declare me to be. For domestic purposes, my dear lady, it seemed to me about the dearest institution that can be devised. In a house in a Southern city you will find fifteen negroes doing the work which John, the cook, the housemaid, and the help, do perfectly in your own comfortable London house. And these fifteen negroes are the pick of a family of some eighty or ninety. Twenty are too sick, or too old for work, let us say ; twenty too clumsy ; twenty are too young, and have to be nursed and watched by ten more.* And master has to maintain the im- mense crew to do the work of half a dozen willing hands. No, no ; let Mitchell, the exile from poor dear enslaved Ireland, wish for a gang of " fat niggers ; " I would as soon you should make me a present of a score of Bengal elephants, when I need but a single stout horse to pull my brougham. How hospitable they were, those Southern men ! In the North itself the welcome was not kinder, as I, who have eaten Northern and Southern salt, can testify. As for New Orleans, in spring-time, — just when the orchards were flushing over with peach-blossoms, and the sweet herbs came to flavor the juleps — it seemed to me the city of the world where you can eat and drink the most and suffer the least. At Bordeaux itself, claret is not better to drink than at New Orleans. It was all good — believe an expert Robert — from the half-dollar Medoc of the public hotel table, to the private gentleman's choicest wine. Claret is, somehow, good in that gifted place at dinner, at sup- per, and at breakfast in the morning. It is good : it is super- abundant — and there is nothing to pay. Find me speaking ill of such a country ! When I do, pone me pigris campis : smother me in a desert, or let Mississippi or Garonne drown me ! At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles ; and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word ; on the con- trary, you only wake Avith a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water. They say there is fever there in the autumn : but • This was an account given by a gentleman at Richmond of his establishment. Six European servants would have kept his house and stables well. " His farm," he said, * barely sufficed to maintain the negroes residing on it." 132 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. not in the spring-time, when the peach-blossoms blush over the orchards, and the sweet herbs come to flavor the juleps. I was bound from New Orleans to Saint Louis ; and our walk was constantly on the Levee, whence we could see a hundred of those huge white Mississippi steamers at their moorings in the river : " Look," said my friend Lochlomond to me, as we stood one day on the quay — " look at that post ! Look at that coffee-house behind it ! Sir, last year a steamer blew up in the river yonder, just where you see those men pulling off in the boat. By that post where you are standing a mule was cut in two by a fragment of the burst machinery, and a bit of the chimney-stove in that first-floor window of the coffee-house, killed a negro who was cleaning knives in the top-room ! " I looked at the post, at the coffee-house window, at the steamer in which I was going to embark, at my friend, with a pleasing interest not divested of melancholy. Yester- day, it was the mule, thinks I, who was cut in two : it may be eras 7nihi. Why, in the same little sketchbook, there is a draw- ing of an Alabama river steamer which blew up on the very next voyage after that in which your humble servant was on board ! Had I but waited another week, I might have. * * * These in- cidents give a queer zest to the voyage down the life-stream in America. When our huge, tall, white, pasteboard castle of a steamer began to work up stream, every limb in her creaked, and groaned, and quivered, so that you might fancy she would burst right off. Would she hold together, or would she split into ten million of shivers ? O my home and children ! Would your humble servant's body be cut in two across yonder chain on the Levee, or be precipitated into yonder first floor, so as to damage the chest of a black man cleaning boots at the window ? The black man is safe for me, thank goodness. But you see the little accident w/^^/^/have happened. It has happened ; and if to a mule, why not to a more docile animal ? On our journey up the Mississippi, I give you my honor we were on fire three times, and burned our cook-room down. The deck at night, was a great firework — the chimney spouted myriads of stars which fell blackening on our garments, sparkling on the deck, or gleaming into the mighty stream through which we labored — the mighty yellow stream with all its snags. How I kept up my courage through these dangers shall now be narrated. The excellent landlord of the " Saint Charles Hotel," when I was going away, begged me to accept two bottles of the very finest Cognac, with his compliments ; and I ^ found them in my state-room with my luggage. Lochlomond A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. ^Z5 came to see me off, and as he squeezed my hand at parting. " Roundabout," says he, the wine mayn't be very good on board, so I have brought a dozen-case of the Medoc which you Uked ; " and we grasped together the hands of friendship and farewell. Whose boat is this pulling up to the ship ? It is our friend Glenlivat, who gave us the dinner on Lake Pontchar- train. " Roundabout," says he, " we have tried to do what we- could for you, my boy ; and it has been done de bon coeur " (I detect a kind tremulousness in the good fellow's voice as he speaks). " I say — hem ! — the a — the wine isn't too good on board, so I've brought you a dozen of Me'doc for your voyage, you know. And God bless you ; and when I come to London in May I shall come and see you. Hallo ! here's Johnson come to see you off, too ! " As I an> a miserable sinner, when Johnson grasped my hand, he said, " Mr. Roundabout, you can't be sure of the wine on board these steamers, so I thought I would bring you a little case of that light claret which you liked at my house." Et de trots ! No wonder I could face the Mississippi with so much courage supplied to me ! Where are you, honest friends, who gave me of your kindness and your cheer ? May I be con- siderably boiled, blown up, and snagged, if I speak hard words of you. May claret turn sour ere I do ! Mounting the stream it chanced that w^e had very few pas- sengers. How far is the famous city of Memphis from New Orleans ? I do not mean the Egyptian Memphis, but the American Memphis, from which to the American Cairo we slowly toiled up the river — to the American Cairo at the conflu- ence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. And at Cairo we parted company from the boat, and from some famous and gifted fel- low-passengers who joined us at MemjDhis, and whose pictures we had seen in many cities of the South. I do not give the names of these remarkable people, unless, by some wondrous chance, inventing a name I should light upon that real one which some of them bore ; but if you please I will say that our fellow passengers whom we took in at Memphis were no less personages than the Vermont Giant and the famous Bearded Lady of Kentucky and her son. Their pictures I had seen in many cities through which I travelled with my own little performance. I think the Vermont Giant was a trifle taller in his pictures than he was in life (being represented in the former as, at least, some two storeys high) : but the lady's prodigious beard received no more than justice at the hands of the painter ; that portion of it which I saw being really most '34 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. black, rich, and curly — I say the portion of beard, for this modest or prudent woman kept I don't know how much of the beard covered up with a red handkerchief, from which I sup- pose it only emerged when she went to bed, or when she ex- hibited it professionally. The Giant, I must think, was an overrated giant. I have known gentlemen, not in the profession, better made, and I should say taller, than the Vermont gentleman. A strange feeling I used to have at meals ; when, on looking round our little society, I saw the Giant, the Bearded Lady of Kentucky, the little Bearded Boy of three years old, the Captain, (this I think ; but at this distance of time I would not like to make the statement on affidavit,) and the three other passengers, all with their knives in their mouths making play at the dinner — a strange feeling I say it was, and as though I was in a castle of ogres. But, after all, why so squeamish ? A few scores of years back, the finest gentlemen and ladies of Europe did the like. Belinda ate with her knife ; and Saccharissa had only that weapon, or a two-pronged fork, or a spoon, for her pease. Have you ever looked at Gilray's print of the Prince of Wales, a languid voluptuary, retiring after his meal, and noted the toothpick which he uses ? * * * You are right, madam ; I own that the subject is revolting and terrible. 1 will not pursue it. Only — allow that a gentleman, in a shaky steamboat, on a dangerous river, in a far-off country, which caught fire three times during the voyage — (of course I mean the steamboat, not the country,) — seeing a giant, a voracious supercargo, a bearded lady, and a little boy, not three years of age, with a chin already quite black and curly, all plying their victuals down their throats with their knives — allow, madam, that in such a company a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I dont't know whether you have ever remarked the Indian jugglers swallowing their knives, or seen, as I have, a whole table of people performing the same trick, but if you look at their eyes when they do it, I assure you there is a roll in them which is dreadful. Apart from this usage, which they practise in common with many thousand most estimable citizens, the Vermont gen- tleman, and the Kentucky whiskered lady — or did I say the reverse ? — whichever you like, my dear sir — were quite quiet, modest, unassuming people. She sat working with her needle, if I remember right. He, I suppose, slept in the great cabin, which was seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to say, did I hear in the night any snores or roars, such as you A M/SSISSIPPI BUBBLE. "35 would fancy ought to accompany the sleep of ogres. Nay, this giant had quite a small appetite, (unless, to be sure, he went forward and ate a sheep or two in private with his Iiorrid knife — oh, the dreadful thought ! — but in public, I say, he had quite a delicate appetite,) and was also a tea-totaller. I don't re- member to have heard the lady's voice, though I might, not unnaturally, have been curious to hear it. Was her voice a deep, rich, magnificent bass ; or was it soft, fluty, and mild ? I shall never know now. Even if she comes to this country, I shall never go and see her. I have seen her, and for nothing. You would have fancied that, as after all we were only some half-dozen on board, she might have dispensed with her red handkerchief, and talked, and eaten her dinner in comfort : but in covering her chin there was a kind of modesty. That beard was her profession : that beard brought the public to see her : out of her business she wished to put that beard aside as it were : as a barrister would wish to put off his wig. I know some who carry theirs into private lite, and who mistake you and me for jury-boxes when they address us : but these are not your modest barristers, not your true gentlemen. Well, I own I respected the lady for the modesty with which, her public business over, she retired into private life. She respected her life, and her beard. That beard having done its day's work, she puts it away in a handkerchief ; and becomes, as far as in her lies, a private ordinary pe son. All public men and women of good sense, I should think, have this modesty. When, for instance, in my small way, poor Mrs. Brown comes simpering up to me, with her album in one hand, a pen in the other, and says, " Ho, ho, dear Mr. Roundabout, write us one of your amusing," &c., &c., my beard drops behind my handkerchief instantly. Why am I to wag my chin and grin for Mrs. Brown's good pleasure ? My dear madam, I have been making faces all day. It is my profession. I do my comic business with the greatest pains, seriousness, and trouble : and with it make, I hope, a not dishonest livelihood. If you ask Mons. Blondin to tea, you don't have a rope stretched from your garret window to the opposite side of the square, and request Monsieur to take his tea out on the centre of the rope ? I lay my hand on this waistcoat, and declare that not once in the course of our voyage together did I allow the Kentucky Giant to suppose I was speculating on his stature, or the Bearded Lady to surmise that 1 wished to peep under the handkerchief which muffled the lower part of her face. " And the more fool you," says some cynic. (I'augh, those 136 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. cynics, I hate 'em !) Don't you know, sir, that a man of genius is pleased to have his genius recognized ; that a beauty Ukes to be admired ; that an actor likes to be applauded ; that stout old Wellington himself was pleased, and smiled when the peo- ple cheered him as he passed ? Suppose you had paid some respectful elegant compliment to that lady ? Suppose you had asked that giant, if, for once, he would take anything at the liquor-bar ? you might have learned a great deal of curious knowledge regarding giants and bearded ladies, about whom you evidently now know very little. There was that little boy of three years old, with a fine beard already, and his little legs and arms, as seen out of his little frock, covered with a dark down. What a queer little capering satyr ! He was quite good-natured, childish, rather solemn. He had a little Norval dress, I remember : the drollest little Norval. I have said the B. L. had another child. Now this was a little girl of some six years old, as fair and as smooth of skin, dear madam, as your own darling cherubs. She wandered about the great cabin quite melancholy. No one seemed to care for her. All the family affections were centred on Master Esau yonder. His little beard was beginning to be a little fortune already, whereas Miss Rosalba was of no good to the family. No one would pay a cent to see her little fair face. No wonder the poor little maid was melancholy. As I looked at her, I seemed to walk more and more in a fairy tale, and more and more in a cavern of ogres. Was this a little foundling whom they had picked up in some forest, where lie the picked bones of the queen, her tender mother, and the tough old defunct monarch, her father ? No. Doubtless they were quite good-natured people, these. I don't believe they were unkind to the little girl without the mustaches. It may have been only my fancy that she repined because she had a cheek no more bearded than a rose's. Would you wish your own daughter, madam, to have a smooth cheek, a modest air, and a gentle feminine behavior, or to be — I won't say a whiskered prodigy, like this Bearderd Lady of Kentucky — but a masculine wonder, a virago, a female per- sonage of more than female strength, courage, wisdom ? Some authors, who shall be nameless, are, I know, accused of depict- ing the most feeble, brainless, namby-pamby heroines, forever whimpering tears and prattling commonplaces. You would have the heroine of your novel so beautiful that she should charm the captain (or hero, whoever he may be) with her ap- pearance ; surprise and confound the bishop with her learning ; A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE. 137 outride the squire and get the brush, and, when he fell from his horse, whip out a lancet and bleed him ; rescue from fever and death the poor cottager's family whom the doctor had given up j make 21 at the butts with the rifle, when the poor captain only scored 18 ; give him twenty in fifty at billiards and beat him ; and draw tears from the professional Italian people by her exquisite performance (of voice and violoncello) in the evening ; — I say, if a novelist would be popular with ladies — the great novel-readers of the world — this is the sort of heroine who would carry him through half a dozen editions. Suppose I had asked that Bearded Lady to sing ? Confess, now, miss, you would not have been displeased if I had told you that she had a voice like Lablache, only ever so much lower. My dear, you would like to be a heroine ? You would like to travel in triumphal caravans ; to see your effigy placarded on city walls ; to have your leve'es attended by admiring crowds, all crying out, "Was there ever such a wonderof a woman.'"' You would like admiration ? Consider the tax you pay for it. You would be alone were you eminent. Were you so distin- guished from your neighbors — I will not say by a beard and whiskers, that were odious — but by a great and remarkable intellectual superiority — would you, do you think, be any the happier? Consider envy. Consider solitude. Consider the jealousy and torture of mind which this Kentucky lady must feel, suppose she should hear that there is, let us say, a Missouri prodigy, with a beard larger than hers .'' Consider how she is separated from her kind by the possession of that wonder of a beard .-' When that beard grows gray, how lonely she will be, the poor old thing ! If it falls off, the public ad- miration falls off too ; and how she will miss it — the compli- ments of the trumpeters, the admiration of the crowd, the gilded progress of the car. I see an old woman alone in a decrepit old caravan, with cobwebs on the knocker, with a blistered ensign flapping idly over the door. Would you like to be that deserted person .-' Ah, Chloe ! To be good, to be simple, to be modest, to be loved, be thy lot. Be thankful thou are not taller, nor stronger, nor richer, nor wiser than the rest of the world ! 138 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ON LETTS' S DIAR Y. Mine is one of your No. 12 diaries, three shillings cloth boards ; silk limp, gilt edges, three-and-six ; French morocco, tuck ditto, four-and-six. It has two pages, ruled with faint lines for memoranda, for every week, and a ruled account at the end, for the twelve months from January to December, where you may set down your incomings and your expenses. I hope yours, my respected reader, are large ; that there are many fine round sums of figures on each side of the page : liberal on the expenditure side, greater still on the receipt. I hope, sir, you will be "a better man," as they say, in '62 than in this moribund '61, whose career of life is just coming to its terminus. A better man in purse ? in body ? in soul's health ? Amen, good sir, in all. Who is there so good in mind, body or estate, but bettering won't still be good for him ? O unknown Fate, presiding over next year, if you will give me better health, a better appetite, a better digestion, a better income, a better temper in '62 than you have bestowed in '61, I think your ser- vant will be the better for the changes. For instance, I should be the better for a new coat. This one, I acknowledge, is very old. The family says so. My good friend, who amongst us would not be the better if he would give up some old habits ? Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the allegory ? Alas at our time of life we don't like to give up those old habits, do we } It is ill to change. There is the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example. What man of sense likes to fling it off and put on a tight guinde prim dress-coat that pinches him ? There is the cozy wraprascal, self-indul- gence — how easy it is ! How warm I How it always seems to fit I You can walk out in it ; you can go down to dinner in it. You can say of such what Tully says of his books : Per- nodat nobiscufn, peregrinaiiir, riisticatur. It is a little slatternly — it is a good deal stained — it isn't becoming — it smells of cigar-smoke ; but, allons done ! let the world call me idle and sloven. I love my ease better than my neighbor's opinion. I live to please myself ; not you, Mr. Dandy, with your supercil- ious airs. I am a philosopher. Perhaps I live in my tub, and don't make any other use of it . We won't pursue further this unsavory metaphor ; but, with regard to some of your old habits, let us say — ON LETTS'S DIARY. 139 1. The habit of being censorious, and speaking ill of your neighbors. 2. The habit of getting into a passion with your man-ser- vant, your maid-servant, your daughter, wife, &c. 3. The habit of indulging too much at table. 4. The habit of smoking in the dining-room after dinner. 5. The habit of spending insane sums of money in bric-a- brac, tall copies, binding, Elzevirs, &c. ; '20 Port, outrageously fine horses, ostentatious entertainments, and what not } or, 6. The habit of screwing meanly, when rich, and chuckling over the saving of half a crown, whilst you are poisoning your friends and family with bad wine. 7. The habit of going to sleep immediately after dinner, in- stead of cheerfully entertaining Mrs. Jones and the family : or, 8. Ladies ! The habit of running up bills with the milli- ners, and swindling paterfamilias on the house bills. 9. The habit of keeping him waiting for breakfast. ID. The habit of sneering at Mrs. Brown and the Miss Browns, because they are not quite du moJide, or quite so gen- teel as Lady Smith. 11. The habit of keeping your wretched father up at balls till five o'clock in the morning, when he has to be at his office at eleven. 12. The habit of fighting with each other, dear Louisa, Jane, Arabella, Amelia. 13. The habit of always ordering John Coachman three- quarters of an hour before you want him. Such habits, I say, sir or madam, if you have had to note in your diary of '61, I have not the slightest doubt you will enter in your pocket-book of '62. There are habits Nos. 4 and 7, for example. I am morally sure that some of us will not give up those bad customs, though the women cry out and grumble, and scold ever so justly. There are habits Nos. 9 and 13. I feel perfectly certain, my dear young ladies, that you will con- tinue to keep John Coachman waiting ; that you will continue to give the most satisfactory reasons for keeping him waiting : and as for (9), you will show that you once (on the ist of April last, let us say,) came to breakfast first, and that you are always first in consequence. Yes ; in our '62 diaries, I fear we may all of us make some of the '61 entries. There is my friend Freehand, for instance. (Aha ! Master Freehand, how you will laugh to find yourself here !) F. is in the habit of spending a little, ever so little, more than his income. He shows you how Mrs. Freehand works, 1 40 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. and works (and indeed, Jack Freehand, if you say she is an angel, you don't say too much of her) ; how they toil, and how they mend, and patch, and pinch ; and how they cant live on their means. And I very much fear — nay, I will bet him half a bottle of Gladstone 14^'. per dozen claret — that the account which is a little on the wrong side this year, will be a little on the wrong side in the next ensuing year of grace. A diary. Dies. Hodie. How queer to read are some of the entries in the journal ! Here are the records of dinners eaten, and gone the way of flesh. The lights burn blue some- how, and we sit before the ghosts of victuals. Hark at the dead jokes resurging ! Memory greets them with the ghost of a smile. Here are the lists of the individuals who have dined at your own humble table. The agonies endured before and during those entertainments are renewed, and smart again. What a failure that special grand dinner was ! How those dreadful occasional waiters did break the old china ! What a dismal hash poor Mary, the cook, made of the French dish which she would try out of Francatdli ! How angry Mrs. Pope was at not going down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop ! How Trimalchio sneered at your absurd attempt to give a feast ; and Harpagon cried out at your extravagance and ostentation ! How Lady Almack bullied the other ladies in the drawing- room (when no gentlemen were present) : never asked you back to dinner again : left her card by her footman : and took not the slightest notice of your wife and daughters at Lady Hustleby's assembly ! On the other hand, how easy, cozy, merry, comfortable, those little dinners were ; got up at one or two days' notice ; when everybody was contented ; the soup as clear as amber ; the wine as good as Trimalchio's own ; and the people kept their carriages waiting, and would not go away till midnight ! Along with the catalogue of by-gone pleasures, balls, ban- quets, and the like, which the pages record, comes a list of much more important occurrences, and remembrances of graver import. On two days of Dives' diary are printed notices that " Dividends are due at the Bank." Let us hope, dear sir, that this announcement considerably interests you ; in which case, probably, you have no need of the almanac-maker's printed re- minder. If you look over poor Jack Reckless's note-book, amongst his memoranda of racing odds given and taken, per- haps you may read : — " Nabbam's bill, due 29th September, 142/. 15^-. 6^." Let us trust, as the day has passed, that the little transaction here noted has been satisfactorily terminated. ON LE TTS'S DIARY. 141 If you are paterfamilias, and a worthy kind gentleman, no doubt you have marked down on your register, 17th December (say), " Boys come home." Ah, how carefully that blessed day is marked in their little calendars ! In my time it used to be, Wednesday, 13th November, " 5 tueeksfrom the holidays ; " Wednesday, 20th November, "4 7veeks from the holidays ;^^ until sluggish time sped on, and we came to Wednesday, i8th December. O rapture ! Do you remember pea-shooters ? I think we only had them on going home for holidays from pri- vate schools, — at public schools, men are too dignified. And then came that glorious announcement, Wednesday, 27th, " Papa took us to the Pantomime ; " or if not papa, perhaps you condescended to go to the pit, under charge of the foot- man. That was near the end of the year — and mamma gave you a new pocket-book, perhaps, with a little coin, God bless her, in the pocket. And that pocket-book was for next year, you know ; and, in that pocket-book you had to write down that sad day, Wednesday, January 24th, eighteen hundred and never mind what, — when Dr. Birch's young friends were expected to re-assemble. Ah me ! Every person who turns this page over has his own little diary, in paper or ruled in his memory tablets, and in which are set down the transactions of the now dying year. Boys and men, we have our calendar, mothers and maidens. For example, in your calendar pocket-book, my good Eliza, what a sad, sad day that is — how fondly and bitterly remem- bered — when your boy went off to his regiment, to India, to danger, to battle perhaps. What a day was that last day at home, when, the tall brother sat yet amongst the family, the little ones round about him wondering at saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword-cases, gun-cases, and other wondrous apparatus of war and travel which poured in and filled the hall ; the new dress- ing-case for the beard not yet grown ; the great sword case at which little brother Tom looks so admiringly ! What a dinner that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children assem- bled together, and all tried to be cheerful ! What a night was that last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last time together under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst their tears, her watching, her fond prayers. What a night that was, and yet how quickly the melancholy- dawn came ! Only too soon the sun rose over the houses. And now in a moment more the city seemed to wake. The 14^ ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. house began to stir. The family gathers together for the last meal. For the last time in the midst of them the widow kneels amongst her kneeling children, and falters a prayer in which she commits her dearest, her eldest born, to the care of the Father of all. O night, what tears you hide — what prayers you hear ! And so the nights pass and the days succeed, until that one comes when tears and parting shall be no more. In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked with sad- ness, not for this year only, but for all. On a certain day — and the sun perhaps, shining ever so brightly — the house- mother comes down to her family with a sad face, which scares the children round about in the midst of their laughter and prattle. They may have forgotten — but she has not — a day which came, twenty years ago it may be, and which she remem- bers only too well : the long night-watch ; the dreadful dawning and the rain beating at the pane ; the infant speechless, but moan- ing in its little crib ; and then the awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub face, when the cries have ceased, and the little suffering breast heaves no more. Then the children, as they see their mother's face, remember this was the day on wliich their little brother died. It was before they were born ; but she remembers it. And as they pray together, it seems almost as if the spirit of the little lost one was hovering round the group. So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill jour- ney, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone. In this past year's diary is there any precious day noted on which you have made a new friend t This is a piece of good fortune bestowed but grudgingly on the old. After a certain age a new friend is a wonder, like Sarah's child. Aged persons are seldom capable of bearing friendships. Do you remember how warmly you loved Jack and Tom when you were at school ; what a passionate regard you had for Ned when you were at college, and the immense letters you wrote to each other? How often do you write, now that postage costs nothing ? There is the age of blossoms and sweet budding green : the age of gen- erous summer ; the autumn when the leaves drop ; and then winter, shivering and bare. Quick, children, and sit at my feet : for they are cold, very cold : and it seems as if neither wine nor worsted will warm 'em. In this past year's diary is there any dismal day noted in ON LETTS' S DIARY. 143 which you have lost a friend ? In mine there is. I do not mean by death. Those who are gone you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still ; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true ; they are only gone into the next room : and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen. As I am in this cheerful mood, I will tell you a fine and touching story of a doctor which I heard lately. About two years since there was, in our or some other city, a famous doctor, into whose consulting-room crowds came daily, so that they might be healed. Now this doctor had a suspicion that there was something vitally wrong with himself, and he went to consult another famous physician at Dublin, or it may be at Edinburgh. And he of Edinburgh punched his comrade's sides ; and listened at his heart and lungs ; and felt his pulse, I suppose ; and looked at his tongue ; and when he had done Doctor London said to Doctor Edinburgh, " Doctor, how long have I to live .'' " And Doctor Edinburgh said to Doctor London, " Doctor, you may last a year." Then Doctor London came home, knowing that what Doc- tor Edinburgh said was true. And he made up his accounts, with man and heaven, I trust. And he visited his patients as usual. And he went about healing, and cheering, and soothing and doctoring ; and thousands of sick people were benefited by him. And he said not a word to his family at home ; but lived amongst them cheerful and tender, and calm, and loving; though he knew the night was at hand when he should see them and work no more. And it was winter time, and they came and told him that some man at a distance — very sick, but very rich — wanted him ; and though Doctor London knew that he was himself at death's door, he went to the sick man ; for he knew the large fee would be good for his children after him. And he died ; and his family never knew until he was gone, that he had been long aware of the inevitable doom. This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not ? You see, in regard to these Roundabout discourses, I never know whether they are to be merry or dismal. My hobby has the bit in his mouth ; goes his own way ; and trots through a park, and paces by a cemetery. Two days since came the printer's little emissary, with a note saying, " We are waiting for the Round- about Paper ! " A Roundabout Paper about what or whom ? How stale it has become, that printed jollity about Christmas ! Carols, and wassail-bowls, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule- 144 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. logs de commands — what heaps of these have we not had fof years past ! Well, year after year the season comes. Come frost, come thaw, come snow, come rain, year after year my neighbor the parson has to make his sermon. They are getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at Fortnum and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres are com- posing the Christmas pantomime, which our young folks will see and note anon in their little diaries. And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse with an extract out of that great diary, the newspaper ? I read it but yesterday, and it has mingled with all my thoughts since then. Here are the two paragraphs, which appeared following each other : — " Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has been ap- pointed to the post of Legislative Member of the Council of the Governor-General." " Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor-General for Central In- dia, died on the 29th of October, of bronchitis." These two men, whose different fates are recorded in two paragraphs and half a dozen lines of the same newspaper, were sisters' sons. In one of the stories by the present writer- a man is described tottering " up the steps of the ghaut," hav- ing just parted with his child, whom he is despatching to Eng- land from India. I wrote this, remembering in long, long dis- tant days, such a ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta ; and a day when, down those steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came two children, whose mothers remained on the shore. One of those ladies was never to see her boy more ; and he, too, is just dead in India, " of bronchitis, on the 2gth October." We were first-cousins ; had been little playmates and friends from the time of our birth ; and the first house in London to which I was taken, was that of our aunt, the mother of his Honor the Member of Council. His Honor was even then a gentle- man of the long robe, being, in truth, a baby in arms. We In- dian children were consigned to a school of which our deluded parents had heard a favorable report, but which was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made our young lives so misera- ble that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a night, and saying, " Pray God, I may dream of my mother 1 " Thence we went to a public school ; and my cousin to Addiscombe and to India. " For thirty-two years," the paper says, " Sir Richmond Shakespear faithfully and devotedly served the Government of India, and during that period but once visited England, for a ON LETTS' S DIARY. ^^45 few months and on public duty. In his miUtary capacity he saw much service, was present in eight general engagements, and was badly wounded in the last. In 1840, when a young lieutenant, he had the rare good fortune to be the means of rescuing from almost hopeless slavery in Khiva 416 subjects of the Emperor of Russia ; and, but two years later, greatly con- tributed to the happy recovery of our own prisoners from a similar fate in Cabul. Throughout his career this officer was ever ready and zealous for the public service, and freely risked life and liberty in the discharge of his duties. Lord Canning, to mark his high sense of Sir Richmond Shakespear's public services, had lately offered him the Chief Commissionership of Mysore, which he had accepted, and was about to undertake, when death terminated his career." When he came to London the cousins and playfellows of early Indian days met once again, and shook hands. " Can I do anything for you ? " I remember the kind fellow asking. He was always asking that question : of all kinsmen ; of all widows and orphans ; of all the poor ; of young men who might need his purse or his service. I saw a young officer yesterday to whom the first words Sir Richmond Shakespear wrote on his arrival in India were, " Can I do anything for you ? " His purse was at the command of all. His kind hand was always open. It was a gracious fate which sent him to rescue widows and captives. Where could they have had a champion more chival- rous, a protector more loving and tender ? I write down his name in my little book, among those of others dearly loved, who, too, have been summoned hence. And so we meet and part ; we struggle and succeed ; or we fail and drop unknown on the way. As we leave the fond mother's knee, the rough trials of childhood and boyhood begin ; and then manhood is upon us, and the battle of life, with its chances, perils, wounds, defeats, distinctions. And Fort William guns are saluting in one man's honor,* while the troops are firing the last volleys over the other's grave — over the grave of the brave, the gentle, the faithful Christian soldier. * W. R. obiit March 22, i86a. 10 14.6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLTDA Y. Most of us tell old stories in our families. The wife and children laugh for the hundredth time at the joke. The old servants (though old servants are fewer every day) nod and smile a recognition at the well-known anecdote. " Don't tell that story of Grouse in the gun-room," says Diggory to Mr. Hardcastle in the play, " or I must laugh." As we twaddle, and grow old and forgetful, we may tell an old story ; or, out of mere benevolence, and a wish to amuse a friend when con- versation is flagging, disinter a Joe Miller now and then ; but the practice is not quite honest, and entails a certain necessity of hypocrisy on story hearers and tellers. It is a sad thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant. What right have I to tell my " Grouse in the gun-room " over and over in the presence of my wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not ? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced : I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint. Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power : and the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly. Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by it, and laughs too. But this practice continued is not moral. This self-indulgence on your part, my dear Paterfamilias, is weak, vain — not to say culpable. I can imagine many a worthy man, who begins unguardedly to read this page, and comes to the present sentence, lying back in his chair, thinking of that story which he has told innocently for fifty years, and rather piteously owning to himself, " Well, well, it is wrong ; I have no right to call on my poor wife to laugh, my daughters to affect to be amused, by that old, old jest of mine. And they would have gone on laughing, and they would have pretended to be amused, to their dying day, if this man had not flung his damper over our hilarity." * * * I lay down the pen, and think, "Are there any old stories which I still tell myself in the bosom of my family ? Have I any ' Grouse in my gun-room ? ' " If there are such, it is because my memory fails ; not because I want applause, and wantonly repeat myself. You see, men with the so-called fund of anecdote will not repeat the same story to the JVOTES OF A WEEK'S HO LID A V. M7 same individual ; but they do think that, on a new party, the repetition of a joke ever so old may be honorably tried. I meet men walking the London street, bearing the best reputa- tion, men of anecdotal powers : — I know such, who very likely will read this, and say, "Hang the fellow, he means me/" And so I do. No — no man ought to tell an anecdote more than thrice, let us say, unless he is sure he is speaking only to give pleasure to his hearers — unless he feels that it is not a mere desire for praise which makes him open his jaws. And is it not with writers as with raconteurs ? Ought they not to have their ingenuous modesty ? May authors tell old stories, and how many times over."" When I come to look at a place which I have visited any time these twenty or thirty years, I recall not the place merely, but the sensations I had at first seeing it, and which are quite different to my feelings to-day. The first day at Calais ; the voices of the women crying out at night, as the vessel came alongside the pier ; the supper at Quillacq's and the flavor of the cutlets and wine ; the red-calico canopy under which I slept ; the tiled floor, and the fresh smell of the sheets ; the wonderful postilion in his Jack- boots and pigtail ;— all return with perfect clearness to my mind, and I am seeing them, and not the objects which are actually under my eyes. Here is Calais. Yonder is that com- missioner I have known this score of years. Here are the women screaming and bustling over the baggage ; the people at the passport-barrier who take your papers. My good people, I hardly see you. You no more interest me than a dozen orange-women in Covent Garden, or a shop bookkeeper in Oxford Street. But you make me think of a time when you were indeed wonderful to behold — when the little French soldiers wore white cockades in their shakos — when the dili- gence was forty hours going to Paris ; and the great-booted postilion as surveyed by youthful eyes from the coupe, with his Jurons, his ends of rope for the harness, and his clubbed pigtail, was a wonderful being, and productive of endless amusement. You young folks don't remember the apple-girls who used to follow the diligence up the hill beyond Boulogne, and the de- lights of the jolly road ? In making continental journeys with young folks, an oldster may be very quiet, and, to outward appearance, melancholy ; but really he has gone back to the days of his youth, and he is seventeen or eighteen years of age (as the case may be), and is amusing himself with all his might. He is noting the horses as they come squealing out of the post-house yard at midnight j he is enjoying the delicious meals 148 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. at Beauvais and Amiens, and quaffing ad libitiim the rich table- d'hote wine ; he is hail-fellow with the conductor, and alive to all the incidents of the road. A man can be alive in i860 and 1830 at the same time, don't you see ? Bodily, I may be in i860, inert, silent, torpid ; but in the spirit I am walking about in 1828, let us say; — in a blue dress-coat and brass buttons, a sweet figured silk waistcoat (which I button round a slim waist with perfect ease), looking at beautiful beings with gigot sleeves and tea-tray hats under the golden chestnuts of the Tuileries, or round the Place Vendome, where the drapeau blanc is float- ing from the statueless column. Shall we go and dine at " Bombarda's," near the " Hotel Breteuil," or at the " Cafe Virginie } " — Away ! " Bombarda's " and the " Hotel Breteuil " have been pulled down ever so long. They knocked down the poor oM Virginia Coffee-house last year. My spirit goes and dines there. My body, perhaps, is seated with ever so many people in a railway-carriage, and no wonder my companions find me dull and silent. Have you read Mr. Dale Owen's " Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World ? " — (My dear sir, it will make your hair stand quite refreshingly on end.) In that work you will read that when gentlemen's or ladies' spirits travel off a few score or thousand miles to visit a friend, their bodies lie quiet and in a torpid state in their beds or in their arm-chairs at home. So in this way, I am absent. My soul whisks away thirty years back into the past. I am looking out anxiously for a beard. I am getting past the age of loving Byron's poems, and pretend that I like Wordsworth and Shelley much better. Nothing I eat or drink (in reason) disagrees with me ; and I know whom I think to be the most lovely creature in the world. Ah, dear maid (of that remote but well- remembered period), are you a wife or widow now ? — are you dead ? — are you thin and withered and old ? — or are you grown much stouter, with a false front ? and so forth, O Eliza, Eliza ! — Stay, was she Eliza .'' Well, I protest I have forgotten what your Christian name was. You know I only met you for two days, but your sweet face is before me now, and the roses blooming on it are as fresh as in that time of May. Ah, dear Miss X , my timid youth and ingenuous modesty would never have allowed me, even in my private thoughts, to address you otherwise than by your paternal name, but that (though I conceal it) I remember perfectly well and that your dear and respected father was a brewer. Carillon. — I was awakened this morning with the chime NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 149 which Antwerp cathedral clock plays at half-hours. The tune has been haunting me ever since, as tunes will. You dress, eat, drink, walk, and talk to yourself to their tune : their inaudible jingle accompanies you all day : you read the sen- tences of the paper to their rhythm. I tried uncouthly to imitate the tune to the'ladies of the family at breakfast, and they say it is " the shadow dance of Dinorah.^'' It may be so. I dimly remember that my body was once present during the performance of that opera, whilst my eyes were closed, and my intellectual faculties dormant at the back of the box ; howbeit, I have learned that shadow dance from hearing it pealing up ever so high in the air, at night, morn, noon. How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheer}'^ peal ! whilst the old city is asleep at midnight, or waking up rosy at sunrise, or basking in noon, or swept by the scudding rain which drives in gusts over the broad places, and the great shining river ; or sparkling in snow which dresses up a hundred thousand masts, peaks and towers ; or wrapt round with thunder- cloud canopies, before which the white gables shine whiter ; day and night the kind little carillon plays its fantastic melodies overhead. The bells go on ringing. Quot vivos voca?it, mortuos plangunt, fidgura frangunt ; so on to the past and future tenses, and for how many nights, days, and years ! Whilst the French were pitching their /u/gura into Chasse's citadel, the bells went on ringing quite cheerfully. Whilst the scaffolds were up and guarded by Alva's soldiery, and regiments of penitents, blue, black, and gray, poured out of churches and convents, droning their dirges, and marching to the place of the Hotel de Ville, where heretics and rebels were to meet their doom, the bells up yonder were chanting at their appointed half-hours and quarters, and rang the mauvais quart dWicure for many a poor soul. This bell can see as far away as the towers and dykes of Rotterdam. That one can call a greeting to St. Ursula's at Brussels, and toss a recognition to that one at the town-hall of Oudenarde, and remember how after a great struggle there a hundred and fifty years ago the whole plain was covered with the flying French cavalry — Burgundy, and Berri, and the Chev- alier of St. George flying like the rest. " What is your clamor about Oudenarde ? " says another bell (Bob Major this one must be). " Be still, thou querulous old clapper ! / can see over to Hougoumont and St. John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one Sunday in June when there was such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you others ever heard tolled of. Yes, from morning service until '5° ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. after vespers, the French and EngUsh were all at it, ding-dong." And then calls of business intervening, the bells have to give up their private jangle, resume their professional duty, and sing their hourly chorus out of Dhiorah. What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard ! I was awakened this morning to their tune, I say. I have been hear- ing it constantly ever since. And this house whence I write, Murray says, is two hundred and ten miles from Antwerp. And it is a week off ; and there is the bell still jangling its shadow dance out of Dinorah. An audible shadow you understand, and an invisible sound, but quite distinct ; and a plague take the tune ! UisfDER THE Bells. — Who has not seen the church under the bells ? Those lofty aisles, those twilight chapels, that cum- bersome pulpit with its huge carvings, that wide gray pavement flecked with various light from the jewelled windows, those famous pictures between the voluminous columns over the altars, which twinkle with their ornaments, their votive little silver hearts, legs, limbs, their little guttering tapers, cups of sham roses, and what not ? I saw two regiments of little scholars creeping in and forming square, each in its appointed place, under the vast roof ; and teachers presently coming to them. A stream of light from the jewelled windows beams slanting down upon each little squad of children, and the tall background of the church retires into a grayer gloom. Patter- ing little feet of laggards arriving echo through the great nave. They trot in and join their regiments, gathered under the slant- ing sunbeams. What are they learning ? Is it truth ? Those two gray ladies with their books in their hands in the midst of these little people have no doubt of the truth of every word they have printed under their eyes. Look, through the windows jewelled all over with saints, the light comes streaming down from the sky, and heaven's own illuminations paint the book ! A sweet, touching picture indeed it is, that of the little children assembled in this immense temple, which has endured for ages, and grave teachers bending over them. Yes, the picture is very pretty of the children and their teachers, and their book — but the text ? Is it the truth, the only truth, and nothing but the truth ? If I thought so, I would go and sit down on the form cum parvulis, and learn the precious lesson with all my heart. Beadle. — But I submit, an obstacle to conversions is the NOTES OF A WEEK'S HO LI DA Y. 151 intrusion and impertinence of that Swiss fellow with the baldric — the officer who answers to the beadle of the British Islands, and is pacing about the church with an eye on the congrega- tion. Now the boast of Catholics is that their churches are open to all ; but in certain places and churches there are ex- ceptions. At Rome I have been into St. Peter's at all hours : the doors are always open, the lamps are always burning, the faithful are forever kneeling at one shrine or the other. But at Antwerp not so. In the afternoon you can go to the church, and be civilly treated ; but you must pay a franc at the side gate. In the forenoon the doors are open, to be sure, and there is no one to levy an entrance fee. I was standing ever so still, looking through the great gates of the choir at the twinkling lights, and listening to the distant chants of the priests performing the service, when a sweet chorus from the organ-loft broke out behind me overhead, and I turned round. My friend the drum-major ecclesiastic was down upon me in a moment. " Do not turn your back to the altar during divine service," says he, in very intelligible English. I take the rebuke, and turn a soft right-about face, and listen awhile as the service continues. See it I cannot, nor the altar and its ministrants. We are separated from these by a great screen and closed gates of iron, through which the lamps glitter and the chant comes by gusts only. Seeing a score of children trotting down a side aisle, I think I may follow them. I am tired of looking at that hideous old pulpit with its grotesque monsters and decorations. I slip off to the side aisle ; but my friend the drum-major is instantly after me — almost I thought he was going to lay hands on me. " You mustn't go there," says he ; " you mustn't disturb the service." I was moving as quietly as might be, and ten paces off there were twenty children kicking and clattering at their ease. I point them out to the Swiss. " They come to pray," says he. " You don't come to pray, you " " When I come to pay," says I, " I am wel- come," and with this withering sarcasm, I walk out of church in a huff. I don't envy the feelings of that beadle after re- ceiving point blank such a stroke of wit. Leo Belgicus. — Perhaps you will say after this I am a pre- judiced critic. I see the pictures in the cathedral fuming under the rudeness of that beadle, or, at the lawful hours and prices, pestered by a swarm of shabby touters, who come behind me chattering in bad English, and who would have me see the sights through their mean, greedy eyes. Better see Rubens 152 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. anywhere than in a church. At the Academy, for example, where you may study him at your leisure. But at church ? — I would as soon ask Alexandre Dumas for a sermon. Either would paint you a martyrdom very fiercely and picturesquely — ■• ■vr.ithing muscles, flaming coals, scowling captains and execu- tioners, swarming groups, and light, shade, color, most dexter- ously brilliant or dark ; but in Rubens I am admiring the per- former rather than the piece. With what astonishing rapidity he travels over his canvas ; how tellingly the cool lights and warm shadows are made to contrast and relieve each other ; how that blazing, blowsy penitent in yellow satin and glittering hair carries down the stream of light across the picture ! This is the way to work, my boys, and earn a hundred florins a day. See ! I am as sure of my line as a skater of making his figure of eight ! and down with a sweep goes a brawny arm or a flow- ing curl of drapery. The figures arrange themselves as if by magic. The paint-pots are exhausted in furnishing brown shadows. The pupils look wondering on, as the master careers over the canvas. Isabel or Helena, wife No. i or No. 2, are sitting by, buxom, exuberant, ready to be painted ; and the children are boxing in the corner, waiting till they are wanted to figure as cherubs in the picture. Grave burghers and gen- tlefolks come in on a visit. There are oysters and Rhenish always ready on yonder table. Was there ever such a painter.!* He has been an ambassador, an actual Excellency, and what better man could be chosen ? He speaks all the languages. He earns a hundred florins a day. Prodigious ! Thirty-six thousand five hundred florins a year. Enormous ! He rides out to his castle with a score of gentlemen after him, like the Governor. That is his own portrait as St. George. You know he is an English knight ? Those are his two wives as the two Maries. He chooses the handsomest wives. He rides the handsomest horses. He paints the handsomest pictures. He gets the handsomest prices for them. That slim young Van Dyck, who was his pupil, has genius too, and is painting all the noble ladies in England, and turning the heads of some of them. And Jordaens — what a droll dog and clever fellow ! Have you seen his fat Silenus ? The master himself could not paint better. And his altar-piece at St. Bavon's ? He can paint you anything, that Jordaens can — a drunken jollification of boors and doxies, or a martyr howling with half his skin off. What a knowledge of anatomy ! But there is nothing like the master — nothing. He can paint you his thirty-six thousand five hundred florins' worth a year. Have you heard of what NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 153 ne has done for the French Court ? Prodigious ! I can't look at Rubens' pictures without fancying I see that handsome figure swaggering before the canvas. And Hans Hemmelinck at Bruges ? Have you never seen that dear old hospital of St. John, on passing the gate of which you enter into the fifteenth century ? I see the wounded soldier still lingering in the house, and tended by the kind gray sisters. His little panel on its easel is placed at the light. He covers his board with the most won- drous, beautiful little figures, in robes as bright as rubies and amethysts. I think he must have a magic glass, in which he catches the reflection of little cherubs with many-colored wings, very little and bright. Angels, in long crisp robes of white, surrounded with haloes of gold, come and flutter across the mirror, and he draws them. He hears mass every day. He fasts through Lent. No monk is more austere and holy than Hans. Which do you love best to behold, the lamb or the lion ? the eagle rushing through the storm, and pouncing may- hap on carrion ; or the linnet warbling on the spray ? By much the most delightful of the Christopher ?,&\. of Rubens to my mind (and ego is introduced on these occasions, so that the opinion may pass only for my own, at the reader's humble service to be received or declined,) is the " Presentation in the Temple : " splendid in color, in sentiment sweet and tender, finely conveying the story. To be sure, all the others tell their tale unmistakably — witness that coarse " Salutation," that magnificent " Adoration of the Kings " (at the Museum), by the same strong downright hands ; that w^onderful " Commun- ion of St. Francis," which, I think, gives the key to the artist's faire better that any of his performances. I have passed hours before that picture in my time, trying and sometimes fancying I could understand by what masses and contrasts the artist ar- rived at his effect. In many others of the pictures parts of his method are painfully obvious, and you see how grief and agony are produced by blue lips, and eyes rolling bloodshot with dabs of vermilion. There is something simple in the practice. Contort the eyebrow sufficiently, and place the eyeball near it, — by a few lines you have anger or fierceness depicted. Give me a mouth with no special expression, and pop a dab of carmine at each extremity — and there are the lips smiling. This is art if you will, but a very naive kind of art : and now you know the trick, don't you see how easy it is ? Tu QuoQUE. — Now you know the trick, suppose you take a canvas and see whether you can do it ? There are brushes, 154 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. palettes, and gallipots full of paint and varnish. Have you tried, my dear sir — you, who set up to be a connoisseur ? Have you tried ? I have — and many a day. And the end of the day's labor? O dismal conclusion! Is this puerile niggling, this feeble scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce — you, who but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and were pointing out the tricks of his mystery ? Pardon, O great chief, magnificent master and poet ! You can do. We critics, who sneer and are wise, can but pry, and measure, and doubt, and carp. Look at the lion. Did you ever see such a gross, shaggy, mangy, roaring brute ? Look at him eating lumps of raw meat — positively bleeding, and raw and tough — till, faugh ! it turns one's stomach to see him — O the coarse wretch ! Yes, but he is a lion. Rubens has lifted his great hand, and the mark he has made has endured for two centuries, and we still continue wondering at him, and admiring him. What a strength in that arm ! What splendor of will hidden behind that tawny beard, and those honest eyes ! Sharpen your pen, my good critic. Shoot a feather into him ; hit him, and make him wince. Yes, you may hit him fair, and make him bleed, too ; but, for all that, he is a lion — a mighty, conquering, gen- erous, rampagious Leo Belgicus — monarch of his wood. And he is not dead yet, and I will not kick at him. Sir Antony. — In that " Pieta " of Van Dyck, in the Mu- seum, have you ever looked at the yellow-robed angel, with the black scarf thrown over her wings and robe ? What a charm- ing figure of grief and beauty ! What a pretty compassion it inspires ! It soothes and pleases me like a sweet rhythmic chant. See how delicately the yellow robe contrasts with the blue sky behind, and the scarf binds the two ! If Rubens lacked grace. Van Dyck abounded in it. What a consummate ele- gance ! What a perfect cavalier ! No wonder the fine ladies in England admired Sir Antony. Look at Here the clock strikes three, and the three gendarmes who keep the Musee cry out, " Allans ! Soriotis ! II estii-ois hcures ! AUezI Sortez /" and they skip out of the gallery as happy as boys running from school. And we must go too, for though many stay behind — many Britons with Murray's handbooks in their handsome hands — they have paid a franc for entrance- fee, you see : and we knew nothing about the franc for entrance until those gendarmes with sheathed sabres had driven us out of this Paradise. But it was good to go and drive on the great quays, and see NOTES OF A WEEK'S HO LID A V. iSS the ships unlading, and by the citadel, and wonder howabouts and whereabouts it was so strong. We expect a citadel to looks like Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein at least. But in this one there is nothing to see but a flat plain and some ditches, and some trees, and mounds of uninteresting green. And then I remem- ber how there was a boy at school, a little dumpy fellow of no personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be overcome except by a much bigger champion, and the immensest quantity of thrashing. A perfect citadel of a boy, with a General Chasse sitting in that bomb-proof casemate, his heart, letting blow after blow come thumping about his head, and never thinking of giving in. And we go home, and we dine in the company of Britons, at the comfortable Hotel du Pare, and we have bought a novel apiece for a shilling, and every half-hour the sweet carillon plays the waltz from Dinar ah in the air. And we have been happy ; and it seems about a month since we left London yes- terday ; and nobody knows where we are, and we defy care and the postman. Spoorweg. — Vast green flats, speckled by spotted cows, and bound by a gray frontier of windmills ; shining canals stretching through the green ; odors like those exhaled from the Thames in the dog-days, and a fine pervading smell of cheese ; little trim houses, with tall roofs, and great windows of many panes ; gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over-pea- green canals ; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers' women, with laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings ; about the houses and towns which we pass a great air of comfort and neatness ; a queer feeling of wonder that you can't understand what your fellow-passengers are saying, the tone of whose voices, and a certain comfortable dowdiness of dress, are so like our own ; — whilst we are remarking on these sights, sounds, smells, the little railway journey from Rotterdam to the Hague comes to an end. I speak to the railway porters and hackney coachman in English, and they reply in their own language, and it seems somehow as if we understood each other perfectly. The carriage drives to the handsome, comfortable, cheerful hotel. We sit down a score at the table ; and there is one for- eigner and his wife, — I mean every other man and woman at dinner are English. As we are close to the sea, and in the midst of endless canals, we have no fish. We are reminded of dear England by the noble prices which we pay for wines. I confess I lost my temper yesterday at Rotterdam, where I had 156 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. to pay a florin for a bottle of ale (the water not being drinkable, and country or Bavarian beer not being genteel enough for the hotel) ; — I confess, I say, that my fine temper was ruffled, when the bottle of pale ale turned out to be a pint bottle : and I meekly told the waiter that I had bought beer at Jerusalem at a less price. But then Rotterdam is eighteen hours from London, and the steamer with the passengers and beer comes up to the hotel windows ; whilst to Jerusalem they have to carry the ale on camels' backs from Beyrout or Jaffa, and through hordes of marauding Arabs, who evidently don't care for pale ale, though I am told it is not forbidden in the Koran. Mine would have been very good, but I choked with rage whilst drinking it. A florin for a bottle, and that bottle having the words " imperial pint," in bold relief, on the surface ! It was too much. I in- tended not to say anything about it ; but I must speak. A florin a bottle, and that bottle a pint! Oh, for shame! for shame ! I can't cork down any indignation ; I froth up with fury ; I am pale with wrath, and bitter with scorn. As we drove through the old city at night, how it swarmed and hummed with life ! What a special clatter, crowd, and outcry there was in the Jewish quarter, where myriads of young ones were trotting about the fishy street ! Why don't they have lamps ? We passed by canals seeming so full that a pail- ful of water more would overflow the place. The laquais-de- place calls out the names of the buildings : the town-hall, the cathedial the arsenal, the synagogue, the statue of Erasmus. Get along ! We know the statue of Erasmus well enough. We pass over drawbridges by canals where thousands of barges are at roost. At roost — at rest ! Shall we have rest in those bedrooms, those ancient lofty bedrooms, in that inn where we have to pay a florin for a pint of pa — psha ! at the " New Bath Hotel " on the Boompjes t If this dreary edifice is the " New Bath," what must the Old Bath be like ? As I feared to go to bed, I sat in the coffee-room as long as I might ; but three young men were imparting their private adventures to each other with such freedom and liveliness that I felt I ought not to listen to their artless prattle. As I put the light out, and felt the bedclothes and darkness overwhelm me, it was with an awful sense of terror — that sort of sensation which I should think going down in a diving-bell would give. Suppose the apparatus goes wrong, and they don't understand your signal to mount ? Suppose your matches miss fire when you wake ; when you want them, when you will have to rise in half an hour, and do battle with the horrid enemy who crawls on you in the LITTLE DUTCHMEN. NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 157 darkness ? I protest I never was more surprised than when I woke and beheld the Hght of dawn. Indian birds and strange trees were visible on the ancient gilt hangings of the lofty cham- ber, and through the windows the Boompjes and the ships along the quay. We have all read of deserters being brought out, and made to kneel, with their eyes bandaged, and hearing the word to " Fire " given ! I declare I underwent all the terrors of exe- cution that night, and wonder how I ever escaped unwounded. But if ever I go to the " Bath Hotel," Rotterdam, again, I am a Dutchman. A guilder for a bottle of pale ale, and that bottle a pint ! Ah ! for shame — for shame ! Mine Ease in Mine Inn. — Do you object to talk about inns .'' It always seems to me to be very good talk. Walter Scott is full of inns. In " Don Quixote " and " Gil Bias " there is plenty of inn-talk. Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett con- stantly speak about them ; and, in their travels, the last two tot up the bill, and describe the dinner quite honestly ; whilst Mr. Sterne becomes sentimental over a cab, and weeps gener- ous tears over a donkey. How I admire and wonder at the information in Murray's Handbooks — wonder how it is got, and admire the travellers who get it. For instance, you read : Amiens (please select your towns), 60,000 inhabitants. Hotels, &c. — " Lion d'Or," good and clean. " Le Lion d'Argent," so so. " Le Lion Noir," bad, dirty, and dear. Now say, there are three travel- lers — three inn-inspectors, who are sent forth by Mr. Muray on a great commission, and who stop at every inn in the world. The eldest goes to the " Lion d'Or " — capital house, good table-d'hote, excellent wine, moderate charges. The second commissioner tries the " Silver Lion " — tolerable house, bed, dinner, bill and so forth. But fancy Commissioner No. 3 — the poor fag, doubtless, and boots of the party. He has to go to the " Lion Noir." He knows he is to have a bad dinner — he eats it uncomplainingly. He is to have bad wine. He swal- lows it, grinding his wretched teeth, and aware that he will be unwell in consequence. He knows he is to have a dirty bed, and what he is to expect there. He pops out the candle. He sinks into those dingy sheets. He delivers over his body to the nightly tormentors, he pays an exorbitant bill, and he writes down, " Lion Noir, bad, dirty, dear." Next day the commission sets out for Arras, we will say, and they begin again: " Le Cochon d'Or," "Le Cochon d'Argent," " Le Cochon Noir " — and that is poor Boots's inn, of course. What 158 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. a life that poor man must lead ! What horrors of dinners he has to go through ! What a hide he must have ! And yet not impervious ; for unless he is bitten, how is he to be able to warn others ? No ; on second thoughts, you will perceive that he ought to have a very delicate skin. The monsters ought to troop to him eagerly, and bite him instantaneously and freely, so that he may be able to warn all future handbook buyers of their danger. I fancy this man devoting himself to danger, to dirt, to bad dinners, to sour wine, to damp beds, to midnight agonies, to extortionate bills. I admire him, I thank him. Think of this champion, who devotes his body for us — this dauntless gladiator going to do battle alone in the darkness, with no other armor than a light helmet of cotton, and a lorica of calico. I pity and honor him. Go, Spartacus ! Go, de- voted man — to bleed, to groan, to suffer — and smile in silence as the wild beasts assail thee ! How did I come into this talk ? I protest it was the word inn set me off — and here is one, the " Hotel de Belle Vue," at the Hague, as comfortable, as handsome, as cheerful, as any I ever took mine ease in. And the Bavarian beer, my dear friend, how good and brisk and light it is ! Take another glass — it refreshes and does not stupefy — and then we will sally out, and see the town and the park and the pictures. The prettiest little brick city, the pleasantest little park to ride in, the neatest comfortable people walking about, the canals not unsweet, and busy and picturesque with old world life. Rows upon rows of houses, built with the neatest little bricks, with windows fresh painted, and tall doors polished and carved to a nicety. What a pleasant spacious garden our inn has, all sparkling with autumn flowers, and bedizened with statues ! At the end is a row of trees, and a summer-house, over the canal, where you might go and smoke a pipe with Mynheer Van Dunck, and quite cheerfully catch the ague. Yesterday, as we passed, they were making hay, and stacking it in a barge which was lying by the meadow, handy. Round about Kensington Palace there are houses, roofs, chimneys, and bricks like these. I feel that a Dutchman is a man and a brother. It is very funny to read the newspaper, one can understand it somehow. Sure it is the neatest, gayest little city — scores and hundreds of mansions looking like Cheyne Walk, or the ladies' schools about Chiswick and Hackney. Le Gros Lot. — To a few lucky men the chance befalls of reaching fame at once, and (if it is of any profit 7noritur6) re- NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 159 taining the admiration of tlie world. Did poor Oliver, when he was at Leyden yonder, ever think that he should paint a little picture which should secure him the applause and pity of all Europe for a century after ? He and Sterne drew the twenty thousand prize of fame. The latter had splendid instalments during his lifetime. The ladies pressed round him ; the wits admired him, the fashion hailed the successor of Rabelais. Goldsmith's little gem was hardly so valued until later days. Their works still form the wonder and delight of the lovers of English art ; and the pictures of the Vicar and Uncle Toby are among the masterpieces of our English school. Here in the Hague Gallery is Paul Potter's pale, eager face, and yonder is the magnificent work by which the young fellow achieved his fame. How did you, so young, come to paint so well ? What hidden power lay in that weakly lad that enabled him to achieve such a wonderful victory ? Could little Mozart, when he was five years old, tell you how he came to play those wonderful sonatas ? Potter was gone out of the world before he was thirty, but left this prodigy (and I know not how many more specimens of his genius and skill) behind him. The details of this admirable picture are as curious as the effect is admirable and complete. The weather being unsettled, and clouds and sunshine in the gusty sky, we saw in our little tour numberless Paul Potters — the meadows streaked with sunshine and spotted with the cattle, the city twinkling in the distance, the thunder- clouds glooming overhead. Napoleon carried off the picture {vide Murray) amongst the spoils of his bow and spear to decorate his triumph of the Louvre. If I were a conquering prince, I would have this picture certainly, and the Raphael "Madonna" from Dresden, and the Titian "Assumption" from Venice, and the matchless Rembrandt of the " Dissec- tion." The prostrate nations would howl with rage as my gen- darmes took off the pictures, nicely packed, and addressed to " Mr. the Director of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, at Paris. This side uppermost." The Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and visit my capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from their native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair occasioned by the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah !_ I would offer them a pinch of snuff out of my box as I walked along my gallery, with their Excellencies cringing after me. Zenobia was a fine woman and a queen, but she had to walk in, Aurelian's triumph. The procede \iz.s peu delicat 1 Eti usez vous l6o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. mon cher monsieur f (The marquis says the " Macaba " is deli- cious.) What a splendor of color there is in that cloud ? What a richness, what a freedom of handling, and what a mar- vellous precision ! I trod upon your Excellency's corn ? — a thousand pardons. His Excellency grins and declares that he rather likes to have his corns trodden on. Were you ever very angry with Soult — about that Murillo which we have bought? The veteran loved that picture because it saved the life of a fellow-creature — the fellow-creature who hid it, and whom the Duke intended to hang unless the picture was forthcoming. We gave several thousand pounds for it — how many thou- sand ? About its merit is a question of taste which we will not here argue. If you choose to place Murillo in the first class of painters, founding his claim upon these Virgin altar-pieces, I am your humble servant. Tom Moore painted altar-pieces as well as Milton, and warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of the Angels after his fashion. I wonder did Watteau ever try his- torical subjects ? And as for Greuze, you know that his heads will fetch I, coo/., 1,500/., 2,000/. — as much as a Sevres "ca- baret " of Rose du Barri. If cost price is to be your criterion of worth, what shall we say to that little receipt for 10/. for the copyright of " Paradise Lost," which used to hang in old Mr. Rogers' room .? When living painters, as frequently happens in our days, see their pictures sold at auctions for four or five times the sums which they originally received, are they enraged or elated ? A hundred years ago the state of the picture-market was different : that dreary old Italian stock was much higher than at present ; Rembrandt himself, a close man, was known to be in difficulties. If ghosts are fond of -^^oney still, what a wrath his must be at the present value »=i his works ! The Hague Rembrandt is the greatest and grandest of all his pieces to my mind. Some of the heads are as sweetly and lightly painted as Gainsborough ; the faces not ugly, but deli- cate and high-bred ; the exquisite gray tones are charming to mark and study ; the heads not plastered, but painted with a free, liquid brush : the result, one of the great victories won by this consummate chief, and left for the wonder and delight of succeeding ages. The humblest volunteer in the ranks of art, who has served a campaign or two ever so ingloriously, has at least this good fortune of understanding, or fancying he is able to under- stand, how the battle has been fought, and how the engaged general won it. This is the Rhinelander's most brilliant NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. i6i achievement — victory along the whole line. The "Night- watch" at Amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the side to the spectator's right, smoky and dim. The " Five Masters of the Drapers " is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power. What words are these to express a picture ! to describe a description ! I once saw a moon riding in the sky serenely, attended by her sparkling maids of honor, and a little lady said, with an air of great satisfaction, " I must sketch it." Ah, my dear lady, if with an H. B., a Bristol board, and a bit of india-rubber, you can sketch the starry firmament on high, and the moon in her glory, I make you my compli- ment ! I can't sketch " The Five Drapers " v/ith any ink or pen at present at command — but can look with all my eyes, and be thankful to have seen such a masterpiece. They say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the old tenant of the mill. What does he think of the "Vander Heist" which hangs opposite his "Night-watch," and which is one of the great pictures of the world ? It is not painted by so great a man as Rembrandt ; but there it is — to see it is an event of your life. Having beheld it you have lived in the year 1648, and celebrated the treaty of Munster. You have shaken the hands of the Dutch Guardsmen, eaten from their platters, drunk their Rhenish, heard their jokes, as they wagged their jolly beards. The Amsterdam Catalogue dis- courses thus about it : — a model catalogue : it gives you the prices paid, the signatures of the painters, a succinct descrip- tion of the work. " This masterpiece represents a banquet of the civic guard, which took place on the iSth June, 1648, in the great hall of the St. Joris Doele, on the Singel at Amsterdam, to celebrate the conclusion of the Peace at Munster. The thirty-five figures composing the picture are all portraits. " 'The Captain Witse ' is placed at the head of the table, and attracts our attention first. He is dressed in black velvet, his breast covered with a cuirass, on his head a broad-brimmed black hat with white plumes. He is comfortably seated on a chair of black oak, with a velvet cushion, and holds in his left hand, supported on his knee, a magnificent drinking horn, sur- rounded by a St. George destroying the dragon, and ornamented with olive leaves. The captain's features express cordiality and good-humor; he is grasping theliand of 'Lieutenant Van Wavern ' seated near him, in a habit of dark gray, with lace and buttons of gold, lace-collar and wristbands, his feet crossed, with boots of yellow leather, with large tops, and gold l62 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. spurs, on his head a black hat and dark -brown plumes. Behind him, at the centre of the picture, is the standard-bearer, 'Jacob Banning,' in an easy martial attitude, hat in hand, his right hand on his chair, his right leg on his left knee. He holds the flag of blue silk, in which the Virgin is embroidered (such a silk ! such a flag ! such a piece of painting ?), emblematic of the town of Amsterdam. The banner covers his shoulder, and he looks towards the spectator frankly and complacently. "The man behind him is probably one of the sergeants. His head is bare. He wears a cuirass, and yellow gloves, gray stockings, and boots with large tops, and kneecaps of cloth. He has a napkin on his knees, and in his hand a piece of ham, a slice of bread, and a knife. The old man behind is probably, 'William the Drummer.' He has his hat in his right hand, and in his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine. He wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with little slashes of yellow silk. Behind the drummer, two matchlock- men are seated at the end of the table. One in a large black habit, a napkin on his knee, a hnusse-col of iron, and a linen scarf and collar. He is eating with his knife. The other holds a long glass of white wine. Four musketeers, with different shaped hats, are behind these, one holding a glass, the three others with their guns on their shoulders. Other guests are placed between the personage who is giving the toast and the standard-bearer. One with his hat off, and his hand uplifted, is talking to another. The second is carving a fowl. A third holds a silver plate ; and another, in the background, a silver ■flagon, from which he fills a cup. The corner behind the cap- tain is filled by two seated personages, one of whom is peeling an orange. Two others are standing, armed with halberts, of whom one holds a plumed hat. Behind him are three other individuals, one of them holding a pewter pot, on which the •name ' Poock,' the landlord of the 'Hotel Doele,' is engraved. At the back, a maid-servant is coming in with a pasty, crowned ■with a turkey. Most of the guests are listening to the captain. From an open window in the distance, facades of two houses are seen, surmounted by stone figures of sheep." There, now you know all about it : now you can go home and paint just such another. If you do, do pray remember to paint the hands of the figures as they are here depicted : they are as wonderful portraits as the faces. None of your slim Van Dyke elegancies, which have done duty at the cuffs of so 'many doublets ; but each man with a hand for himself, as with -a face for himself. I blushed for the coarseness of one of the NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY. 163 chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind "William the Drummer," splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of the public ; and holding a pork bone in his hand. Suppose the Saturday Review critic were to come suddenly on this picture ? Ah ! what a shock it would give that noble nature ! Why is that knuckle of pork not painted out ? at any rate, why is not a little fringe of lace painted round it ? or a cut pink paper ? or couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted instead, with a crest and a gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief, in lieu of the horrid pig, with a pink coronet in the corner ? or suppose you covered the man's hand (which is very coarse and strong), and gave him the decency of a kid glove ? But a piece of pork in a naked hand ? O nerves and eau de Cologne, hide it, hide it! In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy hand as nature made it ! A great, and famous, and noble handiwork I have seen here. Not the greatest picture in the world — not a work of the highest genius — but a perform- ance so great, various, and admirable, so shrewd of humor, so wise of observation, so honest and complete of expression, that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it will be a pleasure for days to come. Well done, Bartholomeus Vander Heist ! Brave, meritorious, victorious, happy Barthol- omew, to whom it has been given to produce a masterpiece ! May I take off my hat and pay a respectful compliment to Jan Steen, Esq. ? He is a glorious composer. His humor is as frank as Fielding's. Look at his own figure sitting in the window-sill yonder, and roaring with laughter! What a twinkle in the eyes ! what a mouth it is for a song, or a joke, or a noggin ! I think the composition in some of Jan's pictures amounts to the sublime, and look at them with the same delight and admiration which I h-\ 'e felt before works of the very highest style. This gallery is admirable — and the city in which the gallery is, is perhaps even more wonderful and curious to behold than the gallery. The first landing at Calais (or, I suppose, on any foreign shore) — the first sight of an Eastern city — the first view of Venice — and this of Amsterdam, are among the delightful shocks which I have had as a traveller. Amsterdam is as good as Venice, with a superadded humor and grotesqueness, which gives the sight-seer the most singular zest and pleasure. A run through Pekin I could hardly fancy to be more odd, strange, and yet familiar. This rush, and crowd, and prodigious vitality ; this immense swarm of life ; these busy waters, crowding barges, r64 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. swinging drawbridges, piled ancient gables, spacious markets teeming with people ; that ever-wonderful Jews' quarter ; that dear old world of painting and the past, yet alive, and throb- bing, and palpable — actual, and yet passing before you swiftly and strangely as a dream ! Of the many journeys of this Round- about life, that drive through Amsterdam is to be specially and gratefully remembered. You have never seen the palace of Amsterdam, my dear sir ? Why, there's a marble hall in that palace that will frighten you as much as any hall in Vathek, or a nightmare. At one end of that old, cold, glassy, glittering, ghostly, marble hall there stands a throne, on which a white marble king ought to sit with his white legs gleaming down into the white marble below, and his white eyes looking at a great white marble Atlas, who bears on his icy shoulders a blue globe as big as the full moon. If he were not a genie, and enchanted, and with a strength altogether hyperatlantean, he would drop the moon with a shriek on to the marble floor, and it would splitter into perdition. And the palace would rock and heave, and tumble ; and the waters would rise, rise, rise ; and the gables sink, sink, sink ; and the barges would rise up to the chimneys ; and the water-souchee fishes would flap over the Boompjes, where the pigeons and the storks used to perch ; and the Amster, and the Rotter, and the Saar, and the Op, and all the dams of Holland would burst, and the Zuyder Zee roll over the dykes ; and you would wake out of your dream, and find yourself sitting in your arm-chair. Was it a dream .? it seems like one. Have we been to Holland ? have we heard the chimes at midnight at Antwerp ? Were we really away for a week, or have I been sitting up in the room dozing, before this stale old desk "i Here's the desk ; yes. But, if it has been a dream, how could I have learned to hum that tune out of Dinorah ? Ah, is it that tune, or myself that I am humming > If it was a dream, how comes this yellow Notice des Tableaux du Musee d'Amsterdam avec fac- simile DES Monogrammes before me. and this signature of the gallant. Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday ; it lasted a whole week. With the exception of that little pint of aftiari aliguid aX Rotterdam, we were all very happy. We might have NIL NISI BONUM. 165 gone on being happy for whoever knows how many days more ; a week more, ten days more : who knows how long that dear teetotum happiness can be made to spin without toppling over ? But one of the party had desired letters to be sent poste restante, Amsterdam. The post-office is hard by that awful palace where the Atlas is, and which we really saw. There was only one letter, you see. Only one chance of finding us. There it was. " The post has only this moment come in," says the smirking commissioner. And he hands over the paper, thinking he has done something clever. Before the letter had been opened, I could read Come back, as clearly as if it had been painted on the wall. It was all over. The spell was broken. The sprightly little holiday fairy that had frisked and gambolled so kindly beside us for eight days of sunshine — or rain which was as cheerful as sunshine — gave a parting piteous look, and whisked away and vanished. And yonder scuds the postman, and here is the old desk NIL NISI BONUM. Almost the last words which Sir Walter spoke "^o Lockhart, his biographer, were, " Be a good man, my dear ! " and with the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and passed away blessing them. Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time.* Ere a few weeks are over, many a critic's pen will be at work, reviewing their lives, and passing judgment on their works. This is no review, or history, or criticism : only a word in testimony of respect and regard from a man of letters, who owes to his own professional labor the honor of becoming acquainted with these two eminent literary men. One was the first ambassador whom the New World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with the republic ; the pater pairice had laid his hand on the child's head. He bore Washington's name : he came amongst us bringing the kindest sympathy, the most artless, sm.iling good- will. His new country (which some people here might be dis- posed to regard rather superciliously) could send us, as he showed in his own person, a gentleman, who, though himself born in no very high sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, • Washington Irving died, November 28, 1859 ; Lord Macaulay died, December 28, 1859 l66 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. witty, quiet ; and, socially, the equal of the most refined Euro- peans. If Irving's welcome in England was a kind one, was it not also gratefully remembered ? If he ate our salt, did he not pay us with a thankful heart ? Who can calculate the amount of friendliness and good feeling for our country which this writer's generous and untiring regard for us disseminated in his own ? His books are read by millions * of his countrymen, whom he has taught to love England, and why to love her. It would have been easy to speak otherwise than he did : to inflame national rancors, which, at the time when he first be- came known as a public writer, war had just renewed : to cry down the old civilization at the expense of the new : to point out our faults, arrogance, shortcomings, and give the republic to infer how much she was the parent state's superior. There are writers enough in the United States, honest and otherwise, who preach that kind of doctrine. But the good Irving, the peaceful, the friendly, had no place for bitterness in his heart, and no scheme but kindness. Received in England with ex- traordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, Southey, Byron, a hundred others have borne witness to their liking for him), he was a messenger of good-will and peace between his country and ours. " See, friends ! " he seems to say, " these English are not so wicked, rapacious, callous, proud, as you have been taught to believe them. I went amongst them a humble man ; won my way by my pen ; and, when known, found every hand held out to me witli kindliness and welcome. Scott is a great man, you acknowledge. Did not Scott's King of England give a gold medal to him, and another to me, your countryman, and a stranger t " Tradition in the United States still fondly retains the his- tory of the feasts and rejoicings which awaited Irving on his return to his native country from Europe. He had a national welcome ; he stammered in his speeches, hid himself in con- fusion, and the people loved him all the better. He had worthily represented America in Europe. In that young com- munity a man who brings home with him abundant European testimonials is still treated with respect (I have found American writers, of wide-world reputation, strangely solicitous about the opinions of quite obscure British critics, and elated or depressed by their judgments) ; and Irving went home medalled by the King, diplomatized by the University, crowned and honored and admired. He had not in any way intrigued for his honors, * See his Life in the most remarkable Dictionary of Authors, published lately at Phi^ adelphia, by Mr. Alibone. NIL NISI BO NUM. 167 he had fairly won them ; and, in living's instance, as in others, the old country was glad and eager to pay them. In America the love and regard for Irving was a national sentiment. Party wars are perpetually raging there, and are carried on by the press with a rancor and fierceness against individuals which exceed British, almost Irish, virulence. It seem^ed to me, during a year's travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed a blow at Irving. All men held their hand from that harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the good fortune to see him at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washing- ton,* and remarked how in every place he was honored and welcome. Every large city has its " Irving House." The country takes pride in the fame of its men of letters. The gate of his own charming little domain on the beautiful Hudson River was forever swinging before visitors who came to him. He shut out no one.f I had seen many pictures of his house, and read descriptions of it, in both of which it was treated with a not unusual American exaggeration. It was but a pretty little cabin of a place ; the gentleman of the press who took notes of the place, whilst his kind old host was sleeping, might have visited the whole house in a couple of minutes. And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr. Irving's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, nay, mil- lions, when his profits were known to be large, and the habits of life of the good old bachelor were notoriously modest and simple ? He had loved once in his life. The lady he loved died ; and he, whom all the world loved, never sought to re- place her. I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched me. Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add to the pathos of that untold story ? To grieve always was not in his nature ; or, when he had his sorrow, to bring all the world in to condole with him and bemoan it. Deep and quiet he lays the love of his heart, and buries it ; and grass and flowers grow over the sacred ground in due time. Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, be- * At Washington, Mr. Irving came to a lecture given by the writer, which Mr- Filmore and General Pierce, the President and President Elect, were also kind enough to attend together. " Two Kings of Brentford smelling at one rose," says Irving, looking up with his gonc'-lunnored smile. t Mr. Irving described tome with that humor and good-humor which he always kept, how, amongst other visitors, a member of the British press who had carried his distinguished pen to America (where he employed it in vilifying his own country) came to Sunnyside, introduced himse.f to Irving, partook of his wine and luncheon, and in two days described Mr. Irving, his house, his nieces, his meal, and his manner of dozing afterwards, in a New York paper. On another occasion, Irving said, laughing, " Two persons came to me, and one held me in conversation whilst the other miscreant took my portrait! " 1 68 RO UND ABOUT PAPERS. cause there was a great number of people to occupy them. He could only afford to keep one old horse (Which, lazy and aged as it was, managed once or twice to run away with that careless old horseman). He could only afford to give plain sherry to that amiable British paragraph-monger from New York, who saw the patriarch asleep over his modest, blameless cup, and fetched the public into his private chamber to look at him. Irving could only live very modestly, because the wifeless, childless man had a number of children to whom he was as a father. He had as many as nine nieces, I am told — I saw two of these ladies at his house — with all of whom the dear old man had shared the produce of his labor and genius. " Be a good fnan, my dear." One can't but think of these last words of the veteran Chief of Letters, who had tasted and tested the value of worldly success, admiration, prosperity. Was Irving not good, and, of his works, was not his life the best part .'' In his family, gentle, generous, good-humored, af- fectionate, self-denying : in society, a delightful example of complete gentlemanhood ; quite unspoiled by prosperity ; never obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, as some public men are forced to be in his and other countries) ; eager to acknowledge every contemporary's merit ; always kind and affable to the young members of his calling ; in his professional bargains and mercantile dealings delicately honest and grateful ; one of the most charming masters of our lighter language ; the constant friend to us and our nation; to men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius merely, but as an examplar of goodness, probity, and pure life : — I don't know what sort of testimonial will be raised to him in his own country, where generous and enthusiastic acknowledgment of American merit is never wanting : but Irving was in our ser- vice as well as theirs ; and as they have placed a stone at Greenwich yonder in memory of that gallant young Bellot, who shared the perils and fate of some of our Arctic seamen, I would like to hear of some memorial raised by English writers and friends of letters in affectionate remembrance of the dear and good Washington Irving. As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some few most dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring readers deplore, our republic has already decreed his statue, and he must have known that he had earned this posthumous honor. He is not a poet and a man of letters merely, but citizen, statesman, a great British worthy. Almost from the first moment when he appears, amongst boys, amongst college stu- NIL NISI BO NUM. 169 dents, amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great Englishman, All sorts of success are easy to him : as a lad he goes down into the arena with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A place in the senate is straightway offered to the young man. He takes his seat there ; he speaks, when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but not with- out party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. Still he is a poet and philosopher even more than orator That he may have leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, he alDsents himself for a while, and accepts a richly-re- munerative post in the East. As learned a man may live in a cottage or a college common-room ; but it always seemed to me that ample means and recognized rank were Macaulay's as of right. Years ago there was a wretched outcry raised be- cause Mr. Macaulay dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he was staying. Immortal gods ! Was this man not a fit guest for any palace in the world .'' or a fit companion for any man or woman in it ? I dare say, after Austerlitz, the old K. K. court officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating from Schonbrunn. But that miserable " Windsor Castle " outcry is an echo out of fast-retreating old-world remembrances. The place of such a natural chief was amongst the first of the land ; and that country is best, according to our British notion at least, where the man of eminence has the best chance of in- vestigating his genius and intellect. If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-si.x; people might be angry at the incon- testable superiority of the very tallest of the party : and so I have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now that that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to listen ! To remember the talk is to wonder : to think not only of the treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had stored there, and could produce with equal readiness. Almost on the last day I had the fortune to see him, a conver- sation happened suddenly to spring up about senior wranglers, and what they had done in after life. To the almost terror of the persons present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler of 1801-2-3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and rela- ting his subsequent career and rise. Everyman who has known him has his story regarding that astonishing m.emory. It may be that he was not ill-pleased that you should recognize it ; but to those prodigious intellectual feats, which were so easy to lyo ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. him, who would grudge his tribute to homage ? His talk was, in a word, admirable, and we admired it. Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord Ma- caulay, up to the day when the present lines were written (the 9th January), the reader should not deny himself the pleasure of looking especially at two. It is a good sign of the times when such articles as these (I mean the articles in The T'mies and Saturday Review^ appear in our public prints about our public men. They educate us, as it were, to admire rightly. An un- instructed person in a museum or at a concert may pass by without recognizing a picture or a passage of music, which the connoisseur by his side may show him is a masterpiece of har- n ony, or a wonder of artistic skill. After reading these pa- pers you like and respect more the person you have admired so much already. And so with regard to Macaulay's style there may be faults of course — what critic can't point them out ? But for the nonce we are not talking about faults : we want to say nil nisi bonuvi. Well — take at hazard any three pages of the " Essays " or " History ; " — and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, as it were, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Why is this epithet used ? Whence is that simile drawn ? How does he manage in two or three words, to paint an individual, or to in- dicate a landscape ? Your neighbor, who has his reading, and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall de- tect more points, allusions', happy touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he travels a hundred miles to make a line cf description. Many Londoners — not all — have seen the British Museum Library. I speak d cxiir ouveri, and pray the kindly reader to bear with me. I have seen all sorts of domes of Peters and Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon, — what not? — and have been struck by none of them so much as by that catholic dome in Bloomsbury, under which our million volumes are housed. What peace, what love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out ! It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked heaven for this my English birth- right, freely to partake of these bountiful books, and to speak the truth I find there. Under the dome which held Macaulay's NIL NISI BONUM. 171 brain, and from which his solemn eyes lookea out on the world but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and wonderful store of learning was ranged ! what strange lore would he not fetch for you at your bidding ! A volume of law, or history, a book of poetry, familiar or forgotten (except by himself who forgot nothing), a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand. I spoke to him once about " Clarissa." " Not read ' Clarissa I ' " he cried out. " If you have once thoroughly entered on ' Clarissa ' and are infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India I passed one hot season at the-hills, and there were the Govern^ or-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the Com- mander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had ' Clarissa ' with me : and, as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace ! The Governor's wife seized the book, and the Secretary waited for it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for tears ! " He acted the whole scene : he paced up and down the " Athenaeum " library : I dare say he could have spoken pages of the book — of that book, and of what countless piles of others ! In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi honum. One paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says " he had no heart." Why, a man's books may not always speak the truth, but they speak his mind in spite of himself : and it seems to me this man's heart is beating through every page he penned. He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he che'ers heroic resistance ; how he backs and applauds freedom struggling for its own ; how he hates scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful ; how he recognizes genius, though selfish villains possess it ! The critic who says Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had none : and two men more generous, and more loving, and more hating, and more partial, and more noble, do not live in our history. Those who knew Lord Macaulay knew how admirably tender and generous,* and affectionate he was. It was not his business to bring his family before the theatre footlights, and call for bouquets from the gallery as he wept over them. If any young man of letters reads this little sermon — and to him, indeed, it is addressed — I would say to him, "Bear Scott's words in your mind, and ''be good, fny dear.'" Here are two literary men gone to their account, and laus Deo, as far as wa * Since the above was written, I have been informed that it has been found, on examin- ing Lord Macaulay's papers, that he was in the habit of giving away more Hum a fourth ^ri of his annual income. 172 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. know, it is fair, and open, and clean. Here Is no need of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which would have been virtuous but for unavoidable, &c. Here are two examples of men most differently gifted : each pursuing his calling; each speaking his truth as God bade him ; each honest in his life ; just and irreproachable in his dealings ; dear to his friends ; honored by his country ; beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both to give incalculable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win the buton or epaulettes ; but God give us strength to guard the honor of the flas ! ON HALF A LOAF. A LETTER TO MESSRS. BROADWAY, BATTERY AND CO., OF NEW YORK, BANKERS. Is it all over ? May we lock up the case of instruments ? Have we signed our wills ; settled up our affairs ; pretended to talk and rattle quite cheerfully to the women at dinner, so that they should not be alarmed ; sneaked away under some pretext, and looked at the children sleeping in their beds with their little unconscious thumbs in their mouths, and a flush on the soft- pillowed cheek ; made every arrangement with Colonel Mac- Turk, who acts as our second, and knows the other principal a great deal too well to think he will ever give in ; invented a monstrous figment about going to shoot pheasants with Mac in the morning, so as to soothe the anxious fears of the dear mis- tress of the house ; early as the hour appointed for the — the little affair — was, have we been awake hours and hours sooner ; risen before daylight, with a faint hope, perhaps, that MacTurk might have come to some arrangement with the other side ; at seven o'clock (confound his punctuality !) heard his cab-wheel at the door, and let him in looking perfectly trim, fresh, jolly, and well shaved ; driven off with him in the cold morning, after a very unsatisfactory breakfast of coffee and stale bread-and- ON HALF A LOAF. 173 butter (which choke, somehow, in the swallowing) ; driven off to Wormwood Scrubs in the cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny morning; stepped out of the cab, where Mac has bid the man to halt on a retired spot in the common ; in one minute more, seen another cab arrive, from which descend two gentlemen, one of whom has a case like MacTurk's under his arm ; — looked round and round the solitude, and seen not one single sign of a policeman — no, no more than in a row in London ; — depre- cated the horrible necessity which drives civilized men to the use of powder and bullet ; — taken ground as firmly as may be, and looked on whilst Mac is neatly loading his weapons ; and when all ready, and one looked for the decisive One, Two, Three — have we even heard Captain O'Toole (the second of the other principal) walk up, and say : " Colonel MacTurk, I am desired by my principal to declare at this eleventh — this twelfth hour, that he is willing to own that he sees he has been WRONG in the dispute which has arisen between him and your friend ; that he apologizes for offensive expressions which he has used in the heat of the quarrel ; and regrets the course he has taken?" If something- like this has happened to you, however great your courage, you have been glad not to fight ; — however accurate your aim, you have been pleased not to fire. On the sixth day of January in this year sixty-two, what hundreds of thousands — I may say, what millions of English- men, were in the position of the personage here sketched — Christian men, I hope, shocked at the dreadful necessity of battle ; aware of the horrors which the conflict must produce, and yet feeling that the moment was come, and that there was no arbitrament left but that of steel and cannon ! My reader, perhaps, has been in America. If he has, he knows what good people are to be found there ; how polished, how generous, how gentle, how courteous. But it is not the voices of these you hear in the roar of hate, defiance, folly, falsehood, which comes to us across the Atlantic. You can't hear gentle voices ; very many who could speak are afraid. Men must go forward, or be crushed by the maddened crowd behind them. I suppose after the perpetration of that act of — what shall we call it.'' — of sudden war, which Wilkes did, and Everett approved, most of us believed that battle was inevitable. Who has not read the American papers for six weeks past? Did you ever think the United States Government would give up those Commissioners? I never did, for my part. It seems to me the United States Government have done the most courageous act of the war. Before that act was done, what an excitement prevailed in 174 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. London ! In every Club there was a parliament sitting in permanence : in every domestic gathering this subject was sure to form a main part of the talk. Of course I have seen many people who have travelled in America, and heard them on this matter — friends of the South, friends of the North, friends of peace, and American stockholders in plenty. — "They will never give up the men, sir," that was the opinion on all sides ; and, if thev would not, we knew what was to happen. For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us. The City was already gloomy enough. When a great domestic grief and misfortune visits the chief person of the State, the heart of the people, too, is sad and awe-stricken. It might be this sorrow and trial were but presages of greater trials and sorrow to come. What if the sorrow of war is to be added to the other calamity? Such forebodings have formed the theme of many a man's talk, and darkened many a fireside. Then came the rapid orders for sliips to arm and troops to depart. How many of us have had to say farewell to friends whom duty called away with their regiments ; on whom we strove to look cheerfully, as we shook their hands, it might be for the last time ; and whom our thoughts depicted, treading the snows of the immense Canadian frontier, where their intrepid Httle band might have to face the assaults of other enemies than winter and rough weather! I went to a jDlay one night, ani protest I hardly know what was the entertainment which passed before my eyes. In the next stall was an American gentleman, who knew me. "Good heavens, sir," I thought, "is it decreed that you and I are to be authorized to murder each other next week ; that my people shall be bombarding your cities, destroy- ing your navies, making a hideous desolation of your coast ; that our peaceful frontiers shall be subject to fire, rapine, and murder.?" "They will never give up the men," said the Englishman. " They will never give up the men," said the American. And the Christmas piece which the actors were playing proceeded like a piece in a dream. To make the grand comic performance doubly comic, my neighbor presently in- formed me how one of the best friends I had in America — the most hospitable, kindly, amiable of men, from whom I had twice received the warmest welcome and the most delightful hospitality — was a prisoner in Fort Warren, on charges by which his life perhaps might be risked. I think that was the most dismal Christmas fun which these eyes ever looked on. Carry out that notion a little farther, and depict ten thou- sand, a hundred thousand homes in England saddened by the ON HAU- A LOAF. 175 thought of the comins: calamity, and oppressed by the pervad- ing gloom. My next-door neighbor perhaps has parted with her son. Now the ship in which he is, with a thousand brave comrades, is ploughing through the stormy midnight ocean. Presently (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which her boy forms a speck, is winding its way through the vast Canadian snows. Another neighbor's boy is not gone, but is expecting orders to sail ; and some one else, besides the circle at home maybe, is in prayer and terror, thinking of the sum- mons which calls the young sailor away. By firesides modest and splendid, all over the three kingdoms, that sorrow is keep- ing; watch, and myriads of hearts beating with that thought, *' Will they give up the men ? " I don't know how, on the first day after the capture of the Southern Commissioners was announced, a rumor got abroad in London that the taking of the men was an act according to law, of which our nation could take no notice. It was said that the law authorities had so declared, and a very noble tes- timony to the loyalty of Englishmen, I think, v^^as shown by the instant submission of high-spirited gentlemen, most keenly feeling that the nation had been subject to a coarse outrage, who were silent when told that the law was with the aggressor. The relief which presently came, when, after a pause of a day, we found that law was on our side, was indescribable. The nation might then take notice of this insult to its honor. Never were people more eager than ours when they found they had a right to reparation. I have talked during the last week with many English holders of American securities, who, of course, have been aware of the threat held over them. " England," says the New York Herald, " cannot afford to go to war with us, for six hundred millions' worth of American stock is owned by British subjects, which, in event of hostilities, would be confiscated ; and we now call upon the Companies not to take it off their hands on any terms. Let its forfeiture be held over Efigland as a weapon in terrorem. British subjects have two or three hundred millions of dollars invested in shipping and other property in the United States. All this property, together with the stocks, would be seized, amounting to nine hundred millions of dollars. Will England incur this tremendous loss for a mere abstraction ? " Whether " a mere abstraction " here means the abstraction of the two Southern Commissioners from under our flag, or the abstract idea of injured honor, which seems ridiculous to I y 6 RO UND ABOUT PAPERS. the Herald^ it is needless to ask. I have spoken with many men who have money invested in the States, but I declare I have not met one English gentleman whom the publication of this threat has influenced for a moment. Our people have nine hundred millions of dollars invested in the United States, have they ? And the Herald " calls upon the Companies " not to take any of this debt off our hands. Let us, on our side, entreat the English press to give this announcement every publicity. Let us do everything in our power to make this *' call upon the Americans " well known in England. I hope English newspaper editors will print it, and print it again and again. It is not we who say this of American citizens, but American citizens who say this of themselves. " Bull is odious. We can't bear Bull. He is haughty, arrogant, a braggart, and a blusterer ; and we can't bear brag and bluster in our modest and decorous country. We hate Bull, and if he quarrels with us on a point in which we are in the wrong, we have goods of of his in our custody, and we will rob him ! " Suppose your London banker saying to you, " Sir, I have always thought your manners disgusting, and your arrogance insupportable. You dare to complain of my conduct because I have wrongfully imprisoned Jones. My answer to your vulgar interference is, that I confiscate your balance ! " What would be an English merchant's character after a few such transactions? It is not improbable that the moralists of the Herald would call him a rascal. Why have the United States been paying seven, eight, ten per cent, for money for years past, when the same commodity can be got elsewhere at half that rate of interest ? Why, because though among the richest proprietors in the world, creditors were not sure of them. So the States have had to pay eighty millions yearly for the use of money which would cost other borrowers but thirty. Add up this item of extra interest alone for a dozen years, and see what a prodigious penalty the States have been paying for repudiation here and there, for sharp practice, for doubtful credit. Suppose the peace is kept between us, the remem- brance of this last threat alone will cost the States millions and millions more. If they must have money, we must have a greater interest to insure our jeopardized capital. Do Ameri- can Companies want to borrow money — as want to borrow they will ? Mr. Brown, show the gentlemen that extract from the New York Herald, which declares that the United States will confiscate private property in the event of a war. As the country newspapers say, " Please, country papers, copy this ON HALF A LOAP. 177 paragraph," And, gentlemen in America, when the honor of your nation is called in question, please to remember that it is the American press which glories in announcing that you are prepared to be rogues. And when this war has drained uncounted hundreds of millions more out of the United States exchequer, will they be richer or more inclined to pay debts, or less willing to evade them, or more popular with their creditors, or more likely to get money from men whom they deliberately announce that they will cheat? I have not followed the. Herald on the "stone- ship " question — that great naval victory appears to me not less horrible and wicked than suicidal. Block the harbors for- ever ; destroy the inlets of the commerce of the world ; perish cities, — so that we may wreak an injury on them. It is the talk of madmen, but not the less wicked. The act injures the whole Republic ; but it is perpetrated. It is to deal harm to ages hence ; but it is done. The Indians of old used to burn women and their unborn children. The stone-ship business is Indian warfare. And it is performed by men who tell us every week that they are at the head of civilization, and that the Old World is decrepit, and cruel, and barbarous- as compared to theirs. The same politicians who throttle commerce at its neck, and threaten to confiscate trust-money, say that when the war is over, and the South is subdued, then the turn of the old country will come, and a direful retribution shall be taken for our conduct. This has been the cry all through the war. "We should have conquered the South," says an American paper which I read this very day, "but for England." Was there ever such puling heard from men who have an army of a million, and who turn and revile a people who have stood as aloof from their contest as we have from the war of Troy ? Or is it an outcry made with malice prepense ? And is the song of the N'l'7u York Times a variation of the Herald tune 1 — " The conduct of the British, in folding their arms and taking no part in the fight, has been so base that it has caused the prolongation of the war, and occasioned a prodigious expense on our part. Therefore, as we have British property in our hands, we, &c., &c." The, lamb troubled the water dreadfully, and the wolf, in a righteous indignation, " confiscated " him. Of course we have heard that at an undisturbed time Great Britain would never have dared to press its claim for redress. Did the United States wait until we were at peace with France before they went to war with us last ? Did Mr. Seward yield the claim which he 12 1 78 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. confesses to be just, until he himself was menaced with war? How long were the Southern gentlemen kept in prison ? What caused them to be set free ? and did the Cabinet of Washington see its error before or after the demand for redress ? * The captor was feasted at Boston, and the captives in prison hard by. If the wrong-doer was to be punished, it was Captain Wilkes who ought to have gone into limbo. At any rate, as " the Cab- inet of Washington could not give its approbation to the com- mander of the ' San Jacinto,' " why were the men not sooner set free } To sit at the Tremont House, and hear the captain after dinner give his opinion on international law, would have been better sport for the prisoners than the grim salle-a-manger at Fort Warren. I read in the commercial news brought by the " Teutonia," and published ni London on the present 13th January, that the pork market was generally quiet on the 29th December last ; that lard, though with more activity, was heavy and decidedly lower ; and at Philadelphia, whiskey is steady and stocks firm. Stocks are firm : that is a comfort for the English holders, and the confiscating process recommended by the Herald is at least deferred. But presently comes an announcement which is not quite so cheering : — " The Saginaw Central Railway Company (let us call it) has postponed its January dividend on account of the disturbed condition of public affairs." A la bonne heure. The bond and shareholders of the Saginaw must look for loss and depression in times of war. This is one of war's dreadful taxes and necessities ; and all sorts of innocent people must sufifer by the misfortune. The com was high at Waterloo when a hundred and fifty thousand men came and trampled it down on a Sabbath morning. There was no help for that calamity, and the Belgian farmers lost their crops for the year. Perhaps I am a farmer myself — an inno- cent colomis ; and instead of being able to get to church with my family, have to see squadrons of French dragoons thunder- ing upon my barley, and squares of English infantry forming • " At the beginning of December the British fleet on the West Indian station mounted 850 guns, and comprised five liners, ten first-class frigates, and seventeen powerful corvettes. • • * In little more than a month the fleet available for operations on the American shore had been more than doubled. The reinforcements prepared at the various dockyards in- cluded two line-of-battle ships, twenty-nine magnificent frieates — such as tlTe ' Shannon,' the ' Sutlej,' the ' Euryalus,' the ' Orlando,' the ' Galatea ; ' eight corvettes, armed like the .frigates in part, with loo and ^o-pounder Armstrong guns ; and the two tremendous iron- cased ships, the 'Warrior' and the 'Black Prince ;' and their smaller sisters the ' Resist- ance' and the ' Defence.' There was work to be done which might have delayed the com- mission of a few of these ships for some weeks longer ; but if the United States had chosen ' war instead of peace, the blockade of their coasts would have been supported by a steam fleet vof more than sixty splendid ships, armed with 1,800 guns, many of them of the heaviest and most efiEective kind." — Saturday Review: Jan. 11. THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 179 and trampling all over my oats. (By the way, in writing of " Panics," an ingenious writer in the Atlantic Magazine says that the British panics at Waterloo were frequent and notorious). Well, I am a Belgian peasant, and I see the British running away and the French cutting the fugitives down. What have I done that these men should be kicking down my peaceful har- vest for me, on which I counted to pay my rent, to feed my horses, my household, my children ? It is hard. But it is the fortune of war. But suppose the battle over ; the Frenchman says, "You scoundrel ! why did you not take a part with me ? and why did you stand like a double-faced traitor looking on ? I should have won the battle but for you. And I hereby con- fiscate the farm you stand on, and you and your family may go to the workhouse." The New York press holds this argument over English people in terrorem. " We Americans may be ever so wrong in the matter in dispute, but if you push us to a war, we will confiscate your English property." Very good. It is peace now. Confidence of course is restored between us. Our eighteen hundred peace commissioners have no occasion to open their mouths ; and the little question of confiscation is postponed. Messrs. Battery, Broadway and Co., of New York, have the kindness to sell my Saginaws for what they will fetch. I shall lose half my loaf very likely ; but for the sake of a quiet life, let us give up a certain quantity of farinaceous food ; and half a loaf, you know, is better than no bread at all. * THE NOTCH ON THE AXE.— A STORY A LA MODE. Part I. Every one remembers in the Fourth Book of the immortal poem of your Blind Bard, (to whose sightless orbs no doubt Glorious Shapes were apparent, and Visions Celestial,) how Adam discourses to Eve of the Bright Visitors who hovered round their Eden — * Millions of spiritual creatore* walk the earth, Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.' " ' How often,' says Father Adam, * from the steep of echo- ing hill or thicket, have we heard celestial voices to the midnight l8o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. air, sole, or responsive to each other's notes, singing ! ' After the Act of Disobedience, when the erring pair from Eden took their solitary way, and went forth to toil and trouble on common earth — though the Glorious Ones no longer were visible, you cannot say they were gone. It was not that the Bright Ones were absent, but that the dim eyes of rebel man no longer could see them. In your chamber hangs a picture of one whom you never knew, but whom you have long held in tenderest regard, and who was painted for you by a friend of mine, the Knight of Plympton. She communes with you. She smiles on you. When your spirits are low, her bright eyes shine on you and cheer you. Her innocent sweet smile is a caress to you. She never fails to soothe you with her speechless prattle. You love her. She is alive with you. As you extinguish your candle and turn to sleep, though your eyes see her not, is she not there still smiling .■• As you lie in the night awake, and thinking of your duties, and the morrow's inevitable toil oppressing the busy, weary, wakeful brain as with a remorse, the crackling fire flashes up for a moment in the grate, and she is there, your little Beauteous Maiden, smiling with her sweet eyes ! When moon is down, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn, when lids are closed, is she not there, the little Beautiful One, though invisible, present and smiling still ? Friend, the Unseen Ones are round about us. Does it not seem as if the time were drawing near when it shall be given to men to behold them ? " The print of which my friend spoke, and which, indeed, hangs in my room, though he has never been there, is that charming little winter piece of Sir Joshua, representing the little Lady Caroline Montague, afterwards Duchess of Buc- cleuch. She is represented as standing in the midst of a winter landscape, wrapped in muff and cloak ; and she looks out of her picture with a smile so exquisite that a Herod could not see her without being charmed. " I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinto," I said to the person with whom I was conversing. (I wonder, by the way, that I was not surprised at his knowing how fond I am of this print.) "You spoke of the Knight of Plympton. Sir Joshua died, 1792 : and you say he was your dear friend ? " As I spoke I chanced to look at Mr. Pinto ; and then it suddenly struck me : Gracious powers ! Perhaps you are a hundred years old, now I think of it. You look more than a hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old for what I know. Your teeth are false. One eye is evidently false. Can I say that the other is not ? If a man's age may be calculated THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. i8i by the rings round his eyes, this man may be as old as Methu- saleh. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive-green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers in Shepherd's Inn. Pinto passed a yellow bandanna handkerchief over his awful white teeth, and kept his glass eye steadily fixed on me. " Sir Joshua's friend ? " said he (you perceive, eluding my direct question). " Is not every one that knows his pictures Rey- nolds's friend ? Suppose I tell you that I have been in his painting room scores of times, and that his sister The has made me tea, and his sister Toffy has made coffee for me ? You will only say I am an old ombog." (Mr. Pinto, I re- marked, spoke all languages with an accent equally foreign.) "Suppose I tell you that I knew Mr. Sam Johnson, and did not like him ? that I was at that very ball at Madame Cornells', which you have mentioned in one of your little — what do you call them ? — bah ! my memory begins to fail me — in one of your little Whirligig Papers ? Suppose I tell you that Sir Joshua has been here, in this very room ? " *' Have you, then, had these apartments for — more — than —seventy years .'' " I asked. " They look as if they had not been swept for that time — don't they ? Hey ? I did not say that I had them for seventy years, but that Sir Joshua has visited me here." " When } " 1 asked, eyeing the man sternly, for I began to think he was an impostor. He answered me with a glance still more stern : " Sir Joshua Reynolds was here this very morning, with Angelica Kaufmann and Mr. Oliver Goldschmidt. He is still very much attached to Angelica, who still does not care for him. Because he is dead (and I was in the fourth mourning coach at his fu- neral), is that any reason why he should not come back to earth again ? My good sir, you are laughing at me. He has sat many a time on that very chair which you are occupying. There are several spirits in the room now, whom you cannot see. Excuse me." Here he turned round as if he were ad- dressing somebody, and began rapidly speaking a language un- known to me. " It is Arabic," he said ; " a bad patois I own. I learned it in Barbary, when I was a prisoner amongst the Moors. In anno 1609, bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen. Ha ! you doubt me : look at me well. At least I am like " Perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which the figure of a man carrying a barrel formed the initial letter, l82 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. and which I copied from an old spoon now in my possession. As I looked at Mr. Pinto I do declare he looked so like the figure on that old piece of plate that I started and felt very uneasy, " Ha ! " said he, laughing through his false teeth (I declare they were false — I could see utterly toothless gums working up and down behind the pink coral), " you see I wore a beard den ; I am shafednow ; perhaps youtink I am a spoon. Ha, ha ! " And as he laughed he gave a cough which I thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass eye out, his wig off, his very head off ; but he stopped this convulsion by stumping across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink medicine, which, being opened, spread a singular acrid aromatic odor through the apartment ; and I thought I saw — but of this I cannot take an affirmation — a light green and vio- let flame flickering round the neck of the phial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust which lay quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat and pretty, and then a round O, which was nat- urally the impression made by the wooden stump. I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and felt a secret comfort that it was not cloven. In this desolate apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited me to see him, there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little table on which you might put a breakfast-tray, and not a single other article of furniture. In the next room, the door of which was open, I could see a magnificent gilt dressing-case, with some splendid diamond and ruby shirt-studs lying by it, and a chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently full of clothes. Remembering him in Baden Baden in great magnificence, I wondered at his present denuded state. " You have a house elsewhere, Mr. Pinto } " I said. " Many," says he. " I have apartments in many cities. I lock dem up, and do not carry mosh logish.'" I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I first met him, was bare, and had no bed in it. " There is, then, a sleeping-room beyond ? " "This is the sleeping-room." (He pronounced it dts. Can this, by the way, give any clue to the nationality of this singular man ?) " If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety couch ; if on the floor, a dusty one." *' Suppose I sleep up dere ,'' " said this strange man, and he THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 183 actually pointed up to the ceiling. I thought him mad, or what he himself called " an ombog." " I know. You do not believe me ; for why should I deceive you .-' I came but to propose a matter of business to you, I told you I could give you the clue to the mystery of the Two Children in Black, whom you met at Baden, and you came to see me. If I told you you would not believe me. What for try and convinz you ? Ha hey? " And he shook his head once, twice, thrice, at me, and glared at me out of his eyes in a peculiar way. Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate account. It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, whilst behind his glass eye there was a green illumination as if a candle had been lit in it. It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, sputtering, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced me back into one of the chairs — the broken one — out of which I had much difficulty in scrambling, when the strange glamor was ended. It seemed to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the broken chair, the man floated up to the ceil- ing, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if he were lying on a sofa, and grinned down at me. When I came to myself he was down from the ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken cane- bottomed chair, kindly enough — ''Bah," said he, "it is the smell of my medicine. It often gives the vertigo. I thought you would have had a little fit. Come into the open air." And we went down the steps, and into Shepherd's Inn, where the setting sun was just shining on the statue of Shepherd ; the laundresses were trapesing about ; the porters were lean- ing against the railings ; and the clerks were playing at marbles to my inexpressible consolation. " You said you were going to dine at the ' Gray's-inn Coffee- house,' " he said. I was. I often dined there. There is ex- cellent wine at the " Gray's-inn Coffee-house ; " but I declare I NEVER SAID SO. I was not astonished at his remark ; no more astonished than if I was in a dream. Perhaps I was in a dream. Is life a dream ? Are dreams facts ? Is sleeping being really awake } I don't know. I tell you I am puzzled. I have read the "Woman in White," "The Strange Story" — not to mention that story " Stranger than Fiction " in the Cornhill Magazitie — that story for which three credible wit- nesses are ready to vouch. I have had messages from the dead, and not only from the dead, but from people who never existed at all. I own I am in a state of much bewilderment : but, if you please, will proceed with my simple, my artless story. x84 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Well, then. We passed from Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, and looked for a while at Woodgate's bric-a-brac shop, which I never could pass without delaying at the windows — indeed, if I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop, and let me have one look more at that delightful omnium gatherum. And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale's little shop, " No. 47," which is also a favorite haunt of mine. Mr. Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged salutations, " Mr. Pinto," I said, " will you like to see a real curiosity in this curiosity-shop ? Step into Mr. Gale's little back room." In that little back parlor there are Chinese gongs ; there are old Saxe and Sevres plates ; there is Fiirstenberg, Carl Theodor, Worcester, Amstel, Nankin, and other jincrockery. And in the corner what do you think there is .'' There is an actual GUILLOTINE. If you doubt me, go and see — Gale, High Holborn, No. 47. It is a slim instrument, much lighter than those which they make now ; some nine feet high, nar- row, a pretty piece of upholstery enough. There is the hook over which the rope used to play which unloosened the dread- ful axe above ; and look ! dropped into the orifice where the head used to go — there is the axe itself, all rusty, with a GREAT NOTCH IN THE BLADE. As Pinto looked at it — Mr. Gale was not in the room, I recollect ; happening to have been just called out by a customer who offered him three pounds fourteen and sixpence for a blue Shepherd in pate tendre, — Mr. Pinto gave a little start, and seemed mjr// for a moment. Then he looked steadily towards one of those great porcelain stools which you see in gardens — and — it seemed to me — I tell you I won't take my affidavit — I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that pink elixir — I may have been sleep-walking : perhaps I am as I write now— I may have been under the influence of that as- tounding MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen — but I vow I heard Pinto say, with rather a gastly grin at the porcelain stool, " Nay, nefer shague your gory Dou canst not say I did it. locks at me, (He pronounced it, by the way, I dit it, by which I know that Pinto was a German.) I heard Pinto say those very words, and sitting on the porcelain stool I saw, dimly at first, then with an awful distinct- ness — a ghost — an eidolon — a form — ^A headless man seated, THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 185 with his head in his lap, which wore an expression of piteous surprise. At this minute Mr. Gale entered from the front shop to show a customer some delf plates ; and he did not see — but we did — the figure rise up from the porcelain stool, shake its head, which it held in its hand, and which kept its eyes fixed sadly on us, and disappeared behind the guillotine. " Come to the ' Gray's-inn Coffee-house,' " Pinto said, " and I will tell you how the notch came to the axe." And we walked down Holborn about thirty-seven minutes past six o'clock. If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes the reader, I promise him that in the next chapter of this little story he will be astonished still more. Part H. "You will excuse me," I said, to my companion, "for remarking, that when you addressed the individual sitting on the porcelain stool, with his head in his lap, your ordinarily benevolent features " — (this I confess was a bouncer, for between ourselves a more sinister and ill-looking rascal than Mens. P. I have seldom set eyes on) — " your ordi- narily handsome face wore an expression that was by no means pleasing. You grinned at the individual just as you did at me when you went up to the cei , pardon me, as I thought you did, when I fell down in a fit in your chambers ; " and I quali- fied my words in a great flutter and tremble ; I did not care to offend the man — I did not dare to offend the man. I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab and flying ; of taking refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse ; of speaking to a policeman, but not one would come. I was this man's slave. I followed him like his dog. I could not get away from him. So, you see, I went on meanly con- versing with him, and affecting a simpering confidence. I remember, when I was a little boy at school, going up fawn- ing and smiling in this way to some great hulking bully of a sixth- form boy. So I said in a word, " Your ordinarily handsome face wore a disagreeable expression," &c. " It is ordinarily very handsome," said he, with such a leer at a couple of passers-by, that one of them cried, " Oh, crikey, here's a precious guy ! " and a child, in its nurse's arms, scream- ed itself into convulsions. " Oh, out, che suis tres-choli gar(on» l86 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. bien peau, cerdainement" continued Mr. Pinto ; "but you were right. That — that person was not very well pleased when he saw me. There was no love lost between us, as you say ; and the world never knew a more worthless miscreant. I hate him, voyez-vous ? I hated him alife ; I hate him dead. I hate him man ; I hate him ghost : and he know it, and tremble before me. If I see him twenty tausend years hence — and why not ? — I shall hate him still. You remarked how he was dressed ? " " In black satin breeches and striped stockings ; a white pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in powder. He must have worn a pigtail — only " " Only it was cutoff'! Ha, ha, ha ! " Mr. Pinto cried, yelling a laugh, which I observed made the policemen stare very much. *' Yes. It was cut off by the same blow which took off the scoundrel's head — ho, ho, ho ! " And he made a circle with his hook-nailed finger round his own yellow neck, and grinned with a horrible triumph. " I promise you that fellow was sur- prised when he found his head in the pannier. Ha ! ha ! Do you ever cease to hate those whom you hate ? " — fire flashed terrifically from his glass eye as he spoke — " or to love dose whom you once loved. Oh, never, never ! " And here his natural eye was bedewed with tears. " But here we are at the * Gray's-inn Coffee-house.' James, what is the joint .? " That very respectful and efficient waiter brought in the bill of fare, and I, for my part, chose boiled leg of pork and pease- pudding, which my acquaintance said would do as well as anything else ; though I remarked he only trifled with the pease-pudding, and left all the pork on the plate. In fact, he scarcely ate anything. But he drank a prodigious quantity of wine ; and I must say that my friend Mr. Hart's port-wine is so good that I myself took — Avell, I should think, I took three glasses. Yes, three, certainly. He — I mean Mr. P. — the old rogue, was insatiable : for we had to call for a second bottle in no time. When that was gone my companion wanted another. A little red mounted up to his yellow cheeks as he drank the wine, and he winked at it in a strange manner. " I remember," said he, musing, " when port-wine was scarcely drunk in this country — though the Queen liked it, and so did Harley; but Bolingbroke didn't — he drank Florence and Champagne. Dr. Swift put water to his wine. ' Jonathan,' I once said to him but bah ! autres temps, aiitres moeurs. Another magnum, James." This was all very well. " My good sir," I said, " it may %yx\\.you to order bottles of '20 port, at a guinea a bottle ; but THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 187 that kind of price does not suit me. I only happen to have thirty-four and sixpence in my pocket, of which I want a shilling for the waiter and eighteenpence for my cab. You rich foreigners and S7vells may spend what you like " (I had him there : for my friend's dress was as shabby as an old-clothes- man's) ; "but a man with a family, Mr. What-d'you-call'im, cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his dinner alone." " Bah ! " he said. " Nunkey pays for us all, as you say. I will what you call stant the dinner, if you are so poor /'^ and again he gave that disagreeable grin, and placed an odious crooked-nailed and by no means clean finger to his nose. But I was not so afraid of him now, for we were in a public place ; and the three glasses of port-wine had, you see, given me courage. " What a pretty snuff-box ! " he remarked, as I handed him mine, which I am still old-fashioned enough to carry. It is a pretty old gold box enough, but valuable to me especially as a relic of an old, old relative, whom I can just remember as a child, when she was very kind to me. " Yes ; a pretty box. I can remember when many ladies — most ladies, carried a box — nay, two boxes — tabatiere and bonbonni^re. What lady carries snuff-box now, hey ? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you z prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then ; \i\ih. patiiers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world ! — ah ! that was a time i that was a time ! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye ! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza ? Aha, did I not love thee ? Did I not walk with thee then ? Do I not see thee still ? " This was passing strange. My ancestress — but there is no need to publish her revered name — did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary's, where she lies buried. She used to walk with a tortoise-shell cane. She used to wear little black velvet shoes, with the prettiest high heels in the world. " Did you — did you — know, then, my great gr-ndm-ther ? " I said. He pulled up his coat-sleeve — " Is that her name ? " he said. '' Eliza " There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old crea- ture written in red on his arm. " You knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with 1 88 OUNDABOUT PAPERS. his strange Knack); " /knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ? " As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's fnaiden name. Her maiden name was Her honored married name was " She married your great gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the Newmarket Plate," Mr. Pinto dryly remarked. Merciful powers ! I remember over the old shagreen knife and spoon-case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his shoulders, was over the mantel- piece, and Posiedon won the Newmarket Cup in the year 1783 ! " Yes ; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled with your grandf , ha ! " As he said " Ha ! " there came three quiet little taps on the table — it is the middle table in the " Gray's-inn Coffee-house," under the bust of the late Duke of VV-lI-ngt-n. " I fired in the air," he continued ; " did I not ? " (Tap, tap, tap.) " Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months afterwards. ' Captain Brown,' I said, ' who could see Miss Sm-th without loving her ? ' She is there ! She is there ! " (Tap, tap, tap.) " Yes, my first love " But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means "No." " I forgot," he said, with a faint blush stealing over his wan features, " she was not my first love. In Germ in my own country — there was a young woman " Tap, tap, tap. There was here quite a lively little treble knock ; and when the old man said, " But I loved thee better than all the world, Eliza," the affirmative signal was briskly re- peated. And this I declare upon my honor. There was, I have said, a bottle of port-wine before us — I should say a decanter. That decanter was lifted up, and out of it into our respective glasses two bumpers of wine were poured. I appeal to Mr. Hart, the landlord — I appeal to James, the respectful and in- telligent waiter, if this statement is not true .■' And when we had finished that magnum, and I said — for I did not now in the least doubt of her presence — " Dear gr-nny, may we have another magnum ? " — the table distinctly rapped " No." " Now, my good sir," Mr. Pinto said, who really began to be affected by the wine, " you understand the interest I have taken in you. I loved Eliza " (of course I don't mention THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 185 family names). " I knew you had that box which belonged to her — I will give you what you like for that box. Name your price at once, and I pay you on the spot." " Why, when we came out, you said you had not sixpence in your pocket." " Bah ! give you anything you like — fifty — a hundred — a tausend pound." " Come, come," said I, " the gold of the box may be worth nine guineas, and i^i^fa^on we will put at six more." " One tausend guineas ! " he screeched. " One tausend and fifty pound, dere ! " and he sank back in his chair — no, by the way, on his bench, for he was sitting with his back to one of the partitions of the boxes, as I dare say James remembers. '■^ Don't go on in this way," I continued, rather weakly, for I did not know whether I was in a dream. " If you offer me a thousand guineas for this box I must take it. Musn't I, dear gr-nny ? " The table most distinctly said, " Yes ; " and putting out his claws to seize the box, Mr. Pinto plunged his hooked nose into it and eagerly inhaled some of my 47 with a dash of Hardman, " But stay, you old harpy ! " I exclaimed, being now in a sort of rage, and quite familiar with him. " Where is the money. Where is the check ? " *' James, a piece of note-paper and a receipt-stamp ! " " This is all mighty well, sir," I said, " but I don't know you ; I never saw you before. I will trouble you to hand me that box back again, or give me a check with some known sig- nature." "Whose? Ha, Ha, HA!" The room happened to be very dark. Indeed, all the wait- ers were gone to supper, and there were only two gentlemen snoring in their respective boxes. I saw a hand come quiver- ing down from the ceiling — a very pretty hand, on which was a ring with a coronet, with a lion rampant gules for a crest. I saw that hand take a dip of ink and write across the paper. Mr. Pinto, then, taking a gray receipt-stamp out of his blue leather pocket-book, fastened it on to the paper by the usual process j and the hand then wrote across the receipt-stamp, went across the table and shook hands with Pinto, and then, as it waving him adieu, vanished in the direction of the ceiling. There was the paper before me, wet with ink. There was the pen which the hand had used. Does anybody doubt me ? / have that pen now. A cedar-stick of a not uncommon sort, and holding one of Gillott's pens. It is in my inkstand now, I xgo ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. tell you. Anybody may see it. The handwriting on the check, for such the document was, was the writing of a female. It ran thus: — "London, midnight, March 31, 1862. Pay the bearer one thousand and fifty pounds. Rachel Sidonia. To Messrs. Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., London." " Noblest and best of women ! " said Pinto, kissing the sheet of paper with much reverence. " My good Mr. Roundabout, I suppose you do not question that signature ? " Indeed, the house of Sidonia, Pozzosanto & Co. is known to be one of the richest in Europe, and as for the Countess Rachel, she was known to be the chief manager of that enor- mously wealthy establishment. There was only one little diffi- culty, the Countess Rachel died last October. I pointed out this circumstance, and tossed over the paper to Pinto with a sneer. " Cest a brendre on a laisser," he said with some heat. " You literary men are all imbrudent ; but I did not tink you such a fool 7uie dis. Your box is not worth twenty pound, and I offer you a tausend because I know you want money to pay dat rascal Tom's college bills." (This strange man actually knew that my scapegrace Tom has been a source of great expense and annoyance to me.) "You see money costs me nothing, and you refuse to take it ! Once, twice ; will you take this check in exchange for your trumpery snuff-box ? " What could I do .'' My poor granny's legacy was valuable and dear to me, but after all a thousand guineas are not to be had every day. " Be it a bargain," said I. " Shall we have a glass of wine on it 1 " says Pinto ; and to this proposal I also unwillingly acceded, reminding him, by the way, that he had not yet told me the story of the headless man. "Your poor gr-ndm-ther was right just now, when she said she was not my first love. 'Twas one of those banale expres- sions " (here Mr. P. blushed once more) " which we use to women. We tell each she is our first passion. They reply with a similar illusory formula. No man is any woman's first love ; no woman any man's. We are in love in our nurse's arms, and women coquette with their eyes before their tongue can form a word. How could your lovely relative love me .-• I was far, far too old for her. I am older than I look. I am so old that you would not believe my age were I to tell you. I have loved many and many a woman before your relative. It has not always been fortunate for them to love me. Ah ! So- phronia ! Round the dreadful circus where you fell, and whence THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 191 I was dragged corpse-like by the heels, there sat multitudes more savage than the lions which mangled your sweet form ! Ah, tenez ! when we marclied to the terrible stake together at Valladolid — the Protestant and the J — But away with mem- ory 1 Boy ! it was happy for thy grandam that she loved me not. " During that strange period," he went on, " when the teem- ing Time was great with the revolution that was speedily to be born, I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my maligned friend, Cagliostro. Mesmer was one of our band. I seemed to occupy but an obscure rank in it : though, as you know, in secret societies the humble man may be a chief and director — the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind my age. It boots not to tell it : why shall I expose myself to your scornful incredulity — or reply to your questions in words that are familiar to you, but which yet you cannot understand ? Words are symbols of things which you know, or of things which you don't know. If you don't know them, to speak is idle." (Here I confess Mr. P. spoke for exactly thirty-eight minutes, about physics, metaphysics, language, the origin and destiny of man, during which time I was rather bored, and, to relieve my ennui, drank a half-glass or so of wine.) " Love, friend, is the fountain of youth ! " It may not happen to me once — once in an age : but when I love, then I am young. I loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, I loved thee — ah, how fondly ! Wine, I say, more wine ! Love is ever young. I was a boy at the little feet of Bathilde de Bechamel — the fair, the fond, the fickle, ah, the false ! " The strange old man's agony was here really terrific, and he showed himself much more agitated than he had been when speaking about my gr-ndm-th-r. " I thought Blanche might love me. I could speak to her in the language of all countries, and tell her the lore of all ages. I could trace the nursery legends which she loved up to their Sanscrit source, and whispered to her the darkling mys- teries of Egyptian Magi. I could chant for her the wild chorus that rang in the dishevelled Eleusinian revel : I could tell her, and I would, the watchword never known but to one woman, the Saban Queen, which Hiram breathed in the abysmal ear of Solomon — You don't attend. Psha ! you have drunk too much wine ! " Perhaps I may as well own that I was not at- tending, for he had been carrying on for about fifty-seven minutes ; and I don't like a man to havetz// the talk to himself. " Blanche de Bechamel was wild, then, about this secret of 192 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Masonry. In early, early days I loved, I married a girl fair as Blanche, who, too, was tormented by curiosity, who, too, would peep into my closet — into the only secret I guarded from her. A dreadful fate befell poor Fatima. An accident shortened her life. Poor thing ! she had a foolish sister who urged her on. I always told her to beware of Ann. She died. They said her brothers killed me. A gross falsehood. Am I dead .-' If I were, could I pledge you in this wine .'' " " Was your name," I asked, quite bewildered, " was your name, pray, then, ever Blueb- ? " " Hush ! the waiter will overhear you. Methought we were speaking of Blanche de Bechamel. I loved her, young man. My pearls, and diamonds, and treasures, my wit, my wisdom, my passion, I flung them all into the child's lap. I was a fool ! Was strong Samson not as weak as I ? Was Solomon the Wise much better when Balkis wheedled him ? I said to the king But enough of that, I spake of Blanche de Be'chamel. " Curiosity was the poor child's foible. I could see, as I talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, she strove to coax it from me — from me — ha ! ha ! " I had an apprentice — the son of a dear friend, who died by my side at Rossbach, when Soubise, with whose army I happened to be, suffered a dreadful defeat for neglecting my advice. The young Chevalier Goby de Mouchy was glad enough to serve as my clerk, and help in some chemical ex- periments in which I was engaged with my friend Dr. Mesmer. Bathilde saw this young man. Since women were, has it not been their business to smile and deceive, to fondle and lure ? Away ! From the very first it has been so ! " And as my companion spoke, he looked as wicked as the serpent that coiled round the tree, and hissed a poisoned counsel to the first woman. " One evening I went, as was my wont, to see Blanche. She was radiant : she was wild with spirits : a saucy triumph blazed in her blue eyes. She talked, she rattled in her childish way. She uttered, in the course of her rhapsody, a hint — an intimation — so terrible that the truth flashed across me in a moment. Did I ask her > She would lie to me. But I know how to make falsehood impossible. And I ordered her to go to sleep:' THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 193 At this moment the clock (after its previous convulsions) sounded Twelve. And as the new Editor * of the ConihlU Magazine — and he, I promise you, won't stand any nonsense — will only allow seven pages, I am obliged to leave off at the VERY MOST INTE'iESTING POINT OF THE StORY. Part III. " Are you of our fraternity ? I see you are not. The secret which Mademoiselle de Be'chamel confided to me in her mad triumph and wild hoyden spirits — she was but a child, poor thing, poor thing, scarce fifteen : — but I love them young — a folly not unusual with the old ! " (Here Mr. Pinto thrust his knuckles into his hollow eyes ; and, I am sorry to say, so little regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears made streaks of white over his gnarled dark hands.) " Ah, at fifteen, poor child, thy fate was terrible ! Go to ! It is not good to love me, friend. They prosper not who do. I divine you. You need not say what you are thinking " In truth, I was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sal- low, hook-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirty, hideous old man, with the sham teeth, they have a queer taste. That is what I was thinking. "Jack Wilkes said the handsomest man in London had but half an hour's start of him. And without vanity, I am scarcely uglier than Jack Wilkes. We were members of the same club at Medenham Abbey, Jack and I, and had many a merry night together. Well, sir, I — Mary of Scotland knew me but as a little hunch-backed music-master; and yet, and yet, I think she was not indififerent to her David Riz and she came to misfortune. They all do — they all do ! " " Sir, you are wandering from your point ! " I said, with some severity. For, really, for this old humbug to hint that he had been the baboon who frightened the club at Medenham, that he had been in the Inquisition at Valladolid — that under the name of D. Riz, as he called it, he had known the lovely Queen of Scots — was a liifle too much. " Sir," then I said, "you were speaking about a Miss de Be'chamel. I really have not time to hear all your biography." " Faith, the good wine gets into my head." (I should think so, the old toper ! Four bottles all but two glasses.) " To return to poor Blanche. As I sat laughing, joking with her,, she let slip a word, a little word, which filled me with dismay. •Mr. Thackeray retired from the Editorship of the Comhill Magazitu in March 1862.. 13 194 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Some one had told her a part of the Secret — the secret which has been divulged scarce thrice in three thousand years — the Secret of the Freemasons. Do you know what happens to those uninitiate who learn that secret ? to those wretched men, the initiate who reveal it ? " As Pinto spoke to me, he looked through and through me with his horrible piercing glance, so that I sat quite uneasily on my bench. He continued : " Did I question her awake ? I knew she would lie to me. Poor child ! I loved her no less because I did not believe a word she said. I loved her blue eye, her golden hair, her delicious voice, that was true in song, though when she spoke, false as Eblis ! You are aware that I possess in rather a remarkable degree what we have agreed to call the mesmeric power. I set the unhappy girl to sleep. Then she was obliged to tell me all. It was as I had surmised. Goby de Mouchy, my wretched, besotted, miserable secretary, in his visits to the chateau of the old Marquis de Be'chamel, who was one of our society, had seen Blanche. I suppose it was because she had been warned that he was worthless, and poor, artful, and a coward, she loved him. She wormed out of the besotted wretch the secrets of our Order, ' Did he tell you the NUMBER ONE ? ' I askcd. " She said, 'Yes.' " ' Did he,' I further inquired, 'tell you the ' " ' Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me ! ' she said, writhing on the sofa, where she lay in the presence of the Marquis de Bechamel, her most unhappy father. Poor Bechamel, poor Bdchamel ! How pale he looked as I spoke ! ' Did he tell you,' I repeated with a dreadful calm, * the number two ? ' She said, ' Yes.' " The poor old Marquis rose up, and clasping his hands, fell on his knees before Count Cagl Bah ! I went by a different name then. Vat's in a name. Dat vich ve call a Rosicrucian by any other name vil smell as sveet. ' Monsieur,' he said, ' I am old — I am rich. I have five hundred thousand livres of rentes in Picardy. I have half as much in Artois. I have two hundred and eighty thousand on the Grand Livre. I am promised by my Sovereign a dukedom and his orders with a reversion to my heir. I am a Grandee of Spain of the First Class, and Duke of Volovento. Take my titles, my ready money, my life, my honor, everything I have in the world, but don't ask the third question.' " ' Godefroid de Bouillon, Comte de Bechamel, Grandee of Spain and Prince of Volovento, in our Assembly what was the THE NOTCH O.V THE AXE. 195 oath you swore ? ' " The old man writhed as he remembered its terrific purport. " Though my heart was racked with agony, and I would have died, ay, cheerfully " (died, indeed, as if that were a pen- alty !) " to spare yonder lovely child a pang, I said to her calmly, * Blanche de Be'chamel, did Goby de Mouchy tell you secret number three ? ' " She whispered a oui that was quite faint, faint and small. But her poor father fell in convulsions at her feet. " She died suddenly that night. Did I not tell you those I love come to no good. When General Bonaparte crossed the Saint Bernard, he saw in the convent an old monk with a white beard, wandering about the corridors, cheerful and rather stout, but mad — mad as a March hare. ' General,' I said to him, * did you ever see that face before ? ' He had not. He had not mingled much with the higher class of our society before the Revolution. / knew the poor old man well enough ; he was the last of a noble race, and I loved his child." " And did she die by .? '" " Man ! did I say so ? Do I whisper the secrets of the Vehmgericht ? I say she died that night : and he — he, the heartless, the villain, the betrayer, — you saw him seated in yon- der curiosity-shop, by yonder guillotine, with his scoundrelly head in his lap. " You saw how slight that instrument was ? It was one of the first which Guillotin made, and which he showed to private friends in a hangar in the Rue Picpus, where he lived. The invention created some little conversation amongst scientific men at the time, though I remember a machine in Edinburgh of a very similar construction, two hundred — well, many, many years ago — and at a breakfast which Guillotin gave he showed us the instrument, and much talk arose amongst us as to whether people suffered under it. " And now I must tell you what befell the traitor who had caused all this sufifering. Did he know that the poor child's death was a sentence ? He felt a cowardly satisfaction that with her was gone the secret of his treason. Then he began to doubt. I had means to penetrate all his thoughts, as well as to know his acts. Then he became a slave to a horrible fear. He fled in abject terror to a convent. They still ex- isted in Paris ; and behind the walls of Jacobins the wretch thought himself secure. Poor fool ! I had but to set one of my somnambulists to sleep. Her spirit went forth and spied the shuddering wretch in his cell. She described the street, ig6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. the gate, the convent, the very dress which he wore, and which you saw to-day. " And now this is what happened. In his chamber in the Rue St. Honore, at Paris, sat a man alone — a man who has been maUgned, a man who has been called a knave and char- latan, a man who has been persecuted even to the death, it is said, in Roman Inquisitions, forsooth, and elsewhere. Ha ! ha ! A man who has a mighty will. " And looking towards the Jacobins Convent (of which, from his chamber, he could see the spires and trees), this man WILLED. And it was not yet dawn. And he willed ; and one who was lying in his cell in the convent of Jacobins, awake and shuddering with terror for a crime which he had com- mitted, fell asleep. " But though he was asleep his eyes were open. " And after tossing and writhing, and clinging to the pallet, and saying, 'No, I will not go,' he rose up and donned his clothes — a gray coat, a vest of white pique, black satin small- clothes, ribbed silk stockings, and a white stock with a steel buckle ; and he arranged his hair, and he tied his queue, all the while being in that strange somnolence which walks, which moves, which flies sometimes, which sees, which is indifferent to pain, which obeys. And he put on his hat, and he went forth from his cell ; and though the dawn was not yet, he trod the corridors as seeing them. And he passed into the cloister, and then into the garden where lie the ancient dead. And he came to the wicket, which Brother Jerome was opening just at the dawning. And the crowd was already waiting with their cans and bowls to receive the alms of the good brethren. " And he passed through the crowd and went on his way, and the few people then abroad who marked him, said, ' Tiens ! How very odd he looks ! He looks like a man walking in his sleep ! ' This was said by various persons : — " By milk-women, with their cans and carts, coming into the town^ " By roysterers who had been drinking at the taverns of the Barrier, for it was Mid-Lent. " By the sergeant of the watch, who eyed him sternly as he passed near their halberds. " But he passed on unmoved by the halberds, " Unmoved by the cries of the roysterers, " By the market-women coming with their milk and eggs. " He walked through the Rue St. Honore, I say : — " By the Rue Rambuteau, THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 197 " By the Rue St. Antoine, " By the King's Chateau of the Bastile, " By the Faubourg St. Antoine. *' And he came to No. 29 in the Rue Picpus — a house which then stood between a court and garden — " That is, there was a building of one story, with a great coach door. ' " Then there was a court, around which were stables, coach- houses, offices. "Then there was a house — a two-storied house, with a perron in front. " Behind the house was a garden — a garden of two hundred and fifty French feet in length. " And as one hundred feet of France equal one hundred and six feet of England, this garden, my friends, equalled ex- actly two hundred and sixty-five feet of British measure. " In the centre of the garden was a fountain and a statue — or, to speak more correctly, two statues. One was recumbent, — a man. Over him, sabre in hand, stood a woman. " The man was Olofernes. The woman was Judith. From the head, from the trunk, the water gushed. It was the taste of the doctor ; — was it not a droll of taste .'' " At the end of the garden was the doctor's cabinet of study. My faith, a singular cabinet, and singular pictures ! — " Decapitation of Charles Premier at Vitehall. " Decapitation of Montrose at Edimbourg. " Decapitation of Cinq Mars. When I tell you that he was a man of a taste, charming ! " Through this garden, by these statues, up these stairs, went the pale figure of him who, the porter said, knew the way of the house. He did. Turning neither right nor left, he seemed to walk through the statues, the obstacles, the flower- beds, the stairs, the door, the tables, the chairs. " In the corner of the room was that instrument which Guillotin had just invented and perfected. One day he was to lay his own head under his own axe. Peace be to his name ! With him I deal not ! " In a frame of mahogany, neatly worked, was a board with a half-circle in it, over which another board fitted. Above was a heavy axe, which fell — you know how. It was held up by a rope, and when this rope was untied, or cut, the steel fell. " To the story which I now have to relate you may give credence, or not, as you will. The sleeping man went up to that instrument. 198 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. " He laid his head in it, asleep." " Asleep ! " " He then took a little penknife out of the pocket of hia white dimity waistcoat. " He cut the rope asleep. " The axe descended on the head of the traitor and villain. The notch in it was made by the steel buckle of his stock, which was cut through. " A strange legend has got abroad that after the deed was done, the figure rose, took the head from the basket, walked forth through the garden, and by the screaming porters at the gate, and went and laid itself clown at the Morgue. But for this I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. ' There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu ! Remember me. Ha!' tis dawn," Pinto said. And he was gone. I am ashamed to say that my first movement was to clutch the check which he had left with me, and which I was deter- mined to present the very moment the bank opened. I know the importance of these things, and that men chaiige their mind sometimes. I sprang through the streets to the great banking house of Manasseh in Duke Street. It seemed to me as if I actually fiew as I walked. As the clock struck ten I was at the counter and laid down my check. The gentleman who received it, who was one of the Hebrew persuasion, as were the other two hundred clerks of the establish- ment, having looked at the draft with terror in his countenance, then looked at me, then called to himself two of his fellow- clerks, and queer it was to see all their aquiline beaks over the paper. " Come, come ! " said I, " don't keep me here all day. Hand me over the money, short, if you please ! " for I was, you see, a little alarmed, and so determined to assume some extra bluster. " Will you have the kindness to step into the parlor to the partners .'' " the clerk said, and I followed him. " What, again ? " shrieked a bald-headed, red-whiskered gentleman, whom I knew to be Mr. Manasseh. " Mr. Salathiel, this is too bad ! Leave me with this gentleman, S." And the clerk disappeared. " Sir," he said, " I know how you came by this ; the Count de Pinto gave it you. It is too bad ! I honor my parents ; I THE NOTCH ON THE AXE. 199 honor their parents ; I honor their bills ! But this one of grandma's is too bad — it is, upon my word, now ! She've been dead these five-and-thirty years. And this last four months she has left her burial-place and took to drawing on our 'ouse ! It's too bad, grandma ; it is too bad ! " and he appealed to me, and tears actually trickled down his nose. " Is it the Countess Sidonia's check or not ? " I asked, haughtily. " But, I tell you she's dead ! It's a shame ! — it's a shame ! — it is, grandmamma ! " and he cried, and wiped his great nose in his yellow pocket-handkerchief. " Look year — will you take pounds instead of guineas ? She's dead, I tell you ! It's no go ! Take the pounds — one tausend pound ! — ten nice, neat, crisp hundred-pound notes, and go away vid you, do ! " " I will have my bond, sir, or nothing," I said ; and I put on an attitude of resolution which I confess surprised even myself. " Wery veil," he shrieked, with many oaths, " then you shall have noting — ha, ha, ha ! — noting but a policeman ! Mr. Abednego, call a policeman ! Take that, you humbug and impostor ! " and here, with an abundance of frightful language which I dare not repeat, the wealthy banker abused and defied me. Alt bout du compte, what was I to do, if a banker did not choose to honor a check drawn by his dead grandmother .? I began to wish I had my snuff-box back. I began to think I was a fool for changing that little old-fashioned gold for this shp of strange paper. Meanwhile the banker had passed from his fit of anger to a paroxysm of despair. He seemed to be addressing some per- son invisible, but in the room : " Look here, ma'am, you've really been coming it too strong. A hundred thousand in six months, and now a thousand more ! The 'ouse can't stand it ; it won't stand it, I say ! What .-• Oh I mercy, mercy ! " As he uttered these words, A HAND fluttered over the table in the air ! It was a female hand : that which I had seen the night before. That female hand took a pen from the green baize table, dipped it in a silver inkstand, and wrote on a quarter of a sheet of foolscap on the blotting-book, " How about the diamond robbery ? If you do not pay, I will tell him where they are." What diamonds ? what robbery } what was this mystery ? That will never be ascertained, for the wretched man's de- meanor instantly changed. " Certainly, sir ; — oh, certainly," 200 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. he said, forcing a grin. " How will you have the money, sir? All right, Mr. Abednego. This way out." " I hope I shall o^ten see you again," I said ; on which I own poor Manasseh gave a dreadful grin, and shot back into his parlor. I ran home, clutching the ten delicious, crisp hundred pounds, and the dear little fifty which made up the account. I flew through the streets again. I got to my chambers. I bolted the outer doors. I sank back in my great chair, and slept. * * * * My first thing on waking was to feel for my money. Per- dition 1 Where was I ? Ha ! — on the table before me was my grandmother's snuff-box, and by its side one of those awful — those admirable — sensation novels, which I had been reading, and which are full of delicious wonder. But that the guillotine is still to be seen at Mr. Gale's, No. 47 High Holborn, I give you my honor. I suppose I was dreaming about it. I don't know. What is dreaming ? What is life } Why shouldn't I sleep on the ceiling ? — and am I sit- ting on it now, or on the floor ? I am puzzled. But enough. If the fashion for sensation novels goes on, I tell you I will write one in fifty volumes. For the present, DIXI. But be- tween ourselves, this Pinto, who fought at the Colosseum, who was nearly being roasted by the Inquisition, and sang duets at Holyrood, I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of Roundabout Papers. Et vous ? DE FINIBUS. When Swift was in love with Stella, and despatching her a letter from London thrice a month by the Irish packet, you may remember how he would begin letter No. xxiii., we will say, on the very day when xxii. had been sent away, stealing out of the coffee-house or the assembly so as to be able to prattle with his dear; "never letting go her kind hand, as it were," as some commentator or other has said in speaking of the Dean and his amour. When Mr. Johnson, walking to Dodsley's, and touch- ing the posts in Pall Mall as he walked, forgot to pat the head of one of them, he went back and imposed his hands on it, — impelled I know not by what superstition. I have this I hope DE FINIBUS. 20I not dangerous mania too. As soon as a piece of work is out o£ hand, and before going to sleep, I like to begin another ; it may be to write only halt" a dozen lines : bi3t that is something towards Number the Next. The printer's boy has not yet reached Green Arbor Court with the copy. Those people who were alive half an hour since, Pendennis, Clive Newcome, and (what do you call him ? what was the name of the last hero ? I remember now !) Philip Firmin, have hardly drunk their glass of wine, and the mammas have only this minute got the chil- dren's cloaks on, and have been bowed out of my premises — and here I come back to the study again : tamen usque recurro. How lonely it looks now all these people are gone ! My dear good friends, some folks are utterly tired of you, and say, " What a poverty of friends the man has ! He is always ask- ing us to meet those Pendennises, Newcomes, and so forth. Why does he not introduce us to some new characters ? Why is he not thrilling like Twostars, learned and profound like Threestars, exquisitely humorous and human like Fourstars ? Why, finally, is he not somebody else.''" My good people, it is not only impossible to please you all, but it is absurd to try. The dish which one man devours, another dislikes. Is the dinner of to-day not to your taste .-' Let us hope to-morrow's entertainment will be more agreeable. * * i resume my original subject. What an odd, pleasant, humorous, melancholy feeling it is to sit in the study, alone and quiet, now all these people are gone who have been boarding and lodging with me for twenty months ! They have interrupted my rest : they have plagued me at all sorts of minutes : they have thrust themselves upon me when I was ill, or wished to be idle, and I have growled out a "Be hanged to you, can't you leave me alone now?" Once or twice they have prevented my going out to dinner. Many and many a time they have prevented my coming home, because I knew they were there waiting in the study, and a plague take them ! and I have left home and family, and gone to dine at the Club, and told nobody where I went. They have bored me, those people. They have plagued me at all sorts of uncomfortable hours. They have made such a disturbance in my mind and house, that sometimes I have hardly known what was going on in my family, and scarcely have heard what my neighbor said to me. They are gone at last ; and you would expect me to be at ease ? Far from it. I should almost be glad if Woolcomb would walk in and talk to me ; or Twysden reappear, take his place in that chair opposite me, and begin one of his tremendous stories. 202 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conversations with, even draw the likeness of, people invisible to you and me. Is this making of people out of fancy madness ? and are novel- writers at all entitled to strait-waistcoats ? I often forget people's names in life ; and in my own stories contritely own that I make dreadful blunders regarding them ; but I declare, my dear sir, with respect to the personages introduced into your humble servant's fables, I know the people utterly — I know the sound of their voices. A gentleman came in to see me the other day, who was so like the picture of Philip Firniin in Mr. Walker's charming drawings in the ComJiill Magazine, that he was quite a curiosity to me. The same eyes, beard, shoulders, just as you have seen them from month to month. Well, he is not like the Philip Firmin in my mind. Asleep, asleep in the grave, lies the bold, the generous, the reckless, the tender- hearted creature whom I have made to pass through those adventures which have just been brought to an end. It is years since I heard the laughter ringing, or saw the bright blue eyes. When L knew him both were young. I become young as 1 think of him. And this morning he was alive again in this room, ready to laugh, to fight, or to weep. As I write, do you know, it is the gray of the evening ; the house is quiet ; every- body is out ; the room is getting a little dark, and I look rather wistfully up from the paper with perhaps ever so little fancy that HE MAY COME IN. No ? No movement. No gray shade, growing more palpable, out of which at last look the well-known eyes. No, the printer came and took him away with the last page of the proofs. And with the printer's boy did the whole cortege of ghosts flit away, invisible ? Ha ! stay ! what is this .-' Angels and ministers of grace ! The door opens, and a dark form enters, bearing a black — a black suit of clothes. It is John. He says it is time to dress for dinner. ***** Every man who has had his German tutor, and has been coached through the famous " Faust " of Goethe (thou wert my instructor, good old Weissenborn, and these eyes beheld the great master himself in dear little Weimar town !) has read those charming verses which are prefixed to the drama, in which the poet reverts to the time when his work was first composed, and recalls the friends now departed, who once listened to his song. The dear shadows rise up around him, he says ; he lives in the past again. It is to-day which appears vague and vision- ary. We humbler writers cannot create Fausts, or raise up monumental works that shall endure for all ages ; but our books DE FINIBUS. 203 are diaries, in which our own feelings must of necessity be set down. As we look to the page written last month, or ten years ago, we remember the day and its events ;,the child ill, mayhap, in the adjoining room, and the doubts and fears which lacked the brain as it still pursued its work ; the dear old friend who read the commencement of the tale, and whose gentle hand shall be laid in ours no more. I own for my part that, in read- ing pages which this hand penned formerly, I often lost sight of the text under my eyes. It is not the worfs I see ; but that past day ; that by-gone page of life's history ; that tragedy, comedy, it may be, which our little home company was enacting ; that merry-making which we shared ; that funeral which we followed ; that bitter, bitter grief which we buried. And, such being the state of my mind, I pray gentle read- ers to deal kindly with their humble servant's manifold short- comings, blunders, and slips of memory. As sure as I read a P3ge of my own composition, I find a fault or two, half a dozen. Jones is called Brown. Brown, who is dead, is brou2:ht to life. Aghast, and months after the number was printed, I saw that I had called Philip Firmin, Clive Newcome. Now Clive New- come is the hero of another story by the reader's most obedient writer. The two men are as different, in my mind's eye, as — • as Lord Palmerston and Mr. Disraeli let us say. But there is that blunder at page 990, line 76, volume 84, of the Cortihill Magazine, and it is past mending ; and I wish in my life I had made no worse blunders or errors than that which is hereby acknowledged. Another Finis written. Another mile-stone passed on this journey from birth to the next world ! Sure it is a subject for solemn cogitation. Shall we continue this stor3'-telling busi- ness and be voluble to the end of our age ? Will it not be presently time, O prattler, to hold your tongue, and let younger people speak ? I have a friend, a painter, who, like other per- sons who shall be nameless, is growing old. He has never painted with such laborious finish as his works now show. This master is still the most humble and diligent of scholars. Of Art, his mistress, he is always an eager, reverent pupil. In his calling, in yours, in mine, industry and humility will help and comfort us. A word with you. In a pretty large experi- ence I have not found the men who write books superior in wit or learning to those who don't write at all. In regard of mere information, non-writers must often be superior to writers. You don't expect a lawyer in full practice to be conversant with all kinds of literature ; he is too busy with his law ; and so a 204 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. writer is commonly too busy with his own books to be able to bestow attention on the works of otlier people. After a day's work (in which I have been depicting, let us say, the agonies of Louisa on parting with the Captain, or the atrocious behavior of the wicked Marquis to Lady Emily) I march to the Club, proposing to improve my mind and keep myself "posted up," as ihe Americans phrase it, with the literature of the day. And what happens ? Given, a \valk after luncheon, a pleasing book, and a most comfortable arm-chair by the fire, and you know the rest. A doze ensues. Pleasing book drops suddenly, is picked up once with an air of some confusion, is laid presently softly in }ap : head falls on comfortable arm-chair cushion ; eyes close : soft nasal music is heard. Am I telling Club secrets ? Of afternoons, after lunch, I say, scores of sensible fogies have a doze. Perhaps I have fallen asleep over that very book to which " Finis " has just been written. " And if the writer sleeps, what happens to the readers ? " says Jone^, coming down upon me with his lightning wit. What ? • You did sleep over it ? And a very good thing too. These eyes have more than once seen a friend dozing over pages which this hand has written. There is a vignette somewhere in one of my books of a friend so caught napping with " Pendennis," or the " Newcomes," in his lap ; and if a writer can give you a sweet- soothing, harmless sleep, has he not done you a kindness ? So is the author who excites and interests you worthy of your thanks and benedictions. I am troubled with fever and ague, that seizes me at odd intervals and prostrates me for a day. There is cold fit, for which, I am thankful to say, hot brandy-and- water is prescribed, and this induces hot fit, and so on. In one or two of these fits I have read novels with the most fearful content- ment of mind. Once on the Mississippi, it was my dearly beloved " Jacob Faithful : " once at Frankfort O. M., the de- lightful " Vingt Ans Apres " of Monsieur Dumas : once at Tun- bridge Wells, the thrilling " Woman in White i " and these books gave me amusement from morning till sunset. I remember those ague fits with a great deal of pleasure and gratitude. Think of a whole day in bed, and a good novel for a companion. No cares : no remorse about idleness : no visitors : and the Woman in White or the Chevalier d'Artagnan to tell me stories from dawn to night ! " Please, ma'am, my master's compliments, and can he have the third volume ? " (This message was sent to an astonished friend and neighbor who lent me, volume by volume, the W. in IV.) How do you like your novels? I like mine Strong, " hot with," and no mistake : no love-making : no obser- DE FINIBUS. 205 va.tions about society : little dialogue, except where the charac- ters are bullying each other : plenty of fighting : and a villain in the cupboard, who is to suffer tortures just before Finis. I don't like your melancholy Finis. I never read the history of a consumptive heroine twice. If I might give a short hint to an impartial writer (as the Examiner used to say in old days), it would be to act, fwt a la mode le pays de Pole (I think that was the phraseology), but always to give quarter. In the story of Philip, just come to an end, I have the permission of the author to state that he was going to drown the two villains of the piece — a certain Doctor F and a certain Mr. T. H on board the " President," or some other tragic ship — but you see I relented. I pictured to myself Firmin's ghastly face amid the crowd of shuddering people on that reeling deck in the lonely ocean, and thought, " Thou ghastly lying wretch, thou shalt not be drowned ; thou shalt have a fever only ; a knowledge of thy danger ; and a chance — ever so small a chance — of repentance." I wonder whether he did repent when he found himself in the yellow-fever, in Virginia ? The probability is, he fancied that his son had injured him very much, and forgave him on his death-bed. Do you imagine there's a great deal of genuine right-down remorse in the world .? Don't people rather find excuses which make their minds easy ; endeavor to prove to themselves that they have been lamentably belied and misunderstood ; and try and forgive the persecutors who will present that bill when it is due ; and not bear malice against the cruel ruffian who takes them to the police-office for stealing the spoons ? Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out to be quite incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel was never quite made up. I said to his brother, " Why is your brother's soul still dark against me } It is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving : for I was in the wrong." In the region which they now inhabit (for Finis has been set to the volumes of the lives of both here below), if they take any cog- nizance of our squabbles, and tittle-tattles, and gossips on earth here, I hope they admit that my little error was not of a nature unpardonable. If you have never committed a worse, my good sir, surely the score against you will not be heavy. Ha, dileciis- simi fratres ! It is in regard of sins not found out that we may say or sing (in an under- tone, in a most penitent and lugubrious minor key). Miserere nobis miseris peccatoribus. Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not 2o6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. seldom perpetrate, is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking, against which, for my part, I will offer up a special libera me. This is the sin of schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young or old people. Nay (for I am making a clean breast, and liberating my soul), perhaps of all the novel-spinners now extant, the present speaker is the most ad- dicted to preaching. Does he not stop perpetually in his story and begin to preach to you ? When he ought to be engaged with business, is he not forever taking the Muse by the sleeve, and plaguing her with some of his cynical sermons ? I cry peccavi loudly and heartily. I tell you I would like to be able to write a story which should show no egotism whatever — in which there should be no reflections, no cynicism, no vulgarity (and so forth), but an incident in every other page, a villain, a battle, a mystery in every chapter. I should like to be able to feed a reader so spicily as to leave him hungering and thirsting for more at the end of every monthly meal. Alexandre Dumas describes himself, when inventing the plan of a work, as lying silent on his back for two whole days on the deck of a yacht in a Mediterranean port. At the end of the two days he arose and called for dinner. In those two days he had built his plot. He had moulded a mighty clay, to be cast presently in perennial brass. The chapters, the char- acters, the incidents, the combinations were all arranged in the artist's brain ere he set a pen to paper. My Pegasus won't fly, so as to let me survey the field below me. He has no wings, he is blind of one eye certainl}'^, he is restive, stubborn, slow; crops a hedge when he ought to be galloping, or gallops when he ought to be quiet. He never will show off when I want him. Sometimes he goes at a pace which surprises me. Some- times, when I most wish him to make the running, the brute turns restive, and I am obliged to let him take his own time. I wonder do other novel-writers experience this fatalism .'' They must go a certain waj'-, in spite of themselves. I have been surprised at the observations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an occult Power was moving the pen. The per- sonage does or says something, and I ask, how the dickens did he come to think of that } Every man has remarked in dreams, the vast dramatic power which is sometimes evinced ; I won't say the surprising power, for nothing does surprise you in dreams. But those strange characters you meet make instant observations of which you never can have thought previously. In like manner, the imagination foretells things. We spake anon of the inflated style of some writers. What also if there DE FIN IB US. 207 is an affiated style, — when a writer is like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and bellowing, and whistling, and moaning through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ ? I have told you it was a very queer shock to me the other day when, with a letter of introduction in his hand, the artist's (not my) Philip Firmin walked into this room, and sat down in the chair oppo- site. In the novel of " Pendennis," written ten years ago, there is an account of a certain Costigan, whom I had invent- ed (as I suppose authors invent their personages out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of characters). I was smoking in a tavern parlor one night — and this Costigan came into the room alive — the very man : — the most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches of the man, of the rude drawings in which I had depicted him. He had the same little coat, the same battered hat, cocked on one eye, the same twinkle in that eye. " Sir," said I, knowing him to be an old friend whom I had met in unknown regions, " sir," I said, " may I offer you a glass of brandy-and-water ? " " Bedad, ye may" says he, " and PU sing ye a song tii." Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of course he had been in the army. In ten minutes he pulled out an Army Agent's account, whereon his name was written. A few months after we read of him in a police court. How had I come to know him, to divine him ? Nothing shall con- vince me that I have not seen that man in the world of spirits. In the world of spirits-and-water I know I did : but that is a mere quibble of words. I was not surprised when he spoke in an Irish brogue. I had had cognizance of him before some- how. Who has not felt that little shock which arises when a person, a place, some words in a book (there is always a collo- cation) present themselves to you, and you know that you have before met the same person, words, scene, and so forth .? They used to call the good Sir Walter the "Wizard of the North." What if some writer should appear who can write so enchantingly that he shall be able to call into actual life the people whom he invents ? What if Mignon, and Margaret, and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now (though I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose TJncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide silent in ? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their mustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm ; and Tittlebat Titmouse, with his hair dyed green ; and all the Crummies company of 2o8 - ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. comedians, with tlie Gil Bias troop ; and Sir Roger de Coverley ; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire ? I say to you, I look rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter, I think I should not be very much frightened. Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have had with them ! We do not see each other very often, but when we do, we are ever happy to meet. I had a capital half-hour with Jacob Faithful last night ; when the last sheet was corrected, when " Finis " had been written, and the printer's boy, with the copy, was safe in Green Arbor Court. So you are gone, little printer's boy, with the last scratches and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis at the story's end. The last corrections ? I say those last cor- rections seem never to be finished. A plague upon the weeds ! Every day, when I walk in my own little literary garden-plot, I spy some, and should like to have a spade, and root them out. Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy. That turning back to the old pages produces anything but elation of mind. Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of them ? Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages ! Oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conver- sations over and over again ! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last : after which, behold Finis itself come to an end, and the Infinite begun. ON A PEAL OF BELLS. As some bells in a church hard by are making a great holi- day clanging in the summer afternoon, I am reminded some- how of a July day, a garden, and a great clanging of bells years and years ago, on the very day when George IV, was crowned. I remember a little boy lying in that garden reading his first novel. It was called the " Scottish Chiefs." The little boy (who is now ancient and not little) read this book in the summer- house of his great-grandmamma. She was eighty years of age then. A most lovely and picturesque old lady, with a long tor- toise-shell cane, with a little pufif, or tour, of snow-white (or was it powdered ?) hair under her cap, with the prettiest little black ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 209 velvet slippers and high heels you ever saw. She had a grand- son, a lieutenant in the navy ; son of her son, a captain in the navy ; grandson of her husband, a captain in the navy. She lived for scores and scores of years in a dear little old Hamp- shire town inhabited by the wives, widows, daughters of navy captains, admirals, lieutenants. Dear me ! Don't I remember Mrs. Duval, widow of Admiral Duval ; and the Miss Dennets, at the Great House at the other end of the town, Admiral Dennet's daughters ; and the Miss Barrys, the late Captain Barry's daughters ; and the good old Miss Maskews, Admiral Maskews' daughter ; and that dear little Miss Norval, and the kind Miss Bookers, one of whom married Captain, now Ad- miral, Sir Henry Excellent, K. C. B. ? Far, far away into the past I look and see the little town with its friendly glimmer. That town was so like a novel of Miss Austen's that I wonder was she born and bred there ? No, we should have known, and the good old ladies would have pronounced her to be a little idle thing, occupied with her silly books and neglecting her housekeeping. There were other towns in England, no doubt, where dwelt the widows and wives of other navy captains ; where they tattled, loved each other, and quarrelled ; talked about Betty the maid, and her fine ribbons indeed ! took their dish of tea at six, played at quadrille every night till ten, when there was a little bit of supper, after which Betty came with the lanthorn ; and next day came, and next, and next, and so forth, until a day arrived when the lanthorn was out, when Betty came no more : all that little company sank to rest under the daisies, whither some folks will presently follow them. How did they live to be so old, those good people ? Moi qui vous park, I perfectly recollect old Mr. Gilbert, who had been to sea with Captain Cook ; and Captain Cook, as you justly observe, dear Miss, quoting out of your " Mangnall's Questions," was mur- dered by the natives of Owhyhee, anno 1779. ■^^"' ' don't you remember his picture, standing on the sea-shore, in tights and gaiters, with a musket in his hand, pointing to his people not to fire from the boats, whilst a great tattooed savage is going to stab him in the back ? Don't you remember those houris dan- cing before him and the other officers at the great Otaheite ball ? Don't you know that Cook was at the siege of Quebec, with the glorious Wolfe, who fought under the Duke of Cumberland, whose royal father was a distinguished officer at Ramillies, before he commanded in chief at Dettingen ? Huzza ! Give it them, my lads ! My horse is down ? Then I know I shall not run away. Do the French run ? then I die content. Stop, 14 2 1 o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. Wo ! Quo me rapis ? My Pegasus is galloping off, goodness knows where, like his majesty's charger at Dettingen. How do these rich historical and personal reminiscences come out of the subject at present in hand ? What is that sub- ject, by the way ? My dear friend, if you look at the last essay- kin (though you may leave it alone, and I shall not be in the least surprised or offended), if you look at the last paper, where the writer imagines Athos and Porthos, Dalgetty and Ivanhoe, Amelia and Sir Chailes Grandison, Don Quixote and Sir Roger, walking in at the garden-window, you will at once per- ceive that Novels and their heroes and heroines are our pres- ent subject of discourse, into which we will presently plunge. Are you one of us, dear sir, and do you love novel-reading ? To be reminded of your first novel will surely be a pleasure to you. Hush ! I never read quite to the end of my first, the " Scottish Chiefs." I couldn't. I peeped in an alarmed furtive manner at some of the closing pages. Miss Porter, like a kind dear tender-hearted creature, would not have Wallace's head chopped off at the end of Vol. V. She made him die in prison,* and if I remember right (protesting I have not read the book for forty-two or three years), Robert Bruce made a speech to his soldiers, in which he said, " And Bannockburn shall equal Cambuskenneth." t But I repeat, I could not read the end of the fifth volume of that dear delightful book for crv-ing. Good heavens ! It was as sad, as sad as going back to school. The glorious Scott cycle of romances came to me some four or five years afterwards ; and I think boys of our year were specially fortunate in coming upon those delightful books at that special time when we could best enjoy them. Oh, that sunshiny bench on half-holidays, with Claverhouse or Ivanhoe for a companion ! I have remarked of very late days some little men in a great state of delectation over the romances of Captain Mayne Reid, and Gustave Aimard's Prairie and Indian Stories, and during occasional holiday visits, lurking off to bed • I find, on reference to the novel, that Sir William died on the scaffold, not in prison. His last words were, " ' My prayer is heard. Life's cord is cut by heaven. Helen t Helen! May heaven preserve my country, and ' He stopped. He felL And with that mighty shock the scaffold shook to its foundation." t The remark of Bruce (which I protest I had not read for forty-two years), I find to be as follows : — "When this was uttered by the English heralds, Bruce turned to Ruthven, with an heroic smile, ' Let him come, my brave barons ! and he shall find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambuskenneth?'" In the same amiable author's famous novel of •' Thaddeus of Warsaw," there is more crying than in any novel 1 ever remember to have read. See, for example, the last page ♦ * * " Incapable of speaking, Thaddeus led his wife back to her carriage. » » • His fears gushed out in spite of himself, and mingling with hers, poured those thanks, those assurances, of animated approbation through her heart, which made it even ache with excess of happiness." * * • And a sentence or two •further, " Kosciusko did bless him, and embalmed the benediction with a shower of tears." ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 311 with the volume under their arms. But are those Indians and warriors so terrible as our Indians and warriors were ? (I say, are they ? Young gentlemen, mind, I do not say they are not.) But as an oldster I can be heartily thankful for the novels of the i-io Geo. IV., let us say, and so downward to a period not unremote. Let us see ; there is, first, our dear Scott. Whom do I love in the works of that dear old master? Amo — The Baron of Bradwardine, and Fergus. (Captain Waver- ley is certainly very mild.) Amo Ivanhoe ; LOCKSLEY ; the Templar. Amo Quentin Durward, and specially Quentin's uncle, who brought the Boar to bay. I forget the gentleman's name. I have never cared for the Master of Ravenswood, or fetched his hat out of the water since he dropped it there when I last met him (circa 1825). Amo Saladin and the Scotch knight in the "Talisman." The Sultan best. Amo Claverhouse. Amo Major Dalgettv. Delightful Major. To think of him is to desire to jump up, run to the book, and get the volume down from the shelf. About all those heroes of Scott, what a manly bloom there is, and honorable modesty ! They are not at all heroic. They seem to blush somehow in their position of hero, and as it were to say, " Since it must be done, here goes ! " They are handsome, modest, upright, simple, courageous, not too clever. If I were a mother (which is absurd), I should like to be mother-in-law to several young men of the Walter-Scott-hero sort. Much as I like those most unassuming, manly, unpretend- ing gentlemen, I have to own that I think the heroes of an- other writer, viz : — Leather-stocking, Uncas, Hardheart, Tom Coffin, are quite the equals of Scott's men ; perhaps 1 weather-stocking is better than any one in " Scott's lot." La Longue Carabine is one of the great prize-men of fiction. He ranks with your Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de Coverley, Falstaff — heroic figures, all — American or British, and the artist has deserved well of his country who devised them. At school, in my time, there was public day, when the boys' relatives, an examining bigwig or two from the universities, old school-fellows, and so forth, came to the place. The boys wer« JSI2 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. all paraded ; prizes were administered ; each lad being in a new suit of clotlies — and magnificent dandies, I promise you, some of us were. Oh, the chubby cheeks, clean collars, glossy new raiment, beaming faces, glorious in youth— ^/f/ tueri cculutn — bright with truth, and mirth, and honor ! To see a hundred boys marshalled in a chapel or old hall ; to hear their sweet fresh voices when they chant, and look in their brave calm faces ; I say, does not the sight and sound of them smite you, somehow, with a pang of exquisite kindness ? * * * Well. As about boys, so about Novelists. I fancy the boys of Par- nassus School all paraded. I am a lower boy myself in that academy. I like our fellows to look well, upright, gentleman- like. There is Master Fielding — he with the black eye. What a magnificent build of a boy ! There is Master Scott, one of the heads of the school. Did you ever see the fellow more hearty and manly ? Yonder lean, shambUng, cadaverous lad, who is always borrowing money, telling lies, leering after the housemaids, is Master Laurence Sterne — a bishop's grandson, and himself intended for the Church ; for shame, you little reprobate ! But what a genius the fellow has ! Let him have a sound flogging, and as soon as the young scamp is out of the whipping-room give him a gold medal. Such would be my practice if I were Doctor Birch, and master of the school. Let us drop this school metaphor, this birch and all per- taining thereto. Our subject, I beg leave to remind the reader's humble servant, is novel heroes and heroines. How do you like your heroes, ladies ? Gentlemen, what novel heroines do you prefer ? When I set this essay going, I sent the above question to two of the most inveterate novel-readers of my acquaintance. The gentleman refers me to Miss Aus- ten ; the lady says Athos, Guy Livingston, and (pardon my. rosy blushes) Colonel Esmond, and owns that in youth she was very much in love with Valancourt. " Valancourt ? and who was he ? " cry the young people. Valancourt, my dears, was the hero of one of the most famous romances which ever was published in this country. The beauty and elegance of Valancourt made your young grand- mammas' gentle hearts to beat with respectful sympathy. He and his glory have passed away. Ah, woe is me that the glory of novels should ever decay ; that dust should gather round them on the shelves ; that the annual checks from Messieurs the publishers should dwindle, dwindle ! Inquire at Mudie's, or the London Librar}', who asks for the " Mysteries of Udolpho " now ? Have not even the " Mysteries of Paris " ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 213 ceased to frighten ? Alas, our novels are but for a season ; and I know characters whom a painful modesty forbids me to mention, who shall go to limbo along with " Valancourt " and " Doricourt " and " Thaddeus of Warsaw." A dear old sentimental friend, with whom I discoursed on the subject of novels yesterday, said that her favorite hero was Lord Orville, in " Evelina," that novel which Doctor John- son loved so. I took down the book from a dusty old crypt at a club, where Mrs. Barbauld's novelists repose : and this is the kind of thing, ladies and gentlemen, in which your ancestors found pleasure : — "And here, whilst I was looking for the books, I was fol- lowed by Lord Orville. He shut the door after he came in, and, approaching me with a look of anxiety, said, ' Is this true, Miss Anville — are you going ? ' " ' I believe so, my lord,' said I, still looking for the books. " ' So suddenly, so unexpectedly : must I lose you ? ' " ' No great loss, my lord,' said I, endeavoring to speak cheerfully. " ' Is it possible,' said he, gravely, ' Miss Anville can doubt my sincerity ? ' " ' I can't imagine,' cried I, ' what Mrs. Selwyn has done with those books.' " ' Would to heaven,' continued he, ' I might flatter myself you would allow me to prove it ! ' " ' I must run up stairs,' cried I, greatly confused, ' and ask what she has done with them.' " ' You are going then,' cried he, taking my hand, * and you give me not the smallest hope of any return ! Will vou not, my too lovely friend, will you not teach me, with fortitude like your own, to support your absence ? ' " ' My lord,' cried I, endeavoring to disengage my hand, ' pray let me go ! ' " ' I will,' cried he, to my inexpressible confusion, dropping on one knee, 'if you wish me to leave you.' " ' Oh, my lord,' exclaimed I, 'rise, I beseech you; rise. Surely your lordship is not so cruel as to mock me.' "'Mock you!' repeated he earnestly, ' no, I revere you. I esteem and admire you above all human beings ! You are the friend to whom my soul is attached, as to its better half. You are the most amiable, the most perfect of women ; and you are dearer to me than language has the power of telling.' " I attempt not to describe my sensations at that moment ; I scarce breathed ; I doubted if I existed ; the blood forsook 214 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. my cheeks, and my feet refused to sustain me. Lord Orville hastily rising supported me to a chair upon which I sanlc al- most lifeless. " I cannot write the scene that followed, though every word is engraven on my heart ; but his protestations, his expressions, were too flattering for repetition ; nor would he, in spite of my repeated efforts to leave him, suffer me to escape ; in short, my dear sir, I was not proof against his solicitations, and he drew from me the most sacred secret of my heart ! " * Other people may not much like this extract, madam, from your favorite novel, but when you come to read it, you will like it. I suspect that when you read that book which you so love, you read it a deiik. Did you not yourself pass a winter at Bath, when you were the belle of the assembly ? Was there not a Lord Orville in your case too ? As you think of him eleven lustres pass away. You look at him with the bright eyes of those days, and your hero stands before you, the brave, the accomplished, the simple, the true gentleman ; and he makes the most elegant of bows to one of the most beautiful young women the world ever saw ; and he leads you out to the cotillon, to the dear unforgotten music. Hark to the horns of Elfand, blowing, blowing ! Bo/me vieille, you remember their melody, and your heart-strings thrill with it still. Of your heroic heroes, I think our friend Monseigneur Athos, Count de la Fere, is my favorite. I have read about him from sunrise to sunset with the utmost contentment of mind. He has passed through how many volumes .-• Forty? Fifty ? I wish for my part there was a hundred more, and would never tire of him rescuing prisoners, punishing rufiians, and running scoundrels through the midriff with his most grace- * Contrast this old perfumed, powdered D'Arblay conversation with the present modera talk. If the two young people wished to hide tlieir emotions nowadays, and express themselves in modest language, the story would run : — " Wliilst I was looking for the books, Lord Orviile came in. He looked uncommonljr down in the mouth, as he said : ' Is this true, Miss Anville ; are you going to cut ? ' " ' To absquatulate, Lord Orville,' said I, still pretending that 1 was looking for tho books. " ' You're very quick about it,' said he. " ' Guess it's no great loss,' I remarked, as cheerfully as I could. " ' You don't think I'm chafifing?' said Orville, with much emotion. " ' Wliat has Mrs. Selwyn done with the books ?' I went on. " ' What, going ? ' said he, ' and going lor good ? I wish I was such a good-plucked one as you, Miss Anville,' " &c. The conversation, you perceive, might be easily written down to this key ; and if the hero and heroine were modern, they would not be suffered to go through their dialogue on stilts, but would converse in the natural graceful way at present customary. By the way, what a strange custom that is in modern lady novelists to make the men bully the women ! In the time of Miss Porter and Madame D'Arblay, we have respect, profound bows and curt- seys, graceful courtesy, from men to women. In the time of Miss Bronte, absolute rudeness. Is it true, mesdames, that you like rudeness, and are pleased at being ill-used by men? I could point to more than one lady novelist who so represents you. • ON A PEAL OF BELLS. 2IS ful rapier. Ah, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, you are a mag- nificent trio. I think I like d'Artagnan in his own memoirs best. I bought him years and years ago, price fivepence, in a little-parchment-covered Cologne-printed volume, at a stall in Gray's Inn Lane. Dumas glorifies him and makes a Marshal of him ; if I remember rightly, the original d'Artagnan was a needy adventurer, who died in exile very early in Louis XIV. 's reign. Did you ever read the "Chevalier d'Harmenthal ? " Did you ever read the " Tulipe Noire," as modest as a story by Miss Edgeworth t I think of the prodigal banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and wonder. To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me ! VVhere does he find the money for these prodigious feasts ? They say that all the works bearing Dumas's name are not written by him. Well ? Does not the chief cook have aides under him .'' Did not Rubens's pupils paint on his canvases ? Had not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds ? For my- self, being also du metier, I confess I would often like to have a competent, respectable, and rapid clerk for the business part of my novels ; and on his arrival, at eleven o'clock, would say, " Mr. Jones, if you please, the archbishop must die this morn- ing in about five pages. Turn to article ' Dropsy ' (or what you Avill) in Encyclopsedia. Take care there are no medical blunders in his death. Group his daughters, physicians, and chaplains round him. In Wales' ' London,' letter B, third shelf, you will find an account of Lambeth, and some prints of the place. Color in with local coloring. The daughter will come down, and speak to her lover in his wherry at Lambeth Stairs," &c., &c. Jones (an intelligent young man) examines the medi- cal, historical, topographical books necessary ; his chief points out to him in Jeremy Taylor (fob, London, m.dclv.) a few re- marks, such as might befit a dear old archbishop departing this life. When I come back to dress for dinner, the archbishojD is dead on my table in five pages ; medicine, topography, theology, all right, and Jones has gone home to his family some hours. Sir Christopher is the architect of St. Paul's. He has not laid the stones or carried up the mortar. There is a great deal of car- penter's and joiner's work in novels which surely a smart pro- fessional hand might supply. A smart professional hand ? I give you my word, there seem to me parts of novels — let us sa^ the love-making, the " business," the villain in the cupboard, and so forth, which I should like to order John Footman to take in hand, as I desire him to bring the coals and polish the boots. Ask me indeed to pop a robber under a bed, to hide a 2l6 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. will which shall be forthcoming in due season, or at my time of life to write a namby-pamby love conversation between Emily and Lord Arthur ! I feel ashamed of myself, and especially when my business obliges me to do the love-passages, I blush so, though quite alone in my study, that you would fancy I was going off in an apoplexy. Are authors affected by their own works ? I don't know about other gentlemen, but if I make a joke myself I cry ; if I write a pathetic scene I am laughing wildly all the time — at least Tomkins thinks so. You know I am such a cynic ! The editor of the Conihill Magazine (no soft and yielding character like his predecessor, but a man of stern resolution) will only allow these harmless papers to run to a certain length. But for this veto I should gladly have prattled over half a sheet more, and have discoursed on many heroes and heroines of novels whom fond memory brings back to me. Of these books I have been a diligent student from those early days, which are recorded at the commencement of this little essay. Oh, de- lightful novels, well remembered ! Oh, novels, sweet and deli- cious as the raspberry open-tarts of budding boyhood ! Do I forget one night after prayers (when we under-boys were sent to bed) lingering at my cupboard to read one little half page more of my dear Walter Scott — and down came the monitor's dictionary upon my head ! Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, I have loved thee faithfully for forty years ! Thou wert twenty years old (say) and I but twelve, when I knew thee. At sixty odd, love, most of the ladies of thy Orient race have lost the bloom of youth, and bulged beyond the line of beauty ; but to me thou art ever young and fair, and I will do battle with any felon Templar who assails thy fair name. ON A PEAR-TREE. A GRACIOUS reader no doubt has remarked that these humble sermons have for subjects some little event Avhich happens at the preacher's own gate, or which falls under his peculiar cognizance. Once, you may remember, we discoursed about a chalk-mark on the door. This morning Betsy, the housemaid, comes with a frightened look, and says, " Law, mum ! there's ON A PEAR-TREE. 217 three bricks taken out of the garden wall, and the branches broke, and all the pears taken off the pear-tree ! " Poor peace- ful suburban pear-tree ! Jail-birds have hopped about thy branches, and robbed them of their smoky fruit. But those bricks removed ; that ladder evidently prepared, by which un- known marauders may enter and depart from my little English- man's castle; is not this a subject of thrilling interest, and may it not he continued in a future number'^ — that is the terrible ques- tion. Suppose, having escaladed the outer wall, the miscreants take a fancy to storm the castle ? Well — well ! we are armed ; we are numerous ; we are men of tremendous courage, who will defend our spoons with our lives ; and there are barracks close by (thank goodness !) whence, at the noise of our shouts and firing, at least a thousand bayonets will bristle to our rescue. What sound is yonder ! A church bell. I might go myself, but how listen to the sermon ? I am thinking of those thieves who have made a ladder of my wall, and a prey of my pear- tree. They may be walking to church at this moment, neatly shaved, in clean linen, with every outward appearance of virtue. If I went, I know I should be watching the congregation, and thinking, " Is that one of the fellows who came over my wall } " If, after the reading of the eighth Commandment, a man sang out with particular energy, " Incline our hearts to keep this law," I should think, "Aha, Master Basso, did you have pears for breakfast this morning .? " Crime is walking round me, that is clear. Who is the perpetrator? * * * What a changed aspect the world has, since these last few lines were written ! I have been walking round about my premises, and in consultation with a gentleman in a single-breasted blue coat, with pewter buttons, and a tape ornament on the collar. He has looked at the holes in the wall, and the amputated tree. We have formed our plan of ^fd^nz^— perhaps of attack. Per- haps some day you may read in the papers " Daring Attempt AT Burglary — Heroic Victory over the Villains," &c., &c. Rascals as yet unknown ! perhaps you, too, may read these words, and may be induced to pause in your fatal intention. Take the advice of a sincere friend, and keep off. To find a man writhing in my man-trap, another mayhap impaled in my ditch, to pick off another from my tree (scoundrel ! as though he were a pear) will give me no pleasure ; but such things may happen. Be warned in time, villains ! Or, if you must pursue your calling as cracksmen, have the goodness to try some other shutters. Enough ! subside into your darkness, children of 2l8 ^ ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. night ! Thieves ! we seek not to \\2lVQ. you hanged — you are but as pegs whereon to hang others, I may have said before, that if I were going to be hanged myself, I think I should take an accurate note of my sensa- tions, request to stop at some public-house on the road to Ty- burn, and be provided with a private room and writing-m.aterials, and give an account of my state of mind. Then, gee up, car- ter ! I beg your reverence to continue your apposite, though not novel, remarks on my situation ; — and so we drive up to Tyburn turnpike, where an expectant crowd, the obliging sher- iffs, and the dexterous and rapid Mr. Ketch are already in waiting. A number of laboring people are sauntering about our streets and taking their rest on this holiday — fellows who have no more stolen my pears than they have robbed the crown jewels out of the Tower — and I say I cannot help think- ing in my own mind, " Are you the rascal who got over my wall last night?" Is the suspicion haunting my mind written on my countenance .'' I trust not. What if one man after another were to come up to me and say, " How dare you, sir, suspect me in your mind of stealing your fruit .'' Go be hanged, you and your jargonels ! " You rascal thief ! it is not merely three-halfp'orth of sooty fruit you rob me of, it is my peace of mind — my artless innocence and trust in my fellow- creatures, my childlike belief that everything they say is true. How can I hold out the hand of friendship in this condition, when my first impression is, " My good sir, I strongly suspect that you were up my pear-tree last night ? " It is a dreadful state of mind. The core is black ; the death-stricken fruit drops on the bough, and a great worm is within — fattening, and feasting, and wriggling ! Who stole the pears ? I say. Is it you, brother ? Is it you, madam ? Come ! are you ready to answer — respondere parati et caniare pares ? (O shame ! shame !) Will the villains ever be discovered and punished who stole my fruit .^ Some unlucky rascals who rob orchards are caught up the tree at once. Some rob through life with impunity. If I, for my part, were to try and get up the smallest tree, on the darkest night, in the most remote orchard, I wager any money I should be found out — be caught by the leg in a man-trap, or have Towler fastening on me. I always am found out ! have been ; shall be. It's my luck. Other men will carry off bushels of fruit, and get away undetected, unsuspected ; where- as I know woe and punishment would fall upon me were I to ON A PEAR-TREE. 219 lay my hand on the smallest pippin. So be it. A man who has this precious self-knowledge will surely keep his hands from picking and stealing, and his feet upon the paths of virtue. I will assume, my benevolent friend and present reader, that you yourself are virtuous, not from a fear of punishment, but from a sheer love of good : but as you and I walk through life, consider what hundreds of thousands of rascals we must have met, who have not been found out at all. In high places and low, in Clubs and on 'Change, at church or the balls and routs of the nobility and gentry, how dreadful it is for benevolent beings like you and me to have to think these undiscovered though not unsuspected scoundrels are swarming ! What is the difference between you and a galley-slave ? Is yonder poor wretch at the hulks not a man and a brother too ? Have you ever forged, my dear sir ? Have you ever cheated your neighbor? Have you ever ridden to Hounslow Heath and robbed the mail.'' Have you ever entered a first-class railway-carriage, where an old gentleman sat alone in a sweet sleep, daintily murdered him, taken his pocket-book, and got out at the next station ? You know that this circumstance occurred in France a few months since. If we have travelled in France this autumn we may have met the ingenious gentleman who perpetrated this daring and successful coup. We may have found him a well-informed and agreeable man. I have been acquainted with two or three gentlemen who have been discovered after — after the performance of ille- gal actions. What ? That agreeable rattling fellow we met was the celebrated Mr. John Sheppard ? Was that amiable quiet gentleman in spectacles the well-known Mr, Fauntleroy ? In Hazlitt's admirable paper, " Going to a Fight," he de- scribes a dashing sporting fellow who was in the coach, and who was no less a man than the eminent destroyer of Mr. William Weare. Don't tell me that you would not like to have met (out of business) Captain Sheppard, the Reverend Doctor Dodd, or others rendered famous by their actions and misfortunes, by their lives and their deaths. They are the subjects of bal- lads, the heroes of romance. A friend of mine had the house in May Fair, out of which poor Doctor Dodd was taken hand- cuffed. There was the paved hall over which he stepped. That little room at the side was, no doubt, the study where he composed his elegant sermons. Two years since I had the good fortune to partake of some admirable dinners in Tyburnia — magnificent dinners indeed ; but rendered J20 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. doubly interesting from the fact that the house was that oc- cupied by the late Mr. Sadleir. One night the late Mr. Sad- leir took tea in that dining-room, and, to the surprise of his butler, went out, having put into his pocket his own cream-jug. The next morning, you know, he was found dead on Hamp- stead Heath, with the creamjug lying Ijy him, into which he poured the poison by which he died. The idea of the ghost of the late gentleman flitting about the room gave a strange interest to the banquet. Can you fancy him taking his tea alone in the dining-room t He empties that cream-jug and puts it in his pocket ; and then he opens yonder door, through which he is never to pass again. Now he crosses the hall : and hark! the hall-door shuts upon him, and his steps die away. They are gone into the night. They traverse the sleeping city. They lead him into the fields, where the gray morning is beginning to glim- mer. He pours something from a bottle into a little silver jug. It touches jiis lips, the lying lips. Do they quiver a prayer ere that- awful draught is swallowed ? When the sun rises they are dumb. I neither knew this unhappy man, nor his countryman — Laertes let us call him — who is at present in exile, having been compelled to fly from remorseless creditors. Laertes fled to America, where he earned his bread by his pen. I own to having a kindly feeling towards this scapegrace, because, though an exile, he did not abuse the country whence he fled, I have heard tliat he went away taking no spoil with him, penniless almost ; and on his voyage he made acquaintance with a cer- tain Jew ; and when he fell sick, at New York, this Jew be- friended him, and gave him help and money out of his own store, which was but small. Now, after they had been awhile in the strange city, it happened that the poor Jew spent all his little money, and he too fell ill, and was in great penury. And now it was Laertes who befriended that Ebrew Jew. He fee'd doctors ; he fed and tended the sick and hungry. Go to, Laertes ! I know thee not. It may be thou art justly exul i>atrice. But the Jew shall intercede for thee, thou not, let us trust, hopeless Christian sinner. Another exile to the same shore I knew : who did not ? Julius Cffisar hardly owed more money than Cucedicus : and, gracious powers ! Cucedicus, how did you manage to spend and owe so much ? All day he was at work for his clients ; at night he was occupied in the Public Council. He neither had wife nor children. The rewards which he received for his orations were enough to maintain twenty rhetoricians. Night ON A PEAR-TREE. 221 after night I have seen him eating his frugal meal, consisting but of a fish, a small portion of mutton, and a small measure of Iberian or Trinacrian wine, largely diluted with the sparkling waters of Rhenish Gaul. And this was all he had ; and this man earned and paid away talents upon talents ; and fled, owing who knows how many more ! Does a man earn fifteen thousand pounds a year, toiling by day, talking by night, having horrible unrest in his bed, ghastly terrors at waking, seeing an officer lurking at every corner, a sword of justice for ever hang- ing over his head — and have for his sole diversion a newsj^aper, a lonely mutton-chop, and a little sherry and seltzer-water ? In the German stories we i^ead how men sell themselves to — a certain Personage, and that Personage cheats them. He gives them wealth ; yes, but the gold pieces turn into worthless leaves. He sets them before splendid banquets ; yes, but what an awful grin that black footman has who lifts up the dish-cover ; and don't you smell a peculiar sulphurous odor in the dish ? Faugh ! take it away ; I can't eat. He promises them splendors and triumphs. The conqueror's car rolls glittering through the city, the multitude shout and huzza. Drive on, coachman. Yes, but who is that hanging on behind the carriage } Is this the reward of eloquence, talents, industry ? Is this the end of a life's labor.' Don't you remember how, when the dragon was infesting the neighloorhood of Babylon, the citizens used to walk dismally out of evenings, and look at the valleys round about strewed with the bones of the victims whom the monster had devoured ? O insatiate brute, and most disgusting, brazen, and scaly reptile ! Let us be thankful, children, that it has not gobbled us up too. Quick. Let us turn away, and pray that we may be kept out of the reach of his horrible maw, jaw, claw I When I first came up to London, as innocent as Monsieur Gil Bias, I also fell in with some pretty acquaintances, found my way into several caverns, and delivered my purse to more than one gallant gentleman of the road. One I remember especially — one who never eased me personally of a single maravedi — one than whom I never met a bandit more gallant, courteous, and amiable. Rob me ? Rolando feasted me ; treated me to his dinner and his wine ; kept a generous table for his friends, and I know was most liberal to many of them. How well I remember one of his speculations ! It was a great plan for smuggling tobacco. Revenue officers were to be bought off ; silent ships were to ply on the Thames ; cunning depots were to be established, and hundreds of thousands of pounds 222 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. to be made by the coup. How his kind eyes kindled as he propounded the scheme to me ! How easy and certain it seemed ! It might have succeeded : I can't say: but the bold and merry, the hearty and kindly Rolando came to grief — a little matter of imitated signatures occasioned a Bank pros- ecution of Rolando the Brave. He walked about armed, and vowed he would never be taken alive : but taken he was ; tried, condemned, sentenced to perpetual banishment ; and I heard that for some time he was universally popular in the colony which had the honor to possess him. What a song he could sing ! 'Twas when the cup was sparkling before us, and heaven gave a portion of its blue, boys, blue, that I remember the song of Roland at the " Old Piazza Coffee-house." And now where is the "Old Piazza Coffee-house .'"' Where is Thebes ? where is Troy ? where is the Colossus of Rhodes 1 Ah, Rolando, Rolando ! thou wert a gallant captain, a cheery, a handsome, a merry. At me thou never presentedst pistol. Thou badest the bumper of Burgundy fill, fill for me, giving those who preferred it Champagne. Coeluvi non animtim, &c. Do you think he has reformed now that he has crossed the sea, and changed the air? I have my own opinion. Howbeit, Rolando, thou wert a most kind and hospitable bandit. And I love not to think of thee with a chain at thy shin. Do you know how all these memories of unfortunate men have come upon me ? When they came to frighten me this morning by speaking of my robbed pears, my perforated garden wall, I was reading an article in the Saturday Review about Rupilius. I have sat near that young man at a public dinner, and beheld him in a gilded uniform. But yesterday he lived in splendor, had long hair, a flowing beard, a jewel at his neck, and a smart surtout. So attired, he stood but yesterday in court ; and to-day he sits over a bowl of prison cocoa, with a shaved head, and in a felon's jerkin. That beard and head shaved, that gaudy deputy-lieutenant's coat exchanged for felon uniform, and your daily bottle of champagne for prison cocoa, my poor Rupilius, what a comfort it must be to have the business brought to an end ! Champagne was the honorable gentleman's drink in the House of Commons dining-room, as I am informed. What uncommonly dry cham- pagne that must have been ! When we saw him outwardly happy, how miserable he must have been ! when we thought him prosperous, how dismally poor ! When tha great Mr. Harker, at the public dinners called out — " Gentlemen, charge your glasses, and please silence for the Honorable Member DESSEJAT'S. 223 for Lambeth ! " how that Honorable Member must have writhed inwardly ! One day, when tliere was a talk of a gentleman's honor being questioned, Rupilius said, " If any man doubted mine, I would knock him down." But that speech was in the way of business. The Spartan boy, who stole the fox, smiled while the beast was gnawing him under his cloak : I promise you Rupilius had some sharp fangs gnashing under his. We have sat at the same feast, I say : we have paid our contribution to the same charity. Ah ! when I ask this day for my daily bread, I pray not to be led into temptation and to be delivered from evil. DESSEIN'S. I ARRIVED by the night-mail packet from Dover, The passage had been rough, and the usual consequences had ensued. I was disinclined to travel farther that night on my road to Paris, and knew the Calais hotel of old as one of the cleanest, one of the dearest, one of the most comfortable hotels on the continent of Europe. There is no town more French than Calais. That charming old " Hotel Dessein," with its court, its gardens, its lordly kitchen, its princely waiter — a gentleman of the old school, who has welcomed the finest company in Europe — have long been known to me. I have read complaints in The Times, more than once, I think, that the Dessein bills are dear. A bottle of soda-water certainly costs well, never mind how much. I remember as a boy, at the " Ship " at Dover (im- perante Carolo Decimo), when, my place to London being paid, I had but 12s. left after a certain little Paris excursion (about which my benighted parents never knew anything), or- dering for dinner a whiting, a beefsteak, and a glass of negus, and the bill was, dinner 7^., glass of negus 2s., waiter 6d., and only half a crown left, as I was a sinner, for the guard and coachman on the way to London ! And I was a sinner. I had gone without leave. What a long, dreary, guilty forty hours' journey it was from Paris to Calais, I remember ! How did I come to think of this escapade, which occurred in the Easter vacation of the year 1830 ? I always think of it when I am crossing to Calais. Guilt, sir, remains stamped on the memory, and I feel easier in my mind now that it is liberated of this old peccadillo. I met my college tutor only yesterday. We were travelling, and stopped at the same hotel. He had the 224 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. very next room to mine. After he had gone into his apart- ment, havinj^' shaken me quite kindly by the hand, I felt in- clined to knock at his door and say, " Doctor Bentley, I beg your pardon, but do you remember, when I was going clown at the Easter vacation in 1830, you asked me where I was going to spend my vacation ? And I said, With my friend Slingsby, in Huntingdonshire. Well, sir, I grieve to have to confess that I told you a fib. I had got 20/. and was going for a lark to Paris, where my friend Edwards was staying." There, it is out. The Doctor will read it, for I did not wake him up after all to make my confession, but protest he shall have a copy of this Roundabout sent to him when he returns to his lodge. They gave me a bedroom there ; a very neat room on the first floor, looking into the pretty garden. The hotel must look pretty much as it did a hundred years ago when Jie visited it. I wonder whether he paid his bill ? Yes : his journey was just begun. He had borrowed or got the money somehow. Such a man would spend it liberally enough when he had it, give generously — nay, drop a tear over the fate of the poor fellow whom he relieved. I don't believe a word he says, but I never accused him of stinginess about money. That is a fault of much more virtuous people than he. Mr. Laurence is ready enough with his purse when there are anybody's guineas in it. Still when I went to bed in the room, in his room ; when I think how I admire, dislike, and have abused him, a certain dim feeling of apprehension filled my mind at the midnight hour. What if I should see his lean figure in the blacksatin breeches, his sinister smile, his long thin finger pointing to me in the moonlight (for I am in bed, and have popped my candle out), and he should say, " You mistrust me, you hate me, do you ? And you, don't you know how Jack, Tom, and Harry, your brother authors, hate yon 1 " I grin and laugh in the moonlight, in the midnight, in the silence. " O you ghost in blacksatin breeches and a wig ! I like to be hated by some men," I say, " I know men whose lives are a scheme, whose laughter is a conspiracy, whose smile means something else, whose hatred is a cloak, and I had rather these men should hate me than not," " My good sir," says he, with a ghastly grin on his lean- face, " you have your wish," " Aj>res ? " I say. " Please let me go to sleep, I sha'n't sleep any the worse because " " Because there are insects in the bed, and they sting you ? " (This is only by way of illustration, my good sir ; the animals D ESSE IN' S. 225 don't bite me now. All the house at present seems to me ex- cellently clean.) " 'Tis absurd to affect this indifference. If you are thin-skinned, and the reptiles bite, they keep you from sleep." " There are some men who cry out at a flea-bite as loud as if they were torn by a vulture," I growl. " Men of the genus irritabile, my worthy good gentleman I — and you are one." " Yes, sir, I am of the profession, as you say ; and I dare say make a great shouting and crying at a small hurt." " You are ashamed of that quality by which you earn your subsistence, and such reputation as you have .■' Your sensibil- ity is your livelihood, my worthy friend. You feel a pang of pleasure or pain ? It is noted in your memory, and some day or other makes its appearance in your manuscript. Wh}^, in your last Roundabout rubbish you mention reading your first novel on the day when King George IV. was crowned. I re- member him in his cradle at St. James's, a lovely little babe ; a gilt Chinese railing was before him, and I dropped the tear of sensibility as I gazed on the sleeping cherub." "A tear — a fiddlestick, Mr. Sterne," I growled out, for of course I knew my friend in the wig and satin breeches to be no other than the notorious, nay, celebrated Mr. Laurence Sterne. " Does not the sight of a beautiful infant charm and melt you, mon ami ? If not, I pity you. Yes, he was beautiful. I was in London the year he was born. I used to breakfast at the ' Mount Coffee-house.' I did not become the fashion until two years later, when my ' Tristram ' made his appearance, who has held his own for a hundred years. By the way, mon bon monsieur, how many authors of your present time will last till the next century .? Do you think Brown will ? " I laughed with scorn as I lay in my bed (and so did the ghost give a ghastly snigger). " Brown ! " I roared. " One of the most overrated men that ever put pen to paper ! " " What do you think of Jones ? " I grew indignant with this old cynic. " As a reasonable ghost, come out of the other world, you don't mean," I said, *' to ask me a serious opinion of Mr. Jones ? His books may b6 very good reading for maid-servants and school-boys, but you don't ask me to read them ? As a scholar yourself you must know that " "Well, then, Robinson?" 15 2 2 6 J^O UNDA BOUT PA PERS. " Robinson, I am told, has merit. I dare say ; I nevei have been able to read his books, and can't, therefore, form any opinion about Mr. Robinson. At least you will allow that I am not speaking in a prejudiced manner about hif?t." " Ah ! I see you men of letters have your cabals and jealousies, as we had in my time. There was an Irish fellow by the name of Gouldsmith, v/ho used to abuse me ; but he went into no genteel company — and faith ! it mattered little, his praise or abuse. I never was more surprised than when I heard that Mr. Irving, an American gentleman of parts and elegance, had wrote the fellow's life. To make a hero of that man, my dear sir, 'twas ridiculous ! You followed in the fashion, I hear, and chose to lay a wreath before this queer little idol. Pre- posterous ! A pretty writer, who has turned some neat couplets. Bah ! I have no patience with Master Posterity, that has choseii to take up this fellow, and make a hero of him ! And there was another gentleman of my time, Mr. Thiefcatcher Fielding, forsooth ! a fellow with the strength, and the tastes, and the manners of a porter ! What madness has possessed you all to bow before that Calvert Butt of a man ? — a creature without elegance or sensibility ! The dog had spirits, certainly. I remember my Lord Bathurst praising them : but as for read- ing his books — ma/oi, I would as lief go and dive for tripe in a cellar. The man's vulgarity stifles me. He wafts me whiffs of gin. Tobacco and onions are in his great coarse laugh, which choke xw&, pardi ; and I don't think much better of the other fellow — the Scots' gallipot purveyor — Peregrine Clinker, Humphrey Random — how did the fellow call his rubbish.!" Neither of these men had the bcl air, the ban ton, the je nc sais quoi. Pah ! If I meet them in my walks by our Stygian river, I give them a wide berth, as that hybrid apothecary fellow would say. An ounce of civet, good apothecary ; horrible, horrible ! The mere thought of the coarseness of those men gives me the chair de poulc. Mr. Fielding, especially, has no more sensi- bility than a butcher in Fleet Market. He takes his heroes out of alehouse kitchens, or worse places still. And this is the person whom Posterity has chosen to honor along with me — me ! Faith, Monsieur Posterity, you have put me in pretty com- pany, and I see you are no wiser than we were in our time. Mr. Fielding, forsooth ! Mr. Tripe and Onions ! Mr. Cow- heel and Gin ! Thank you for nothing. Monsieur Posterity ! " " And so," thought I, " even among these Stygians this envy and quarrelsomeness (if you will permit me the word) survive ? What a pitiful meanness ! To be sure, I can understand this D ESSE IN 'S. 227 feeling to a certain extent ; a sense of justice will prompt it. In my own case, I often feel myself forced to protest against the absurd praises lavished on contemporaries. Yesterday, for instance. Lady Jones was good enough to praise one of my works. IVes hien. But in the very next minute she began, with quite as great enthusiasm, to praise Miss Hobson's last romance. My good creature, what is that woman's praise worth who absolutely admires the writings of Miss Hobson ? I offer a friend a bottle of '44 claret, fit for a pontifical supper. ' This is capital wine,' says he ; ' and now we have finished the bottle, will you give me a bottle of that ordinaire we drank the other day .'' ' Very well, my good man. You are a good judge — of or- dinaire, I daresay. Nothing so provokes my anger, and rouses my sense of justice, as to hear other men undeservedly praised. In a word, if you wish to remain friends with me, don't praise anybody. You tell me that the Venus de' Medici is beautiful, or Jacob Omnium is tall. Qice diablc I Can't I judge for my- self ? Haven't I eyes and a foot-rule ? I don't think the Venus is so handsome, since you press me. She is pretty, but she has no expression. And as for Mr. Omnium, I can see much taller men in a fair for twopence." "And so," I said, turning round to Mr. Sterne, "you are actually jealous of Mr. Fielding ? O you men of letters, you men of letters ! Is not the world (your world, I mean) big enough for all of you ? " I often travel in my sleep. I often of a night find myself walking in my night-gown about the gray streets. It is awk- ward at first, but somehow nobody makes any remark. I glide along over the ground with my naked feet. The mud does not wet them. The passers-by do not tread on them. I am wafted over the ground, down the stairs, through the doors. This sort of travelling, dear friends, I am sure you have all of you in- dulged. Well, on the night in question (and, if you wish to know the precise date, it was the 31st of September last), after having some little conversation with Mr. Sterne in our bedroom, I must have got up, though I protest I don't know how, and come down stairs with him into the coffee-room of the " Hotel Des- sein," where the moon was shining, and a cold supper was laid out. I forget what we had — " vol-au-vent d'oeufs de Phenix — agneau aux pistaches a la Barmecide," — what matters what we had? " As regards supper this is certain, the less you have of it the better." 228 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. That is what one of the guests remarked, — a shabby old man, in a wig, and such a dirty, ragged, disreputable dressing- gown that I should have been quite surprised at him, only one never is surprised in dr under certain circumstances. " I can't eat 'em now," said the greasy man (with his false old teeth, I wonder he could eat anything). " I remember Al- vanley eating three suppers once at Carlton House — one night de petite comitcy ^^ Fetit comite, sir," said Mr. Sterne. " Dammy, sir, let me tell my own story my own way. I say, one night at Carlton House, playing at blind-hookey with York, Wales, Tom Raikes, Prince Boothby, and Dutch Sam the boxer, Alvanley ate three suppers, and won three-and-twenty hundred pounds in ponies. Never saw a fellow with such an appetite, except Wales in his good time. But he destroyed the finest digestion a man ever had with maraschino, by Jove — always at it." " Try mine," said Mr. Sterne. " What a doosid queer box," says Mr. Brummell. " I had it from a Capuchin friar in this town. The box is but a horn one ; but to the nose of sensibility Araby's perfume is not more delicate." " I call it doosid stale old rappee," says Mr. Brummell — (as for me I declare I could not smell anything at all in either of the boxes.) " Old boy in smock-frock, take a pinch ? " The old boy in the smock-frock, as Mr. Brummell called him, was a very old man, with long white beard, wearing not a smock- frock, but a shirt ; and he had actually nothing else save a rope round his neck, which hung behind his chair in the queerest way. " Fair sir," he said, turning to Mr. Brummell, " when the Prince of Wales and his father laid siege to our town " " What nonsense are you talking, old cock ? " says Mr. Brummell ; " Wales was never here. His late Majesty George IV. passed through on his way to Hanover. My good man, you don't seem to know what's up at all. What is he talkin' about the siege of Calais .? I lived here fifteen years ! Ought to know. What's his old name ? " " I am Master Eustace of Saint Peter's," said the old gen- tleman in the shirt. " When my Lord King Edward laid siege to this city " " Laid siege to Jericho ! " cries Mr. Brummell. " The old man is cracked — cracked, sir ! " " Laid siege to this city," continued the old man, " I DESSEIN'S. 229 and five more promised Messire Gautier de Mauny that we would give ourselves up as ransom for the place. And we came before our Lord King Edward, attired as you see, and the fair queen begged our lives out of her gramercy." " Queen, nonsense ! you mean the Princess of Wales — pretty woman, J>etit nez retrousse^ grew monstrous stout ? " sug- gested Mr. Brummell, whose reading was evidently not exten- sive. " Sir Sidney Smith was a fine fellow, great talker, hook nose, so has Lord Cochrane, so has Lord Wellington. She was very sweet on Sir Sidney." "Your acquaintance with the history of Calais does not seem to be considerable," said Mr. Sterne to Mr. Brummell, with a shrug. *' Don't it, bishop ? — for I conclude you are a bishop by your wig. I know Calais as well as any man. I lived here for years before I took that confounded consulate at Caen. Lived in this hotel, then at Leleux's. People used to stop here. Good fellows used to ask for George Brummell ; Hert- ford did, so did the Duchess of Devonshire. Not know Calais indeed ! That is a good joke. Had many a good dinner here : sorry I ever left it." " My Lord King Edward," chirped the queer old gentle- man in the shirt, " colonized the place with his English, after we had yielded it up to him. I have heard tell they kept it for nigh three hundred years, till my Lord de Guise took it from a fair Queen, Mary of blessed memory, a holy woman. Eh, but Sire Gautier of Mauny was a good knight, a valiant captain, gentle and courteous withal ! Do you remember his ransoming the ? " " What is the old fellow twaddlin' about .'' " cries Brummell. " He is talking about some knight ? — I never spoke to a knight, and very seldom to a baronet. Firkins, my butterman, was a knight — a knight and alderman. Wales knighted him once on going into the City." " I am not surprised that the gentleman should not under- stand Messire Eustace of St. Peter's," said the ghostly indi- vidual addressed as Mr. Sterne. " Your reading doubtless has not been very extensive ? " " Dammy, sir, speak for yourself ! " cries Mr. Brummell, testily. " I never professed to be a reading man, but I was as good as my neighbors. Wales wasn't a reading man ; York wasn't a reading man ; Clarence wasn't a reading man ; Sussex was ; but he wasn't a man in society. I remember reading your * Sentimental Journey, old boy : read it to the Duchess at Beau- «3o ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. voir, I recollect, and she cried over it. Doosid clever amusing book, and does you great credit. Birron wrote doosid clever books, too ; so did Monk Lewis. George Spencer was an elegant poet, and my dear Duchess of Devonshire, if she had not been a grande dame, would have beat 'em all, by Gee rge. Wales couldn't write : he could sing, but he couldn't spell." " Ah, you know the great world ? so did I in my time, Mr. Brummell. I have had the visiting tickets of half the nobility at my lodgings in Bond Street. But they left me there no more cared for than last year's calendar," sighed Mr. Sterne. " I wonder who is the inode in London now ? One of our late arrivals, my Lord Macaulay, has prodigious merit and learning, and, faith, his histories are more amusing than any novels, my own included." " Don't know, I'm sure ; not in my line. Pick this bone of chicken," says Mr. Brummell, trifling with a skeleton bird be- fore him. " I remember in this city of Calais worse fare than yon bird," said old Mr. Eustace of Saint Peter's. " Marry, sirs, when my Lord King Edward laid siege to us, lucky was he who could get a slice of horse for his breakfast, and a rat was sold at the price of a hare." " Hare is coarse food, never tasted rat," remarked the Beau. " Table-d'hote poor fare enough for a man like me, who has been accustomed to the best of cookery. But rat — stifle me ! I couldn't swallow that : never could bear hardship at all." " We had to bear enough when my Lord of England pressed us. 'Twas pitiful to see the faces of our women as the siege went on, and hear the little ones asking for dinner." " Always a bore, children. At dessert, they are bad enough, but at dinner they're the deuce and all," remarked Mr. Brummell. Messire Eustace of St. Peter's did not seem to pay much attention to the Beau's remarks, but continued his own train of thought as old men will do. " I hear," said he, " that there has actually been no war between us of France and you men of England for wellnigh fifty year. Ours has ever been a nation of warriors. And besides her regular found men-at-arms, 'tis said the English of the present time have more than a hundred thousand of archers with weapons that will carry for half a mile. And a multitude have come amongst us of late from a great Western country, never so much as heard of in my time — valiant men and great DESSEIN'S. 231 drawers of the long-bow, and they say they have ships in ar- mor that no shot can penetrate. Is it so ? Wonderful ! The best armor, gossips, is a stout heart." " And if ever manly heart beat under shirt-frill, thine is that heart, Sir Eustace ! " cried Mr. Sterne, enthusiastically. " We, of France, were never accused of lack of courage, sir, in so far as I know," said Messire Eustace. " We have shown as much in a thousand wars with you English by sea and land ; and sometimes we conquered, and sometimes, as is the fortune of war, we were discomfited. And notably in a great sea-fight which befell off Ushant on the first of June Our Amiral, Messire Villaret de Joyeuse, on board his galleon named the ' Vengeur,' being sore pressed by an English bom- bard, rather than yield the crew of his ship to mercy, deter- mined to go down with all on board of her : and to the cry of Vive la Re'pub or, I would say, of Notre Dame a la Res- cousse, he and his crew all sank to an immortal grave " " Sir," said I, looking v.'ith amazement at the old gentle- man, " Surely, surely there is some mistake in your statement. Permit me to observe that the action of the first of June took place five hundred years after your time, and " "Perhaps I am confusing my dates," said the old gentle- man, with a faint blush. " You say I am mixing up the trans- actions of my time on earth with the story of my successors ? It may be so. We take no count of a few centuries more or less in our dwelling by the darkling Stygian river. Of late, there came amongst us a good knight, Messire de Cambronne, who fought against you English in the country of Flanders, being captain of the guard of my Lord the King of France, in a famous battle where you English would have been utterly routed but for the succor of the Prussian heathen. This Messire de Cambronne, when bidden to yield by you of England, an- swered this, ' The guard dies, but never surrenders ;' and fought a long time afterwards, as became a good knight. In our wars with you of England it may have pleased the Fates to give you the greater success, but on our side, also, there has been no lack of brave deeds performed by brave men." " King Edward may have been the victor, sir, as being the strongest, but you are the hero of the siege of Calais ! " cried Mr. Sterne. " Your story is sacred, and your name has been blessed for five hundred years. Wherever men speak of patriot- ism and sacrifice, Eustace of Saint Pierre shall be beloved and remembered. I prostrate myself before the bare feet which Stood before King Edward. What collar of chivalry is to be 232 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. compared to that glorious order which you wear ? Think, sir, how out of the myriad milHons of our race, you, and some few more, stand forth as exemplars of duty and honor. Fortunatl nimium ! " "Sir,'' said the old gentleman, "I did but my duty at a painful moment ; and 'tis matter of wonder to me that men talk still, and glorify such a trifling matter. By our Lady's grace, in the fair kingdom of France, there are scores of thou- sands of men, gentle and simple, who would do as I did. Does not every sentinel at his post, does not every archer in the front of battle, brave it, and die where his captain bids him ? Who am I that I should be chosen out of all France to be an example of fortitude ? I braved no tortures, though these I trust I would have endured with a good heart. I was subject to threats only. Who was the Roman knight of whom the Latin clerk Horatius tells ? " " A Latin clerk ? Faith, I forget my Latin," says Mr. Brummell. "Ask the parson here." " Messire Regulus, I remember, was his name. Taken pris- oner by the Saracens, he gave his knightly word, and was per- mitted to go seek a ransom among his own people. Being unable to raise the sum that was a fitting ransom for such a knight, he returned to Afric, and cheerfully submitted to the tortures which the Paynims inflicted. And 'tis said he took leave of his friends as gayly as though he were going to a vil- lage kermes, or riding to his garden house in the suburbs of the city." " Great, good, glorious man ! " cried Mr. Sterne, very much moved. " Let me embrace that gallant hand and bedew it with my tears ! As long as honor lasts thy name shall be re- membered. See this dewdrop twinkling on my cheek ! 'Tis the sparkling tribute that Sensibility pays to Valor. Though in my life and practice I may turn from Virtue, believe me, I never have ceased to honor her ! Ah, Virtue ! Ah, Sensi- bility ! Oh " Here Mr. Sterne was interrupted by a monk of the Order of St. Francis, who stepped into the room, and begged us all to take a pinch of his famous old rappee. I suppose the snuff was very pungent, for, with a great start, I woke up ; and now perceived that I must have been dreaming altogether. " Des- sein's " of nowadays is not the " Dessein's " which Mr. Sterne, and Mr. Brummell, and I recollect in the good old times. The town of Calais has bought the old hotel, and " Dessein " has gone over to " Quillacq's." And I was there yesterday. And ON SOME CARP A T SANS SOUCL 233 I remember old diligences, and old postilions in pigtails and jackboots, who were once as alive as I am, and whose crack- ing whips I have heard in the midnight many and many a time. Now, where are they ? Behold, they have been ferried ovei Styx, and have passed away into limbo, I wonder what time does my boat go ? Ah ! Here comes the waiter bringing me my little bill. ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCx. We have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of ninety, who has passed the last twenty-five years of her old life in a great metropolitan establishment, the workhouse, namely, of the parish of Saint Lazarus*. Stay — twenty-three or four years ago, she came out once, and thought to earn a little money by hop-picking ; but being overworked, and having to lie out at night, she got a palsy which has incapacitated her from all further labor, and which has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since. An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how poverty makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows, this poor old shaking body has to lay herself down every night in her workhouse bed by the side of some other old woman with whom she may or may not agree. She herself can't be a very pleasant bedfellow, poor thing ! with her shaking old limbs and cold feet. She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not thinking of happy old times, for hers never were happy ; but sleepless with aches, and agues, and rheumatism of old age. " The gentleman gave me brandy-and-water," she said, her old voice shaking with rapture at the thought. I never had a great opinion of Queen Charlotte, but I like her better now from what this old lady told me. The Queen, who loved snuff herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain poorhouses ; and, in her watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen Charlotte's snuff, " and it do comfort me, sir, that it do ! " Piiheris exigiii munus. Here is a forlorn aged creature, shak- ing with palsy, with no soul among the great struggling multi- tude of mankind to care for her, not quite trampled out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny legacy. Let me 234 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. think as I write. (The next month's sermon, thank goodness ! is safe in press.) This discourse will appear at the season when I have read that wassail-bowls make their appearance ; at the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages, plum-puddings, jollifications for school-boys ; Christmas bills, and reminis- cences more or less sad and sweet for elders. If we oldsters are not merry, we shall be having a semblance of merriment. We shall see the young folks laughing round the holly-bush. We shall pass the bottle round cosily as we sit by the fire. That old thing will have a sort of festival too. Beef, beer, and pudding will be served to her for that day also, Christmas falls on a Thursday. Friday is the workhouse day for coming out. Mary, remember that old Goody Twcshoes has her invi- tation for Friday, 26th December ? Ninety is she, poor old soul ? Ah ! what a bonny face to catch under a mistletoe ! "Yes, ninety, sir," she says, "and my mother was a hundred, and my grandmother was a hundred and two." Herself ninety, her mother, a hundred, her grandmother a hundred and two .-' What a queer calculation ! Ninety ! Very good, granny : you were born, then, in 1772. Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were orn, and was born therefore in 1745. Your grandmother was thirty when her daughter was born, and was born therefore in 17 15. We will begin with the present granny first. My good old creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentle- man for whom your mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith, author of a " History of Eng- land," the " Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always good to children. That gentleman who wellnigh smoth- ered you by sitting down on you as you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr. S. Johnson, whose history of " Rasselas " you have never read, my poor soul ; and whose tragedy of " Irene " I don't believe any man in these kingdoms ever per- used. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr. Burke and your Mr. Johnson, and your Dr. Goldsmith. Your father often took him home in a chair to his lodgings ; and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond Street, the famous wit. Of course, my good creature, you remember the Gordon Riots, and crying No Popery before Mr. Langdale's house, the Po- ON SOME CARP A T SANS SOU CI. 235 pish distiller's, and that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield's books in Bloomsbury Square ? Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have seen ! For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed's Hill ; for the peace in 18 14, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St. James's Park ; for the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales, Goody, don't you ? Yes ; and you went in a procession of laundresses to pay your respects to his good lady, the injured Queen of Eng- land, at Brandenburg House ; and you remember your mother told you how she was taken to see the Scotch lords executed at the Tower. And as for your grandmother, she was born five years after the battle of Malplaquet, she was ; where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the Queen. With the help of a " Wade's Chronology," I can make out ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as many in the peerage-books. Peerage-books and pedigrees ? What does she know about them .? Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to her ? Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe ? Your mother may have seen him embark, and your father may have carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may have cried huzza for Marlborough ; but what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever so much as hear tell of his name ? How many hundred or thousand of years had that toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct Exhibition ? — and yet he was not a bit better informed than toads seven or eight hundred years younger. " Don't talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and Prince Dukes, and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is it ? " says granny. " I know there was a good Queen Char- lotte, for she left me snuff ; and it comforts me of a night when I lie awake." To me there is something very touching in the notion of that little pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully inhaled by her in the darkness. Don't you remember what traditions there used to be of chests of plate, bulses of dia- monds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the country privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relations in M-ckl-nb-rg Str-l-tz ? Not all the treasure went. Non omnis moritur. A* poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts her shaking old hand to her nose. Glid- ing noiselessly among the beds where lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old ghost 236 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. with a snuff-box that does not creak. " There, Goody, take of my rappee. You will not sneeze, and I shall not say, ' God bless you.' But you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won't you .-• Ah ! I had a many troubles, a many troubles. I was a prisoner almost so much as you are. I had to eat boiled mutton every day : cntre nous, I abominated it. But I never complained. I swallowed it. I made the best of a hard life. We have all our burdens to bear. But hark ! I hear the cock- crow, and snuff the morning air." And with this the royal ghost vanishes up the chimney — if there be a chimney in that dismal harem, where poor old Twoshoes and her companions pass their nights — their dreary nights, their restless nights, their cold long nights, shared in what glum companionship, illumined by what a feeble taper ! " Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that your mother was seven-and-twenty years old when you were born, and that she married your esteemed father when she herself was twenty-five .'' 1 745, then, was the date of your dear mother's birth. I dare say her father was absent in the Low Countries, with his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, under whom he had the honor of carrying a halberd at the famous engage- ment of Fontenoy — or if not there, he may have been at Pres- ton Pans, under General Sir John Cope, when the wild High- landers broke through all the laws of discipline and the Eng- lish lines ; and, being on the spot, did he see the famous ghost which didn't appear to Colonel Gardiner of the Dragoons .■' My good creature, is it possible you don't remember that Doc- tor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Oxford, as you justly say), old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr. Pope, of Twitnam, died in the year of your birth ? What a wretched memory you have ! What .'' haven't they a library, and the commonest books of reference at the old convent of Saint Lazarus, where you dwell >. " '' Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr. Swift, Atossa, and Mr. Pope, of Twitnam ! What is the gentleman talking about .''" says old Goody, with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like an old parrot — you know they live to be as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is compar- atively young (ho ! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to an immense old age. Some which Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are there now, with great humps of blue mould on their old backs ; and they could tell all sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak — but they are very silent, carps are — of their nature peu communicatives. Oh ! what has been thy long ON SOME CARP AT SANS SOUCL «37 life, old Goody, but a dole of bread-and-water and a perch on a cage ; a dreary swim round and round a Lethe of a pond ? What are Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy ones, and do they know it is a grandchild of England who brings bread to feed them ? No ! Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand years old and have nothing to tell but that one day is like another : and the history of friend Goody Twoshoes has not much more variety than theirs. Hard labor, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger most days. That is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank heaven, I am not as one of these ? " If I were eighty, would I like to feel the hunger always gnawing, gnawing ? to have to get up and make a bow when Mr. Bumble the beadle entered the common room ? to have to listen to Miss Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world ? If I were eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams, and snoring ; to march down my vale of years at word of com- mand, accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the other prisoners in my dingy, hopeless old gang ; to hold out a trembling hand for a sickly pittance of gruel, and say, " Thank you, ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she has done reading her sermon. John ! when Goody Twoshoes comes next Friday, I desire she may not be disturbed by theological controversies. You have a very fair voice, and I heard you and the maids sing- ing a hymn very sweetly the other night, and was thankful that our humble household should be in such harmony. Poor old Twoshoes is so old and toothless and quaky, that she can't sing a bit ; but don't be giving yourself airs over her, because she can't sing and you can. Make her comfortable at our kitchen hearth. Set that old kettle to sing by our hob. Warm her old stomach with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee ? Think of the ninety she has seen already ; the fourscore and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years ! If you were in her place, would you like to have a remem- brance of better early days, when you were young, and happy, and loving, perhaps ; or would you prefer to have no past on which your mind could rest? About the year 1788, Goody, were your cheeks rosy, and your eyes bright, and did some young fellow in powder and a pigtail look in them ? We may grow old, but to us some stories never are old. On a sudden 238 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. they rise up, not dead, but living — not forgotten, but freshly re- membered. The eyes gleam on us as they used to do. The dear voice thrills in our hearts. The rapture of the meeting, the terrible, terrible parting, again and again the tragedy is acted over. Yesterday, in the street, I saw a pair of eyes so like two which used to brighten at my coming once, that the whole past came back as I walked lonely, in the rush of the Strand, and I was young again in the midst of joys and sorrows alike sweet and sad, alike sacred and fondly remembered. If I tell a tale out of school, will any harm come to my old school-girl ? Once, a lady gave her a half-sovereign, which was a source of great pain and anxiety to Goody Twoshoes. She sewed it away in her old stays somewhere, thinking here at least was a safe investment — (vestis — a vest — an investment, — pardon me, thou poor old thing, but I cannot help the pleasantry). And what do you think .■' Another pensionnaire of the establishment cut the coin out of Goody's stays — aii oldiuoman who wait upon ttvo crutches ! Faugh, the old witch ! What t Violence amongst these toothless, tottering, trembling, feeble ones ? Robbery amongst the penniless ? Dogs coming and snatching Lazarus's crumbs out of his lap ? Ah, how indignant Goody was as she told the story ! To that pond at Potsdam where the carps live for hundreds of hundreds of years, with hunches of blue mould on their back, I dare say the little Prince and Princess of Preus- sen-Britannien come sometimes with crumbs and cakes to feed the mouldy ones. Those e3^es may have goggled from beneath the weeds at Napoleon's jack-boots : they have seen Frederick's lean shanks reflected in their pool ; and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them — and now, for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob, squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the ignoble struggle is over. Sans souci, indeed ! It is mighty well writing " Sans souci" over the gate ; but where is the gate through which Care has not slipped ? She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box : she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair : she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal : this very night I dare say she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes's meagre bolster, and whisper, " Will the gentleman and those ladies ask me again ? No, no ; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody ! For shame of yourself ! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What ? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For fourscore and ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and obscure .-' Peace and good* A U TOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. 239 will to thee, let us say at this Christmas season. Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim ! And of the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray, brother reader, we may not forget to set aside a part for those noble and silent poor, from whose innocent hands war has torn the means of labor. Enough ! As I hope for beef at Christmas, I vow a note shall be sent to Saint Lazarus Union House, in which Mr, Roundabout requests the honor of Mrs. Twoshoes's company on Friday, 26th December. AUTOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. Never have I seen a more noble tragic face. In the centre of the forehead there was a great furrow of care, towards which the brows rose piteously. What a deep solemn grief in the eyes ! They looked blankly at the object before them, but through it, as it were, and into the grief beyond. In moments of pain, have you not looked at some indifferent object so ? It mingles dumbly with your grief, and remains afterwards con- nected W'ith it in your mind. It may be some indifferent thing — a book which you were reading at the time when you receiv^ed her farewell letter (how well you remember the paragraph after- wards — the shape of the words, and their position on the page) j the words you were writing when your mother came in, and said it was all over — she was married — Emily married — to that insignificant little rival at whom you have laughed a hundred times in her company. Well, well ; my friend and reader, whoe'er you be — old man or young, wife or maiden — you have had your grief-pang. Boy, you have lain awake the first night at school, and thought of home. Worse still, man, you have parted from the dear ones with bursting heart : and, lonely boy, recall the bolstering an unfeeling comrade gave you ; and, lonely man, just torn from your children — their little tokens of affection yet in your pocket — pacing the deck at evening in the midst of the roaring ocean, you can remember how you were told that supper was ready, and how you went down to the cabin and had brandy-and-water and biscuit. You remember the taste of them. Yes ; forever. You took them whilst you and your Grief were sitting together, and your Grief clutched you round the soul. Serpent, how you have writhed round me, and bitten 24° ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. me ! Remorse, Remembrance, &c., come in the night season, and I feel you gnawing, gnawing 1****1 tell you that man's face was like Laocoon's (which, by the way, I always think overrated. The real head is at Brussels, at the Duke Daremberg's, not at Rome). That man ! What man ? That man of whom I said that his magnificent countenance exhibited the noblest tragic woe. He was not of European blood. He was handsome, but not of European beauty. His face white — not of a Northern white- ness ; his eyes protruding somewhat, and rolling in their grief. Those eyes had seen the Orient sun, and his beak was the eagle's. His lips were full. The beard, curling round them, was unkempt and tawny. The locks were of a deep, deep cop- pery red. The hands, swart and powerful, accustomed to the rough grasp of the wares in which he dealt, seemed unused to the flimsy artifices of the bath. He came from the Wilderness, and its sands were on his robe, his cheek, his tattered sandal, and the hardy foot it covered. And his grief — whence came his sorrow ? I will tell you. He bore it in his hand. He had evidently just concluded the compact by which it became his. His business was that of a purchaser of domestic raiment. At early dawn — nay, at what hour when the City is alive — do we not all hear the nasal cry of " Clo ? " In Paris, Habits Galons, Marchaiid d' habits, is the twanging signal with which the wandering merchant makes his presence known. It was in Paris I saw this man. Where else have I not seen him ? In the Roman Ghetto — at the Gate of David, in his fathers' once imperial city. The man I mean was an itinerant vendor and purchaser of wardrobes — what you call an * * * Enough ! You know his name. On his left shoulder hung his bag ; and he held in that hand a white hat, which I am sure he had just purchased, and which was the cause of the grief which smote his noble features. Of course I cannot particularize the sum, but he had given too much for that hat. He felt he might have got the thing for less money. It was not the amount, I am sure ; it was the principle involved. He had given fourpence (let us say) for that which threepence would have purchased. He had been done : and a manly shame was upon him, that he, whose energy, acuteness, experience, point of honor, should have made him the victor in any mercantile duel in which he should engage, had been overcome by a porter's wife, who very likely sold him the old hat, or by a student who was tired of it. I can understand his grief. Do I seem to be speaking of it in a A U TOUR DE MON CHAPE A U. 241 disrespectful or flippant way ? Then you mistake me. He had been outwitted. He had desired, coaxed, schemed, hag- gled, got what he wanted, and now found he had paid too much for his bargain. You don't suppose I would ask you to laugh at that man's grief ? It is you, clumsy cynic, who are disposed to sneer, whilst it may be tears of genuine sympathy are trickling down this nose of mine. What do you mean by laughing ? If you saw a wounded soldier on the field of bat- tle, would you laugh ? If you saw a ewe robbed of her lamb, would you laugh, you brute .'' It is you who are the cynic, and have no feeling : and you sneer because that grief is unintel- ligible to you which touches my finer sensibility. The Old- Clothes'-Man had been defeated in one of the daily battles of his most interesting, checkered, adventurous life. Have you ever figured to yourself what such a life must be ? The pursuit and the conquest of twopence must be the most eager and fascinating of occupations. We might all engage in that business if we would. Do not whist-players, for example, toil, and think, and lose their temper over six- penny pomts .'' They 'bring study, natural genius, long fore- thought, memory, and careful historical experience to bear upon their favorite labor. Don't tell me that it is the six- penny points, and five shillings the rub, which keeps them for hours over their painted pasteboard. It is the desire to conquer. Hours pass by. Night glooms. Dawn, it may be, rises unheeded ; and they sit calling for fresh cards at the "Portland," or the "Union," while waning candles splutter in the sockets, and languid waiters snooze in the ante-room. Sol rises. Jones has lost four pounds : Brown has won two ; Robinson lurks away to his family house and (mayhap, in- dignant) Mrs. R. Hours of evening, night, morning, have passed away whilst they have been waging this sixpenny bat- tle. What is the loss of four pounds to Jones, the gain of two to Brown ? B. is, perhaps, so rich that two pounds more or less are as naught to him ; J. is so hopelessly involved that to win four pounds cannot benefit his creditors, or alter his condition ; but they play for that stake : they put forward their best energies : they ruff, finesse (what are the technical words, and how do I know ?). It is but a sixpenny game if you like ; but they want to win it. So as regards my friend yonder with the hat. He stakes his money : he wishes to win the game, not the hat merely. I am not prepared to say that he is not inspired by a noble ambition. Caesar wished to be first in a village. If first of a hundred yokels, why not 16 242 roujVdabout papers. first of two ? And my friend the old-clothes'-man wishes to win his game, as well as to turn his little sixpence. Suppose in the game of life — and it is but a twopenny game after all — you are equally eager of winning. Shall you be ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it .'' There are games, too, which are becoming to particular periods of life. I remember in the days of our youth, when my friend Arthur Bowler was an eminent cricketer. Slim, swift, strong, well- built, he presented a goodly appearance on the ground in his flannel uniform. Militasti noii sine gloria, Bowler my boy ! Hush ! We tell no tales. Mum is the word. Yonder comes Charley his son. Now Charles his son has taken the field, and is famous among the eleven of his school. Bowler senior, with his capacious waistcoat, &c., waddling after a ball, would present an absurd object, whereas it does the eyes good to see Bowler junior scouring the plain — a young exemplar of joyful health, vigor, activity. The old boy wisely contents himself with amusements more becoming his age and waist ; takes his sober ride ; visits his farm soberly — busies himself about his pigs, his i^loughing, his peaches, or what not ? Very small routinicr amusements interest him ; and (thank goodness !) nature provides very kindly for kindly-disposed fogies. We relish those things which we scorned in our lusty youth. I see the young folks of an evening kindling and glowing over their delicious novels. I look up and watch the eager eye flashing down the page, being, for my part, perfectly contented with my twaddling old volume of " Howel's Letters," or the Gentlanafi's Magazine. I am actually arrived at such a calm frame of mind that I like batter-pudding, I never should have believed it possible ; but it is so. Yet a little while, and I may relish water-gruel. It will be the age of mon lait de poiile ct mon bon- net de nuit. And then— the cotton extinguisher is pulled over the old noddle, and the little flame of life is popped out. Don't you know elderly people who make learned notes in Army Lists, Peerages, and the like "i This is the batter-pud- ding, water-gruel of old age. The worn-out digestion does not care for stronger food. Formerly it could swallow twelve- hours' tough reading, and digest an encyclopaedia. If I had children to educate, I would, at ten or twelve years of age, have a professor, or professoress, of whist for them, and cause them to be well grounded in that great and useful game. You cannot learn it well when you are old, any more than you can learn dancing or billiards. In our house at home we youngsters did not play whist because we were dear AUTOUR DE MGN CHAPE A U. 243 obedient children, and the elders said playing at cards was " a waste of time." A waste of time, my good people ! Allans! What do elderly home-keeping people do of a night after din- ner ? Darby gets his newspaper ; my dear Joan her Missionary Magazine or her volume of Cumming's Sermons — and don't you know what ensues ? Over the arm of Darby's arm-chair the paper flutters to the ground unheeded, and he performs the trumpet obbligato que voiis savez on his old nose. My dear old Joan's head nods over her sermon (awakening though the doctrine may be). Ding, ding, ding : can that be ten o'clock ? It is time to send the servant to bed, my dear — and to bed master and mistress go too. But they have not wasted their time playing at cards. Oh, no ! I belong to a Club where there is whist of a night ; and not a little amusing is it to hear Brown speak of Thompson's play, and vice versa. But there is one man — Greatorex let us call him — who is the ac- knowledged Captain and primus of all the whist-players. We all secretly admire him. I, for my part, watch him in private life, hearken to what he says, note what he orders for dinner, and have that feeling of awe for him that I used to have as a boy for the cock of the school. Not play at whist ? '■'■Quelle triste vieillesse vous vans preparez ! " were the words of the great and good Bishop of Autun. I can't. It is too late now. Too late ! too late ! Ah ! humiliating confession ! That joy might have been clutched, but the life-stream has swept us by it — the swift life-stream rushing to the nearing sea. Too late ! too late ! Twentystone my boy ! When you read in the papers *' Valse a deux temps," and all the fashionable dances taught to adults by " Miss Lightfoots," don't you feel that you would like to go in and learn ? Ah, it is too late ! You have passed the choreas, Master Twentystone, and the young people are dancing without vou. I don't believe much of what my Lord Byron the poet says ; but when he wrote, " So, for a good old gentlemanly vice, I think I shall put up with avarice," I think his lordship meant what he wrote, and if he practised what he preached, shall not quarrel with him. As an occupation in declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing, and not unbecoming.' It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you must win in the long run. I am tired and want a cab. The fare to my house, say, is two shillings. The cabman will nat- urally want half a crown. I pull out my book. I show him the distance is exactly three miles and fifteen hundred and ninety 244 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. yards. I offer him my card — my winning card. As he retires with the two shillings, blaspheming inwardly, every curse is a compliment to my skill. I have played him and beat him ; and a sixpence is my spoil and just reward. This is a game, by the way, which women play far more cleverly than we do. But what an interest it imparts to life ! During the whole drive home I know I shall have my game at the journey's end ; am sure of my hand, and shall beat my adversary. Or I can play in another way. I won't have a cab at all, I will wait for the omnibus : I will be one of the damp fourteen in that steaming vehicle. I will wait about in the rain for an hour, and 'bus after 'bus shall pass, but I will not be beat. I will have a place, and get it at length, with my boots wet through, and an umbrella dripping between my legs. I have a rheumatism, a cold, a sore throat, a sulky evening, — a doctor's bill to- morrow perhaps ? Yes, but I have won my game, and am gainer of a shilling on this rubber. If you play this game all through life it is wonderful what daily interest it has, and amusing occupation. For instance, my wife goes to sleep after dinner over her volume of sermons. As soon as the dear soul is sound asleep, I advance softly and puff out her candle. Her pure dreams will be all the happier without that light ; and, say she sleeps an hour, there is a penny gained. As for clothes, parhleu ! there is not much money to be saved in clothes, for the fact is, as a man advances in life — as he becomes an Ancient Briton (mark the pleasantry) — he goes without clothes. When my tailor proposes something in the way of a change of raiment, I laugh in his face. My blue coat and brass buttons will last these ten years. Il; is seedy ? What then ? I don't want to charm anybody in particular. You say that my clothes are shabby ? What do I care .'' When I wished to look well in somebody's eyes, the matter may have been different. But now, when I receive my bill of lo/. (let us say) at the year's end, and contrast it with old tailor's reckonings, I feel that I have played the game with master tailor, and beat him ; and my old clothes are a token of the victory. I do not like to give servants board-wages, though they are cheaper than household bills : but I know they save out of board wages, and so beat me. This shows that it is not the money but the game which interests me. So about wine. I have it good and dear. I will trouble you to tell me where to get it good and cheap. You may as well give me the address of a shop where I can buy meat for fourpence a pound, or A U TOUR DE MON CHAPEAU. 245 sovereigns for fifteen shillings apiece. At the game of auctions, docks, shy wine-merchants, depend on it there is no winning ; and I would as soon think of buying jewelry at an auction in Fleet Street as of purchasing wine from one of your dreadful needy wine-agents such as infest every man's door. Grudge myself good wine ? As soon grudge my horse corn. Merci ! that would be a very losing game indeed, and your humble servant has no relish for such. But in the very pursuit of saving there must be a hundred harmless delights and pleasures which we who are careless necessarily forego. What do you know about the natural his- tory of your household ? Upon your honor and conscience, do you know the price of a pound of butter ? Can you say what sugar costs, and how much your family consumes and ought to consume .'' How much lard do you use in your house ? As I think on these subjects I own I hang down the head of shame. I suppose for a moment that you, who are reading this, are a middle-aged gentleman, and paterfamilias. Can you answer the above questions ? You know, sir, you cannot. Now turn • round, lay down the book, and suddenly ask Mrs. Jones and your daughters if they can answer? They cannot. They look at one another. They pretend they can answer. The}' can tell you the plot and principal characters of the last novel. Some of them know something about history, geology, and so forth. But of the natural history of home — Nichts, and for shame on you all 1 Hcmnis soyez ! For shame on you ? for shame on us ! In the early morning I hear a sort of call ox jo del under my window : and know 'tis the matutinal milkman leaving his can at my gate. O household gods ! have I lived all these years and don't know the price or the quantity of the milk which is delivered in that can ? Why don't I know ? As I live, if I live till to morrow morning, as soon as I hear the call of Lactantius, I will dash out upon him. How many cows ? How much milk, on an average, all the year round t What rent ? What cost of food and dairy servants .-' What loss of animals, and average cost of purchase ? If I interested myself properly about my pint (or hogshead, whatever it be) of milk, all this knowledge would ensue ; all this additional interest in life. What is this talk of my friend, Mr. Lewes, about objects at the sea-side, and so forth ? * Objects at the sea-side ? Objects at the area-bell : objects before my nose : objects which the butcher brings me in his tray : which the cook dresses and puts down before me, and over which I say grace ! My daily life is surrounded with * " Sea-side Studies." By G. H, Lewes. 246 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. objects which ought to interest me. The pudding I eat (or refuse, that is neither here nor there ; and, between ourselves, what I have said about batter-pudding may be taken cum grano — we are not come to that yet, except for the sake of argument or illustration) — the pudding, I say, on my plate, the eggs that made it, the fire that cooked it, the table-cloth on which it is laid, and so forth — are each and all of these objects a knowl- edge of which I may "acquire — a knowledge of the cost and production of which I might advantageously learn ? To the man who does know these things, I say the interest of life is prodigiously increased. The milkman becomes a study to him ; the baker a being he curiously and tenderly examines. Go, Lewes, and clap a hideous sea anemone into a glass : I will put a cabman under mine, and make a vivisection of a butcher. O Lares, Penates, and gentle household gods, teach me to sympathize with all that comes within my doors ! Give me an interest in the butcher's book. Let me look forward to the ensuing number of the grocer's account with eagerness. It seems ungrateful to my kitchen chimney not to know the cost of sweeping it ; and I trust that many a man who reads this, and muses on it, will feel, like the writer, ashamed of himself, and hang down his head humbly. Now, if to this household game you could add a little money interest, the amusement would be increased far beyond the mere money value, as a game at cards for sixpence is better than a rubber for nothing. If you can interest yourself about sixpence, all life is invested with a new excitement. From sunrise to sleeping you can always be playing that game — with butcher, baker, coal-merchant, cabman, omnibus man — nay, diamond-merchant and stockbroker. You can bargain for a guinea over the price of a diamond necklace, or for a sixteenth per cent, in a transaction at the Stock Exchange. We all know men who have this faculty who are not ungenerous with their money. They give it on great occasions. They are more able to help than you and I who spend ours, and say to poor Prod- igal who comes to us out at elbow, " My dear fellow, I should have been delighted : but I have already anticipated my quarter, and am going to ask Screwby if he can do anything for me." In this delightful, wholesome, ever-novel twopenny game, there is a danger of excess, as there is in every other pastime or occupation of life. If you grow too eager for your two- pence, the acquisition or the loss of it may affect your peace of mind, and peace of mind is better than any amount of two- pences. My frii^nd, the old-clothes'-man, whose agonies over AUTOUR DE MON CHAPE AU. 247 the hat have led to this rambling disquisition, has, I very much fear, by a too eager pursuit of small profits, disturbed the equanimity of a mind that ought to be easy and happy. " Had I stood out," he thinks, " I might have had the hat for three- pence," and he doubts whether, having given fourpence for it, he will ever get back his money. M}^ good Shadrach, if you go through life passionately deploring the irrevocable, and allow yesterday's transactions to embitter the cheerfulness of to-day and to-morrow — as lief walk down to the Seine, souse in, hats, body, clothes-bag and all, and put an end to your sor- row and sordid cares. Before and since Mr. Franklin wrote his pretty apologue of the Whistle have we not all made bar- gains of which we repented, and coveted and acquired objects for which we have paid too dearly ? Who has not purchased his hat in some market or other ? There is General M'Clellan's cocked-hat for example : I dare say he was eager enough to wear it, and he has learned that it is by no means cheerful wear. There were the militaiy beavers of Messeigneurs of Orleans : * they wore them gallantly in the face of battle ; but I suspect they were glad enough to pitch them into the James River and come home in mufti. Ah, 77ies afiiis / a cJiacjin son schakot ! I was looking at a bishop the other day, and thinking, " My right reverend lord, that broad brim and rosette must bind your great broad forehead very tightly, and give you many a headache. A good easy wideawake were better for you, and I would like to see that honest face with a cutty-pipe in the middle of it." There is my Lord Mayor. My once dear lord, my kind friend, when your two years' reign was over, did not you jump for joy and fling your chapeau-bras out of window : and hasn't that hat cost you a pretty bit of money ? There, in a splendid travelling chariot, in the sweetest bonnet, all trimmed with orange blossoms and Chantilly lace, sits my Lady Rosa, with old Lord Snowdon by her side. Ah, Rosa ! what a price have you paid for that hat which you wear ; and is your lady- ship's coronet not purchased too dear? Enough of hats. Sir, or Madam, I take off mine, and salute you with profound .aspect. ''■ Two cadets of the House of Orleans who served as Volunteers under General C'jiOan in his campaign against Richmond. 248 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. ON ALEXANDRINES* A LETTER TO SOME COUNTRY COUSINS. Dear Cousins, — Be pleased to receive herewith a packet of Mayall's photographs, and copies of Illustrated News, Illus- trated Tillies, London Review, Queen, and Observer, each con- taining an account of the notable festivities of the past week. If, besides these remembrances of home, you have a mind to read a letter from an old friend, behold here it is. When I was at school, having left my parents in India, a good-natured captain or colonel would come sometimes and see us Indian boys, and talk to us about papa and mamma, and give us coins of the realm, and write to our parents, and say, " I drove over yesterday and saw Tommy at Dr. Birch's. I took him to the ' George,' and gave him a dinner. His appetite is fine. He states that he is reading ' Cornelius Nepos,' with which he is much interested. His masters report," &c. And though Dr. Birch wrote by the same mail a longer, fuller, and official state- ment, I have no doubt the distant parents preferred the friend's letter, with its artless, possibly ungrammatical, account of their little darling. I have seen the young heir of Britain. These eyes have beheld him and his bride, on Saturday in Pall Mall, and on Tuesday in the nave of St. George's Chapel at Windsor, when the young Princess Alexandra of Denmark passed by with her blooming procession of bridesmaids ; and half an hour later, when the Princess of Wales came forth from the chapel, her husband by her side robed in the purple mantle of the famous Order which his forefather established here five hundred years ago. We were to see her yet once again, when her open car- riage passed out of the Castle gate to the station of the near railway which was to convey her to Southampton. Since womankind existed, has any woman ever had such a greeting ? At ten hours' distance, there is a city far more magni- ficent til an ours. With every respect for Kensington turnpike, I own that the Arc de I'Etoile at Paris is a much finer entrance to an imperial capital. In our black, orderless, zigzag streets, we can show nothing to compare with the magnificent array of the •This paper, it is almost needless to say, was written just after the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in March, 1863. ON ALEXANDRINES. 249 Rue de Rivoli, that enormous regiment of stone stretching for five miles and presenting arms before tlie Tuileries. Think of the late Fleet Prison and Waithman's Obelisk, and of the Place de la Concorde and the Luxor Stone ! " The finest site in Europe," as Trafalgar Square has been called by some obstinate British optimist, is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, and statues so puerile, disorderly, and hideous that a lover of the arts must hang the head of shame as he passes to see our deai old queen city arraying herself so absurdly ; but when all is said and done, we can show one or two of the greatest sights in the world. I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast or striking as the Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show such a pro- digious muster of faithful people as our young Princess saw on Saturday, when the nation turned out to greet her. The cal- culators are squabbling about the numbers of hundreds of thou- sands, of millions, who came forth to see her and bid her wel- come. Imagine beacons flaming, rockets blazing, yards manned, ships and forts saluting with their thunder, every steamer and vessel, every town and village from Ramsgate to Gravesend, swarming with happy gratulation ; young girls with flowers, scattering roses before her ; staid citizens and aldermen pushing and squeezing and panting to make the speech, and bow the knee, and bid her welcome ! Who is this who is hon- ored with such a prodigious triumph, and received with a wel- come so astonishing ? A year ago we had never heard of her. I think about her pedigree and family not a few of us are in the dark still, and I own, for my part, to be much puzzled by the allusions of newspaper genealogists and bards and skalds to Vikings, Berserkers, and so forth. But it would be interest- ing to know how many hundreds of thousands of photographs of the fair bright face have by this time made it beloved and familiar in British homes. Think of all the quiet country nooks from Land's End to Caithness, where kind eyes have glanced at it. The farmer brings it home from market ; the curate from his visit to the Cathedral town ; the rustic folk peer at it in the little village shop-window ; the squire's children gaze on it round the drawing-room table : every eye that beholds it looks ten- derly on its bright beauty and sweet artless grace, and young and old pray God bless her. We have an elderly friend (a certain Goody Twoshoes) who inhabits, with many other old ladies, the Union House of the Parish of St. Lazarus in Soho. One of your cousins from this house went to see her, and found Goody and her companion crones all in a flutter of excitement about the marriage. The whitewashed walls of their bleak 250 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. dormitory were ornamented with prints out of the illustrated journals, and hung with festoons and true-lovers' knots of tape and colored paper ; and the old bodies had had a good dinner, and the old tongues were chirping and clacking away, all eager, interested, sympathizing ; and one very elderly and rheumatic Goody, who is obliged to keep her bed, (and has, I trust, an exaggerated idea of the cares attending on royalty,) said, " Pore thing, pore thing ! I pity her." Yes, even in that dim place there was a little brightness and a quavering huzza, a contribu- tion of a mite subscribed by those dozen poor old widows to the treasure of loyalty with which the nation endows the Prince's bride. Three hundred years ago, when our dread Sovereign Lady Elizabeth came to take possession of her realm and capital city, Holingshed, if you please (whose pleasing history of course you carry about with you,) relates in his fourth volume folio, that — "At hir entring the citie, she was of the people received maruellous intierlie, as appeared by the assemblies, praiers, welcommings, cries, and all other signes which argued a woonder- full earnest loue : " and at various halting-places on the royal progress children habited like angels appeared out of allegoric edifices and spoke verses to her — " Welcome, O Queen, ns much as heart can think, Welcome again, as much as tongue can tell, Welcome to joyous tongues and hearts that will not shrink. God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well ! " Our new Princess, you may be sure, has also had her Alex- andrines, and many minstrels have gone before her singing her praises. Mr. Tupper, who begins in very great force and strength, and who proposes to give her no less than eight hun- dred thousand welcomes in the first twenty lines of his ode, is not satisfied with this most liberal amount of acclamation, but proposes at the end of his poem a still more magnificent sub- scription. Thus we begin, " A hundred thousand welcomes, a hundred thousand welcomes." (In my copy the figures are in the well-known Arabic numerals, but let us have the numbers literally accurate :) — '■ A hundred thousand welcomes ! A hundred thousand welcomes! And a hundred thousand more ! O happy heart of England, Shout aloud and sing, land, As no land sang before ; And let the pseans soar And ring from shore to shore, A hundred thousand welcomes, And a hundred thousand more ; And let tne cannons roar The joy-stunned city o'er. And let the steeples chime it A hundred thousand welcomes And a hundred thousand more ; And let the people rhyme it From neighbor's door to door, From every man's heart's core, A hundred thousand welcomes And a hundred thousand more." ON ALEXANDRINES. 25» This contribution, in twenty not long" lines, of 900,000 (say nine hundred thousand) welcomes is handsome indeed : and shows that when our bard is inclined to be liberal, he does not look to the cost. But what is a sum of 900,000 to his further proposal ? — " O let all these declare it, Let miles of shouting swear it, In all the years of yore, Unparalleled before ! And thou, most welcome Wand'rer Across tlie Northern Water, Our Eng:land's Alexandra, Our dear adopted daughter — Lay to thine heart, conned o'er and o'er 111 future years remembered well, The magic feivor of this spell That shakes the lar.d from' shore to shore, And makes all hearts and eyes brim o'er; Our hundred thousand welcomes. Our fifty niillion welcomes, And a hundred million more ! " Here we have, besides the most liberal previous subscrip- tion, a further call on the public for no less than one hundred and fifty million one hundred thousand welcomes for her Royal Highness. How much is this per head for all of us in the three kingdoms ? Not above five welcomes apiece, and I am sure many of us have given more than five hurrahs to the fair young Princess. Each man sings according to his voice, and gives in propor- tion to his means. The guns at Sheerness " from their ada- mantine lips" (which had spoken in quarrelsome old times a very different language), roared a hundred thundering welcomes to the fair Dane. The maidens of England strewed roses be- fore her feet at Gravesend when she landed. Mr. Tupper, with the million and odd welcomes, may be compared to the thun- dering fleet ; Mr. Chorley's song, to the flowerets scattered on her Royal Highness's happy and carpeted path : — " Blessings on that fair face ! Safe on the shore Of her home-dwelling place, Stranger no more, Love, from her household shrinCi Keep sorrow far ! May for her hawthorn twine, June bring sweet eglantine, Autumn, the golden vine, Dear Northern Star I " Hawthorn for May, eglantine for June, and in autumn a little tass of the golden vine for our Northern Star. I am sure no one will grudge the Princess these simple enjoyments, and of the produce of the last-named pleasing plant, I wonder how many bumpers were drunk to her health on the happy day of her bridal ? As for the Laureate's verses, I would respectfully liken his Highness to a giant showing a beacon torch on " a windy headland." His flaring torch is a pine-tree, to be sure, which nobody can wield but himself. He waves it : and four *52 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. times in the midnight he shouts mightily, *' Alexandra ! " and the Pontic pine is whirled into the ocean and Enceladus goes home. Whose muse, whose cornemuse, sounds with such plaintive sweetness from Arthur's Seat, while Edinburgh and Mussel- burgh lie rapt in delight, and the mermaids come flapping up to Leith shore to hear the exquisite music ? Sweeter piper Edina knows not than Aytoun, the Bard of the Cavaliers, who has given in his frank adhesion to the reigning dynasty. When a most beautiful, celebrated and unfortunate princess whose memory the Professor loves — when Mary, wife of Francis the Second, King of France, and by her own right proclaimed Queen of Scotland and England (poor soul !), entered Paris with her young bridegroom, good Peter Ronsard wrote of her — " Toi qui as veu I'excellence de celle Qui rend le ciel de I'Kscosse envieux, Dy hardiment, contentez vous mes yeux, Vous ne verrez jamais chose plus belle."* " Vous ne verrez jamais chose phis belle.'^ Here is an Alex- andrine written three hundred years ago, as simple as honjour. Professor Aytoun is more ornate. After elegantly compliment- ing the spring, and a description of her Royal Highness's well- known ancestors the " Berserkers," he bursts forth — " The Rose of Denmark comes, the Royal Bride ! O loveliest Rose ! our paragon and pride — Choice of the Prince whom England holds so dear— What homage shall we pay To one who has no peer? What can the bard or wildered minstrel say More than the peasant who on bended knee Breathes from his heart an earnest prayer for thee? Words are not fair, if that they would express Is fairer still ; so lovers in dismay Stand all abashed before that loveliness They worship most, but find no words to pray. Too sweet for incense ! (bravo .') Take our loves instead- Most freely, truly, and devoutly given ; Our prayer for blessings on that gentle head, For earthly happiness and rest in Heaven! May never sorrow dim those dove-like eyes, But peace as pure as reigned in Paradise, Calm and untainted on creation's eve, Attend thee still ! May holy angels," &c. This is all very well, my dear country cousins. But will you say " Amen " to this prayer ? I won't. Assuredly our fair Princess will shed many tears out of the " dove-like eyes " or the heart will be little worth. Is she to know no parting, no care, no anxious longing, no tender watches by the sick, to de- * Quoted in Mignet's " Life of Mary." ON ALEXANDRINES. 253 plore no friends and kindred, and feel no grief ? Heaven for- bid ! When a bard or wildered minstrel writes so, best accept his own confession that he is losing his head. On the day of her entrance into London who looked more bright and happy than the Princess ? On the day of the marriage, the fair face wore its marks of care already, and looked out quite grave, and frightened almost, under the wreaths and lace and orange- flowers. Would you have had her feel no tremor ? A maiden on the bridegroom's threshold, a Princess led up to the steps of a throne ! I think her pallor and doubt became her as well as her smiles. That, I can tell you, was our vote who sat in X compartment, let us say, in the nave of St. George's Chapel at Windsor, and saw a part of one of the brightest ceremonies ever performed there. My dear cousin Mary, you have an account of the dresses ; and I promise you there were princesses besides the bride whom it did the eyes good to behold. Around the bride sailed a bevy of young creatures so fair, white, and graceful that I thought of those fairy-tale beauties who are sometimes princesses, and sometimes white swans. The Royal Princesses and the Royal Knights of the Garter swept by in prodigious robes and trains of purple velvet, thirty shillings a yard, my dear, not of course including the lining, which, I have no doubt, was of the richest satin, or that costly " miniver " which we used to read about in poor Jerrold's writings. The young princes were habited in kilts ; and by the side of the Princess Royal trotted such a little wee solemn Highlander ! He is the young heir and chief of the famous clan of Brandenburg. His eyrie is amongst the Eagles, and I pray no harm may befall the dear little chieftain. The heralds in their tabards were marvellous to behold, and a nod from Rouge Croix gave me the keenest gratification. I tried to catch Garter's eye, but either I couldn't or he wouldn't. In his robes, he is like one of the Three Kings in old missal illuminations. Goldstick in waiting is even more splendid. With his gold rod and robes and trappings of many colors, he looks like a royal enchanter, and as if he had raised up all this scene of glamor by a wave of his glittering wand. The silver trumpeters wear such quaint caps, as those I have humbly tried to depict on the playful heads of children. Behind the trump- eters came a drum-bearer, on whose back a gold-laced drummer drubbed his march. When the silver clarions had blown, and under a clear chorus of white-robed children chanting round the organ, the noble procession passed into the chapel, and was hidden from ZS4 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. our.sight for a while, there was silence, or from the inner chapel ever so faint a hum. Then hymns arose, and in the lull we knew that prayers were being said, and the sacred rite per- formed which joined Albert Edward to Alexandra his wife. I am sure hearty prayers were offered outside the gate as well as within for that princely young pair, and for their Mother and Queen. The peace, the freedom, the happiness, the order which her rule guarantees, are part of my birthright as an Englishman, and I bless God for my share. Where else shall I find such liberty of action, thought, speech, or laws which protect me so well ? Her part of her compact with her people, what sovereign ever better performed ? If ours sits apart from the festivities of the day, it is because she suffers from a grief so recent that the loyal heart cannot master it as yet, and remains trcu nnd fcst to a beloved memory. A part of the music which celebrates the day's service was composed by the husband who is gone to the place where the just and pure of life meet the reward promised by the Father of all of us to good and faithful servants who have done well here below. As this one gives in his account, surely we may remember how the Prince was the friend of all peaceful arts and learning ; how he was true and fast always to duty, home, honor ; how, through a life of complicated trials, he was sagacious, righteous, active and self-denying. And as we trace in the young faces of his many children the father's features and likeness, what Englishman will not pray that they may have inherited also some of the great qualities which won for the Prince Consort the love and respect of our country ? The papers tell us how, on the night of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, all over England and Scotland illuminations were made, the poor and children were feasted, and in village and city thousands of kindly schemes were devised to mark the national happiness and sympathy. " The bonfire on Copt- point at Folkestone was seen in France," the Telegraph says, " more clearly than even the French marine lights could be seen at Folkestone." Long may the fire continue to burn ! There are European coasts (and inland places) where the liberty light has been extinguished, or is so low that you can't see to read by it — there are great Atlantic shores where it flickers and smokes very gloomily. Let us be thankful to the honest guardians of ours, avid for the kind sky under which it burns bright and steady. ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 255 ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. Before me lies a coin bearing the image and superscription of King George IV., and of the nominal value of two-and- sixpence. But an official friend at a neighboring turnpike saj's the piece is hopelessly bad ; and a chemist tested it, returning a like unfavorable opinion. A cabman, who had brought me from a Club, left it with the Club porter, appealing to the gent who gave it a pore cabby, at ever so much o'clock of a rainy night, which he hoped he would give him another. I have taken that cabman at his word. He has been provided with a sound coin. The bad piece is on the table before me, and shall have a hole drilled through it, as soon as this essay is written, by a loyal subject who does not desire to deface the Sovereign's image, but to protest against the rascal who has taken his name in vain. Fid. Def. indeed ! Is this what you call defending the faith ? You dare to forge your Sovereign's name, and pass your scoundrel pewter as his silver ? I wonder who you are, wretch and most consummate trickster ? This forgery is so complete that even now I am deceived by it — I can't see the difference between the base and sterling metal. Perhaps this piece is a little lighter ; — I don't know, A little softer : — is it ? I have not bitten it, not being a connoisseur in the tasting of pewter or silver. I take the word of three honest men, though it goes against me : and though I have given two-and-sixpence worth of honest consideration for the counter, I shall not at- tempt to implicate anybody else in my misfortune, or transfer my ill-luck to a deluded neighbor. I say the imitation is so curiously successful, the stamping, milling of the edges, lettering, and so forth, are so neat, that even now, when my eyes are open, I cannot see the cheat. How did those experts, the cabman, and pikeman, and trades- man, come to find it out ? How do they happen to be more familiar with pewter and silver than I am .'' You see, I put out of the question another point which I might argue without fear of defeat, namely, the cabman's statement that I gave him this bad piece of money. Suppose every cabman who took me a shilling fare were to drive away and return presently with a bad coin and an assertion that I had given it to him ! This would be absurd and mischievous ; an encouragement of vice amongst 256 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. men who already are subject to temptations. Being homo, I think if I were a cabman myself, I might sometimes stretch a furlong or two in my calculation of distance. But don't come twice, my man, and tell me I have given you a bad half-crown. No, no ! I have paid once like a gentleman, and once is enough. For instance, during the Exhibition time I was stopped by an old country-woman in black, with a huge umbrella, who, bursting into tears, said to me, " Master, be this the way to Harlow, in Essex ? This the way to Harlow ? This is the way to Exeter, my good lady, and you will arrive there if you walk about 170 miles in your present direction," I answered courteously, replying to the old creature. Then she fell a-sobbing as though her old heart would break. She had a daughter a-dying at Harlow. She had walked already " vifty- dree mile that day." Tears stopped the rest of her discourse, so artless, genuine, and abundant that — I own the truth — I gave her, in I believe genuine silver, a piece of the exact size of that coin which forms the subject of this essay. Well. About a month since, near to the very spot where I had met my old woman, I was accosted by a person in black, a person in a large draggled cap, a person with a huge umbrella, who was beginning, " 1 say. Master, can you tell me if this be the way to Har " but here she stopped. Her eyes goggled wildly. She started from me, as Macbeth turned from Macduff. She would not engage with me. It was my old friend of Harlow, in Essex. I dare say she has informed many other people of her daughter's illness, and her anxiety to be put upon the right way to Harlow. Not long since a very gentlemanlike man, Major Delamere let us call him (I like the title of Major very much), requested to see me, named a dead gentleman who he said had been our mutual friend, and on the strength of this mutual acquaintance, begged me to cash his check for five pounds ! It is these things, my dear sir, which serve to make a man cynical. I do conscientiously believe that had I cashed the Major's check there would have been a difficulty about payment on the part of the respected bankers on whom he drew. On your honor and conscience, do you think that old widow who was walking from Tunbridge Wells to Harlow had a daughter ill, and was an honest woman at all ? The daughter couldn't always, you see, be being ill, and her mother on her way to her dear child through Hyde Park, In the same way some habitual sneerei's may be inclined to hint that the cabman's story was an invention — or at any rate, choose to ride off (so to speak) ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 257 on the doubt. No. My opinion, I own, is unfavorable as regards the widow from Tunbridge Wells, and Major Dela- mere ; but, believing the cabman was honest, I am glad to think he was not injured by the reader's most humble servant. What a queer, exciting life this rogue's march must be : this attempt of the bad half-crowns to get into circulation ! Had my distinguished friend the Major knocked at many doors that morning, before operating on mine ? The sport most be some- thing akin to the pleasure of tiger or elephant hunting. What ingenuity the sportsman must have in tracing his prey — what daring and caution in coming upon him ! What coolness in facing the angry animal (for, after all, a man on whom you draw a check a bout port atit will be angry). What a delicious thrill of triumph, if you can bring him down ! If I have money at the banker's and draw for a portion of it over the counter, that is mere prose — any dolt can do that. But, having no balance, say I drive up in a cab, present a check at Coutts's, and, receiving the amount, drive ofif .'' What a glorious morn- ing's sport that has been ! How superior in excitement to the common transactions of every-day life 1****1 must tell a story ; it is against myself, I know, but it will out, and per^ haps my mind will be the easier. More than twenty years ago, in an island remarkable for its verdure, I met four or five times one of the most agreeable companions with whom I have passed a night. I heard that evil times had come upon this gentleman ; and, overtaking him in a road near my own house one evening, I asked him to come home to dinner. In two days, he was at my door again. At breakfast-time was this second appearance. He was in a cab (of course he was in a cab, they always are, these unfortunate, these courageous men). To deny myself was absurd. My friend could see me over the parlor blinds, surrounded by my family, and cheerfully partaking of the morning meal. Might he have a word with me ? and can you imagine its purport ? By the most provoking delay, his uncle the admiral not being able to come to town till Friday — would I cash him a check ? I need not say it would be paid on Saturday without fail. I tell you that man went away with money in his pocket, and I regret to add that his gallant relative has not come to town yet t Laying down the pen, and sinking back in my chair, here, perhaps, I fall into a five minutes' reverie; and think of one, two, three, half a dozen cases in which I have been content to accept that sham promissory coin in return for sterling money advanced. Not a reader, whatever his age, but could tell a; 17 258 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. like story. I vow and believe there are men of fifty, who will dine well to-day who have not paid their school debts yet, and who have not taken up their long-protested promises to pay. Tom, Dick, Harry, my boys, I owe you no grudge, and rather relish that wince witli which you will read these meek lines and say, " He means me." Poor Jack in Hades ! Do you remem- ber a certain pecuniary transaction, and a little sum of money you borrowed " until the meeting of Parliament ? " Parliament met often in your lifetime : Parliament has met since : but I think I should scarce be more surprised if your ghost glided into the room now,, and laid down the amount of your little account, than I should have been if you had paid me in your lifetime with the actual acceptances of the Bank of England. You asked to borrow, but you never intended to pay. I would as soon have believed that a promissory note of Sir John Fal- stafif (accepted by Messrs. Bardolph and Nym, and payable in Aldgate,) would be as sure to find payment, as that note of the departed — nay, lamented Jack Thriftless. He who borrows, meaning to pay, is quite a different person from the individual here described. Many — most, I hope — took Jack's promise for what it was worth — and quite well knew that when he said, " Lend me," he meant " Give me " twenty pounds. " Give me change for this half-crown," said Jack ; " I know it's a pewter piece ; " and you gave him the change in honest silver, and pocketed the counterfeit gravely. What a queer conciousness that must be which accompanies such a man in his sleeping, in his waking, in his walk through life, by his fireside with his children round him ? " For what we are going to receive," &c. — he says grace before his dinner. " My dears ! Shall I help you to some mutton ? I robbed the butcher of the meat. I don't intend to pay him. Johnson my boy, a glass of champagne ? Very good, isn't it ? Not too sweet. Forty six. I get it from so-and-so, whom I intend to cheat." As eagles go forth and bring home to their eaglets the lamb or their pavid kid, I say they are men who live and victual their nests by plunder. We all know highway robbers in white neckcloths, domestic bandits, marauders, passers of bad coin. What was yonder check which Major Delamere proposed I should cash but a piece of bad money ? What was Jack Thriftless's promise to pay ? Having got his booty, I fancy Jack or the Major returning home, and wife and children gathering about him. Poor wife and children ! They respect papa very likely. They don't know he is false coin. Maybe tiie wife has a dreadful inkling of the truth, and, sickening, tries ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 259 to hide it from the daughters and sons. Maybe she is an ac- complice : herself a brazen forger)'. If Turpin and Jack Shep- pard were married, very likely Mesdames Sheppard and Turpin did not know, at first, what their husbands' real profession was, and fancied, when the men left home in the morning, they only went away to follow some regular and honorable business. Then a suspicion of the truth may have come : then a dread- ful revelation ; and presently we have the guilty pair robbing together, or passing forged money each on his own account. You know Doctor Dodd ? I wonder whether his wife knows that he is a forger, and scoundrel t Has she had any of the plunder, think you, and were the darling children's new dresses bought with it ? The Doctor's sermon last Sunday was cer- tainly charming, and we all cried. Ah, my poor Dodd I Whilst he is preaching most beautifully, pocket-handkerchief in hand, he is peering over the pulpit cushions, looking out piteously for Messrs. Peachum and Lockit from the police-office. By Doctor Dodd you understand I would typify the rogue of re- spectable exterior, not committed to jail yet, but not undis- covered. We all know one or two such. This very sermon perhaps will be read by some, or more likely — for, depend upon it, your solemn hypocritic scoundrels don't care much for light literature — more likely, I say, this discourse will be read by some of their wives, who think, "Ah mercy! does that horrible cynical wretch know how my poor husband blacked my eye, or abstracted mamma's silver teapot, or forced me to write So-and- so's name on that piece of stamped paper, or what not .'' " My good creature, I am not angry with you. If your husband has broken your nose, you will vow that he had authority over your person, and a right to demolish any part of it : if he has con- veyed away your mamma's teapot, you will say that she gave it to him at your marriage, and it was very ugly, and what not? if he takes your aunt's watch, and you love him, you will carry it ere long to the pawnbroker's, and perjure yourself — oh, how you will perjure yourself — in the witness-box ! I know this is a degrading view of woman's noble nature, her exalted mission, and so forth, and so forth. I know you will say this is bad morality. Is it ? Do you, or do you not, expect your woman- kind to stick by you for better or for worse ? Say I have committed a forgery, and the officers come in search of me, is my, wife, Mrs. Dodd, to show them into the dining-room and say, " Pray step in, gentlemen ! My husband has just come home from church. That bill with my Lord Chesterfield's accept- ance, I am bound to own, was never written by his lordship, 26o RO UND ABOUT PA PERS. and the signature is in the doctor's handwriting?" I say, would any man of sense and honor, or fine feeling, praise his wife for telling the truth under such circumstances ? Suppose she had made a fine grimace, and said, " Most painful as my position is, most deeply as I feel for my William, yet truth must prevail, and I deeply lament to state that the beloved partner of my life did commit the flagitious act with which he is charged, and is at this present moment located in the two- pair back, up the chimney, whither it is my duty to lead you." Why, even Dodd himself, who was one of the greatest humbugs who ever lived, would not have had the face to say that he ap- proved of his wife telling the truth in such a case. Would you have had Flora Macdonald beckon the officers, saying, " This way, gentlemen ! You will find the young chevalier asleep in that cavern." Or don't you prefer her to be spleiidide mejidax, and ready at all risks to save him ? If ever I lead a rebellion, and my women betray me, may I be hanged but I will not for- give them : and if ever I steal a teapot, and my women don't stand up for me, pass the article under their shawls, whisk down the street with it, outbluster the policeman, and utter any amount of fibs before Mr. Beak, those beings are not what I take them to be, and — for a fortune — I won't give them so much as a bad half-crown. Is conscious guilt a source of unmixed pain to the bosom which harbors it ? Has not your criminal, on the contrary, an excitement, an enjoyment within quite unknown to you and me who never did anything wrong in your lives ? The housebreaker must snatch a fearful joy as he walks unchallenged by the policeman with his sack full of spoons and tankards. Uo not cracksmen, when assembled together, entertain themselves with stories of glorious old burglaries which they or by-gone heroes have committed ? But that my age is mature and my habits formed, I should really just like to try a little criminality. Fancy passing a forged bill to your banker ; calling on a friend and sweeping his sideboard of plate, his hall of umbrellas and coats ; and then going home to dress for dinner, say — and to meet a bishop, a judge, and a police magistrate or so, and talk more morally than any man at table ! How I should chuckle (as my host's spoons clinked softly in my pocket) whilst I was uttering some noble speech about virtue, duty, charity ! I wonder do we meet garotters in society ? In an average tea- party, now, how many returned convicts are there ? Does John Footman, when he asks permission to go and spend the even- ing with some friends, pass his time in thuggee ; waylay and ON A MEDAL OF GEORGE THE FOURTH. 261 Strangle an old gentleman, or two ; let himself into your house, with the house-key of course, and appear as usual with the shaving-water when you ring your bell in the morning ? The very possibility of such a suspicion invests John with a new and romantic interest in my mind. Behind the grave politeness of his countenance I try and read the lurking treason. Full of this pleasing subject, I have been talking thief-stories with a neighbor. The neighbor tells me how some friends of hers used to keep a jewel-box under a bed in their room ; and, going into the room, they thought they heard a noise under the bed. They had the courage to look. The cook was under the bed — under the bed with the jewel- box. Of course she said she had come for purposes connected with her business ; but this was absurd. A cook under a bed is not there for professional purposes. A relation of mine had a box containing diamonds under her bed, which diamonds she told me were to be mine. Mine ! One day, at dinner-time, between the entre'es and the roast, a cab drove away from my relative's house containing the box wherein lay the diamonds. John laid the dessert, brought the coffee, waited all the evening — and oh, how frightened he was when he came to learn that his mistress's box had been conveyed out of her own room, and it contained diamonds — " Law bless us, did it now?" I won- der whether John's subsequent career has been prosperous? Perhaps the gentlemen from Bow Street were all in the wrong when they agreed in suspecting John as the author of the robbery. His noble nature was hurt at the suspicion. You conceive he would not like to remain in a family where they were mean enough to suspect him of stealing a jewel-box out of a bedroom — and the injured man and my relatives soon parted. But, inclining (with my usual cynicism) to think that he did steal the valuables, think of his life for the month or two whilst he still remains in the service ! He shows the officers over the house, agrees with them that the coup must have been made by persons familiar with it ; gives them every assistance ; pities his master and mistress with a manly compassion ; points out what a cruel misfortune it is to himself as an honest man, with his living to get and his family to provide for, that this suspicion should fall on him. Finally, he takes leave of his place, with a deep though natural melancholy that ever he had accepted it. What's a thousand pounds to gentlefolks ! A loss certainly, but they will live as well without the diamonds as with them. But to John his Hhhonor was worth more than diamonds, his Hhonor was. Whohever is to give him back his 262 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. character ? Who is to prevent hany one from saying, " Ho yes. This is the footman which was in the family where the diamonds was stole ? " &c. I wonder has John prospered in life subsequently ? If he is innocent, he does not interest me in the least. The interest of the case lies in John's behavior supposing him to be guilty. Imagine the smiling face, the daily service, the orderly per- formance of duty, whilst within John is suffering pangs lest discovery should overtake him. Every bell of the door which he is obliged to open may bring a police-officer. The accom- plices may peach. What an exciting life John's must have been for a while. And now, years and years after, when pursuit has long ceased, and detection is impossible, does he ever revert to the little transaction .'' Is it possible those diamonds cost a thousand pounds .'' What a rogue the fence must have been who only gave him so and so ! And I pleasingly picture to myself an old ex-footman and an ancient receiver of stolen goods meeting and talking over this matter, which dates from times so early that her present ]\Iajesty's fair image could only just have begun to be coined or forged. I choose to take John at the time when his little peccadillo is suspected, perhaps, but when there is no specific charge of robbery against him. He is not yet convicted : he is not even on his trial ; how then can we venture to say he is guilty ? Now think what scores of men and women walk the world in a like predicament ; and what false coin passes current ! Pinchbeck strives to pass off his history as sound coin. He knows it is only base metal, washed ever with a thin varnish of learning. Poluphloisbos puts his sermons in circulation : sounding brass, lackered over with white metal, and marked with the stamp and image of piety. What say you to Drawcansir's reputation as a military commander .-' to Tibbs's pretensions to be a fine gentleman t to Sapphira's claims as a poetess, or Rodoessa's as a beauty ? His bravery, his piety, high birth, genius, beauty — each of these deceivers would palm his falsehood on us, and have us accept his forgeries as sterling coin. And we talk here, please to observe, of weaknesses rather than crimes. Some of us have more serious things to hide than a yellow cheek behind a raddle of rouge, or a white poll under a wig of jetty curls. You know, neighbor, there are not only false teeth in this world, but false tongues : and some make up a bust and an appearance of strength with padding, cotton, and what not ? while another kind of artist tries to take you in by wearing under his waistcoat, and perpetually thumping, an immense "STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPER."' 263 sham heart. Dear sir, may yours and mine be found, at the right time, of the proper size and in the right place. And what has this to do with half-crowns, good or bad ? Ah, friend ! may our coin, battered, and clipped, and defaced though it be, be proved to be Sterling Silver on the day of the Great Assay ! ''STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPERS Before the Duke of York's column, and between the " Athenaeum " and " United Service " Clubs, I have seen more than once, on the esplanade, a preacher holding forth to a little congregation of badauds and street-boys, whom he entertains with a discourse on the crimes of a rapacious aristocracy, or warns of the imminent peril of their own souls. Sometimes this orator is made to " move on " by brutal policemen. Some- times, on a Sunday, he points to a white head or two visible in the windows of the Clubs to the right and left of him, and volunteers a statement that those quiet and elderly Sabbath- breakers will very soon be called from this world to another, where their lot will by no means be so comfortable as that which the reprobates enjoy here, in their arm-chairs by their snug fires. At the end of last month, had I been a Pall Mall preacher. I would have liked to send a whip round to all the Clubs in St, James's, and convoke the few members remaining in London to hear a discourse sub Dio on a text from the Observer news- paper. I would have taken post under the statue of Fame, say, where she stands distributing wreaths to the three Crimean Guardsmen, (The crossing-sweeper does not obstruct the path, and I suppose is away at his villa on Sundays.) And, when the congregation was pretty quiet, I would have begun : — In the Observer oi the 27th September, 1863, in the fifth page and the fourth column, it is thus written : — " The codicil appended to the will of the late Lord Clyde, executed at Chatham, and bearing the signature of Clyde, F. M., is written, strange to say, on a sheet of paper bearing the 'Athena; uffi Club ' marky What the codicil is, my dear brethren, it is not our business to inquire. It conveys a benefaction to a faithful and attached 264 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. friend ot the good Field-Marshal. The gift may be a lac of rupees, or it may be a house and its contents — furniture, plate, and wine-cellar. My friends, I know the wine-merchant, and, for the sake of the legatee, hope heartily that the stock is large. Am I wrong, dear brethren, in supposing that you expect a preacher to say a seasonable word on death here. If you don't, I fear you are but little familiar with the habits of preachers, and are but lax hearers of sermons. We might contrast the vault where the warrior's remains lie shrouded and coffined, with that in which his worldly provision of wine is stowed aw'ay. Spain and Portugal and France — all the lands which supplied his store — as hardy and obedient subaltern, as resolute captain, as colonel daring but prudent — he has visited the fields of all. In India and China he marches always unconquered ; or at the head of his dauntless Highland brigade he treads the Crimean snow; or he rides from conquest' to conquest in India once more ; succoring his countrymen in the hour of their utmost need ; smiting down the scared mutiny, and trampling out the embers of rebellion ; at the head of an heroic army, a con- summate chief. And now his glorious old sword is sheathed, and his honors are won ; and he has bought him a house, and stored it with modest cheer for his friends (the good old man put water in his own wine, and a glass or two sufficed him) — behold the end comes, and his legatee inherits these modest possessions by virtue of a codicil to his lordship's will, w-ritten, *■'■ strange to saj>, upon a sheet of papC7' bearing tlie ^ Athenceum Club ' markr It is to this part of the text, my brethren, that I propose to address myself particularly, and if the remarks I make are offensive to any of you, you know the doors of our meeting- house are open, and you can walk out when you will. Around us are magnificent halls and palaces frequented by such a multitude of men as not even the Roman Forum assembled to- gether. Yonder are the Marlium and the Palladium. Next to the Palladium is the elegant Viatorium, which Barry grace- fully stole from Rome. By its side is the massive Reforma- torium : and the — the Ultratorium rears its granite columns beyond. Extending down the street palace after palace rises magnificent, and under their lofty roofs warriors and lawyers, merchants and nobles, scholars and seamen, the wealthy, the poor, the busy, the idle assemble. Into the halls built down this little street and its neighborhood the principal men of all London come to hear or impart the news ; and the affairs of "STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPER." 265 the state or of private individuals, the quarrels of empires or of authors, the movements of the court, or the splendid vaga- ries of fashion, the intrigues of statesmen or of persons of an- other sex yet more wily, the last news of the battles in the great occidental continents, nay, the latest betting for the horse- races, or the advent of a dancer at the theatre — all that men do is discussed in these Pall Mall agorae, where we of London daily assemble. Now among so many talkers, consider how many false reports must fly about : in such multitudes imagine how many disappointed men there must be ; how many chatterboxes ; how many feeble and credulous (whereof I mark some speci- mens in my congregation) ; how many mean, rancorous, prone to believe ill of their betters, eager to find fault ; and then, my brethren, fancy how the words of my text must have been read and received in Pall Mall ! (I perceive several of the congre- gation looking most uncomfortable. One old boy with a dyed mustache turns purple in the face, and struts back to the Mar- tium: another, with a shrug of the shoulder and a murmur of " Rubbish," slinks away in the direction of the Togatorium, and the preacher continues.) The will of Field-Marshal Lord Clyde — sign A at Chathatn, mind, where his lordship died — is written, stra?ige to say, on a sheet of paper bearing the " Athen- aeum Club " mark ! The inference is obvious. A man cannot get Athenaeum paper except at the " Athenaeum." Such paper is not sold at Chatham where the last codicil to his lordship's will is dated. And so the painful belief is forced upon us, that a Peer, a Field-Marshal, wealthy, respected, illustrious, could pocket paper at his Club, and carry it away with him to the country. One fancies the hall-porter conscious of the old lord's iniquity, and holding down his head as the Marshal passes the door. What is that roll which his lordship carries ? Is it his Marshal's baton gloriously won ? No ; it is a roll of foolscap conveyed from the Club. What has he on his breast, under his great- coat ? Is it his Star of India ? No ; it is a bundle of envelopes, bearing the head of Minerva, some sealing-wax, and a half- score of pens. Let us imagine how in the hall of one or other of these Clubs this strange anecdote will be discussed. "Notorious screw," says Sneer. "The poor old fellow's avarice has long been known. " Suppose he wishes to imitate the Duke of Marlborough," says Simper. 266 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. " Habit of looting contracted in India, you know ; ain't so easy to get over, you know," says Snigger. " When officers dined with him in India," remarks Solemn, " it was notorious that the spoons were all of a different pattern." " Perhaps it isn't true. Suppose he wrote his paper at the Club ? " interposes Jones. " It is dated at Chatham, my good man," says Brown. " A man if he is in London says he is in London, A man if he is in Rochester says he is in Rochester. This man happens to forget that he is using the Club paper : and he happens to be found out : many men ^i:;;/V happen to be found out. I've seen literary fellows at Clubs writing their rubbishing articles ; I have no doubt they take away reams of paper. They crib thoughts; why shouldn't they crib stationery.'' One of your literary vagabonds who is capable of stabbing a reputation, who is capable of telling any monstrous falsehood to support his party, is surely capable of stealing a ream of paper." " Well, well, we have all our weaknesses," sighs Robinson. " Seen that article, Thompson, in the Observer about Lord Clyde and the Club paper? You'll find it up stairs. In the third column of the fifth page towards the bottom of the page. I suppose he was so poor he couldn't afford to buy a quire of paper. Hadn't fourpence in the world. Oh, no ! " " And they want to get up a testimonial to this man's mem- ory — a statue or something!" cries Jawkins. "A man who wallows in wealth and takes paper away from his Club ! I don't say he is not brave. Brutal courage most men have. I don't say he was not a good officer : a man with such ex- perience must have been a good officer, unless he was born fool. But to think of this man loaded with honors — though of a low origin — so lost to self-respect as actually to take away the 'Athenaeum' paper! These parvenus, sir, betray their origin — betray their origin. I said to my wife this very morning, ' Mrs. Jawkins,' I said, ' there is talk of a testi- monial to this man. I will not give one shilling. I have no idea of raising statues to fellows who take away Club paper. No, by George, I have not. Why, they will be raising statues to men who take Club spoons next ! Not one penny of my money shall they have ' " And now, if you please, we will tell the real story which has furnished this scandal to a newspaper, this tattle to Club gossips and loungers. The Field-Marshal, wishing to make a further provision for a friend, informed his lawyer what he "STRANGE TO SAY, ON CLUB PAPER. 267 desired to do. The lawyer, a member of the " Athenaeum Club," there wrote the draft of such a codicil as he would ad- vise, and sent the paper by the post to Lord Clyde at Chatham, Lord Clyde, finding the paper perfectly satisfactory, signed it and sent it back : and hence we have the story of " the codicil bearing the signature of Clyde, F. M., and written, strange to say, upon paper bearing the ' Athenaeum Club ' mark." Here I have been imagining a dialogue between a half- dozen gossips such as congregate round a Club fireplace of an afternoon. I wonder how many people besides — whether any chance reader of this very page has read and believed this story about the good old lord ? Have the country papers copied the anecdote, and our " own correspondents " made their remarks on it .^ If, my good sir, or madam, you have read it and cred- ited it, don't you own to a little feeling of shame and sorrow, now that the trumpery little mystery is cleared ? To " the new inhabitant of light," passed away and out of reach of our cen- sure, misrepresentation, scandal, dulness, malice, a silly false- hood matters nothing. Censure and praise are alike to him — " The music warbling to the deafened ear, The incense wasted on the funeral bier," the pompous eulogy pronounced over the gravestone, or the lie that slander spits on it. Faithfully though this brave old chief did his duty, honest and upright though his life was, glorious his renown — you see he could write at Chatham on London paper ; you see men can be found to point out how " strange " his behavior was. And about ourselves ? My good people, do you by chance know any man or woman who has formed unjust conclusions regarding his neighbor.? Have you ever found yourself willing, nay, eager to believe evil of some man whom you hate ? Whom you hate because he is successful, and you are not : because he is rich, and you' are poor : because he dines with great men who don't invite you : because he wears a silk gown, and yours is still stuff : because he has been called in to perform the opera- tion though you lived close by : because his pictures have been bought, and yours returned home unsold : because he fills his church, and you are preaching to empty pews ? If your rival prospers, have you ever felt a twinge of anger ? If his wife's carriage passes you and Mrs. Tomkins, who are in a cab, don't you feel that those people are giving themselves absurd airs of importance t If he lives with great people, are you not sure he is a sneak ? And if you ever felt envy towards another, and if 268 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. your heart has ever been black towards your brother, if you have been peevish at his success, pleased to liear his merit de- preciated, and eager to believe all that is said in his disfavor — my good sir, as you yourself contritely own that you are unjust, jealous, uncharitable, so you may be sure, some men are un- charitable, jealous, and unjust regarding ^(72/. The proofs and manuscript of this little sermon have just come from the printer's, and as I look at the writing, I perceive, not without a smile, that one or two of the pages bear, " strange to say," the mark of a Club of which I have the honor to be a member. Those lines quoted in a foregoing page are from some noble verses written by one of Mr. Addison's men, Mr. Tickell, on the death of Cadogan, who was amongst the most prominent " of Marlborough's captains and Eugenio's friends." If you are acquainted with the history of those times, you have read how Cadogan had his feuds and hatreds too, as Tickell's patron had his, as Cadogan's great chief had his. "The Duke of Marlborough's character has been so variously drawn " (writes a famous contemporary of the duke's), " that it is hard to pronounce on either side without the suspicion of flattery or detraction. I shall say nothing of his military accomplish- ments, which the opposite reports of his friends and enemies among the soldiers have rendered problematical. Those ma- ligners who deny him personal valor, seem not to consider that this accusation is charged at a venture, since the person of . a general is too seldom exposed, and that fear which is said some- times to have disconcerted him before action might probably be more for his army than himself." If Swift could hint a doubt of Marlborough's courage, what wonder that a nameless scribe of our dav should question the honor of Clyde t THE LAST SKETCH. Not many days since I went to visit a house where in former years I had received many a friendly welcome. We went into the owner's — an artist's — studio. Prints, pictures and sketches hung on the walls as I had last seen and remembered them. The implements of the painter's art were there. The light which had shown upon so many, many hours of patient THE LAST SKETCH. 269 and cheerful toil, poured through the northern window upon print and bust, lay figure and sketch, and upon the easel before which the good, the gentle, the beloved Leslie labored. In this room the busy brain had devised, and the skilful hand executed, I know not how many of the noble works which have delighted the world with their beauty and charming humor. Here the poet called up into pictorial presence, and informed with life, grace, beauty, infinite friendly mirth and wondrous naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him the stories, — his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le Sage. There was his last work on the easel — a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy im- agined the Midsmnmer Nighfs queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glimmers on the can- vas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest Bottom's grotesque head and form are indicated as reposing by the side of the consummate beauty. The darkling forest would have grown around them, with the stars glittering from the midsummer sky : the flowers at the queen's feet, and the boughs and foliage about her, would have been peopled with gambolling sprites and fays. They were dwelling in the artist's mind no doubt, and would have been developed by that patient, faithful, admirable genius ; but the busy brain stopped working, the skilful hand fell lifeless, the loving, honest heart ceased to beat. What was she to have been — that fair Titania — when perfected by the patient skill of the poet, who in imagination saw the sweet innocent figure, and with tender courtesy and caresses, as it were, posed and shaped and traced the fair form ? • Is there record kept anywhere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn ? Some day will they assume form in some yet undeveloped light ? If our bad unspoken thoughts are registered against us, and are writ- ten in the awful account, will not the good thoughts unspoken, the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, which pass through the breast, and cause the heart to throb with silent good, find a remembrance too ? A few weeks more, and this lovely offspring of the poet's conception would have been com- plete — to charm the world with its beautiful mirth. May there not be some sphere unknown to us where it may have an ex- istence ? They say our words, once out of our lips, go travel- ling in omne cevum, reverberating for ever and ever. If our words, why not our thoughts ? If the Has Been, why not the Might Have Been ? Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries 270 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. of fancies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and delight in masterpieces which poets' and artists' minds have fathered and conceived only. With a feeling much akin to that with which I looked upon the friend's — the admirable artist's — unfinished work, I can fancy many readers turning to the last pages which were traced by Charlotte Bronte's hand. Of the multitude that have read her books, who has not known and deplored the tragedy of her family, her own most sad and untimely fate ? Which of her readers has not become her friend ? Who that has known her books has not admired the artist's noble English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman ? What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors ! At nine o'clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and relative had gone to bed, the three poetesses — the three maidens, Char- lotte, and Emily, and Anne — Charlotte being the " motherly friend and guardian to the other two " — " began, like restless wild animals, to pace up and down their parlor, * making out ' their wonderful stories, talking over plans and projects, and thoughts of what was to be their future life." One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat with her husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the wind about the house, she suddenly said to her husband, " If you had not been with me, I must have been writing now." She ran up stairs, and brought down, and read aloud, the be- ginning of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband remarked, " The critics will accuse you of repetition." She replied, " Oh ! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times before I can please myself." But it was not to be. The trembling little hand was to write no more. The heart newly awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, was soon to cease to beat ; that intrepid outspeaker and champion of truth, that eager, impetuous redresser of wrong, was to be called out of the world's fight and struggle, to lay down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere where even a noble indignation cor ulterius neqtiit lacerare, and where truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage war. I can only say of this lady, vidi tafittim. I saw her first just as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to THE LAST SKETCH. 271 recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions. (I have smiled at one or two passages in the " Biography," in which my own disposi- tion or behavior forms the subject of talk.) She formed con- clusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own ; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely : but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc march- ing in upr-n us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She ga\e me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded persor;. A great and holy reverence of right an^ truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief inter- view, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely — of that passion for truth — of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching ana admirable history of the heart that tlirobbed in this one little frame — of this one amongst the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth — this great earth ? — this little speck in the infinite universe of God, — with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear ! As I read this little fragmentary sketch, I think of the rest. Is it ? And where is it .-• Will not the leaf be turned some day, and the story be told ? Shall the deviser of the tale somewhere perfect the history of little Emma's griefs and troubles ? Shall TiTANiA come forth complete with her sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the forest around her, and all the stars of summer glittering overhead ? How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure with which I read "Jane Eyre," sent to me by an author whose name and sex were then alike unknown to me ;. the strange fascinations of the book ; and how with my own work pressing upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them down until they were read through ! Hundreds of those who, 272 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. like myself, recognized and admired that master-work of a great genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard and curi- osity upon the last fragmentary sketch from the noble hand which wrote " Jane Eyre." THE END OF "ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. THE FOUR GEORGES: SKETCHES OF MANNERS, MORALS, COURT, AND TOWN LIFE. U73) GEORGE THE FIRST. Very few years since, I knew familiarly a lady, who had been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been patted on the head by George I. This lady had knocked at Dr. Johnson's door ; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful Georgina of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig society of the reign of George III. ; had known the Duchess of Queensberry, the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of the court of Queen Anne. I often thought as I took my kind old friend's hand, how with it I held on to the old society of wits and men of the world. I could travel back for seven-score years of time — have glimpses of Brummell, Selwyn, Chester- field, and the men of pleasure ; of Walpole and Conway ; ot Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith ; of North, Chatham, Newcas- tle ; of the fair maids of honor of George II. 's court; of the German retainers of George I.'s ; where Addison was secretary of state ; where Dick Steele held a place ; whither the great Marlborough came with his fiery spouse ; when Pope, and Swift, and Polingbroke yet lived and wrote. Of a society so vast, busy, brilliant, it is impossible in four brief chapters to give a com- plete notion ; but we may peep here and there into that by-gone world of the Georges, see what they and their courts were like ; glance at the people round about them ; look at past manners, fashions, pleasures, and contrast them with our own. I have to say this much by way of preface, because the subject of these lectures has been misunderstood, and I have been taken to task for not having given grave historical treatises, which it never was my intention to attempt. Not about battles, about politics, about statesmen and measures of state, did I ever think to lecture you : but to sketch the manners and life of the old world ; to amuse for a few hours with talk about the old society ; and, with the result of many a day's and night's pleas- 276 THE FOUR GEORGES. ant reading, to try and while away a few winter evenings for my hearers. Among the German princes who sat under Luther at Wit- tenburg, was Duke Ernest of Celle, whose younger son, William of Liineburg, was the progenitor of the illustrious Hanoverian house at present reigning in Great Britain. Duke William held his court at Celle, a little town of ten thousand people that lies on the railway line between Hamburg and Hanover, in the midst of great j^lains of sand, upon the river Aller. When duke William had it, it was a very humble wood-built place, with a great brick church, which he sedulously frequented, and in which he and others of his house lie buried. He was a very religious lord, and was called William the Pious by his small circle of subjects, over whom he ruled till fate deprived him both of sight and reason. Sometimes, in his latter days, the good Duke had glimpses of mental light, when he would bid his musicians play the psalm-tunes which he loved. One thinks of a descendant of his, two Imndred years afterwards, blind, old, and lost of wits, singing Handel in Windsor Tower. William the Pious had fifteen children, eight daughters and seven sons, who, as the property left among them was small, drew lots to determine which one of them should marry, and continue the stout race of the Guelphs. The lot fell on Duke George, the sixtli brother. The others remained single, or con- tracted left-handed marriages after the princely fashion of those days. It is a queer picture — that of the old Prince dying in his little wood-built capital, and his seven sons tossing up which should inherit and transmit the crown of Brentford. Duke George, the lucky prizeman, made the tour of Europe, during which he visited the c uirt of Queen Elizabeth ; and in the year 161 7, came back and settled at Zell, with a wife out of Darm- stadt. His remaining brothers all kept their house at Zell, for economy's sake. And presently, in due course, they all died — all the honest Dukes ; Ernest, and Christian, and Augustus, and Magnus, and George, and John — and they are buried in the brick church of Brentford yonder, by the sandy banks of the Aller. Dr. Vehse gives a pleasant glimpse of the way of life of our Dukes in Zell. " When the trumpeter on the tower has blown," Duke Christian orders — viz. : at nine o'clock in the morning, and four in the evening — every one must be present at meals, and those who are not must go without. None of the servants, un- less it be a knave who has been ordered to ride out, shall eat GEORGE THE FIRST. 277 or drink in the kitchen or cellar ; or, without special leave^ fodder his horses at the Prince's cost. When the meal is served in the court-room, a page shall go round and bid every one be quiet and orderly, forbidding all cursing, swearing, and rudeness ; all throwing about of bread, bones, or roast, or pocket- ing of the same. Every morning, at seven, the squires shall have their morning soup, along with which, and dinner, they shall be served with their under-drink — -every morning, except Friday morning, when there was sermon, and no drink. Every even- ing they shall have their beer, and at night their sleep-drink. The butler is especially warned not to allow noble or simple to go into the cellar : wine shall only be served at the Prince's or councillors' table ; and every Monday, the honest old Duke Christian ordains the accounts shall be ready, and the expenses in the kitchen, the wine and beer cellar, the bakehouse and stable, made out. Duke George, the marrying Duke, did not stop at home to partake of the beer and wine, and the sermons. He went about fighting wherever there was profit to be had. He served as general in the army of the circle of Lower Saxony, the Prot- estant army ; then he went over to the Emperor, and fought in his armies in Germany and Italy ; and when Gustavus Adolphus appeared in Germany, George took service as a Swedish gen- eral, and seized the Abbey of Hildesheim, as his share of the plunder. Here, in the year 1641, Duke George died, leaving four sons behind him, from the youngest of whom descend our royal Georges. Under these children of Duke George, the old God-fearing, simple ways of Zell appear to have gone out of mode. The second brother was constantly visiting Venice, and leading a jolly, wicked life there. It was the most jovial of all places at the end of the seventeeth century ; and military men, after a campaign, rushed thither, as the warriors of the Allies rushed to Paris in 18 14, to gamble, and rejoice, and partake of all sorts of godless delights. This Prince, then, loving Venice and its pleasures, brought Italian singers and dancers back with him to quiet old Zell ; and worse still, demeaned himself by marrying a French lady of birth quite inferior to his own — Eleanor d'Olbreuse, from whom our Queen is descended. Eleanor had a pretty daughter, who inherited a great fortune, which inflamed her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, with a desire to marry her, and so, with her beauty and her riches, she came to a sad end. It is too long to tell how the four sons of Duke George 278 THE FOUR GEORGES. divided his territories among them, and how, finally, they came into possession of the son of the youngest of the four. In this generation the Protestant faith was very nearly extinguished in the family : and then where should we in England have gone for a king? The third brother also took delight in Italy, where the priests converted him and his Protestant chaplain too. Mass was said in Hanover once more ; and Italian soprani piped their Latin rhymes in place of the hymns which William the Pious and Dr. Luther sang. Louis XIV. gave this and other converts a splendid pension. Crowds of Frenchmen and brilliant French fashions came into his court It is incal- culable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. Every prince imitated the French King, and had his Versailles, his Wilhelmshohe or Ludwigslust ; his court and its splendors ; his gardens laid out with statues ; his fountains, and water- works, and Tritons ; his actors, and dancers, and singers, and fiddlers ; his harem, with its inhabitants ; his diamonds and duchies for these latter ; his enormous festivities, his gaming- tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week long, for which the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches had it ; with their bodies and very blood when they had none; being sold in thousands by their lords and masters, who gayly dealt in soldiers, staked a regiment upon the red at the gambling-table; swapped a battalion against a dancing- girl's diamond necklace ; and, as it were, pocketed their people. As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel in the early part of the last centurj^ the landscape is awful — ■ wretched wastes, beggarly and plundered ; half-burned cottages and trembling peasants gathering piteous harvests ; gangs of such tramping along with bayonets behind them, and corporals with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks. By these passes my lord's gilt carriage floundering through the ruts, as he swears at the postilions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but away from the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles — it scarcely matters which, — near to the city, shut out by woods from the beggared country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous marble palace, where the Prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and the forest where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is death to them to touch a feather) ; and the jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform of crimson and gold ; and the Prince gallops ahead puffing his royal horn ; and his lords and mistresses ride after GEORGE THE FIRST. 279 him ; and the stag is pulled down ; and the grand huntsman gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles ; and 'tis time the Court go home to dinner ; and our noble traveller, it may be the Baron of Pollnitz, or the Count de Konigsmarck, or the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession gleaming through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens to the inn, and sends his noble name to the marshal of the Court. Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and gold, or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly Prince, and the gracious Princess ; and is presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at Faro, where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a German court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this picture of high life ; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying outside ; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly following precarious husbandry ; plough- ing stony fields with starved cattle ; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne ; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost ; his mistress, Aurora von Konigsmarck, is the loveliest, the wittiest creature ; his diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respect- fully, and mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he passes through the great gallery where Villars and Vendome, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. Can Court be more splendid ; nobles and knights more gallant and superb ; ladies more lovely ? A grander monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we wish to estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry ? Yes ! Remember the grace and beauty, the splendor and lofty politeness ; the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy, where the French line bids the gentlemen of the English guard to fire first ; the noble constancy of the old King and Villars his general, who fits out the last army with the last crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or conquer for France at Denain. But round all that royal splendor lies a nation enslaved and ruined : there are people robbed of their rights — communities laid waste — faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and wellnigh destroyed 28o THE FOUR GEORGES. — nay, in the ver)' centre of royalty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame ! It is but to a silly harlot that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the world, are bowing down ; it is the price of a miserable province that the King ties in diamonds round his mistress's white neck. In the first half of the last century, I say, this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a waste as well as Picardy or Artois ; and Versailles is only larger and not worse than Herrenhausen. It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate match which bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon us Brito'ns. Nine years after Charles Stuart lost his head, his niece Sophia, one of many children of another luckless dethroned sovereign, the Elector Palatine, married Ernest Augustus of Brunswick, and brought the reversion to the crown of the three kingdoms in her scanty trousseau. One of the handsomest, the most cheerful, sensible, shrewd, accomplished of women, was Sophia, daughter of poor Fred- erick, the winter king of Bohemia. The other daughters of lovely, unhappy Elizabeth Stuart went off into the Catholic Church ; this one, luckily for her family, remained, I cannot say faithful to the Reformed Religion, but at least she adopted no other. An agent of the French King's, Gourville, a convert himself, strove to bring her and her husband to a sense of the truth ; and tells us that he one day asked Madame the Duchess of Hanover, of what religion her daughter was, then a pretty girl of thirteen years old. The Duchess replied that the prin- cess was of no religion as yet. They were waiting to know of what religion her husband would be, Protestant or Catholic, before instructing her ! And the Duke of Hanover having heard all Gourville's proposal, said that a change would be advantageous to his house, but that he himself was too old to change. This shrewd woman had such keen eyes that she knew how to shut them upon occasion, and was blind to many faults which it appeared that her husband the Bishop of Osnaburg and Duke of Hanover committed. He loved to take his pleasure like other sovereigns — was a merry prince, fond of dinner and the bottle ; liked to go to Italy, as his brothers had done before him ; and we read how he jovially sold 6,700 of his Hanoverians to the seigniory of Venice. They went bravely off to the Morea, under command of Ernest's son, Prince Max, and only 1,400 of them ever came home again. The German princes sold a good deal of this kind of stock. You may GEORGE THE FIRST. 281 remember how George III.'s Government purchased Hessians, and the use we made of them during the War of Independence. The ducats Duke Ernest got for his soldiers he spent in a series of the most briUiant entertainments. Nevertheless, the jovial prince was economical, and kept a steady eye upon his own interests. He achieved the electoral dignity for himself ; he married his eldest son George to his beautiful cousin of Zell ; and sending his sons out in command of armies to fight — now on this side, now on that — he lived on, taking his pleas- ure, and scheming his schemes, a merry, wise prince enough, not, I fear, a moral prince, of which kind we shall have but a very few specimens in the course of these lectures. Ernest Augustus had seven children in all, some of whom were scapegraces, and rebelled against the parental system of primogeniture and non-division of property which the Elector ordained. " Gustchen," the Electress writes about her second son • — " Poor Gus is thrust out, and his father will give him no more keep. I laugh in the day and cry all night about it ; for I am a fool with my children." Three of the six died fighting against Turks, Tartars, Frenchmen. One of them conspired, revolted, fled to Rome, leaving an agent behind him, whose head was taken off. The daughter, of whose early education we have made mention, was married to the Elector of Branden- burg, and so her religion settled finally on the Protestant side. A niece of the Electress Sophia — who had been made to change her religion, and marry the Duke of Orleans, brother of the French King ; a woman whose honest heart was always with her friends and dear old Deutschland, though her fat little body was confined at Paris, or Marly, or Versailles — has left us, in her enormous correspondence (part of which has been printed in German and French), recollections of the Elec- tress, and of George her son. Elizabeth Charlotte was at Os- naburg when George was born (1660). She narrowly escaped a whipping for being in the way on that auspicious day. She seems not to have liked little George, nor George grown up ; and represents him as odiously hard, cold, and silent. Silent he may have been : not a jolly prince like his father before him, but a prudent, quiet, selfish potentate, going his owm way, managing his own aft'airs, and understanding his own interests remarkably well. In his father's lifetime, and at the head of the Hanover forces of 8,000 or 10,000 men, George served the Emperor, on the Danube against Turks, at the siege of Vienna, in Italy, and on the Rhine. When he succeeded to the Electorate, he 282 THE FOUR GEORGES handled its affairs with great prudence and dexterity. He was very much liked by his people of Hanover. He did not show his feelings much, but he cried heartily on leaving them ; as they used for joy when he came back. He showed an uncom- mon Drudence and coolness of behavior when he came into his kingdom ; exhibiting no elation ; reasonably doubtful whether he should not be turned out someday ; looking upon himself only as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James's and Hampton Court ; plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing amongst his German followers ; but what could be expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at so many ducats per head, and make no scruple in so disposing of them ? I fancy a considerable shrewdness, prudence, and even moderation in his ways. The German Protestant was a cheaper, and better, and kinder king than the Catholic Stuart in whose chair he sat, and so far loyal to England, that he let England govern herself. Having these lectures in view, I made it my business to visit that ugly cradle in which our Georges were nursed. The old town of Hanover must look still pretty much as in the time when George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions of Her- renhausen are scarce changed since the day when the stout old Electress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but by a few weeks to the tomb James H.'s daughter, whose death made way for the Brunswick Stuarts in England. The two first royal Georges, and their father, Ernest Augus- tus, had quite royal notions regarding marriage ; and Louis XIV. and Charles H. scarce distinguished themselves more at Ver- sailles or St. James's, than these German sultans in their little city on the banks of the Leine. You may see at Herrenhausen the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and per- formed masques, and sang before the Elector and his sons. There are the very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering through the branches, still grinning and piping their ditties of no tone, as in the days when painted nymphs hung garlands round them ; appeared under their leafy arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns ; descended from " ma- chines " in the guise of Diana or Minerva ; and delivered im- mense allegorical compliments to the princes returned home from the campaign. That was a curious state of morals and politics in Europe ; a queer consequence of the triumph of the monarchical prin- ciple. Feudalism was beaten down. The nobility, in its quar- rels with the crown, had pretty well succumbed, and the mon- GEORGE THE FIRST. ^83 arch was all in all. He became almost divine : the proudest and most ancient gentry of the land did menial service for him. Who should carry Louis XIV. 's candle when he went to bed ? what prince of the blood should hold the king's shirt when his Most Christian Majesty changed that garment .'' — the French memoirs of the seventeenth century are full of such details and squabbles. The tradition is not yet extinct in Europe. Any of you who were present, as myriads were, at that splendid pageant, the opening of our Crystal Palace in London, must have seen two noble lords, great officers of the household, with ancient pedigrees, with embroidered coats, and stars on their breasts and wands in their hands, walking backwards for near the space of a mile, while the royal procession made its prog- ress. Shall we wonder — shall we be angry — shall we laugh at these old-world ceremonies ? View them as you will, according to your mood ; and with scorn or with respect, or with anger and sorrow, as your temper leads you. Up goes Gesler's hat upon the pole. Salute that symbol of sovereignty with heart- felt awe ; or with a sulky shrug of acquiescence, or with a grinning obeisance ; or with a stout rebellious No — clap your own beaver down on your pate, and refuse to doff it to that spangled velvet and flaunting feather. I make no comment upon the spectators' behavior ; all I say is, that Gesler's cap is still up in the market-place of Europe, and not a few folks are still kneeling to it. Put clumsy, high Dutch statues in place of the marbles of Versailles : fancy Herrenhausen waterworks in place of those of Marly : spread the tables with Schweinskopf, Specksuppe, Leberkuchen, and the like delicacies, in place of the French cuisine ; and fancy Frau von Kielmansegge dancing with Count Kammerjunker Quirini, or singing French songs with the most awful German accent : imagine a coarse Versailles, and we have a Hanover before us. " I am now got into the region of beauty," writes Mary Wortley, from Hanover in 1716 ; "all the women have literally rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and necks, jet eye- brows, to which may generally be added coal-black hair. These perfections never leave them to the day of their death, and have a very fine effect by candle-light ; but I could wish they were handsome with a little variety. They resemble one another as Mrs. Salmon's Court of Great Britain, and are in as much danger of melting away by too nearly approaching the fire." The sly Mary Wortley saw this painted seraglio of. the first George at Hanover, the year after his accession to the British throne. There were great doings and feasts there. Here Lady 284 1^^- FOUR GEORGES. Mary saw George II. too. " I can tell you. without flattery or partiality," she says, " that our young prince has all the accom- plishments that it is possible to have at his age, with an air of sprightliness and understanding, and a something so very en- gaging in his behavior that needs not the advantage of his rank to appear charming." I find elsewhere similar panegyrics upon Frederick Prince of Wales, George II. 's son ; and upon George III., of course, and upon George IV. in an eminent degree. It was the rule to be dazzled by princes, and people's eyes winked quite honestly at that royal radiance. The Electoral Court of Hanover was numerous — pretty well paid, as times went ; above all, paid with a regularity which few other European courts could boast of. Perhaps you will be amused to know how the Electoral Court was composed. There were the princes of the house in the first class ; in the second, the single field-marshal of the army (the contingent was 18,000 Pollnitz says, and the Elector had other 14,000 troops in his pay). Then follow, in due order, the authorities civil and military, the working privy councillors, the generals of cavalry and infantry, in the third class ; the high chamberlain, high marshals of the court, high masters of the horse, the major- generals of cavalry and infantry, in the fourth class ; down to the majors, the hofjunkers or pages, the secretaries or assessors, of the tenth class, of whom all were noble. We find the master of the horse had 1,090 thalers of pay; the high chamberlain, 2,000 — a thaler being about three shillings of our money. There were two chamberlains, and one for the Princess ; five gentlemen of the chamber, and five gentlemen ushers ; eleven pages and personages to educate these young noblemen — such as a governor, a preceptor, a fecht-meister, or fencing-master, and a dancing ditto, this latter with a handsome salary of 400 thalers. There were three body and court physicians, with 800 and 500 thalers ; a court barber 600 thalers ; a court organist ; two musikanten ; four French fid- dlers ; twelve trumpeters, and a bugler ; so that there was plenty of music, profane and pious, in Hanover. There were ten chamber waiters, and twenty-four lackeys in livery ; a maitre-d'hotel, and attendants of the kitchen ; a French cook ; a. body cook ; ten cooks ; six cooks' assistants ; two Braten masters, or masters of the roast — (one fancies enormous spits turning slowly, and the honest masters of the roast beladling the dripping) ; a pastry-baker ; a pie-baker ; and finally three scullions, at the modest remuneration of eleven thalers. In the sugar-chamber there were four pastry-cooks (for the ladies, GEORGE THE FIRST. 285 no doubt) ; seven officers in the wine and beer cellars ; four bread-bakers ; and five men in the plate-room. There were 600 horses in the Serene stables — no less than twenty teams of princely carriage horses, eight to a team ; sixteen coachmen; fourteen postilions ; nineteen ostlers ; thirteen helps, besides smiths, carriage-masters, horse-doctors, and other attendants of the stable. The female attendants were not so numerous : I grieve to find but a dozen or fourteen of them about the Electoral pre#iises, and only two washerwomen for all the Court. These functionaries had not so much to do as in the present age. I own to finding a pleasure in these small- beer chronicles. I like to people the old world, with its every-day figures and inhabitants — not so much with heroes fighting im- mense battles and inspiring repulsed battalions to engage ; of statesmen locked up in darkling cabinets and meditating pon- derous laws or dire conspiracies — as with people occupied with their every-day work or pleasure ; my lord and lady hunting in the forest, or dancing in the Court, or bowing to their Serene Highnesses as they pass in to dinner ; John Cook and his pro- cession bringing the meal from the kitchen ; the jolly butlers bearing in the flagons from the cellar ; the stout coachman driving the ponderous gilt wagon, with eight cream-colored horses in housings of scarlet velvet and morocco leather ; a postilion on tlie leaders, and a pair or a half-dozen of running footmen scudding along by the side of the vehicle, with conical caps, long silver-headed maces, which they poised as they ran, and splendid jackets laced all over with silver and gold. I fancy the citizens' wives and their daughters looking out from the balconies ; and the burghers over their beer and INIumm, rising up, cap in hand, as the cavalcade passes through the town with torch-bearers, trumpeters blowing their lusty cheeks out, and squadrons of jack-booted life-guardsmen, girt with shining cuirasses, and bestriding thundering chargers, escort- ing his Highness's coach from Hanover to Herrenhausen ; or halting, mayhap, at Madame Platen's country house of Mon- plaisir, which lici half-way between the summer-palace and the Hesidenz. In the good old times of which I am treating, whilst com- mon men were driven off by herds, and sold to fight the Empe- ror's enemies on the Danube, or to bayonet King Louis's troops of common men on the Rhine, noblemen passed from court to court, seeking service with one prince or the other, and naturally taking command of the ignoble vulgar soldiery which battled and died almost without hope of promotion. Noble adventurers 286 THE FOUR GEORGES. travelled from court to court in search of employment ; not merely noble males, but noble females too ; and if these latter were beauties, and obtained the favorable notice of princes, they stopped in the courts, became the favorite of their Serene or Royal Highnesses ; and received great sums of money and splendid diamonds ; and were promoted to be duchesses, mar- chionesses, and the like ; and did not fall much in public es- teem for the manner in wliich they won their advancement. In this way Mdlle. de Querouailles, a beautiful French lady, came to London on a special mission of Louis XIV., and was adopted bv our grateful country and sovereign, and figured as Duchess of Portsmouth. In this way the beautiful Aurora of Konigs- marck travelling about found favor in the eyes of Augustus of Saxony, and became the mother of Marshal Saxe, who gave us a beating at Fontenoy ; and in this manner the lovely sisters Elizabeth and Melusina of IMeissenbach (who had act- ually been driven out of Paris, whither they had travelled on a like errand, by the wise jealousy of the female favorite there in possession) journeyed to Hanover, and became favorites of the serene house there reigning. That beautiful Aurora von Konigsmarck and her brother are wonderful as types of by-gone manners, and strange illustrations of the morals of old days. The Konigsmarcks were descended from an ancient noble family of Brandenburg, a branch of which passed into Sweden, where it enriched itself and pro- duced several mighty men of valor. The founder of the race was Hans Christof, a famous warrior and plunderer of t/e Thirty Year^' war. One of Hans' sons. Otto, appeared as ambassador at the court of Louis XIV., and had to make a Swedish speech at his reception before the Most Christian King. Otto was a famous dandy and warrior, but he forgot his speech, and what do you think he did.? Far from being disconcerted, he recited a portion of the Swedish Catechism to his Most Christian Majesty and his court, not one of whom understood his lingo with the exception of his own suite, who had to keep their gravity as best they might. Otto's nephew, Aurora's elder brother, Carl johann of Konigsmarck, a favorite of Charles II., a beauty, a dandy, a warrior, a rascal of more than ordinary mark, escaped but deserved being hanged in England, for the murder of Tom Thynne of Longleat." He had a little brother in London with him at this time : — as great a beauty, as great a dandy, as great a villain as his elder. This lad, Philip of Konigsmarck, also was implicated in the affair ; and perhaps it is a pity that he GEORGE THE FIRST. 287 ever brought his pretty neck out of it. He went over to Han- over, and was soon appointed colonel of a regiment of H. E. Highness's dragoons. In early life he had been page in the court of Celle ; and it was said that he and the pretty Princess Sophia Dorothea, who by this time was married to George the Electoral Prince, had been in love with each other as children. Their loves were now to be renewed, not innocently, and to come to a fearful end. A biography of the wife of George I., by Mr. Doran, has lately appeared, and I confess I am astounded at the verdict which that writer has delivered, and at his acquittal of this most unfortunate lady. That she had a cold selfish libertine of a husband no one can doubt ; but that the bad husband had a bad wife is equally clear. She was married to her cousin for money or convenience, as all princesses were married. She was most beautiful, lively, witty, accomplished : his brutality outraged her : his silence and coldness chilled her : his cruelty insulted her. No wonder she did not love him. Plow could love be a part of the compact in such a marriage as that } With this unlucky heart to dispose of, the creature bestowed it on Philip of Konigsmarck, than whom a greater scamp does not walk the history of the seventeenth century. A hundred and eighty years after the fellow was thrust into his unknown grave, a Swedish professor lights upon a box of letters in the Univer- sity Library at Upsala, written by Philip and Dorothea to each other, and telling their miserable stor}\ The bewitching Konigsmarck had conquered two female hearts in Hanover. Besides the electoral Prince's lovely young wife Sophia Dorothea, Philip had inspired a passion in a hideous old court lady, the Countess of Platen. The Princess seems to have pursued him with the fidelity of many years. Heaps of letters followed him on his campaigns, and were an- swered by the daring adventurer. The Princess wanted to fly with him ; to quit her odious husband at any rate. She be- sought her parents to receive her back ; had a notion of taking refuge in France and going over to the Catholic religion ; had absolutely packed her jewels for flight, and very likely arranged its details with her lover, in that last long night's interview, after which Philip of Konigsmarck was seen no more. Konigsmarck, inflamed with drink — there is scarcely any vice of which, according to his own showing, this gentleman was not a practitioner — had boasted at a supper at Dresden of his intimacy with the two Hanoverian ladies, not only with the Princess, but with another lady powerful in Hanover. The 288 THE FOUR GEORGES. Countess Platen, the old favorite of the Elector, hated the young Electoral Princess. The young lady had a lively wit, and constantly made fun of the old one. The Princess's jokes were conveyed to the old Platen just as our idle v/ords are carried about at this present day : and so they both hated each other. The characters in the tragedy, of which the curtain was now about to fall, are about as dark a set as eye ever rested on. There is the jolly Prince, shrewd, selfish, scheming, lov- ing his cups and his ease (I think his good-humor makes the tragedy but darker) ; his Princess, who speaks little but ob- serves all ; his old painted Jezebel of a mistress ; his son, the Electoral Prince, shrewd too, quiet, selfish, not ill-humored, and generally silent, except when goaded into fury by the in- tole-rable tongue of his lovely wife ; there is poor Sophia Doro- thea, with her coquetry and her wrongs, and her passionate attachment to her scamp of a lover, and her wild imprudences, and her mad artifices, and her insane fidelity, and her furious jealousy regarding her husband (though she loathed and cheated him), and her prodigious falsehoods ; and the confi- dante, of course, into whose hands the letters are slipped ; and there is Lothario, finally, than whom, as I have said, one can't imagine a more handsome, wicked, worthless reprobate. How that perverse fidelity of passion pursues the villain ! How madly true the woman is, and how astoundingly she lies ! She has bewitched two or three persons who have taken her up, and they won't believe in her wrong. Like Mary of Scotland, she finds adherents ready to conspire for her even in history, and people who have to deal with her are charmed, and fasci- nated, and bedevilled. How devotedly Miss Strickland has stood by Mary's innocence ! Are there not scores of ladies in this audience who persist in it too ? Innocent ! I remember as a boy how a great party persisted in declaring Caroline of Brunswick was a martyred angel. So was Helen of Greece in- nocent. She never ran away with Paris, the dangerous young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, ill-used her ; and there nevef was any siege of Troy at all. So was Bluebeard's wife inno- cent. She never peeped into the closet where the other wives were with their heads cut off. She never dropped the key, or stained it with blood ; and her brothers were quite right in fin- ishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute ! Yes, Caroline of Bruns- wick was innocent ; and Madame Laffarge never poisoned her husband ; and Mary of Scotland never blew up hers ; and poor Sophia Dorothea was never unfaithful ; and Eve never took the apple — it was a cowardly fabrication of the serpent's. GEORGE THE FIRST. 289 George Louis has been held up to execration as a murder- ous Bluebeard, whereas the Electoral Prince had no share in the transaction in which Philip of Konigsmarck was scuffled out of this mortal scene. The Prince was absent when the catastrophe came. The Princess had had a hundred warnings \ mild hints from her husband's parents ; grim remonstrances from himself — but took no more heed of this advice than such besotted poor wretches do. On the night of Sunday, the ist of July, 1694, Konigsmarck paid a long visit to the Princess, and left her to get ready for flight. Her husband was away at Ber- lin ; her carriages and horses were prepared and ready for the elopement. Meanwhile, the spies of Countess Platen had brought the news to their mistress. She went to Ernest Augustus, and procured from the Elector an order for the arrest of the Swede. On the way by which he was to come, four guards were commissioned to take him. He strove to cut his way through the four men, and wounded more than one of them. They fell upon him ; cut him down ; and, as he was lying wounded on the ground, the Countess, his enemy, whom he had betrayed and insulted, came out and beheld him pros- trate. He cursed her with his dying lips, and the furious woman stamped upon his mouth with her heel. He was de- spatched presently ; his body burnt the next day ; and all traces of the man disappeared. The guards who killed him were en- joined silence under severe penalties. The Princess was re- ported to be ill in her apartments, from which she was taken in October of the same year, being then eight-and-twenty years old, and consigned to the castle of Ahlden, where she remained a prisoner for no less than thirty-two years. A separation had been pronounced previously between her and her husband. She was called henceforth the " Princess of Ahlden," and her silent husband no more uttered her name. Four years after the Konigsmarck catastrophe, Ernest Augustus, the first Elector of Hanover, died, and George Louis, his son, reigned in his stead. Sixteen years he reigned in Han- over, after which he became, as we know, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. The wicked old Countess Platen died in the year 1706. She had lost her sight, but nevertheless the legend says that she constantly saw Kon- igsmarck's ghost by her wicked old bed. And so there was an end of her. In the year 1700, the little Duke of Gloucester, the last of poor Queen Anne's children, died, and the folks of Hanover straightway became of prodigious importance in England. The 19 3^0 THE FOUR GEORGES. Electress Sophia was declared the next in succession to the English throne. George Louis was created Duke of Cam- bridge \ grand deputations were sent over from our country to Deutschland ; but Queen Anne, whose weak heart hankered after her relatives at St. Germains, never could be got to allow her cousin, the Elector Duke of Cambridge, to come and pay his respects to her Majesty, and take his seat in her House of Peers. Had the Queen lasted a month longer ; had the Eng- lish Tories been as bold and resolute as they were clever and crafty; had the Prince whom the nation loved and pitied been equal to his fortune, George Louis had never talked German in St. James's Chapel Royal. When the crown did come to George Louis he was in no hurry about putting it on. He waited at home for awhile ; took an affecting farewell of his dear Hanover and Herren- hausen ; and set out in the most leisurely manner to ascend " the throne of his ancestors," as he called it in his first speech to Parliament. He brought with him a compact body of Ger- mans, whose society he loved, and whom he kept round the royal person. He had his faithful German chamberlains ; his German secretaries ; his negroes, captives of his bow and spear in Turkish wars ; his two ugly, elderly German favorites, Mesdames of Kielmansegge and Schulenberg, whom he created respectively Countess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The Duchess was tall, and lean of stature, and hence was ir- reverently nicknamed the Maypole. The Countess was a large- sized noblewoman, and this elevated personage was denomi- nated the Elephant. Both of these ladies loved Hanover and its delights ; clung round the linden-trees of the great Herren- hausen avenue, and at first would not quit the place. Schulen- berg, in fact, could not come on account of her debts ; but finding the Maypole would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk and slipped out of Hanover, unwieldy as she was. On this the Maypole straightway put herself in motion, and fol- lowed her beloved George Louis. One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, and Polly, and Lucy. The king we had selected ; the courtiers who came in his train ; the English nobles who came to welcome him, and on many of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back — I protest it is a wonderful satirical picture. I am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and crying hurrah for King George ; and yet I can scarcely keep my countenance, and help laughing at the enormous ab- surdity of this advent ! Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop o£ GEORGE THE FIRST. 291 Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his church, with Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grin- ning behind the defender of the faith. Here is my Lord Duke of Marlborough kneeling too, the greatest warrior of all times; he who betrayed King William — betrayed King James II. — • betrayed Queen Anne — betrayed England to the French, the Elector to the Pretender, the Pretender to the Elector; and here are my Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just tripped up the heels of the former ; and if a month's more time had been allowed him, would have had King James at Westminster. The great Whig gentlemen made their bows and congees with proper decorum and ceremony ; but yonder keen old schemer knows the value of their loyalty. " Loyalty," he must think, " as applied to me — it is absurd ! There are fifty nearer heirs to the throne than I am. I am but an acci- dent, and you fine Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not for mine. You Tories hate me ; you archbishop, smirking on your knees, and prating about Heaven, you know I don't care a fig for your Thirty-nine Articles, and can't understand a word of your stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and Oxford — you know you were conspiring against me a month ago ; and you, my Lord Duke of Marlborough — you would sell me or any man else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, my good Melusina, come, my honest Sophia, let us go into my private room, and have some oysters and some Rhine wine, and some pipes afterwards : let us make the best of our situa- tion ; let us take what we can get, and leave these bawling, brawling, lying English to shout, and fight, and cheat, in their own way ! " If Swift had not been committed to the statesmen of the losing side, what a fine satirical picture we might have had of that general sauve qui peu( dimongst the Tory party ! How mum the Tories became ; how the House of Lords and House of Commons chopped round ; and how decorously the majorities welcomed King George ! Bolingbroke, making his last speech in the House of Lords, pointed out the shame of the peerage, where several lords concurred to condemn in one general vote all that they had approved in former parliaments by many particular resolutions. And so their conduct was shameful. St. John had the best of the argument, but the worst of the vote. Bad times were come for him. He talked philosophy, and professed innocence. He courted retirement, and was ready to meet persecution ; but, hearing that honest Mat Prior, who had been recalled from 292 THE FOUR GEORGES. Paris, was about to peach regarding the past transactions, the philosopher bolted, and took that magnificent head of his out of the ugly reach of the axe. Oxford, the lazy and good- humored, had more courage, and awaited the storm at home. He and Mat Prior both had lodgings in the Tower, and both brought their heads safe out of that dangerous menagerie. When Atterbury was carried off to the same den a few years afterwards, and it was asked, what next should be done with him ? " Done with him ? Fling him to the lions," Cadogan said, Marlborough's lieutenant. But the British lion of those days did not care much for drinking the blood of peaceful peers and poets, or crunching the bones of bishops. Only four men were executed in London for the rebellion of 17 15 ; and twenty- two in Lancashire. Above a thousand taken in arms, sub- mitted to the King's mercy, and petitioned to be transported to his Majesty's colonies in America. I have heard that their descendants took the loyalist side in the disputes which arose sixty years after. It is pleasant to find that a friend of ours, worthy Dick Steele, was for letting off the rebels with their lives. As one thinks of what might have been, how amusing the speculation is ! We know how the doomed Scottish gentlemen came out at Lord Mar's sumnions, mounted the white cockade, that has been a flower of sad poetry ever since, and rallied round the ill-omened Stuart standard at Braemar. Mar, with 8,000 men, and but 1,500 opposed to him, might have driven the enemy over the Tweed, and taken possession of the whole of Scotland ; but that the Pretender's Duke did not venture to move when the day was his own. Edinburgh Castle might have been in King James's hands ; but that the men who were to escalade it stayed to drink his health at the tavern, and arrived two hours too late at the rendezvous under the castle wall. There was sympathy enough in the town — the projected attack seems to have been known there — Lord Mahon quotes Sinclair's account of a gentleman not concerned, who told Sin- clair, that he was in a house that evening where eighteen of them were drinking, as the facetious landlady said, " powder- ing their hair," for the attack on the castle. Suppose they had not stopped to powder their hair 1 Edinburgh Castle, and town, and all Scotland were King James's. The north of Eng- land rises, and marches over Barnet Heath upon London. Wyndham is up in Somersetshire ; Packington in Worcester- shire ; and Vivian in Cornwall. The Elector of Hanover, and his hideous mistresses, pack up the plate, and perhaps the GEORGE THE FIRST. 293 crown jewels in London, and are off vid Harwich and Helvoet- sluys, for dear old Deutschland. The King — God save him 1 lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause ; shouting multitudes, roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough weeping tears of joy, and all the bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few years, mass is said in St. Paul's ; matins and vespers are sung in York Minster ; and Dr. Swift is turned out of his stall and deanery at St. Patrick's, to give place to Father Dominic, from Sala- manca. All these changes were possible then, and once thirty years afterwards — all this we might have had, but for the////- veris exiguijactit, that little toss of powder for the hair which the Scottish conspirators stopped to take at the tavern. You understand the distinction I would draw between history — of which I do not aspire to be an expounder — and manners and life such as these sketches would describe. The rebellion breaks out in the north ; its story is before you in a hundred volumes, in none more fairly than in the excellent narrative of Lord Mahon. The clans are up in Scotland ; Derwentwater, Nithsdale and Forster are in arms in North- umberland — these are matters of history, for which you are referred to the due chroniclers. The Guards are set to watch the streets, and prevent the people wearing white roses. I read presently of a couple of soldiers almost flogged to death for wearing oakboughs in their hats on the 29th of May — another badge of the beloved Stuarts. It is with these we have to do, rather than the marches and battles of the armies to which the poor fellows belonged — with statesmen, and how they looked, and how they lived, rather than with measures of State, which belong to history alone. For e:;; niple, at the close of the old Queen's reign, it is known the Duke of Marlborough left the kingdom — after what menaces, after what prayers, lies, bribes offered, taken, refused, accepted ; after what dark doubling and tacking, let history, if she can or dare, say. The Queen dead ; who so eager to return as my lord duke ? Who shouts God save the King ! so lustily as the great conqueror of Blenheim and Malplaquet ? (By the way, he will send over some more money for the Pretender yet, on the sly.) Who lays his hand on his blue ribbon, and lifts his eyes more gracefully to heaven than this hero ? He makes a quasi-triumphal entrance into London, by Temple Bar, in his enormous gilt coach — and the enormous gilt coach breaks down somewhere by Chancery Lane, and his highness is obliged to get another. There it is we have him. We are with the mob in the crowd, not with the great folks in the procession. We are not the Historic Muse, 294 THE POUR GEORGES. but her ladyship's attendant, tale-bearer — valet de chamhre — fof whom no man is a hero ; and, as yonder one steps from his car- riage to the next handy conveyance, we take the number of the hack ; we look all over at his stars, ribbons, embroidery ; we think within ourselves, O you unfathomable schemer ! O you warrior invincible ! O you beautiful smiling Judas ! Whaf master would you not kiss or betray ? What traitor's head, blackening on the spikes on yonder gate, ever hatched a tithe of the treason which has worked under your periwig ? We have brought our Georges to London City, and if we would behold its aspect, may see it in Hogarth's lively perspec- tive of Cheapside, or read it in a hundred contemporary books which paint the manners of that age. Our dear old Spectator looks smiling upon the streets, with their innumerable signs, and describes them with his charming humor. " Our streets are filled with Blue Boars, Black Swans, and Red Lions, not to mention Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armor, with other crea- tures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa." A few of these quaint old figures .still remain in London town. You may still see there, and over its old hostel in Ludgate Hill, the " Belle Sauvage " to whom the .S/^rA?/i9/- so pleasantly alludes in that paper ; and who was, probably, no other than the sweet American Pocahontas, who rescued from death the daring Captain Smith. There is the " Lion's Head," down whose jaws the Spectator's own letters wer5 passed ; and over a great banker's in Fleet Street, the effigy of the wallet, which the founder of the firm bore when he came into London a country boy. People this street, so ornamented, with crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lackey marching before him ; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack, tripping to chapel, her foot- boy carrying her ladyship's great prayer-book ; with itinerant tradesmen singing their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as boy in London City, a score of cheery, familiar cries that are silent now). Fancy the beaux thronging to the choco- late-houses, tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their periwigs appearing over the red curtains. Fancy Saccharissa, beckoning and smiling from the upper windows, and a crowd of soldiers brawling and bustling at the door — gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams ; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver ; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Flarry left them, with their ruff and GEORGE THE FIRST. 295 velvet flat caps. Perhaps the King's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass. If he is going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his Majesty only uses a chair, with six footmen walking before, and six yeomen of the guard at the sides of the sedan. The officers in waiting follow the King in coaches. It must be rather slow work. Our Spectator and Tatler are full of delightful glimpses of the town life of those days. In the company of that charming guide, we may go to the opera, the comedy, the puppet-show, the auction, even the cockpit : we can take boat at Temple Stairs, and accompany Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spec- tator to Spring Garden — it will be called Vauxhall a few years hence, when Hogarth will paint for it. Would you not like to step back into the past and be introduced to Mr. Addison ? Not the Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq., George I.'s Secre- tary of State, but to the delightful painter of contemporary manners ; the man who, when in good-humor himself, was the pleasantest companion in all England. I should like to go into Lockit's with him, and drink a bowl along with Sir R. Steele (who has just been knighted by King George, and who does not happen to have any money to pay his share of the reckon- ing). I should not care to follow Mr. Addison to his secretary's office in Whitehall. There we get into politics. Our business is pleasure, and the town, and the coffee-house, and the theatre, and the Mall. Delightful Spectator.! kind friend of leisure hours ! happy companion ! true Christian gentleman ! How much greater, better, you are than the King Mr. Secretary kneels to ! You can have foreign testimony about old-world London, if you like ; and my before-quoted friend, Charles Louis, Baron de Pollnitz, will conduct us to it. " A man of sense," says he, " or a fine gentleman, is never at a loss for company in Lon- don, and this is the way the latter passes his time. He rises late, puts on a frock, and, leaving his sword at home, takes his cane, and goes where he pleases. The park is commonly the place where he walks, because 'tis the Exchange for men of quality. 'Tis the same thing as the Tuileries at Paris, only the park has a certain beauty of simplicity which cannot be described. The grand walk is called the Mall ; is full of people at every hour of the day, but especially at morning and evening, when their Majesties often walk with the royal family, who are at- tended only by a half-dozen yeomen of the guard, and permit all persons to walk at the same time with them. The ladies 296 THE FOUR GEORGES. and gentlemen always appear in rich dresses, for the English, who, twenty years ago, did not wear gold lace but in their army, are now embroidered and bedaubed as much as the French. I speak of persons of quality ; for the citizen still contents him- self with a suit of fine cloth, and a good hat and wig, and fine linen. Everybody is well clothed here, and even the beggars don't make so ragged an appearance as they do elsewhere." After our friend, the man of quality, has had his morning or undress walk in the Mall, he goes home to dress, and then saunters to some coffee-house or chocolate-house frequented by the persons he would see. " For 'tis a rule with the Eng- lish to go once a day at least to houses of this sort, where they talk of business and news, read the papers, and often look at one another without opening their lips. And 'tis very well they are so mute ; for were they all as talkative as people of other nations, the coffee-houses would be intolerable, and there would be no hearing what one man said where they are so many. The chocolate-house in St. James's Street, where I go every morning to pass away the time, is always so full that a man can scarcely turn about in it." Delightful as London City M'as, King George I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could ; and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher, 100 years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's, and sighed out, " Was fur Plunder ! " The German women plundered ; the German secretaries plundered ; the German cooks and intendants plundered ; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim. He was not a lofty monarch, certainly : he was not a patron of the fine arts ; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revenge- ful, he was not extravagant. Though a despot in Hanover, he was a moderate ruler in England. His aim was to leave it to itself as much as possible, and to live out of it as much as he could. His heart was in Hanover. When taken ill on his last journey, as he was passing through Holland, he thrust his livid head out of the coach-window, and gasped out, " Osna- burg, Osnaburg ! " He was more than fifty years of age when he came amongst us : we took him because we wanted him, because he served our turn ; we laughed at his uncouth Ger- man ways, and sneered at him. He took our loyalty for what it was worth ; laid hands on what money he could ; kept us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. I, for one, would have been on his side in those days. Cynical, and selfish, as GEORGE THE FIRST. 297 he was, he was better than a king out of St. Germainswith the French King's order in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in his train. The Fates are supposed to interest themselves about royal personages ; and so this one had omens and prophecies spe- cially regarding him. He was said to be much disturbed at a prophecy that he should die very soon after his wife ; and sure enough, pallid Death having seized upon the luckless Princess in her castle of Ahlden, presently pounced upon H. M. King George I., in his travelling-chariot, on the Hanover road. What postilion can outride that pale horseman ? It is said, George promised one of his left-handed widows to come to her after death, if leave were granted to him to revisit the glimpses of the moon ; and soon after his demise, a great raven actually flying or hopping in at the Duchess of Kendal's window at Twickenham, she chose to imagine the king's spirit inhabited these plumes, and took special care of her sable visitor. Affect- ing metempsychosis — funereal royal bird ! How pathetic is the idea of the Duchess weeping over it ! When this chaste addition to our English aristocracy died, all her jewels, her plate, her plunder went over to her relations in Hanover. I wonder whether her heirs took the bird, and whether it is still flapping its wings over Herrenhausen ? The days are over in England of that strange religion of king-worship, when priests flattered princes in the Temple of God ; when servility was held to be ennobling duty ; when beauty and youth tried eagerly for royal favor ; and woman's shame was held to be no dishonor. Mended morals and mended manners in courts and people, are among the priceless consequences of the freedom which George I. came to rescue and secure. He kept his compact with his English subjects ; and if he escaped no more than other men and monarchs from the vices of his age, at least we may thank him for preserving and transmitting the liberties of ours. In our free air, royal and humble homes have alike been purified ; and Truth, the birthright of high and low among us, which quite fearlessly judges our greatest personages, can only speak of them now in words of respect and regard. There are stains in the portrait of the first George, and traits in it which none of us need ad- mire ; but, among the nobler features, are justice, courage, moderation — and these we may recognize ere we turn the picture to the wall. GEORGE THE SECOND. On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen might have been perceived galloping along the road from Chel- sea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jack-boots of the period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very corpulent cavalier ; but, by the manner in which he urged his horse, you might see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider. Indeed, no man loved sport better ; and in the hunting-fields of Nor^ folk, no squire rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ring- wood and Sweettips more lustily, than he who now thundered over the Richmond road. He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see the owner of the mansion. The mistress of the house and her ladies, to whom our friend was admitted, said he could not be introduced to the master, however pressing the business might be. The master was asleep after his dinner ; he always slept after his dinner : and woe be to the person who interrupted him ! Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jack-boots put the affrighted ladies aside, opened the forbidden door of the bed- room, wherein upon the bed lay a little gentleman ; and here the eager messenger knelt down in his jack-boots. He on the bed started up, and with many oaths and a strong German accent asked who was there, and who dared to disturb him ? " I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messenger. The awakened sleeper hated Sir Robert Walpole. " I have the honor to announce to your Majesty that your royal father, King George I., died at Osnaburg, on Saturday last, the loth inst." " Dat is one hi^ lie ! " roared out his sacred Majesty King George H. : but Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from (298) GEORGE THE SECOND. 299 that day until three-and-thirty years after, George, the second of the name, ruled over England. How the King made away with his father's will under the astonished nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; how he was a choleric little sovereign ; how he shook his fist in the face of his father's courtiers ; how he kicked his coat and wig about in his rages, and called everybody thief, liar, rascal, with whom he differed : you will read in all the history books ; and how he speedily and shrewdly reconciled himself with the bold minister, whom he had hated during his father's life, and by whom he was served during fifteen years of his own with ad- mirable prudence, fidelity, and success. But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pretender back again. But for his obstinate love of peace, we should have had wars, which the nation was not strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his resolute counsels and good-humored resistance we might have had German despots attempting a Hanoverian regi- ment over us : we should have had revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter of a century of peace, freedom, and material prosperity, such as the country never enjoyed, until that corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot, and statesman governed it. In religion he was little better than a heathen ; cracked ribald jokes at bigwigs and bishops, and laughed at High Church and Low. In private life the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures : he passed his Sundays tippling at Richmond ; and his holy- days bawling after dogs, or boozing at Houghton with boors over beef and punch. He cared for letters no more than his master did : he judged human nature so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he was right, and that men could be corrupted by means so base. But, with his hireling House of Commons, he defended liberty for us ; with his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. There were parsons at Oxford as double-dealing and dangerous as any priests out of Rome, and he routed them both. He gave Englishmen no conquests, but he gave them peace, and ease, and freedom ; the three per cents nearly at par ; and wheat at f ve and six and twenty shillings a quarter. It was lucky for us that our first Georges were not mora high-minded men ; especially fortunate that they loved Han- over so much as to leave England to have her own way. Our chief troubles began when we got a king who gloried in the name of Briton, and, being born in the country, proposed to 300 THE FOUR GEORGES. rule it. He was no more fit to govern England than his grand- father and great-grandfather, who did not try. It was righting itself during their occupation. The dangerous, noble old spirit of cavalier loyalty was dying out ; the stately old English High Church was emptying itself : the questions dropping which, on one side and the other ; — the side of loyalty, prerog- ative, church, and king ; — the side of right, truth, civil and re- ligious freedom, — had set generations of brave men in arms. By the time when George HI. came to the throne, the combat between loyalty and liberty was come to an end ; and Charles Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, was dying in Italy. Those who are curious about European Court history of the last age know the memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, and what a Court was that of Berlin, where George II.'s cousins ruled sovereign. Frederick the Great's father knocked down his sons, daughters, officers of state ; he kidnapped big men all Europe over to make grenadiers of : his feasts, his parades, his wine-parties, his tobacco-parties, are all described. Jonathan Wild the Great in language, pleasures, and behavior, is scarcely more delicate than this German sovereign. Louis XV,, his life, and reign, and doings, are told in a thousand French memoirs. Our George II., at least, was not a worse king than his neigh- bors. He claimed and took the royal exemption from doing right which sovereigns assumed. AduU little man of low tastes he appears to us in England ; yet Hervey tells us that this choleric prince was a great sentimentalist, and that his letters — of which he wrote prodigious quantities — were quite danger- ous in their powers of fascination. He kept his sentimentali- ties for his Germans and his queen. With us English, he never chose to be familiar. He has been accused of avarice, yet he did not give much money, and did not leave much be- hind him. He did not love the fine arts, but he did not pre- tend to love them. He was no more a hypocrite about religion than his father. He judged men by a low standard ; yet, with such men as were near him, was he wrong in judging as he did ? He readily detected lying and flattery, and liars and flat- terers were perforce his companions. Had he been more of a dupe he might have been more amiable. A dismal experience made him cynical. No boon was it to him to be clear-sighted, and see only selfishness and flattery round about him. What could Walpole tell him about his Lords and Commons, but that they were all venal ? Did not his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the same story ? Dealing with men and women in his rude, skeptical way, he came to doubt about AVE, C-^SAR. GEORGE THE SECOND. ^oi honor, male and female, about patriotism, about religion. " He is wild, but he fights like a man," George I., the taciturn, said of his son and successor. Courage George II. certainly had. The Electoral Prince, at the head of his father's contingent, had approved himself a good and brave soldier under Eugene and Marlborough. At Oudenarde he specially distinguished himself. At Malplaquet the other claimant to the English throne won but little honor. There was always a question about James's courage. Neither then in Flanders, nor after- wards in his own ancient kingdom of Scotland, did the luckless Pretender show much resolution. But dapper little George had a famous tough spirit of his own, and fought likft a Trojan. He called out his brother of Prussia, with sword and pistol \ and I wish, for the interest of romancers in general, that that famous duel could have taken place. The two sovereigns hated each other with all their might ; their seconds were ap- pointed ; the place of meeting was settled ; and the duel was only prevented by strong representations made to the two, of the European laughter which would have been caused by such a transaction. Whenever we hear of dapper George at war, it is certain that he demeaned himself- like a little man of valor. At Det- tingen his horse ran away with him, and with difficulty was stopped from carrying him into the enemy's lines. The King, dismounting from the fiery quadruped, said bravely, " Now I know I shall not run away ; " and placed himself at the head of the foot, drew his sword, brandishing it at the whole of the French army, and calling out to his own men to come on, in bad English, but with the most famous pluck and spirit. In '45, when the Pretender was at Derby, and many people began to look pale, the King never lost his courage — not he. " Pooh ! don't talk to me that stuff ! " he said, like a gallant little prince as he was, and never for one moment allowed his equanimity, or his business, or his pleasures, or his travels, to be disturbed. On public festivals he always appeared in the hat and coat he wore on the famous day of Oudenarde ; and the people laughed, but kindly, at the odd old garment, for bravery never goes out of fashion. In private life the Prince showed himself a worthy descend- ant of his father. In this respect, so much has heen said about the first George's manners, that we need not enter into a description of the son's German harem. In 1705 he married a princess remarkable for beauty, for cleverness, for learning, for good temper — one of the truest and fondest wives ever prince 302 THE FOUR GEORGES. was blessed with, and who loved him and was faithful to him, and he, in his coarse fashion, loved her to the last. It must be told to the honor of Caroline of Anspach, that, at the time when German princes thought no more of changing their reli- gion than you of altering your cap, she refused to give up Prot- estantism for the other creed, although an archduke, after- wards to be an emperor, was offered to her for a bridegroom. Her Protestant relations in Berlin were angry at her rebellious spirit ; it was they who tried to convert her (it is droll to think that Frederick ti.e Great, who had no religion at all, was known for a long time in England as the Protestant hero), and these good Protestants set upon Caroline a certain Father Urban, a very skilful Jesuit, and famous winner of souls. But she routed the Jesuit ; and she refused Charles VI. ; and she mar- ried the little Electoral Prince of Hanover, whom she tended with love, and with every manner of sacrifice, with artful kind- ness, with tender flattery, with entire self-devotion, thencefor- ward until her life's end. When George I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son was appointed regent during the royal absence. But this honor was never again conferred on the Prince of Wales ; he and his father fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of his second son, a royal row took place, and the Prince, shaking his fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, called him a rogue, and provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned out of St. James's, and their princely children taken from them, by order of the royal head of the family. Father and mother wept piteously at parting from their little ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with their love, to papa and mamma ; the parents watered the fruit with tears. They had no tears thirty-five years afterwards, when Prince Frederick died — their eldest son, their heir, their enemy. The King called his daughter-in-law " cette diablesse madame la princesses The frequenters of the latter's court were for- bidden to appear at the King's : their Royal Highnesses going to Bath, we read how the courtiers followed them thither, and paid that homage in Somersetshire which was forbidden in London. That phrase of '''' cette diablesse mada7fie la prittcesse," explains one cause of the wrath of her royal papa. She was a very clever woman : she had a keen sense of humor : she had a dreadful tongue : she turned into ridicule the antiquated sultan and his hideous harem. She wrote savage letters about him home to members of her family. So, driven out from the royal presence, tlie Prince and Princess set up for themselves GEORGE THE SECOND. l^l in Leicester Fields, " wliere," says Walpole, " the most prom- ising of the young gentlemen of the next party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young ladies, formed the new court." Besides Leicester House, they had their lodge at Richmond, frequented by some of the pleasantest company of those days. There were the Herveys, and Chesterfield, and little Mr. Pope from Twickenham, and with him, sometimes, the savage Dean of St. Patrick's, and quite a bevy of young ladies, whose pretty faces smile on us out of history. There was Lepell, famous in ballad song; and the saucy, charming Mary Bellenden, who would have none of the Prince of Wales's fine compliments, who folded her arms across her breast, and bade H. R. H. keep off ; and knocked his purse of guineas into his face, and told him she was tired of seeing him count them. He was not an august monarch, this Augustus. Walpole tells how, one night at the royal card-table, the playful princess pulled a chair away from under Lady Deloraine, who, in re- venge, pulled the King's from under him, so that his Majesty fell on the carpet. In whatever posture one sees this royal George, he is ludicrous somehow ; even at Dettingen, where he fought so bravely, his figure is absurd — callingout in his broken English, and lunging with his rapier, like a fencing-master. In contemporary caricatures, George's son, "the Hero of Cul- loden," is also made an object of considerable fun. I refrain to quote from Walpole regarding George — for those charming volumes are in the hands of all who love the gossip of the last century. Nothing can be more cheery than Horace's letters. Fiddles sing all through them : wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle there : never was such a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us. Hervey, the next great author- ity, is a darker spirit. About him there is something frightful : a few years since his heirs opened the lid of the Ickworth box ; it was as if a Pompeii was opened to us — the last century dug up, with its temples and its games, its chariots, its public places — lupanaria. Wandering through that city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing and eager, and struggling — rouged, and lying, and fawning — I have wanted some one to be friends with, I have said to friends conversant with that history, " Show me some good person about that Court ; find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute, gay people, some one being that I can love and regard." There is that strutting little sultan George II. ; there is that hunch- 304 THE FOUR GEORGES. backed, beetle-browed Lord Chesterfield ; there is John Hervey, with his deadly smile, and ghastly, painted face — I hate them. There is Hoadly, cringing from one bishopric to another : yonder comes little Mr. Pope, from Twickenham, with his friend, the Irish dean, in his new cassock, bowing too, but with rage flashing from under his bushy eyebrows, and scorn and hate quivering in his smile. Can you be fond of these ? Of Pope I might : at least I might love his genius, his wit, his greatness, his sensibility — with a certain conviction that at some fancied slight, some sneer which he imagined, he would turn upon and stab me. Can you trust the Queen ? She is not of our order : their very position makes kings and queens lonely. One inscrutable at- tachment that inscrutable woman has. To that she is faithful, through all trial, neglect, pain, and time. Save her husband, she really cares for no created being. She is good enough to her children, and even fond enough of them; but she would chop them all up into little pieces to please him. In her in- tercourse with all around her, she was perfectly kind, gracious, and natural : but friends may die, daughters may depart, she will be as perfectly kind and gracious to the next set. If the King wants her, she will smile upon him, be she ever so sad; and walk with him, be she ever so weary ; and laugh at his brutal jokes, be she in ever so much pain of body or heart. Caroline's devotion to her husband is a prodigy to read of. What charm had the little man ? What was there in those wonderful letters of thirty pages long, which he wrote to her when he was absent, and to his mistresses at Hanover, when he was in London with his wife ? Why did Caroline, the most lovely and accomplished princess of Germany, take a little red- faced staring princeling for a husband, and refuse an emperor ? Why, to her last hour, did she love him so ? She killed herself because she loved him so. She had the gout, and would plunge her feet in cold water "-in order to walk with him. With the film of death over her eyes, writhing in intolerable pain, she yet had a livid smile and a gentle word for her master. You have read the wonderful history of that death-bed ? How she bade him marry again, and the reply the old King blubbered out, " Non, non : j'aurai des maitresses." There never was such a ghastly farce. I watch the astonishing scene — I stand by that awful bedside, wondering at the ways in which God has ordained the lives, loves, rewards, successes, passions, actions, ends of his creatures — and can't but laugh, in the presence of death, and with the saddest heart. In that often-quoted passage from Lord Hervey, in which the Queen's death-bed is described, GEORGE THE SECOND. 30S the grotesque horror of the details surpasses all satire : the dreadful humor of the scene is more terrible than Swift's blackest pages, or Fielding's fiercest irony. The man who wrote the story had something diabolical about him : the terrible verses which Pope wrote respecting Hervey, in one of his own moods of almost fiendish malignity, I fear are true. I am frightened as I look back into the past, and fancy I behold that ghastly, beautiful face ; as I think of the Queen writhing on her death-bed, and crying out, " Pray! — pray ! " — of the royal old sinner by her side, who kisses her dead lips with frantic grief, and leaves her to sin more ; — of the bevy of courtly clergymen, and the archbishop, whose prayers she rejects, and who are obliged for propriety's sake to shuffle off the anxious inquiries of the public, and vow that her Majesty quitted this life "in a heavenly frame of mind." What a life! — to what ends devoted ! What a vanity of vanities ! It is a theme for another pulpit than the lecturer's. For a pulpit ? — I think the part which pulpits play in the deaths of kings is the most ghastly of all the ceremonial : the lying eulogies, the blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the simulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies — all uttered in the name of Fleaven in our State churches : these monstrous threnodies have been sung from time immemorial over kings and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State pr rson must bring out his commonplaces ; his apparatus of- rhetorical black- hangings. Dead king or live king, the clergyman must flatter him — announce his piety whilst living, and when dead, perform the obsequies of " our most religious and gracious king." I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious King's favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5,000/. (She betted him 5000?. that he would not be made a bishop, and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time led up by such hands for consecration ? As I peep into George II.'s St. James's, I see crowds of cassocks rustling up the back-stairs of the ladies of the Court ; stealthy clergy slipping purses into their laps ; that godless old King yawning under his canopy in his Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing. Discoursing about what ? — about righteous- ness and judgment ? Whilst the chaplain is preaching, the King is chattering in German almost as loud as the preacher ; so loud that the clergyman — it may be one Dr. Young, he who wrote " Night Thoughts," and discoursed on the splendors of the stars, the glories of heaven, and utter vanities of this world — actually burst out crying in his pulpit because the defender 3o6 THE FOUR GEORGES. of the faith and dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to him ! No wonder that the clergy were corrupt and indifferent amidst this indifference and corruption. No wonder that skeptics multiplied and morals degenerated, so far as they depended on the influence of such a king. No wonder that Whitfield cried out in the wilderness, that Wesley quitted the insulted temple to pray on the hill-side. I look with reverence on those men at that time. Which is the sublimer spectacle — • — the good John Wesley, surrounded by his congregation of miners at the pit's mouth, or the Queen's chaplains mumbling through their morning office in their ante-room, under the picture of the great Venus, with the door opened into the ad- joining chamber, where the Queen is dressing, talking scandal to Lord Hervey, or uttering sneers at Lady Suffolk, who is kneeling with the basin at her mistress's side ? I say I am scared as I look round at this society — at this king, at these courtiers, at these politicians, at these bishops — at this flaunting vice and levity. VVhereabouts in this Court is the honest man ? Where is the pure person one may like ? The air stifles one with its sickly perfumes. There are some old-world follies and some absurd ceremonials about our Court of the present day, which I laugh at, but as an Englishman, contrasting it with the past, shall I not acknowledge the change of to-day .-• As the mistress of St. James's passes me now, I salute the sovereign, wise, moderate, exemplary of life ; the good mother ; the good wife; the accomplished lady ; the enlightened friend of art; the tender sympathizer in her people's glories and sorrows. Of all the Court of George and Caroline, I find no one but Lady Suffolk with whom it seems pleasant and kindly to hold converse. Even the misogynist Croker, who edited her letters, loves her, and has that regard for her with which her sweet graciousness seems to have inspired almost all men and some women who came near her. I have noted many little traits which go to prove the charms of her character (it is not merely because she is charming, but because she is characteristic, that I allude to her). She writes delightfully sober letters. Address- ing Mr. Gay at Tunbridge (he was, you know, a poet, penniless and in disgrace), she says : " The place you are in, has strangely filled your head with physicians and cures ; but, take my word for it, many a fine lady has gone there to drink the waters without being sick ; and many a man has complained of the loss of his heart, who had it in his own possession. I desire you will keep yours ; for I shall not be very fond of a friend without one, and I have a great mind you should be in the number of mine." GEORGE THE SECOND. 307 When Lord Peterborough was seventy years old, that in- domitable youth addressed some flaming love, or rather gal- lantry, letters to Mrs. Howard — curious relics they are of the romantic manner of wooing sometimes in use in those days. It is not passion ; it is not love ; it is gallantry : a mixture of earnest and acting; high-flown compliments, profound bows, vows, sighs and ogles, in the manner of the Clelie romances, and Millamont and Doricourt in the comedy. There was a vast elaboration of ceremonies and etiquette, of raptures — a regulated form for kneeling and wooing which has quite passed out of our downright manners. Henrietta Howard accepted the noble old earl's philandering; answered the queer love- letters with due acknowledgment ; made a profound curtsey to Peterborough's profound bow ; and got John Gay to help her in the composition of her letters in reply to her old knight. He wrote her charming verses, in which there was truth as well as grace. " O wonderful creature ! " he writes : — " O wonderful creature, a woman of reason ! Never grave out of pride, never gay out of season ! When so easy to guess who this anc;el should be, Who would think Mrs. Howard ne'er dreamt it was she ?" The great Mr. Pope also celebrated her in lines not less pleas- ant, and painted a portrait of what must certainly have been a delightful lady : — " I know a thing that's most uncommon — Envy, be silent and attend! — I know a reasonable woman. Handsome, yet witty, and a friend : " Not warp'd by passion, aw'd by rumor, Not grave through pride, or gay through folly i An equal mixture of good-humor And exquisite soft melancholy. " Has she no faults, then (Envy says), sir? Yes she has one, I must aver — When all the world conspires to praise her. The woman's deaf, and does not hear ! " Even the women concurred in praising and loving her. The Duchess of Queensbury bears testimony to her amiable qual- ities, and writes to her : " I tell you so and so, because you love children, and to have children love you." The beautiful, jolly Mary Bellenden, represented by contemporaries as " the most perfect creature ever known," writes very pleasantly to her " dear Howard," her " dear Swiss," from the country, whither Mary had retired after her marriage, and when she gave up being a maid of honor, " How do you do, Mrs. How- 3o8 ^-^^ FOUR GEORGES. ard ? " Mary breaks out. " How do you do, Mrs. Howard ? that is all I have to say. This afternoon I am taken with a fit of writing ; but as to matter, I have nothing better to entertaii\ you, than news of my farm. I therefore give you the following list of the stock of eatables that I ani fatting for my private tooth. It is well known to th.e whole county of Kent, that I have four fat calves, two fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve promis- ing black pigs, two young chickens, three fine geese, with thir- teen eggs under each (several being duck-eggs, else the others do not come to maturity) ; all this, with rabbits, and pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef and mutton at reasonable rates. Now, Howard, if you have a mind to stick a knife into anything I have named, say so I " A jolly set must they have been, those maids of honor. Pope introduces us to a whole bevy of them, in a pleasant letter. " I went," he says, "by water to Hampton Court, and met the Prince, with all his ladies, on horseback, coming from hunting. Mrs. Bellenden and Mrs. Lepell took me into pro- tection, contrary to the laws against harboring Papists, and gave me a dinner, with something I liked better, an opportunity of conversation with Mrs. Howard. We all agreed that the life of a maid of honor was of all things the most miserable, and wished that all women who envied it had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham of a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark on the forehead from an uneasy hat — all this may qualify thern to make excellent wives for hunters. As soon as they wipe ofif the heat of the day, they must simper an hour and catch cold in the Princess's apartment ; from thence to dinner with what appetite they may ; and after that till midnight, work, walk, or think which way they please. No lone house in Wales, with a mountain and rookery, is more contemplative than this Court. Miss Lepell walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the King, who gave audience to the vice-chamberlain all alone under the garden wall." I fancy it was a merrier England, that of our ancestors, than the island which we inhabit. People high and low amused themselves very much more. I have calculated the manner in which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time — • and what with drinking, and dining, and supping, and cards, wonder how they got through their business at all. They played all sorts of games, which, with the exception of cricket and GEORGE THE SECOND. 309 tennis, have quite gone out of our manners now. In the old prints of St. James's Park, you still see the marks along the ivalk, to note the balls when the Court played at Mall. Fancy Birdcage Walk now so laid out, and Lord John and Lord Pal- merston knocking balls up and down the avenue ! Most' of those jolly sports belong to the past, and the good old games of England are only to be found in old novels, in old ballads, or the columns of dingy old newspapers, which say how a main of cocks is to be fought at Winchester between the Winchester men and the Hampton men ; or how the Cornwall men and the Devon men are going to hold a great wrestling-match at Totnes, and so on. A hundred and twenty years ago there were not only coun- try towns in England, but people who inhabited them. We were very much more gregarious ; we were amused by very sim- ple pleasures. Every town had its fair, every village its wake. The old poets have sung a hundred jolly ditties about great cudgel-playings, famous grinning through horse-collars, great maypole meetings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run races clad in very light attire ; and the kind gentry and good parsons thought no shame in looking on. Dancing bears went about the country with pipe and tabor. Certain well-known tunes were sung all over the land for hundreds of years, and high and low rejoiced in that simple music. Gentlemen who wished to entertain their female friends constantly sent for a band. When Beau Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was courting the lady whom he married, he treated her and her companion at his lodgings to a supper from the tavern, and after supper they sent out for a fiddler — three of them. Fancy the three, in a great wainscoted room, in Covent Garden or Soho, lighted by two or three candles in silver sconces, some grapes and a bottle of Florence wine on the table, and the honest fiddler playing old tunes in quaint old minor keys, as the Beau takes out one lady after the other, and solemnly dances with her ! The very great folks, young noblemen, with their governors, and the like, went abroad and made the great tour; the home satirists jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which they brought back ; but the greater number of people never left the country. The jolly squire often had never been twenty miles from home. Those who did go went to the baths, to Harro- gate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. Old letters are full of these places of pleasure. Gay writes to us about the fid- dlers at Tunbridge ; of the ladies having merry little private 310 THE FOUR GEORGES. balls amongst themselves ; and the gentlemen entertaining them by turns with tea and music. One of the young beauties whom he met did not care for tea : "We have a young lady here," he says, " that is very particular in her desires. I have known some young ladies, who, if ever they prayed, would ask for some equipage or title, a husband or matadores : but this lady, who is but seventeen, and has 30,000/. to her fortune, places all her wishes on a pot of good ale. When her friends, for the sake of her shape and complexion, would dissuade her from it, she answers, with the truest sincerity, that by the loss of shape and complexion she could only lose a husband, whereas ale is her passion." Every country town had its assembly-room — mouldy old tenements, which we may still see in deserted inn-yards, in de- cayed provincial cities, out of which the great wen of London has sucked all the life. York, at assize times, and throughout the winter, harbored a large society of northern gentry. Shrews- bury was celebrated for its festivities. At Newmarket, I read of " a vast deal of good company, besides rogues and black- legs ; " at Norwich, of two assemblies, with a prodigious crowd in the hall, the rooms, and the galleiy. In Cheshire (it is a maid of honor of Queen Caroline who writes, and who is long- ing to be back at Hampton Court, and the fun there) I peep into a country house, and see a very merry party : " We meet in the work-room before nine, eat, and break a joke or two till twelve, then we repair to our ovi'n chambers and make ourselves ready, for it cannot be called dressing. At noon the great bell fetches us into a parlor, adorned with all sorts of fine arms, poisoned darts, several pair of old boots and shoes worn by men of might, with the stirrups of King Charles I., taken from him at Edgehill," — and there they have their dinner, after which comes dancing and supper. As for Bath, all history went and bathed and drank there, George II. and his Queen, Prince Frederick and his court, scarce a character one can mention of the early last century, but was seen in that famous Pump Room where Beau Nash presided, and his picture hung between the busts of Newton and Pope : " This picture, placed these busts between, Gives satire ail its strength : Wisdom and Wit are little seen, But Folly at full length." I should like to have seen the Folly. It was a splendid, embroidered, berufifled, snuff-boxed, red-heeled, impertinent, GEORGE THE SECOND. 3" Folly, and knew how to make itself respected. I should like to have seen that noble old madcap Peterborough in his boots (he actually had the audacity to walk about Bath in boots !), with his blue ribbon and stars, and a cabbage under each arm, and a chicken in his hand, which he had been cheapening for his dinner. Chesterfield came there many a time and gam- bled for hundreds, and grinned through his gout. Mary Wortley was there, young and beautiful ; and Mary Wortley, old, hideous, and snuffy. Miss Chudleigh came there, slipping awa}r from one husband, and on the look-out for another. Walpole passed many a day there ; sickly, supercilious, absurdly dandified, and affected ; with a brilliant wit, a delight- ful sensibility ; and for his friends, a most tender, generous, and faithful heart. And if you and I had been alive then, and strolling down Milsom Street — hush ! we should have taken our hats off, as an awful, long, lean, gaunt figure, swathed in flannels, passed by in* its chair, and a livid face looked out from the window — great fierce eyes staring from under a bushy, powdered wig, a terrible frown, a terrible Roman nose — and we whisper to one another, "There he is ! There's the great com- moner ! There is Mr. Pitt ! " As we walk away, the abbey bells are set a-ringing ; and we meet our testy friend Toby Smollett, on the arm of James Quin the actor, who tells us that the bells ring for Mr. Bullock, an eminent cowkeeper from Tottenham, who has just arrived to drink the waters ; and Toby shakes his cane at the door of Colonel Ringworm — the Creole" gentleman's lodgings next his own — where the colonel's two negroes are practising on the French horn. When we try to recall social England, we must fancy it playing at cards for many hours every day. The custom is well- nigh gone out among us now, but fifty years ago was general, fifty years before that almost universal, in the country. " Gam- ing has become so much the fashion," writes Seymour, the author of the " Court Gamester," " that he who in company should be ignorant of the games in vogue, would be reckoned low-bred, and hardly fit for conversation." There were cards everywhere. It was considered ill-bred to read in company. " Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms," old ladies used to say. People were jealous, as it were, and angry with them. You will find in Hervey that George II. was always furious at the sight of books ; and his Queen, who loved reading, had to practise it in secret in her closet. But cards were the resource of all the world. Every night, for hours, kings and queens of England sat down and handled their majesties of spades and 312 THE FOUR GEORGES. diamonds. In European Courts, I believe the practice still remains, not for gambling, but for pastime. Our ancestors generally adopted it. " Books ! prithee, don't talk to me about books," said old Sarah Marlborough. "The only books I know are men and cards." " Dear old Sir Roger de Coverley sent all his tenants a string of hogs' puddings and a pack of cards at Christmas," says the Spectatoi% wishing to depict a kind landlord. One of the good old lady writers in whose letters I have been dipping cries out, " Sure, cards have kept us women from a great deal of scandal ! " Wise old Johnson regfetted that he had not learnt to play. " It is very useful in life," he says; " it generates kindness, and consolidates society." David Hume never went to bed without his whist. We have Walpole, in one of his letters, in a transport of gratitude for the cards. " I shall build an altar to Pam," says he, in his pleasant dandi- fied way, "for the escape of my charming Duchess of Grafton." The Duchess had been playing cards at Rome, when she ought to have been at a cardinal's concert, where the floor fell in, and all the monsignors were precipitated into the cellar. Even die Nonconformist clergy looked not unkindly on the practice. " I do not think," says one of them, " that honest Martin Luther committed sin by playing at backgammon for an hour or two after dinner, in order by unbending his mind to promote di- gestion." As for the High Church parsons, they all played, bishops and all. On Twelfth-day the Court used to play in •state. This being Twelfth-day, his Majesty, the Prince of Wales, and the Knights Companions of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath, appeared in the collars of their respective orders. Their Majesties, the Prince of Wales, and three eldest Princesses, went to the Chapel Royal, preceded by the heralds. The Duke of Manchester carried the sword of State. The King and Prince made offering at the altar of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, according to the annual custom. At night their Majes- ties played at hazard with the nobility, for the benefit of the groom-porter ; and 'twas said the king won 600 guineas ; the queen, 360 ; Princess Amelia, twenty ; Princess Caroline, ten ; the Duke of Grafton and the Earl of Portmore, several thou- sands." Let us glance at the same chronicle, which is of the year 1731, and see how others of our forefathers were engaged. " Cork, 15th January. — This day, one Tim Croneen was, for the murder and robbery of Mr. St. Leger and his wife, sentenced to be hanged two minutes, then his head to be cut off, and his body divided in four quarters, to be placed in four cross-ways. GEORGE THE SECOND. I'^l He was servant to Mr. St. Leger, and committed the murder with the privity of the servant-maid, who was sentenced to be burned ; also of the gardener, whom he knocked on the head, to deprive him of his share of the booty." "January 3. — A postboy was shot by an Irish gentleman on the road near Stone, in Staffordshire, who died in two days, for which the gentleman was imprisoned." "A poor man was found hanging in a gentleman's stables at Bungay, in Norfolk, by a person who cut him down, and running for assistance, left his penknife behind him. The poor man recovering, cut his throat with the knife ; and a river being nigh, jumped into it ; but company coming, he was dragged out alive, and was like to remain so." "The Honorable Thomas Finch, brother to the Earl of Nottingham, is appointed ambassador at the Hague, in the room of the Earl of Chesterfield, who is on his return home." " William Cowper, Esq., and the Rev. Mr. John Cowper, chaplain in ordinary to her Majesty, and rector of Great Berk- hampstead, in the county of Hertford, are appointed clerks of the commissioners of bankruptcy." " Charles Creagh, Esq., and Macnamara, Esq., between whom an old grudge of three years had subsisted, which had occasioned their being bound over about fifty times for break- ing the peace, meeting in company with Mr. Eyres, of Galloway, they discharged their pistols, and all three were killed on the spot — to the great joy of their peaceful neighbors, say the Irish papers." "Wheat is 26^. to 285-., and barley 20s. to 22J-. a quarter; three per cents., 92 ; best loaf sugar, g^^. ; Bohea, 12s. \.o 14J. ; Pekoe, i8j-. ; and Hyson, 2)^s. per pound," " At Exon was celebrated with great magnificence the birth- day of the son of Sir W. Courtney, Bart., at which more than 1,000 persons were present. A bullock was roasted whole ; a butt of wine and several tuns of beer and cider were given to the populace. At the same time Sir William delivered to his son, then of age, Powdram Castle, and a great estate." " Charlesworth and Cox, two solicitors, convicted of forgery, stood on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. The first was severely handled by the populace, but the other was very much favored, and protected by six or seven fellows who got on the pillory to protect him from the insults of the mob." " A boy killed by falling upon iron spikes, from a lamp-post which he climbed to see Mother Needham stand in the pillory." " Mary Lynn was burnt to ashes at the stake for being concerned in the murder of her mistress," 3M THE FOUR GEORGES. " Alexander Russell, the foot soldier, who was capitally convicted for a street robbery in January sessions, was reprieved for transportation ; but having an estate fallen to him, obtained a free pardon." " The Lord John Russell married to the Lady Diana Spencer, at Marlborough House. He has a fortune of 30,000/ down, and is to have 100,000/. at the death of the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, his grandmother." " March r being the anniversary of the Queen's birthday, when her Majesty entered the forty-ninth year of her age, there was a splendid appearance of nobility at St. James's. Her Majesty was magnificently dressed, and wore a flowered muslin head-edging, as did also her Royal Highness. The Lord Port- more was said to have had the richest dress, though an Italian Count had twenty-four diamonds instead of buttons." New clothes on the birthday were the fashion for all loyal people. Swift mentions the custom several times. Walpole is constantly speaking of it ; laughing at the practice, but havmg the very finest clothes from Paris, nevertheless. If the King and Queen were unpopular, there were very few new clothes at the drawing-room. In a paper in the True Patriot^ No. 3, written to attack the Pretender, the Scotch, French, and Popery, Fielding supposes the Scotch and Pretender in posses- sion of London, and himself about to be hanged for loyalty, — when, just as the rope is round his neck, he says : " My little girl entered my bedchamber, and put an end to my dream by pulling open my eyes, and telling me that the tailor had just brought home my clothes for his Majesty's birthday." In his "Temple Beau," the beau is dunned "for a birthday suit of velvet, 40/." Be sure that Mr. Harry Fielding was dunned too. The public days, no doubt, were splendid, but the private Court life must have been awfully wearisome. " I will not trouble you," writes Hervey to Lady Sandon, "with any ac- count of our occupations at Hampton Court. No mill-horse ever went in a more constant track, or more unchanging circle ; so that, by the assistance of an almanac for the day of the week, and a watch for the hour of the day, you may inform yourself fully, without any other intelligence but your memory, of every transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levees, and audiences fill the morning. At night the King plays at commerce and backgammon, and the Queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet, the Queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal GEORGE THE SECOND. 315 rapping her knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls from one room to another (as Dryden says), like some discontented ghost that oft appears, and is forbid to speak ; and stirs himself about as people stir a fire, not with any design, but in hopes to make it burn brisker. At last the King gets up ; the pool finishes ; and everybody has their dismission. Their Majesties retire to Lady Charlotte and my Lord Lifford ; my Lord Grantham, to Lady Frances and Mr. Clark : some to supper, some to bed ; and thus the evening and the morning make the day." The King's fondness for Hanover occasioned all sorts of rough jokes among his English subjects, to whom sauer-kraut and sausages have ever been ridiculous objects. When our present Prince Consort came amongst us, the people bawled out songs in the streets indicative of the absurdity of Germany in general. The sausage-shops produced enormous sausages which we might suppose were the daily food and delight of German princes. I remember the caricatures at the marriage of Prince Leopold with the Princess Charlotte. The bride- groom was drawn in rags. George I XL's wife was called by the people a beggarly German duchess ; the British idea being that all princes were beggarly except British princes. King George paid us back. He thought there were no manners out of Germany. Sarah Marlborough once coming to visit the Prin- cess, whilst her Royal Highness was whipping one of the roar- ing royal children, " Ah ! " says George, who was standing by, " you have no good manners in England, because you are not properly brought up when you are young." He insisted that no English cooks could roast, no English coachman could drive ; he actually questioned the superiority of our nobility, our horses, and our roast beef ! Whilst he was away from his beloved Hanover, everything remained there exactly as in the Prince's presence. There were 800 horses in the stables, there was all the apparatus o. chamberlains, court-marshals, and equerries ; and court assem- blies were held every Saturda}^ where all the nobility of Hanover assembled at what I can't but think a fine and touch- ing ceremony. A large arm-chair was placed in the assembly- rov m, and on it the King's portrait. The nobility advanced, and made a bow to the arm-chair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up ; and spoke under their voices before the august picture, just as they would have done had the King Churfurst been present himself. 3i6 THE FOUR GEORGES He was always going back to Hanover. In the year 1729, he went for two whole years, during which Caroline reigned for him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his British subjects. He went again in '35 and '36 ; and between the years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on the Continent, which amusement he was obliged to give up at the outbreak of the Seven Years' war. Here every day's amuse- ment was the same. " Our life is as uniform as that of a monastery," writes a courtier whom Vehse quotes. " Every morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we drive in the heat to Herrenhausen, through an enormous linden avenue ; and twice a day cover our coats and coaches with dust. In the King's society there never is the least change. At table, and at cards, he sees always the same faces, and at the end of the games retires into his chamber. Twice a week there is a French theatre ; the other days there is play in the gallery. In this way, were the King always to stop in Hanover, one could make a ten years' calendar of his proceedings ; and settle be- forehand what his time of business, meals, and pleasure would be." The old pagan kept his promise to his dying wife. Lady Yarmouth was now in full favor, and treated with profound respect by the Hanover society, though it appears rather neglected in England when she came among us. In 1740, a couple of the King's daughters went to see him at Hanover ; Anna, the Princess of Orange (about whom, and whose husband and marriage-day, Walpole and Hervey have left us the most ludicrous descriptions), and Maria of Hesse Cassel, with their respective lords. This made the Hanover court very brilliant. In honor of his high guests, the King gave several y^/^'i" / among others, a magnificent masked ball, in the green theatre at Her- renhausen — the garden theatre, with linden and box for screen, and grass for a carpet, where the Platens had danced to George and his father the late sultan. The stage and a great part of the garden were illuminSted with colored lamps. Almost the whole court appeared in white dominoes, " like," says the de- scriber of the scene, " like spirits in the Elysian fields. At night, supper was served in the gallery with three great tables, and the King was very merry. After supper dancing was re- sumed, and I did not get home till five o'clock by full daylight to Hanover. Some days afterwards we had, in the opera-house at Hanover, a great assembly. The King appeared in a Turkish dress ; his turban was ornamented with a magnificent agraffe of diamonds ; the Lady Yarmouth was dressed as a GEORGE THE SECOND. Z^l sultana ; nobody was more beautiful than the Princess of Hesse." So, while poor Caroline was resting in her coffin, dapper little George, with his red face and his white eyebrows and goggle-eyes, at sixty years of age, is dancing a pretty dance with Madame Walmoden, and capering about dressed up like a Turk ! For twenty years more, that little old Bajazet went on in this Turkish fashion, until the fit came which choked the old man, when he ordered the side of his coffin to be taken out, as well as that of poor Caroline's who had preceded him, so that his sinful old bones and ashes might mingle with those of the faithful creature. O strutting Turkey-cock of Herren- hausen ! O naughty little Mahomet ! in what Turkish paradise are you now, and where be your painted houris ? So Countess Yarmouth appeared as a sultana, and his Majesty in a Turkish dress wore an agraffe of diamonds, and was very merry, was he ? Friends ! he was your father's King as well as mine — let us drop a respectful tear over his grave. He said of his wife that he never knew a woman who was worthy to buckle her shoe ; he would sit alone weeping before her portrait, and when he had dried his eves, he would go off to his Walmoden and talk of her. On the 25th day of October, 1760, he being then in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and the thirty-fourth year of his reign, his page went to take him his royal chocolate, and behold ! the most religious and gracious King was lying dead on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden ; but Walmoden could not wake him. The sacred Majesty was but a lifeless corpse. The King was dead ; God save the King ! But, of course, poets and clergymen decor- ously bewailed the late one. Here are some artless verses, in which an English divine deplored the famous departed hero, and over which you may cry or you may laugh, exactly as your humor suits : — " While at his feet expiring Faction lay, No contest left but who should best obey ; Saw in his offspring all himself renewed ; The same fair path of glory still pursued ; Saw to young George Augusta's cares impart Whate'er could raise and humanize the heart; Blend all his grandsire's virtues with his own, And from their mnigled radiance for the throne — No farther blessincs could on earth be given — The next degree of happiness was — heaven ! If he had been good, if he had been just, if he had been pure in life, and wise in council, could the poet have said much more ? It was a parson who came and wept over this grave, with Walrnoden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the poor 3i8 THE FOUR GEORGES. old man slumbering below. Here was one who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor wit — who tainted a great society by a bad example ; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, low, and sensual ; and Mr. Porteus, afterwards my lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not good enough for him, and that his only place was heaven ! Bravo, Mr. Porteus ! The divine who wept these tears over George the Second's memory wore George the Third's lawn. I don't know whether people still admire his poetry or his sermons. GEORGE THE THIRD. We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy our allotted tune, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies ; to submit to defeat and separation ; to shake- under the volcano of the French Revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Na- poleon ; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its courtly splendors, has to pass away ; gener- ations of statesmen to rise and disappear ; Pitt to follow Chat- ham to the tomb ; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory ; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves ; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise ; Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theatre. Steam has to be invented • kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored. Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III, is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these revolutions of thought, government, society ; to survive out of the old world into ours. When I first saw England, she was in mourning for the young Princess Charlotte, the hope of the empire. I came from India as a child, and our ship touched at an island on the way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden where we saw a man walk- ing. " That is he," said the black man : " that is Bonaparte ! He eats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on ! " There were people in the British dominions besides that poor Calcutta serving-man, with an equal horror of the Corsican ogre. (319) 320 THE FOUR GEORGES. With the same childish attendant, I remember peeping through the colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the great Prince Regent. I can see yet the Guards jDacing before the gates of the place. The place ! What place ? The palace exists no more than the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name now. Where be the sentries who used to salute as the Royal chariots drove in and out? The chariots, with the kings inside^ have driven to the realms of Pluto ; the tall Guards have marched into darkness, and the echoes of their drums are rolling in Hades. Where the palace once stood, a hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to St. James's Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the " Athenaeum Club ; " as many grisly warriors are garrisoning the " United Service Club " opposite. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of London now — the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumor — the English forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. And, now and then, to a few antiquarians whose thoughts are with the past rather than with the present, it is a memorial of old times and old people, and Pall Mall is our Palmyra. Look ! About this spot Tom of Ten Tlousand was killed by Konigs- marck's gang. In that great red house Gainsborough lived, and Culloden Cumberland, George III.'s uncle. Yonder is Sarah Marlborough's palace, just as it stood when that terma- gant occupied it. At 25, Walter Scott used to live ; at the house, now No. 79,* and occupied by the Society for the Prop- agation of the Gospel in Foieign Parts, resided Mrs. Eleanor Gwynn, comedian. How often has Queen Caroline's chair issued from under yonder arch ! All the men of the Georges have passed up and down the street. It has seen Walpole's chariot and Chatham's sedan ; and Fox, Gibbon, Sheridan, on their way to Brookes's ; and stately William Pitt stalking on the arm of Dundas ; and Hanger and Tom Sheridan reeling out of Raggett's ; and Byron limping into Wattier's ; and Swift striding out of Bury Street ; and Mr. Addison and Dick Steele, both perhaps a little the better for liquor ; and the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York clattering over the pavement ; and Johnson counting the posts along the streets, after dawd- ling before Dodsley's window ; and Harry Walpole hobbling into his carriage, with a gimcrack just bought at Christie's ; and George Selwyn sauntering into White's. In the published letters to George Selwyn we get a mass of • 1856. GEORGE THE THIRD. 321 correspondence by no means so brilliant and witty as Wal- pole's, or so bitter and bright as Hervey's, but as interesting, and even more descriptive of the time, because the letters are the work of many hands. You hear more voices speaking, as it were, and more natural than Horace's dandified treble, and Sporus's malignant whisper. As one reads the Selwyn letters — as one looks at Reynolds's noble pictures illustrative of those magnificent times and voluptuous people — one almost hears the voice of the dead past ; the laughter and the chorus ; the toast called over the brimming cups ; the shout at the race- course or the gaming-table ; the merry joke frankly spoken to the laughing fine lady. How fine those ladies were, those ladies who heard and spoke such coarse jokes , how grand those gentlemen ! I fancy that peculiar product of the past, the fine gentle- man, has almost vanished off the face of the earth, and is dis- appearing like the beaver or the Red Indian. We can't have fine gentlemen any more, because we can't have the society in which they lived. The people will not obey : the parasites will not be as obsequious as formerly : children do not go down on their knees to beg their parents' blessing : chaplains do not say grace and retire before the pudding : servants do not say " Your honor " and " your worship " at every moment : trades- men do not stand hat in hand as the gentleman passes : authors do not wait for hours in gentlemen's ante-rooms with a fulsome dedication, for which they hope to get five guineas from his lordship. In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt's under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him ; but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II. ; and when George III. spoke a few kind words to him. Lord Chatham burst into tears of reverential joy and gratitude ; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so great the distinctions of rank. Fancy Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston on their knees whilst the Sovereign was reading a despatch, or beginning to cry because Albert said something civil 1 At the accession of George III., the patricians were yet at the height of their good fortune. Society recognized their superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for grant- ed. They inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in the house of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons, There were a multitude of Government places, and not merely these, but bribes of actual 500/. notes, which members of the House took not much shame in receiving. Fox went into 21 322 THE FOUR GEORGES. Parliament at 20 : Pitt when just of age : his father when not much older. It was the good time for Patricians. Small blame to them if they took and enjoyed, and over-enjoyed the prizes of politics, the pleasures of social life. In these letters to Selwyn, we are made acquainted with a whole society of these defunct fine gentlemen ; and can watch with a curious interest a life which the novel-writers of that time, I think, have scarce touched upon. To a Smollett, to Fielding even, a lord was a lord : a gorgeous being with a blue ribbon, a coroneted chair, and an immense star on his bosom, to whom commoners paid reverence. Richardson, a man of humbler birth than either of the above two, owned that he was ignorant regarding the manners of the aristocracy, and besought Mrs. Donnellan, a lady who had lived in the great world, to examine a volume of Sir Charles Grandison, and point out any errors which she might see in this particular. Mrs. Donnellan found so many faults, that Richardson changed color ; shut up the book ; and muttered that it were best to throw it in the fire. Here, in Selwyn, we have the real original men and women of fashion of the early time of George III. We can follow them to the new club at Almack's : we can travel over Europe with them : we can accompany them not only to the public places, but to their country-houses and private society. Here is a whole company of them ; wits and prodigals ; some persevering in their bad ways : some repentant, but relapsing ; beautiful ladies, ]iarasites, humble chaplains, led captains. Those fair creatures whom we love in Reynolds's portraits, and who still look out on us from the canvases with their sweet calm faces and gracious smiles — those fine gentlemen who did us the honor to govern us ; who inherited their boroughs ; took their ease in their patent places ; and slipped Lord North's bribes so elegantly under their rufifies — we make acquaintance with a hundred of these fine folks, hear their talk and laughter, read of their loves, quarrels, intrigues, debts, duels, divorces ; can fancy them alive if we read the book long enough. We can attend at Duke Hamilton's wedding, and behold him marry his bride with the curtain-ring : we can peep into her poor sister's death-bed : we can see Charles Fox cursing over the cards, or March bawling out the odds at Newmarket : we can imagine Burgoyne tripping off from St. James's Street to conquer the Americans, and slinking back into the club somewhat crest- fallen after his beating ; we can see the young King dressing himself for the drawing-room and asking ten thousand ques- tions regarding all the gentlemen : we can have high life or low, GEORGE THE THIRD. 323 the struggle at the Opera to behold the Violetta or the Zam- perini — the Macaronies and fine ladies in their chairs trooping to the masquerade or Madame Cornelys's — the crowd at Drury Lane to look at the body of Miss Ray, whom Parson Hackman has just pistolled — or we can peep into Newgate, where poor Mr. Rice the forger is waiting his fate and his supper. " You need not be particular about the sauce for his fowl," says one turnkey to another : " for you know he is to be hanged in the morning." " Yes," replies the second janitor, " but the chaplain sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted butter." Selwyn has a chaplain and parasite, one Dr. Warner, than whom Plautus, or Ben Jonson, or Hogarth, never painted a better character. In letter after letter he adds fresh strokes to the portrait of himself, and completes a portrait not a little curious to look at now that the man has passed away ; all the foul pleasures and gambols in which he revelled, played out ; all the rouged faces into which he leered, worms and skulls ; all the fine gentlemen whose shoebuckles he kissed, laid- in their coffins. This worthv clergyman takes care to tell us that he does not believe in his religion, though, thank heaven, he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on Mr. Selwyn's errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that gentle- man's proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry — old Q. — and exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He comes home " after a hard day's christening," as he says, and writes to his patron before sitting down to whist and p^irtridges for supper. He revels in the thoughts of ox-cheek and Bur- gundy — he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his mas- ter's shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto, and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret in old Q.'s cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers' ends. He is inexpressibly mean, curiously jolly ; kindly and good-natured in secret — a tender-hearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, that at his chapel in Long Acre, "he attained a considerable popularity by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery." Was infidelity endemic, and corruption in the air ? Around a young king, himself of the most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived a court society as dissolute as our country ever knew. George H.'s bad morals bore their fruit in George ni.'s early years ; as I believe that a knowledge of that good man's example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and God- fearing life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country and purify the whole nation. 324 THE FOUR GEORGES. After Warner, the most interesting of Selvvyn's correspond- ents is the Earl of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable noble- man at present * Viceroy in Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish Viceroy, having previously been treasurer of the King's household ; and, in 1778, the principal commissioner for treating, consulting, and agreeing upon the means of quiet- ing the divisions subsisting in his Majesty's colonies, planta- tions, and possessions in North America. You may read his lordship's manifestoes in the Royal New York Gazette. He returned to England, having by no means quieted the colonies; and speedily afterwards the Royal New York Gazette somehow ceased to be published. This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of the English fine gentlemen who was wellnigh ruined by the awful debauchery and extravagance which prevailed in the great English society of those days. Its dissoluteness was awful : it had swarmed over Europe after the Peace ; it had danced, and raced, and gambled in all the courts. It had made its bow at Versailles ; it had run its horses on the plain of Sablons, near Paris, and created the Anglomania there : it had exported vast quantities of pictures and marbles from Rome and Florence : it had ruined itself by building great galleries and palaces for the reception of the statues and pic- tures : it had brought over singing-women and dancing-women from all the operas of Europe, on whom my lords lavished their thousands, whilst they left their honest wives and honest chil- dren languishing in the lonely, deserted splendors of the castle and park at home. Besides the great London society of those days, there was another unacknowledged world, extravagant beyond measure, tearing about in the pursuit of pleasure ; dancing, gambling, drinking, singing ; meeting the real society in the public places (at Ranelaghs, Vauxhall, and Ridottos, about which our old novelists talk so constantly), and outvying the real leaders of fashion in luxury, and splendor, and beauty. For instance, when the famous Miss Gunning visited Paris as Lady Coven- try, where she expected that her beauty would meet with the applause which had followed her and her sister through Eng- land, it appears she was put to flight by an English lady still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the Countess ; and was so much handsomer than her ladyship, that the parterre cried out that this was the real English angel, whereupon Lady Coven- try quitted Paris in a huff. The poor thing died presently of » 1856. GEORGE THE THIRD. 325 consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with which she plastered those hickless charms of hers. (We must represent to ourselves all fashionable female Europe, at that time, as plastered with white, and raddled with red.) She left two daughters behind her, whom George Selwyn loved (he was curiously fond of little children), and who are described very drolly and pathetically in these letters, in their little nursery, where passionate little Lady Fanny, if she had not good cards, flung hers into Lady Mary's face ; and where they sat conspiring how they should receive a new mother-in- law whom their papa presently brought home. They got on very well with their mother-in-law, who was very kind to them ; and they grew up, and they were married, and they were both divorced afterwards — poor little souls ! Poor painted mother, poor society, ghastly in its pleasures, its loves, its revelries ! As for my lord commissioner, we can afford to speak about him ; because, though he was a wild and weak com- missioner at one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting — "five times more," says the unlucky gentleman, " than I ever lost before \ " though he swore he never would touch a card again ; and yet, strange, to say, went back to the table and lost still more : yet he repented of his errors, sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good children whom he had always loved with the best part of his heart. He had married at one-and- twenty. He found himself, in the midst of a dissolute society, at the head of a great fortune. Forced into luxury, and obliged to be a great lord and a great idler, he yielded to some tempta- tions, and paid for them a bitter penalty of manly remorse ; from some others he fled wisely, and ended by conquering them nobly. But he always had the good wife and children in his mind, and they saved him. " I am very glad you did not come to me the morning I left London," he writes to G. Selwyn, as he is embarking for America. " I can only say, I never knew till that moment of parting, what grief was." There is no parting now, where they are. The faithful wife, the kind, gen- erous gentleman, have left a noble race behind them : an in- heritor of his name and titles, who is beloved as widely as he is known j a man most kind, accomplished, gentle, friendly, and pure ; and female descendants occupying high stations and embellishing great names ; some renowned for beauty, and all for spotless lives, and pious matronly virtues. Another of Selwyn's correspondents is the Earl of March, 326 THE FOUR GEORGES. afterwards Duke of Queensberr)^, whose life lasted into this century ; and who certainly as earl or duke, young man or gray- beard, was not an ornament to any possible society. The legends about old Q. are awful. In Selwyn, in Wraxall, and contemporary chronicles, the observer of human nature may follow him, drinking, gambhng, intriguing to the end of his career ; when the wrinkled, palsied, toothless old Don Juan died, as wicked and unrepentant as he had been at the hottest season of youth and passion. .There is a house in Piccadilly, where they used to show a certain low window at which old Q. sat to his very last days, ogling through his senile glasses the women as they passed by. There must have been a great deal of good about this lazy, sleepy George Selwyn, which, no doubt, is set to his present credit. " Your friendship," writes Carlisle to him, " is so dif- ferent from anything I have ever met with or seen in the world, that when I recollect the extraordinary proofs of your kindness, it seems to me like a dream." " I have lost my oldest friend and acquaintance, G. Selwyn," writes Walpole to Miss Berry : " I really loved him, not only for his infinite wit, but for a thou- sand good qualities." I am glad, for my part, that such a lover of cakes and ale should have had a thousand good quali- ties — that he should have been friendly, generous, warm-hearted, trustworthy. " I rise at six," writes Carlisle to him, from Spa (a great resort of fashionable people in our ancestors' days), " play at cricket till dinner, and dance in the evening, till I can scarcely crawl to bed at eleven. There is a life for you ! You get up at nine ; play with Raton your dog till twelve, in your dressing-gown; then creep down to 'White's;' are five hours at table ; sleep till supper-time ; and then make two wretches carry you in a sedan-chair, with three pints of claret in you, three miles for a shilling." Occasionally, instead of sleeping at " White's," George went down and snoozed in the House of Commons by the side of Lord North. He represented Glouces- ter for many years, and had a borough of his own, Ludgershall, for which, when he was too lazy to contest Gloucester, he sat himself. " I have given directions for the election of Ludgers- hall to be of Lord Melbourne and myself," he writes to the Premier, whose friend he was, and who was himself as sleepy, as witty, and as good-natured as George. If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's fail- ings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and GEORGE THE THIRD. 327 voiuptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle ? In these letters of Lord Carlisle's from which I have been quoting, there is many a just complaiht made by the kind-hearted young nobleman of the state which he is obliged to keep ; the magnitrcence in which he must live ; the idleness to which his position as a peer of England bound him. Better for him had he been a lawyer at his desk, or a clerk in his office ; — a thousand times better chance for happiness, education, employment, security from temptation. A few years since the profession of arms was the only one which our nobles could follow. The church, the bar, medicine, literature, the arts, commerce, v/ere below them. It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England : the working educated men, away from Lord North's bribery in the senate ; the good clergy not corrupted into parasites by hopes of preferment ; the tradesmen rising into manly opulence ; the painters pursuing their gentle calling : the men of letters in their quiet studies ; these are the men whom we love and like to read of in the last age. How small the grandees and the men of pleasure look beside them !. how contemptible the story of the George III. court squabbles are beside the recorded talk of dear old Johnson ! What is the grandest entertainment at Windsor, compared to a night at the club over its modest cups, with Percy and Langton, and Goldsmith, and poor Bozzy at the table ? I declare I think, of all the polite men of that age, Joshua Reynolds was the finest gentleman. And they were good, as well as witty and wise, those dear old friends of the past. Their minds were not debauched by excess, or effeminate with luxury. They toiled their noble day's labor : they rested, and took their kindly pleasure : they cheered their holiday meetings with generous wit and hearty interchange of thought : they were no prudes, but no blush need follow their conversa- tion : they were merry, but no riot came out of their cups. Ah ! I would have liked a night at the " Turk's Head," even though bad news had arrived from the colonies, and Doctor Johnson was growling against the rebels ; to have sat with him and Goldy ; and to have heard Burke, the finest talker in the world ; and to have had Garrick flashing in with a story from his theatre ! — I like, I say, to think of that society j and not merely how pleasant and how wise, but how good they were. I think it was on going home one night from the club that Edmund Burke — his noble soul full of great thoughts, be sure, for they 328 THE FOUR GEORGES. never left him ; his heart full of gentleness — was accosted by a poor wandering woman, to whom he spoke words of kindness ; and moved by the tears of this Magdalen, perhaps having caused them by the good words he spoke to her, he took her home to the house of his wife and children, and never left her until he had found the means of restoring her to honesty and labor. O you fine gentlemen ! you Marches, and Selwyns, and Chester- fields, how small you look by the side of these great men ! Good-natured Carlisle plays at cricket all day, and dances in the evening " till he can scarcely crawl," gayly contrasting his superior virtue with George Selvvyn's, " carried to bed by two wretches at midnight with three pints of claret in him." Do you remember the verses — the sacred verses — which Johnson wrote on the death of his humble friend, Levett ? " Well tried through many a varying year, See Levett to the grave descend ; Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend. " In misery's darkest cavern known. His useful care was ever nigh. Where hopeless anguish poured the groan. And lonely want retired to die. *' No summons mocked by chill delay, No petty gain (^Jisdained by pride, The modest wants of every day The toil of every day supplied. " His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void ; And sure the Eternal Master found His single talent well employed." Whose name looks the brightest now, that of Queensberry, the wealthy duke, or Selwyn the wit, or Levett the poor physician ? I hold old Johnson (and shall we not pardon James Boswell some errors for embalming him for us ?) to be the great sup- porter of the British monarchy and church during the last age — better than whole benches of bishops, better than Pitts, Norths, and the Great Burke himself. Johnson had the ear of the nation ; his immense authority reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed it out of irreligion. When George III. talked with him, and the people heard the great author's good opinion of the sovereign, whole generations rallied to the King. Johnson was revered as a sort of oracle ; and the oracle declared for church and king. What a humanity the old man had ! He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures : a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. " What, boys, are you for a frolic ? " he cries, when Topham Beauclerc comes and wakes him up at midnight : " I'm with you." And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles through GEORGE THE THIRD. 329 Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to fre- quent Garrick's theatre, and had " the liberty of the scenes," he says, " All the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsey as they passed to the stage." That would make a pretty pic- ture : it is a pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gayety, tenderly surveyed by wisdom's merciful, pure eyes. George III. and his Queen lived in a very unpretending but elegant-looking house, on the site of the hideous pile under which his granddaughter at present reposes. The King's mother inhabited Carlton House, which contemporary prints represent with a perfect paradise of a garden, with trim lawns, green arcades, and vistas of classic statues. She admired these in company with my Lord Bute, who had a fine classic taste, and sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea in the pleasant green arbors along with that polite nobleman. Bute was hated with a rage of which there have been few examples in English history. He was the butt for everybody's abuse ; for Wilkes's devilish mischief ; for Churchill's slashing satire; for the hooting of the mob that roasted the boot, his emblem, in a thousand bonfires ; that hated him because he was a favorite and a Scotchman, calling him " Mortimer," " Lothario," I know not what names, and accusing his royal mistress of all sorts of crimes — the grave, lean, demure elderly woman, who, I dare say, was quite as good as her neighbors. Chatham lent the aid of his great malice to influence the popular sentiment against her. He assailed, in the House of Lords, " the secret influence, more mighty than the throne itself, which betrayed and clogged every administration." The most furious pam- phlets echoed the cry. " Impeach the King's mother," was scribbled over every wall at the Court end of the town, Wal- pole tells us. What had she done ? What had Frederick, Prince of Wales, George's father, done, that he was so loathed by George II. and never mentioned by George III. ? Let us not seek for stones to batter that forgotten grave, but acquiesce in the contemporary epitaph over him : — " Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead. Had it been his father, 1 had much rather. Had it been his brother, Still better than another. Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her. Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation. But since 'tis only Fred, Who was alive, and is dead. There's no more to be said." 33<^ THE FOUR GEORGES. The widow with eight children round her, prudently recon- ciled herself with the King, and won the old man's confidence and good-will. A shrewd, hard, domineering, narrow-minded woman, she educated her children according to her lights, and spoke of the eldest as a dull, good boy : she kept him very close : she held the tightest rein over him : she had curious prejudices and bigotries. His uncle, the burly Cumberland, taking down a sabre once, and drawing it to amuse the child — the boy started back and turned pale. The Prince felt a generous shock : " What must they have told him about me ? " he asked. His mother's bigotry and hatred he inherited with the courageous obstinacy of his own race j but he was a firm believer where his fathers had been free-thinkers, and a true and fond supporter of the Church, of which he was the titular defender. Like other dull men, the King was all his life sus- picious of superior people. He did not like Fox : he did not like Reynolds \ he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke ; he was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrities ; Benjamin West was his favorite painter; Beattie was his poet. The King lamented, not without pathos, in his after life, that his education had been neglected. He was a dull lad brought up by narrow-minded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done little probably to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes, and taught his perceptions some generority. But he admired as well as he could. There is little doubt that a letter, written by the little Princess Charlotte of Meck- lenburg Strelitz — a letter containing the most feeble common- places about the horrors of war, and the most trivial remarks on the blessings of peace, struck the young monarch greatly, and decided him upon selecting the young Princess as the sharer of his throne. I pass over the stories of his juvenile loves — of Plannah Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom they say he was actually married (though I don't know who has ever seen the register) — of lovely black-haired Sarah Lennox, about whose beauty Walpole has written in raptures, and who used to lie in wait for the young Prince, and make hay at him on the lawn of Holland House. He sighed and he longed, but he rode away from her. Her picture still hangs in Holland House, a magnificent masterpiece of Reynolds, a canvas worthy of Titian, She looks from the castle window, holding a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young Charles Fox, her GEORGE THE THIRD. ZZ"^ nephew. The royal bird flew away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as bridesmaid at her little Mecklenburg rival's wedding, and died in our own time a quiet old lady, who had become the mother of the heroic Napiers. They say the little Princess who had written the fine letter about the horrors of war — a beautiful letter without a single blot, for which she was to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spelling-book stor}^ — was at play one day with some of her young companions in the gardens of Strelitz, and that the young ladies' conversation was, strange to sa}^, about hus- bands. " Who will-take such a poor little princess as me?" Charlotte "said to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida said, " Princess! there is the sweetheart." As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters from the splendid young King of all England, who said, " Princess ! because you have written such a beautiful letter, which does credit to your head and heart, come and be Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the true wife of your most obedient servant, George I " So she jumped for joy ; and went up stairs and packed all her little trunks ; and set off straightway for her kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a harpsichord on board for her to play upon, and around her a beautiful fleet, all covered with flags and streamers : and the distinguished Madame Auer- bach complimented her with an ode, a translation of which may be read in the Gentleman^ s Magazine to the present day : — " Her jrallant navy through the main Now cleaves its Uquid way. There to their queen a chosen train Of nymphs due reverence pay. " Europa, when conveyed by Jove To Crete's distinguished shore, Greater attention scarce could prove, Or be respected more." They met, and they were married, and for 5'ears they led the happiest, simplest lives sure ever led by married couple. It is said the King winced when he first saw his homely little bride ; but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the simplest pleasures — the very mildest and simplest — ■ little country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest King would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune ; after which delicious excitement they would go to bed without any supper (the Court people 332 THE FOUR GEORGES. grumbling sadly at that absence of supper), and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another dance ; or the Queen would play on the spinet — she played pretty well, Haydn said — or the King would read to her a paper out of the Spectator, or perhaps one of Ogden's sermons. O Arcadia ! what a life it must have been ! There used to be Sunday drawing-rooms at Court ; but the young King stopped these, as he stopped all the godless gambling whereof we have made mention. Not that George was averse to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he thought innocent. He was a patron of the arts, after his fashion ; kind and gracious to the artists whom he favored, and respectful to their calling. He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva for literary and scientific characters ; the knights were to take rank after the knights of the Bath, and to sport a straw-colored ribbon and a star of sixteen points. But there was such a row amongst the literati as to the persons who should be appointed, that the plan was given up, and Minerva and her star never came down amongst us. He objected to painting St. Paul's, as Popish practice ; ac- cordingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures decorate that edifice at present. It is fortunate that the paintings, too, were spared, for painting and drawing were wofully unsound at the close of the last century ; and it is far better for our eyes to contemplate whitewash (when we turn them away from the clergyman) than to look at Opie's pitchy canvases, or Fuseli's livid monsters. And yet there is one day in the year — a day when old George loved with all his heart to attend it — when I think St. Paul's presents the noblest sight in the whole world : when five thousand charity children, with cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world — coronations, Parisian splendors. Crystal Palace openings. Pope's chapels with their processions of long- tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani — but think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's Day. Non Aiigli, sed angeli. As one looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents : as the first note strikes : indeed one may almost fancy that cherubs are singing. Of church music the King was always very fond, showing skill in it both as a critic and a performer. Many stories, mirthful and affecting, are told of his behavior at the concerts which he ordered. When he was blind and ill he chose the GEORGE THE THIRD. ZZl music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the music and words which he selected were from " Samson Agonistes," and all had reference to his blindness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would beat time with his music-roll as they sang the anthem in the Chapel Royal. If the page below was talkative or in- attentive, down would come the music-roll on young scape- grace's powdered head. The theatre was always his delight. His bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it no shame to appear where that good man was seen. He is said not to have cared for Shakspeare or tragedy much ; farces and pan- tomimes were his joy ; and especially when the clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so outrageously that the lovely Princess by his side would have to say, " My gracious monarch, do compose yourself." But he continued to laugh, and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor wits were left him. There is something to me exceedingly touching in that sim- ple early life of the King's. As long as his mother lived — a dozen years after his marriage with the little spinet-player — he was a great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of that hard parent. She must have been a clever, domineering, cruel wo- man. She kept her household lonely and in gloom, mistrust- ing almost all people who came about her children. Seeing the young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him the cause of his silence. " I am thinking," said the poor child. " Thinking, sir ! and of what ? " "I am thinking if ever I have a son I will not make him so unhappy as you make me." The other sons were all wild, except George. Dutifully every evening George and Charlotte paid their visit to the King's mother at Carlton House. She had a throat-complaint, of which she died ; but to the last persisted in driving about the streets to show she was alive. The night before her death the resolute woman talked with her son and daughter-in-law as usual, went to bed, and was found dead there in the morning. " George, be a king ! " were the words which she was forever croaking in the ears of her son : and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried to be. He did his best \ he worked according to his lights ; what virtue he knew, he tried to practise ; what knowledge he could master, he strove to acquire. He was forever drawing maps, for example, and learned geography with no small care and in- dustry. He knew all about the family histories and genealo- gies of his gentry, and pretty histories he must have known. He knew the whole Army List ; and all the facings, and the 334 THE FOUR GEORGES. exact number of the buttons, and all the tags and laces, and the cut of all the cocked hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. He knew \\\^ perso?uiel of the Universities: what doctors were inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound Churchmen ; he knew the etiquettes of his own and his grandfather's courts to a nicety, and the smallest particulars regarding the routine of ministers, secretaries, embassies, audiences ; the humblest page in the ante-room, or the meanest helper in the stables or kitchen. These parts of the royal business he was capable of learning, and he learned. But, as one thinks of an office, almost divine, performed by any mortal man — of any single being pretending to control the thoughts, to direct the faith, to order the implicit obedience of brother millions, to compel them into war at his offence or quarrel ; to command, " In this way you shall trade, in this way you shall think ; these neighbors shall be your allies whom you shall help, these others your enemies whom you shall slay at my orders ; in this way you shall worship God ; " — who can wonder that, when such a man as George took such an office on himself, punishment and humiliation should fall upon people and chief .-• Yet there is something grand about his courage. The battle of the King with his aristocracy remains yet to be told by the historian who shall view the reign of George more justly than the trumpery jDanegyrists who wrote immediately after his decease. It was he, with the people to back him, who made the war with America ; it was he and the people who refused justice to the Roman Catholics ; and on both questions he beat the patricians. He bribed : he bullied : he darkly dissembled on occasion : he exercised a slippery perseverance, and a vin- dictive resolution, which one almost admires as one thinks his character over. His courage was never to be beat. It trampled North under foot : it beat the stiff neck of the younger Pitt ; even his illness never conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as his brain was clear, it resumed the scheme, only laid aside when his reason left him : as soon as his hands were out of the strait waistcoat, they took up the pen and the plan which had engaged him up to the moment of his malady. I believe it is by persons believing themselves in the right that nine- tenths of the tyranny of this world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that convenient premiss, the Dey of Algiers would cut off twenty heads of a morning ; Father Dominic would burn a score of Jews in the presence of the Most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of Toledo and Salamanca sing Amen. Prot- estants were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered at Smith- GEORGE THE THIRD. 335 jfield, and witches burned at Salem, and all by worthy people, who believed they had the best authority for their actions. And so, with respect to old George, even Americans, whom he hated and who conquered him, may give him credit for hav- ing quite honest reasons for oppressing them. Appended to Lord Brougham's biographical sketch of Lord North are some autograph notes of the King, which let us most curiously into the state of his mind. " The times certainly require," says he, "the concurrence of all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have no wish but the prosperity of my own dominions, therefore 1 must look upon all who would not heartily assist me as bad men, as well as bad subjects." That is the way he reasoned. *• I wish nothing but good, therefore every man who does not agree with me is a traitor and scoundrel." Remember that he believed himself anointed by a divine commission ; remember that he was a man of slow parts and imperfect education ; that the same awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon his head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his life, courageous and honest, made him dull of comprehension, ob- stinate of will, and at many times deprived him of reason. He was the father of his people ; his rebellious children must be flogged into obedience. He was the defender of the Protes- tant faith ; he would rather lay that stout head upon the block than that Catholics should have a share in the government of England. And you do not suppose that there are not honest bigots enough in all countries to back kings in this kind of statesmanship? Without doubt the American war was popular in England. In 1775 the address in favor of coercing the col- onies was carried by 304 to 105 in the Commons, by 104 to 29 in the House of Lords. Popular ? — so was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes popular in France : so was the massacre of St. Bartholomew : so was the Inquisition exceedingly popu- lar in Spain. Wars and revolutions are, however, the politicians' prov- ince. The great events of this long reign, the statesmen and orators who illustrated it, I do not pretend to make the sub- jects of an hour's light talk. Let us return to our hum- bler duty of court gossip. Yonder sits our little Queen, sur- rounded by many stout sons and fair daughters whom she bore to her faithful George. The history of the daughters, as little Miss Burney has painted them to us, is delightful. They were handsome — she calls them beautiful ; they were most kind, loving, and ladylike ; they were gracious to every per- son, high and low, who served them. They had many little 33^ THE FOUR GEORGES. accomplishments of their own. This one drew : that one played the piano : they all worked most prodigiously, and fitted up whole suites of rooms — pretty, smiling Penelopes, — with their busy little needles. As we picture to our- selves the society of eighty years ago, we must imagine hundreds of thousands of groups of women in great high caps, tight bodies, and full skirts, needling away, whilst one of the number, or perhaps a favored gentleman in a pigtail, reads out a novel to the company. Peep into the cottage at Olney, for example, and see there Mrs. Unwin and Lady Hesketh, those high-bred ladies, those sweet, pious women, and William Cow- per, that delicate wit, that trembling pietist, that refined gen- tleman, absolutely reading out Jonathan Wild to the ladies ! What a change in our manners, in our amusements, since then ! King George's household was a model of an English gen- tleman's household. It was early ; it was kindly ; it was chari- table ; it was frugal ; it was orderly ; it must have been stupid to a degree which I shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran away from the lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At the same hour at night the King kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks ; the Princesses kissed their mother's hand ; and Madame Thielke brought the royal nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and women in waiting had their little dinner, and cackled over their tea. The King had his backgammon or his evening concert ; the equerries yawned themselves to death in the anteroom; or the King and his family walked on Windsor slopes, the King holding his darling little Princess Amelia by the hand ; and the people crowded round quite good-naturedly ; and the Eton boys thrust their chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows : and the concert over, the King never failed to take his enormous cocked-hat off, and salute his band, and say, " Thank you, gentlemen." A quieter household, a more prosaic life than this of Kew or Windsor, cannot be imagined. Rain or shine, the King rode every day for hours ; poked his red face into hundreds of cottages round about, and showed that shovel hat and Windsor uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women making apple dumplings ; to all sorts of people, gentle and simple, about whom countless stories are told. Nothing can be more undig- nified than these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a sub- ject incog., the latter is sure to be very much the better for the caliph's magnificence. Old George showed no such royal splendor. He used to give a guinea sometimes : sometimes feel A LITTLE REBEL. GEORGE THE THIRD. 337 in his pockets and find he had no money : often ask a man a hundred questions : about the number of his family, about his oats and beans, about the rent he paid for his house, and ride on. On one occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and turned a piece of meat with a string at a cottager's house. When the old woman came home, she found a paper with an enclosure of money, and a note written by the royal pencil : " Five guineas to buy a jack." It was not splendid, but it was kind and worthy of Farmer George. One day, when the King and Queen were walking together, they met a little boy — they were always fond of children, the good folks — and patted the little white head. " Whose little boy are you .-' " asked the Windsor uniform. " I am the King's beefeater's little boy," replied the child. On which the King said, " Then kneel down and kiss the Queen's hand." But the innocent offspring of the beefeater declined this treat. " No," said he, " I won't kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new breeches." The thrifty king ought to have hugged him and knighted him on the spot. George's admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories about him. One morn- ing, before anybody else was up, the King walked about Glou- cester town; pushed over Molly the housemaid with her pail who was scrubbing the doorsteps ; ran up stairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms ; and then trotted down to the bridge, where, by this time, a dozen louts were assembled. " What ! is this Gloucester New Bridge ? " asked our gracious monarch ; and the people answered him, " Yes, your Majesty." " Why, then, my boys " said he, " let us have a huzzay ! " After giving them which intellectual gratification, he went home to breakfast. Our fathers read these simple tales with fond pleas- ure ; laughed at these very small jokes ; liked the old man who poked his nose into every cottage ; who lived on plain whole- some roast and boiled ; who despised your French kickshaws ; who was a true hearty old English gentleman. You may have seen Gilray's famous print of him — in the old wig, in the stout old hideous Windsor uniform — as the King of Brobdingnag, peer- ing at a little Gulliver, whom he holds up in his hand, whilst in the other he has an opera-glass, through which he surveys the pigmy.'' Our fathers chose to set up George as the type of a great king ; and the little Gulliver was the great Napoleon, We prided ourselves on our prejudices ; we blustered and bragged with absurd vainglory ; we dealt to our enemy a mon- strous injustice of contempt and scorn ; we fought him with all weapons, mean as well as heroic. There was no lie we would not believe ; no charge of crime which our furious prejudice 22 338 THE FOUR GEORGES. would not credit. I thought at one time of making a collec- tion of the lies which the French had written against us, and we had published against them during the war: it would be a strange memorial of popular falsehood. Their Majesties were very sociable potentates : and the Court Chronicler tells of numerous visits which they paid to their subjects, gentle and simple : with whom they dined ; at whose great country-houses they stopped ; or at whose poorer lodgings they affably partook of tea and bread-and-butter. Some of the great folks spent enormous sums in entertaining their sovereigns. As marks of special favor, the King and Queen sometimes stood as sponsors for the children of the nobility. We find Lady Salisbury was so honored in the year 17S6 ; and in the year 1802, Lady Chesterfield. The Court News relates how her ladyship received their Majesties on a state bed " dressed with white satin and a profusion of lace : the counterpane of white satin embroidered with gold, and the bed of crimson satin lined with white." The child was first brought by the nurse to the Marchioness of Bath, who presided as chief nurse. Then the Marchioness handed baby to the Queen. Then the Queen handed the little darling to the Bishop of Norwich, the officiating clergyman ; and, the ceremony over, a cup of caudle was pre- sented by the Earl to his Majesty on one knee, on a large gold waiter, placed on a crimson velvet cushion. Misfortunes would occur in those interesting genuflectory ceremonies of royal worship. Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe, a very fat, puffy man, in a most gorgeous court-suit, had to kneel, Cumberland says, and was so fat and so tight that he could not get up again. "Kneel, sir, kneel !" cried my lord in waiting to a country mayor who had to read an address, but who went on with his compliment standing. " Kneel, sir, kneel ! " cries my lord, in dreadful alarm. " I can't ! " says the mayor, turning round ; " don't you see I have got a wooden leg .-' " In the capital " Burney Diary and Letters," the home and court life of good old King George and good old Queen Charlotte are presented at portentous length. The King rose every morning at six : and had two hours to himself. He thought it effeminate to have a carpet in his bedroom. Shortly before eight, the Queen and the royal family were always ready for him, and they pro- ceeded to the King's chapel in the castle. There were no fires in the passages : the chapel was scarcely alight ; princesses, governesses, equerries grumbled and caught cold : but cold or hot, it was their duty to go : and, wet or dry, light or dark, the stout old George was always in his place to say amen to the chaplain. GEORGE THE THIRD 339 The Queen's character is represented in " Burney " at full length. She was a sensible, most decorous woman ; a very grand lady on state occasions, simple enough in ordinary life ; well read as times went, and giving shrewd opinions about books ; stingy, but not unjust ; not generally unkind to her dependents, but invincible in her notions of etiquette, and quite angry if her people suffered ill-health in her service. She gave Miss Burney a shabby pittance, and led the poor young woman a life which wellnigh killed her. She never thought but that she was doing Burney the greatest favor, in taking her from free- dom, fame, and competence, and killing her off with languor in that dreary court. It was not dreary to her. Had she been servant instead of mistress, her spirit would never have broken down : she never would have put a pin out of place, or been a moment from her duty. She was not weak, and she could not pardon those who were. She was perfectly correct in life, and she hated poor sinners with a rancor such as virtue sometimes has. She must have had awful private trials of her own : not merely with her children, but with her husband, in those long days about which nobody will ever know anything now ; when he was not quite insane ; when his incessant tongue was bab- bling folly, rage, persecution ; and she had to smile and be re- spectful and attentive under this intolerable ennui. The Queen bore all her duties stoutly, as she expected others to bear them. At a State christening, the lady who held the infant was tired and looked unwell, and the Princess of Wales asked permission for her to sit down. " Let her stand," said the Queen, flicking the snuff off her sleeve. She would have stood, the resolute old woman, if she had had to hold the child till his beard was grown. " I am seventy years of age," the Queen said, facing a mob of ruffians who stopped her sedan : " I have been fifty years Queen of England, and I never was insulted before." Fearless, rigid, unforgiving little queen ! I don't wonder that her sons revolted from her. Of all the figures in that large family group which surrounds George and his Queen, the prettiest, I think, is the father's darling, the Princess Amelia, pathetic for her beauty, her sweet- ness, her early death, and for the extreme passionate tender- ness with which her father loved her. This was his favorite amongst all the children : of his sons, he loved the Duke of York best. Burney tells a sad story of the poor old man at Weymouth, and how eager he was to have this darling son with him. The King's house was not big enough to hold the Prince \ and his father had a portable house erected close to his own, 340 THE FOUR GEORGES. and at huge pains, so that his dear Frederick should be near him. He clung on his arm all the time of his visit : talked to no one else ; had talked of no one else for some time before. The Prince, so long expected, stayed but a single night. He had business in London the next day, he said. The dulness of the old King's court stupefied York and the other big sons of George HI. They scared equerries and ladies, frightened the modest little circle, with their coarse spirits and loud talk. Of little comfort, indeed, were the King's sons to the King. But the pretty Amelia was his darling ; and the little maiden, prattling and smiling in the fond arms of that old father, is a sweet image to look on. There is a family picture in Burney, which a man must be very hard-hearted not to like. She de- scribes an after-dinner walk of the royal family at Windsor : — "It was really a mighty pretty procession," she says. "The little Princess, just turned of three years old, in a robe-coat covered with fine muslin, a dressed close cap, white gloves, and fan, walked on alone and first, highly delighted with the parade, and turning from side to side to see everybody as she passed ; for all the terracers stand up against the walls, to make a clear passage for the royal family the moment they come in sight. Then followed the King and Queen, no less delighted with the joy of their little darling. The Princess Royal leaning on Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, the Princess Augusta holding by the Duchess of Ancaster, the Princess Elizabeth led by Lady Charlotte Bertie, followed. Office here takes place of rank," says Burney, — to explain how it was that Lady E. Waldegrave, as lady of the bedchamber, walked before a duchess ; — "Gen- eral Bude, and the Duke of Montague, and Major Price as equerry, brought up the rear of the procession."' One sees it ; the band playing its old music, the sun shining on the happy, loyal crowd ; and lighting the ancient battlements, the rich elms, and purple landscape, and bright greensward ; the royal stand- ard drooping from the great tower yonder ; as old George passes, followed by his race, preceded by the charming infant, who caresses the crowd with her innocent smiles. " On sight of Mrs. Delany, the King instantly stopped to speak to her ; the Queen, of course, and the little Princess, and all the rest, stood still. They talked a good while with the sweet old lady, during which time the King once or twice ad- dressed himself to me. I caught the Queen's eyes, and saw in it a little surprise, but by no means any displeasure, to see me of the party. The little Princess went up to Mrs. Delany, of whom she is very fond, and behaved like a little angel to her. GEORGE THE THIRD. 341 She then, with a look of inquiry and recollection, came behind Mrs. Delany to look at me. ' I am afraid,' said 1, in a whisper, and stooping down, 'your Royal Highness does not remember me ? ' Her answer was an arch little smile, and a nearer ap- proach, with her lips pouted out to kiss me." The Princess wrote verses herself, and there are some pretty plaintive lines attributed to her, which are more touching than better poetry : — " Unthinking, idle, wild, and young, I laughed, and danced, and talked and sung And, proud of health, of freedom vain, Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain ; Concluding, io those hours of glee, That all the world was made for me. " But when the hour of trial came, When sickness shook this trenibling frame, When folly's gay pursuits were o'er. And I could sing and dance no mo'^e, It then occurred, how sad 'twould be, Were this world only made for me." The poor soul quitted it — and ere yet she was dead the agonized father was in such a state, that the officers round about him were obliged to set watchers over him, and from November, 18 10, George III. ceased to reign. All the world knows the story of his malady : all history presents no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imag- inary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen his picture as it was taken at this time, hanging in the apartment of his daughter, the Landgravine of Hesse Hombourg — amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast — the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. He was not only sightless : he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had ; in one of which, the Queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, and found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself at the harpsichord. Whet^ he had finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his family, and then for the nation, concluding with a prayer for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to sub- mit. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled. What preacher need moralize on this story ; what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it ? It is too terrible for 342 THE FOUR GEORGES. tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in sub- mission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. " O brothers," I said to those who heard me first in America, — " O brothers ! speaking the same dear mother tongue — O comrades ! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle ! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest : dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne ; buffeted by rude hands ; with his children in revolt ; the darling of his old age killed before him untimely ; our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, ' Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little ! ' ' Vex not his ghost — oh! let him pass — he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer! ' Hush ! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave ! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy." GEORGE THE FOURTH. In Twisss amusing " Life of Eldon/' we read how, on the death of the Duke of York, the old chancellor became pos- sessed of a. lock of the defunct Prince's hair ; and so careful was he respecting the authenticity of the relic, that Bessy Eldon his wife sat in the room with the young maji from Ham- let's, who distributed the ringlet into separate lockets, which each of the Eldon family afterwards wore. You know how, when George IV. came to Edinburgh, a better man than he went on board the royal yacht to welcome the King to his king- dom of Scotland, seized a goblet from which his Majesty had just drunk, vowed it should remain forever as an heirloom in his family, clapped the precious glass in his pocket, and sat down on it and broke it when he got home. Suppose the good sheriff's prize unbroken now at Abbotsford, should we not smile with something like pity as we beheld it ? Suppose one of those lockets of the no-Popery Prince's hair offered for sale at Christie's, quot lihras educe summo invenies ? how many pounds would you find for the illustrious Duke ? Madame Tussaud has got King George's coronation robes ; is there any man now alive who would kiss the hem of that trumpery ? He sleeps since thirty years : do not any of you, who remember him, wonder that you once respected and huzza'd and admired him ? To make a portrait of him at first seemed a matter of small difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it : with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races and so forth, you find you have nothing — nothing but a coat and a wig and a (343) 344 THE FOUR GEORGES. mask smiling below it — nothing but a great simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. One knows what they were like : what they would do in given circumstances : that on occasion they fought and demeaned themselves like tough good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked according to their natures ; enemies whom they hated fiercely ; passions, and actions, and individualities of their own. The sailor King who came after George was a man : the Duke of York was a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. But this George, what was he ? I look through all his life, and recognize but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, underwaistcoats, more underwaistcoats, and then nothing, I know of no senti; ment that he ever distinctly uttered. Documents are published under his name, but people wrote them — private letters, but people spelt them. He put a great George P. or George R. at the bottom of the page and fancied he had written the paper : some bookseller's clerk, some poor author, some man did the work ; saw to the spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, and gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency. He must have had an individuality : the dancing-master whom he emulated, nay, surpassed — the wig-maker who curled his toupee for him — the tailor who cut his coats, had that. But, about George, one can get at nothing actual. That outside, I am certain, is pad and tailor's work ; there may be something behind, but what ? We cannot get at the character ; no doubt never shall. Will men of the future have nothing better to do than to unswathe and interpret that royal old mummy ? I own I once used to think it would be good sport to pursue him, fas- ten on him, and pull him down. But now I am ashamed to mount and lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then to hunt the poor game. On the 1 2th August, 1762, the forty-seventh anniversary of the accession of the House of Brunswick to the English throne, all the bells in London pealed in gratulation, and announced that an heir to George HI. was born. Five days afterwards the King was pleased to pass letters patent under the great seal, creating H. R. H. the Prince of Great Britain, Electoral Prince of Brunswick Liineburg, Duke of Cornwall and Roth- say, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. GEORGE THE FOURTH. 345 All the people at his birth thronged to see this lovely child ; and behind a gilt china-screen railing in St. James's Palace, in a cradle surmounted by the three princely ostrich -feathers, the royal infant was laid to delight the eyes of the lieges. Among the earliest instances of homage paid to him, I read that " a curious Indian bow and arrows were sent to the Prince from his father's faithful subjects in New York." He was fond of playing with these toys : an old statesman, orator, and wit of his grandfather's and great-grandfather's time, never tired of his business, still eager in his old age to be well at court, used to play with the little Prince, and pretend to fall down dead when the Prince shot at him with his toy bow and arrows — and get up and fall down dead over and over again — to the in- creased delight of the child. So that he was flattered from his cradle upwards ; and before his little feet could walk, states- men and courtiers were busy kissing them. There is a pretty picture of the royal infant — a beautiful buxom child — asleep in his mother's lap : who turns round and holds a finger to her lip, as if she would bid the courtiers around respect the baby's slumbers. From that day until his decease, sixty-eight years after, I si/(ppose there were more pictures taken of that personage than of any other human being who ever was born and died — in every kind of uniform and every possible court-dress — in long fair hair, with powder, with and without a pig-tail — in every conceivable cocked-hat — in dragoon uniform — in Windsor uniform — in a field-marshal's clothes — in a Scotch kilt and tartans, with dirk and claymore (a stupendous figure) — in a frogged frock-coat with a fur collar and tight breeches and silk stockings — in wigs of every color, fair, brown, and black — in his famous coronation robes finally, with which performance he was so much in love that he distributed copies of the picture to all the courts and British embassies in Europe, and to numberless clubs, town-halls, and private friends. I remember as a young man how almost every dining-room had his. portrait. There is plenty of biographical tattle about the Prince's boyhood. It is told with what astonishing rapidity he learned all languages, ancient and modern ; how he rode beautifully, sang charmingly, and played elegantly on the violoncello. That he was beautiful was patent to all eyes. He had a high spirit ; and once, when he had had a difference with his father, burst into the royal closet and called out, " Wilkes and liberty forever ! " He was so clever, that he confounded his very governors in learning ; and one of them. Lord Bruce, having 346 THE FOUR GEORGES. made a false quantity in quoting Greek, the admirable young Prince instantly corrected him. Lord Bruce could not remain a governor after this humiliation ; resigned his ofifice, and, to soothe his feelings, was actually promoted to be an earl ! It is the most wonderful reason for promoting a man that ever I heard. Lord Bruce was made an earl for a blunder in prosody; and Nelson was made a baron for the victory of the Nile. Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and mil- lions which in the course of his brilliant existence this single Prince consumed. Besides his income of 50,000/., 70,000/., 100,000/., 120,000/., a year, we read of three applications to Parliament : debts to the amount of 160,000/., of 650,000/. ; besides mysterious foreign loans, .whereof he pocketed the proceeds. What did he do for all this money ? Why was he to have it .'' If he had been a manufacturing town, or a popu- lous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he would not have cost more. He, one solitary stout man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor fight, — what had any mortal done that he should be pampered so ? In 17S4, when he was twenty-one years of age, Carlton Palace was given to him, and furnished by the naiion with as much luxury as could be devised. His pockets were filled with money : he said it was not enough ; he flung it out of window: he spent 10,000/. a year for the coats on his back. The nation gave him more money, and more, and more. The sum is past counting. He was a prince most lovely to look on, and was christened Prince Florizel on his first appearance in the world. That he was the handsomest prince in the whole world was agreed by men, and alas ! by many women. I suppose he must have been very graceful. There are so many testimonies to the charm of his manner, that we must allow him great elegance and powers of fascination. He, and the King of France's brother, the Count d'Artois, a charming young Prince who danced deliciously on the tight-rope — a poor old tottering exiled King, who asked hospitality of King George's successor, and lived awhile in the palace of Mary Stnart — divitled in their youth the title of first gentleman of Europe. We in England of course gave the prize to our gen- tleman. Until George's death the propriety of that award was scarce questioned, or the doubters voted rebels and traitors. Only the other day I was reading in the reprint of the delightful " Noctes " of Christopher North. The health of THE KING is drunk in large capitals by the loyal Scotsman. You would fancy him a hero, a sage, a statesman, a pattern for kings and GEORGE THE FOURTH. 347 men. It was Walter Scott who had that accident with the broken glass I spoke of anon. He was the king's Scottish champion, rallied all Scotland to him, made loyalty the fashion, and laid about him fiercely with his claymore upon all the Prince's enemies. The Brunswicks had no such defenders as those two Jacobite commoners, old Sam Johnson the Lichfield chapman's son, and Walter Scott, the Edinburgh lawyer's. Nature and circumstance had done their utmost to prepare the Prince for being spoiled : the dreadful dulness of papa's court, its stupid amusements, its dreary occupations, the mad- dening humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have made a scapegrace of a much less lively prince. All the big princes bolted from that castle of ennici where old King George sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel ; and old Queen Charlotte over her snuff and her tambour-frame. Most of the sturdy, gallant sons settled down after sowing their wild oats, and became sober subjects of their father and brother — not ill-liked by the nation, which pardons youthful irregularities readily enough, for the sake of pluck, and unaffect- edness, and good-humor. The boy is the father of the man. Our Prince signalized his entrance into the world by a feat worthy of his future life. He invented a new shoebuckle. It was an inch long and five inches broad. " It covered almost the whole instep, reaching down to the ground on either side of the foot." A sweet invention ! lovely and useful as the Prince on whose foot it sparkled. At his first appearance at a court ball, we read that " his coat was pink silk, with white cuffs ; his waistcoat white silk, embroidered with various-colored foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And his hat was orna- mented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new military style." What a Florizel ! Do these details seem trivial ? They are the grave incidents of his life. His biog- raphers say that when he commenced housekeeping in that splendid new palace of his, the Prince of Wales had some windy projects of encouraging literature, science, and the arts ; of having assemblies of literary characters ; and Societies for the encouragement of geography, astronomy and botany. As- tronomy, geography, and botany ! Fiddlesticks ! French bal- let-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel, and gimcrack merchants — these were his real companions. At first he made a pretence of having Burke and Fox and Sheridan for his 348 THE FOUR GEORGES. friends. But how could such men be serious before such an empty scapegrace as this lad ? Fox might talk dice with him, and Sheridan wine ; but what else had these men of genius in common with their tawdry young host of Carlton House ? That fribble the leader of such men as Fox and Burke 1 That man's opinions about the constitution, the India Bill, justice to the Catholics — about any question graver than the button for a waistcoat or the sauce for a partridge — worth anything ! The friendship between the Prince and Whig chiefs was impossible. They were hypocrites in pretending to respect him, and if he broke the hollow compact between them, who shall blame him ? His natural companions were dandies and parasites. He could talk to a tailor or a cook ; but, as the equal of great states- men, to set up a creature, lazy, weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous vanity, and levity incurable — it is absurd. They thought to use him, and did for awhile ; but they must have known how timid he was ; how entirely heartless and treacher- ous, and have expected his desertion. His next set of friends were mere table companions, of whom he grew tired too ; then we hear of him with a very few select toadies, mere boys from school or the Guards, whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of the worn-out voluptuary. What matters what friends he had .-• He dropped all his friends ; he never could have real friends. An heir to the throne has flatterers, adventurers who hang about him, ambitious men who use him ; but friendship is denied him. And women, I suppose, are as false and selfish in their dealmgs with such a character as men. Shall we take the Leporello part, flourish a catalogue of the conquests of this royal Don Juan, and tell the names of the favorites to whom, one after the other, George Prince flung his pocket-handker- chief .'' What purpose would it answer to say how Perdita was pursued, won, deserted, and by whom succeeded.? What good in knowing that he did actually marry Mrs. Fitz-Herbert ac- cording to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church ; that her marriage settlements have been seen in London ; that the names of the witnesses to her marriage are known. This sort of vice that we are now come to presents no new or fleeting trait of manners. Debauchees, dissolute, heartless, fickle, .cowardly, have been ever since the world began. This one had more temptations than most, and so much may be said in extenuation for him. It was an unlucky thing for this doomed one, and tending to lead him yet farther on the road to the deuce, that, besides THK KEGEXX. J. 790 THE KING. GEORGE THE FOURTH. 349 being lovely, so that women were fascinated by him ; and heir- apparent, so that all the world flattered him ; he should have a beautiful voice, which led him directly in the way of drink : and thus all the pleasant devils were coaxing on poor Florizel ; de- sire, and idleness, and vanity, and drunkenness, all clashing their merry cymbals and bidding him come on. We first hear of his warbling sentimental ditties under the walls of Kew Palace by the moonlight banks of Thames, with Lord Viscount Leporello keeping watch lest the music should be disturbed. Singing after dinner and supper was the universal fashion of the day. You may fancy all England sounding with choruses, some ribald, some harmless, but all occasioning consumption of a prodigious deal of fermented liquor. " The jolly Muse her wuigs to try no frolic flights need take, But round the bowl would dip and fly, like swallows round a lake," sang Morris in one of his gallant Anacreontics, to which the Prince many a time joined in chorus, and of which the burden is — " And that I think's a reason fair to drink and fill again." This delightful boon companion of the Prince's found " a reason fair " to forego filling and drinking, saw the error of his ways, gave up the bowl and chorus, and died retired and reli- gious. The Prince's table no doubt was a very tempting one. The wits came and did their utmost to amuse him. It is won- derful how the spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an aroma, when a great man is at the head of the table. Scott, the loyal cavalier, the king's true liegeman, the very best ra- conteur of his time, poured out with an endless generosity his store of old-world learning, kindness, and humor. Grattan contributed to it his wondrous eloquence, fancy, feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for awhile, and piped his most exquisite little love-tunes on it, flying away in a twitter of indignation afterwards, and attacking the Prince with bill and claw. In such society, no wonder the sitting was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks. Remember what the usages of the time were, and that William Pitt, coming to the House of Com- mons after having drunk a bottle of port-wine at his own house, would go into Bellamy's with Dundas, and help finish a couple more. You peruse volumes after volumes about our Prince, and find some half-dozen stock stories — indeed not many more — common to all the histories. He was good-natured ; an indo- 35° THE FOUR GEORGES. lent, voluptuous prince, not unkindly. ' One story, the most fa- vorable to him of all, perhaps, is that as Prince Regent he was eager to hear all that could be said in behalf of prisoners con- demned to death, and anxious, if possible, to remit the capital sentence. He was kind to his servants. There is a story common to all the biographies, of Molly the housemaid, who, when his household was to be broken up, owing to some re- forms which he tried absurdly to practise, was discovered cry- ing as she dusted the chairs because she was to leave a master who had a kind word for all his servants. Another tale is that of a groom of the Prince's being discovered in corn and oat peculations, and dismissed by the personages at the head of the stables ; the Prince had word of John's disgrace, remon- strated with him very kindly, generously reinstated him, and bade him promise to sin no more — a promise which John kept. Another story is ver}' fondly told of the Prince as a young man hearing of an officer's family in distress, and how he straight- way borrowed six or eight hundred pounds, put his long fair hair under his hat, and so disguised carried the money to the starving family. He sent money, too, to Sheridan on his death- bed, and would have sent more had not death ended the career of that man of genius. Besides these, there are a few pretty speeches, kind and graceful, to persons with whom he was brought in contact. But he turned on twenty friends. He was fond and familiar with them one day, and he passed them on the next without recognition. He used them, liked them, loved them perhaps in his way, and then separated from them. On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita, and on Tues- day he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was very affectionate with that wretched Brummell, and on Thurs- day forgot him ; cheated him even out of his snuff-box which he owed the poor dandy ; saw him years afterwards in his downfall and poverty, when the bankrupt Beau sent him an- other snuff-box, with some of the snuff he used to love, as a pit- eous token of remembrance and submission, and the King took the snuff, and ordered his horses and drove on, and had not the grace to notice his old companion, favorite, rival, enemy, superior. In Wraxall there is some gossip about him. When the charming, beautiful, generous Duchess of Devonshire died — the lovely lady whom he used to call his dearest duchess once, and pretend to admire as all English society admired her — he said, " Then we have lost the best bred woman in Eng- land." " Then we have lost the kindest heart in England," said noble Charles Fox. On another occasion, when three GEORGE THE FOURTH. 3J^I noblemen were to receive the Garter, says Wraxall, " A great personage observed that never did three men receive the order in so characteristic a manner. The Duke of A. advanced to the sovereign with a phlegmatic, cold, awkward air like a clown ; Lord B. came forward fawning and smiling like a courtier ; Lord C. presented himself easy, unembarrassed, like a gentle- man ! " These are the stories one has to recall about the Prince and King — kindness to a housemaid, generosity to a groom, criticism on a bow. There are no better stories about him : they are mean and trivial, and they characterize him. The great war of empires and giants goes on. Day by day victories are won and lost by the brave. Torn, smoky flags and battered eagles are wrenched from the heroic enemy and laid at his feet ; and he sits there on his throne and smiles, and gives the guerdon of valor to the conqueror. He! EUiston the actor, when the Coronation was performed, in which he took the principal part, used to fancy himself the King, burst into tears, and hiccough a blessing on the people. I believe it is certain about George IV., that he had heard so much of the war, knighted so many people, and worn such a prodigious quantity of marshal's uniforms, cocked-hats, cock's feathers, scarlet and bullion in general, that he actually fancied he had been present in some campaigns, and, under the name of Gen- eral Brock, led a tremendous charge of the German legion at Waterloo. He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how a great society could have tolerated him ? Would Ave bear him now } In this quarter of a century, what a silent revolution has been working ! how it has separated us from old times and manners ! How it has changed men themselves ! I can see old gentlemen now among us, of perfect good breeding, of quiet lives, with venerable gray heads, fondling their grandchildren ; and look at them, and wonder at what they were once. That gentleman of the grand old school, when he was in the loth Hussars, and dined at the Prince's table, would fall under it night after night. Night after night, that gentleman sat at Brookes's or Raggett's over the dice. If, in the petulance of play or drink, that gen- tleman spoke a sharp word to his neighbor, he and the other would infallibly go out and try to shoot each other the next morning. That gentleman would drive his friend Richmond the black boxer down to Moulsey, and hold his coat, and shout and swear, and hurrah with delight, whilst the black man was beating Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would take a manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, and thrashing a 352 THE FOUR GEORGES. bargeman in a street row. That gentleman has been in a watch-house. That gentleman, so exquisitely polite with ladies in a drawing-room, so loftily courteous, if he talked now as he used among men in his youth, would swear so as to make your hair stand on end. I met lately a very old German gentleman, who had served in our army at the beginning of the century. Since then he has lived on his own estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, whose language — the language of fifty years ago that is — he possesses perfectly. When this highly bred old man began to speak English to me, almost every other \yord he uttered was an oath : as they used (they swore dread- fully in Flanders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, or at Carlton House over the supper and cards. Read Byron's letters. So accustomed is the young man to oaths that he em- ploys them even in writing to his friends, and swears by the post. Read his account of the doings of young men at Cam- bridge, of the ribald professors, one of whom " could pour out Greek like a drunken Helot," and whose excesses surpassed even those of the young men. Read Matthews' description of the boyish lordling's housekeeping at Newstead, the skull-cap passed round, the monk's dresses from the masquerade ware- house, in which the young scapegraces used to sit until daylight, chanting appropriate songs round their wine. " We come to breakfast at two or three o'clock," Matthews says. " There are gloves and foils for those who like to amuse themselves, or we fire pistols at a mark in the hall, or we worry the wolf. " A jolly life truly ! The noble young owner of the mansion writes about such affairs himself in letters to his friend, Mr. John Jackson, pugilist, in London. All the Prince's time tells a similar strange story of manners and pleasure. In Wraxall we find the Prime Minister himself, the redoubted William Pitt, engaged in high jinks with person- ages of no less importance than Lord Thurlow the Lord Chan- cellor, and Mr. Dundas the Treasurer of the Navy. Wraxall relates how these three statesmen, returning after dinner from Addiscombe, found a turnpike open and galloped through it with- out paying the toll. The -turnpike man, fancying they were highwaymen, fired a blunderbuss after them, but missed them ; and the poet sang, — " How as Pitt wandered darkling o'er the plain, His reason drown'd in Jenkinson's champagne, A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood, Had shed a premier's for a robber's blood." Here we have the Treasurer of the Navy, the Lord High Chan- GEORGE THE FOURTH. 353 cellor, and the Prime Minister, all engaged in a most undoubted lark. In Eldon's " Memoirs," about the very same time, I read that the bar loved wine, as well as the woolsack. Not John Scott himself ; he was a good bo}' alwaj's ; and though he loved port-wine, loved his business and his duty and his fees a great deal better. He has a Northern Circuit story of those days, about a party at the house of a certain Lawyer Fawcett, who gave a dinner every year to the counsel. " On one occasion," related Lord Eldon, " I heard Lee say, *I cannot leave Fawcett's wine. Mind, Davenport, you will go home immediately after dinner, to read the brief in that cause that we have to conduct to-morrow.'" " ' Not I,' said Davenport. ' Leave my dinner and my wine to read a brief! No, no, Lee ; that won't do.' " ' Then,' said Lee, ' what is to be done ? who else is em-^ ployed ? ' " Davenport. — ' Oh ! young Scott.' " Lcc. — ' Oh ! he must go. Mr. Scott, you must go home immediately, and make yourself acquainted with that cause, before our consultation this evening.' " This was very hard upon me ; but I did go, and there was an attorney from Cumberland, and one from Northumberland, and I do not know how many other persons. Pretty late, in came Jack Lee, as drunk as he could be. " ' I cannot consult to-night ; I must go to bed,' he exclaim- ed, and away he went. Then came Sir Thomas Davenport. "'We cannot have a consultation to-night, Mr. Wordsworth* (Wordsworth, I think, was the name ; it was a Cumberland name), shouted Davenport. Don't you see how drunk Mr, Scott is ? it is impossible to consult.' Poor me ! who had scarce had any dinner, and lost all my wine — I was so drunk that I could not consult ! Well, a verdict was given against us, and it was all owing to Lawyer Fawcett's dinner. We moved for a new trial ; and I must say, for the honor of the bar, that those two gentlemen, Jack Lee and Sir Thomas Davenport, paid all the expenses between them of the first trial. It is the only instance I ever knew ; but they did. We moved for a new trial (on the ground, I suppose, of the counsel not being in their senses), and it was granted. When it came on, the following year, the judge rose and said, — " ' Gentlemen, did any of you dine with Lawyer Fawcett yesterday ? for, if you did, I will not hear this cause till next year.' 23 2-4 THE FOUR GEORGES. "There was great laughter. We gained the cause that time." On another occasion, at Lancaster, where poor Bozzy must needs be going the Northern Circuit, " we found him," says Mr. Scott, " lying upon the pavement inebriated. We sub- scribed a guinea at supper for him, and a half-crown for his clerk " — (no doubt there was a large bar, so that Scott's joke did not cost him much), — " and sent him, when he waked next morning, a brief, with instructions to move for what we de- nominated the writ of quare adhcesit pavimejito ? with observations duly calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it, to the judge before whom he was to move." Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for books that might enable him to distinguish himself — but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The judge was perfectly astonished, and the audience amazed. The judge said, " 1 never heard of such a writ — what can it be that SLclheres pavimenio ? Are any of you gentlemen at the bar able to explain this ? " The bar laughed. At last one of them said, — "My lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhcesit pavimento. There was no moving him for some time. At last he was car- ried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement." The canny old gentleman relishes these jokes. When the Bishop of Lincoln was moving from the deanery of St. Paul's, he says he asked a learned friend of his, by name Will Hay, how he should move some especially fine claret, about which he was anxious. " Pray, my lord bishop," says Hay, "how much of the wine have you ? " The bishop said six dozen. "If that is all," Hay answered, "you have but to ask me six times to dinner, and I will carry it all away myself." There were giants in those days ; but this joke about wine is not so fearful as one perpetrated by Orator Thelwall, in the heat of the French Revolution, ten years later, over a frothing pot of porter. He blew the head off, and said, " This is the way I would serve all kings." Now we come to yet higher personages, and find their doings recorded in the blushing pages of timid little Miss Burney's " Memoirs." She represents a prince of the blood in quite a royal condition. The loudness, the bigness, boisterousness, GEORGE THE FOURTH. 355 creaking boots and rattling oaths of the young princes, appear to have frightened the prim household of Windsor, and set all the teacups twittering on the tray. On the night of a ball and birthday, when one of the pretty, kind princesses was to come out, it was agreed that her brother, Prince William Henry, should dance the opening minuet with her, and he came to visit the household at their dinner. " At dinner, Mrs. Schwellenberg presided, attired magnifi- cently ; Miss Goldsworthy, Mrs. Stanforth, Messrs. Du Luc and Stanhope, dined with us ; and while we were still eating fruit, the Duke of Clarence entered. " He was just risen from the King's table, and waiting for his equipage to go home and prepare for the ball. To give you an idea of the energy of his Royal Highness's language, I ought to set apart an objection to writing, or rather intimating, certain forcible words, and beg leave to show you in genuine colors a royal sailor. " We all rose, of course, upon his entrance, and the two gentlemen placed themselves behind their chairs, while the footmen left the room. But he ordered us all to sit down, and called the men back to hand about some wine. He was in ex- ceeding high spirits, and in the utmost good-humor. He placed himself at the head of the table, next Mrs. Schwellenberg, and looked remarkably well, gay, and full of sport and mischief; yet clever withal, as well as comical. " ' Well, this is the first day I have ever dined with the King at St. James's on his birthday. Pray, xiave you all drunk his Majesty's health?' " ' No, your Royal Highness ; your Royal Highness might make dem do dat,' said Mrs. Schwellenberg. " ' Oh, by , I will ! Here, you ' (to the footman), 'bring champagne ; I'll drink the King's health again, if I die for it. Yes, I have done it pretty well already ; so has the King, I promise you ! I believe his Majesty was never taken such good care of before ; we have kept his spirits up, I prom- ise you \ we have enabled him to go through his fatigues ; and I should have done more still, but for the ball and Mary ; — I have promised to dance with Mary. I must keep sober for Mary. '" Indefatigable Miss Burney continues for a dozen pages re- porting H. R. H.'s conversation, and indicating, with a humot not unworthy of the clever little author of " Evelina," the in- creasing state of excitement of the young sailor Prince, who drank more and more champagne, stopped old Mrs. Schwellen- 356 THE FOUR GEORGES. berg's remonstrances by giving the old lady a kiss, and telling her to hold her potato-trap, and who did not " keep sober for Mary." Mary had to find another partner that night, for the royal William Henry could not keep his legs. Will you have a picture of the amusements of another royal prince } It is the Duke of York, the blundering general, the beloved commander-in-chief of the army, the brother with whom George IV. had had many a midnight carouse, and who con- tinued his habits of pleasure almost till death seized his stout body. In Piickler Muskau's " Letters," that German Prince de- scribes a bout with H. R. H., who in his best time was such a powerful toper that "six bottles of claret after dinner scarce made a perceptible change in his countenance." " I remember," says Piickler, " that one evening, — indeed, it was past midnight, — he took some of his guests, among whom were the Austrian ambassador. Count Meervelt Count Berol- dingen, and myself, into his beautiful armory. We tried to swing several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a very firm grasp ; whence it happened that the Duke and Meervelt both scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword so as to draw blood. Meervelt then wished to try if the sword cut as well as a Damascus, and attempted to cut through one of the wax candles that stood on the table. The experiment an- swered so ill, that both the candles, candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we were groping in the dark and trying to find the door, the Duke's aide-de-camp stammered out in great agitation, ' By G — , sir, I remember the sword is poisoned ! ' " You may conceive the agreeable feelings of the wounded at this intelligence ! Happily, on further examination, it ap- peared that claret, and not poison, was at the bottom of the colonel's exclamation." And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of the realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast took place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gilray's caricatures, and amongst Fox's jolly associates, there figures a great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk in his time, and celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarrelled with the Prince, like the rest of the Whigs ; but a sort of reconciliation had taken place ; and now, being a very old man, the Prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pa- GEORGE THE FOURTH. 357 vilion, and the old Duke drove over from his Castle of Arundel with his famous equipage of gray horses, still remembered in Sussex. The Prince of Wales had concocted with his royal brothers a notable scheme for making the old man drunk. Every per^ son at table was enjoined to drink wine w'ith the Duke — a challenge which the old toper did not refuse. He soon began to see that there was a conspiracy against him ; he drank glass for glass ; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the First Gentleman of Europe proposed bumpers of brandy. One of the royal brothers filled a great glass for the Duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. " Now," says he, " I will have mv carriage, and go home." The Prince urged upon him his pre- vious promise to sleep under the roof where he had been so generously entertained. " No," he said ; he had had enough of such hospitality. A trap had been set for him ; he would leave the place at once and never enter its doors more. The carriage was called, and came ; but, in the half-hour's interval, the liquor had proved too potent for the old man ; his hosts generous purpose was answered, and the Duke's old gray head lay stupefied on the table. Nevertheless, when his post- chaise was announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, and stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel. They drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn ; the poor old man fancied he was going home. When he awoke that morning he was in bed at the Prince's hideous house at Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence : they have fiddlers there every day ; and sometimes buffoons and mounte- banks hire the Riding House and do their tricks and tumbling there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks round which the poor old sinner was trotted. I can fancy the flushed faces of the royal princes as they support themselves at the portico pillars, and look on at old Norfolk's disgrace ; but I can't fancy how the man who perpetrated it continued to be called a gentleman. From drinking, the pleased Muse now turns to gambling, of which in his youth our Prince was a great practitioner. He was a famous pigeon for the play-men ; they lived upon him. Egalite' Orleans, it was believed, punished him severely. A noble lord, whom we shall call the Marquis of Steyne, is said to have mulcted him in immense sums. He frequented the clubs, where play was then almost universal ; and, as it was known his debts of honor were sacred, whilst he was gambling Jews waited outside to purchase his notes of hand. His trans- 3^8 THE FOUR GEORGES. actions on the turf were unlucky as well as discreditable : though I believe he, and his jockey, and his horse. Escape, were all innocent in that affair whicli created so much scandal. Arthur's, Almack's, Bootle's, and White's were the chief clubs of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and decayed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the un- wary there. In Selwyn's " Letters " we find Carlisle, Devon- shire, Coventry, Queensberr}^, all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late times — lost 200,000/. at play. Gibbons tells of his playing for twenty- two hours at a sitting, and losing 500/. an hour. That indom- itable punter said that the greatest pleasure in life, after win- ning, was losing. What hours, what nights, what health did he waste over the devil's books ! I was going to say what peace of mind ; but he took his losses very philosophically. After an awful night's play, and the enjoyment of the greatest pleasure but one in life, he was found on a sofa tranquilly reading an Eclogue of Virgil. Play survived long after the wild Prince and Fox had given up the dice-box. The dandies continued it. Byron, Brummell ■ — how many names could I mention of men of the world who have suffered by it ! In 1837 occurred a famous trial which pretty nigh put an end to gambling in England. A peer of the realm was found cheating at whist, and repeatedly seen to prac- tise the trick called sauter la coupe. His friends at the clubs saw him cheat, and went on playing with him. One greenhorn, who had discovered his foul play, asked an old hand what he should do. "Do," said the Mammon of Unrighteousness, '■'■ Back hi77i., yoic fool. ^'' The best efforts were made to screen him. People wrote him anonymous letters and warned him ; but he would cheat, and they were obliged to find him out. Since that day, when my lord's shame was made public, the gaming-table has lost all its splendor. Shabby Jews and black- legs prowl about race-courses and tavern parlors, and now and then inveigle silly yokels with greasy packs of cards in railroad cars ; but Play is a deposed goddess, her worshippers bankrupt and her table in rags. So is another famous British institution gone to decay — the Ring : the noble practice of British boxing, which in my youth was still almost flourishing. The Prince, in his early days, was a great patron of this national sport, as his grand-uncle Culloden Cumberland had been before him ; but being present at a fight at Brighton, where one of the combatants was killed, the Prince pensioned GEORGE THE FOURTH. 359 the boxer's widow, and declared he never would attend another battle. " But, nevertheless," — I read in the noble language of Pierce Egan (whose smaller work on Pugilism I have the honor to possess), — "he thought it a manly and decided English feature, which ought not to be destroyed. His Majesty had a drawing of the sporting characters in the Fives' Court placed in his boudoir, to remind him of his former attachment and sup- port of true courage ; and when any light of note occurred after he was king, accounts of it were read to him by his desire." That gives one a fine image of a king taking his recreation ; — at ease in a royal dressing-gown ; — too majestic to reaon Lord Orrery's "Remarks, &'(., on Swift." London, 1754. jSo ENGLISH HUMORISTS. His initiation into politics, his knowledge of business, his knowledge of polite life, his acquaintance with literature even, which he could not have pursued very sedulously during that reckless career at Dublin, Swift got under the roof of Sir William Temple. He was fond of telling in after life what quantities of books he devoured there, and how King William taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch fashion. It was at Shene and at Moor Park, with a salary of twenty pounds and a dinner at the upper servants' table, that this great and lonely Swift passed a ten years' apprenticeship — wore a cassock that was only not a livery — bent down a knee as proud as Lucifer's to supplicate my lady's good graces, or run on his honor's errands.* It was here, as he was wricing at Temple's table, or following his patron's walk, that he saw and heard the men who had governed the great world — measured himself with them, looking up from his silent corner, gauged their brains, weighed their wits, turned them, and tried them, and marked them. Ah ! what platitudes he must have heard ! what feeble jokes ! what pompous commonplaces ! what small men they must have seemed under those enormous periwigs, to the swarthy, un- couth, silent Irish secretary. I wonder whether it ever struck Temple, that that Irishman was his master .-• I suppose that dismal conviction did not present itself under the ambrosial wig, or Temple could never have lived with Swift. Swift sickened, rebelled, left the service — ate humble pie and came back again ; and so for ten years went on, gathering learning, swallowing scorn, and submitting with a stealthy rage to his fortune. Temple's style is the perfection of practised and easy good- breeding. If he does not penetrate very deeply into a subject, he professes a very gentlemanly acquaintance with it ; if he makes rather a parade of Latin, it was the custom of his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelope his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles, and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park ; and lets the King's party and the Prince of Orange's party battle it out * " Don't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir WilHam Temple would look cold and out of humor for three or four days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons ? 1 have plucked up my spirits since then, faith : he spoiled a fino gentleman.'' — Jourtial to Stella. SWIFT. 381 among themselves. He reveres the Sovereign (and no man perhaps ever testified to his loyalty by so elegant a bow) j he admires the Prince of Orange ; but there is one person whose ease and comfort he loves more than all the princes in Chris- tendom, and that valuable member of society is himself Guliel- mus Temple, Baronettus. One sees him in his retreat ; be- tween his study-chair and his tulip-beds,* clipping his apricots and pruning his essays, — the statesman, the ambassador no more ; but the philosopher, the Epicurean, the fine gentleman and courtier at St. James's as at Shene ; where in place of kings and fair ladies he pays his court to the Ciceronian majesty ; or walks a minuet with the Epic Muse ; or dallies by the south wall with the ruddy nymph of gardens. Temple seems to have received and exacted a prodigious deal of veneration from his household, and to have been coaxed, and warmed, and cuddled by the people round about him, as delicately as any of the plants which he loved. When he fell ill in 1693, the household was aghast at his indisposition ; mild Dorothea his wife, the best companion of the best of men — " Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate.'' *"**** The Epicureans were more intelligible in their notion, and fortu- nate in their expression, when they placed a man's happiness in the tranquillity of his mind and indolence of body ; for while we are composed of both, I doubt both must have a share in the good or ill we feel. As men of several languages say the same things in very different words, so in several ages, countiies, constitutions of laws and religion, the same thing seems to be meant by very different expressions: what is called by the Stoics apathy, or dispassion ; by the skeptics, indisturbance ; by the Molinists, quietism ; by common, men, peace of conscience, — seems all to m-an but great tranquillity of mind. * * * For this reason, Epicurus passed his life wholly in his garden ; there he studied, there he exetcised, there he taught his philosophy ; and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to contribute so much to both tiie tranquillity of mind and indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of the air, the pleasantness of smell, the verdure of plants, the cleanness and lightness of food, the exercise of working or walking ; but, above all, the exemp- tion from cares and solicitude, seem equally to favor and improve both contemplation and health, the enjoyment of sense and imagination, and ^hereby the quiet and ease both of the body and mind.* * * Where Paradise was, has been much debated, and little agreed ; but what sort of place meant by it may perhaps easier be conjectured. It seems to have been a Persian word, since Xenophon and other Greek authors mention it as what was much in use and delight among the kings of those eastern countries. Strabo describing Jericho : ' Ibi est palmetum, cui immixtae sunt etiam aliae stirpes hortenses, locus ferax palmis abundans, f patio stadiorum centum, totus irrigus : ibi est Regis Balsami paradisus.'' '' — Essay o?i Gardens. In the same famous essay Temple speaks of a friend, whose conduct and prudence he characteristically admires : " * * * * J thought it very prudent in a gentleman of my friends in Stafford- shire, who is a .great lover of his gardens, to pretend no higher, though his soil be good enough, than to the perfection of plums ; and in these (by bestowing south walls upon them) he has very well succeeded, which he could never have done in attempts upon peaches and grapes ; and a good plum is certaiuly better than an ill peach." 3S2 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. As for Dorinda, his sister, — " Those who would grief describe, might come and trace Its watery footsteps in Dorinda's face. To S2e her weep, joy every face forsook. And grief flung sables on each menial look. The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, That furnished spirit and motion through the whole." Isn't that line in which grief is described as putting the menials into a mourning livery, a fine image.'' One of the menials wrote it who did not like that Temple livery nor those twenty- pound wages. Cannot one fancy the uncouth young servitor, with downcast ej'es, books and papers in hand, following at his honor's heels in the garden walk ; or taking his honor's orders as he stands by the great chair, where Sir William has the gout, and his feet all blistered with moxa ? When Sir William has the gout or scolds it must be hard work at the second- table;* the Irish secretary owned as much afterwards: and when he came to dinner, how he must have lashed and growled and torn the household with his gibes and scorn ! What would the steward say about the pride of them Irish schollards — and this one had got no great credit even at his Irish college, if the truth were known — and what a contempt his Excellency's * Swift's Thoughts on Hanging. {Directions to Servants.) " To grow old in the office of a footman is the highest of all indignities ; therefore, when you find years coming on without hopes of a place at court, a command in the army, a succession to the stewardship, an employment in the revenue (which two last you cannot obtain without reading and writing), or running away with your master's niece or daughter, 1 directly advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honor left you ; there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short life and a merry one, and make a figure at your exit, wherein I will give you some in- structions. " The last advice I give you relates to your behavior when you are going to be hanged : which, either for robbing 5'our master, for housebreaking, or going upon the highway, or in a drunken quarrel by killing the first man you meet, may very probably be your lot, and is owing to one of these three qualities : either a love of good fellow- ship, a generosity of mind, or too much vivacity of spirits. Your good behavior on this article will concern your whole community: deny the fact with all solemnity of imprecations : a hundred of your brethren, if they can be admitted, will attend about the bar, and be ready upon demand to give you a character before the Court ; let noth- ing prevail on you to confess, but th; promise of a pardon for discovering your com- rades ; but I suppose all this to be in vain ; for if you escape now, your fate will be the same another day. Get a speech to be written by the best author of Newgate ; some of your kind wenches will provide you with a holland shirt and white cap, crowned with a crimson or black ribbon : take leave cheerfully of all your friends in Newgate : mount the cart with courage ; fall on your knees ; lift up your eyes ; hold a book in your hands, although you cannot read a word ; deny the fact at the gallows ! kiss and forgive the hangman, and so farewell ; you shall be buried in pomp at the charge of the fraternity : the surgeon shall not touch a limb of you ; and your fama shall continue until a successor of equal renovra succeeds in your place. * * • '' SWIFT. 383 own gentleman must have had for Parson Teague from Dublin. (The valets and chaplains were always at' war. It is hard to say which Swift thought the more contemptible). And what must have been the sadness, the sadness and terror, of the housekeeper's little daughter with the curling black ringlets and the sweet smiling face, when the secretary who teaches her to read and write, and whom she loves and reverences above all things — above mother, above mild Dorofliea, above that tremendous Sir William in his square-toes and periwig, — when Mr. Sivi/i comes down from his master with rage in his heart, and has not a kind word even for little Hester Johnson? Perhaps, for the Irish secretary, his Excellency's condescen- sion was even more cruel than his frowns. Sir William would perpetually quote Latin and the ancient classics d propos of his gardens and his Dutch statues 2lX\<\ plates-bandes, and talk about Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius, Julius Caesar, Semiramis, and the gardens of the Hesperides, McEcenas, Strabo describing Jericho, and the Assyrian kings. Apropos of beans, he would mention Pythagoras's precept to abstain from beans, and that this precept probably meant that wise men should abstain from public affairs. He is a placid Epicurean ; he is a Pythagorean philosopher ; he is a wise man — that is the deduction. Does not Swift think so ? One can imagine the downcast eyes lifted up for a moment, and the flash of scorn which they emit. Swift's eyes were as azure as the heavens ; Pope says nobly (as everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble), " His eyes are as azure as the heavens, and have a charming archness in them." And one person in that house- hold, that pompous, stately, kindly Moor Park, saw heaven no- where else. But the Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; and in a garden-seat which he devised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily the stock of books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which pun- ished and tormented Jiim through life. He could not bear the place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condo- lence, from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melan- choly, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his own grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by fortune, and even hope. I don't know anything more melancholy than the letter to Temple, in which, after having broke from his bondage, the poor 384 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. wretch crouches piteously towards his cage again, and deprecates his master's anger. He asks for testimonials for orders. " The particulars required of me are what relate to morals and learn- ing ; and the reasons of quitting your honor's family — that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill action. They are left entirely to your honor's mercy, though in the first I think 1 cannot reproach myself for anything further than for infirmities. This is alt I dare at present beg from your honor, under cir- cumstances of life not worth your regard : what is left me to wish (next to the health and prosperity of your honor and family) is that Heaven would one day allow me the opportu- nity of leaving my acknowledgments at your feet. I beg my most humble duty and service be presented to my ladies, your honor's lady and sister." — Can prostration fall deeper ? could a slave bow lower ? * Twenty years afterwards Bishop Ken net, describing the same man, says, " Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the ante- chamber [at Court] to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a place for a clergyman. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake, with my Lord Treasurer, that he should obtain a salary of 200/. per annum as member of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going into the * " He continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that great man." — Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, )yj tlie Dean. " It has since pleased God to take this great and good person to himself." — Pre- face to Templets Works. On all public occasions, Swift speaks of Sir William in the same tone. But the reader will better understand how acutely he remembered the indignities he suffered in his household, from the subjoined extracts from \.\\t Journal to Stella: — "I called at Mr. Secretary the other day, to see what the d ailed him on Sun- day : I made him a very proper speech ; told him I observed he was much out of temper, that I did not expect he would tell me the cause, but would be glad to sec he was in better ; and one thing I warned him of — never to appear cold to me, for I would not b3 treated like a schoolboy ; that I had felt too much of that in my life already '' {mea ling Sir William Temple), &c., &c. — Journal to Stella. '■ I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple be- cause he might have been Secretary of State at fifty ; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment."— /Z-Zif. " The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State." — Ibid. " Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence apiece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple." —Ibid. " I thought I saw Jack Temple {nephew to Sir William] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach ; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family."— 5. to S. Sept., 1710. SWIFT. 385 Queen with the red bag, and told him aloud, he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He took out his gold watch, and telling the time of day, complained that it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. ' How can I help it,' says the Doctor, ' if the courtiers give me a watch that won't go right ? ' Then he instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English, for which he would have them all subscribe : 'For,' says he, 'he shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.' * Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him, — both went off just before prayers." There's a little malice in the Bishop's "just before prayers." This picture of the great Dean seems a true once, and is harsh, though not altogether unpleasant. He was doing good, and to deserving men too, in the midst of these intrigues and triumphs. His journals and a thousand anecdotes of him relate his kind acts and rough manners. His hand was constantly stretched out to relieve an honest man — he was cautious about his money, but ready. — If you were in a strait would you like , such a benefactor.? I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner. t He insulted a man as he served him, made women cry, guests look foolish, bullied unlucky friends, and flung his benefactions into poor men's faces. No ; the Dean was no Irishman — no Irish ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart. * "Swift must be allowed," says Dr. Johnson, " for a time, to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation.'' A conversation on the Dean's pamphlets excited one of the Doctor's liveliest sallies. " One, in particular, praised his 'Conduct of the Allies.' — Johnson: 'Sir, his ' Conduct of the Allies ' is a performance of very little ability. * * * Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written the ' Conduct of the AlHes ! ' " — Boswell's Life of Johison. t " Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, it was his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that bore the appearance of rudeness. If this were well taken, and answered with good humor, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further intercourse with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. ' For,' said he, ' 1 always keep some poor parson to drink the foid wine for me.' Mr. Pilk- ington, entering into his humor, thanked him, and told him ' he did not know the difference, but was glad *-o get a glass at any rate.' ' Why, then,' said the Dean, 'you shan't, for I'll drink it myself. Why, take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago ; for upon my making the same speech to him, he said he did not understand such usage, and so walked off without his din- ner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recommended him to me that the fellow was a blockhead, and 1 had done with him.' " — Sheridan's Life of Swift. 25 386 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. It is told, as if it were to Swift's credit, that the Dean of St. Patrick's performed his family devotions every morning reg- ularly, but with such secrecy that the guests in his house were never in the least aware of the ceremony. There was no need surely why a church dignitary should assemble his family priv- ily in a crypt, and as if he was afraid of heathen persecution. But I think the world was right, and the Bishops who advised Queen Anne, when they counselled her not to appoint the author of the "Tale of a Tub" to a bishopric, gave perfectly good ad- vice. The man who wrote the arguments and illustrations in that wild book, could not but be aware what must be the sequel of the propositions which he laid down. The boon companion of Pope and Bolingbroke, who chose these as the friends of his life, and the recipients of his confidence and affection, must have heard many an argument, and joined in many a conversa- tion over Pope's port, or St. John's Burgundy, which would not bear to be repeated at other men's boards. I know of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn cler- gyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the " Beggar's Opera " — Gay, the wildest of the wits about town — it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders — to invest in a cassock and bands — just as he advised him to husband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out at interest.* The Queen, and the bishops, and the world, were right in mistrusting the religion of that man. * From The Archbishop of Cashell. « Dear Sir,- " ^''''''^^^ ^"y ^i^, i73S- " I HAVE been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I am resolved to have no more, especially where I am likely to be overmatched ; and as I have some reason to hope what is past will be forgotten, I confess I did endeavor in my last to put the best color I could think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge right of my idleness ; but, in reality, it has iiitherto proceeded from a hurry and confusion, arising from a thousand unlucky unforeseen accidents rather than mere sloth. I have but one troublesome affair now upon my hands, which, by the help of the prime Ser- jeant, I hope soon to get rid of ; and then you shall sec me a true Irish bishop. Sir James Ware has nia le a very useful collection of the memorable actions of my prede- cessors. He tells me, they were born in such a town of England or Ireland ; were consecrated such a year ; and if not translated, were buried in the Cathedral church, either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude, that a good bishop has noth- ing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die ; which laudable example I propose for the remainder of my liife to follow; for to tell you the truth, I have for these four or five years past met with so much treachery, baseness, and ingratitude among mankind, that I can hardly think it incumbent on any man to endeavor to do good to so perverse a generation. " I am truly concerned at the account you gave me of your health. Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover your flesh ; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a road so suited SWIFT. 387 I am not here, of course, to speak of any man's religious views, except in so far as they influence his literary character, his life, his humor. The most notorious sinners of all those fellow- mortals whom it is our business to discuss — Harry Fielding and Dick Steele, were especially loud, and I believe really fervent, in their expressions of belief ; they belabored freethinkers, and stoned imaginary atheists on all sorts of occasions, going out of their way to bawl their own creed, and persecute their neighbor's, and if they sinned and stumbled, as they constantly did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behavior, they got upon their knees and cried " Peccavi " with a most sonor- ous orthodoxy. Yes ; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England men ; they abhorred Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idola- tries in general ; and hiccough Church and State with fervor. But Swift? His mind had had a different schooling, and possessed a very different logical power. He was not bred up in a tipsy guard-room, and did not learn to reason in a Covent Garden tavern. He could conduct an argument from begin- ning to end. He could see forward with a fatal clearness. In his old age, looking at the " Tale of a Tub," when he said, " Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book ! " I think he was admiring not the genius, but the consequences to which the genius had brought him — a vast genius, a magnifi- cent genius, a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and strong, — to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of men, — an awful, an evil spirit. Ah man ! you, educated in Epicurean Temple's library, you to your circumstances, as from Dublin hitlier. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles' end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inns at all : but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor ; his wife is allowed to be th^ best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, of wliich he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side ; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach ; if you be tired, you shall stay all night ; if not, after dinner, we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine ; and bv going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainlv verv bad. I hope vou will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that ] may have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him. Cope will come : he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, 1 shall add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your most faithful and obedient servant, Theo. Cashell." 388 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. whose friends were Pope and St. John — what made you to swear to fatal vows, and bind yourself to a life-long hypocrisy before the Heaven which you adored with such real wonder, humility, and reverence ? For Swift was a reverent, was a pious spirit — for Swift could love and could pray. Through the storms and tempests of his furious mind, the stars of re- ligion and love break out in the blue, shining serenely, though hidden by the driving clouds and the maddened hurricane of his life. It is my belief that he suffered frightfully from the con- sciousness of his own skepticism, and that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.* The paper left behind him, called " Thoughts on Religion," is merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets : they have scarce a Christian char- acteristic ; they might be preached from the steps of a syna- gogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant — he is too great and too proud for that ; and, in so far as the badness of his sermons goes, he is honest. But having put that cassock on, it poisoned him : he was strangled in his bands. He goes through life, tear- ing, like a man possessed with a deviU Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What a night, my God, it was ! what a lonely rage and long agony — what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant ! t It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow. Goethe was so. I can't fancy Shakspeare otherwise. The giants must live apart. The kings can have no company. But this man suffered so ; and deserved so to suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain. The " saeva indignatio " of which he spoke as lacerating his heart, and which he dares to inscribe on his tombstone — as if the wretch who lay under that stone waiting God's judgment had a right to be angry — breaks out from him in a thousand pages of his writing, and tears and rends him. Against men * " Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but resolving to settle himself in some way of livmg, was inclined to take orders. However, althouc;h his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of enterin:^ into the Church merely for support.''— .4«^cTic. But the following prove her wit : — "A gentleman who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by comforted him — that he should be easy, because " the child was gone to heaven.' ' No, my lord,' said she ; ' that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there." *' When she was extremely ill, her physician said, ' Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavor to get you up again.' She answered, ' Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breatli before I get up to the top.' " A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repar- tees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at a loss ; but she solved the difficulty by saying. ' The Doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.' " A Quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked ; it had a broad brim, and a label of paper about its neck. ' What is that '' ' — said she — ' my apothecary's son ! ' The ridic- ulous resemblance, and tlie suddenness of the question, set us all a-laughing."— Swift's Works, Scott's Ed. vol. ix. 295-61; 398 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. whole week with his neighbor ! Stella was quite right in her previsions. She saw from the very first hint, what was going to happen ; and scented Vanessa in the air.* The rival is at the Dean's feet. The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayers together, and learning Latin together, and conjugating amo, amas, ainavi to- gether. The little language is over for poor Stella. By the rule of grammar and the course of conjugation, doesn't amavi come after amo and ai7ias ? The loves of Cadenus and Vanessa f you may peruse in Cadenus's own poem on the subject, and in poor Vanessa's vehement expostulatory verses and letters to him ; she adores him, implores him, admires him, thinks him something god- like, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet.f As they are bringing him home from church, those divine feet of Dr. Swift's are found pretty often in Vanessa's parlor. He likes to be admired and adored. He finds Miss Vanhomrigh to be a woman of great taste and spirit, and beauty and wit, and a fortune too. He sees her every day ; he does not tell Stella about the business : until the impetuous Vanessa be- comes too fond of him, until the Doctor is quite frightened by * I am so hot and lazy after my mom'ng's walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Van- honi'^h's, whore my best %o\\\\ and periwij was, and out of mere listlessncss dine there very often ; So I did to-day." — Journal to Stella. Mrs. Vanhomrigh, " Vanessa's'' mother, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William's time. The family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Bury Street, St. James's — a street made notable by such residents as Swift and Steele ; and, in our own time, Moore and Crabbe. t " Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress ; impatient to be admired ; very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex ; full of pertuess, gayety, and pride ; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel ; * * * * happy in the thoughts of being reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife." — Lord Orrery. t " You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had bettor have said, as often as jou can get the better of your inclinations so much ; or as often as you remember tliere was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you v/ill not bo made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe wliat I have suffered since I saw you last : I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more ; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long ; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me ; for I am sure you'd not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you ; for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh ! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can ; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live." — Vanessa. (M. 1714.) SWIFT. 399 the young woman's ardor, and confounded by her wannth. He wanted to marry neither of them — that I believe was the truth ; but if he had not married Stella, Vanessa would have had him in spite of himself. When he went back to Ireland, his Ari- adne, not content to remain in her isle, pursued the fuc^itive Dean. In vain he protested, he vowed, he soothed, and bullied ; the news of the Dean's marriage with Stella at last came to her, and it killed her — she died of that passion.* * "If we consider Swift's behavior, so far only as it relates to women, we shall find tliat he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures." — Orrery. " You would have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very vir- tuous women, who attended him from morning till night."' — Qrrery. A correspondent of Sir Waiter Scott's furnished him with the materials on which to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa — after she liad retired to cherish her passion in retreat : — " Marley .Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account) showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden when a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well ; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her perse n, especially as to her cmhonpaint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company : her con- stant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden. * * * She avoided com- pany, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He sliowed her favorite seat, still called ' Vanessa's bower.' Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot. * * * * There were two scats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey. * * * * In this sequestered spot, accord- ing to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them. — Scott's Swift, vol. i. pp. 2^6-7. i( * * "* * gilt jiiss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with t'r.e object of her affections — to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connection with Mrs. jolinson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long excited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be fourd in their correspondence, and that so early as 17?-;, when she writes to him — then in Ireland — ' If you are very liappy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, cxccfi 'ris what is inconsistent zvith mine." Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and, partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Jolmson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connection., Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean ; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogation, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was lia'ole, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with si'ch terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, mounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. 400 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. And when she died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifully regarding her, " That doesn't surprise me," said Mrs. Stella, '' for we all know the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick." A woman — a true woman ! Would you have had one of them forgive the other ? In a note in his biography, Scott says that his friend Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's hair, enclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are written, in the Dean's hand, the words : " Only a ivomuji's hair." An instance, says Scott, of the Dean's desire to veil his feelings under the mask of cyni- cal indifference. See the various notions of critics ! Do those words indi- cate indifference or an attempt to hide feeling .? Did you ever hear or read four words more pathetic? Only a woman's hair: only love, only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ;only the tenderest heart in the world stricken and wounded, and passed away now out of reach of pangs of hope deferred, love insult- ed, and pitiless desertion : — only that lock of hair left ; and memory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, shuddering over the grave of his victim. And yet to have had so much love, he must have given some. Treasures of wit and wisdom, and tenderness, too, must that man have had locked up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shone fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. But it was not good to visit that place. People did not remain there long, and suffered for having been there.* He shrank away from all affections sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him and away from him. He had not heart enough to see them die. He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan ; he slunk away from his fondest admirer. Pope. His laugh jars on one's ear after seven-score years. He was always alone — alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella's sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense When Vanessa opened the packet she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed yet cherished hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived this last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks." — Scott. * " M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. II n'a pas, i la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la laison, le choix, le bon gout qui manquent \ notre cure de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un gout smgulier, et presque inimitable ; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose ; maig pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage dans son pays." — Voltaire r Lettres sttr les Anidais. Let 22. CONGREVE AND ADDISON, 401 genius : an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have other great names to mention — none I think, how- ever, so great or so gloomy. CONGREVE AND ADDISON A GREAT number of years ago, before the passing of the Reform Bill, there existed at Cambridge a certain debating club, called the " Union ; " and I remember that there was a tradition amongst the undergraduates who frequented that renowned school of oratory, that the great leaders of the Oppositon and Government had their eyes upon the University Debating Club, and that if a man distinguished himself there he ran some chance of being returned to Parliament as a great nobleman's nominee. So Jones of John's, or Tiaompson of Trinity, would rise in their might, and draping themselves in their gowns, rally round the monarchy, or hurl defiance at priests and kings, with the majesty of Pitt or the fire of Mira- beau, fancying all the while that the great nobleman's emissary was listening to the debate from the back benches, where he was sitting with the family seat in his pocket. Indeed, the legend said that one or two young Cambridge men, orators of the "Union," were actually caught up thence, and carried down to Cornwall or old Sarum, and so into Parliament. And many a young fellow deserted the jogtrot University curriculum, to hang on in the dust behind the fervid wheels of the parliamentary chariot. Where, I have often wondered, were the sons of Peers and Members of Parliament in Anne's and George's time ? Were they all in the army, or hunting in the country, or boxing the watch .'' How was it that the young gentlemen from the Uni- versity got such a prodigious number of places } A lad com- posed a neat copy of verses at Christchurch or Trinit}'-, in which the death of a great personage was bemoaned, the French king assailed, the Dutch or Prince Eugene compli- mented, or the reverse ; and the party in power was presently to provide for the young poet ; and a commissionership, or a post in the Stamps, or the secretaryship of an Embassy, or a clerkship in the Treasury, came into the bard's possession. A 26 402 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. wonderful fruit-bearing rod was that of Busby's. What have men of letters got in our time ? Think, not only of Swift, a king fit to rule in any time or empire — but Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell, Congreve, John Gay, John Dennis, and many others, who got public employment, and pretty little pickings out of the public purse.* The wits of whose names we shall treat in this lecture and two following, all (save one) touched the King's coin, and had, at some period of their lives, a happy quarter-day coming round for them. They all began at school or college in the regular way, pro- ducing panegyrics upon public characters, what were called odes upon public events, battles, seiges, court marriages and deaths, in which the gods of Olympus and the tragic muse were fatigued with invocations, according to the fashion of the time in France and in England. " Aid us. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo," cried Addison, or Congreve, singing of William or Marlborough. '''' Accunrez, chasies ny7nphcs du Fermesse" says Boileau, celebrat- ing the Grand Monarch. '■'■ Dcs soiis que 7iia /yre eii/at2te max- ques en bien la cadence, d vous vcnts^faitcs silence ! je vais parlcr de Louis !" Schoolboys' themes and foundation exercises are the only relics left now of this scholastic fashion. The Olym- pians are left quite undisturbed in their mountain. What man of note, what contributor to the poetry of a country news- paper, would now think of writing a congratulatory ode on the birth of the heir to a dukedom, or the marriage of a nobleman ? In the past century the young gentlemen of the Universities all exercised themselves at these queer compositions ; and some got fame, and some gained patrons and places for life, and many more took nothing by these efforts of what they were pleased to call their muses. * The followin!T is a conspectus of them : — Addison. — Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; Keeper of the Records in Ireland ; Lord of Trade ; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively. Steele. — Commissioner of the Stamp Office ; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court ; and Ciovernor of the Royal Company of Comedians ; Commissioner of " Forfeited Estates in Scotland." Prior. — Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague ; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William ; Secretary to the Embassy in France ; Under Secretary of State ; Ambassador to France. Tickell. — Under Secretary of State ; Secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland. Congreve. — Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches ; Commissioner for Wine Licenses ; place in the Pipe Office ; post in the Custom House ; Secre- tary of Jamaica. Gay. —Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover.) John Dennis. — A place in the Custom House. " En Angleterre * * * * les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici." — Voltaire: Lettres sur les Anglais. Let. 20. CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 403 William Congreve's* Pindaric Odes are still to be found in •* Johnson's Poets," that now unfrequented poets'-corner. in which so many forgotten bigwigs have a niche ; but though he was also voted to be one of the greatest tragic poets of any- day, it was Congreve's wit and humor which first recommended him to courtly fortune. And it is recorded that his first play, the "Old Bachelor," brought our author to the notice of that great patron of English muses, Charles Montague Lord Hali- fax — who, being desirous to place so eminent a wit in a state of ease and tranquillity, instantly made him one of the Com- missioners for licensing hackney-coaches, bestowed on him soon after a place in the Pipe Office, and likewise a post in the Custom House of the value of 600/. A commissionersbip of hackney-coaches — a post in the Custom House — a place in the Pipe Office, and all for writing a comedy ! Doesn't it sound like a fable, that place in the Pipe Office ? f " Ah, I'heureux temps que celui de ces fables ! " Men of letters there still be : but I doubt whether any Pipe Offices are left. The public has smoked them long ago. Words, like men, pass current for a while with the public, and being known everywhere abroad, at length take their places in society ; so even the most secluded and refined ladies here present will have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers at school, and will permit me to call William Congreve, Esquire, the most eminent literary " swell " of his age. In my copy of " Johnson's Lives " Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the jauntiest air of all the laurelled worthies. " I am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, looking out from his voluminous curls. People called him the great Mr. Congreve. J * He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Con- greve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire — a very ancient family t " Pipe. — P'pa, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also W\^ great roll. " Pipe Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of Crown lands, by warrant from the Lord Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. " Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c." — Rees : Cyclopczd. Art. Pipe. '' Pipe Office. — Spelman thinks so called, because the papers were kept in a large fipe or cask. '••These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe * * * because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small //)5f 5 or quills.'— Bacon : The Office of Alienations." [We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these points — by experience.] X " It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the least ; nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom House, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year." — Biog. Brit., Art. Congreve. 404 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. From the beginning of liis career until the end everybody ad- mired him. Having got his education in Ireland, at the same school and college with Swift, he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, where he luckily bestowed no attention to the law ; but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beautiful, and victorious from the first. Everybody acknowledged the young chieftain. The great Mr. Dryden * declared that he was equal to Shakspeare, and be- queathed to him his own undisputed poetical crown, and writes of him : " Mr. Congreve has done me the favor to review the 'yEneis,'and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man has showed me many faults which I have endeavored to correct." The " excellent young man " was but three or four and twenty when the great Dryden thus spoke of him : the greatest literary chief in England, the veteran field-marshal of letters, himself the marked man of all Europe, and the centre of a school of wits who daily gathered round his chair and tobacco- pipe at Will's. Pope dedicated his " Iliad " to him ; f Swift, * Dryden addressed his " twelfth epistle " to " My dear friend, Mr. Congreve," on his comedy called the " Double Dealer," in which he says : — "Great Johnson did by strength of judgment please; Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease. In differing talents both adorned their age : One for the study, t'other for the stage. But both to Congreve justly shall submit, One match'd in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit. In him all beauties of this age we see," &c., &c. The " Double Dealer," however, was not so palpable a hit as the " Old Bachelor," but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our " Swell " applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the " Epistle Dedicatory '' to the " Right Honorable Charles Montague." " 1 was conscious," said he, " where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, * * * * but I have not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer." He goes on — " But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me ; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it ; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it .'' It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind. * * *. * I sliould be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon w/icn he is letting their blood.'' t " Instead of endeavoring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave be- hind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country — one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer — and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labors. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honor and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of l\Ir. Congreve and of —A. Pope." — Postcript to Translation of the Iliad oj Homer , Mar. 25, 172-. CONGREVE AND ADD/SON. 405 Addison, Steele, all acknowledge Congreve's rank, and lavish compliments upon him. Voltaire went to wait upon him as one of the Representatives of Literature ; and the man who scarce praises any other living person — who flung abuse at Pope, and Swift, and Steele, and Addison — the Grub Street Timon, old John Dennis,* was hat in hand to Mr. Congreve ; and said that when he retired from the stage, Comedy went with him. Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the coffee-houses ; as much be- loved in the side-box as on the stage. He loved, and con- quered, and jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle,t the heroine of all his plays, the favorite of all the town in her day ; and the Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daughter, had such an admiration of him, that when he died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him,| and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were dressed in his great lifetime. He saved some money by his Pipe Office, and his Custom House office, and his Hackney Coach office, and nobly left it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it,§ but to the Duchess of Marlborough, who didn't. || * " When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generously took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner." — Thos. Davies : Dramatic Miscellanies. t " Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed me a diamond necklace (which*lLady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle." — Dr. Young. Spetice's Anecdotes. J " A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it." — Thos. Davies : Dra- matic Miscellanies. § The sum Congreve left Mrs. Bracegirdle was 200/., as is said in the " Dramatic Miscellanies" of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman. She had a " lively aspect," says Tom, on the authority of Gibber, and " such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with desire." " Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers." Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. " In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla. * * * ; Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in ' Love for Love ; ' in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the ' Mourning Bride;' and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the ' Way of the World.' Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve." — Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. 1784. She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favorite. She died in 174S, in the eighty-fifth year of her age. II Johnson calls his legacy the " accumulation of attentive parsimony, which," he continues, " though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress." — Lives of the Poets. * 4o6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. How can I introduce to you that merry and shameless Comic Muse who won him such a reputation ? Nell Gwynn's servant fought the other footman for having called his mistress a bad name ; and in like manner, and with pretty like epithets, Jeremy Collier attacked that godless, reckless Jezebel, the English comedy of his time, and called her what Nell Gwynn's man's fellow-servants called Nell Gwynn's man's mistress. The servants of the theatre, Dryden, Congreve,* and others, defended themselves with the same success, and for the same cause which set Nell's lackey fighting. She was a disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage, that Comic Muse. She came over from the Continent with Charles (who chose many more of his female friends there) at the Restoration — a wild, dishevelled Lais, with eyes bright with wit and wine — a saucy court-favorite that sat at the king's knees, and laughed in his face, and when she showed her bold cheeks at her chariot-window, had some of the noblest and most famous people of the land bowing round her wheel. She was kind and popular enough, that daring Comedy, that audacious poor Nell : she was gay and generous, kind, frank, as such people can afford to be : and the men who lived with her and laughed with her, took her pay and drank her wine, turned out when the Puritans hooted her, to fight and defend her. But the jade was indefensible, and it is pretty certain her servants knew it. There is life and death going on in everything : truth and lies always at battle. Pleasure is always warring against self- restraint. Doubt is always crying Psha ! and sneeifng. A man in life, a humorist, in writing about life, sways over to one principle or the other, and laughs with the reverence for right and the love of truth in his heart, or laughs at these from the other side. Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious busi- * He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called " Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are subjoined : — " The greater part of these examples which he has produced are only demonstra- tions of his own impurity : they only savor of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath. " Where the expression is unblamable in its own pure and genuine signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit ; he possesses the innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies. " If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures. * * * i vvill only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it. '' The corruption of a rott;n divine is the generation of a sour critic." " Congreve," says Dr. Johnson, "a very young man, elated with success, and impa- tient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. * * * The dispute was protracted through ten years ; but at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of liis labors in the reformation of the theatre." — Life oj Congreve. CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 407 ness to Harlequin ? I have read two or three of Congreve's plays over before speaking of him ; and my feelings were rather like those, which I dare say most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an orgy: a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing-girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester : a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve Muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, desire, with which that empty bowl once fermented. We think of the glances that allured, the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that shone in those vacant sockets; and of lips whispering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, that once covered yon ghast- ly yellow framework. They used to call those teeth pearls once. See ! there's the cup she drank from, the gold chain she wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge for her cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find a gravestone, and in place of a mis- tress a few bones ! Reading in these plays now is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing. What does it mean? the measures, the grimaces, the bowing, shuffling and retreating, the cavalier seul advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and men twirl- ing round at the end in a mad galop, after which everj^body bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can't understand that comic dance of the last century — its strange gravity and gayety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike life ; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a Heathen mystery, symbolizing a Pagan doctrine ; protesting — as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at their games j as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses, protested, crowned with flowers, with cups in their hands — against the new, hard, ascetic, pleasure-hating doctrine whose gaunt disciples, lately passed over from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean, were for breaking the fair images of Venus and flinging the altars of Bacchus down, I fancy poor Congreve's theatre is a temple of Pagan de- lights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and wor- ship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites frorn 4o8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife : in the ballad, when the poet bids his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying : in the ballet, when honest Corydon courts Phillis under the treillage of the pasteboard cottage, and leers at her over the head of grandpapa in red stockings, •who is opportunely asleep ; and when seduced by the invita- tions of the rosy youth she comes forvvard to the footlights, and they perform on each other's tiptoes that pas which you all know, and which is only interrupted by old grandpapa awaking from his doze at the pasteboard chalet, (whither he returns to take another nap in case the young people get an encore) : when Harlequin, splendid in youth, strength, and agility, arrayed in gold and a thousand colors, springs over the heads of countless perils, leaps down the throat of bewildered giants, and, dauntless and splendid, dances danger down : when Mr. Punch, that godless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman — don't you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show — the Pagan protest ? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment ? Look how the lovers walk and hold each other's hands and whisper! Sing the cljorus — "There is nothing like. love, there is nothing like youth, there is nothing like beauty of your spring-time. Look ! how old age tries to meddle with merry sport ! Beat him with his own crutch, the wrinkled old dotard ! There is nothing like beauty, there is nothing like strength. Strength and valor win beauty and youth. Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy ! Would you know the Segreto p^r esser fclice ? Here it is in a smiling mistress and a cup of P'alernian." As the boy tosses the cup and sings his song — hark! what is that chaunt coming nearer and nearer? What is that dirge which will disturb us ? The lights of the festival burn dim — the cheeks turn pale — the voice quavers — ■ and the cup drops on the floor. Who's there ? Death and Fate are at the gate, and they will come in. Congreve's comic feast flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants as dissolute as their mistresses —perhaps the very worst company in the world. There doesn't seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 409 Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited on by English imitators of Scapin and Frontin). Their calling is to be irresistible, and to conquer everywhere. Like the heroes of the chivalry story, whose long-winded loves and combats they were sending out of fashion, they are always splendid and triumphant — overcome all dangers, vanquish all enemies, and win the beauty at the end. Fathers, husbands, usurers are the foes these champions contend with. They are merciless in old age, invariably, and an old man plays the part in the drama which the wicked enchanter or the great blundering giant per- forms in the chivalry tales, who threatens and grumbles aijd resists — a huge stupid obstacle always overcome by the kniglit. It is an old man with a money-box: Sir Belmour his son or nephew spends his money and laughs at him. It is an old man with a young wife whoni he locks up : Sir Mirabel robs him of his wife, trips up his gouty old heels and leaves the old hunks. The old fool, what business has he to hoard his money, or to lock up blushing eighteen ? Money is for youth, love is for youth, away with the old people. When Millamant is sixt}^ having of course divorced the first Lady Millamant, and married his friend Doricourt's granddaughter out of the nurs- ery — it will be his. turn ; and young Belmour will make a fool of him. All this pretty morality you have in the comedies of William Congreve, Esq. They are full of wit. Such manners as he observes, he observes with great humor ; but ah ! it's a weary feast, that banquet of wit where no love is. It palls very soon ; sad indigestions follow it and lonely blank headaches in the morning. I can't pretend to quote scenes from the splendid Con- greve's plays* — which are undeniably bright, witty, and daring * The scene of Valentine's pretended madness in " Love for Love" is a splendid specimen of Congreve's daring manner : — • " Scajidal. — And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon him ? " Jeremy. — Yes, Sir ; he says he'll favor it, and mistake her for Angelica. " Scandal. — It may make us sport. " Foi-esight. — Mercy on us ! " Valentine. — Ilusht — interrupt me not — I'll whisper predictions to thee, and thou shalt prophesie ; — I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick, — I have told thee what's passed — now I'll tell what's to come: — Dost thou know what will happen to- morrow? Answer me not — for I will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro* craft, and fools thro' fortune ; and honesty will go as it did frostnipt in a summer suit. Ask me questions concerning to-morrow. " Scandal. — Ask him, il/r. Fofesighf. " Foresight. — Pray what will be done at Court ? " Valentine. — Scandal will tell you ; — I am truth, I never come there. " Foresight. — In the city ? " Valentine. — Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters as if religion were to be sold in every 4IO ENGLISH HUMORISTS. ' — any more than I could ask j^ou to hear the dialogue of a witty bargeman and a brilliant fishwoman exchanging compli- shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee- houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt 'prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange ; which are wanton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look suspiciously. Are you a husband? '■'■Foresight. — I am married. " Valentine. — Poor creature ! Is your wife of Covent-garden Parish ? '^Foresight. — No; St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. ' " Valentine. — Alas, poor man ! his eyes arc sunk, and his hands shrivelled ; his legs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray for a metamorphosis — change thy shape, and shake off age ; get thee Medea' s kettle and be boiled anew ; come forth with lab'ring callous hands, and chine of steel, and Atlas' shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and ni.ike thee pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ila, ha, ha 1 That a man should have a stomach to a wedding-supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet. Ha, ha, ha ! " Foresight. — His frenzy is very high now, Mr. Scandal. " Scandal.— \ believe it is a spring-tide. " Foresight. — Very likely — truly ; you understand these matters. Mr. Scandal, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical. " Valentine. — Ch ! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long ? " ycremy. — She's here, Sir. " Mrs. Foresight. — Now, Sister! " Mrs. Frail. — O Lord ! what must I say "Scandal. Humor him. Madam, by all means. "Valentine. — Where is she? Oh! I see her : she comes, like Riches, Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. Oh — welcome, welcome ! " Mrs. Frail. — How d'ye, Sir ? Can I serve you ? " Valentine. — Hark'ee — I have a secret to tell you. Endymion and the moon shall meet us on Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of night. But say not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret ; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus's hundred eyes be sliut — ha ! Nobody shall know, but Jeremy. " Mrs. Frail. — No, no , we'll keep it secret ; it shall be done presently. " Valentine. — The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither — closer — that none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news : Angelica is turned nun, and 1 am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part ; for she'll meet me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't see one another's faces 'till we have done something to be ashamed of, and then we'll blush once for all. * * * " Enter Tattle. " Tattle. — Do you know me, Valentine ? " Valentine. — You ! — who are you ? No, I hope not. " Tattle.— I am Jack Tattle, your friend. " Valentine. — My friend ! Wliat to do ? I am no married man, and thou canst not lye with my wife ; I am very poor, and thou canst not borrow money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend ? " Tattle. — Hah ! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a secret " Angelica. — Do you know me, Valentine? " Valentine. — Oh, very well. " Angelica. — Who am I ? " Valentine. — You're a woman, one to whom Pleaven gave beauty when it grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond ; and he that leaps at CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 41 1 ments at Billingsgate ; but some of his verses — they were amongst the most famous lyrics of the time, and pronounced equal to Horace by his contemporaries — may give an idea of his power, of his grace, of his daring manner, his magnificence in compliment, and his polished sarcasm. He writes as if he was you is sunk. You arc all white — a sheet of spotless paper — when you first are born ; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you ; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing : I found out what a woman was good for. " Tattle. — Ay ! pr'ythee, what's that? " Valejitine. — Whv, to keep a secret. « Tattlc.~Q Lord'! " Valentine. — Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she should tell, yet she is not to be Lelieved. " Tattle. — Hah ! Good again, faith. " Valentine. — I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like." — Congreve : Love for Love. There is a Mrs. Nickleby, of the year 1700, in Congreve's Comedy of "The Double Dealer,'' in whose character the author introduces some wonderful traits of roguish satire. She is practised en by the gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve. " Lady Plyant. — Oh ! reflect upon the horror of your conduct ! Offering to per- vert me" [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, not for her own] — " perverting me from the road of virtue, in which i have trod thus long, and never made one trip — not oTie faux fas. Oh, consider it • what would you have to answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty ! Alas I humanity is feeble, heaven knows ! Very feeble, and unable to support itself. " Mellcfont. — Where am I ? Is it day*? and am I awake ? Madam " Lady Plyant. — O Lord, ask me the question ! I'll swear I'll deny it — therefore don't ask me ; nay, you sha'n't ask me, I swear I'll deny it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face ; I wairant I am as red as a turkey-cock. O fie, cousin Mellefont ! " Mellcfont. — Nay, Madam, hear me ; I mean *'■ Lady Plyant. — Ilear you? No, no; V\\ deny you first, and hear you after- wards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon hearing — hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I won't trust my honor, I assure you ; my honor is infallible and uncomatable. '■'■Mellefont. — For heaven's sake. Madam " Lady Plyant. — Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart ? May bo, you don't think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin ; but still, my honor, if it were no sin But, then, to marry my daughter for the convenience of frequent oppor- tunities — I'll never consent to that: as sure as can be, I'll break the match. " Mell:fo7it. — Death and amazement ! Madam, upon my knees " Lady Plyant. — Nay, nay, rise up ! come, you shall see my good-nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not your fault ; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms ? And how can you help it, if you are made a captive ? I swear it is pity it should be a fault ; but, my honor. Well, but your honor, too — but the sin ! Well, but tJie necessity. O Lord, here's somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of^ your crime : and strive as much as can be against it — strive, be sure ; but don't be melancholick — don't despair ; but never think that I'll grant you anything. O Lord, no ; but be sure you lay aside all thoughts of the marriage, for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind to )'our passion for me — yet it will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous! No, no, I can't be jealous; for I must not love you. Therefore, don't hope; but don't despair neither. Oh, they're coming; I must fly." — The Double Dealer : Act 2, sc. v. page 156. 412 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. SO accustomed to conquer, that he has a poor opinion of his victims. Nothing's new except their faces, says he : " every woman is the same." He says this in his first comedy, whicii he wrote languidly * in illness, when he was an "excellent young man." Richelieu at eighty could have hardly said a more ex- cellent thing. When he advances to make one of his conquests, it is with a splendid gallantry, in full uniform and with the fiddles playing, like Grammont's French dandies attacking the breach of Lerida. " Cease, cease to ask her name," he writes of a young lady at the Wells at Tunbridge, whom he salutes with a magnificent compliment — " Cease, cease to ask her name, The crowned Muse's noblest theme, Whose glory by immortal fame Shall only sounded be. But if you long to know, Then look round yonder dazzling row; Who most does like an angel show, You may be sure 'tis she." Here are lines about another beauty, who perhaps was not so well pleased at the poet's manner of celebrating her — " When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair, With eyes so bright and with that awful air, I thought my heart which durst so high aspire As bold as his who snatched celestial fire. But soon as e'er the beauteous idiot spoke, Fort h from her coral lips such folly broke : Like balm the trickling nonsense heal'd my wound, And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound." Amoret is a cleverer woman than the lovely Lesbia, but the poet does not seem to respect one much more than the other ; and describes both with exquisite satirical humor — " Fair Amoret is gone astray : Pursue and seek her every lover. I'll tell the signs by which you may The wandering shepherdess discover. Coquet and coy at once her air, Both studied, though both seem neglected ; Careless she is with artful care, Affecting to seem unaffected. * " There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. The ' Old liachelor ' was written for amusement in the languor of oonvalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue and incessant ambition of wit."— Johnson : Lives of the Poets. CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 41^5 With skill her eyes dart every glance, Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect ihc3l For she'd persuade they wound by cliance, Though certain aim and art direct them. She likes herself, yet others hates For that which in herself she prizes ; And, while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises." What could Amoret have done to bring down such shafts of ridicule upon her ? Could she have resisted the irresistible Mr, Congreve ? Could an3'body ? Could Sabina, vi'hen she woke and heard such a bard singing under her window ? " See " he writes — " See ! see, she wakes — Sabina wakes And now the sun begins to rise ? Less glorious is the morn, that breaks From his bright beams, than her fair eyes. With ligl.t united, day they give ; But different fates ere night fulfil : How many by his warmth will live ! How many will her coldness kill ! '' Are you melted? Don't you think him a divine man? If not touched by the brilliant Sabina, hear the devout Selinda : — " Pious Selinda goes to prayers, If I but ask the favor ; And yet the tender fool's in tears, When she believes I'll leave her : Would I were free from this restraint, Or else had hopes to win her : Would she could make of me a saint, Or I of her a sinner ! '' What a conquering air there is about these ! What an irre- sistible Mr. Congreve it is ! Sinner ! of course he will be a sinner, the delightful rascal ! Win her ! of course he will win her, the victorious rogue ! He knows he will : he must — with such a grace, with such a fashion, with such a splendid em- broidered suit. You see him with red-heeled shoes deliciously turned out, passing a fair jewelled hand through his dishevelled periwig, and delivering a killing' ogle along with his scented billet. And Sabina ? What a comparison that is between the nymph and the sun ! The sun gives Sabina the pas, and does not venture to rise before her ladyship : the morn's bright beams are less glorious than her fair eyes : but before night everybody will be frozen by her glances : everybody but onS lucky rogue who shall be nameless. Louis Quatorze in all his 414 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. glory is hardly more splendid than our Phoebus Apollo of the Mall and Spring Gardens.* When Voltaire came to visit the great Congreve, the latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation, and in this perhaps the great Congreve was not far wrong.f A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery ; a flash of Swift's lightning, a beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a pretty fellow.^ * " Among those by whom it (' Will's ') was frequented, Southerne and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship. * * « But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced lo him by his first pLiy, ihe celebrated ' Old Bachelor ' being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever seen.'' — Scott's Drydoi, vol. i. p. 370. t It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life. Tlie anecdote relating to his saying that he wished " to be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity,'' is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Vol- taire's " Letters concerning the English Nation,'' published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's " Memoir of Voltaire.'' But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text of tlie same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's "CEuvres Com- pletes " in the " Pantheon Literaire." Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1S37.) " Celui de tons les Anglais qui ^ porte le plus loin la gloire du theatre comique est feu M. Congreve. II n'a fait que peu de pieces, maistoutes sent excellentes dans Jeur genre. * * * Vous y voyez pat tout le langage des honnetes gens avec des actions de fripon ; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie." — Voltaire : Letires sur les Anglais. Let. 19. \ On the death of Queen Mary he published a Pastoral — " The Mourning Muse of Alexis." Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodo.x way. The Queen is called Pastora. " I mourn Pastora dead, let Albion mourn, And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,'' says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that — " With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound. And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground (a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period) « • • continues- " Lord of these woods and wide extended plains, Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face, Scalding with tears the already faded grass. * * * * To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come ? And must Pastora moulder in the tomb? Ah Death ! more fierce and unrelenting far Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are ; V/ith lambs and s: eep their hungers are appeased, But ravenous Death the shepherdess has ieizcd." This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess — that CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 415 We have seen in Swift a humorous philosopher, whose truth frightens one, and whose laughter makes one melancholy. We have had in Congreve a humorous observer of another school, to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and whose ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat, drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) when the time comes. We come now to a humor that flows from quite a different heart and spirit — a wit that makes us laugh and leaves us good and happy ; to one of the kindest figure of the " Great Shepherd " lying speechless on his stomach in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit — are to be remembered in poetry surely : and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve ! " In the " Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas " (the young Lord Blandford, the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess ! The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come into work here again. At the sight of her grief — " Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forego, And dumb distress and new compassion show, Nature herself attentive silence kept. And motion seemed sjtsf ended while she ivept ! ' And Pope dedicated the " Iliad'' to the author of these lines — and Dryden wrote to him in his great hand : " Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought. But genius must be born and never can be taught. This is your portion, this your native store ; Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, To Shakspeare gave as much she could not give him more. Maintaui your Post : that's all the fame you need, For 'tis impossible you should proceed ; Already I am worn with cares and age. And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage : Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense, I live a Rent-charge upon Providence : But you, whom eveiy Muse and Grace adom Whom I foresee to better fortune born. Be kind to my remains, and oh ! defend Against your Judgment your departed Friend 1 Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue ; But shade those Lawrels which descend to You ; And take for Tribute what these Lines express ; You merit more, nor could my Love do less." This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen meet they fall into each other's arms, with "Jack, Jack, I must buss thee;'' or, ''Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad." And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentlemen do not kiss now ; I wonder if they love each other better ? Steele calls Congreve " Great Sir '' and " Great Author ; '' says " Well-dressed barbarians knew his awful name," and addresses him as if he were a prince ; and speaks of " Pastora " as one of the most famous tragic compositions. 41 6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. benefactors that society has ever had ; and I believe that you have divined already that I am about to mention Addison's honored name. From reading over his writings, and the biographies which we have of him, amongst which the famous article in the Edinburgh Review * may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most illus- trious artists of our own ; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance — those chiselled features pure and cold, I can't but fancy that this great man — in this respect like him of whom we spoke in the last lecture — was also one of the lonely ones of the world. Such men have very few equals, and they don't herd with those. It is in the nature of such lords of in- tellect to be solitary — they are in the world but not of it ; and our minor struggles, brawls, successes, pass under them. Kind, just, serene, impartial, his fortitude not tried beyond ea?y endurance, his affections not much used, for his books were his family and his society was in jDublic ; admirably wiser, wittier, calmer, and more instructed than almost every man with whom he met, how could Addison suffer, desire, admire, feel much ?' I may expect a child to admire me for being taller or writing more cleverly than she ; but how can I ask my superior to say that I am a wonder when he knows better than I ? In Addison's days you could scarcely show him a literary performance, a sermon or a poem, or a piece of literary criti- cism, but he felt he could do better. His justice must have made him indifferent. He didn't praise, because he measured his compeers by a higher standard than common people have.f How was he who was so tall to look up to any but the loftiest genius .'' He must have stooped to put himself on a level with * " To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. * * * After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race." — Macaulay. '• Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great variance; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion imited him, he had not only the esteem but the kindness ; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence.'' — Johnson. I " Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man ; but with any mix- ture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence.'" — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. CONGREVE AND ADDISON: 417 most men. By that profusion of graciousness and smiles with which Goethe or Scott, for instance, greeted almost every liter- ary beginner, every small literary adventurer who came to his court and went away charmed from the great king's audience, and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his literary majesty had paid him — each of the two good-natured poten- tates of letters brought their star and ribbon into discredit. Everybody had his majesty's orders. Everybody had his'majes- ty's cheap portrait, on a box surrounded with diamonds worth twopence apiece. A very great and just and wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the truth. Addi- son praises the ingenious Mr. Pinktheman : Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Dogget, the actor, whose benefit is coming off that night : Addison praises Don Saltero : Addison praises Milton with all his heart, bends his knee and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius.* But between those degrees of men his praise is very scanty. I don't think the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much ; I don't think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison's men abused Mr. Pope, I don't think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth to contradict them.f Addison's father was a clergyman of good repute in Wilt- shire, and rose in the church. $ His famous son never lost his clerical training and scholastic gravity, and was called " a par- son in a tye-wig " § in London afterwards at a time when tye- * " Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence, lies in the sub- limity of his thoughts. There are others of the moderns, who rival him in every other part of poetry ; but in the greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, both modern and ancient. Homer only excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to distend itself with greater ideas than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books." — Spectator, No. 279. " If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one." — Ibid. No. 417. These famous papers appeared in each Saturday's Spectator, from January 19th to May 3d, 1 712. Beside his services to Milton, we may place those he did to Sacred Music. + " Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards." — Pope. Spence' s Anecdotes. " ' Leave him as soon as you can,' said Addison to me, speaking of Pope ; 'he will certainly play you some devilish trick else ; he has an appetite to satire.' '' — Lady WoRTLEY Montagu. Spence's Anecdotes. X " Lancelot Addison, his father, was the ^nn of another Lancelot Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon of Cov- entry. § " The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, declared, that he was ' a parson in a tye-wig,' can detract little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a char- acter like that of Mandeville." — Johnson. Lives of the Poets. " Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison ; he had a quarrel with him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him — ' One day or other 27 41 8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. wigs were only worn by the laity, and the fathers of theology did not think it decent to appear except in a full bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687, when he was fifteen years old, he went to Queen's Col- lege, Oxford, where he speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful poem of "The Pygmies and the Cranes," is still read by lovers of that sort of exercise ; and verses are extant in honor of King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyaus : many more works are in the Collection, including one on the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300/. a year, on which Addison set out on his travels. During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers' ends when he travelled in Italy.* His patron went out of office, and his pension was unpaid : and hearing that this great scholar, now eminent and known to the literati of Europe (the great Boileau,t upon perusal of Mr. Addison's elegant hexameters, v/as first made aware that England was not altogether a barbarous nation) — hearing that the celebrated Mr. Addison, of Oxford, proposed to travel as governor to a young gentleman on the grand tour, the great Duke of Somer- set proposed to Mr. Addison to accompany his son, Lord Hartford. Mr. Addison was delighted to be of use to his Grace, and his lordship his Grace's son, and expressed himself ready to set forth. His Grace the Duke of Somerset now announced to one of the most famous scholars of Oxford and Europe that it was his gracious intention to allow my Lord Hartford's tutor one hun- you'll see that man a bishop — I'm sure he looks that way ; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his heart.' " — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. " Mr. Addison stayed above a year at BIols. He would rise as early as between tv^o and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative whilst here, and often thoughtful : sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into his room and stayed five minutes there be- fore he has known anything of it. , He had his masters generally at supper with him ; kept very little company beside ; and had no amour that I know of ; and I think I should have known it if he had had any." — Abbe Philippeaux of Blois. Spencers Anecdotes. * " His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Clau- dian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound." — Macaulay. t " Oiw country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing the present he made him of the ' Musae Anglicanae.' " — Tickell : Preface to Addison's Works. CONGREVE AND ADDISON. 419 dred guineas per annum. Mr. Addison wrote back tliat his services were his Grace's, but he by no means found his account in the recompense for them. The negotiation was broken off. Tliey parted witli a profusion of congees on one side and tlie other. Addison remained abroad for some time, living in the best society of Europe. How could he do otherwise ? He must have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw : at all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.* He could scarcely ever have had a degrading thought. He might have omitted a virtue or two, or many, but could not have had many faults committed for which he need blush or turn pale. When warmed into confidence, his conversation appears to have been so delightful that the greatest wits sat rapt and charmed to listen to him. No man bore poverty and narrow fortune with a more lofty cheerfulness. His letters to his friends at this period of his life, when he had lost his Gov- ernment pension and given up his college chances, are full of courage and a gay confidence and philosophy : and they are none the worse in my eyes, and I hope not in those of his last and greatest biographer (though Mr. Macaulay is bound to own and lament a certain weakness for wine, which the great and good Joseph Addison notoriously possessed, in common with countless gentlemen of his time), because some of the letters are written when his honest hand was shaking a little in the morning after libations to purple Lyseus over-night. He was fond of drinking the healths of his friends : he writes to Wyche,t * " It was my fate to be much with the wits ; my father was acquainted with all of them. Addison was the best company in the -world. I never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve.'' — Lady Wortley Montagu. Spence" s Anecdotes. t " Mr. Addison to Mr. Wcyhe. "Dear Sir, " My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so th( properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentlemen that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, whicli I should certainly have done could 1 have found out a rhyme to rummer. But thougli you have escaped for y* present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favors you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, 1 dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long-lived as Methuselah, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't 42 o ENGLISH HUMORISTS. of Hamburg, gratefully remembering Wyche's " hoc." " I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard Shirley," he writes to Bathurst. " I have lately had the honor to meet my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. Wood's health a hundred times in excellent champagne," he writes again. Swift* describes him over his cups, when Joseph yielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to warm his blood. If he was a parson, he -wore a tye-wig, recollect. A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine — why, we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we do.f At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book of " Travels " had failed : his " Dialogues on Medals " had had no particular success : his Latin verses, even though reported the best since Virgil or Statius at any rate, had not forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to y« owners of them, and desiring you to believe me always, " Dear Sir, " Yoiu-s,'' &c. " To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg, " May, 1703.'' . — From the Life of Addison, by Miss AlKlN. Vol. i. p. 146.' * " It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when noth- ing personal mflamed his vision or warped his judgment, can be doubted by nobody. " Sept. 10, 1710. — I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele. " II. — Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening. " 18. — To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retirement near Chel- sea. * * * * I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison. " 27. — To-day all oiir company dined at Will Frankland's with Steele and Addi- son, too. "29. — I dined with Mr. Addison,'' &c. — Journal to Stella. Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels " To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age." — (Scott. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.) " Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person ; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things." — Letters. " I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, be- sides that great love and esteem 1 have always had for you. I have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself." — Swift to Addison (17 17). Scott's Swift. Vol. xix. p. 274. Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communications. Time renewed them : and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honorably connected. t " Addison usually studied all the morning ; then met his party at Button's ; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me : it hurt my health, and so I quitted it." — Pope. Spence"! Anecdotes. CONG R EVE AND ADDISON. 421 brought him a Government place, and Addison was living up three shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms an emissary from Government and Fortune came and found him.* A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marl- borough's victory of Blenheim. Would Mr. Addison write one ? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton, took back the reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. Addison would. When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was carried to Godolphin ; and the last lines which he read were these : — " But, O my Muse ! what numbers wilt thou find To sing tlie furious troops in battle join'd ? Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound The victor's sliouts and dying groans confound ; The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, And all the thunder of the battle rise. 'Twas then great Marlborough's might}' soul was proved, That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war : In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid. Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught tlie doubtful battle where to rage. So when an angel, by divine command, With rising tempest shakes a guilty land (Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed). Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to jierform. Rides in the v^hirlwind and directs the storm.'' Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pro- nounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place of Commissioner of Appeals — vice Mr. Locke providentially promoted. In the following year Mr, Addison went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the year after was made Under Secretary of State. O angel visits ! you come " few and far between " to literary gentlemen's lodgings ! Your wings seldom quiver at second-floor windows now ! You laugh? You think it is in the power of few writers now-a-days to call up such an angel ? Well, perhaps not ; but permit us to comfort ourselves by pointing out that there are in the poem ©f the " Campaign " some as bad lines as heart can desire : and to hint that Mr, Addison did very wisely in * " When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind." — Johnson : Lives of the Poets. 422 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. not going further with my Lord Godolphin tlian that angelical simile. Do allow me, just for a little harmless mischief, to read you some of- the lines which follow. Here is the interview between the Duke and the King of the Romans after the battle : — " Austria's young monarch, whose imperial sway Sceptres and thrones are destined to obey, Whose boasted ancestry so high extends That in tlie Pagan Gods his Imeage ends. Comes from afar, in gratitude to own The great supporter of Ids father's throne. What tides of glory to his bosom ran Clasped in tlr embraces of the godlike man ! How were his eves with pleasing wonder fixt. To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt ! Such easy greatness, sucli a graceful port, So turned and finished for the camp or court 1 " How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison's -school of Charterhouse could write as well as that now \ The " Cam- paign " has blunders, triumphant as it was ; and weak points like all campaigns.* In the year 1713 "Cato" came out. Swift has left a de- scription of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this pro- digious poem.f Laudations of Whig and Tory chiefs, popular * " Mr. Addison wrote very fluently ; but he was sometimes very slow and scrupu- lous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends ; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself ; and too much concerned about his character as a poet ; or (as he worded it) too solicitous for that kind of praise which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all ! ' — Pope. Sfeiicch Anecdotes. t "As to poetical affairs,'' says Pope, in 1713, " I am content at present to be a bare looker-on. * * * Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours : and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion : " ' Envy itself is dumb — in wonder lost ; And factions strive who shall applaud him most.' " The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other ; wliile the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than the head. * * * * I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the oppo- site faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for de- fending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator." — Pope's Letters to Sir W. Trumbull. " Cato " ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue and Garth the Epilogue. It is worth noticing how many things in " Cato '' keep their ground as habitual quotations, e. g. : — " * * * big with the fate • Of Cato and of Rome." '' 'Tis not in mortals to command success. But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.'' CONG RE VE AND ADDISON. 423 ovations, complimentary garlands from literary men, transla- tions in all languages, delight and homage from all — save from John Dennis in a minority of one. Mr. Addison was called the "great Mr. Addison" after this. The Coffee-house Senate saluted him Divus : it was heresy to question that decree. _ Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of State in 17 17. And letters of his are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as " my dearest lord," and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily about nightingales and birds'-nests which he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. Addison married her ladyship in 17 16; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal union.* " Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury." " I think the Romans call it Stoicism.'' " My voice is still for war.'' " When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station.'' Not to mention — " The woman who deliberates is lost.'' And the eternal — " Plato, thou reasonest well,'' which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play ! * " The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused — to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, ' Daughter, 1 give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness ; it neither found them, nor made them, equal. * * * Rovve's ballad of ' The Despairing Shepherd ' is said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair." — Dr. John- son. " I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and 1 really believe thathe would have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.''— Lady Wortley Montagu to Pope: Works, Lord WhariicUffe' s edit., vol. ii. p. iii. The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased. She was of weak intellect, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his Collection contains " Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's going to Ireland," in whicli her ladyship is called " Chloe," and Joseph Addison " Lycidas ; " besides the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and which is entitled " Colin"s Complaint." But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen : — " What though I have skill to complain — Though the Muses my temples have crowned ; 424 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. But it is not for his reputation as the great author of " Cato " and the " Campaign," or for his merits as vSecretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warvviclv's hus- band, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless — a literary Jeffreys — in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried : only peccadilloes and small sins against society : only a danger- ous libertinism in tuckers and hoops ;* or a nuisance in the What though, when they hear my soft strain, The virgins sit weeping around. " Ah, Colin ! thy hopes are in vain ; Thy pipe and thy laurel resign ; Thy false one inclines to a swain Whose music is sweeter than thine." * One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the Speciatof tells us, particularly pleased his friend Sir Roger : — " Mr. Spectator, — " You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your with- drawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petti- coats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more ; in short, sir, since our women know themselves to be out of the eye of the Spectator, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their head-dresses ; for as the humor of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. " The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are airy and very proper for the season ; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather ; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them ? " 1 find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honor cannot be better intrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks of lines and circum- vallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Ether- idge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops. " Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observe, that the farthingale appeared in Eng- CONGREVE AND ADDISON: 425 abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from the side-box ; or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head : or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children : every one of the little sinners brought before him is amusing, and he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of admonition. Addison wrote his papers as gayly as if he was going out for a holiday. When Steele's "Tatler" first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years old : full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of let- ters. He had not done much as yet ; a few Latin poems — ■ graceful prolusions ; a polite book of travels ; a dissertation on medals, not very deep ; four acts of 1 tragedy, a great classical exercise ; and the " Campaign," a large prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of the " Tatler," Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep : let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he couldn't go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his life ;* whereas poor Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into or rever- ence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the conse- quence of the other. He walks about the world watching their land a little before the niin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c., &c. — Spectator, No. 127. * " Mr. Addison has not had one enithalamium that I can hear of, and must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own." — Pope's Letters. 426 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. pretty humors, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries ; and noting them with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre, or the assembly, or the puppet-show ; or at the toy-shop higgling for gloves and lace ; or at the auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon or a darling monster in Japan ; or at church, eyeing the width of their rival's hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the " Garter " in St. James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the drawing- room with her coronet and six footmen ; and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the city, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her earring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box ; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women, Addison was one of the most resolute club-men of his day. He passed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking — which alas ! is past praying for — you must know it, he owned, too, ladies, that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking Poor fellow ! He was a man's man, remember. The only woman he did know, he didn't write about. I take it there would not have been much humor in that story. He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the "Grecian," or the " Devil ; " to pace 'Change and the Mall * — to mingle * "I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposi- tion, married or a bachelor ; with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, 1 design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my fol- lowing writings ; and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work witli my own history. * * * There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child o me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine ; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that 1 sucked, seemed to favor my mother's dream ; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before 1 was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it. " As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage 1 had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favorite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that my parts %ieciator, No. 381. 430 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. you knew. And if it is so with those you knew, how much more with those you don't know ? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. T read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part ; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age — he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity : he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing" back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information ; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough's career, which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side — the winning side : I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe's portrait, or Swift's portrait, is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to be as skeptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, " O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made since your ladyship was a Muse ! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers : Non- sense ! He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero : I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously You utter the con- demnation of a loose character : I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read ; except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no object in setting themselves right with the public or their own consciences ; these have no motive for concealment or half-truths ; these call for no more confi- dence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the Spectator, and say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time ; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules STEELE. 431 of society — the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?" As we read in these delightful volumes of the Tatlcr and Spectator the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The Maypole rises in the Strand again in London : the churches are thronged with daily worshippers ; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses ; the gentry are going to the Drawing-room ; the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops ; the chairmen are jostling in the streets ; the footmen are running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre doors. In the country I see the young Squire riding to Eton with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him safe. To make that journey from the Squire's and back. Will is a week on horseback. The coach takes five days between London and Bath. The judges and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her post- chariot, her people carry pistols to fire a salute on Captain Macbeth if he should appear, and her couriers ride ahead to prepare apartments for her at the great caravancerais on the road ; Boniface receives her under the creaking sign of the " Bell " or the " Ram," and he and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state-apartments, whilst her car- riage rumbles into the court-yard, where the " Exeter Fly" is housed that performs the journey in eight days, God willing, having achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for supper and sleep. The curate is taking his pipe in the kitchen, where the Captain's man — having hung up his master's half pike — is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet to the town's-folk, who have their club in the chimney-corner. The Captain is ogling the cham- bermaid in the wooden gallery, or bribing her to know who is the pretty young mistress that has come in the coach. The pack-horses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers carousing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady's bar, over a glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military appearance, who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world does, and has a rattling gray mare in the stables which will be saddled and away with its owner half an hour before the " Fly " sets out on its last day's flight. And some five miles on the road, as the " Exeter Fly " comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a gray mare, with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into the coach window, and bids the company to hand out their ♦32 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. purses. * * * It must have been no small pleasure even to sit in the great kitchen in those days, and see the tide of humankind pass by. We arrive at places now, but we travel no more. Addison talks jocularly of a difference of manner and costume being quite perceivable at Staines, where there passed a young fellow " with a very tolerable periwig," though, to be sure, his hat was out of fashion, and had a Ramillies cock. I would have liked to travel in those days (being of that class of travellers who are proverbially pretty easy coram latronibus) and have seen my friend with the gray mare and the black vizard. Alas ! there always came a day in the life of that warrior when it was the fashion to accompany him as he passed — without his black mask, and with a nosegay in his hand, accompanied by halberdiers and attended by the sheriff, — in a carriage without springs, and a clergyman jolting beside him, to a spot close by Cumberland Gate and the Marble Arch, where a stone still records that here Tyburn turnpike stood. What a change in a century ; in a few years ! Within a few yards of that gate the fields began : the fields of his exploits, behind the hedges of which he lurked and robbed. A great and wealthy city has grown over those meadows. Were a man brought to die there now, the windows would be closed and the inhabitants keep their houses in sickening horror. A hundred years back, people crowded to see that last act of a highwayman's life, and make jokes on it. Swift laughed at him, grimly advising him to provide a Holland shirt and white cap crowned with a crimson or black ribbon for his exit, to mount the cart cheerfully — shake hand with the hangman, and so — farewell. Gay wrote the most delightful ballads, and made merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present humorists ! Compare those morals and ours — those manners and ours ! We can't tell — you would not bear to be told the whole truth regarding those men and manners. You could no more suffer in a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne's time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific pastimes, of the men of pleasure of that age. We have our' fine gentlemen, and our " fast men ;" permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen Anne's days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law reporters. STEELE. 433 In 1 69 1, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun was tried by his peers for tlie murder of William Mountford, comedian. In " Howell's State Trials," the reader will find not only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, but of the times and manners of those days. My lord's friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, deter- mined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney- coach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) took its station opposite my Lord Craven's house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed in company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and at- tacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his noble friend endeavored to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr. Page called for help : the population of Drury Lane rose : it was impossible to effect the capture ; and bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and waited for other opportuni- ties of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the comedian; Will removed, he thought Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his : and accordingly the Captain and his lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorney-General, made a pass and ran him clean through the body. Sixty-one of my lord's peers finding him not guilty of mur- der, while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast noble- man was discharged : and made his appearance seven years after in another trial for murder — when he, my Lord Warwick, and three gentlemen of the military profession, were concerned in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote. This jolly company were drinking together at " Lockit's " in Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain Coote and Captain French ; whom my Lord Mohun and my Lord the Earl of Warwick * and Holland endeavored to pacify * The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father of the young Earl, who was brought to his stepfather's bed to see " how a Christian could die.'' He was amongst the wildest of the nobility of that day ; and in the curious collection of Chap-books- at the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks of the gay lord. He was popular in London as such daring spirits have been in our time. The anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical jokes. Mohun was scarcely out of prison for his second homicide, when he went on Lord 28 434 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. My Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him a hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards ; once when the captain was arrested for 13/. by his tailor, my lord lent him five guineas, often paid his reckoning for him, and showed him other offices of friendship. On this evening the disputants, French and Coote, being separated whilst they were up stairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again at the bar of *' Lockit's." The row began afresh — Coote lunged at French over the bar, and at last all six called for chairs, and went to Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their lordships engaged on the side of Captain Coote. My Lord of Warwick was severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was stabbed, but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds — one espe- cially, " a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and piercing through the diaphragma," which did for Captain Coote. Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun : hence the assemblage of peers, the report of the transaction, in which these defunct fast men still live for the observation of the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by the Deputy Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe car- ried before him by the gentleman jailer, who stood with it at the bar at the right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge from him ; the prisoner, at his approach, making three bows, one to his Grace the Lord High Steward, the other to the peers on each hand ; and his Grace and the peers return the salute. And besides these great personages, august in periwigs, and nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out of the past and pass before us — the jolly captains brawling in the tavern, and laughing and cursing over their cups — the drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the bailiff on the prowl, the chairmen trudging though the black lampless streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords are clashing in the garden within. " Help there ! a gentleman is hurt ! " The chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentle- man over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the Bagnio in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon — a pretty tall gentleman : but that wound under the short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and gentleman jailer with your axe, where be you now? The gen- Macclesfield's embassy to the Elector of Hanover, when Queen Anne sent the garter to H. E. Highness. The chronicler of the expedition speaks of his lordship as an amiable young man, who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and reformed. He and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton between them, in which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable baron's name was Charles, and not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened him. STEELE. A-^ (J tleman axeman's head is off his own shoulders ; the lords and judges can wag theirs no longer ; the bailiff's writs have ceased to run ; the honest chairmen's pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have walked away into Hades — all as irre- coverably done for as Will Mountford or Captain Coote. The subject of our night's lecture saw all these people — rode in Captain Coote's company of the Guards very probably — wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern — fled from many a bailiff. In 1709, when the publication of the Tatler began, our great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light lit- erature in a later day exhibited when the Waverley novels ■appeared, upon which the public rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary castles and exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly. I have looked over many of the comic books with which our ancestors amused themselves, from the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the delectable aathor of the " New Atlantis," to the facetious productions of Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the " London Spy " and several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and ordinaries, the wit of the Bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collec- tion at the British Museum, you may see, besides, the Crafls- mefi and Postboy specimens, and queer specimens they are, of the higher literature of Queen Anne's time. Here is an ab- stract from a notable journal bearing date, Wednesday, Octo- ber 13th, 1708, and entitled 27u' B?-itish Apollo ; or, curious amusements for the ingenious, by a society of gentlemen.'^ The British Apollo invited and professed to answer questions upon all subjects of wit, morality, science, and even religion ; and two out of its four pages are filled with queries and replies much like some of the oracular penny prints of the present time. One of the first querists, referring to the passage that a bishop should be the husband of one wife, argues that polygamy is justifiable in the laity. The society of gentlemen conduct- ing the British Apollo are posed by this casuist, and promise to give him an answer. Celinda then wishes to know from "the gentlemen," concerning the souls of the dead, whether they shall have the satisfaction to know those whom they most valued in 436 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. this transitory life. The gentlemen of the Apollo give but cold comfort to poor Celinda. They are inclined to think not : for, say they, since every inhabitant of those regions will be infi- nitely dearer than here are our nearest relatives — what have we to do with a partial friendship in that happy place? Pool Celinda ! it may have been a child or a lover whom she had lost, and was pining after, when the oracle of B?-itis/i Apollo gave her this dismal answer. She has solved the question for herself by this time, and knows quite as well as the society of gentlemen. From theology we come to physics, and Q. asks, " Why doe.* hot water freeze sooner than cold ? " Apollo replies, " Hot water cannot be said to freeze sooner than cold ; but water once heated and cold, may be subject to freeze by the evapora- tion of the spirituous parts of the water, which renders it less able to withstand the power of frosty weather." The next query is rather a delicate one. " You, Mr. Apollo, who are said to be the God of wisdom, pray give us the reason why kissing is so much in fashion : what benefit one receives by it, and who was the inventor, and you will oblige Corinna," To this queer demand the lips of Phoebus, smiling, answer : "Pretty innocent Corinna! Apollo owns that he was a little surprised by your kissing question, particularly at that part of it where you desire to know the benefit you receive by it. Ah ! madam, had you a lover, you would not come to Apollo for a solution ; since there is no dispute but the kisses of mutual lovers give infinite satisfaction. As to its invention, 'tis certain nature was its author, and it began with the first courtship." After a column more of questions, follow nearly two pages of poems, signed by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and chiefly on the tender passion ; and the paper wound up with a letter from Leghorn, an account of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for publishing two sheets on the present state of Ethiopia, by Mr. Hill : all of which is printed for the authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing Press against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it must have been — how Apollo'' s oracles must have been struck dumb, when the Tatler appeared, and scholars, gentlemen, men of the world, men of genius, began to speak ! Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had begun to make acquaintance with English court manners and English servitude, in Sir William Temple's family, another Irish youth was brought to learn his humanities at the old school of Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which foundation he had STEELE. 437 been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor of the House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was an or- phan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be checkered by a strange variety of good and evil fortune. I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters and ushers of that thick-set, squared-faced, black-eyed, soft- hearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging-block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have my- self inspected, but only as an amateur, that instrument of righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a seclu- ded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School ; and have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not the ancient and interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted himself to the tormentors. Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably into debt with the tart-woman ; ran out of bounds, and entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory, en- gagements with the neighboring lollipop-vendors and piemen — exhibited an early fondness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made of Steele's early life ; but if the child is father of the man, the father of young Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without tak- ing a degree, and entered the Life Guards — the father of Cap- tain Steele of Lucas's Fusiliers, who got his company through the patronage of my Lord Cutts — the father of Mr. Steele the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the Gazette^ the Tatler^ and Spectator., the expelled Member of Parliament, and the au- thor of the " Tender Husband" and the " Conscious Lovers ; " if man and boy resembled each other, Dick Steele the school- boy must have been one of the most generous, good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb tupto, I beat, tuptofuai, I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain. Almost every gentleman who does me the honor to hear me will remember that the very greatest character which he has seen in the course of his life, and the person to whom he has looked up with the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires 438 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the school- master himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, and every little boy listens. He writes off copies of Latin verses as melodiously as Virgil. He is good-natured, and, his own masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies of verses for other boys with an astonishing ease and fluency ; the idle ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in their exercices, and whipped because their poems were too good. I have seen great men in my time, but never such a great one as that head boy of my childhood ; we all thought he must be Prime Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting him in after-life to find he was no more than six feet high. Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faith- fully through his life. Through the school and through the world, whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, way- ward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best -themes. He ran on Addison's messages : fagged for him and blacked his shoes : to be in Joe's company was Dick's greatest pleasure ; and he took a sermon or a caning from his monitor with the most boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affection.* Steele found Addison a stately college Don at Oxford, and himself did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a comedy, which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow burned there ; and some verses, which I dare say are as sublime as other gentlemen's composition at that age ; but being smitten with a sudden love for military glor}^ he threw up the cap and gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in the Duke of Ormond's troop — the second — and, probably, with the rest of the gentlemen of his troop, "all mounted on black horses with white feathers in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced," marched by King William, in Hyde Park, in November, 1699, and a great show of the nobility, besides twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. " The Guards had just got their new clothes," the Lofidott Post said : " they are extraordinary grand, and thought to be the finest body of horse in the world." But Steele could hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about himself, his mother, * " Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show it, in all companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then, used to play a little upon him ; but he always took it well."— Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. " Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the world : even in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to please and be pleased." — Dr. YouNS. Spends AntedoUs, STEELE. 439 his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, from which he was promoted to be a Captain in Lucas's Fusi' Hers, getting his company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, whose secretary he was, and to whom he dedicated his work called the " Christian Hero." As for Dick, whilst writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink, and in all the follies of the town ; it is related that all the officers of Lucas's, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.* * The gayety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene between two brilliant sisters, from his comedy " The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode." Dick wrote this, he said, from " a necessity of enlivening his character," which, it seemed, the " Christian Hero " had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and respectable in the eyes of readers of that pious piece. \Scene draws and discovers Lady Charlotte, reading at a table, — Lady Har- riet, flaying at a glass, to and fro, and vicu'itig herself^ " L. Ha. — Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [looking at herself as she Speaks~\ as sit staring at a book which I know you can't jttend. — Good Dr. Lucas may have writ there what he pleases, but there's no putting Francis, Lord Hardy, now Earl of Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent from your eyes. Do but look on me, now, and deny it if you can. " L. Ch. — You are the maddest girl [sjniUng\. " L. Ha. — Look'ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing [looking over Charlotte\ — Oh ! I see his name as plain as you do — F-r-a-n, Fran, — c-i-s, cis, Fran- cis, 'tis in every line of the book. " L. Ch. [rising^ — It's in vain, I see, to mind anything in such impertinent com- pany — but grantmg 'twere as you say, as to my Lord Hardy — 'tis more excusable to admire another than oneself. " L. Ha. — Xo, I think not, — yes, I grant you, than really to be vain of one's per son, but I don't admire myself — Pish ! I don't believe my eyes to have that softness. [Looking in the glass ^ They ain't so piercing: no, 'tis only stuff, the men will be talking. — Some people are such admirers of teeth — Lord, what signifies teeth ! [Showing her teeth.\ Avery blackamoor has as white a set of teeth as \. — No, sister, I don't admire myself, but I've a spirit of contradiction in me ; I don't know I'm in love with myself, only to rival the men. '' L. Ch. — Ay, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev'n of that rival of his, your dear self. " L. Ha. — Oh, what have I done to you, that you sho\Jd name that insolent in- truder .^ A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a poetical lover of mine sighed and sung of both sexes, The public envy and the public care, I sha'n't be so easily catched — ^I thank him — I want but to be sure I should heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he should depart this life or not. " L. Ch. — Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your humor does not at all become you. " L. Ha. — -Vanity ! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere than you wise folks : all your life's an art. — Speak j'our soul. — Look you there. — [Hauling her to the glass^ Are you not struck with a secret pleasure when you view that bloom in your look, that harmony in your shape, that promptitude in your mien ? " L. Ch. — Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to correct it. " L. Ha. — Pshaw 1 Pshaw ! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Fardingale, 'tis too goon for me to think at that rate. 44? ENGLISH HUMORISTS. And in truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit, though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele sa3^s of himself that he was always sinning and repenting. He beat his breast and cried most piteously when he did repent : but as soon as crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that charming paper in the Tailer, in which he records his father's death, his mother's griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he is interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, " the same as is to be sold at Garraway's, next week ; " upon the receipt of which he sends for three friends, and they fall to instantly, " drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o'clock in the morning." His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting it, bringing him a bottle from the " Rose," or inviting him over to a bout there with Sir Plume and I^r. Diver ; and Dick wiped his eyes, which were whimpering over his papers, took down his laced hat, put on his sword and wig, kissed his wife and children, told them a lie about pressing business, and went off to the " Rose " to the jolly fellows. While Mr. Addison was abroad, and after he came honys in rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabb}^ lodg- ing in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was cutting a much smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk. Could not some painter give an interview between the gallant captain of Lucas's, with his hat cocked, and his lace, and his face too, a trifle tarnished with drink, and that poet, that philosopher, pale, proud, and poor, his friend and monitor of schooldays, of all days .? How Dick must have bragged about his chances and his hopes, and the fine company he kept, and the charms of the reigning toasts and popular actrsBses, and the number of bottles that he and my lord and some other pretty fellows had cracked overnight at the " Devil," or the " Garter ! " Cannot one fancy Joseph Addison's calm smile and cold gray eyes following Dick for an instant, as he struts down the Mall, to dine with the Guard at St. James's, before he turns, with his sober pace and threadbare " L. Ch. — They that think it too soon to understand themselves will very soon find it too late. — But tell me honestly, don't you like Campley ? " L. Ha. — The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did not think of getting me so easily.— Oh, I hate a heart I can't break when I please. — What makes the value of dear china, but that 'tis so brittle ? — were it not for that, you might as well have stone mugs in your closet." — The Funeral, Oct. 2d. " We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele's] ; there being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom liis Toilers liad not mads better by his recommendation of them." — Cibber. STEELE. 441 suit, to walk back to his lodgings up the two pair of stairs ? Steele's name was clown for promotion, Dick always said him- self, in the glorious, pious, and immortal William's last table- book. Jonathan Swift's name had been written there by the same hand too. Our worthy friend, the author of the " Christian Hero," con- tinued to make no small figure about town by the use of his wits.* He was appointed Gazetteer : he wrote, in 1703, " The Tender Husband," his second play, in which there is some delightful farcical writing, and of which he fondly owned in after- life, and when Addison was no more, that there were " many applauded strokes " from Addison's beloved hand.t Is it not a pleasant partnership to remember.? Can't one fancy Steele full of spirits and youth, leaving his gay company to go to Ad- dison's lodging, where his friend sits in the shabby sitting-room, quite serene, and cheerful, and poor? In 1704, Steele came on the town with another comedy, and behold it was so moral and religious, as poor Dick insisted, — so dull the town thought, — ■ that the " Lying Lover " was damned. Addison's hour of success now came, and he was able to help our friend the " Christian Hero " in such a way, that, if there had been any chance of keeping that poor tipsy cham- pion upon his legs, his fortune was safe, and his competence assured. Steele procured the place of Commissioner of Stamps : he wrote so richly, so gracefully often, so kindly always, with such a pleasant wit and easy frankness, with such a gush of good spirits and good-humor, that his early papers may be compared to Addison's own, and are to be read, by a male reader at least, with quite an equal pleasure. $ * " There is not now in his sight that excellent man, whom Heaven made his friend and superior, to be at a certain place in pain for what he should say or do. I will go on in his further encouragement. The best woman that ever man had cannot nowlamentandpineathis neglect of himself." — Steele [of himself] : The Theatre. No. 12, Feb. 1719-20. t " The Funeral " supplies an admirable stroke of humor, — one which Sydney Smith has used as an illustration of the faculty in his Lectures. The undertaker is talking to his employes about their duty. Sable. — " Ha, you ! — A little more upon the dismal \formmg their countenances^ : this fellow has a good mortal look, — place him near the corpse : that wainscot-face must be o' top of the stairs ; that fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the end of the hall. So — But Fll fix you all myself. Let's have no laughing now on any provocation. Look yonder, — that hale, well-looking puppy ! You ungrateful scoundrel, did not I pity you, take you out of a great man's service, and show you the pleasure of receiving wages ? — Did not I give yo2i ten, then fifteen, and twenty shillings a week to be sorrowful — and the 7tiore I give you 1 think the gladder you are I " J " From my own Apartment, Nov. l5. " There are several persons who have many pleasures and entertainments in their possession, which they do not enjoy ; it is, therefore, a kind and good ofi&ce to 442 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. After the Tatlerm. 171 1, the famous Spectator made its ap)- pearance, and this was followed at various- intervals, by many periodicals under the same editor — the Guardian — the English- acquaint them with their own happiness, and turn their attention to such instances of their good fortune as they are apt to overlook. Persons in the married state often want such a monitor ; and pine away their days by loolcing upon the same condition in anguish and murmuring, wliich carries with it, in the opinion of otliers, a compli- cation of all the pleasures of life, and a retreat from its inquietudes. " I am led into this thought by a visit I made to an old friend who was formerly my schoolfellow. He came to town last week, with his family, for the winter ; end yesterday morning sent me word his wife expected me to dinner. I am, as it were, at home at that house, and every member of it knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot, indeed, express the pleasure it is to be met by the children with so much joy as I am when I go thither. The boys and girls strive who shall come first, when they think it is I that am knocking at the door : and that child which loses the race to me runs back again to tell the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff. This day I was led in by a pretty girl that we all thought must have forgot me ; for the family has been out of town these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty subject with us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance ; after which, they began to rally me upon a thousand little stories they heard in the country, about my marriage with one of my neighbor's daughters ; upon which, the gentleman, my friend, said, 'Nay; if Mr. Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old companions, I hope mine shall have the preference : there is Mrs. Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the bast of them. But I know him too well ; he is so enamored with the very memory of those w'ho flourished in our youth, that he will not so much as look upon the modern beauties. I remember, old gentleman, how often you went home in a day to refresh your countenance and dress when Tcraminta reigned in your heart. As we came up in the coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.' With such reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed our time during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dinner his lady left the room, as did also the children. As soon as we were alone, he took me by the hand : ' Well, my good friend,' says he, ' I am heartily glad to see thee ; I was afraid you would never have seen all the company that dined with you to-day again. Do not you think the good woman of the house a little altered since you followed her from the playhouse to find out who she was for me ? ' I perceived a tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little. But, to turn the discourse, I said, ' She is not, indeed, that creature she was when she returned me the letter 1 carried from you, and told me, " She hoped, as I was a gentleman, I would be employed no more to trouble her, who had never offended me ; but would be so much the gentleman's friend as to dissuade him from a pursuit which he could never succeed in.'' You may remember I thought her in earnest, and you were forced to employ your cousin Will, who made his sister get acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to be forever fifteen.' ' Fifteen ! ' replied my good friend. ' Ah ! you little understand — you, that have lived a bachelor — how great, how exquisite a pleasure there is in being really beloved ! It is impossible that tlie most beauteous face in nature should raise in me such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watching with me in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which had like to have carried me off last winter. I tell you, sincerely, I have so many obligations to her that I cannot, with any sort of moderation, think of her present state of health. But, as to what you say of fifteen, she gives me every day pleasure beyond what I ever knew in the possession of her beauty when I was in the vigor of youth. Every moment of her life brings me fresh instances of her complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw it; there is no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for my welfare and interests. Thus, at the same time, methinks, the love I conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened by my gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much above the idle passion commonly called by that name, as the loud laughter of buffoons is inferior to tho STEELE. 443 fnan — the Lover, whose love was rather insipid — the Reader, of whom the public saw no more after his second appearance — the Theatre, under the pseudonym of Sir John Edgar, which ele;;ant mirth of gentlemen. Oh ! she is an inestimable jewel ! In her examination of her household affairs, she shows a certain fearfulness to find a fault, which makes her servants ob:y her like children ; and the meanest we have has an ingenious shame for an offence not always to be seen in cliildren in other families. I speak free! v'_ ta you, my old friend ; ever since her sickness, thmgs that gave me the quickest joy before turn now to a certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know the poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must do should they lose tlieir mother in their tender years. The pleasure I used to take in telling my boys stories of battles, and asking my girl questions about the disposal of her baby, and the gossipping of it, is turned into inward reflection and melancholy.' " He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady entered, and, with an inexpressible sweetness m her countenance, told us ' she had been searching lier closet for something very good to treat such an old friend as I was.' Her husband's eyes sparkled with pleasure at the cheerfulness of her countenance ; and I saw all his fears vanish in an instant. The lady observing something in our looks which showed we had been more serious than ordinary, and seeing her husband receive her with great concern under a forced cheerfulness, immediately guessed at what we had been talking of ; and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, ' Mr. Bickerstaff, do not believe a word of what he tells you ; I shall still live to have you for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town. You must know he tells me, that he finds London is a much more healthy place than the country ; for he sees several of his old acquaintances and schoolfellows are here — yoicng fellows -with fair, full-bottomed ferhv'igs. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out open-breasted.' My friend, who is always extremely delighted with her agreeable humor, made her sit down with us. She did it with that easiness which is peculiar to women of sense ; and to keep up the good-humor she had brought in with her, turned her raillery upon me. ' Mr. Bickerstaft, you remember you followed me one night from the play- house ; suppose you should carry me thither to-morrow night, and lead me in the front box.' This put us into a long field of discourse about the beauties who were the mothers to the present, and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her, ' I was glad she had transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question but her eldest daughter was within half a year of being a toast.' " We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the young lady, when, on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war. His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have him put out of the room ; but I would not part with him so. I found, upon conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all the learning on the other side of eight years old. I perceived him a very great historian in ' yEsop's Fables ; ' but he frankly declared to me his mind, ' that he did not delight in that learning because he did not believe they were true;' for which reason I found he had very much turned his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into the lives of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, ' the Seven Champions,' and other historians of that age. I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his son, and that these diversions might turn to some profit. I found the boy had made remarks which might be of service to him during the course of his whole life. He would tell you the mismanagement of John Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate temper of Bevis of Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of England ; and by this means liad his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and honor. 1 was extolling his accomplishments, when his mother told me ' that the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he. Betty,' said she, ' deals chiefly in fairies and sprights ; and some- times in a winter night will terrify the maids with her accounts, until they are a'fraid to go up to bed.' " 1 sat with them until it was very late, sometimes in merry, sometimes in serious 444 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. Steele wrote while Governor of the Royal Company of Come- dians, to which post, and to that of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, and to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honor of knighthood, Steele had been preferred soon after the accession of George I. ; whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through disgrace, and danger, against the most formidable enemies, against traitors and bullies, against Bolingbroke and Swift in the last reign. With the arrival of the King, that splendid conspiracy broke up ; and a golden opportunity came to Dick Steele, whose hand, alas, was too careless to gripe it. Steele married twice ; and outlived his places, his schemes, his wife, his income, his health, and almost everything but his kind heart. That ceased to trouble him in 1729, when he died, worn out and almost forgotten by his contemporaries, in Wales, where he had the remnant of a property. Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature ; all women especially are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them. Congreve the Great, who alludes to the low estimation in which women were held in Elizabeth's time, as a reason why the women of Shakspeare make so small a figure in the poet's dialogues, though he can himself pay splendid comiDliments to women, yet looks on them as mere instruments of gallantry, and destined, like the most consummate fortifications, to fall, after a certain time, before the arts and bravery of the besieger, man. There is a letter of Swift's, entitled " Advice to a very Young Married Lady," which shows the Dean's opinion of the female society of his day, and that if he despised man he utterly scorned women too. No lady of our time could be treated by any man, were he ever so much a wit or Dean, in such a tone of insolent patronage and vulgar protection. In this performance. Swift hardly takes pains to hide his opinion that a woman is a fool : tells her to read books, as if reading was a novel accomplishment ; and informs her that " not one gentleman's daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand her own natural tongue." Addison laughs at women equally ; but, with the gentleness and politeness of his discourse, with this particular pleasure, which gives the only true relish to all con- versation, a sense that every one of us liked each other. I went home, considering the difierent conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor ; and I must confess it struck me with a secret concern, to reflect, that whenever I go off I shall leave no traces behind me. In this pensive mood I return to my family ; that is to say, to my maid, my dog, my cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to me." — The Tatler. STEELE. 445 nature, smiles at them and watches them, as if they were harm- less, half-witted, amusing, pretty creatures, only made to be men's jolaythings. It was Steele who first began to pay a manly homage to their goodness and understanding, as well as their tenderness and beauty.* In his comedies, the heroes do not rant and rave about the divine beauties of Gioriana or Statira, as the characters were made to do in the chivalry romances and the high-flown dramas just going out of vogue ; but Steele ad- mires women's virtue, acknowledges their sense, and adores their purity and beauty, with an ardor and strength wliich should win the good -will of all women to their hearty and re- spectful champion. It is this ardor, this respect, this manliness, which makes his comedies so pleasant and their heroes such fine gentlemen. He paid the finest compliment to a woman that perhaps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom Con- greve had also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that " to have loved her was a liberal education." " How often," he says, dedicating a volume to his wife, " how often has your ten- derness removed pain from my sick head, how often anguish from my afilicted heart ! If there are such beings as guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form than my wife." His breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when he meets with a good and beautiful woman, and it is with his heart as well as with his hat that he salutes her. About children, and all that relates to home, he is not less tender, and more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his softness. He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. It is that which gives his works their worth and his style its charm. It, like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders ; and redeemed, like that, by his sweet and compassionate nature. We possess of poor Steele's wild and checkered life some of the most curious memoranda that ever were left of a man's biography.f Most men's letters, from Cicero down to Walpole *" As to the pursuits after affection and esteem, the fair sex are happy in this particular, that with them the one is much more nearly related to the other than in men. The love of a woman is inseparable from some esteem of her ; and as she is naturally the object of affection, the woman who has your esteem has also some degree of your love. A man that dotes on a woman for her beauty, will whisper his friend, ' Thn.t creature has a great deal of wit when you are well acquainted with hen' And if you examine the bottom of your esteem for a woman, you will find you have a greater opinion of her beauty than anybody else. As to us men, I design to pass most of my time with the facetious Harry Bickerstaff ; but William Bickerstaff, the most prudent man of our family, shall be my executor.'' — Tatler, No. 206. t The Correspondence of Steele passed after his death into the possession of his daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife, Miss Scurlock, of Carmarthenshire. She married the Hon. John, afterwards third Lord Trevor. At her death, part of the 446 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. or down to the great men of our own time, if you will, are doc- tored compositions, and written with an eye suspicious towards posterity. That dedication of Steele's to his wife is an artifi- Jetters passed to Mr. Thomas, a grandson of a natural daughter of Steele's ; and part to Lady Trevor's next of kin, Mr. Scurlock. They were published by the learned Nichols — from whose later edition of them, in 1809, our specimens are quoted. Here we have him in his courtship — which was not a very long one : — " To Mrs. Scurlock. "Madam,- " ^«,-. 30, 1707. " I BEG pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write from a coffee- house, where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me, talking of money ; while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love ! Love which animates my heart, sweetens my humor, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are con- tinually affixed to my words and actions ; it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the admirer some similitude of the object admired. Thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, to that Heaven which made thee such ; and join with me to implore its influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech the Author of love to bless the rites he has ordained — and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation to His will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavor to please Him and each other. " I am forever your faithful servant, " Rich. Steele." Some few hours afterwards, apparently, Mistress Scurlock received the next one — obviously written later in the day ! — " Dear Lovely Mrs. Scurlock, — a ur ay igi \ 2^^.30,1707;. " I HAVE been in very good company, where your health, under the character of the woman I lo'^ed best, has been often dnmk ; so that I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than I die for yon. " Rich. Steele.'' "To Mrs. Scurlock. " Madam, — ^ i / / " It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me. " A gentleman asked me this morning, ' What news from Lisbon .' ' and I answered, ' She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know ' when I had last been at Hampton Court ? ' I replied, ' It will be on Tuesday come sc'nnight.' Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that day, that my mind may be in some composure. O Love ! ' A thousand torments dwell about thee, Yet who could live, to live without thee ? ' " Methinks I could write a volume to you ; but all the language on earth would fail m saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, " I am ever yours, " Rich. Steele." Two days after this, he is found expounding his circumstances and prospects to the young lady's mamma. He dates from '' Lord Sunderland's office, Whitehall ; " and states his clear income at 1,025/. per annum. " I promise myself,'' says he, " the pleasure of an industrious and virtuous life, in studying to do things agreeable to you.'' They were married, according to the most probable conjectures, about the 7th STEELE. 447 cial performance, possibly ; at least, it is written with that de- gree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement for the House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in September. There are traces of a tiff about the middle of the next month ; she being prudish and fidgety, as he was impassioned and reckless. Genera! progress, however, may be seen from the following notes. The " house in Bury Street, St. James's," was now taken. " To Mrs. Steele. ,,-,„_ " Oct. i6, 1707 " Dearest Being on Earth, — ' ' ' " Pardon me if you do not see me till eleven o'clock, having met a schoolfellow from India, by whom I am to be informed on things this night which expressly concern your obedient husband, " Rich. Steele." " To Mrs. Steele. " Eight o'clock, Fou7ttiiin Tavern, " My Dear, — Oct. 22, 1707. " I BEG of you not to be uneasy ; for I have done a great deal of business to-day very successfully, and wait an hour or two about my Gazette.'' ,, ,. ,,. " Dec. 22, 1707. " My DEAR, DEAR WiFE, — ' ' ' "1 WRITE to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when 1 see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband.'' "Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, " Dear Prue, — y««. 3, 1707-8. -' I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and inclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment careless more. " Your faithful husband," &c II T-v iTr " Jail. 14, 1707-8. " Dear Wife, — -^ ti / / " Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley have desired me to sit an hour with them at the ' George,' in Pall Mall, for which I desire your patience till twelve o'clock, and that you will go to bed,'' &c. « Dear Prue,- " ^''"-^'^ ^""' ^"^- 3- '7o8. " If the man who has my shoemaker's bill calls, let him be answered that I shall call on him as I come home. I stay here in order to get Jonson to discount a bill for me, and shall dine with him for that end. He is expected at home every minute. Your most humble, obedient servant,'' &c. ,, _- „, " Tennis-court Coffee-house. May <.. 1708. "Dear Wife, — -^ 1 j 01 1 " I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you ; in the meantime shall lie this night at a baker's, one Leg, over against the ' Devil Tavern,' at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront the fools who wish me uneasy, and shall have the satisfaction to see thee cheerful and at ease. " If the printer's boy be at home, send him hither ; and let Mrs. Todd send by the boy my nightgown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall hear from me early in the mornmg," &c. Dozens of similar letters follow, with occasional guineas, little parcels of tea, or walnuts, &c. In 1709 the Tatler made its appearance. The following curious note dates April 7th, 1710 : — " I inclose to you [' Dear Prue '] a receipt for the saucepan and spoon, and a note of 23/. of Lewis's, which will make up the 50/. I promised for your ensuing occasion. " I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to the pleasure I hav» 448 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. verse or for the stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick Steele's to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accu- rately, and which could have been written but for her and her alone. They contain details of the business, pleasures, quar- rels, reconciliations of the pair ; they have all the genuineness of conversation; they are as artless as a child's prattle, and as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the printing office, where he is waiting for the proof-sheets of his Gazette., or his Tatlcr ; some are written from the tavern, whence he promises to come to his wife " within a pint of wine," and where he has given a rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender: some are composed in a high state of vinous excitement, when his head is flustered with Burgundy, and his heart abounds with amorous warmth for his darling Prue : some are under the in- fluence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning : some, alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have impounded him, and where he is waiting for bail. You trace many years of the poor fellow's career in these letters. In September, 1707, from which day she began to save the letters, he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You have passion- ate protestations to the lady ; his respectful proposals to her mamma ; his private prayer to Heaven when the union so ardently desired was completed ; his fond professions of con- trition and promises of amendment, when, immediately after his marriage, there began to be just cause for the one and need for the other. Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their mar- riage, " the third door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street," and the next year he presented his wife with a country house at Hampton. It appears she had a chariot and pair, and soinetimes four horses : he himself enjoyed a little horse for his own riding. He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty pounds a year, and always went abroad in a laced coat and a large black buckled periwig, that must have cost somebody fifty guineas. He was rather a well-to-do gentleman. Captain Steele, with the proceeds of his estates in Barbadoes (left to him by his first wife), his income as a writer of the Gazette^ and in your person and society. I only bes; of you to add to your other charms a fearful- ness to see a man that loves you in pain and uneasiness, to make nie as happy as it is possible to be in this life. Rising a little in a morning, and being disposed to a cheer- fulness * * * * would not be amiss. In another, he is found excusing his coming home, being " invited to supper to Mr. Boyle's.'' " Dear Prue," he says on this occasion, " do not send after me, for I shall be ridiculous." STEELE. 449 his office of gentleman waiter to his Royal Highness Prince George. His second wife brought him a fortune too. But it is melancholy to relate, that with these houses and chariots and horses and income, the Captain was constantly in want of money, for which his beloved bride was asking as constantly.. In the course of a few pages we begin to find the shoemaker calling for money, and some directions from the Captain, who has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife, "the beau- tifullest object in the world," as he calls her, and evidently in. reply to applications of her own, which have gone the way of all waste paper, and lighted Dick's pipes, which were smoked a hundred and forty years ago — he sends his wife now a guinea, then a half-guinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound of tea ; and again no money and no tea at all, but a promise that his darling Prue shall have some in a day or two ; or a re- quest, perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and shaving-plate to the temporary lodging where the nomadic Captain is lying, hidden from the bailiffs. Oh ! that a Chris- tian hero and late Captain in Lucas's should be afraid of a dirty sheriff's officer ! That the pink and pride of chivalry should turn pale before a writ ! It stands to record in poor Dick's own handwriting — the queer collection is preserved at the British Museum to this present day — that the rent of the nup- tial house in Jermyn Street, sacred to unutterable tenderness and Prue, and three doors from Bury Street, was not paid until after the landlord had put in an execution on Captain Steele's furniture. Addison sold the house and furniture at Hampton, and, after deducting the sum in which his incorrigible friend was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the proceeds of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn't in the least angry at Addi- son's summary proceeding, and I dare say was very glad of any sale or execution, the result of which was to give him a little ready money. Having a small house in Jermyn Street for which he couldn't pay, and a country house at Hampton on which he had borrowed money, nothing must content Captain Dick but the taking, in 17 12, a much finer, larger, and grander house in Bloomsbury Square ; where his unhappy landlord got no better satisfaction than his friend in St. James's, and where it is recorded that Dick, giving a grand entertainment, had a half-dozen queer-looking fellows in livery to wait upon his noble guests, and confessed that his servants were bailiffs to a man. " I fared like a distressed prince," the kindly prodigal writes, generously complimenting Addison for his assistance in the Tatlery — " I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a power- 29 4 5 O ENGLISH HUM ORIS TS. ful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary ; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without depen- dence on him." Poor, needy Prince of Bloomsbury ! think of him in his palace, with his allies from Chancery Lane ominously guarding him. All sorts of stories are told indicative of his restlessness and his good-humor. One narrated by Dr. Hoadly is exceedingly characteristic ; it shows the life of the time : and our poor friend very weak, but very kind both in and out of his cups. " My father," says Dr. John Hoadly, the Bishop's son, " when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of the Whig meetings, held at the ' Trumpet,' in Shire Lane, when Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the im- mortal memory of King William, it being the 4th November, as to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, was in the house ; and John, pretty mellow, took it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to the itmnortal tuemory, and to return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, whispered him — Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh. Sir Richard, in the evening, being too much in the same condition, was put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor's, late as it was. However, the chairman carried him home, and got him up stairs, when his great complaisance would wait on them down stairs, which he did, and then was got quietly to bed." * There is another amusing story which, I believe, that re- nowned collector, Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have incorporated into their work. Sir Richard Steele, at a time when he was much occupied with theatrical affairs, built him- self a pretty private theatre, and, before it was opened to his friends and guests, was anxious to try whether the hall was well adapted for 'hearing. Accordingly he placed himself in the most remote part of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who had built the house to speak up from the stage. The man at first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking, and did not know what to say to his honor ; but the good-natured knight * Of this famous Bishop, Steele wrote, — " Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, All faults he pardons, though he none commits." STEELE. 451 called out to him to say whatever was uppermost ; and, after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible : " Sir Richard Steele ! " he said, " for three months past me and my men has been a working in this theatre, and we've never seen the color of your honor's money : we will be very much obliged if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we won't drive in another nail." Sir Richard said that his friend's elocution was perfect, but that he didn't like his subject much. The great charm of Steele's writing is its naturalness. He wrote so quickly and carelessly, that he was forced to make the reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance with the world. He had known men and taverns. He had lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentlemen ushers of the Court, with men and women of fashion ; with authors and wits, with the inmates of the sponging-houses, and with the frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He was liked in all company because he liked it ; and you like to see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a boxful of children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary ; on the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever wrote ; and full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to share his delight and good-humor. His laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been in- valuable ct a tragedy, and have cried as much as the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakspeare affectionately, and more than any man of his time ; and, accord- ing to his generous expansive nature, called upon all his company to like what he liked himself. He did not damn with faint praise : he was in the world and of it ; and his enjoyment of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift's savage indignation and Addison's lonely serenity.* Permit me to read you a pas- sage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar humor : * Here we have some of his later letters :— " To Lady Steele. " Dear Prue " Hampton Court, Alarch 16, 1716-17. " If you have written anything to me which I should have received last night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the next post. ***** Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a very great scholar : he can read his primer ; and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged ; and J 452 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling and the most solemn, the humorist takes upon himself to com- ment. All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of Swift, in vi'hich he hints at his philosophy and describes the end of mankind : — * " Amazed, confused, its fate unknown, The world stood trembling at Jove's throne ; While each pale sinner hung his head, Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said : 'Offending race of human kind. By nature, reason, learning, blind ; You who through frailty stepped aside And you who never err'd through pride; You who in different sects were shamm'd And come to see each other damn'd ; (So some folk told you, but they knew No more of Jove's designs than you ;) The world's mad business now is o'er, And I resent your freaks no more ; / to, such blockheads set my wit, 1 damn such fools — go, go, you're bit ! ' " hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans and I shall think for his service." " To Lady Steele. [Undated.] " You tell me you want. a little flattery from me. I assure you I know no one who deserves so much commendation as yourself, and to whom saying the best things would be so little like flattery. The thing speaks for itself, considering you as a very handsome woman that loves retirement— one who does, not want wit, and yet is ex-. tremely sincere ; and so I could go through all the vices which attend the good qual- ities of otlier people, of which you are exempt. But, indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant fault, which alniost frustrates the good in you to me ; and that is, that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my re- quest, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you are mine. * * * * " Your most affectionate,, obsequious husband, " Richard Steele. " A quarter of Molly's schooling is paid. The children are perfectly well." " To Lady Steele. My Dearest Prue, ''March 26, 1717. " I have received yours, wherein you give me the sensible affliction of tell- ing me enow ot the continual pain in your head. * * * * Wlien 1 lay in your place, and on your pillow, 1 assure you I fell into tears last night, to think that my charm- ing little insolent might be then awake and in pain ; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep. " For this tender passion towards you I must he contented that your Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher. * * * * '' At the time when the above later letters were written. Lady Steele was in Wales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was much occupied with a pro- ject for conveying fish alive, by which, as he coastantly assures Ins wife, he fi-mly be- lieved he should make his fortune. It did not succeed, however. Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried in West- minster Abbey. * Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic letter. STEELE. 453 Addison, speaking on the same theme, but with how different a voice, says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey {Spec- tator, No. 26) : — " For my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every in- ordinate desire goes out ; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion ; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow," (I have owned that I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that he indulged very inordinately in the " vanity of grieving.") "When," he goes on, "when I see kings lying by those who deposed them : when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, — I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I read the several dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday and some 600 years ago, I consider that Great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance to- gether." Our third humorist comes to speak upon the same subject. You will have observed in the previous extracts the character- istic humor of each writer — the subject and the contrast — the fact of Death, and the play of individual thought, by which each comments on it, and now hear the third writer — death, sorrow, and the grave being for the moment also his theme. " The first sense of sorrow I ever knew," Steele says in the Tatler, " was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age : but w-as rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed of a real understanding why no- body would play with us. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling papa ; for, I know not how, I had some idea that he was locked up there. My mother caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was be- fore in, she almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me in a flood of tears, ' Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more : for they were going to put him under ground, whence he would never come to us again.' She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in 454 FNGLISH HUMORISTS. her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which me- thought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I ^\•as sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since." Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and men ? " Fools, do you know anything of this mystery ? " says Swift, stamping on a grave, and carrying his scorn for mankind actually beyond it. " Miserable, purblind wretches, how dare you to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder bound- less heaven ? " Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment : and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same skeptic placidity. " Look what a little vain dust we are," he says, smiling over the tombstones ; and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks, in words of inspiration almost, of " the Great Day, when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance to- gether." The third, whose theme is Death, too, and who will speak his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads you ujd to his father's coffin, and shews you his beautiful mother weeping, and himself an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand and con- fidingly asks your sympathy. " See how good and innocent and beautiful women are," he says ; "how tender little children ! Let us love these and one another, brother — God knows we have need of love and pardon." So it is each man looks with his own eyes, speaks with his own voice, and prays his own prayer. When Steele asks your sympathy for the actors in that charming scene of Love and Grief and Death, who can refuse it .'* One yields to it as to the frank advance of a child, or to the appeal of a woman. A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you call unmanned — the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage ; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak. If Steele is not our friend he is nothing. He is by no means the most brilliant of wits nor the deepest of thinkers : but he is our friend : we love him, as children love their love with an A, because he is amiable. Who likes a man best because he is the cleverest or the wisest of mankind ; or a woman because she is the most virtuous, or talks French, or plays the piano better than the rest of her sex ? I STEELE. 45 S own to liking Dick Steele the man, and Dick Steele the author, much better than much better men and much better authors. The misfortune regarding Steele is, that most part of the company here present must take his amiability upon hearsay, and certainly can't make his intimate acquaintance. Not that Steele was worse than his time ; on the contrary, a far better, truer, and higher-hearted man than most who lived in it. But things were done in that society, and names were named, which would make you shudder now. What would be the sensation of a polite youth of the present day, if at a ball he saw the young object of his affections taking a box out of her pocket and a pinch of snuff : or if at dinner, by the charmer's side, she deliberately put her knife into her mouth .'' If she cut her mother's throat with it, mamma would scarcely be more shocked I allude to these peculiarities of by-gone times as an excuse for my favorite, Steele, who was not worse, and often much more delicate than his neighbors. There exists a curious document descriptive of the manners of the last age, which describes most minutely the amusements and occupations of persons of fashion in London at the time of which we are speaking ; the time of Swift, and Addison, and Steele. When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, the immortal personages of Swift's polite conversation, came to breakfast with my Lady Smart, at eleven o'clock in the morn- ing, my Lord Smart was absent at the leve'e. His lordship was at home to dinner at three o'clock to receive his guests ; and we may sit down to this meal, like the Barmecide's, and see the fops of the last century before us. Seven of them sat down at dinner, and were joined by a country baronet who told them they kept court hours. These persons of fashion began their dinner with a sirloin of beef, fish, a shoulder of veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart carved the sirloin, my Lady Answer- all helped the fish, and the gallant Colonel cut the shoulder of veal. All made a considerable inroad on the sirloin and the shoulder of veal with the exception of Sir John, who had no appetite, having already partaken of a beefsteak and two mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March beer as soon as he got out of bed. They drank claret, which the master of the house said should always be drunk after fish ; and my Lord Smart particu- larly recommended some excellent cider to my Lord Sparkish, which occasioned some brilliant remarks from that nobleman. When the host called for wine, he nodded to one or other of his guests, and said, " Tom Neverout, my service to you." 456 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. After the first course came almond-pudding, fritters, which the Colonel took with his hands out of the dish, in order to help the brilliant Miss Notable ; chickens, black puddings, and soup ; and Lady Smart, the elegant mistress of the mansion, finding a skewer in a dish, placed it in her plate with directions that it should be carried down to the cook and dressed for the cook's own dinner. Wine and small beer were drunk during this second course ; and when the Colonel called for beer, he called the butler Friend, and asked whether the beer was good. Various jocular remarks passed from the gentlefolks to the servants ; at breakfast several persons had a word and a joke for Mrs. Betty, my lady's maid, who warmed the cream and had charge of the canister (the tea cost thirty shillings a pound in those days). When my Lady Sparkish sent her footman out to my Lady Match to come at six o'clock and play at quadrille, her ladyship warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell by the way not to stay to get up again. And when the gentle- men asked the hall-porter if his lady was at home, that func- tionary replied, with manly waggishness, " She was at home just now, but she's not gone out yet," After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters and soup, came the third course, of which the chief dish was a hot vension pasty, which was put before Lord Smart, and carved by that nobleman. Besides the pasty, there was a hare, a rabbit, some pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer and wine were freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen always pledging somebody with every glass which they drank : and by this time the conversation between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had grown so brisk and lively, that the Derbyshire baronet began to think the young gentlewoman was Tom's sweetheart ; on which Miss remarked, that she loved Tom " like pie." After the goose, some of the gentlemen took a dram of brandy, " which was ver}^ good for the wholesomes," Sir John said ; and now having had a tolerably substantial dinner, honest Lord Smart bade the butler bring up the great tankard full of October to Sir John. The great tankard was passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but when pressed by the noble host upon the gallant Tom Neverout, he said, " No, faith, my lord ; I like your wine, and won't put a churl upon a gentleman. Your honor's claret is good enough for me." And so, the dinner over, the host said, " Hang saving, bring us up a ha'porth of cheese." The cloth was now taken away, and a bottle of burgundy was set down, of which the ladies were invited to partake before they went to their tea. When they withdrew, the gentlemen STEELE. 457 promised to join them in an hour : fresh bottles were brought ; the " dead men," meaning the empty bottles, removed ; and " D'you hear, John ? bring clean glasses," my Lord Smart said. On which the gallant Colonel Alwit said, " I'll keep my glass ; for wine is the best liquor to wash glasses in." After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then they all sat and played quadrille until three o'clock in the morning, when the chairs and the flambeaux came, and this noble company went to bed. Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw no inference from this queer picture — let all moralists here present deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that society in which a lady of fashion joked with a footman, and carved a sirloin, and provided besides a great shoulder of veal, a goose, hare, rabbit, chickens, partridges, black puddings, and a ham for a dinner for eight Christians. What — what could have been the condition of that polite world in which people openly ate goose after almond-pudding, and took their soup in the middle of dinner.? Fancy a Colonel in the Guards putting his hand into a dish of beignets d'abricot, and helping his neigh- bor, a young lady du monde ! Fancy a noble lord calling out to the servants, before the ladies at his table, " Hang expense, bring us a ha'porth of cheese ! " Such were the ladies of Saint James's — such were the frequenters of " White's Chocolate- House," when Swift used to visit it, and Steele described it as the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, a hundred and forty years ago ! Dennis, who ran amuck at the literary society of this day, falls foul of poor Steele, and thus depicts him : — " Sir John Edgar, of the county in Ireland, is of a middle stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of some- body over a farmer's chimney — a short chin, a short nose, a short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance. Yet with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty that he took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more mortified at being told that he was ugly, than he was by any reflection made upon his honor or understanding. " He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honor- able family ; certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors flourished in Tipperary long before the English ever set foot in Ireland. He has testimony of this more authentic than the Herald's Office, or any human testimony. For God has marked him more abundantly than he did Cain, and stamped his native country on his face, his understanding, his writings, 45 8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. his actions, his passions, and, above all, his vanity. The Hibernian brogue is still upon all these, though long habit and length of cla)^s have worn it off his tongue." * Although this portrait is the work of a man who was neither the friend of Steele nor of any other man alive, yet there is a dreadful resemblance to the original in the savage and exag- gerated traits of the caricature, and everybody who knows him must recognize Dick Steele. Dick set about almost all the undertakings of his life with inadequate means, and, as he took and furnished a house with the most generous intentions towards his friends, the most tender gallantry towards his wife, and with his only drawback, that he had not wherewithal to pay the rent when quarter-day came, — so, in his life he proposed to himself the most magnificent schemes of virtue, forbearance, public and private good, and the advancement of his own and the national religion ; but when he had to pay for these articles — so difficult to purchase and so costly to maintain — poor Dick's money was not forthcoming : and when Virtue called with her little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he could not see her that morning, having a headache from being tipsy overnight ; or when stern Duty rapped at the door with his ac- count, Dick was absent and not ready to pay. He was shirk- * Steele replied to Dennis in an " Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, called the Character of Sir John Edgar." What Steele had to say against the cross-grained old Critic discovers a great deal of humor : — " Thou never didst let the sun into thy garret, for fear he should bring a bailiff along with him. » * * * " Your years are about sixty-five, an ugly, vinegar face, that if you had any com- mand you would be obeyed out of fear, from your ill-nature pictured there ; not from any other motive. Your heiglit is about some five feet five inches. You see I can give your e.xact measure as well as if I had taken your dimension with a good cudgel, which I promise you to do as soon as ever I have the good fortune to meet you. * * * " Your doughty paunch stands before you like a firkin of butter, and your duck legs seem to be cast for carrying burdens. " Thy works are libels upon others, and satires upon thyself ; and while they bark at men of sense, call him knave and fool that wrote them. Thou hast a great anti- pathy to thy own species ; and hates the sight of a fool but in thy glass.'' Steele had been kind to Dennis, and once got arrested on account of a pecuniary service which he did him. When John heard of the fact — " S'death ! '' cries John ; " why did not he keep out of the way as I did ? '' The " Answer " concludes by mentioning that Cibber had offered Ten Pounds for the discovery of the authorship of Dennis's pamphlet ; on which, says Steele, — " lam» only sorry he has offered so much, because "iXM twentieth part would have over-valued his whole carcase. But I know the fellow that he keeps to give answers to his cred- itors will betray him ; for he gave me his word to bring officers on top of the house that should make a hole through the ceiling of his garret, and so bring him to the pun- ishment he deserves. Some people think this expedient out of the way, and that he would make his escape upon hearing the least noise. I say so too ; but it takes him up lialf an hour every night to fortify himself with his old hair trunk, two or three joint-stools, and some other lumber, which lie ties together with cords so fast that it takes him up the same time in the morning to release himself." STEELE, 4. C Q mg at the tavern ; or had some particular business (of some- body's else) at the ordinary; or he was in hiding, or worse than in hiding, in the lock-up house. What a situation for a man ! — for a philanthropist — for a lover of right and truth — for a magnificent designer and schemer ! Not to dare to look in the face the Religion which he adored and which he had offended : to have to shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid the friend whom he loved and who had trusted him ; to have the house which he had intended for his wife, whom he loved pas- sionately, and for her ladyship's company which he wished to entertain splendidly, in the possession of a bailiff's man ; with a crowd of little creditors, — grocers, butchers, and small-coal men — lingering round the door with their bills and jeering at him. Alas ! for poor Dick Steele ! For nobody else, of course. There is no man or woman in our time who makes fine projects and gives them up from idleness or want of means. When Duty calls upon us^ we no doubt are always at home and ready to pay that grim tax-gatherer. When we are stricken with re- morse and promise reform, we keep our promise, and are never angry, or idle, or extravagant any more. There are no cham- bers in our hearts, destined for family friends and affections, and now occupied by some Sin's emissary and bailiff in p6sses- sion. There are no little sins, shabby peccadilloes, importu- nate remembrances, or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door ! Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth century ; and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again, and got into jail and out again, and sinned and repented, and loved and suffered, and lived and died, scores of years ago. Peace be with him ! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle : let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with human kind' ness. 46o ENGLISH HUMORISTS. PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. Matthew Prior was one of those famous and lucky wits of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, whose name it behoves us not to pass over. Mat was a world-philosopher of no small genius, good nature, and acumen.* He loved, he drank, he sang. He describes himself, in one of his lyrics, " in a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night ; on his left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," going out of town from the Hague to pass that evening, and the ensuing Sunday, boozing at a Spiel- haus with his companions, perhaps bobbing for perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain and with a grace not unworthy of his Epicurean master, the charms of his idleness, his retreat, and his Batavian Chloe. A vintner's son in White- hall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the Rod, Prior at- tracted some notice by writing verses at St. John's College, * Gay calls him — " Dear Prior * * * * beloved by every muse.'' — Mr. Pope's We/co»ic from Greece. Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently mentioned in the " Journal to Stella.'' " Mr. Prior," says Swift, " walks to make himself fat, and I to keep myself down. * * * * VVe often walk round the park together.'' In Swift's works there is a curious tract called " Remarks on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne " [Scott's edition, vol. xii.] The " Remarks " are not by the Dean ; but at the end of eacli is an addition in italics from his hand, and these are always characteristic. Thus, to the Duke of Marlborough, he :tdds, " Detestably covetous^' &c. Prior is thus noticed — " Matthew Prior, Esq., Commissioner of Trade. " On the Queen's accession to the throne, he was continued in his office ; is very well at court with the ministry, and is an entire creature of my Lord Jersey's, whom he supports by his advice ; is one of the best poets in England, but very facetious in conversation. A thin, hollow-looking man, turned of forty years old. This is neat the truth, ^^ " Yet counting as far as to fifty his years. His virtues and vices were as other men's are. High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears, In a life party-coloured — half pleasure, half care. " Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave. He strove to make interest and freedom agree ; In public employments industrious and grave, And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he! " Now in equipage stately, now humble on foot, Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust ; And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust." Prior's Poems. [For my own monument.'] PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 461 Cambridge, and, coming up to town, aided Montague * in an attack on the noble old English lion John Dryden ; in ridicule of whose work, " The Hind and the Panther," he brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, " The Town and Country Mouse." Aren't you all acquainted with it ? Have you not all got it by heart ? What ! have you never heard of it ? see what fame is made of ! The wonderful part of the satire was, that, as a natural consequence of " The Town and Country Mouse," Matthew Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at the Hague ! I believe it is dancing, rather than singing, which distinguishes the young English diplomatists of the present day ; and have seen them in various parts perform that part of their duty very finely. In Prior's time it appears a different accomplishment led to preferment. Could you write a copy of Alcaics ? that was the question. Could you turn out a neat epigram or two ? Could you compose " The Town and Country Mouse ? " It is manifest that, by the possession of this faculty, the most difficult treaties, the laws of foreign nations, and the interests of our own, are easily understood. Prior rose in the diplomatic service, and said good things that proved his sense and his spirit. When the apartments at Versailles were shown to him, with the victories of Louis XIV. painted on the walls, and Prior was asked whether the palace of the King of England had any such decorations, " The monuments of my master's actions," Mat said, of William whom he cordially revered, " are to be seen everywhere except in his own house." Bravo, Mat ! Prior rose to be full ambassador at Paris,! where he somehow was cheated out of his ambassadorial plate ; and in an heroic poem, addressed by him to her late lamented Majesty, Queen Anne, Mat makes some magnificent allusions to these dishes and spoons, of which Fate had deprived him. All that he * " They joined to produce a parody, entitled the 'Town and Country Mouse,' part of which Mr. Bayes is supposed to gratify his old friends, Smart and Johnson, by repeating to them. The piece is therefore founded upon the twice-told jest of the 'Rehearsal.' * * * There is nothing new or original in the idea. * * * In this piece, Prior, though the younger man, seems to have had by far the largest share." — Scott's Dryden, vol. i. p. 330. t " He was to have been in the same commission with the Duke of Shrewsbury, but that that nobleman,"' says Johnson, " refused to be associated with one so meanly born. Prior therefore continued to act without a title till the Duke's return next year to England, and then he assumed the style and dignity of ambassador." He had been thinking of slights of this sort when he wrote his Epitaph : — " Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior, The son of Adam and of Eve ; Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher ? '' But, in this case, the old prejudice got the better of the old joke. 4^2 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. wants, he says, is her Majesty's picture ; without that he can't be happy. " Thee, gracious Anne, thee present I adore : Thee, Queen of Peace, if Time and Fate have power Higher to raise the glories of thy reign, In words sublimer and a nobler strain May future bards the mighty theme rehearse. Here, Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, The votive tablet I suspend.'' With that word the poem stops abruptly. The votive tablet is suspended for ever, like Mahomet's coffin. News came that the Queen was dead. Stator Jove, and Phoebus, king of verse, were left there, hovering to this day, over the votive tablet. The picture was never got, any more than the spoons and dishes : the inspiration ceased, the verses were not wanted — the ambassador wasn't wanted. Poor Matt was recalled from his embassy, suffered disgrace along with his parents, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and disappeared in Essex. When deprived of all his pensions and emoluments, the hearty and generous Oxford pensioned him. They played for gallant stakes — the bold men of those days — and lived and gave splendidly. Johnson quotes from Spence a legend, that Prior, after spending an evening with Harley, St. John, Pope, and Swift, would go off and smoke a pipe with a couple of friends of his, a soldier and his wife, in Long Acre. Those who have not read his late Excellency's poems should be warned that they smack not a little of the conversation of his Long Acre friends. Johnson speaks lightly of his lyrics ; but with due deference to the great Samuel, Prior's seem to be amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous of English lyrical poems.* Horace is always in his mind : and his song, and his * His epigrams have the genuine sparkle : " The Remedy worse than the Disease. " I sent for Radcliff ; was so ill, That other doctors gave me over : He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill, And I was likely to recover. " But when the wit began to wheeze,' And wine had warmed the politician, Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician." " Yes, every poet is a fool ; By demonstration Ned can show it ; Happy could Ned's inverted rule Prove every fool to be a poet.'* PRIOR, GA y, AND POPE. ifi2, philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves and his Epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master. In reading his works, one is struck with their modern air, as well as by their happy similarity to the songs of the charming owner of the Sabine farm. In his verses addressed to Halifax, he says, writing of that endless theme to poets, the vanity of human wishes — " So whilst in fevered dreams we sink, And waking, taste what we desire, The real draught but feeds the fire, The dream is better than the drink. " Our hopes like towering falcons aim At objects in an airy height : To stand aloof and view the flight, Is all the pleasure of the game.'' Would not you fancy that a poet of our own days was sing- ing.'' and in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for his inconstancy, where he says — " The God of us versemen, you know, child, the Sun, How, after his journeys, he sets up his rest. If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run. At night hfc declines on his Thetis's breast. " So, when I am wearied with wandering all day, To thee, my delight, in the evening I come : No matter what beauties I saw in my way ; They were but my visits, but thou art my home 1 " Then finish, dear Chloe, this pastoral war. And let us like Horace and Lydia agree : For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, As he was a poet sublimer than me.'' If Prior read Horace, did not Thomas Moore study Prior ? Love and pleasure finds singers in all days. Roses are always blowing and fading — to-day as in that pretty time when Prior sang of them, and of Chloe lamenting their decay — " She sighed, she smiled, and to the flowers Pointing, the lovely moralist said : " On his death-bed poor Lubin lies, His spouse is in despair ; With frequent sobs and mutual cries. They both express their care. " ' A different cause,' says Parson Sly, ' The same effect may give ; Poor Lubin fears that he shall die, His wife that he may live.' " 464 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. See, friend, in some few fleeting hours, See yonder what a change is made ! " Ah me ! the blooming pride of May And that of Beauty are but one : At morn both flourish, bright and gay, Both fade at evening, pale and gone. " At da^vn poor Stella danced and sung. The amorous youth around her bowed : At night her fatal knell was rung ; I saw, and ki^ed her in her shroud. " Such as she is who died to-day, Such I, alas, may be to-morrow . Go, Damon, bid thy Muse display The justice of thy Chloe's sorrow.'' Damon's knell was rung in 1721. May his turf lie lightly on him. Dens sit propitius kuic potatori, as Walter de Mapes sang.* Perhaps Samuel Johnson, who spoke slightly of Prior's * " Prior to Sir Thomas Hanmer. "Dear Sir,- 'M^jj. 4, 1709- " Friendship may live, I grant you, without being fed and cherished by cor- respondence ; but with that additional benefit I am of opinion it will look more cheer- ful and thrive better : for in this case, as in love, though a man is sure of his own constancy, yet his happiness depends a good deal upon the sentiments of another, and while you and Chloe are alive, 'tis not enougli that I love you both, except 1 am sure you both love me again ; and as one of her scrawls fortifies my mind more against affliction than all Epictetus, with Simplicius's comments into the bargain, so your single letter gave me more real pleasure than all the works of Plato. ***** I must return my answer to your very kind question concerning my health. The Bath waters have done a good deal towards the recovery of it, and the great specific, Cape caballicm, will, I think, confirm it. Upon this head 1 must tell you tii.it my mare Betty grows blind, and may one day, by breaking my neck, perfect my cure : if at Rixam fair any pretty nagg that is between thirteen and fourteen hands presented himself, and you would be pleased to purchase him for me, one of your servants might ride him to Euston, and I might receive him there. This, sir, is just as such a thing happens. If you hear, too, of a Welch widow, with a good jointure, that has her goings and is not very skittish, pray, be pleased to cast your eye on her for me too. You see, sir, the great trust I repose in your skill and honor, when I dare put two such commissions in your hand. * * » * " — The Hanmer CorrcsfondcTtce, ■p. 120. "From Mr. Prior. « My dear Lord and Friend,- "^""-''^ '^^-'2'/' ^f^y, ^7H. _ " Matthew never had so great occasion to write a word to Henry as now: it is noised here that I am soon to return. The question that I wish I could answer to the many that ask, and to our friend Colbert de Torcy (to whom 1 made your compli- ments in the manner you commanded) is, what is done for me ; and to what I am re- called ? It may look like a bagatelle, what is to become of a philosopher like me ? but it is not such : what is to become of a person who had the honor to be chosen, and sent hither as intrusted, in the midst of a war, with what the Queen designed should make the peace ; returning with the Lord Bolingbroke, one of the greatest men in England, and one of the finest heads in Europe (as they say here, if true or not, n'importc) ; having been left by him in the greatest character (that of her Majesty's Plenipotentiary), exercising that power conjointly with the Duke of Shrewsbury, and solely after his departure ; having here received more distinguished honor than any Minister, except an Ambassador, ever did, and some which were never given to any PRIOR, GA V, AiVD POPE. 465 verses, enjoyed them more than he was willing to own. The old moralist had studied them as well as Thomas Moore, and de- fended them, and showed that he remembered them very well too, on an occasion when their morality was called in question by that noted puritan, James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck.* In the great society of the wits, John Gay deserved to be a but who had that character ; having had all the success that could be expected ; having (God be thanked !) spared no pains, at a time when at home the peace is voted safe and lionorable — at a time when the Earl of Oxford is Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke First Secretary of State? This unfortunate person, I say, neglected, forgot, unnamed to anything that may speak the Queen satisfied with his services, or his friends concerned as to his fortune, '• Mr. de Torcy put me quite out of countenance, the other day, by a pity that wounded me deeper than ever did the cruelty of the late Lord Godolphin. He said he would write to Robin and H.irry about me. God forbid, my lord, that I should need any foreign intercession, or owe the least to any Frenchman living, besides the decency of behavior and the returns of common civility : some say I am to go to Baden, others that I am to be added to the Commissioners for settling the commerce. In all cases I am ready, but in the meantime, die aUqiud de irihus cafeHis. Neither of these two are, I presume, honors or rewards, neither of them (let me say to my dear Lord Bolingbroke, and let him not be angry with me,) are what drift may aspire to, and wliat Mr. Whitworth, who was his fellow-clerk, has or may possess. I am far from desiring to lessen the great mer'.t of the gentleman I named, for I heartily esteem and love him ; but in this trade of ours, my lord, in which you are the general, as in that of the soldiery, there is a certain right acquired by time and long service. You would do anything for your Queen's service, but you would not be contented to de- scend, and be degraded to a charge, no way proportioned to that of Secretary of State, any more than Mr. Ross, though he would charge a party with a halberd in his hand, would be content all his life after to be Sergeant. Was my Lord Dartmouth, from Secretai-y, returned again to be Commissioner of Trade, or from Secretary of War, would Fr.'.nk Gwyn think himself kindly used to be returned again to be Commis- sioner ? In short, my lord, you have put me above myself, and if I am to return to myself, I shall return to something very discontented and uneasy. I am sure, my lord, you will make the best use you can of this hint for my good. If I am to have anything, it will certainly be for Her Majesty's service, and tl^ credit of my friends in the Ministry, that it be done before I am recalled from home, lest the world may think either that 1 have merited to be disgraced, or that ye dare not stand by me. If nothing is to be Aona,Jiat voluntas Del. I have writ to Lord Treasurer upon this subject, and having implored your kind intercession, I promise you it is the last re- monstrance of this kind that I will ever make. Adieu, my lord; all honor,. health and pleasure to you. '• Yours ever, Matt.'' " P.S. — Lady Jersey is just gone from me. We drank your healths together in usquebaugh after cur tea : we are the greatest friends alive. Once more adieu. There is no such thing as the ' Book of Travels ' you mentioned ; if there be, let friend Tilson send us more particular account of them, for neither I nor Jacob Tonson can find them. Pray send Barton back to me, I hope with some comfortable tidings.'' — Bolingbroke' s Letters. * " I asked whether Prior's poems were to be printed entire ; Johnson said they were. I mentioned Lord Hales' censure of Prior in his preface to a collection of sacred poems, by various hands, published by him at Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions ' these impure tales, which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious author.' Johnson: ' Sir Lord Hales has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hales thinks there is, he must be more combustible thr.n other people. ' I instanced the tale of ' Paulo Purganti and his wife.' Johnson: ' Sir, there is nothing there but that his wife wanted to be kissed, when poor Paulo was out of pocket. No, sir, Prior is a lady's book. No lady is ashamed to have it standing in her library." — Boswell's Life of Jolmson. 30 466 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. favorite, and to have good a place.* In his set all were fond of him. His success offended nobody. He missed a fortune once or twice. He was talked of for court favor, and hoped to win it ; but the court favor jilted him. Craggs gave him some South Sea Stock ; and at one time Gay had very nearly made his fortune. But Fortune shook her swift wings and jilted him too ; and so his friends, instead of being angry with him, and jeal- ous of him, were kind and fond of honest Gay. In the portraits of the literary worthies of the early part of the last century. Gay's face is the pleasantest perhaps of all. It appears adorned with neither periwig nor nightcap (the full dress and negligee of learning, without which the painters of those days scarcely ever portrayed wits), and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an honest boyish glee — an artless sweet humor. He was so kind, so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally wobegone at others, such a natural good creature that the Giants loved him. The great Swift was gentle and sportive with him,t as the enormous Brobdingnag maids of honor were with little Gulliver. He could frisk and fondle round Pope,1: and sport, and bark, and caper, without offending the most * Gay was of an old Devonshire family, but his pecuniary prospects not being great, was placed in his youth in the house of a silk-merccr in London. He was born in i6S8 — Pope's year, and in 1712 the Duchess of Monmouth made him her secretary. Next year he published his " Rural Sports," which he dedicated to Pope, and so made an acquaintance, which became a memorable friendship. " Gay," says Pope, '' was quite a natural man, — wholly without art or design, and spoke just what he thought and as he thought it. He dangled for twenty years about a court, and at last was offered to be made usher to the young princesses. Secretary Craggs made Gay a present of stock in the South Sea year ; and he was once worth 20,000/., but lost it al] again. He got about 400/. by the first ' Beggar's Opera,' and 1,100/. or 1,200/. by the second. He was negligent and a bad manager. Latterly, the Duke of Queensbury took his money into his keeping, and let him only have what was necessary out of it, and, as he lived with them, he could not have occasion for much. He died worth upwards of 3,000/.'' — Pope. Spencers Anecdotes. t " Mr. Gay is, in all regards, as honest and sincere a man as ever I knew.'' — Swift, To Lady Betty Gcrmainc, Jan. 1733. % " Of manners gentle, of affections mild ; In wit a man ; simplicity, a child ; With native humor temp' ring virtuous rage, Form'd to delight at once and lash the age ; Above temptation in a low estate. And uncorrupted e'en among the great : A safe companion, and an easy friend, .Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end. These are thy honors ; not that here thy bust Is mixed with heroes, or with kings thy dust ; But that the worthy and the good shall say, Striking their pensive bosoms, ' Here lies Gay.' '' Pope's Epitaph on Gay. " A hare who, in a civil way. Complied with everything, like Gay." Fables, " The Hare and many Frtendt. " PRIOR, GA y, AND POPE. 467 thin-skinned of poets and men ; and when he was jilted in that little court affair of which we have spoken, his warm-hearted patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry* (the " Kitty, * " I can give you no account of Gaj','' says Pope, curiously, " since he was raffled for, and won back by his Duchess."— M^frZ-j-, Roscoc^s Ed., vol. ix. p. 392. Here is the letter Pope wrote to him when the death of Queen Anne brought back Lord Clarendon from Hanover, and lost him the Secretaryship of that nobleman, of which he had had but a short tenure. Gay's court prospects were never happy from this time. — His dedication of the " Shepherd's Week " to Bolingbroke, Swift used to call the " original sin " which had hurt him with the house of Hanover : — "Dear Mr. Gay,- . . . " 5.//. 23, 1 714. " Welcome to your native soil ! welcome to your friends ! thrice welcome to me ! whether returned in glory, blest with court interest, the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable hopes ; or melancholy with dejection, contempla- tive of the changes of fortune, and doubtful for the future ; whether returned a triumphant Whig or a desponding Tory, equally all hail ! equally beloved and wel- come to me 1 If happy, I am to partake in your elevation ; if unhappy, you have still a warm corner in my heart, and a retreat at Binfield in the worst of times at your service. If you are a Tory, or thought so by any man, I know it can proceed from nothing but your gratitude to a few people who endeavored to serve you, and whose politics were never your concern. If you are a Whig, as I rather hope, and as I think your principles and mine (as brother poets) had ever a bias to the side of liberty, I know you will be an honest man and an inoffensive one. Upon the whole, I know you are incapable of being so mucli of either party as to be good for nothing. Therefore, once more, whatever you are or in whatever state you are, all hail ! " One or two of your old friends complained they had heard nothing from you since the Queen's death ; I told them no man living loved Mr. Gay better than I, yet I had not once written to him in all his voyage. This I thought a convincing proof how truly one may b(?a friend to another without telling him so every month. Liut they had reasons, too, themselves to allege in your excuse, as men who really value one another will never want such as make their friends and themselves easy. The late universal concern in public affairs threw us all into a hurry of spirits : even I, who am more a philosopher than to expect anything from any reign, was borne away with the current, and full of the expectation of the successor. During your journeys, I knew not whither to aim a letter after you ; that was a sort of shooting flying : add to this the demand Homer had upon me, to write fifty verses a day, besides learned notes, all which are at a conclusion for this year. Rejoice with me, O my friend I that my labor is over ; come and make merry with me in much feasting. We will feed among the lilies (by the lilies I mean the ladies). Are not the Rosalindas of Britain as charm- ing as the Blousalindas of the Hague ? or have the two great Pastoral poets of our nation renounced love at the same time ? for Philips, immortal Philips, hath deserted,* yea, and in a rustic manner kicked his Rosalind. Dr. Parnell and I have been insep- arable ever since you went. We are now at the Bath, where (if you are not, as I heartily hope, better engaged) your coming would be the greatest pleasure to us in the world. Talk not of expenses : Homer shall support his children. I beg a line from you, directed to the Post-house in Bath. Poor Parnell is in an ill state of health. " Pardon me if 1 add a word of advice in the poetical way. Write something on the King, or Prince, or Princess. On whatsoever foot you may be with the court, this can do no harm, I shall never know where to end, and am confounded in the many things I have to say to you, though they all amount but to this, that I am, entirely, as ever, " Your,'' &c. Gay took the advice " in the poetical way,'' and published " An Epistle to a Lady, occasioned by the arrival of her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales." But though this brought him access to court, and the attendance of the Prince and 468 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. beautiful and young," of Prior,) pleaded his cause with indig- nation, and quitted the court in a huff, carrying off with them into their retirement their Ivind gentle protege. With these kind lordly folks, a real Duke and Duchess, as delightful as those who harbored Don Quixote, and loved that dear old Sancho, Gay lived, and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended.* He became very melancholy and lazy, sadly plethoric, and only occasionally diverting in his latter days. But everybody loved him, and the remembrance of his pretty little tricks ; and the raging old Dean of St. Patrick's, chafing in his banishment, was afraid to open the letter which Pope wrote him, announcing the sad news of the death of Gay.f Swift's letters to him are beautiful ; and having no purpose but kindness in writing to him, no party aim to advocate, or slight or anger to wreak, every word the Dean says to his favorite is natural, trustv/orthy, and kindly. His admiration for Gay's parts and honesty, and his laughter at his weaknesses, were alike just and genuine. He paints his character in wonderful pleasant traits of jocular satire. " I writ lately to Mr. Pope," Swift says, writing to Gay : " I wish you had a little villakin in his neighborhood ; but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach and six horses would carry you to Japan." " If your ramble," says Swift, in another letter, "was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account of your health ; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage-coaches and Princess at his farce of the " What d'ye call it ? " it did not bring him a place. On the accession of George II., he was offered the situation of Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa (her Highness being then two years old) ; but " by this offer,'' says Johnson, "he thought himself insulted.'' * "Gay was a great eater. — As the French philosopher used to prove his existence by Cogito, ergo si<)?t, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is, Edit, ergo est." — CoN- ' GREVE, in a Letter to PJfe. Sfenee^s Anecdotes. t Swift endorsed the letter — " On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death ; received Dec. 15, but not read till the 20th, by an impulse foreboding some misfortune.'' " It was by Swift's interests that Gay was made known to Lord Bolingbroke, and obtained his patronage.'' — Scott's Swift, vol. i. p. 156. Pope wrote on the occasion of Gay's death, to Swift, thus : — "[Dec. 5, 1732.] i< * * * * One of the nearest and longest ties I have ever had is broken all on a sudden by the unexpected death of poor Mr. Gay. An inflammatory fever hurried him out of this life m three days. * * * * He asked of you a few hours before when in acute torment by the inflammation in his bowels and breast. * * * * His sisters, we suppose, will be his heirs, who are two widows. * * * * Good God ! how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage ? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part. God keep those we have left ! few are worth praying for, and one's self the least of all.'' PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 469 friends coaches — for you are as arrant a cockney as any hosier in Cheapsicle. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours, that you ought to have some great work in scheme, which may take up seven years to finish, besides two or three under- ones that may add another thousand pounds to your stock, and then I shall be in less pain about you. I know you can find dinners, but you love twelvepenny coaches too well, without considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings you but half a crown a day." And then Swift goes off from Gay to pay some grand compliments to her Grace the Duchess of Queensberry, in whose sunshine Mr. Gay was basking, and in whose radiance the Dean would have liked to warm himself too. But we have Gay here before us, in these letters — lazy, kindly, uncommonly idle ; rather slovenly, I'm afraid ; forever eating atid saying good things ; a little round French abbe of a man, sleek, soft-handed, and soft-hearted. Our object in these lectures is rather to describe the men than their works ; or to deal with the latter only in as far as they seem to illustrate the character of their writers. Mr. Gay's " Fables," which were written to benefit that amiable Prince, the Duke of Cumberland, the warrior of Dettingen and Cullo- den, I have not, I own, been able to peruse since a period of very early youth ; and it must be confessed that they did not effect much benefit upon the illustrious young Prince, whose manners they were intended to mollif}^ and whose natural fe- rocity our gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six pastorals called the " Shepherd's Week," and the burlesque poem of " Trivia," any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful at the present day, and must read from be- ginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what charm- ing little Dresden china figures are to sculpture : graceful, minikin, fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dance their loves to a minuet-tune played on a bird-organ, approach the charmer, or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tip-toes, and die of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles ; or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbor of pea-green crockery; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot. Gay's gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that of Phillips — his rival and Pope's — a serious and dreary idyllic cockney ; not that Gay's 47 o ENGLISH HUMORISTS. "Bumkinets and " Hobnelias " are a whit more natural than the would-be serious characters of the other posture-master; but the equality of this true humorist was to laugh and make laugh, though alwa3's with a secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics and capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music — as you may have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turn- ing over head and heels, or clattering and pirouetting in a pair of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift of nature ! It was this which made the great folks and court ladies free and friendly with John Gay — which made Pope and Arbuthnot love him — which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him — and drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies which obscured the lonely tyrant's brain, as he heard Gay's voice with its simple melody and artless ringing laughter. What used to be said about Rubini, qti'll avait des iarfus dans la voix, may be said of Gay,* and of one other humorist of whom we shall have to speak. In almost every ballad of his, however slight,t in the Beggar's Opera " and in its wearisome * " Gay, like Goldsmith, had a musical talent. ' He could play on the flute,' says Malone, ' and was, therefore, enabled to adapt so happily some of the airs in the " Beggar's Opera." ' " — Noles to Spence. " 'Twas when the seas were roaring With hollow blasts of wind, A damsel lay deploring All on a rock reclined. Wide o'er the foaming billows She cast a wistful look ; Her head was crown'd with willows That trembled o'er the brook. " ' Twelve months are gone and over, And nine long tedious days ; Why didst thou, venturous lover — Why didst thou trust the seas ? Cease, cease, thou cruel Ocean, And let my lover rest ; Ah ! what's thy troubled motion To that within my breast " ' The merchant, robb'd of pleasure, Sees tempests in despair ; But what's the loss of treasure To losing of my dear ? Should you some coast be laid on, Where gold and diamonds grow You'd find a richer maiden, But none that loves you so. PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 471 continuation (where the verses are to the full as pretty as in the first piece, however), there is a peculiar, hinted, pathetic, sweetness and melody.* It charms and melts you. It's inde- finable, but it exists ; and is the property of John Gay's and Oliver Goldsmith's best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, or freshness of a rose. Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delightful that it is always pleasant to hear : — " I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt's which he lent me. It overloolcs a common field, where, under the shade of a haycoclc, sat two lovers — as constant as ever were found in romance — beneath a spreading beech. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet ; of the other Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five and twenty ; Sarah a brown woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labor of tlie day " 'How can they say that Nature Has nothing made in vain ; Why, then, beneath the water > Should hideous rocks remain ? No eyes the rocks discover That lurk beneatli the deep, To wreck the wandering lover, And leave the maid to weep ? ' " All melancholy lying. Thus wailed she for her dear; Repay'd each blast with sighing, Each billow with a tear ; When o'er the white wave stooping, His floating corpse she spy'd ; Then like a lily drooping. She bow'd her head, and died." —A Ballad from the " What d'ye call it 7 " " What can be prettier than Gay's ballad, or, rather. Swift's, Arbuthnot's, Pope's and Gay's, in the ' What d'ye call it?' ' 'Twas when the seas were roaring?' I have been well informed that they all contributed." — Coxvper to Utiwin, 17S3. * " Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for some time, but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the ' Beggar's Opera.' He began on it, and when he first mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us ; and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of advice ; but it was wholly of his own writing. When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said, ' It would either take greatly, or be damned confoundedly.' We were all at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, ' It will do — it must do ! — I see it in the eyes of them ! ' This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon ; for the Duke [besides his own good taste] has a more particular knack than any one now living in discovering the taste of the public. He was quite right in this as usual ; the good nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamor of ap- plause.'' — Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. 473 E^^GLlSn HUMOR IS TS. in the same field with Sarah ; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighborhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage; It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents' consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Per- haps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding- clothes ; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field-flowers to her complexion, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus em- ployed (it was on the last of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that di'ove the laborers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, fright- ened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock; and John (who never separated from her), sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together, to secure her. Im- mediately there was heard so loud a crack, as if heaven had burst asunder. The laborers, all solicitous for each other's safety, called to one another : those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay : they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithfid pair — John, with one arm about his Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discoloring on their bodies — only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little signed, and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave. And the proof that this description is delightful and beauti- ful is, that the great Mr. Pope admired it so much that he thought proper to steal it and send it off to a certain lady and wit, with whom he pretended to be in love in those da3s — my Lord Duke of Kingston's daughter, and married to Mr. Wortley Montagu, then his Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople. We are now come to the greatest name on our list — the highest among the poets, the highest among the. English wits and humorists with whom we have to rank him. If the author of the " Dunciad " be not a humorist, if the poet of the " Rape of the Lock " be not a wit, who deserves to be called so ? Be- sides that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both of which we should respect him, men of letters should admire him as being the greatest literary artist that England has seen. He polished, he refined, he thought ; he took thoughts from other works to adorn and complete his own ; borrowing an idea or a cadence from another poet as he would a figure or a siinile from a flower, or a river, stream, or any object which struck him in his walk, or contemplation of Nature. He began to imitate at an early age ; * and taught himself to write by copying printed * " Waller, Spencer, and Dryden were Mr. Pope's great favorites, in the order they are named, in his first reading, till he was about twelve years old." — Pope. Spence' s Anecdotes. " Mr. Pope's father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in Hollands, whole- sale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make English verses when very young. He was pretty difficult in being pleased ; and used often to send him back to new turn them. ' These are not good rhimes ; ' for that was my husband's word for Terses." — Pope's Mother. Spence. " I wrote things, I'm ashamed to say how soon. Part of an Epic Poem when PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 473 booRs. Then he passed into the hands of the priests, and from his first clerical master,, who came to him when he was eight 3'ears old, he went to a school at Twyford, and another school at Hyde Park, at which places he unlearned all that he had got from his first instructor. At twelve years old, he went with his father into Windsor Forest, and there learned for a few months under a fourth priest. '• And this was all the teaching I ever had," he said, " and God knows it extended a very little way." When he had done with his priests he took to reading by himself, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. He learned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of " Alcander," he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statins, Homer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. " This I did," he says, " without any design, except to amuse myself ; and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I looked upon as the hap- piest in my life." Is not here a beautiful holiday picture ? The forest and the fairy story-book — the boy spelling Ariosto or Virgil under the trees, battling with the Cid for the love of Chimene, or dreaming of Armida's garden — peace and sunshine round about — the kindest love and tenderness waiting for him at his quiet home yonder — and Genius throbbing in his young heart, and whispering to him, " You shall be great ; you shall be famous ; you too shall love and sing ; you will sing her so nobly that some kind heart shall forget you are weak and ill- formed. Every poet had a love. Fate must give one to you too," — and day by day he walks the forest, very likely looking about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes and some of the neighborin,5 islands ; and the poem opened under water with a description of the Court of Neptune.'' — Pope. Ibid. " His perpetual application (after he set to study of himself) reduced him in four years' time to so bad a state of health, that, after trying physicians for a good wliile in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper ; and sat down calmly in a full ex- pectation of death in a short time. Under this thought, he wrote letters to take a last farewell of some of his more particular friends, and, among the rest, one to the Abbe Southcote. The Abbe was extremely concerned, both for his very ill state of health and the resolution he said he had taken. He thought there might yet be hope, and went immediately to Dr. Radcliffe, with whom he was well acquainted, told him Mr. Pope's case, got full directions from him, and carried them down to Pope in Windsor Forest. The chief thing the Doctor ordered him was to apply less, and to ride every day. The following his advice soon restored him to his health." — Pope, S^ence. 474 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. out for that charmer. " They were the happiest days of his" life," he says, when he was only dreaming of his fame : when he had gained that mistress she was no consoler. That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about the year 1705, when Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are extant, addressed to a certain Lady M , whom the youth courted, and to whom he expressed his ardor in language, to say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious and affected. He imitated love-compositions as he had been imitating love- poems just before — it was a sham mistress he courted, and a sham passion, expressed as became it. These unlucky letters found their way into print years afterwards, and were sold to the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of my hearers, as I hope they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope's correspond- ence, let them pass over that first part of it ; over, perhaps, almost all Pope's letters to women ; in which there is a tone of not pleasant gallantry, and amidst a profusion of compliments and politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the little pert, prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about his loves, and that little not edifying. He wrote flames and raptures and elaborate verse and prose for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ; but that passion probably came to a climax in an impertinence and was extinguished by a box on the ear, or some such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a fervor much more genuine than that of his love had been. It was a feeble, puny grimace of love, and paltering with pas- sion. After Mr. Pope had sent off one of his fine composi- tions to Lady Mary, he made a second draft from the rough copy, and favored some other friend with it. He was so charmed with the letter of Gay's that I have just quoted, that he had copied that and amended it, and sent it to Lady Mary as his own. A gentleman who writes letters h deux Jins, and having poured out his heart to the beloved, serves up the same dish rechauffe to a friend, is not very much in earnest about his loves, however much he maybe in his piques and vanities when his impertinence gets its due. But, save that unlucky part of the " Pope Correspondence," I do not know, in the range of our literature, volumes more delightful* You live in them in the finest company in the * "Mr. Pope to the Rev. Mr. Broom, Pulham, Norfolk. "Dear Sir,- ^«^. 29'/., 1730. " I INTENDED to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr. Fenton, before yours came, but stayed to have informed myself and you of the circum- stances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a gradual decay, though so early in life, and PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 475 world. A little stately, perhaps ; a little aprete and conscious that they are speaking to whole generations who are listening ; but in the tone of their voices — pitched, as no doubt they are, ■was declining for five or six months. It was not, as I apprehended, the gout in his stomach, but, I believe, rather a complication first of gross humors, as he was nat- urally corpulent, not discharging themselves, as he used no sort of exercise. No man better bore the approaches of hi= dissolution (as I am told), or with less ostenta- tion yielded up his being. The great modesty which you know was natural to him, and the great contempt he had for all sorts of vanity and parade, never appeared more than in his last moments : he had a conscious satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself honest, true, and unpretending to more than his own. So he died as he lived, with that secret, yet sufficient contentment. " As to any papers left beliind him, I dare say they can be but few ; for this reason, he never wrote out of vanity, or thought much of the applause of men. I know an instance when he did his utmost to conceal his own merit that way ; and if we join to this his natural love of ease, I fancy we must expect little of this sort : at least, I have heard of none, except some few further remarks on Waller (which his cautious integrity made him leave an order to be given to Mr. Tonson), and perhaps, though it is many years since I saw it, a translation of the first book of ' Oppian.' He had begun a tragedy of ' Dion,' but made small progress in it. " As to his other affairs, he died poor but honest, leaving no debts or legacies, ex- cept of a few pounds to Mr. Trumbull and my lady, in token of respect, gratefulness, and mutual esteem. " I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, deserving, un- pretending, Christian, and philosophical character in his epitaph. There truth may be spoken in a few words ; as for flourish, and oratory, and poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively writers, such as love writing for writing's sake, and would rather show their own fine parts than report the valuable ones of any other man. So the elegy I renounce. " I condole with you from my heart on the loss of so worthy a man, and a friend to us botli. * * * * " Adieu ; let us love his memory and profit by his example. Am very sincerely, dear sir, Your affectionate and real servant.'' "To THE Earl of Burlington. a ^ ,„., "My Lord, August, 1714. " If your mare could speak she would give you an account of what extraor- dinary company she had on the road, which, since she cannot do, I will. " It was the enterprising Mr. Lintot, the redoubtable rival of Mr. Tonson, who, mounted on a stone-horse, overtook me in Windsor Forest. He said he heard I de- signed for Oxford, the seat of the Muses, and would, as my bookseller, by all means accompany me thither. " I asked him where he got his horse ? He answered he got it of his publisher ; ' for that rogue, my printer,' said he, ' disappointed me. I hoped to put him in good- humor by a treat at the tavern of a brown fricassee of rabbits, which cost ten shillings, with two quarts of wine, besides my conversation. I thought myself cock-sure of his horse, which he readily promised me, but said that Mr. Tonson had just such another design of going to Cambridge, expecting there the copy of a new kind of Horace from Dr. ; and if Mr. Tonson went, he was pre-engaged to attend him, being to have the printing of the said copy. So, in short, I borrowed this stone-horse of my publisher, which he had of Mr. Oldmixon for a debt. He lent me, too, the pretty boy you see after me. He was a smutty dog yesterday, and cost me more than two liours to wash the ink off his face ; but the devil is a fair-conditional devil, and very for- ward in his catechism. If you have any more bags he shall carry them.' " I thought Mr. Lintot's civility not to be neglected, so gave the boy a small bag containing three shirts and an Elzevir Virgil, and, mounting in an instant, proceeded on the road, with my man before, my courteous stationer beside, and the aforesaid devil behind. " Mr. Lintot began in this manner : ' Now, damn them 1 What if they should put 476 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. beyond the mere conversation key — in the expression of their thoughts, their various views and natures, there is something generous, and cheering, and ennobling. You are in the society it into the newspaper how you and I went together to Oxford? What would I care? If I should go down into Sussex they would say 1 was gone to the Speaker ; but what of 'ihat ? If my son were but big enough to go on with the business, by G— d, I would keep as good company as old Jacob.' " Hereupon, 1 inquired of his son. ' The lad,' says he, 'has fine parts, but is somewhat sickly, much as you are. I spare for nothing in his education at West minster. Pray, don't you think Westminster to be the best school in England ? Most of the late Ministry came out of it; so did many of this Ministry. 1 hope the boy will make his fortune.' "' Don't you design to let him pass a year at Oxford?' ' To what purpose?' said he. ' The Universities do but make pedants, and 1 intend to breed him a man of business.' " As Mr. Lintot was talking I observed he sat uneasy on his saddle, for which I ex- pressed some solicitude. ' Nothing,' says he. ' I can bear it well enough ; but, since we have tlie day before us, methinks it would be very pleasant for you to rest awhile under the woods.' When we were alighted, ' See, here, what a mighty pretty Horace I have in my pocket ? What, if you amused yourself in turning an ode till we mount again 1 Lord ! if you pleased, what a clever miscellany might you make at leisure hours ? ' ' Perhaps I may,' said I, ' if we ride on : the motion is an aid to my fancy ; a round trot very much awakens my spirits ; then jog on apace, and I'll think as hard as I can.' " Silence ensued for a full hour ; after which Mr. Linton lugged the reins, stopped short, and broke out, ' Well, sir, how far have you gone ? ' 1 answered, seven miles. ' Z — ds, sir,' said Lintot, ' I thought you had done seven stanzas. Oldsworth, in a ramble round Wimbledon Hill, would translate a whole ode in half this time. I'll say that for Oldsworth [thou[;h I lost by his Timothy's], he translates an ode of Horace the quickest of any man in Enc;land. I remember Dr. King would write verses in a tavern, three hours aft.r he could not speak : and there is Sir Richard, in that rum- bling old chariot of his, between Fleet Ditch and St. Giles's Pound, shall make you half a Job.' " ' Fray, Mr. Lintot,' said I, ' now you talk of translators, what is your method of managing them ? ' ' Sir,' replied he, ' these are the saddest pack of rogues in the world : in a hungry fit, they'll swear they understand all the languages in the universe. I have known one of them take down a Greek book upon my counter and cry, " Ah, this is Hebrew, and must read it from the latter end." By G — d, I can never be sure in these fellows, for I neither understand Greek, Latin, French, nor Italian myself. But this is my way ; I agree with them for ten shillings per sheet, with a proviso that I will have their doings corrected with whom I please ; so by one or the other they are led at last to the true sense of an author ; my judgment giving the negative to all my translators.' ' Then how are you sure these correctors may not impose upon you ?' ' Why, I get any civil gentleman (especially any Scotchman) that comes into my shop, to read the original to me in English ; by this I know whether my first trans- lator be deficient, and whether my corrector merits his money or not. '" I'll tell you what happened to me last month. I bargained with S for a new version of " Lucretius,'' to publish against Tonson's, agreeing to pay the author so many shillings at his producing so many lines. He made a great progress in a very short time, and I gave it to the corrector to compare with the Latin ; but he went directly to Creech's translation, and found it the same, word for word, all but the first page. Now, what d'ye think I did ? I arrested the translator for a cheat ; nay, and I stopped the corrector's pay, too, upon the proof that he had made use of Creech instead of the original.' " ' Pray tell me next how you deal with the critics ? ' ' Sir,' said he, ' nothing more easy. I can silence thj most formidable of them ; the rich ones for a sheet apiece of the blotted manuscript, which cost me nothing ; they'll go about with it to their acquaintance, and pretend they had it from the author, who submitted it to their correction : this has given some of them such an air, that in time they come to be con- PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 477 of men who have filled the greatest parts in the world's story — you are with St. John the statesman ; Peterborough the con- queror; Swift, the greatest wit of all times; Gay, the kindliest laugher — it is a privilege to sit in that company. Delightful and generous banquet ! with a little faith and a little fancy any suited with and dedicated to as the tip-top critics of the town.— As for the poor critics, I'll give you one instance of my management, by which you may guess the rest : A lean man, that looked like a very good scholar, came to me t'other day; he turned over your Homer, shook his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and pish'd at every line of it. " One would wonder,' says he, " at the strange presumption of some men ; Homer is no such easy task as every stripling, every versifier " he was going on when my wife called to dinner. " Sir,'' said I, " will you please to eat a piece of beef with me ? " " Mr. Lintot," said he, " I am very sorry you should be at the expense of this great book : I am really concerned on your account.'' " Sir, I am much obliged to you ; if you can dine upon a piece of beef, together with a piece of pudding ? '' — "Mr. Lintot, I do not say but Mr. Pope, if he would condescend to advise with men of learning " — " Sir, the pudding is upon the table, if you please to go in." My critic complies ; he comes to a taste of your poetry, and tells me in the same breath that the book is commendable, and the pudding excellent. '" Now, sir,' continued Mr. Lintot, ' in return for the frankness I have shown, pray tell me, is it the opinion of your friends at court that my Lord Lansdowne will be brought to the bar or not ? ' I told him I heard he would not, and I hoped it, my lord being one I had particular obligations to. — ' That may be,' replied Mr. Lintot ; 'but by G if he is not, I shall lose the printing of a very good trial.' " These, my lord, are a few traits with which you discern the genius of Mr. Lintot, which I have chosen for the subject of a letter. I dropped him as soon as I got to Oxford, and paid a visit to my Lord Carleton, at Middleton. * * * " I am," &c. "Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope. " Sept. 29, 1725. " I am now returning to the noble scene of Dublin — \vA.o\h& grand mondc — for fear of burying my parts ; to signalize myself among curates and vicars, and correct all corruptions crept in relating to the weight of bread and butter through those do- minions where I govern. I have employed my time (besides ditching) in finishing, correcting, amending, and transcribing my ' Travels ' [Gulliver's], in four parts com- plete, newly augmented, and intended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or rather, when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture his ears. I like the scheme of our meeting after distresses and dispersions ; but the chief end I propose to myself in all my labors is to vex the world rather than divert it ; and if I could compass that design without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen, without reading. I am exceedingly pleased that you have done with translations ; Lord Treasurer Oxford often lamented that a rascally world should lay you under a necessity of misemploying your genius for so long a time ; but since you will now be so much better employed, when you think of the world, give it one lash the more at my request. I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities ; and all my love is towards individuals — for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Councillor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one ; it is so with physicians (I will not speak of my own trade), soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man — although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. "* * * I have got materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis eafax. * * * * The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute — nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point. * * * " Mr. Lewis sent me an account of Dr. Arbuthnot's illness, which is a very sensible affiiction to me, who, by living so long out of the world, have lost that hardness of heart contracted by years and general conversation. I am daily losing friends, and neither 478 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. one of us here may enjoy it, and conjure up those great figures out of the past, and listen to their wit and wisdom. Mind that there is always a certain cachet about great men — they may be as mean on many points as you or I, but they carry their great air — they speak of common life more largely and gen- erously than common men do — they regard the world with a manlier countenance, and see its real features more fairly than the timid shufflers who only dare to look up at life through blinkers, or to have an opinion when there is a crowd to back it. He who reads these noble records of a past age, salutes and reverences the great spirits who adorn it. You may go home now and talk with St. John ; you may take a volume from your library and listen to Swift and Pope. Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say to him, Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society ; learn to admire rightly ; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired ; they admired great things : narrow spirits ad- mire basely, and worship meanly. I know nothing in any story seeking nor getting others. Oh ! if the world had but a dozen of Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my ' Travels ! ' " " Mr. Pope to Dr. Swift. " October 15, 1725. " I am wonderfully pleased with the suddenness of your kind answer. It makes me hope you are coming towards us, and that you incline more and more to your old friends. * * * Here is one [Lord Bolingbroke] who was once a powerful planet, but has now (after long experience of all that comes of shining) learned to be content with returning to his first point without the thought or ambition of shining at all. Here is another [Edward, Earl of Oxford], who thinks one of the greatest glories of his father was to have distinguished and loved you, and who loves you hereditaril}'. Here is Arbuthnot, recovered from the jaws of death, and more pleased with the hope of seeing you again than of reviewing a world, every part of which he has long despised but what is made up of a few men like yourself. * * * " Our friend Gay is used as the friends of Tories are by Whigs — and generally by Tories too. Because he had humour, he was supposed to have dealt with Dr. Swift, in like manner as when any one had learning formerly, he was thought to have dealt with the devil. * * * " Lord Bolingbroke had not the least harm by his fall ; I wish he had received no more by his other fall. But Lord Bolingbroke is the most improved mind since you saw him, that ever was improved without shifting into a new body, or hemg faiillo vtiiiiis ab aiigdis. I have often imagined to myself, that if ever all of us meet again, after so many varieties and changes, after so much of the old world and of the old man in each of us has been altered, that scarce a single thought of the one, any more than a single atom of the other, remains just the same ; I have fancied, I say, that we should meet like the righteous in the millenium, quite in peace, divested of all our former passion, smiling at our past follies, and content to enjoy the kingdom of the just in tranquillity. " I designed to have left the following page for Dr. Arbuthnot to fill, but he is so touched with the period in yours to me, concerning him, that he intends to answer it by a whole letter. * * #'' PRIOR, GA Y, AND POPE. 479 more gallant and cheering than the love and friendship which this company of famous men bore towards one another. There never has been a society of men more friendly, as there never was one more illustrious. Who dares quarrel with Mr. Pope, great and famous himself, for liking the society of men great and famous ? and for liking them for the qualities which made them so ? A mere pretty fellow from White's could not have written the " Patriot King," and would very likely have de- spised little Mr. Pope, the decrepit Papist, whom the great St. John held to be one of the best and greatest of men : a mere nobleman of the court could no more have won Barcelona, than he could have written Peterborough's letters to Pope,* which are as witty as Congreve : a mere Irish Dean could not have written "Gulliver;" and all these men loved Pope, and Pope loved all these men. To name his friends is to name the best men of his time. Addison had a senate ; Pope reverenced his equals. He spoke of Swift with respect and admiration always. His admiration for Bolingbroke was so great, that when some one said of his friend, " There is something in that great man which looks as if he was placed here by mistake," " Yes," Pope answered, " and when the comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes an imagination that it maght pos- sibly be come to carry him home, as a coach comes to one's * " Of the Earl of Peterborough, Walpole says : — " He was one of those men of careless wit and nej^ligent grace, who scatter a thousand bon-mois and idle verses, which we painful compilers gather and hoard, till the authors stare to find themselves authors. Such was this lord, of an advantageous figure and enterprising spirit ; as gallant as Amadis and as brave ; but a little more expeditious in his journeys ; for he is said to have seen more kings and more postilions than any man in Europe. * * * He was a man, as his friend said, who would neither live nor die like any other mortal. " From the Earl of Peterborough to Pope. "You must receive my letters with a just impartiality, and give grains of allow- ance for a gloomy or rainy day ; I sink grievously with the weather-glass, and am quite spiritless when oppressed with the thoughts of a birthday or a return. " Dutiful affection was bringing mc to town ; but undutiful laziness, and being much out of order, keep me in the country : however, if alive, 1 must make my appear- ance at the birthday. * * * " You seem to think it vexatious that I shall allow you but one woman at a tin-e either to praise or love. If I dispute with you upon this point, I doubt every jury will give a verdict against me. So, sir, with a Mahometan indulgence, I allow you plural- ities, the favorite privilege of our church. " I find you don't mend upon correction ; again I tell you you must not think of women in a reasonable way ; you know we always make goddesses of those we adore upon earth ; and do not all the good men tell us we must lay aside reason in what relates to the Deity ? (( * * * J should have been glad of anything of Swift's. Pray, when you write to him next, tell him I expect him with impatience, in a place as odd and as much out of the way as himself. Yours.'' Peterborough married Miss Anastasia Robinson, the celebrated singer. 480 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. door for visitors." So these great spirits spoke of one another. Show me six of the dullest middle-aged gentlemen that ever dawdled round a club table, so faithful and so friendly. We have said before that the chief wits of this time, with the exception of Congreve, were what we should now call men's men. They spent many hours of the four-and-twenty, a fourth part of each day nearly, in clubs and coffee-houses, where they dined, drank, and smoked. Wit and news went by word of mouth; a journal of 1710 contained the very smallest portion of one or the other The chiefs spoke, the faithful habitues sat round ; strangers came to wonder and listen. Old Dryden had his head-quarters at " Will's," in Russell Street, at the corner of Bow Street : at which place Pope saw him when he was twelve years old. The company used to assemble on the first floor — what was called the dining-room floor in those days — and sat at various tables smoking their pipes. It is recorded that the beaux of the day thought it a great honor to be allowed to take a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box. When Addison began to reign, he with a certain crafty propriety — a policy let us call it — which belonged to his nature, set up his court, and appointed the officers of his royal house. His palace was "Button's," opposite "Will's."* A quiet opposition, a silent assertion of empire, distinguished this great man. Addison's ministers were Budgell, Tickell, Phillips, Carey ; his master of the horse, honest Dick Steele, who was what Duroc was to Napoleon, or Hardy to Nelson ; the man who performed his master's bidding, and would have cheerfully died in his quarrel. Addison lived with these people for seven or eight hours every day. The male society passed over their punch-bowls and tobacco-pipes about as much time as ladies of that age spent over Spadille and IVIanille. For a brief space, upon coming up to town, Pope formed part of King Joseph's court, and was his rather too eager and obsequious humble servant.f Dick Steele, the editor of the * " Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that the wits of that time used to as- semble. It is said that when Addison had suffered any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company from Button's house. " From the coffee house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late and drank too much wine.'' — Dr. Johnson. Will's coffee-house was on the west side of Bow Street, and " corner of Russell Street." See " Handbook of London.'' t " My acquaintance with Mr. Addison commenced in 1712: I liked him then as well as I liked any man, and was very fond of his conversation. It was very soon after that Mr. Addison advised me 'not to be content with the applause of half the nation.' He used to talk much and often to me, of moderation in parties ; and used to blame PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 481 Tatler, Mr. Addison's man, and his own man too, — a person or no little figure in the world of letters, patronized the young poet, and set him a task or two. Young Mr. Pope did the tasks very quickly and smartly (he had been at the feet, quite as a boy, of Wycherley's * decrepit reputation, and propped up for a year that doting old wit) : he was anxious to be well with the men of letters, to get a footing and a recognition. He thought it an honor to be admitted into their company ; to have the confidence of Mr Addison's friend. Captain Steele. His eminent parts obtained for him the honor of heralding Ad- dison's triumph of ** Cato " with his admirable prologue, and' heading the victorious procession as it were. Not content with. this act of homage and admiration, he wanted to distinguish himself by assaulting Addison's enemies, and attacked John- Dennis with a prose lampoon, which highly offended his lofty his dear friend Steele for being to much of a party man. He encouraged me in jay design of translating the ' Iliad,' which was begun that year, and finished in 171S.'.'— Pope. Spcnce's Anecdotes. " Addison had Budgell, and I think Phillips, in the house with him — Gay they would call one of my clcves. — They were angry with me for keeping so much with Dr. Swift and some of the late Ministry.'"— Pope. Spence's Anecdotes. * " To Mr. Blount. "yan. 21, 1715-16. " I know of nothing that will be so interesting to you at present as some circum- sfences of the last act of that eminent comic poet and our friend, Wycherley. He had often told me, and 1 doubt not he d.d all his acquaintance, that he would marry as soon as his life was despaired of. Accordingly, a few days before his death, he under- went the ceremony, and joined together these two sacraments which wise men say we should be the last to receive ; for, if you observe, matrimony is placed after extreme unction in our catechism, as a kind of hint of the order of time in which they are to be taken. The old man then lay down, satisfied in the consciousness of having, by this one act, obliged a woman wlw (he was told) had merit, and shown an heroic resent- ment of the ill-usage of his next heir. Some hundred pounds which he had with the lady discharged his debts ; a jointure of 500/. a year made her a recompense ; and the nephew was left to comfort himself as well as he could with the miserable remains of mortgaged estate. I saw our friend twice after this was done — less peevish in his sickness than he used to be in his health ; neither much afraid of dying, nor (which in him had been more likely) much ashamed of marrying. The evening before he ex- pired, he called his young wife to his bedside, and earnestly entreated her not to deny him one request — the last he should make. Upon her assurances of consenting to it, he told her : " My dear, it is only this — that you will never marry an old man again. I cannot help remarking that sickness, which often destroys both wit and wisdom,, yet seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humor. Mr. Wycherley showed his even in his last compliment ; though I think his request a little hard, for- why should he bar her from doubling her jointure on the same easy terms ? " So trivial as these circumstances are, I should not be displeased myself to knovir such trifles when they concern or characterize any eminent person. The wisest and' wittiest of men are seldom wiser or wittier than others in these sober moments ; at least, our friend ended much in the same character he hid lived in ; and Horace's rule for play may as well be apphed to him as a playwright : — " ' Servetur ad imum Qualis ab Incepto processerit et sibi constet.' <' I am," §c« 31 482 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. patron. Mr. Steele was instructed to write to Mr. Dennis, and inform him that Mr. Pope's pamphlet against him was written quite without Mr. Addison's approval.* Indeed, " The Nar- rative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Phrenzy of J. D." is a vulgar and mean satire, and such a blow as the magnificent Addison could never desire to see any partisan of his strike in any literary quarrel. Pope was closely allied with Swift when he wrote this pamphlet. It is so dirty that it has been printed in Swift's works too. It bears the foul marks of the master hand. Swift admired and enjoyed with all his heart the prodigious genius of the young Papist lad out of Windsor Forest, who5 of this subject. — He charitably sneers, in onex)f his letters, at Spence's " fondling an old mother — in imitation of Pope ! " PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 489 As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked and enjoyed for himself — a euthanasia — a beautiful end. A perfect benevolence, affection, serenity, hallowed the departure of that high soul. Even in the very hallucinations of his brain, and weaknesses of his delirium, there was something ahnost sacred. Spence describes him in his last days, looking up and with a rapt gaze as if something had suddenly passed before him. " He said to me, * What's that ? ' pointing into the air with a very steady regard, and then looked down and said, with a smile of the greatest softness, " 'Twas a vision ! " He laughed scarcely ever, but his companions describe his coun- tenance as often illuminated by a peculiar sweet smile. "When," said Spence,* the kind anecdotistwhom Johnson despised — " When I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. Pope, on every catching and recovery of his mind, was always saying something kindly of his present or absent friends ; and that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if humanity had outlasted understanding. Lord Bolingbroke said, ' It has so,' and then added, * I never in my life knew a man who had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than ' Here," Spence says, " St. John sunk his head, and lost his voice in tears." The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words, it is the cloak thrown over the father's face in the famous Greek picture, which hides the grief and heightens it. In Johnson's " Life of Pope " you will find described, with rather a malicious minuteness, some of the personal habits and infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked, he was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with other people at table. f He was sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and required a nurse * Joseph Spence was the son of a clergyman, near Winchester. He was a short time at Eton, and afterwards became a FeliOw of New College, Oxford, a clergyman, and professor of poetry. He was a friend of Thomson's, whose reputation he aided. He published an " Essay on the Odyssey " in 1726, which introduced him to Pope. Everybody liked him. His " Anecdotes '' were placed, while still in MS., at the service of Johnson and also of Malone. They were published by Mr. Singer in 1S20. t He speaks of Arbuthnot's having helped him through " that long disease, my life." But not only was he so feeble as is implied in his use of the '' buckram," but " it now appears,'' says Mr. Peter Cunningham, "from his unpublished letters, that, like Lord Hervey, he had recourse to ass's-milk for the preservation of his health." It is to his lordship's use of that simple beverage that he alludes when he says — " Let Sporus tremble ! — A. What, that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white-curd of ass's milk ? " 49° ENGLISH HUMORISTS. like a child. His contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with a strange acrimony, and made his poor deformed person the butt for many a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking of him, says, " If you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope's Christian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you have A. P. E." Pope catalogues, at the end of the Dunciad, with a rueful precision, other pretty names, besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That great critic pronounced Mr. Pope as a little ass, a fool, a coward, a Papist, and therefore a hater of Scripture, and so forth. It must be remembered that the Pillory was a flourishing and popular institution in those days. Authors stood in it in the body sometimes : and dragged their enemies thither morally, hooted them with foul abuse, and assailed them with garbage of the gutter. Poor Pope's figure was an easy one for those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a hunchback, and write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill-nature. but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles the boorish wag ; and many of Pope's revilers laughed, not so much because they were wicked, as because they knew no better. Without the utmost sensibility. Pope could not have been the poet he was ; and through his life, however much he pro- tested that he disregarded their abuse, the coarse ridicule of his opponents stung and tore him. One of Gibber's pamphlets coming into Pope's hands, whilst Richardson the painter was with him. Pope turned round and said, " These things are my diversions ; " and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused the libel, said he saw his features " writhing with anguish." How little human nature changes ! Can't one see that little figure .'' Can't one fancy one is reading Horace .-' Can't one fancy one is speaking of to-day .'' The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cul- tivate the society of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, or beauty, caused him to shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous crew which formed the rank and file of literature in his time : and he was as unjust to these men as they to him. The delicate little creature sickened at habits and company which were quite tolerable to robuster men : and in the famous feud between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE. 4^1 any peculiar wrong to either, one can quite understand how the two parties should so hate each other. As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope's triumph passed, Mr. Ad- dison and his men should look rather contemptuously down on it from their balcony ; so it was natural for Dennis and Tib> bald, and Welsted and Gibber, and the worn and hungry press> men in the crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And Pope was more savage to Grub Street than Grub Street was to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was dreadful \ he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison, he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the " Dunciad " and the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who established among us the Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men's want ; he gloats over poor Dennis's garret, and flannel-nightcap, and red stockings ; he gives instructions how to find Curll's authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler's under the blind arch in Petty France, the two translators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary calling. It was not an unprosperous one before that time, as we have seen \ at least there were great prizes in the profession which had made Addison a Minister, and Prior an Ambassador, and Steele a Commissioner, and Swift all but a Bishop. The pro- fession of letters was ruined by that libel of the " Dunciad." If authors were wretched and poor before, if some of them lived in haylofts, of which their landladies kept the ladders, at least nobody came to disturb them in their straw ; if three ol them had but one coat between them, the two remained invis- ible in the garret, the third, at any rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It was Pope that dragged into light all this poverty and mean- ness, and held up those wretched shifts and rags to public ridicule. It was Pope that has made generations of the reading world (delighted with the mischief, as who would not be that read it ?) believe that author and wretch, author and rags, author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cow-heel, tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squalling children and clamorous landladies, were always associated together. The condition of authorship began to fall from the days of the " Dunciad : " and I believe in my heart that much of that obloquy which has since pursued our calling 492 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. was occasioned by Pope's libels and wicked wit. Everybody read those. Everybody was familiarized with the idea of the poor devil, the author. The manner is so captivating that young authors practise it, and begin their career with satire. It is so easy to write, and so pleasant to read ! to fire a shot that makes a giant wince, perhaps; and fancy one's self his conqueror. It is easy to shoot — but not as Pope did. The shafts of his satire rise sublimely : no poet's verse ever mounted higher than that wonderful flight with which the " Dunciad " concludes : — * " She comes, she comes ! the sable throne behold Of Night primeval and of Chaos old; Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away ; Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires. The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As, one by one, at dread Medea's strain The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain ; As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd, Closed, one by one, to everlasting rest ; — Thus, at her felt approach and secret might, Art after Art goes out, and all is night. See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled. Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head ; Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before. Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, And, unawares, Morality expires. Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. Lo ! tliy dread empire, Chaos, is restored, Light dies before thy uncreating word ; Thy liand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all." t • In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the very greatest height which his sublime art has attained, and shows himself the equal of all poets of all times. It is the brightest ardor, the loftiest assertion of truth, the most generous wisdom, illustrated by the noblest poetic figure, and spoken in words the aptest, grandest, and most harmonious. It is heroic courage speaking : a splendid declaration of righteous wrath and war. It is the gage flung down, and the silver trumpet ringing defi- ance to falsehood aad tyranny, deceit, dulness, superstition. It is Truth, the champion, shining and intrepid, and fronting the * " He (Johnson) repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the ' Dunciad.' " — Boswell. t " Mr. Langton informed me that he on':e related to Johnson (on the authority of Spence), that Pope himself achnired these lines so much that when he repeated them his voice faltered. ' And well it might, sir,' said Johnson, ' for they are noble lines.' " — J. Boswell, junior. PRIOR, GA V, AND POPE. 493 great world-tyrant with armies of slaves at his back. It is a wonderful and victorious single combat, in that great battle, which has always been waging since society began. In speaking of a work of consummate art one does not try to show what it actually is, for that were vain ; but what it is like, and what are the sensations produced in the mind of him who views it. And in considering Pope's admirable career, I am forced into similitudes drawn from other courage and great- ness, and into comparing him with those who achieved triumphs in actual war, I think of the works of young Pope as I do of the actions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you will find frailties and meannesses, as great as the vices and follies of the meanest men. But in the presence of the great occasion, the great soul flashes out, and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the splendor of Pope's young victories, of his merit, unequalled as his renown, I hail and salute the achieving genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero. 494 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FLELDING. I SUPPOSE, as long as novels last and authors aim at interest- ing their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion ; bravery and virtue conquer beauty ; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own. There never was perhaps a greatly popular story hut this simple plot was carried through it : mere satiric wit is addressed to a class of readers and thinkers quite different to those simple souls who laugh and weep over the novel. I fancy very few ladies indeed, for instance, could be brought to like " Gulliver " heartily, and (putting the coarseness and difference of manners out of the question) to relish the wonderful satire of "Jona- than Wild." In that strange apologue the author takes for a hero the greatest rascal, coward, traitor, tyrant, hypocrite, that his wit and experience, both large in this matter, could enable him to devise or depict ; he accompanies this villain through all the actions of his life, with a grinning deference and a won- derful mock respect : and doesn't leave him, still he is dangling at the gallows, when the satirist makes him a low bow and wishes the scoundrel good-day. It was not by satire of this sort, or by scorn and contempt, that Hogarth achieved his vast popularity and acquired his rep- utation.* His art is quite simple,! he speaks popular parables * Coleridge speaks of the "beautiful female faces'' in Hogarth's pictures, " in whom,'' he says, " the satirist never extinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as a poet." — The Friend. t " I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who. being asked which book he esteemed most in his library, answered ' Shakspeare ' being asked which he es- teemed next best, replied ' Hogarth. ' His graphic representations are indeed books : they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of words. Other pictures we look at — his prints we read, i^ * * * " The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture would almost unvulgarize every subject which he might choose. » * * * " i say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have necessarily something in them to make us like them ; some are indifferent to us, some in their nature repul- sive, and only made interesting by the wonderful skill and truth to nature in the painter ; but I contend that there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better na- ture, which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of the bad. They have this in them, besides, that they bring us acquainted with the every-day human face, — they give us skill to detect those gradations of sense and virtue (which escape the careless or fastidious observer) in the circumstances of the world about us j HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 4^5 to interest simple hearts, and to inspire tliem with pleasure or pity or warning and terror. Not one of his tales but is as easy as " Goody Twoshoes ; " it is the moral of Tommy was a naughty boy and the master flogged him, Jacky was a good boy and had plumcake, which pervades the whole works of the homely and famous English moralist. And if the moral is written in rather too large letters after the fable, we must re- member how simple the scholars and schoolmaster both were, and like neither the less because they are so artless and honest. " It was a maxim of Dr. Harrison's," Fielding says, in " Amelia," — speaking of the benevolent divine and philosopher who rep- resents the good principle in that novel — " that no man can descend below himself, in doing any act which may contribute to protect an innocent person, or to bring a rogue to the gallows. ^^ The moralists of that age had no compunction, you see ; they had not begun to be skeptical about the theory of punishment, and thought that the hanging of a thief was a spectacle for edification. Masters sent their apprentices, fathers took their children, to see Jack Sheppard or Jonathan Wild hanged, and it was asundoubting subscribers to this moral law," that Fielding wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one instance, where, in the madhouse scene in the " Rake's Progress," the girl and prevent that disgust at common life, that iadimn qiiotidiajiaritm formarum which an unrestricted passion for ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. In this, as in many other things,vthey are analogous to the best novels of Smollett and Fielding.'' — Charles Lamb. " It has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are exceedingly unlike any other representations of the same kind of subjects — that they form a class, and have a character, peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in what this gen- eral distinction consists. "In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, historical pictures ; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of ' Tom Jones' ought to be regarded as an epic prose-poem, because it contained a regular develi^pment of fable; manners, char- acter, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth wi!], m like manner, be found to have a higher claim to the title of epic pictures than many which have of late arrogated that denomination to themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his subject historically, we mean that his works represent the manners and humors of mankind in action, and their characters by varied expression. Everything in his pictures has life and motion in it. Not only does the business of the scene never stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full play ; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out, and carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the canvas forever. The expression is always taken en fassani, in a state of pro- gress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point. * * * * His figures are not like the back-ground on which they are painted : even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, Hogarth's heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the ex- tremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still life. * * » His faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it." — Hazlitt. 496 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and weep- ing over him in his insanity, a glimpse of pity for his rogues never seems to enter honest Hogarth's mind. There's not the slightest doubt in the breast of the jolly Draco. The famous set of pictures called " Marriage k la Mode," and which are now exhibited in the National Gallery in London, contains the most important and highly wrought of the Ho- garth comedies. The care and method with which the moral grounds of these pictures are laid is as remarkable as the wit and skill of the observing and dexterous artist. He has to describe the negotiations for a marriage pending between the daughter of a rich citizen Alderman and young Lord Viscount Squanderfield, the dissipated son of a gouty old Earl. Pride and pomposity appear in every accessory surrounding the Earl. He sits in gold lace and velvet — as how should such an Earl wear anything but velvet and gold lace ? His coronet is every- where : on his footstool, on which reposes one gouty toe turned out ; on the sconces and looking-glass ; on the dogs ; on his lordship's very crutches ; on his great chair of state and the great baldaquin behind him ; under which he sits pointing ma- jestically to his pedigree, which shows that his race is sprung from the loins of William the Conqueror, and confronting the old Alderman from the City, who has mounted his sword for the occasion, and wears his Alderman's chain, and has brought a bag full of money, mortgage-deeds, and thousand-pound notes, for the arrangement of the transaction pending between them. Whilst the steward (a Methodist — therefore a hypocrite and cheat : for Hogarth scorned a Papist and a Dissenter,) is nego- tiating between the old couple, their children sit together, united but apart. My lord is admiring his countenance in the glass, while his bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her pocket- handkerchief, and listening with rueful countenance to Coun- sellor Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. The girl is pretty, but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a likeness to her father ; as in the young Viscount's face you see a resemblance to the Earl, his noble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about to marry. A martyr is led to the fire ; Androm- eda is offered to sacrifice ; Judith is going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the house (in the picture it is the Earl himself as a young man), with a comet over his head, indica- ting that the career of the family is to be brilliant and brief. In HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 497 the second picture, the old lord must be dead, for Madam has now the Countess's coronet over her bed and toilet-glass, and, sits listening to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually hangs up in her room, whilst the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the confidant of the mistress. My lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he re- turns jaded and tipsy from the " Rose," to find his wife yawning in her drawing-roojii, her whist-party over, and the daylight streaming in ; or he amuses himself with the very worst com- pany abroad, whilst his wife sits at home listening to foreign singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or, worse still, seeks amusement at masquerades. The dismal end is known. I\Iy lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended whilst endeavoring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to to the Alderman in the City, and faints upon reading Counseller Silvertongue's dying speech at Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for sending his lordship out of the world. Moral : — don't listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors : don't marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money ; don't fre- quent foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband : don't have wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn. The people are all naughty, and I"o;ey carries them all off. In the " Rake's Pro- gress," a loose life is ended by a similar sad catastrophe. It is the spendthrift coming into possession of the wealth of the pa- ternal miser ; the prodigal surrounded by flatterers, and wasting his substance on the very worst company ; the bailiffs, the gam- bling-house, and Bedlam for an end. In the famous story of " Industiy and Idleness," the moral is pointed in a manner similarly clear. Fair-haired Frank Goodchild smiles at his work, whilst naughty Tom Idle snores over his loom. Frank reads the edifying ballads of " Whittington " and the " London 'Prentice," whilst that reprobate Tom Idle prefers " Moll Flanders," and drinks hugely of beer. Frank goes to church of a Sunday, and warbles hymns from the gallery ; while Tom lies on a toiigbstone outside playing at "halfpenny-under-the- hat " with street blackguards, and is deservedly caned by the beadle. Frank is made overseer of the business, whilst Tom is sent to sea. Frank is taken into partnership and marries his master's daughter, sends out broken victuals to the poor, and listens in his nightcap and gown, with the lovely Mrs. Good- child by his side, to the nuptial music of the City bands and 32 498 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. the marrow-bones and cleavers ; whilst Idle Tom, returned from sea, shudders in a garret lest the officers are coming to take him for picking pockets. The Worshipful Francis Good- child, Esq., becomes Sheriff of London, and partakes of the most splendid dinners which money can purchase or Alderman devour ; whilst poor Tom is taken up in a night-cellar, with that one-eyed and disreputable accomplice who first taught him to play chuck-farthing on a Sunday. What happens next ? Tom is brought up before the justice of his country, in the per- son of Mr. Alderman Goodchild, who weeps as he recognizes his old brother 'prentice, as Tom's one-eyed friend peaches on him, and the clerk makes out the poor rogue's ticket for New- gate. Then the end comes. Tom goes to Tyburn in a cart with a coffin in it ; whilst the Right Honorable Francis Goodchild, Lord Mayor of London, proceeds to his Mansion House, in his gilt coach with four footmen and a sword-bearer,, whilst the Companions of London march in the august jDroces- sion, whilst the trainbands of the City fire their pieces and get drunk in his honor ; and — O crowning delight and glory of all — whilst his Majesty the King looks out from his royal balcony, with his ribbon on his breast, and his Queen and his star by his side, at the corner house of St. Paul's Churchyard. How the times have changed ! The new post office now not disadvantageously occupies that spot where the scaffolding is in the picture, where the tipsy trainband-man is lurching against the post, with his wig over one eye, and the 'prentice- boy is trying to kiss the pretty girl in the gallery. Passed away 'prentice-boy and pretty girl ! Passed away tipsy trainband-man with wig and bandolier.-' On the spot where Tom Idle (for whom I have an unaffected pity made his exit from this wicked world, and where you see the hangman smoking his pipe as he reclines on the gibbet and views the hills of Harrow or Hamp- stead beyond, a splendid marble arch, a vast and modern city — clean, airy, painted drab, populous with nursery-maids and children, the abode of wealth and comfort — the elegant, the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the most respectable district in the habitable globe ! In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the apotheosis of the Right Honorable Francis Goodchild is drawn, a ragged fellow is represented in the corner of the simple, kindly piece, offering for sale a broadside, purporting to con- tain an account of the appearance of the ghost of Tom Idle, executed at Tyburn. Could Tom's ghost have made its ap- pearance in 1847, and not in 1747, what changes would have HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 495 been remarked by that astonished escaped criminal ! Over that road which the hangman used to travel constantly, and the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten thousand carriages every day ; over yonder road, by which Dick Turpin fled to Windsor, and Squire Western journeyed into town, when he came to take up his quarters at the " Hercules Pillars " on the outskirts of London, what a rush of civilization and order flows now ! What armies of gentlemen with umbrellas march to banks, and chambers, and counting-houses ! What regiments of nursery- maids and pretty infantry ; what peaceful processions of police- men, what light broughams and what gay carriages, what swanns of busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, pass daily and hourly ! Tom Idle's times are quite changed : many of the institutions gone into disuse which were admired in his day. There's more pity and kindness and a better chance for poor Tom's successors now than at that simpler period when Fielding hanged him and Hogarth drew him. To the student of history, these admirable works must be invaluable, as they give us the most complete and truthful pic- ture of the manners, and even the thoughts, of the past cen- tury. We look, and see pass before us the England of a hundred years ago — the peer in his drawing-room, the lady of fashion in her apartment, foreign singers surrounding her, and the chambers filled with gewgaws in the mode of that day ; the church, with its quaint florid architecture and singing congre- gation ; the parson with his great wig, and the beadle with his cane ; all these are represented before us, and we are sure of the truth of the portrait. We see how the Lord Mayor dines in state ; how the prodigal drinks and sports at the bagnio ; how the poor girl beats hemp in Bridewell ; how the chief di- vides his booty and drinks his punch at the night-cellar, and how he finishes his career at the gibbet. We may depend on the perfect accuracy of these strange and varied portraits of the by-gone generation : we see one of Walpole's Members of Parliament chaired after his election, and the lieges celebrating the event, and drinking confusion to the Pretender; we see the grenadiers and the trainbands of the City marching out to meet the enemy ; and have before us, with sword and firelock, and white Hanoverian horse embroidered on the cap, the very fig- ures of the men who ran away with Johnny Cope, and who con- quered at Culloden, The Yorkshire wagon rolls into the inn yard ; the country parson, in his jack-boots, and his bands and short cassock, comes trotting into town, and we fancy it is Par- son Adams, with his sermons in his pocket. The Salisbury fly 500 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. sets forth from the old " Angel " — you see the passengers en-' tering the great heavy vehicle, up the wooden steps, their hats tied down with handkerchiefs over their faces, and under their arms, sword, hanger, and case-bottle ; the landlady — apoplectic with the liquors in her own bar — is tugging at the bell ; the hunchbacked postilion — he may have ridden the leaders to Hum- phrey Clinker — is begging a gratuity ; the miser is grumbling at the bill ; Jack of the " Centurion " lies on the top of the clumsy vehicle, with a soldier by his side — it may be Smollet's Jack Hatchway — it has a likeness to Lismahago. You see the suburban fair and the strolling company of actors ; the pretty milkmaid singing under the window of the enraged French musician : it is such a girl as Steele charmingly described in the Guardian, a few years before this date, singing, under Mr. Ironside's window in Shire Lane, her pleasant carol of a May morning. You see noblemen and blacklegs bawling and bet- ting in the Cockpit ; you see Garrick as he was arrayed in *' King Richard ; " Macheath and Polly in the dresses which they wore when they charmed our ancestors, and when noble- men in blue ribbons sat on the stage and listened to their de- lightful music. You see the ragged French soldiery, in their white coats and cockades, at Calais Gate : they are of the regi- ment, very likely, which friend Roderick Random joined be- fore he was rescued by his preserver Monsieur de Strap, with whom he fought on the famous day of Dettingen. You see the judges on the bench ; the audience laughing in the pit ; the student in the Oxford theatre ; the citizen on his country walk ; you see Broughton the boxer, Sarah Malcolm the murderess, Simon Lovat the traitor, John Wilkes the demagogue, leering at you with that squint which has become historical, and that face which, ugly as it was, he said he could make as captivating to woman as the countenance of the handsomest beau in town. All these sights and people are with you. After looking in the "Rake's progress" at Hogarth's picture of St. James's Palace Gate, you may people the street, but little altered within these hundred years, with the gilded carriages and thronging chair- men that bore the courtiers of your ancestors to Queen Caro- line's drawing-room more than a hundred years ago. What manner of man * was he who executed these portraits * Hogarth (whose family name was Hogart) was the grandson of a Westmoreland yeoman. His father came to London, and was an author and schoolmaster. Wil- liam was born in 1698 (according to the most probable conjecture) in the parish of St. Martin Ludgate. He was early apprenticed to an engraver of arms on plate. The following touches are from his " Anecdotes of Himself." (Edition of 1S33.) — " As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 501 ■ — SO various, so faithful, and so admirable ? In the National Collection of Pictures most of us have seen the best and most gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant ; and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighboring painter drew my attention from play ; and I was, at every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. 1 picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercise itself. In the former, I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me ; but for the latter I was particularly distinguished. * * * * " I thought it still more unlikely that by pursuing the common method, and copy- ing old drawings, I could ever attain the power of making new designs, which was my first and greatest ambition. I therefore endeavored to habituate myself to the exer- cise of a sort of technical memory ; and by repeating in my own mind the parts of which objects were composed, I could by degrees combine and put them down with my pencil. Thus, with all the drawbacks which resulted from the circumstances I have mentioned, I had one material advantage over my competitors, viz. : the early habit I thus acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying it on the spot, whatever I intended to imitate. " The instant I became master of my own time, I determined to qualify myself for engraving on copper. In this I readily got employment ; and frontispieces to books, such as prints to ' Hudibras,' in twelves, &c., soon brought me into the way. But the tribe of booksellers remained as my father liad left them * * * * which put me upon publishing on my own account. But here again I had to encounter a monopoly of printsellers, equally mean and destructive to the ingenious ; for the first plate I published, called ' The Taste of the Town,' in which the reigning follies were lashed, had no sooner begun to take a run, than I found copies of it in the print-shops, vending at half-price, while the original prints were returned to me again, and I was thus obliged to sell the plate for whatever these pirates pleased to give me, as there was no place of sale but at their shops. Owing to this, and other circumstances, by engraving, until I was near thirty, I could do little more than maintain myself ; but even then, I was a punctual paymaster. " I then married, and — — " [But William is going too fast here. He made " a stolen union,'' on March 23, 1729, with Jane, daughter of Sir James Thornhill, sergeant-painter. For some time Sir James kept his heart and his purse-strings close, but " soon after became both reconciled and generous to the young couple." — Hogarth's Works, by Nichols and Steevens, vol. i. p. 44.] " — commenced painter of small Conversation Pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches high. This, being a novelty, succeeded for a few years." [About this time Hogarth had summer lodgings at South Lambeth, and did all kinds of work, " embellishing " the " Spring Gardens '' at " Vauxhall,'' and the like. In 1731, he published a satirical plate against Pope, founded on the well-known impu- tation against him of his having satirized the Duke of Chandos, under the name of Tiinon, in his poem on "Taste." The platerepresenteda viewof Burlington House, with Pope whitewasliing it, and bespattering the Duke of Chandos's coach. Pope made no retort, and has never mentioned Hogarth.] " Before I had done anything of much consequence in this walk, I entertained some hopes of succeeding in what the puffers in books call The Great Style of History Painting ; so that without having had a stroke of this grand business before, I quit- ted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity, com- menced history-painter, and on a great staircase at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, painted two Scripture stories, the ' Pool of Beth; sda' and the ' Good Samaritan,' with figures seven feet high. * * * * But as religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected it in England, I was unwilling to sink into ?. portrait mamtfacturer ; and still ambitious of being singular, dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large. " As to portrait-painting, the chief branch of the art by which a painter can pro- 502 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. carefully finished series of his comic paintings, and the por- trait of his own lionest face, of which the bright blue eyes shine cure himself a tolerable livelihood, and the only one by which a lover of money can get a fortune, a man of very moderate talents may have great success in it, as the artifice and address of a mercer is infinitely more useful than the abilities of a painter. By the manner in which the present race of professors in England conduct it, that also becomes still life." » * * « « "By this inundation of folly and puff '' {^hc has been speaking of the success of Vanloo^who catnc over here in 1737), ''I must confess I was much disgusted, and determined to try if by any means I could stem the torrent, and, by opposing, e7id it. I laughed at the pretensions of these quacks in coloring, ridiculed their productions as feeble and contemptible, and asserted that it required neither taste nor talents to excel their most popular performances. This interference excited much enmity, because, as my opponents told me, my studies were in another way. ' You talk,' added they, ' with ineffable contempt of portrait-painting ; if it is so easy a task, why do not you convince the world, by painting a portrait yourself ? ' Provoked at this language, I, one day at the Academy in St. Martin's Lane, put the following ques- tion : ' Supposing any man, at this time, were to paint a portrait as well as Vandyke, would it be seen or acknowledged, and could the artist enjoy the benefit or acquire the reputation due to his performance ? ' " They asked me in reply. If I could paint one as well ? and I frankly answered, I believed I could. * * * * " Of the mighty talents said to be requisite for portrait-painting I had not the most exalted opinion." Let us now hear him on the question of the Academy : — " To pester the three great estates of the empire, about twenty or thirty students drawing after a man or a horse, appears, as must be acknowledged, foolish enough : but the real motive is, that a few bustling characters, who have access to people of rank, think they can thus get a superiority over their brethren, be appointed to places, and have salaries, as in France, for telling a lad when a leg or an arm is too long or too short. "* * * * " France, ever aping the magnificence of other nations, has in its turn assumed a foppish kind of splendor sufficient to dazzle the eyes of the neighboring states, and draw vast sums of money from this country. * * * * " We return to our Royal Academy : I am told that one of their leading objects will be, sending young men abroad to study the antique statues, for such kind of studies may sometimes improve an exalted genius, but they will not create it ; and whatever has been the cause, this same travelling to Italy has, in several instances that I have seen, reduced the student from nature, and led him to paint marble fig- ures, in which he has availed himself of the great works of antiquity, as a coward does when he puts on the armor of an Alexander ; for, with similar pretensions and similar vanity, the painter supposes he shall be adored as a second Raphael Urbino." We must now hear him on his " Sigismunda: '' — " As the most violent and virulent abuse thrown on ' Sigismunda ' was from a set of miscreants, with whom I am proud of having been ever at war — I mean the ex- pounders of the mysteries of old pictures — I have been sometimes told they were beneath my notice. This is true of them individually ; but as they have access to people of rank, who seem as happy in being cheated as these merchants are in cheat- ing them, they have a power of doing much mischief to a modern artist. However mean the vendor of poisons, the mineral is destructive : — to me its operation was troublesome enough. All nature spreads so fast that now was the time for every little dog in the profession to bark ! '' Next comes a characteristic account of his controversy with Wilkes and Churchill. " The stagnation rendered it necessary that I should do some timid thing, to re- cover my lost time, and stop a gap in my income. This drew forth my print of ' The Times,' a subject which tended to the restoration of peace and unanimity, and put the opposers of these humane objects in a light which gave great offence to those who were trying to foment disaffection in the minds of the populace. One of the HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 503 out from the canvas and give j'ou an idea of that keen and brave look with which Wilham Hogarth regarded the world. No man was ever less of a hero : yju see him before you, and can fancy what he was — a jovial, honest London citizen, stout and sturdy ; a hearty, plain-spoken man,* loving his laugh, his friend, his glass, his roast-beef of Old England, and having a proper bourgeois scorn for French frogs, for mounseers, and wooden shoes in general, for foreign fiddlers, foreign singers, and, above all, for foreign painters, whom he held in the most amusing contempt. It must have been great fun to hear him rage against Cor- reggio and the Carracci ; to watch him thump the table and snap his fingers, and say, " Historical painters be hanged ; here's a man that will paint against any of them for a hundred pounds. Correggio's ' Sigismunda ! ' Look at Bill Hogarth's ' Sigismunda ; ' look at my altar-piece at St. Mary Redcliffe, most notorious of them, till now my friend and flatterer, attacked me in the North Briton, in so infamous and malign a style, that he himself, when pushed even by his best friends, was driven to so poor an excuse as to say he was drunk when he wrote it. * * * " This renowned patriot's portrait, drawn like as I could as to features, and marked with some indications of his mind, fully answered my purpose. The ridicu- lous was apparent to every eye! A Brutus ! A saviour of his country with such an aspect — was so arrant a farce, that though it gave rise to much laughter in the look- ers-on, galled both him and his adherents to the bone. * * * " Churchill, Wilkes's toad-echo, put the North Briton into verse, in an Epistle to Hogarth ; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little poetical heighten- ing, which goes for nothing, it made no impression. * * * However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready, such as the back-ground and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master Churchill in the character of a Bear. The pleasure and pe- cuniary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occa- sionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as can be expected at my time of life.'' * It happened in the early part of Hogarth's life, that a nobleman who was un- commonly ugly and deformed came to sit to him for his picture. It was executed with a skill that did honor to the artist's abilities ; but the likeness was rigidly ob- served, without even the necessary attention to compliment or flattery. The peer,. disgusted at this counterpart of himself, never once thought of paying for a reflection that would only disgust him with his deformities. Some time was suffered to elapse before the artist applied for his money ; but afterwards many applications were made by him (who had then no need of a banker) for payment, without success. The painter, however, at last hit upon an expedient. * * * It was couched in the fol- lowing card: — " ' Mr. Hogarth's dutiful respects to Lord . Finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of Mr. Hogarth's necessity for the money. If, therefore, his Lordship does not send for it, in three days it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail, and some other little append- ages, to Mr. Hare, the famous wild-beast man : Mr. Hogarth having given that gen- tleman a conditional promise of it, for an exhibition-picture, on his Lordship's refusal.' " This intimation had the desired effect." — Works, by Nichols and Steevens, vol. i. p. 25, S04 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. Bristol ; look at my ' Paul before Felix/ and see whether I'm not as good as the best of them.* Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Hogarth's opinion about his talents for the sublime. Although Swift could not see the difference between tvveedle-dee and tweedle-dum, pos- terity has not shared the Dean's contempt for Handel ; the world has discovered a difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause and admiration to Hogarth, too, but not exactly as a painter of scriptural subjects, or as a rival of Correggio. It does not take away from one's liking for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the humor of it — from one's admiration for the prodigious merit of his performances, to remember that he persisted to the last in be- lieving that the world was in a conspiracy against him with re- spect to his talents as an historical painter, and that a set of miscreants, as he called them, were employed to run his genius dovv-n. They say it was Liston's firm belief, that he was a great and neglected tragic actor ; they say that every one of us be- lieves in his heart, or would like to have others believe, that he is something which he is not. One of the most notorious of of the " miscreants," Hogarth says, was Wilkes, who assailed him in the North Briton ; the other was Churchill, who put the North Briton attack in heroic verse, and published his " Epistle to Hogarth." Hogarth replied by that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which he is represented as a bear with a staff, on which, lie the first, lie the second — lie the tenth, are engraved in unmistakable letters. There is very little mistake about honest Hogarth's satire : if he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws him with his head almost off ; and he tried to do the same for his ene- mies in this little controversy. " Having an old plate by me," * " Garrick himself was not more ductile to flattery. A word in favor of * Sigismunda ' might have commanded a proof-print or forced an original print out of our artist's hands. * * * " " The following authenticated story of our artist (furnished by the late Mr. Eclchior, F. R. S., a surgeon of eminence) will also serve to show how much more easy it is to detect ill-placed or hyperbolical adulation respecting others, than when applied to ourselves. Hogarth, being at dinner with the great Cheselden and some other company, was told that Mr. John Freke, surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, a few evenings before at Dick's Coffee-House, had asserted that Greene was as eminent in composition as Handel. ' That fellow Frekc,' replied Hogarth, ' is always shooting his bolt absurdly, one way or another. Handel is a giant in music ; Greene only a light Florimel kind of a composer.' ' Ay,' says our artist's informant, 'but at tlie same time Mr. Freke declared you were as good a portrait-painter as Vandyck.' — ' There he was right,' adds Hogarth, ' and so, by G , I am, give me my time and let me choose my subject.' " — Works, by Nichols and Steevens, vol. 1. pp. 236, 237. HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 505 says he, " with some parts ready, such as the background, and a dog-, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account, and so patched up a print of Master Churchill, in the character of a bear ; the pleasure and pecu- niary advantage which I derived from these two engravings, together with occasionally riding on horseback, restored me to as much health as I can expect at my time of life." And so he concludes his queer little book of Anecdotes : " I have gone through the circumstances of a life which till lately passed pretty much to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no respect injurious to any other man. This I may safely assert, that I have done my best to make those about me toler- ably happy, and my greatest enemy cannot say I ever did an intentional injury. What may follow, God knows." A queer account still exists of a holiday jaunt taken by Hogarth and four friends of his, who set out, like the redoubted INIr. Pickwick and his companions, but just a hundred years before those heroes ; and made an excursion to Gravesend, Roch- ester, Sheerness, and adjacent places.* One of the gentlemen noted down the proceedings of the journey, for which Hogarth and a brother artist made drawings. The book is chiefly curi- ous at this moment from showing the citizen life of those days, and the rough jolly style of merriment, not of the five com- panions merely, but of thousands of jolly fellows of their time. Hogarth and his friends, quitting the " Bedford Arms," Co- vent Garden, with a song, took water to Billingsgate, exchang- ing compliments with the bargemen as they went down the river. At Billingsgate, Hogarth made " a caracatura " of a facetious porter, called the Duke of Puddledock, who agreeably entertained the party with the humors of the place. Hence they took a Gravesend boat for themselves ; and straw to lie upon, and a tilt over their heads, they sa}^, and went down the river at night, sleeping and singing jolly choruses. They arrived at Gravesend at six, when they washed their faces and hands, and had their wigs powdered. Then they sallied forth for Rochester on foot, and drank by the way three pots of ale. At one o'clock they went to dinner with excel- lent port, and a quantity more beer, and afterwards Hogarth and Scott played at hopscotch in the tovvn hall. It would ap- pear that they slept most of them in one room, and the chroni- cler of the party describes them all as waking at seven o'clock, and telling each other their dreams. You have rough sketches * He made this excursion in 1732, his companions being John Thornhill (son of Sir James), Scott the landscape-painter, Tothall, and Forrest. co6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. by Hogarth of the incidents of this hoUday excursion. The sturdy little painter is seen sprawling over a plank to a boat at Gravesend ; the whole company are represented in one de- sign, in a fisherman's room, where they had all passed the night. One gentleman in a nightcap is shaving himself ; an- other is being shaved by the fisherman ; a third, with his hand- kerchief over his bald pate, is taking his breakfast ; and Hogarth is sketching the whole scene. They describe at night how they returned to their quarters, drank to their friends, as usual, emptied several cans of good flip, all singing merrily. It is a jolly party of tradesmen engaged at high jinks. These were the manners and pleasures of Hogarth, of his time very likely, of men not very refined, but honest and merry. It is a brave London citizen, with John Bull habits, prejudices, and pleasures.* Of Smollett's associates and manner of life the author of the admirable " Humphrey Clinker " has given us an interest- ing account, in that most amusing of novels. f * " Dr. Johnson made four lines once, on the death of poor Hogarth, which were equally true and pleasing ; I know not why Garrick's were preferred to them : — " ' The hand of him here torpid lies, That drew th' essential forms of grace ; Here, closed in death, th' attentive eyes. That saw the manners in the face.' " Mr. Hogarth, among the variety of kindnesses shown to me when I was too young to luive a proper sense of them, was used to be very earnest that 1 should obtain the acquaintance, and if possible the friendship, of Dr. Johnson ; whose conversation was, to the talk of other men, like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's, he said: ' but don't you tell people now, that I say so,' continued he; 'for the connoisseurs and I are at war, you know ; and because I hate ihcvi, they think I hate Titian — and let them ! ' * * * Of Dr. Johnson, when my father and lie were talking about him one day, ' That man,' says Hogarth, ' is not contented with believing the Bible ; but he fairly resolves, I think, to believe nothing but the Bible. Johnson,' added he, ' though so wise a fellow, is more like King David than King Solomon, for he says in his baste, All men are liars.'' " — Mrs. Piozzi. Hogarth died on the 26th of October, 1764. The day before his death, he was removed from his villa at Chiswick to Leicester Fields, " in a very weak condition, yet remarkably cheerful." He had just received an agreeable letter from Franklin. He lies buried at Chiswick. t " To Sir Watkin Phillips, Bart., of Jesus College, Oxon. " Dear Phillips, — In my last, I mentioned my having spent an evening with a society of authors, who seemed to be jealous and afraid of one another. My uncle was not at all surprised to hear me say I was disappointed in their conversation. _ ' A man may be very entertaining and instructive upon paper,' said he, ' and e.xceedingly dull in common discourse. I have observed, that those who shine most in private company are but secondary stars in the constellation of genius. A small stock of ideas is more easily managed, and sooner displayed, than a great quantity crowded HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 507 I have no doubt that this picture by Smollett is as faith- ful a one as any from the pencil of his kindred humorist, Hogarth. .together. There is very seldom anything extraordinary in the appearance and address of a good writer ; whereas a dull author generally distinguishes himself by some oddity or extravagance. For this reason 1 fancy that an assembly of grubs must be very diverting.' " My curiosity being excited by this hint, I consulted my friend Dick Ivy, who undertook to gratify it the very next day, which was Sunday last. He carried me to dine with S , whom you and I have long known by his writings. He lives in the skirts of the town ; and every Sunday his house is open to all unfortunate brothers of the quill, whom he treats with beef, pudding, and potatoes, port, punch, and Calvert's entire butt beer. He has fixed upon the first day of the week for the exer- cise of his hospitality, because some of his guests could not enjoy it on any other, for reasons that I need not explain. I was civilly received in a plain, yet decent habi- tation, which opened backwards into a very pleasant garden, kept in excellent order ; and, indeed, I saw none of the outward signs of authorship either in the house or the landlord, who is one of those few writers of the age that stand upon their own foun- dation, without patronage, and above dependence. If there was nothing characteristic in the entertainer, the company made ample amends for his want of singularity. " At two in the afternoon, I found myself one of ten messmates seated at table ; and I question if the whole kingdom could produce such another assemblage of originals. Among their peculiarities, I do not mention those of dress, which may be purely accidental. What struck me were oddities originally produced by affectation, and afterwards confirmed by habit. One of them wore spectacles at dinner, and another his hat flapped ; though (as Ivy told me) the first was noted for having a seaman's eye when a bailiff was in the wind ; and the other was never known to labor under any weakness or defect of vision, except about five years ago, when he was complimented with a couple of black eyes by a player, with whom he had quarrelled in his drink. A third wore a laced stocking, and made use of crutches, because, once in his life, he had been laid up with a broken leg, though no man could leap over a stick with more agility. A fourth had contracted such an antipathy to the country, that he insisted upon sitting with his back towards the window that looked into the garden ; and when a dish of cauliflower was set upon the table, he snuffed up volatile salts to keep him from fainting ; yet this delicate person was the son of a cottager, born under a hedge, and had many years run wild among asses on a com- mon. A fifth affected distraction : when spoke to he always answered from the purpose. Sometimes he suddenly started up, and rapped out a dreadful oath ; some- times he burst out a laughing ; then he folded his arms, and sighed ; and then he hissed like fifty serpents. " At first, I really thought he was mad ; and, as he sat near me, began to be under some apprehensions for my own safety ; when our landlord, perceiving me alarmed, assured me aloud that I had nothing to fear. ' The gentleman,' said he, ' is trying to act a part for which he is by no means qualified : if he had all the incli- nation in the world, it is not in his power to be mad ; his spirits are too flat to be kindled into phrenzy.' ''Tis not bad p-p-puff, how-owever,'' observed a person in a tarnished laced coat : ' aff-ff ected m-madness v/-ill p-pass for w-wit w-with nine-nineteen out of t-twenty.' ' And affected stuttering for humor,' replied our land- lord ; ' though, God knows ! there is no affinity between them.' It seems this wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain speaking, had recourse to this defect, by means of which he frequently extorted the laugh of the company, without the least expense of genius ; and that imperfection, which he had at first counter- feited, was now become so habitual, that he could not lay it aside. " A certain winking genius, who wore yellow gloves at dinner, had, on his first introduction, taken such offence at S , because he looked and talked, and ate and drank, like any other man, that he spoke contemptuously of his understanding ever after, and never would repeat his visit, until he had exhibited the following proof of his caprice. Wat Wyvil, the poet, having made some unsuccessful advances towards an intimacy with S , at last gave him to understand, by a third person, that he goS ENGLISH HUMORISTS. We have before us, and painted by his own hand, Tobias Smollett, the manly, kindly, honest, and irascible ; worn and battered, but still brave and full of heart, after a long struggle had written a poem in his praise, and a satire against his person : that if he would admit him to his house, the first sliould be immediately sent to press ; but that if he persisted in declining his friendship, he would publish the satire without delay. S replied, that he looked upon Wyvil's penegyric as, in effect, a specimen of infamy, and would resent it accordingly with a good cudgel ; but if he published the satire he might deserve his compassion, and had nothing to fear from his revenge. Wyvil having considered the alternative, resolved to mortify S by printing the panegyric, for which he received a sound drubbing. Then he swore the peace against the aggressor, who, in order to avoid a prosecution at law, admitted him to his good graces. It was the singularity in S 's conduct on this occasion, that reconciled him to the yellow-gloved philosopher, who owned he had some genius ; and from that period cultivated his acquaintance. " Curious to know upon what subjects the several talents of my fellow-guests were employed, I applied to my communicative friend Dick Ivy, who gave me to understand that most of them were, or liad been, understrappers, or journeymen, to more creditable authors, for whom they translated, collated, and compiled, in the business of bookmaking ; and tliat all of them had, at different times, labored in the service of our landlord, though they had now set up for themselves in various depart- ments of literature. Not only their talents, but also their nations and dialects, were so various, that our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off by the most discordant vociferation ; for as they all spoke together, no man had any chance to be heard, unless he could bawl louder than liis fellows. It must be owned, however, there was nothing pedantic in their discourse ; they carefully avoided all learned disquisitions, and endeavored to be facetious : nor did their endeavors always mis- carry ; some droll repartee passed, and much laugliter was excited ; and if any individual lost his temper so far as to transgress the bounds of decorum, he was effectually checked by the master of the feast, who exerted a sort of paternal authority over this irritable tribe. " The most learned philosopher of the whole collection, who had been expelled the university for atheism, has made great progress in a refutation of Lord Boling- broke's metaphysical works, which is said to V'--. equally ingenious and orthodox : but, in the meantime, he has been presented to the grand jury as a public nuisance for having blasphemed in an alehouse on the Lord's-day. The Scotchman gives lectures on the pronunciation of the English language, which he is now publishing by sub- scription. " The Irishman is a political writer, and goes by the name of My Lord Potatoe. He wrote a pamphlet in vindication of a Minister, hoping his zeal would be rewarded with some place or pension ; but finding himself neglected in that quarter, he whis- pered about tliat the pamphlet was written by the Minister himself, and he published an answer to his own production. In this he addressed the author under the title of ' your lordship,' with such solemnity, that the public swallowed the deceit, and bought up the whole impression. The wise politicians of the metropolis declared they were both masterly performances, and chuckled over the flimsy reveries of an ignorant garretteer, as the profound speculations of a veteran statesman, acquainted with all the secrets of the cabinet. The imposture was detected in the sequel, and our Hibernian pamphleteer retains no part of his assumed importance but the bnre title of 'my lord,' and the upper part of the table at the potatoe-ordinary in Shoe Lane. " Opposite to me sat a Piedmontese, who had obliged the public with a humorous satire, entitled ' The Balance of the English Poets ; ' a performance which evinced the great modesty and taste of the author, and, in particular, his intimacy with the elegancies of the English language. The sage, wlio labored under the dypoi|)o/3ia, or, ' horror of green fields,' had just finished a treatise on practical agriculture, though, in fact, he had never seen corn growing in his life, and was so ignorant of grain, that HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 509 against a hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a hundred different schemes ; he had been reviewer and historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphleteer. He had fought end- less literary battles ; and braved and wielded for years the cudgels of controversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those days, and a niggard pay. He was oppressed by illness, age, narrow fortune ; but his spirit was still resolute, and his cour- age steady ; the battle over, he could do justice to the enemy with whom he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not un- friendly grasp to the hand that had mauled him. He is like one of those Scotch cadets, of whom history gives us so many examples, and whom, with a national fidelity, the great Scotch novelist has painted so charmingly. Of gentle birth * and nar- our entertainer, in the face of the whole company, made him own that a plate of hominy was the best rice-pudding he had ever eat. " The stutterer had almost finished his travels through Europe and part of Asia, without ever budging beyond the liberties of the King's Bench, except in term-time with a tipstaff for his companion : and as for little Tim Cropdale, the most facetious member of the whole society, he had happily wound up the catastrophe of a virgin tragedy, from the exhibition of which he promised himself a large fund of profit and reputation. Tim had made shift to live many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume; but that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease, and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tran- quillity of high life, tliat the reader is not only enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality. " After dinner, we adjourned into the garden, where I observed Mr. S give a short separate audience to every individual in a small remote filbert-walk, from whence most of them dropped off one after another, without further ceremony.'' Smollett's house was in Lawrence Lane, Chelsea, and is now destroyed. See Handbook of London, p. 115. " The person of Smollett was eminently handsome, his features prepossessing, and, by the joint testimony of all his surviving friends, his conversation, in the highest degree, instructive and amusing. Of his disposition, those who have read his works (and who has not ?) may form a very accurate estimate ; for in each of them he has presented, and sometimes, under various points of view, the leading features of his own character without disguising the most unfavorable of tliem. * * # * When unseduced by his satirical propensities, he was kind, generous, and humane to others ; bold, upright, and independent in his own character ; stooped to no patron, sued for no favor, but honestly and honorably maintamed himself on his literary labors. *- * * * He was a doating father, and an affectionate husband ; and the warm zeal with which his memory was cherished by his surviving friends showed clearly the reliance which they placed upon his regard." — Sir Walter Scott. * Smollett of Bonhill, in Dumbartonshire. Arms, azure, a bend, or, between a lion rampant, ppr., holding in his paw a banner, argent, and a bugle-horn, also ppr. Crest, an oak-tree, ppr.. Motto Vircsco. Smollett's father, Archibald, was the fourth son of Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, a Scotch Judge and Member of Parliament, and one of the commissioners for framing the Union with England. Archibald married, without the old gentleman's consent, and died early, leaving his children dependent on their grandfather. Tobias, the second son, was born in 1721, in the old house of Dalquharn in the valley of Leven ; and all his life loved and admired that valley and Loch Lomond beyond all the vallej's and lakes in Europe, He learned the " rudiments '' at Dumbarton Grammar School, and studied at Glasgow, But when he was only ten, his grandfather died, and left him without provision 5IO ENGLISH HUMORISTS. row means, going out from his northern home to win his for- tune in the world, and to fight his way, armed with courage, hunger, and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree, with green leaves yet springing from it. On his ancient coat-of-arms there is a lion and a horn ; this shield of his was battered and dinted in a hundred fights and brawls,* through which the (figuring as the old judge in " Roderick Random '' in consequence, according to Sir Walter). Tobias, armed with the " Regicide, a Tragedy," — a provision precisely similar to that with which Dr. Johnson had started, just before — came up to London. The "Regicide" came to no good, though at first patronized by Lord Lyttelton ("one of those little fellows who are sometimes called great men," Smollett says); and Smollett embarked as " surgeon's mate " on board a line-of-battle ship, and served in the Carthagena expedition, in 1741. He left the service in the West Indies, and after residing some time in Jamaica, returned to England in 1746. He was now unsuccessful as a physician, to begin with ; published the satires, " Advice " and " Reproof," without any luck ; and (1747) married the " beautiful and accomplished Miss Lascelles." In 174S he brought out his " Roderick Random," which at once made a "hit.'' The subsequent events of his life may be presented, chronologically, in a bird's-eye view : — 1750. Made a tour to Paris, where he chiefly wrote " Peregrine Pickle." 1751. Published " Peregrine Pickle." 1753. Published "Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom." 1755. Published version of " Don Quixote." 1756. Began the " Critical Review." 1758. Published his " History of England.'' 1763-1766. Travelling in France and Italy; published his "Travels." 1769. Published " Adventures of an Atom." 1770. Set out for Italy ; diedat Leghorn 21st of October, 1771, in the fifty-first year of his age. * A good specimen of the old "slashing" style of writing is presented by the paragraph on Admiral Knowles, which subjected Smollett to prosecution and im- prisonment. The admiral's defence on the occasion of the failure of the Rochfort expedition came to be examined before the tribunal of the " Critical Review.'' "He is,'' said our author, "an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity ! " Three months' imprisonment in the King's Bench avenged this stinging paragraph. But the "Critical" was to Smollett a perpetual fountain of "hot water." Among less important controversies may be mentioned that with Grainger, the translator of " Tibullus." Grainger replied in a pamphlet ; and in the next number of the " Review " we find him threatened with " castigation," as an "owl that has broken from his mew ! '' In Dr. Moore's biography of him is a pleasant anecdote. After publishing the " Don Quixote," he returned to Scotland to pay a visit to his mother : — " On Smollett's arrival he was mtroduced to his mother with the connivance of Mrs. Telfer (her daughter), as a gentleman from the West Indies, who was inti- mately acquainted with her son. The better to support his assumed character, he endeavored to preserve a serious countenance, apptoachir.g to a frown ; but while his mother's eyes were riveted on his countenance, he could not refrain from smiling : she immediately sprung from her chair, and throwing her arms round his neck, exclaimed, ' Ah, my son ! my son ! I have found you at last ! ' " She afterwards told him, that if he had kept his austere looks and continued to gloom, he might have escaped detection some time longer, but ' your old roguish smile,' added she, ' betrayed you at once.' '' " Sliortly after the publication of ' The Adventures of an Atom,' disease again attacked Smollett with redoubled violence. Attempts being vainly made to obtain for him the office of Consul in some part of the Mediterranean, he was compelled to seek HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 51 x stout Scotchman bore it courageously. You see somehow that he is a gentleman, through all his battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard-fought successes, and his defeats. His novels are recollections of his own adventures ; his characters drawn, as I should think, from personages with whom he became acquaint- ed in his own career of life. Strange companions he must have had ; queer acquaintances he made in the Glasgow College — in the country apothecary's shop ; in the gun-room of the man- of-war where he served as surgeon ; and in the hard life on shore, where the sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest percep- tive faculty, and described what he saw with wonderful relish and delightful broad humor. I think Uncle Bowling, in " Rod- erick Random," is as good a character as Squire Western himself : and Mr. Morgan, the Welsh apothecary, is as pleas- ant as Dr. Caius. What man who has made his inestimable acquaintance — what novel-reader who loves Don Quixote and Major Dalgetty — will refuse his most cordial acknowledgments to the admirable Lieutenant Lismahago, The novel of " Hum- phrey Clinker " is, I do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing be- gan. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Eng- lishmen on the grin for ages yet to come ; and in their letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of spark- ling laughter, as inexhaustible as Bladud's well. Fielding, too, has described, though with a greater hand, the characters and scenes which he knew and saw. He had more than ordinary opportunities for becoming acquainted with life. His family and education, first — his fortunes and mis- fortunes afterwards, brought him into the society of every rank and condition of man. He is himself the hero of his books : he is wild Tom Jones, he is wild Captain Booth ; less wild, I am glad to think, than his predecessor : at least heartily con- scious of demerit, and anxious to amend. When Fielding first came upon the town in 1727, the recol- lection of the great wits was still fresh in the coffee-houses and a warmer climate, without better means of provision than his own precarious finances could afford. The kindness of his distmguished friend and countryman, Dr. Arm- strong (then abroad), procured for Dr. and Mrs. Smollett a house at Monte Nero, a village situated on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea, in the neighborhood of Leghorn, a romantic and salutary abode, where he prepared for the press, the last, and like music ' sweetest in the close,' the most pleasing of his compositions, ' The Expedition of Humphrey CJinker.' This delightful work was published in 1771.''— Sir Walter Scott. 5^2 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. assemblies, and the judges there declared that young Harry Fielding had more spirits and wit than Congreve or any of his brilliant successors. His figure was tall and stalwart ; his face handsome, manly, and noble-looking ; to the very last days of his life he retained a grandeur of air, and although worn down by disease, his aspect and presence imposed respect upon the people round about him. A dispute took place between Mr. Fielding and the cap- tain * of the ship in which he was making his last voyage, and Fielding relates how the man finally went down on his knees and begged his passenger's pardon. He was living up to the last days of his life, and his spirit never gave in. His vital power must have been immensely strong. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu f prettily characterizes Fielding and this capacity for happiness which he possessed, in a little notice of his death, when she compares him to Steele, who was as improvident and as happy as he was, and says that both should have gone on living for ever. One can fancy the eagerness and gusto with which a man of Fielding's frame, with his vast health and ro- bust appetite, his ardent spirits, his joyful humor, and his keen and hearty relish for life, must have seized and drunk that cup of pleasure which the town offered to him. Can any of my hearers remember the youthful feats of a college breakfast — * The dispute with the captain arose from the wish of that functionary to intrude on his right to his cabin, for which he had paid thirty pounds. After recounting the circumstances of the apology, he characteristically adds : — " And here, that I may not be thought the sly trumpeter of my own praises, I do utterly disclaim all praise on the occasion. Neither did the greatness of my mind dictate, nor the force of my Christianity exact this forgiveness. To speak truth, I forgave him from a motive which would make men much more forgiving, if they were much wiser than they are, because it was convenient for me so to do." t Lady Mary was his second-cousin — their respective grandfathers being sons of George Fielding, Earl of Desmond, son of William, Earl of Denbigh. In a letter dated just a week before his death, she says — " H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted ; and I am persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact. 1 wonder he does not perceive Tom Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry scoundrels. * * * * Fielding has really a fund of true humor, and was to be pitied at his first entrance into the world, having no choice, as he said himself, but to be a hackney writer or a hackney coachman. His genius deserved a better fate ; but I cannot help blaming that continued indiscretion, to give it the softest name, that has run through his life, and I am afraid still remains. * * * * Since I was born no original has appeared excepting Congreve, and Fielding, who would, I believe, have approached nearer to his excellences, if not forced by his necessities to publish without correction, and throw many productions into the world he would have thrown into the fire, if meat could have been got without money, or money without scribbling. * » * * I am sorry not to see any more of Peregrine Pickle's performances ; I wish you would tell me his name."— Z^/Z^w and Works (Lord Wharncliffe's Ed.), vol. iii. pp. 93. 94- HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING 513 the meats devoured and the cups quaffed in that Homeric feast ? I can call to mind some of the heroes of those youthful ban- quets, and fancy young Fielding from Leyden rushing upon the feast, with his great laugh and immense healthy young appe- tite, eager and vigorous to enjoy. The young man's wit and manners made him friends everywhere : he lived with the grand Man's society of those days ; he was courted by peers and men of wealth and fashion. As he had a paternal allowance from his father. General Fielding, which, to use Henry's own phrase, any man might pay who would ; as he liked good wine, good clothes, and good company, which are all expensive arti- cles to purchase, Harry Fielding began to run into debt, and borrow money in that easy manner in which Captain Booth borrows money in the novel : was in nowise particular in ac- cepting a few pieces from the purses of his rich friends, and bore down upon more than one of them, as Walpole tells us only too truly, for a dinner or a guinea. To supply himself with the latter he began to write theatrical pieces, having already, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance amongst the Oldfields and Bracegirdles behind the scenes. He laughed at these pieces and scorned them. When the audience upon one occasion be- gan to hiss a scene which he was too lazy to correct, and regard- ing which, when Garrick remonstrated with him, he said that the public was too stupid to find out the badness of his work : when the audience began to hiss. Fielding said, with charac- teristic coolness — " They have found it out, have they ? " He did not prepare his novels in this way, and with a very different care and interest laid the foundations and built up the edifices of his future fame. Time and shower have very little damaged those. The fashio^n and ornaments are, perhaps, of the architecture of that age ; but the buildings remain strong and lofty, and of admirable proportions — masterpieces of genius and monuments of workmanlike skill. I cannot offer or hope to make a hero of Harry Fielding. Why hide his faults ? Why conceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases ? Why not show him, like him as he is, not robed in a marble toga, and draped and polished in an heroic attitude, but with inked ruffles, and claret-stains on his tar- nished laced coat, and on his manly face the marks of good- fellowship, of illness, of kindness, of care, and wine. Stained ■ as you see him, and worn by care and dissipation, that man retains some of the most precious and splendid human quali- ties and endowments. He has an admirable natural love of 5^4 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. truth, the keenest instinctive antipathy to hypocrisy, the hap- piest satirical giEt of Laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonder- fully wise and detective ; it flashes upon a rogue and lightens up a rascal like a policeman's lantern. He is one of the man- liest and kindliest of human beings : in the midst of all his imperfections, he respects female innocence and infantine ten- derness, as you would suppose such a great-hearted, coura- geous soul would respect and care for them. He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, and tender. He will give any man his purse — he can't help kindness and profusion. He may have low tastes, but not a mean mind ; he admires with all his heart good and virtuous men, stoops to no flatter}'-, bears no rancor, disdains all disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work.* If that theory be — and I have no doubt it is — the right and safe one, that human nature is always pleased with the spec- tacle of innocence rescued by fidelity, purity, and courage ; I suppose that of the heroes of Fielding's three novels, we should like honest Joseph Andrews the best, and Captain Booth the second, and Tom Jones the third. f Joseph Andrews, though he wears Lady Booby's cast-off livery, is, I think, to the full as polite as Tom Jones in his fustian-suit, or Captain Booth in regimentals. He has, like those heroes, large calves, broad shoulders, high courage, and a handsome face. The accounts of Joseph's bravery and good qualities ; his voice, too musical to halloo to the dogs ; his bravery in riding races for the gentlemen of the country, and his constancy in refusing bribes and temptation, have some- thing affecting in their ndiveti and freshness, and prepossess one in favor of that young hero. The rustic bloom of Fanny, and the delightful simplicity of Parson Adams, are described with a friendliness which wins the reader of their story ; we part from them with more regret than from Booth and Jones. Fielding, no doubt, began to write this novel in ridicule of " Pamela," for which work one can understand the hearty con- * He sailed for Lisbon, from Gravesend, on Sunday morning, June 3otb, 1754 ; and began " The Journal of a Voyage '' during the passage. He died at Lisbon, in the beginnins; of October of the same year. He lies buried there, in the English Protestant churchyard, near the Estrella Church, with this mscription over him : — " HENRICUS FIELDING. LUGEt BRITANNIA GREMIO NON DATUM FOVERE NATUM." t Fielding himself is said by Dr. Warton to have preferred " Joseph Andrews " to his other writings. HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 515 tempt and antipathy which such an athletic and boisterous genius as Fielding's must have entertained. He couldn't do otherwise than laugh at the puny cockney bookseller, pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle, and hold him up to scorn as a mollycoddle and a milksop. His genius had been nursed on sack-posset, and not on dishes of tea. His muse had sung the loudest in tavern choruses, had seen the daylight streaming in over thousands of emptied bowls and reeled home to chambers on the shoulders of the watchman, Richardson's goddess was attended by old maids and dowagers, and fed on muffins and bohea. " Milksop ! " roars Harry Fielding, clat- tering at the timid shop-shutters. " Wretch ! Monster ! Mohock ! " shrieks the sentimental author of " Pamela ; '" * and all the ladies of his court cackle out an affrighted chorus. Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the author, whom he dislikes and utterly scorned and laughed at ; but he is himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he be- gins to like the characters which he invents, can't help making them manly and pleasant as well as ridiculous, and before he has done with them all, loves them heartily every one. Richardson's sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite as natural as the other's laughter and contempt at the sentimentalist, I have not learned that these likings and dis- likings have ceased in the present day : and every author must lay his account not only to misrepresentation, but to honest enmity among critics, and to being hated and abused for good as well as for bad reasons. E.ichardson disliked Fielding's works quite honestly : Walpole quite honestly spoke of them as vulgar and stupid. Their squeamish stomachs sickened at the rough fare and the rough guests assembled at Fielding's jolly revel. Indeed the cloth might have been cleaner : and the dinner and the company were scarce such as suited a dandy. The kind and wise old Johnson would not sit down with him.f But a greater scholar than Johnson could afford * " Richardson," says wortliy Mrs. Barbauld, in her Memoir of him, prefixed to his Correspondence, " was exceedingly hurt at this (' Joseph Andrews '), the more so as they had been on good terms, and he was very intimate with Fielding's two sisters. He never appears cordially to have forgiven it (perhaps it was not in human nature he should), and he always speaks in his letters with a great deal of asperity of ' Tom Jones,' more indeed than was quite graceful in a rival author. No doubt he himself thought his indignation was sorely excited by the loose morality of the work and of its author, but he could tolerate Gibber." t It must always be borne in mind, that besides that the Doctor couldn't be expected to like Fielding's wild life (to say nothing of the fact that they were of opposite sides in politics), Richardson was one of his earliest and kindest friends. Yet Johnson too (as Boswell tells us) read "Amelia"' through without stopping. 5 1 6 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. to admire that astonishing genius of Harry Fielding : and we all know the lofty panegyric which Gibbon wrote of him, and which remains a towering monument to the great novelist's memory. "Our immortal Fielding," Gibbon writes, "was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburgh. The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren of England : but the romance of ' Tom Jones,' that exquisite picture of humor and manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Im- perial Eagle of Austria." There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have your name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it written on the dome of St. Peter's. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it. As a picture of manners, the novel of " Tom Jones " is indeed exquisite : as a work of construction quite a wonder : the by- play of wisdom ; the power of observation ; the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts ; the varied character of the great Comic Epic : keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curi- osity.* But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we have a right to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author evidently has for that character. Charles Lamb says finely of Jones, that a single hearty laugh from him "clears the air" — but then it is in a certain state of the atmosphere. It might clear the air when such personages as Blifil or Lady Bellaston poison it. But I fear very much that (except until the very last scene of the story), when Mr. Jones enters Sophia's draw- ing-room, the pure air there is rather tainted with the young gentleman's tobacco-pipe and punch. I can't say that I think Mr. Jones a virtuous character; I can't say but that I think Fielding's evident liking and admiration for Mr. Jones shows that the great humorist's moral sense was blunted by his life, * " Manners change from generation to generation, and with manners morals appear to change — actually change with some, but appear to change with all but the abandoned. A young man of the present day who should act as Tom Jones is sup- posed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston, &c., would not be a Tom Jones ; and a Tom Jones of the present day, without perhaps being in the ground a better man, would have perished rather than submit to be kept by a harridan of fortune. There- fore, this novel is, and indeed pretends to be, no example of conduct. But, notwith- standing all this, I do loathe the cant that can recommend ' Pamela ' and ' Clarissa Harlowe' as strictly moral, although they poison the imagination of the young with continued doses of iinct. lytta, while Tom Jones is prohibited as loose. I do not speak of young women ; but a young man whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions excited by this novel, is already thoroughly corrupt. There is a cheerful, sunshiny, breezy spirit, that prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson.'' — Coleridge : Literary Re- mains, vol. ii. p. 374. HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 517 and that here, in Art and Ethics, there is a great error. If it is right to have a hero whom we may admire, let us at least take care that he is admirable : if, as is the plan of some authors (a plan decidedly against their interests, be it said), it is pro- pounded that there exists in life no such being, and therefore that in novels, the picture of life, there should appear no such character ; then Mr. Thomas Jones becomes an admissible person, and we examine his defects and good qualities, as we do those of Parson Thwackum, or Miss Seagrim. But a hero with a flawed reputation ; a hero spunging for a guinea ; a hero who can't pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his honor out to hire, is absurd, and his claim to heroic rank untenable. I protest against Mr. Thomas Jones holding such rank at all. I protest even against his being considered a more than ordinary young fellow, ruddy-cheeked, broad-shouldered, and fond of wine and pleasure. He would not rob a cliurch, but that is all ; and a pretty long argument may be debated, as to which of these old types, the spendthrift, the hypocrite, Jones and Blifil, Charles and Joseph Surface, — is the worst member of society and the most deserving of censure. The prodigal Captain Booth is a better man than his predecessor Mr. Jones, in so far as he thinks much more humbly of himself than Jones did : goes down on his knees, and owns his weaknesses, and cries out, " Not for my sake, but for the sake of my pure and sweet and beautiful wife Amelia, I pray you, O critical reader, to forgive me." That stern moralist regards him from the bench (the judge's practice out of court is not here the ques- tion), and says, " Captain Booth, it is perfectly true that your life has been disreputable, and that on many occasions you have shown yourself to be no better than a scamp — you have been tippling at the tavern, when the kindest and sweetest lady in the world has cooked your little supper of boiled mutton and awaited you all the night ; you have spoilt the little dish of boiled mutton thereby, and caused pangs and pains to Amelia's tender heart.* You have got iuto debt without the means of * " Nor was she (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) a stranger to that beloved first wife, whose picture he drew in his ' Amelia,' when, a& she said, even the glowing language he knew how to employ, did not do more than justice to the amiable qualities of the original, or to her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the accident related in the novel — a frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her nose. He loved her passionately, and she returned his affection * * * " His biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that, after the death of this charming woman, he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found 5 1 8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. paying it. You have gambled the money with which you ought to have paid your rent. You have spent in drink or in worse amusements the sums which your poor wife has raised upon her Httle home treasures, her own ornaments, and the toys of her children. But, you rascal ! you own humbly that you are no better than you should be ; you never for one moment pre- tend that you are anything but a miserable weak-minded rogue. You do in your heart adore that angelic woman, your wife, and for her sake, sirrah, you shall have your discharge. Lucky for you and for others like you, that in spite of your failings and imperfections, pure hearts pity and love you. For your*wife's sake you are permitted to go hence without a re- mand ; and I beg you, by the way, to carry to that angelical lady the expression of the cordial respect and admiration of this court." Amelia pleads for her husband. Will Booth : Amelia pleads for her reckless kindly old father, Harry Field- ing. To have invented that character, is not only a triumph of art, but it is a good action. They say it was in his own home that Fielding knew her and loved her ; and from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction. Fiction ! why fiction ? why not history ? I know Amelia just as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I believe in Colonel Bath almost as much as in Colonel Gardiner or the Duke of Cumber- land. I admire the author of "Amelia," and thank the kind master who introduced me to that sweet and delightful com- panion and friend. " Amelia " perhaps is not a better story than " Tom Jones," but it has the better ethics ; the prodigal repents at least, before forgiveness, — whereas that odious broad- backed Mr. Jones carries off his beauty with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold errors and short-comings ; and is not half punished enough before the great prize of fortune and love falls to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum-cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swag- gering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without no relief but from weeping along with her ; nor solace when a degree calmer, but in talking to her of the angel they mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confi- dential associate, and in process of time he began to think he could not give his children a tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper and nurse. At least, this was what he told his friends ; and it is certain that her conduct as his wife confirmed it, and fully justified his good opinion.'' — Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Edited by Lord Wharncuffe. Introduc- tory Anecdotes., vol. i. pp. 80, Ri. Fielding's first wife was Miss Craddock, a young lady from Salisbury, with a fortune of 1,500/., whom he married in 1736. About the same time he succeeded, himself, to an estate of 200/. per annum, and on the joint amount he lived for some time as a splendid country gentleman in Dorsetshire. Three years brought him to the end of his fortune j wheii he returned to London and became a student of law. HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING. 519 a proper sense of decorum ; the fond, foolish, palpitatng little creature ! — " Indeed, Mr. Jones," she says, — " it rests with you to appoint the day." I suppose Sophia is drawn from life as well as Amelia ; and many a young fellow, no better than Mr. Thomas Jones, has carried by a coupde fnain the heart of many a kind girl who is a great deal too good for him. What a wonderful art ! What an admirable gift of nature was it by which the author of these tales was endowed, and which enabled him to fix our interest, to waken our sympathy, to seize upon our credulity, so that we believe in his people — speculate gravely upon their faults or their excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore Jones's fondness for drink and play. Booth's fondness for play and drink, and the un- fortunate position of the wives of both gentlemen — love and admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this morning in their actual drawing-rooms or should meet them this afternoon in the Park ! What a genius ! what a vigor ! what a bright-eyed intelligence and observation ! what a whole- some hatred for meanness and knavery ! what a vast sympathy ! what a cheerfulness ! what a manly relish of life ! what a love of human kind ! what a poet is here ! — watching, meditating, brood- ing, creating ! What multitudes of truths has that man left be- hind him ! What generations he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly ! What scholars he has formed and accustomed to the exercise of thoughtful humor and the manly play of wit ! What a courage he had ! What a dauntless and constant cheerful- ness of intellect, that burned bright and steady through all the storms of his life, and never deserted its last wreck ! It is wonderful to think of the pains and misery which the man suffered ; the pressure of want, illness, remorse which he en- dured ; and that the writer was neither malignant nor melan- choly, his view of truth never warped, and his generous hu- man kindness never surrendered.* * In the Gentleman'' s Magazine for 17S6, an anecdote is related of Harry Fielding, "in whom," says the correspondent, "good-nature and philanthropy in their extreme degree were known to be the prominent features." It seems that '' some parochial taxes " for his house in Beaufort Buildings had long been demanded by the collector. " At last, Harry went off to Johnson, and obtained by a process of literary mortgage the needful sum. He was returning with it, when he met an old college chum whom he had not seen for many years. He asked the chum to dinner with him at a neighboring tavern ; and learning that he was in difficulties, emptied the contents of his pocket into his. On returning home he was informed that the collector had been twice for the money. ' Friendship has called for the money and had it,' said Fielding ; 'let the collector call again.' " It is elsewhere told of him, that being in company with the Earl of Denbigh, his 520 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. In the quarrel mentioned before, which happened on Field- ing's last voyage to Lisbon, and when the stout captain of the ship fell down on his knees and asked the sick man's pardon — " I did not suffer," Fielding says, in his hearty, manly way, his kinsman, and the conversation turninc; upon their relationship, the Earl asked him how it was that he spelled his name " Fielding," and not " Feilding," like the head of the house ? " I cannot tell, my lord," said he, " except it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to spell.'' In 1748, he was made Justice of the Peace for Westminster and Middlesex, an office then paid by fees, and very laborious, without being particularly reputable. It may be seen from his own words, in the Introduction to the " Voyage," what kind of work devolved upon him, and in what a state he was, during these last years ; and still more clearly, how he comported himself through all. " Whilst I was preparing for my journey, and when I was almost fatigued to death, with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed within the space of a week, by different gangs of street-robbers, I received a message from his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, by Mr. Carrington, the King's messenger, to attend his Grace the next morning in Lincoln's Inn Fields, upon some business of importance ; but I excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill with the great fatigues 1 had lately undergone, added to my distemper. " His Grace, however, sent Mr. Carrington the very next morning, with another summons ; with which, though in the utmost distress, I immediately complied ; but the Duke happening, unfortunately for me, to be then particularly engaged, after I had waited soraj time, sent a gentleman to discourse with me on the best plan which could be invented for these murders and robberies, which were every day com- mitted in the streets ; upon which I promised to transmit my opinion m writing to his Grace, who, as the gentleman informed me, intended to lay it before the Privy Cou'ic'.l. " Though this visit cost me a severe cold, I, notwithstanding, set myself down to work, and in about fo-ir days sent the Duke as regular a plan as I could form, with all the reasons and arguments I could bring to support it, drawn out on several sheets of paper ; and soon received a message from the Duke, by Mr. Carrington, acquainting ma that my plan was highly approved of, and that all the terms of it would be com- plied with. " The principal and most material of these terms was the immediately depositing 600/ in my hands ; at which small charge I undertook to demolish the then reigning gangs, and to put the civil policy into sucli order, that no such gangs should ever be able for the future to form themselves into bodies, or at least to remain any time formidable to tlie public. " I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the repeated advice of my physical acquaintances and the ardent desire of my warmest friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice ; in which case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire to demolish this gang of villains and cut-throats. * * « * " After some weeks the money was paid at the Treasury, and within a few days after 200/. of it had come into my hands, the whole gang of cut-throats was entirely dispersed. *■***" Further on, he says — " I will confess that my private affairs at the beginning of the winter had but a gloomy aspect; for I had not plundered the public or the poor of those sums which men, who are always ready to plunder both as much as they can, have been pleased to suspect me of taking ; on the contrary, by composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been universally practised), and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about 500/. a year of the dirtiest m.oney upon eartli, to little more than 300/., a considerable portion of which remained with my clerk." STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 521 eyes lighting up as it were with their old fire — " I did not suffer a brave man and an old man to remain a moment in that pos ture, but immediately forgave him." Indeed, I think, with his noble spirit and unconquerable generosity, Fielding reminds one of those brave men of whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks and disasters — of the officer on the African shore, when disease has destroyed the crew, and he himself is seized by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off the dan- gerous coast, and dies in the manly endeavor — of the wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who never loses his heart, who eves the danger steadily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the manly, the English Harry Fielding. STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. Roger Sterne, Sterne's father, was the second son of a numerous race, descendants of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, in the reign of James II. ; and children of Simon Sterne and Mary Jaques, his wife, heiress of Elvington, near York.* Roger was a lieutenant in Handyside's regiment, and engaged in Flanders in Queen Anne's wars. He married the daughter of a noted sutler — " N.B,, he was in debt to him," his son writes, pursuing the paternal biography — and marched through the world with this companion ; she following the regiment and bringing many children to poor Roger Sterne, The captain was an irascible but kind and simple little man, Sterne says, and informs us that his sire was run through the body at Gib- raltar, by a brother ofiicer, in a duel which arose out of a dis- pute about a goose. Roger never entirely recovered from the effects of this rencontre, but died presently at Jamaica, whither he had followed the drum. Laurence, his second child, was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, in 1 7 13, and travelled, for the first ten years of his life, on his * He came of a Suffolk family — one of whom settled in Nottinghamshire. The famous " starling " was actually the family crest. 522 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. father's march, from barrack to transport, from Ireland to Eng- lai.d * One relative of his mother's took her and her family under shelter for ten months at Mullingar : another collateral de- scendant of the Archbishop's housed them for a year at his castle near Carrickfergus. Larry Sterne was put to school at Hali- fax in England, finally was adopted by his kinsman of Elving- ton, and parted company with his father, the Captain, who marched on his path of life till he met the fatal goose, which closed his career. The most picturesque and delightful parts of Laurence Sterne's writings, we owe to his recollections of the military life. Trim's montero cap, and Le Fevre's sword, and dear Uncle Toby's roquelaure, are doubtless reminiscences of the boy, who had lived with the followers of William and Marlborough, and had beat time with his little feet to the fifes of Ramillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn flags and halberds of Malplaquet on the parade-ground at Clonmel. Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen years old. His wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the respect of his master here ; for when the usher whipped Lau- rence for writing his name on the newly whitewashed school- room ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the understrapper, and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne was a boy of genius, and would come to preferment. His cousin, the Squire of Elvington, sent Sterne to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he remained five years, and taking orders, got, through his uncle's interest, the living of Sutton and the prebendary of York. Through his wife's connections, he got the living of Stillington. He married her in 1741 ; having ardently courted the young lady for some years previously. It was not until the young lady fancied herself dying, that she made Sterne acquainted with the extent of her liking for him. One evening when he was sitting with her, with an almost broken heart to see her so ill (the Rev. Mr. Sterne's heart was a good deal broken in the course of his life), she said — " My dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live ; but I have left you every shilling of my for- tune : " a generosity which overpowered Sterne. She recovered : and so they were married, and grew heartily tired of each other * " It was in this parish (of Animo, in Wicklow), during our stay, that I had that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race, whilst the mill was going, and of being taken up unhurt ; the story is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people flocked to see me." — Sterne. STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 523 before many years were over. " Nescio quid est materia cum me," Sterne writes to one of his friends (in dog-Latin, and very sad dog-Latin too) ; " sed sum fatigatus et aegrotus de mea uxore plus quam unquam : " which means, I am sorry to say, " I don't know what is the matter with me : but I am more tired and sick of my wife than ever."* This to be sure was five-and-twenty years after Laurey had been overcome by her generosity and she by Laurey's love. Then he wrote to her of the delights of marriage, saying, " We will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Para- dise, before the arch fiend entered that indescribable scene. The kindest affections will have room to expand in our retire- ment : let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen a polyanthus blow in December ? — Some friendly wall has shel- tered it from the biting wind, No planetary influence shall reach us, but that which presides and cherishes the sweetest flowers. The gloomy family of care and distrust shall be banished from our dwelling, guarded by thy kind and tutelar deity. We will sing our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice to the end of our pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one who languishes for thy society ! — As I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears are trickling down on my paper as I trace the word L." And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault but that she bores him, that our philanthropist writes, " Sum fatiga- tus et aegrotus " — Siwi 77tortaliter in atfiore with somebody else ! That fine flower of love, that polyanthus over which Sterne snivelled so many tears, could not last for a quarter of a century ! Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with such a fountain at command should keep it to arroser one homely old lady, when a score of younger and prettier people might be refreshed from the same gushing source. t It was in * " My wife returns to Toulouse, and proposes to pass the summer at Bignaeres. I, on the contrary, go and visit my wife, the church, in Vorkshire. We all live the longer, at least the happier, for having things our own way ; this is my conjugal maxim. I own 'tis not the best of maxims, but I maintain 'tis not the worst." — Sterne's Z,(?^/erj/ 20th January, 1764. t In a collection of " Seven Letters by Sterne and his Friends '' (printed for private circulation in 1844), is a letter of M. Tollot, who was in France with Sterne and his family in 1764. Here is a paragraph : — " Nous arrivames le lendemain a Montpellier, oh nous trouvlmes notre ami Mr. Sterne, sa femme, sa fille, Mr. Huet, et quelques autres Anglaises. J'eus, je vous I'avoue, beaucoup de plaisir en revoyant le bon et agreable Tristram. * « * * II avait ete assez longtemps a Toulouse, oil il se serait amuse sans sa femme, qui le 524 ENGLISH HUMORISTS, December, 1767, that the Rev. Laurence Sterne, the famous Shanclean, the charming Yorick, the dehght of the fashionable world, the delicious di\ine, for whose sermons the whole polite world was subscribing.* the occupier of Rabelais's easy chair, only fresh stuffed and more elegant than when in possession of the cynical old curate of Meudon,t — the more than rival of the poursuivit partout, et qui voulait etre de tout. Ces dispositions dans cette bonne dame lui ont fait passer d'assez mauvais momens ; il supporte tous ces desagremens avec une patience d'ange." About four months after this very characteristic letter, Sterne wrote to the same gentleman to whom Tollot had written ; and from his letter we may extract a companion paragraph : — 11 * « * '* y\^jj -vvhich being premised, I have been for eight weeks smitten with the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent. I wish, dear cousin, thou could'st conceive (perhaps thou canst without my wishing it) how deliciously I cantered away with it the first month, two up, two down, always upon my hanc/ies, along the streets from my hotel to hers, at first once — then twice, then three times a day, till at length I was within an ace of setting up my hobby-horse in her stable for good and all. I might as well, considering how the enemies of the Lord have blasphemed thereupon. The last three weeks w'e were every hour upon the doleful ditty of parting ; and thou may'st conceive, dear cousin, how it altered my gait and air: for I went and came like any louden'd carl, and did nothing hnt joucr des sentimens with her from sun-rising even to the setting of the same ; and now she is gone to the south of France ; and to finish the comedie, I fell ill, and broke a vessel in my lungs, and half bled to death. Voil&. mon histoire ! '' Whether husband or wife had most of the '■'■ patic}ice d''ange'' may be uncertain ; but there can be no doubt which needed it most ! * " ' Tristram Shandy ' is still a great object of admiration, the man as well as the book : one is invited to dmner, where he dines, a fortnight before. As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them and humor sometimes hit and sometimes missed. Have you read his ' Sermons,' with his own comic figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them .' They are in the style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart ; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laugliter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience.'' — Gray's Letters: June 22jul, 1760. " It having been observed that there was little hospitality in London— Johnson : * Nay, sir, any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London . The man, Sterne, I have been told, has had engage- ments for three months.' Goldsmith : 'And a very dull fellow.' Johnson: 'Why no, sir ' '' — Boswell's Lifeof'Jo/nison. '' Her [Miss Monckton's] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to talk together with all imaginable case. A singular instance happened one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it. 'lam sure,' said she, 'they have affected me.' 'Why,' said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about — 'that is, because, dearest, you're a dunce.' When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth and politeness, ' Madam, if I ' had thought so, I certainly should not have said it.'' — Ibid. I" A passage or two from Sterne's " Sermons " may not be without interest here. Is not the following, levelled against the cruelties of the Church of Rome, stamped with the autograph of the author of the '' Sentimental Journey ? " — " To be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of the Inquisition — behold religion with mcrcv and justice chained down under her feet, — there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks and instruments of torment. — Hark ! — what a piteous groan ! — See the melancholy wretch who uttered it, just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock-trial, and endure the utmost pain that a studied system of religious cruelty has been able to invent. Behold this STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 525 Dean of St. Patrick's, wrote the above-quoted respectable letter to his friend in London : and it was in April of the same year that he was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of " Daniel Draper, Esq., Councillor of Bombay, and, in 1775, chief of the factory of Surat — a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe." " I got thy letter last night, Eliza," Sterne writes, "on my return from Lord Bathurst's, where I dined " — (the letter has this merit in it, that it contains a pleasant reminiscence of bet- ter men than Sterne, and introduces us to a portrait of a kind old gentleman) — " I got thy letter last night, Eliza, on my re- turn from Lord Bathurst's ; and where I was heard— as I talked of thee an hour without intermission — with so much pleasure and attention, that the good old Lord toasted your health three different times; and now he is in his 85th year, says he hopes to live long enough to be introduced as a friend to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her eclipse all other Nabobesses as much in wealth as she does already in exterior and, what is far better " (for Sterne is nothing without his morality), " in interior merit. This nobleman is an old friend of mine. You know he helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors. His body so wasted with sorrow and long confinement, you' II see every nerve and muscle as it suffers. — Observe the last movement of that horrid engine. — What convulsions it has thrown him into! Con- sider the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretched. — What exquisite torture he endures by it. — 'Tis all nature can bear. — Good God 1 see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips, willing to take its leave, but not suffered to depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell, — dragg'd out of it again to meet the flames — and the insults in his last agonies, which this principle — this principle, that there can be religion without morality — has prepared for him.'' — Sermon zyi/t. The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix. vv. i, 2, 3, concernin? a " certain Levite : " — " Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that uncom- fortable blank in the heart in such a situation : for, notwithstanding all we meet with in books, in many of which, no doubt, there are a good many handsome things said upon the sweets of retirement, &c. * * * * yet still ' it is not good for 7nan to be alone: ' nor can all which the cold-hearted pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject, ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship ; — a good heart wants some object to be kind to — and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution. " Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed him ! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way : let me be wise and religious, but let me be Man ; wherever thy Providence places me, or whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some companion in my journey, be it only to remark to, ' How our shadows lengthen as our sun goes down ; ' — to whom I may say, ' How fresh is the face of Nature ! how sweet the flowers of the field I how delicious are these fruits!' ■' — Sermon iSt/i. The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous "Captive."' The second shows that the same reflection was suggested to the Rev. Laurence by a text in Judges as by the fi/le-de-c/iambre. Sterne's Sermons were published as those of " Mr. Yorick.'" f 2 6 ENGLISH HUMOR IS TS. was always the protector of men of wit and genius, and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Prior, &c., always at his table. The manner in which his notice began of me was as singular as it was polite. He came up to me one day as I was at the Princess of Wales's court, and said, * I want to know you, Mr. Sterne, but it is fit you also should know who it is that wishes this pleasure. You have heard of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken so much ? I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast ; but have survived them ; and, despairing ever to find their equals, it is some years since I have shut up my books and closed my accounts ; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die : which I now do : so go home and dine with me.' This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty ; a disposition to be pleased, and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew : added to which a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling. " He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, with uncommon satisfac- tion — for there was only a tliird person, and of sensibility, with us : and a most sentimental afternoon till nine o'clock have we passed ! * But thou, Eliza, wert the star that conducted and enlivened the discourse ! And when I talked not of thee, still didst thou fill my mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for I am not ashamed to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best of all good girls ! — the sufferings I have sustained all night in consequence of thine, Eliza, are beyond the power of words. * * * And so thou hast fixed thy Bramin's portrait over thy writing desk, and will consult it in all doubts and difficul- ties ? — Grateful and good girl ! Yorick smiles contentedly over all thou dost : his picture does not do justice to his own com- placency. I am glad your shipmates are friendly beings " (Eliza was at Deal, going back to the Councillor at Bombay, and in- deed it was high time she should be olif). " You could least * " I am glad that you are in love : 'twill cure you at least of the spleen, which has a bad effect on both man and woman. I myself must ever have some Dulcinea in my head ; it harmonizes the soul ; and in these cases I first endeavor to make the lady believe so, or rather, L begin first to make myself believe that I am in love; but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally: '■ V amour ^ say they, ' ti'est rien suits sentiinejit.' Now, notwithstandmg they make such a pother about the 'vord, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called love."— Sterne's Letters • May 23, 1765. " P. S. — My ' Sentimental Journey ' will please Mrs. J and my Lydia " [his daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle] — " I can answer for those two. It is a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been in for some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world and our fellow-creatures better than we do — so it runs most upon those gentler passions and affections which aid so much to it." — Letters [1767.] STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 527 dispense with what is contrary to your own nature, which is soft and gentle, Eliza ; it would civilize savages — though pity were it thou should'st be tainted with the office. Write to me, my child, thy delicious letters. Let them speak the easy careless- ness of a heart that opens itself anyhow, everyhow. Such, Eliza, I write to thee ! " (The artless rogue, of course he did !) " And so I should ever love thee, most artlessly, most affec- tionately, if Providence permitted thy residence in the same section of the globe -. for I am all that honor and affection can make me ' Thy Bramin.' " The Bramin continues addressing Mrs. Draper until the departure of the " Earl of Chatham " Indiaman from Deal, on the 2d of April, 1767. He is amiably anxious about the fresh paint for Eliza's cabin ; he is uncommonly solicitous about her companions on board : " I fear the best of your shipmates are only genteel by comparison with the contrasted crew with which thou beholdest them. So was — you know who — from the same fallacy which was put upon your judgment when — but I will not mortify you ! " " You know who " was, of course, Daniel Draper, Esq., of Bombay — a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe, and about whose probable health our worthy Bramin writes with delightful candor : — " I honor you, Eliza, for keeping secret some things which, if explained, had been a panegyric on yourself. There is a dignity in venerable affliction which will not allow it to appeal to the world for pity or redress. Well have you supported that character, my amiable, my philosophic friend ! And, indeed, I begin to think you have as many virtues as my Uncle Toby's widow. Talking of widows — pray, Eliza, if ever you are such, do not think of giving yourself to some wealthy Nabob, because I design to marry you myself. My wife cannot live long, and I know not the woman I should like so well for her substitute as yourself. 'Tis true I am ninety-five in constitution, and you but twenty-five ; but what I want in youth, I will make up in wit and good-humor. Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Saccharissa. Tell me, in answer to this, that you approve and honor the proposal." Approve and honor the proposal ! The coward was writing gay letters to his friends this while, with sneering allusions to this poor foolish Bramine. Her ship was not out of the Downs, and the charming Sterne was at the " Mount Coffee-house," with a sheet of gilt-edged paper before him, offering that pre- cious treasure his heart to Lady P , asking whether it gave 528 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. her pleasure to see him unhappy? whether it added to her triumph that her eyes and lips had turned a man into a fool ? — quoting the Lord's Prayer, with a horrible baseness of blas- phemy, as a proof that he had desired not to be led into temp- tation, and swearing himself the most tender and sincere fool in the world. It was from his home at Coxwould that he wrote the Latin letter, which, I suppose, he was ashamed to put into English. I find in my copy of the Letters, that there is a note of I can't call it admiration, at Letter 112, which seems to announce that there was a No. 3 to whom the wretched worn- out old scamp was paying his addresses ; f and the year after, having come back to his lodgings in IBond Street, with his " Sentimental Journey " to launch upon the town, eager as ever for praise and pleasure — as vain, as wicked, as witty, as false as he had ever been — death at length seized the feeble wretch, and, on the i8th of March, 1768, that " bale of cadaverous goods," as he calls his body, was consigned to Pluto.* In his * " To Mrs. H . Coxwould, Nov. 15, 1767. " Now be a good dear woman, my H— — , and execute those commissions well, and when I see you I will give you a kiss — there's for you ! But I have something else for you which I am fabricating at a great rate, and that is my ' Sentimental Journey,' which shall make you cry as much as it has affected me, or 1 will give up the business of sentimental writing. * * * " I am yours, &e., &c., " T. Shandy." " To THE Earl of . " Cox-wonld, Nov. 28, 1767. " My Lord, — 'Tis with the greatest pleasure I take my pen to thank your lord- ship for your letter of inquiry about Yorick : he was worn out, both his spirits and body, with the ' Sentimental Journey.' 'Tis true, then, an author must feel himself, or his reader will not ; but I have torn my whole frame into pieces by my feelings: I believe the brain stands as much in need of recruiting as the body. Therefore I shall set out for town the twentieth of next month, after having recruited myself a week at York. I might indeed solace myself with my wife (who is come from France) ; but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental being, whatever your lordship may think to the contrary." t " In February, 176S, Laurence Sterne, his frame exhausted by long debilitating illness, expired at his lodgings in Bond Street, London. There was something in the manner of his death singularly resembling the particulars detailed by Mrs. Qnickly as attending that oi Falstaff, the compeer of Yorick for infinite jest, however unlike in other particulars. As he lay on his bed totally exhausted, he complained that his feet were cold, and requested the female attendant to chafe them. She did so, and it seemed to relieve him. He complained that the cold came up higher ; and whilst the assistant was in the act of chafing his anldes and legs, he expired without a groan. It was also remarkable that his death took place much in the manner which he him- self had wished ; and that the last offices were rendered him, not in his own house, or by the hand of kindred affection, but in an inn, and by strangers. " We are well acquainted with Sterne's features and personal appearance, to STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 529 last letter there is one sign of grace — the real affection with which he entreats a friend to be a guardian to his daughter Lydia. All his letters to her are artless, kind, affectionate and not sentimental ; as a hundred pages in his writings are beau- tiful, and full, not of surprising humor merely, but of genuine love and kindness. A perilous trade, indeed, is that of a man who has to bring his tears and laughter, his recollections, his personal griefs and joys, his private thoughts and feelings to market, to write them on paper, and sell them for money. Does he exaggerate his grief, so as to get his reader's pity for a false sensibility .'' feign indignation, so as to establish a character for virtue ? elaborate repartees, so that he may pass for a wit ? steal from other authors, and put down the theft to the credit side of his own reputation for ingenuity and learning? feign originality ? affect benevolence or misanthropy ? appeal to the gallery gods with claptraps and vulgar baits to catch applause ? How much of the paint and emphasis is necessary for the fair business of the stage, and how much of the rant and rouge is put on for the vanity of the actor. His audience trusts him : can he trust himself? How much was deliberate calculation and imposture — how much was false sensibilitv — and how much true feeling ? Where did the lie begin, and did he know Vv'here ? and where did the truth end in the art and scheme of this man of genius, this actor, this quack ? Some time since, I was in the company of a French actor, who began after dhiner, and at his own request, to sing French songs of the sort called des chansons grivoises, and which he performed admirably, and to the dissatisfaction of most persons present. Having finished these, he commenced a sentimental ballad — 4t was so charm- ingly sung, that it touched all persons present, and especially the singer himself, whose voice trembled, whose eyes filled with emotion, and who was snivelling and weeping quite genuine tears by the time his own ditty was over. I suppose Sterne had this artistical sensibility ; he used to blubber perpetually in his study, and finding his tears infectious, and that they brought him a great popularity, he exercised the lucrative gift of weeping : he utilized it, and cried on every occasion. I own which he himself frequently alludes. He was tall and thin, with a hectic and con- sumptive appearance.'' — Sir Walter Scott. " It is known that Sterne died in hired lodgings, and I have been told that his attendants robbed him even of his gold sleeve-buttons while he was expiring." — Dr. Ferriar. " He died at No. 41 (now a cheesemonger's) on the west side of Old Bond Street." ^Handbook of London. 34 r^o ENGLISH HUMORISTS. that I don't value or respect much the cheap dribble of those fountains. He fatigues me with his perpetual disquiet and his uneasy appeals to my risible or sentimental faculties. He is always looking in my face, watching his effect, uncertain whether I think him an impostor or not ; posture making, coaxing, and imploring me. " See what sensibility I have — own now that I'm very clever — do cry now, you can't resist this." The humor of Swift and Rabelais, whom he pretended to succeed, poured from them as naturally as song does from a bird ; they loose no manly dignity with it, but laugh their hearty great laugh out of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this man — who can make you laugh, who can make you cry too — never lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience repose : when you are quiet, he fancies he must rouse you, and turns over head and heels, or sidles up and whispers a nasty story. The man is a great jester, not a great humorist. He goes to work systematically and of cold blood ; paints his face, puts on his ruff and motley clothes, and lays down his carpet and tumbles on it. For instance, take the " Sentimental Journey," and see in the writer the deliberate propensity to make points and seek applause. He gets to " Dessein's Hotel," he wants a carriage to travel to Paris, he goes to the inn-yard, and begins what the actors call " business " at once. There is that little carriage (the desobligeante). " Four months had elapsed since it had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur Dessein's coachyard, and having sallied out thence but a vamped-up business at first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on Mount Sennis, it had not profited much by its adventures, but by none so little as the standing so many months unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessein's coach-yard. Much, indeed, was not to be said for it — but something might — and when a few words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them." Le tour est fait ! Paillasse has tumbled! Paillasse has jumped over the desobligeante^ cleared it, hood and all, and bows to the noble company. Does anybody believe that this is a real Sentiment? that this luxury of generosity, this gallant rescue of Misery — out of an old cab, is genuine feeling ? It is as genuine as the virtuous oratory of Joseph Surface when he begins, " The man who," &c., &c., and wishes to pass off for a saint with his credulous good-humored dupes. Our friend purchases the carriage : after turning that noto- rious old monk to good account, and effecting (like a soft and STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 531 good-natured Paillasse as he was, and very free with his money when he had it,) an exchange of snuff-boxes with the old Fran- ciscan, jogs out of Calais ; sets down in immense figures on the credit side of his account the sous he gives away to the Mon- treuil beggars ; and, at Nampont, gets out of the chaise and whimpers over that famous dead donkey, for which any sentimentalist may cry who will. It is agreeably and skilfully done — that dead jackass : like M. de Soubise's cook on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up quite tender and with a very piquante sauce. But tears, and fine feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with a dead donkey inside ! Psha, mountebank ! I'll not give thee one penny more for that trick, donkey and all ! This donkey had appeared once before with signal effect. In 1765, three years before the publication of the " Sentimental Journey," the seventh and eighth volumes of " Tristram Shandy" were given to the world, and the famous Lyons donkey makes his entry in those volumes (pp. 315, 316) : — " 'Twas by a poor ass, with a couple of large panniers at his back, who had just turned in to collect eleemosynary turnip- tops and cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious, with his two fore- feet at the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in or no. " Now 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike : there is a patient endurance of suffering wrote so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me, and to that degree that I do not like to speak unkindly to him : on the contrary, meet him where I will, whether in town or country, in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever something civil to say to him on my part ; and, as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I), I generally fall into conversation with him ; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing responses from the etchings of his coun- tenance ; and where those carry me not deep enough, in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think — as well as a man, upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me with whom I can do this. * * * With an ass I can commune forever. " ' Come, Honesty,' said I, seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate, ' art thou for coming in or going out ? ' 532 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. " The ass twisted his head round to look up the street. '" Well ! ' replied I, 'we'll wait a minute for thy driver.' " He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wist- fully the opposite way. " ' I understand thee perfectly,' answered I : * if thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well ! a minute is but a minute ; and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill spent.' " He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and, in the little peevish contentions between hunger and unsavoriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and had picked it up again. ' God help thee Jack ! ' said I, ' thou hast a bitter breakfast on't — and many a bitter day's labor, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for its wages ! 'Tis all, all bitterness to thee^whatever life is to others ! And now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, I dare say, as soot ' (for he had cast aside the stem), ' and thou hast not a friend i>erhaps in all this world that will give thee a maca- roon.' In saying this, I pulled out a paper of 'em, which I had just bought, and gave him one ; — and, at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon, than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. " When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come in. The poor beast was heavy loaded — his legs seemed to tremble under him— -he hung rather backwards, and, as I pulled at his halter, it broke in my hand. He looked up pen- sive in my face : 'Don't thrash me with it ; but if you will you may.' ' If I do,' said I, ' I'll be d^ — ~.' " A critic who refuses to see in this charming description wit, humor, pathos, a kind nature speaking, and a real sentiment, must be hard indeed to move and to please. A page or two farther we come to a description not less beautiful — a land- scape and figures, deliciously painted by one who had the keenest enjoyment and the most tremulous sensibility : — " 'Twas in the road between Nismes and Lunel, where is the best IMuscatto wine in all France : the sun was set, they had done their work : the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh, and the swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made a dead point. ' 'Tis the pipe and tambourine,' said I — ' I never will argue a point with one of your family as long as I live ; ' so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch and t'other into that. ' I'll take a dance,' said I, 'so stay you here.' STEJiNE AiVD GOLDSMITH. 533 " A sun-burnt daughter of labor rose up from the group to meet me as I advanced towards them ; her hair, wliich was of a dark chestnut approaching to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single tress. " ' We want a cavalier,' said she, holding out both her hands, as if to offer them. ' And a cavalier you shall have,' said I, taking hold of both of them. ' We could not have done without you,' said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, and leading me up with the other. " A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he had added a tambourine of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank. ' Tie me up this tress instantly,' said Nannette, putting a piece of string into my hand. It taught me to forget I was a stranger. The whole knot fell down — we had been seven years acquainted. The youth struck the note upon the tambourine, his pipe fol- lowed, and off we bounded, " The sister of the youth — who had stolen her voice from heaven — sang alternately with her brother. 'Twas a Gascoigne roundelay: '• Vivala joia,fidon la tristessa.' The nymphs joined in unison, and their swains an octave below them. " Viva lajoia was in Nannette's lips, viva la joia in her eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us. She looked amiable. Why could I not live and end my days thus ? ' Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows ! ' cried I, ' why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid ? ' Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious. ' Then 'tis time to dance off,' quoth I." And with this pretty dance and chorus, the volume artfully concludes. Even here one can't give the whole description. There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption — a hint, as of an impure presence.* * " With regard to Sterne, and the charge of licentiousness which presses so seri- ously upon his character as a writer, I would remark that there is a sort of knowing- ness, the wit of which depends, ist, on the modesty it gives pain to; or, 2dly, on the innocence and innocent ignorance over which it triumphs ; or, 3dly, on a certain os- cillation in the individual's own mind between the remaining good and the encroach- ing evil of his nature — a sort of dallying with the devil — a fiuxionary art of combining courage and cowardice, as when a man snuffs a candle with his fingers for the first time, or better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring with which a child touches a hot tea-urn, because it has been forbidden ; so that the mind has its own white and black angel ; the same or similar amusement as may be supposed to take place be- tween an old debauchee and a prude — the feeling resentment, on the one hand, from a 534 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours, but not all. The foul Satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly : the last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked — the last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon. I think of these past writers and of one who lives amongst us now, and am grateful for the innocent laughter and the sweet and unsullied page which the author of " David Copperfield " gives to my children. " Jete sur cette boule, Laid, chetif et souffrant ; Etouffe dans la foule, Faute d'etre assez grand : " Une plainte touchante De ma bouche sortit. Le bon Dieu me dit : Chante, Chante, pauvre petit ! " Chanter, ou je m'abuse, Est ma tache ici bas. Tons ceux qu'ainsi j'amuse, Ne m"aimeront-ils pas ? " In those charming lines of Beranger, one may fancy de- scribed the career, the sufferings, the genius, the gentle nature of Goldsmith, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who, of the millions whom he has amused, doesn't love him ? To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a man ! * A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and prudential anxiety to preserve appearances and have a character ; and, on the other, an inward sympathy with the enemy. We have only to suppose society innocent, and then nine-tenths of this sort of wit would be like a stone that falls in snow, making no sound, because exciting no resistance ; the remainder rests on its being an offence against the good manners of human nature itself. " This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be combined with wit, drollery fancy, and even humor ; and we have only to regret the misalliance ; but that the latter are quite distinct from the former, may be made evident by abstracting in our imagination the morality of the characters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which are all antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the rest of ' Tristram Shandy,' and by supposing, instead of them, the presence of two or three callous de- bauchees. The result will be pure disgust. Sterne cannot be too severely censured for thus using the best dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for the basest." — Coleridge : Literary Remains, vol. i. pp. 141, 142. * " He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never forgets what Is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy and purity of feeling distinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence to the generosity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last guinea. * * * * " The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleasing truth with which the principal characters are designed, make tlie' Vicar of Wakefield ' one of the STERN'S AXD GOLDSMITH. 535 affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and achieve name and fortune ; and after years of dire struggle, and neglect and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home : he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant ; in repose it longs for change : as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-mor- row, or fn writing yesterday's elegy ; and he would fly away this hour, but that a cage and necessity keeps him. What is the charm of his verse, of his style, and humor.? His sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns ? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper ? Whom did he ever hurt ? He carries no weapon, save the harp on which he plays to you ; and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the cap- tains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of the " Vicar of Wakefield " * he has found entry into most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever employed. ''**** We read the ' Vicar of Wakefield ''in youth and in age — we return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature." — Sir Walter Scott. * " Now Herder came,'' says Goethe in his Autobiography, relating his first ac- quaintance with Goldsmith's masterpiece, " and together with his great knowledge brought many other aids, and the later publications besides. Among these he an- nounced to us the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' as an excellent work, with the German translation of which he would make us acquainted by reading it aloud to us him- self. * * * * " A Protestant country clergyman is perhaps the most beautiful subject for a modern idyl ; lie appears like Melchizedeck, as priest and king in one person. To tlie most innocent situation which can be imagined on earth, to that of a husband- man, he is, for the most part, united by similarity of occupation as well as by equality in family relationships ; he is a father, a master of a family, an agriculturist, and thus perfectly a member of the community. On this pure, beautiful earthly foundation rests his higher caUing ; to him is it given to guide men through life, to take care of their spiritual education, to bless them at all the leading epochs of their existence, to instruct, to strengthen, to console them, and if consolation is not sufficient for the present, to call up and guarantee the hope of a happier future. Imagine such a man with pure human sentiments, strong enough not to deviate from them under any cir- 536 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. every castle and every hamiet in Europe. Not one of us, how- ever busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an evening "'ith him, and undergone the charm of his delightful music. Goldsmith's father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, whom we all of us know.* Swift was yet alive, when the little cumstances, and by this already elevated above the multitude of whom one cannot expect purity and firmness ; give him the learning necessary for his office, as well as a cheerful, equable activity, which is even passionate, as it neglects no moment to do good — and you will have him well endowecl. But at the same time add the necessary limitation, so that he must not only pause in a small circle, but may also, perchance, pass over to a smaller ; grant him good-nature, placability, resolution, and everything else praiseworthy that springs from a decided character, and over all this a cheerful spirit of compliance, and a smiling toleration of his own failings and those of others, — then you will have put together pretty well the image of our excellent Wakefield. " The delineation of this character on his course of life through joys and sorrows, the ever-increasing interest of the story, by the combination of the entirely natural with the strange and the singular, make this novel one of the best which has ever been written ; besides this, it has the great advantage that it is quite moral, nay, in a pure sense. Christian — represents the reward of a good-will and perseverance in the right, strengthens an unconditional confidence in God, and attests the final triumph of good over evil ; and all this without a trace of cant or pedantry. The author was preserved from both of these by an elocution of mind that shows itself througliout in the form of irony, by which this little work must appear to us as wise as it is amiable. The author, Dr. Goldsmith, has, without question, a great insight into the moral world, into its strength and its infirmities ; but at the same time he can thankfully acknowledge that he is an Englishman, and reckon highly the advantages which his country and his nation afford him. The family, with the delineation of which he occupies himself, stands upon one of the last steps of citizen comfort, and yet comes in contact with the highest ; its narrow circle, which becomes still more contracted, touches upon the great world through the natural and civil course of things ; this little skiff floats on the agitated waves of English life, and in weal or woe it has to expect injury or help from the vast fleet which sails around it. " I may suppose that my readers know this work, and have iit in memory ; who- ever hears it named for the first time here, as well as he who is induced to read it again, will thank me." — Goethe : Truth a7id Poetry ; from my own Life. (English Translation, vol. i. pp. 378, 379.) " He seems from infancy to have been compounded of two natures, one bright, the other blundering ; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his cradle by the ' good people ' who haunted his birthplace, the old goblin mansion on the banks of the Inny. " He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may so tenn it, throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no avail at school, academy, or college : they unfit him for close study and practical science, and render him heedless of everything that does not address itself to his poetical imagination and genial and festive feelings ; they dispose him to break away from restraint, to stroll about hedges, green lanes, and haunted streams, to revel with jovial companions, or to rove the country like a gipsy in quest of odd adventures.* * * * " Though his circumstances often compelled him to associate with the poor, they never could betray him into companionship with the depraved. His relish for humor, and for the study of character, as we have before observed, brought him often into convivial company of a vulgar kind ; but he discriminated between their vul- garity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store familiar features of life which form the staple of his most popular writings." — Washington Irving. * " The family of Goldsmith, Goldsmyth, or, as it was occasionally written, Gould smith, is of considerable standing in Ireland, and seems always to have held a respec- STEHNE AND GOLDSMITH. 537 Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child's birth, Charles Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath, that sweet " Auburn " which every person who hears me has seen in fancy. Here the kind parson * brought up his eight children ; and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all the world loved him. He had a crow'd of poor de- pendants besides those hungry children. He kept an open table ; round which sat flatterers and poor friends, who laughed at the honest rector's many jokes, and ate the produce of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish house in the present day can fancy that one of Lissoy. The old beggar still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf ; the maimed old solcier still gets his potatoes and butter-milk ; the poor cotter still asks his honor's charity, and prays God bless his reverence for the sixpence ; the ragged pensioner still takes his place by right and sufferance. There's still a crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlor-table, profusion, con- fusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish depend- ants who take a percentage of his earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith f left but little provision for his hungry race when table station in society. Its origin is Enc;lish, supjaosed to be derived from that which was long settled at Crayford in Kent." — Prior's Life of Goldsmith. Oliver's father, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather were clergymen ; and two of them married clergymen's daughters. * " At church, with meek and unaffected grace. His looks adorn'd the venerable place ; Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. The service past, around the pious man. With steady zeal each honest rustic ran ; E'en children follow'd with endearing wile. And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile. His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest ; To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form. Swells Irom the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head." — The Deserted Village. *"In May this year (176S), he lost his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, for whom he liad been unable to obtain preferment in the church. * * * « " * * * To the curacy of Kilkenny West, the modern stipend of which, forty pounds a year, is sufficiently celebrated by his brother's lines. It has been stated that Mr. Goldsmith added a school, which, after having been held at more than one place in the vicinity, was finally fixed at Lissoy. Here his talents and industry gave it celebrity, and under his care the sons of many of the neighboring gentry received ^^8 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. death summoned him ; and one of his daughters being engaged to a Squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith im- poverished the rest of his family to provide the girl with a dowry. The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver's face, when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a dunce : Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, took him in hand ; and from Paddy Byrne, he was transmitted to a clergy- man at Elphin. When a child was sent to school in those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed under Mr. So-and-so's ferule. Poor little ancestors ! It is hard to think how ruthlessly you were birched ; and how much of needless whipping and tears our small forefathers had to undergo ! A relative — kind uncle Contarine, took the main charge of little Noll ; who went through his school-days righteously doing as little work as he could : robbing orchards, playing at ball, and making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to him. Every- body knows the story of that famous " Mistake of a Night," when the young schoolboy, provided -with a guinea and a nag, rode up to the "best house" in Ardagh, called for the land- lord's company over a bottle of wine at supper, and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning ; and found, when he asked for the bill, that the best house was Squire Featherstone's, and not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know every story about Goldsmith ? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness, and called him ^sop ; and little Noll made his repartee of " Her- alds proclaim aloud this saying — see ^sop dancing and his monkey playing." One can fancy a queer pitiful look of hu- mor and appeal upon that little scarred face — the funny little dancing figure, the funny little brogue. In his life, and his writ- their education. A fever breaking out among the boys about 1765, they dispersed for a time, but re-assembhng at Athlone, he continued his scholastic labors there until the time of his death, which happened, like that of his brother, about the forty- fifth year of his age. He was a man of an excellent heart and an amiable disposi- tion." — Prior's Goldsmith. " Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee : Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain." — TRe Traveller, STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 539 ings, which are the honest expression of it, he is constantly be- wailing that homely face and person ; anon, he surveys them in the glass ruefully, and presently assumes the most comical dig- nity. He likes to deck out his little person in splendor and fine colors. He presented himself to be examined for ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did not like to go into the church, because he was fond of colored clothes. When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook a black velvet suit, and looked as big and grand as he could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat : in better days he bloomed out in plum-color, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendors the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to this day : per- haps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled the little account in Hades.* They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dub- lin, on which the name of O. Goldsmith was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it ? Not the young sizar's, who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure : f he learned his way early to the pawnbroker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street-singers, who paid him a crown for a poem : and his pleas- ure was to steal out at night and hear his verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his room, and took the box on the ear so much to heart, that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to go to America, but when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home rue- fully, and the good folks there killed their calf — it was but a lean one — and welcomed him back. After college, he hung about his mother's house, and lived for some years the life of a buckeen — passed a month with this relation and that, a year with one patron, a great deal of time at the public-house. $ Tired of this life, it was resolved that he * " When Goldsmith died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William Filby (amounting in all to 79/-) was for clothes supplied to this nephew Hodson.'' — Forster's Goldsmith, p. 520. As this nephew Hodson ended his days (see the same page) " a prosperous Irish gentleman," it is not unreasonable to wish that he had cleared off Mr. Filby's bill. t " Poor fellow ! He hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table.'' — Cumberland's Memoirs. \ " These youthful follies, like the fermentation of liquors, often disturb the mind only in order to its future refinement : a life spent in phlegmatic apathy resembles those liquors which never ferment, and are consequently always muddy." — Gold- smith : Memoir of Voltaire. " He [Johnson] said ' Goldsmith was a plant that flowered late. There appeared nothing remarkable about him when he was young.' " — Boswell. 54° ENGLISH HUMORISTS. should go to London, and study at the Temple ; but he got no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him for his outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home. Then he determined to be a doctor, and uncle Conta- rine helped him to a couple of years at Edinburgh, Then from Edinburgh he felt that he ought to hear the famous professors of Leyden and Paris, and wrote most amusing pompous letters to his uncle about the great Farheim, Du Petit, and Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to follow. If uncle Contarine believed those letters — if Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth related of his going to Cork, with the, purpose of embarking for America, of his having paid his passage-money, and having sent his kit on board ; of the anony- mous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage, in a nameless ship, never to return ; if uncle Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a very simj^le pair ; as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his clerical exam- ination, after failing in his plan for studying the law, took leave of these projects and of his parents, and set out for Edinburgh, he saw mother, and uncle, and lazy Ballymahon, and green native turf, and sparkling river for the last time. He was never to look on old Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her. " But me not destined such delights to share, My prime of life in wandering spent and care, Impelled, with steps unceasing, to pursue Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view ; That like the circle bounding earth and skies Allures from far, yet, as 1 follow, flies : My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, And find no spot of all the world my own." I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which ena- bled Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse and poverty, always to retain a cheerful spirit, and to keep his manly benevolence and love of truth intact, as if these treasures had been confided to him for the public benefit, and he was accountable to poster- ity for their honorable employ ; and a constancy equally happy and admirable I think was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of a life's storm, and rain, and bitter weather,* The poor fellow * " An ' inspired idiot,' Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him [Johnson], * * * * Yet, on the whole, tliere is no evil in the ' gooseberry-fool,' but rathwr much good ; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than Johnson's ; and all the more genuine STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 541 was never so friendless but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy in the dreary London court. He could give the coals in that queer coal- scuttle we read of to his poor neighbor ; he could give away his blankets in college to the poor widow, and Avarm himself as he best might in the feathers : he could pawn his coat to save his landlord from jail : when he was a school-usher he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, and the good-natured school- master's wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. When he met his pupils in later life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them still. " Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds ? " he asked of one of his old pupils. " Not seen it ? not bought it ? Sure, Jack, if your picture had been published, I'd not have been without it half an hour." His purse and his heart were everybody's, and his friends' as much as his own. When he was at the height of his reputation, and the Earl of Northumberland, going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be of any service to Dr. Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother, and not himself, to the great man. " My patrons," he gallantly said, " are the book- sellers, and I want no others." * Hard patrons they were, and hard work he did ; but he did not complain much : if in his early writings some bitter words escaped him, some allusions to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these expressions when his works were republished, and better days seemed to open for him ; and he did not care to complain that printer or publisher that he himself could never become conscious of it, — though unhappily never cease attempting to become so : the author of the genuine ' Vicar of Wakefield,' nill he will he, must needs fly towards such a mass of genuine manhood.'' — Carlyle's Essays (2d ed.), vol. iv. p. 91. * " At present, the few poets of England no longer depend on the great for sub- sistence ; they have now no other patrons but the public, and the public, collectively considered, is a good and a generous master. It is indeed too frequently mistaken as to the merits of every candidate for favor ; but to make amends, it is never mistaken long. A performance indeed maybe forced for a time into reputation, but, destitute of real merit, it soon sinks ; time, the touchstone of what is truly valuable, will soon discover the fraud, and an author should never arrogate to himself any share of suc- cess till his works have been read at least ten years with satisfaction. " A man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly sensible of their value. Every polite member of the community, by buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The ridicule, therefore, of living jn a garret might have been wit in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no longer true. A writer of real merit now may easily be rich, if his heart be set only on fortune : and for those who have no merit, it is but fit that such should remain in merited obscurity." — GOLDSMITH : Citizen of the World, Let. 84. 542 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. had overlooked his merit, or left him poor. The Court face was turned from honest Oliver, the Court patronized Beattie ; the fashion did not shine on him — fashion adored Sterne.* Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of his day. A little — not ill-humor, but plaintiveness — a little betrayal of wounded pride which he showed render him not the less amiable. The author of the " Vicar of Wakefield " had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the MS. for two years ; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne ; a little angry when Colman's actors declined their parts in his delightful comedy, when the manager refused to have a scene painted for it, and pronounced its damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with him ; but he had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, and the great Gibbon, and the great Burke, and the great Fox — friends and admirers illustrious indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years before, sat round Pope's table. Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper kept no account of all the pains which he endured during the early period of his literary career. Should any man of letters in our day have to bear up against such, heaven grant he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast. The insults to which he had to submit are shocking to read of — slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity perverting his commonest motives and actions ; he had his share of these, and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and weak, and full of love, should have * Goldsmith attacked Sterne obviously enough, censuring his indecency, and slighting his wit, and ridiculing his manner, in the 53d letter in the " Citizen of the World.''' " As in common conversation," says he, "the best way to make the audience laugh is by first laughing yourself ; so in writing, the properest manner is to show an attempt at humor, which will pass upon most for humor in reality. To effect this, readers must be treated with the most perfect familiarity ; in one page the author is to make them a low bow, and in the next to pull them by the nose; he must talk in riddles, and then send' them to bed in order to dream for the solu- tion,'' &c. Stern-i's humorous mot on the subject of the gravest part of the charges, then, as now, made against him, may perhaps be quoted here, from the excellent, the respect- able Sir Walter Scott : — " Soon after ' Tristram ' had appeared, Sterne asked a Yorkshire lady of fortune and condition whether she had read his book. ' I have not, Mr. Sterne,' was the answer ; ' and to be plain with you, I am informed it is not proper for female perusal.' ' My dear good lady,' replied the author, ' do not be gulled by such stories ; the book is like your young heir there ' (pointing to a child of three years old, who was rolling on the carpet in his white tunic) : ' he shows at times a good deal that is usually concealed, but it is all in perfect innocence.' " STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. ^43 had to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to undergo — < to own to fault and deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths are in the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been forced to borrow money. " He was wild, sir," John- son said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with his great, wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart — " Dr. Gold- smith was wild, sir ; but he is so no more." Ah ! if we pity the good and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently with him from whom misery extorts not only tears, but shame ; let us think humbly and charitably of the human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low. Whose turn may it be to-morrow? What weak heart, confident before trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible ? Cover the good man who has been vanquished — cover his face and pass on. For the last half-dozen years of his life. Goldsmith was far removed from the pressure of any ignoble necessity : and in the receipt, indeed, of a pretty large income from the book- sellers his patrons. Had he lived but a few years more, his public fame would have been as great as his private reputation, and he might have enjoyed alive a part of that esteem which his country has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has touched on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Except in rare in- stances, a man is known in our profession, and esteemed as a skilful workman, years before the lucky hit which trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength of his age, and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers and friends the most illustrious literary men of his time,* fame and prosperity might have been in store for Goldsmith, had fate so willed it : and, at forty-six, had not sudden disease carried him off. I say prosperity rather than competence, for it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must be remembered that he owed 2,000/. when he died. " Was ever poet," Johnson asked, " so trusted before ? " As has * " Goldsmith told us that he was now bus}' in writing a Natural History ; and that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken lodgings at a farmer's house, near to the six-mile stone in the Edgware Road, and had carried down his books in two returned postchaises. He said he believed the farmer's family thought him an odd character, similar to that in which the Spectator appeared to his landlady and her children; he was The Gentleman. Mr. Mickle, the translator of the 'Lusiad,' and I, went to visit him at this place a few days aftei-wards. He was not at home ; but having a curiosity to see his apartment, we went in, and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a blacklead pencil." — Boswell. 544 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry beggars and lazy dependants. If they came at a lucky time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and watched his pay-day), he gave them of his money : if they begged on empty-purse days he gave them his promissory bills : or he treated them to a tavern where he had credit ; or he obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats, for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load of debt and labor, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, running from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new com- edies, all sorts of new literary schemes, flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure — at last, at five and forty, death seized him and closed his career.* I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his, and passed up the staircase, which Johnson, and Burke, and Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Gold- smith — the stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door.f Ah, it was a dif- ferent lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of all fond verses, in which he fancies he revisits Auburn — " Here, as I take my solitary rounds, Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, * " When Goldsmith was dying, Dr. Turton said to him, ' Your pulse is in greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever which you have ; is your mind at ease ? ' Goldsmith answered it was not." — Dr. Johnson (in Bos-well). " Chambers, you find, is gone far, and poor Goldsmith is gone much further. He died of a fever, exasperated, as I believe, by the fear of distress. He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. But let not his failings be remembered; he was a very great man." — Dr. Johnson to Boszivll, July '~,fh, 1774. t " When Burke was told [of Goldsmith's death] he burst into tears. Reynolds was in his painting-room when the messenger went to him ; but at once he laid his pencil aside, which in times of great family distress he had not been known to do, left his painting-room, and did not re-enter it that day. " The staircase of Brick Court is said to have been filled with mourners, the reverse of domestic ; women without a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had come to weep for : outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic mourners, too. His coffin was re-opened at the request of Miss Horncck and her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them !) that a lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she died, after nearly seventy years," — Forster's Goldsmith, STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 545 And, many a year elapsed, return to view Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train, Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs — and God has given my share — I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; To husband out life's taper at the close. And keep the flame from wasting by repose ; I still had hopes — for pride attends us still — Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill. Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw ; And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first he flew — I still had hopes — my long vexations past, Here to return, and die at home at last. blest retirement, friend to life's decline ! Retreats from care that never must be mine — How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease ; Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! For him no wretches born to work and weep Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep ; No surly porter stands in guilty state To spurn imploring famine from the gate : But on he moves to meet his latter end. Angels around befriending virtue's friend ; Sinks to the grave with unperceived decay, Whilst resignation gently slopes the way ; And all his prospects brightening to the last. His heaven commences ere the world be past." In these verses, I need not say with what melody, with what touching truth, with what exquisite beauty of compari- son — as indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this honest soul — the whole character of the man is told — his bumble confession of faults and weakness ; his pleasant little vanity, and desire that his village should admire him ; his simple scheme of good in which everybody was to be happy — no beg- gar was to be refused his dinner — nobody in fact was to work much, and he to be the harmless chief of the Utopia, and the monarch of the Irish Yvetot. He would have told again, and without fear of their failing, those famous jokes * which had * " Goldsmith's incessant desire of being conspicuous in company was the occasion of his sometimes appearing to such disadvantage, as one should hardly have supposed possible in a man of his genius. When his literary reputation had risen deservedly high, and his society was much courted, he became very jealous of the extraordinary attention which was everywhere paid to Johnson. One evening, in a circle of wits, he found fault with me for talking of Johnson as entitled to the honor 35 546 ENGLISH HUMORISTS. hung fire in London ; he would have talked of his great friends of the Club — of my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my Lord Nugent — sure he knew them intimately, and was hand and glove with some of the best men in town — and he would have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, and of Sir Joshua who had painted him — and he would have told wonderful sly stories of Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Mad- ame Cornelis' ; and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessamy Bride — the lovely Mary Horneck. The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the prettiest recollections of Goldsmith's Hfe. She and her beauti- ful sister, who married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous amateur artist of those days, when Gilray had but just begun to try his powers^ were among the kindest and dearest of Gold- smith's many friends, cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad with him, made him welcome at their home, and gave him of unquestionable superiority. ' Sir,' said he, ' you are for making a monarchy of what should be a republic' " He was still more mortified, when, talking in a company with fluent vivacity, and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all present, a German who sat next him, and perceived Johnson rolling himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ' Stay, stay — Toctor Shonson is going to zay zomething.' This was no doubt very provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation. " It may also be observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be treated with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential and important. An instance of this occurred in a small particular. Johnson had a way of contracting the names of his friends, as Beauclerk, Beau ; Boswell, Bozzy. * * * * i remember one day, when Tom Davies was telling that Dr. Johnson said, — ' We are all in labour for a name to Goldfs play,' Goldsmith seemed displeased that such a liberty should be taken with his name, and said, ' I have often desired him not to call me Goldy.' " This is one of several of Boswell's depreciatory mentions of Goldsmith — which may well irritate biographers and admirers — and also those who take that more kindly and more profound view of Boswell's own character, which was opened up by Mr. Carlyle's famous article on his book. No wonder that Mr. Irving calls Boswell an " incarnation of toadyism.'' And the worst of it is, that Johnson himself has suffered from this habit of the Laird of Auchinleck's. People are apt to forget under what Boswellian stimulus the great Doctor uttered many hasty things: — things no more indicative of the nature of the depths of his character than the phosphoric gleaming of the sea, when struck at night, is indicative of radical corruption of nature ! In truth, it is clear enough on the whole that both Johnson and Goldsmith appre- ciated each other, and that they mutually knew it. They were — as it were, tripped up and flung against each other, occasionally, by the blundering and silly gambolling of people in company. Something must be allowed for Boswell's " rivalry for Johnson's good graces '' with Oliver (as Sir Walter Scott has remarked), for Oliver was intimate with the Doctor before his biographer was, — and, as we all remember, marched off with him to " take tea with Mrs. Williams " before Boswell had advanced to that honorable degree of intimacy. But, in truth, Boswell — though he perhaps showed more talent in his delineation of the Doctor than is generally ascribed to him — had not faculty to take a fair view of two great men at a time. Besides, as Mr. Forster justly remarks, " he was impatient of Goldsmith from the first hour of their acquaintance." — Life and Adventures, p. 292. STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 54^ many a pleasant holiday. He bought his finest clothes to figure at their country house at Barton — he wrote them droll verses. They loved him, laughed at him, played him tricks and made him happy. He asked for a loan from Garrick, and Garrick kindly supplied him, to enable him to go to Barton : but there were to be no more holidays, and only one brief struggle more for poor Goldsmith. A lock of his hair was taken from the coffin and given to the Jessamy Bride. She lived quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her an old lady, but beautiful still, in Northcote's painting-room, who told the eager critic how proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her. The younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of him. Vol. i. 63, 64. " I was only five years old," he says, " when Goldsmith took me on his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee with my father, and began to play with me, which amiable act I returned, with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very smart slap on the face : it must have been a tingler, for it left the marks of my spiteful paw on his cheek. This infan- tile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked up by my indignant father in an adjoining room to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably, which was no bad step towards my liberation, since those who were not inclined to pity me might be likely to set me free for the purpose of abating a nuisance. " At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy, and that generous friend was no other than the man I had so wantonly molested by assault and battery — it was the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still par- tially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and sobbed as he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. Goldsmith seized the propitious moment of returning good-hu- mor, when he put down the candle and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to be in the room, and a shilling under each. The shillings he told me were England, France, and Spain. ' Hey presto cockalorum ! ' cried the Doctor, and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found con- gregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown ; but, as also I was no conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure. ***** From that time, whenever the Doctor 548 ENGLISH HUM ORIS TS. came to visit my father, ' I plucked his gown to share the good man's smile ;' a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older ; but it did not last long : my senior playmate died in his forty- fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh. * * * in all the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, his ' compassion for another's woe' was always pre- dominant ; and my trivial story of his humoring a froward child weighs but as a feather in the recorded scale of his be- nevolence. Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like — but mer- ciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave ; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him ; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph — and of the wonderful and unani- mous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it. His humor delighting us still : his song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it : his words in all our mouths, his very weaknesses beloved and familiar — his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us : to do gentle kindnesses : to succor with sweet charity : to soothe, caress, and forgive : to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor. His name is the last in the list of those men of humor who have formed the themes of the discourses which you have heard so kindly, • Long before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or dreamed of the possibility of the good-fortune which has brought me so many friends, I was at issue with some of my literary brethren upon a point — which they held from tradition I think rather than experience — that our profession was neglected in this country ; and that men of letters were ill-received and held in slight esteem. It would hardly be grateful of me now to alter my old opinion that we do meet with good-wilL and kind- ness, with generous helping hands in the time of our necessity, with cordial and friendly recognition. What claim had any one of these of whom I have been speaking, but genius ? What re- turn of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all ? What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them, but that which follows reckless habits and careless STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 549 lives ? For these faults a wit must sufter like the dullest prodi- gal that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor if he wears the coat ; his children must go in rags if he spends his money at the tavern ; he can't come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if he stops on the road and gambles away his last shilling at Dublin. And he must pay the social penalty of these follies too, and expect that the world will shun the man of bad habits, that women will avoid the man of loose life, that prudent folks will close their doors as a precaution, and before a demand should be made on their pockets by the needy prodi- gal. With what difficulty had any one of these men to con- tend, save that eternal and mechanical one of want of means and lack of capital, and of which thousands of young lawyers, young doctors, young soldiers and sailors, of inventors, manu- facturers, shopkeepers, have to complain ? Hearts as brave and resolute as ever beat in the breast of any wit or poet, sicken and break daily in the vain endeavor and unavailing struggle against life's difficulty. Don't we see daily ruined inventors, gray-haired midshipmen, baulked heroes, blighted curates, bar- risters pining a hungry life out in chambers, the attorneys never mounting to their garrets, whilst scores of them are rapping at the door of the successful quack below ? If these suffer, who is the author, that he should be exempt ? Let us bear our ills with the same constancy with which others endure them, accept our manly part in life, hold our own, and ask no more. I can conceive of no kings or laws causing or curing Goldsmith's im- providence, or Fielding's fatal love of pleasure, or Dick Steele's mania for running races with the constable. You never can outrun that sure-footed officer — not by any swiftness or by dodges devised by any genius, however great ; and he carries off the Tatler to the sponging-house, or taps the Citizen of the World on the shoulder as he would any other mortal. Does society look down on a man because he is an author ? I suppose if people want a buffoon they tolerate him only in so far as he is amusing ; it can hardly be expected that they should . respect him as an equal. Is there to be a guard of honor pro- vided for the author of the last new novel or poem ? how long is he to reign, and keep other potentates out of possession ? He re- tires, grumbles, and prints a lamentation that literature is de- spised. If Captain A. is left out of Lady B.'s parties he does not state that the army is despised : if Lord C. no longer asks • Councellor D. to dinner, Counsellor D. does not announce that the bar is insulted. He is not fair to society if he enters it with this suspicion hankering about him ; if he is doubtful 55° ENGLISH HUMORISTS. about his reception, how hold up his head honestly, and look frankly in the face that world about which he is full of suspi- cion ? Is he place-hunting, and thinking in his mind that he ought to be made an Ambassador, like Prior, or a Secretary of State, like Addison ? his pretence of equality falls to the ground at once : he is scheming for a patron, not shaking the hand of a friend, when he meets the world. Treat such a man as he deserves ; laugh at his buffoonery, and give him a dinner and a hon jour ; laugh at his self-sufficiency and absurd assump- tions of superiority, and his equally ludicrous airs of martyrdom : laugh at his flattery and his scheming, and buy it, if it's worth the having. Let the wag have his dinner and the hireling his pay, if you want him, and make a profound bow to the grand homme incotnpris, and the boisterous martyr, and show him the door. The great world, the great aggregate experience, has its good sense, as it has its good-humor. It detects a pretender, as it trusts a loyal heart. It is kind in the main : how should it be otherwise than kind, when it is so wise and clear-headed ? To any literary man who says, " It despises my profession," I say, with all my might — no, no, no. It may pass over your individual case — how many a brave fellow has failed in the race and perished unknown in the struggle ! — but it treats you as you merit in the main. If you serve it, it is not unthankful ; if you please, it is pleased ; if you cringe to it, it detects you, and scorns you if you are mean ; it returns your cheerfulness with its good-humor; it deals not ungenerously with your weakness ; it recognizes most kindly your merits ; it gives you a fair place and fair play. To any one of those men of whom we have spoken was it in the main ungrateful ? A king might refuse Goldsmith a pension, as a publisher might keep his master- piece and the delight of all the world in his desk for two years ; but it was mistake, and not ill-will. Noble and illustrious names of Swift, and Pope, and Addison ! dear and honored memory of Goldsmith and Fielding ! kind friends, teachers, benefactors ! who shall say that our country, which continues to bring such an unceasing tribute of applause, admi- ration, love, sympathy, does not do honor to the Uterary calling in the honor which it bestows upon you ! THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. By MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. I. OF THE DISINTERMENT OF NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA. My Dear , — It is no easy task in this world to distinguish between what is great in it, and what is mean ; and many and many is the puzzle that I have had in reading History (or the works of fiction which go by that name), to know whether I should laud up to the skies, and endeavor, to the best of my small capabilities, to imitate the remarkable character about whom I was reading, or whether I should fling aside the book and the hero of it, as things altogether base, unworthy, laugh- able, and get a novel, or a game of billiards, or a pipe of tobacco, or the report of the last debate in the House, or any other employment which would leave the mind in a state of easy vacuity, rather than pester it with a vain set of dates relating to actions which are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a parcel of names of people whom it can do one no earthly good to remember. It is more than probable, my love, that you are acquainted with what is called Grecian and Roman history, chiefly from perusing, in very early youth, the little sheepskin-bound vol- umes of the ingenious Dr. Goldsmith, and have been indebted for your knowledge of our English annals to a subsequent study of the more voluminous works of Hume and Smollett. The first and the last-named authors, dear Miss Smith, have written each an admirable histor}'^, — that of the reverend Dr. Primrose, Vicar of Wakefield, and that of Mr. Robert Bramble, of Bramble 554 ^^^ SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. Hall — in both of which works you will find true and instructive pictures of human life, and which you may always think over with advantage. But let me caution you against putting any considerable trust in the other works of these authors, which were placed in your hands at school and afterwards, and in which you were taught to believe. Modern historians, for the most part, know very little, and, secondly, only tell a little of what they know. As for those Greeks and Romans whom you have read of in "sheepskin," were you to know really what those monsters were, you would blush all over as red as a hollyhock, and put down the history-book in a fury. Many of our English worthies are no better. You are not in a situation to know the real characters of any one of them. They appear before you in their public capacities, but the individuals you know not. Suppose, for instance, your mamma had purchased her tea in the Borough from a grocer living there by the name of Greenacre : suppose you had been asked out to dinner, and the gentleman of the house had said : " Ho ! Francois ! a glass of champagne for Miss Smith ; " — Courvoisier would have served you just as any other footman would : you would never have known that there was anything extraordinary in these individuals, but would have thought of them only in their respective public characters of Grocer and Footman. This, Madam, is History, in which a man always appears dealing with the world in his apron, or his laced livery, but which has not the power or the leisure, or, perhaps, is too high and mighty to condescend to follow and study him in his privacy. Ah, my dear, when big and little men come to be measured rightly, and great and small actions to be weighed properly, and people to be stripped of their royal robes, beggars' rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbowed coats, and the like — or the contrary say, when souls come to be stripped of their wicked deceiving bodies, and turned out stark naked as they were before they were born — what a strange startling sight shall we see, and what a pretty figure shall some of us cut ! Fancy how we shall see Pride, with his Stultz clothes and pad- ding pulled off, and dwindled down to a forked radish ! Fancy some Angelic virtue, whose white raiment is suddenly whisked over his head, showing us cloven feet and a tail ! Fancy Humil- ity, eased of its sad load of cares and want and scorn, walking up to the very highest place of all, and blushing as he takes it I Fancy, — but we must not fancy such a scene at all, which would be an outrage on public decency. Should we be any better than our neighbors ? No, certainly. And as we can't be virtuous THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 555 let us be decent. Fig-leaves are a very decent, becoming wear, and have been now in fashion for four thousand years. And so, my dear, History is written on fig-leaves. Would you have anything further ? Oh fie ! Yes, four thousand years ago, that famous tree was planted. At their very first lie, our first parents made for it, and there it is still the great Humbug Plant, stretching its wide arms, and shel- tering beneath its leaves, as broad and green as ever, all the generations of men. Thus, my dear, coquettes of your fascina- ting sex cover their persons with figgery, fastastically arranged, and call their masquerading, modesty. Cowards fig themselves out fiercely as " salvage men," and make us believe that they are warriors. Fools look very solemnly out from the dusk of the leaves, and we fancy in the gloom that they are sages. And many a man sets a great wreath about his pate and struts abroad a hero, whose claims we would all of us laugh at, could we but remove the ornament and see his numskull bare. And such — (excuse my sermonizing) — such is the constitution of mankind, that men have, as it were, entered into a compact among themselves to pursue the fig-leaf system a routrana\ and to cry down all who oppose it. Humbug they will have. Hum- bugs themselves, they will respect humbugs. Their daily vict- uals of life must be seasoned with humbug. Certain things are there in the world that they will not allow to be called by their right names, and will insist upon our admiring, whether we will or no. Woe be to the man who would enter too far into the recesses of that magnificent temple where our Goddess is en- shrined, peep through the vast embroidered curtains indiscreetly, penetrate the secret of secrets, and expose the Gammon of Gam- mons ! And as you must not peer too curiously within, so nei- ther must you remain scornfully without. Humbug-worshippers, let us come into our great temple regularly and decently : take our seats, and settle our clothes decently ; open our books, and go through the service with decent gravity ; listen, and be decently affected by the expositions of the decent priest of the place ; and if by chance some straggling vagabond, loitering in the sun- shine out of doors, dares to laugh or to sing, and disturb the sanctified dulness of the faithful ; — quick ! a couple of big beadles rush out and belabor the wretch, and his yells make our devo- tions more comfortable. Some magnificent religious ceremonies of this nature are at present taking place in France ; and thinking that you might perhaps while away some long winter evening with an account of them, I have compiled the following pages for your use. 256 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. Newspapers have been filled, for some days past, with details regarding the Saint Helena expedition, many pamphlets have been published, men go about crying little books and broad- sheets filled with real or sham particulars ; and from these scarce and valuable documents the following pages are chiefly compiled. We must begin at the beginning ; premising, in the first place, that Monsieur Guizo^, when French Ambassador at London, waited upon Lord Palmerston with a request that the body of the Emperor Napoleon should be given up to the French nation, in order that it might find a final resting-place in French earth. To this demand the English Government gave a ready assent ; nor was there any particular explosion of sentiment upon either side, only some pretty cordial expressions of mutual good-will. Orders were sent out to St. Helena that the corpse should be disinterred in due time, when the French exjDedition had arrived in search of it, and that every respect and attention should be paid to those who came to carry back to their country the body of the famous dead warrior and sovereign. This matter being arranged in very few words (as in England, upon most points, is the laudable fashion), the French Cham- bers began to debate about the place in which they should bury the body when they got it ; and numberless pamphlets and newspapers out of doors joined in the talk. Some people there were who had fought and conquered and been beaten with the great Napoleon, and loved him and his memory. Many more were there who, because of his great genius and valor, felt exces- sively proud in their own particular persons, and clamored for the return of their hero. And if there were some few indi- viduals in this great hot-headed, gallant, boasting, sublime, absurd French nation, who had taken a cool view of the dead Emperor's character ; if, perhaps, such men as Louis Philippe, and Mon- sieur A. Thiers, Minister and Deputy, and Monsieur Francois Guizot, Deputy and Elxcellency, had, from interest or conviction, opinions at all differing from those of the majority : why, they knew what was what, and kept their opinions to themselves, coming with a tolerably good grace and flinging a few handfuls of incense upon the altar of the popular idol. In the succeeding debates, then, various opinions were given w-ith regard to the place to be selected for the Emperor's sepul- ture, " Some demanded," says an eloquent anonymous Captain in the Navy who has written an " Itinerary from Toulon to St. Helena," " that the coffin should be deposited under the bronze taken from the enemy by the French army — under the Column of the Place Vendome. The idea was a fine one. This is the THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 557 most glorious monument that was ever raised in a conqueror's honor. This column has been melted out of foreign cannon. These same cannons have furrowed the bosoms of our braves with noble cicatrices ; and this metal — conquered by the soldier first, by the artist afterwards — has allowed to be im- printed on its front its own defeat and our glory. Napoleon might sleep in peace under this audacious trophy. But would his ashes find a shelter sufificiently vast beneath this pedestal ? And his puissant statue dominating Paris, beams with sufficient grandeur on this place : whereas the wheels of carriages and the feet of passengers would profane the funereal sanctity of the spot in trampling on the soil so near his head." You must not take this description, dearest Amelia, " at the foot of the letter," as the French phrase it, but you will here have a masterly exposition of the arguments for and against the burial of the Emperor under the column of the Place Ven- dome. The idea was a fine one, granted ; but, like all other ideas, it was open to objections. You must not fancy that the cannon, or rather the cannon-balls, were in the habit of furrow- ing the bosoms of French braves, or any other braves, with cicatrices : on the contrary, it is a known fact that cannon-balls make wounds, and not cicatrices (which, my dear, are wounds partially healed) ; nay, that a man generally dies after receiving one such projectile on his chest, much more after having his bosom furrowed by a score of them. No, my love ; no bosom, however heroic, can stand such applications, and the author only means that the French soldiers faced the cannon and took them. Nor, my love, must you suppose that the column was melted : it was the cannon was melted, not the column ; but such phrases are often used by orators when they wish to give a par- ticular force and emphasis to their opinions. Well, again, although Napoleon might have slept in peace under " this audacious trophy," how could he do so and car- ages go rattling by all night, and people with great iron heels to tlieir boots pass clattering over the stones ? Nor indeed could it be expected that a man whose reputation stretches from the Pyramids to the Kremlin, should find a column of which the base is only five-and-twenty feet square, a shelter vast enough for his bones. In a word, then, although the proposal to bury Napoleon under the column was ingenious, it was found not to suit ; whereupon somebody else proposed the Madelaine. " It was proposed," says the before-quoted author with his usual felicity, " to consecrate the Madelaine to his exiled manes " 558 THE SECOXD FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. — that is, to his bones when they were not in exile any longer. " He ought to have, it was said, a temple entire. His glory fills the world. His bones could not contain themselves in the coffin of a man — in the tomb of a king ! " In this case what was Mary Magdalen to do ? " This proposition, I am happy to say, was rejected, and a new one — that of the President of the Council — adopted. Napoleon and his braves ought not to quit each other. Under the immense gilded dome of the Invalides he would find a sanctuary worthy of himself. A dome imitates the vault of heaven, and that vault alone " (meaning of course the other vault) " should dominate above his head. His old mutilated Guard shall watch around him : the last veteran, as he has shed his blood in his combats, shall breathe his last sigh near his tomb, and all these tombs shall sleep under the tattered standards that have been won from all the nations of Europe." The original words are " sous les lambeaux cribles des dra- peaux cueillis chez toutes les nations ;" in English, " under the riddled rags of the flags that have been culled or plucked " (like roses or buttercups) " in all the nations." Sweet, innocent flowers of victory ( there they are, my dear, sure enough, and a pretty considerable hortiis skciis may any man examine who chooses to walk to the Invalides. The burial-place being thus agreed on, the expedition was prepared, and on the 7th July the " Belle Poule " frigate, in company with " La Favorite " corvette, quitted Toulon harbor. A couple of steamers, the " Tjident " and the " Ocean," escorted the ships as far as Gibral- tar, and there left them to pursue their voyage. The two ships quitted the harbor in the sight of a vast con- course of people, and in the midst of a great roaring of cannons. Previous to the departure of the " Belle Poule," the Bishop of Frejus went on board, and gave to the cenotaph, in which the Emperor's remains were to be deposited, his episcopal benedic- tion. Napoleon's old friends and followers, the two Bertrands, Gourgaud, Emanuel Las Cases, " companions in exile, or sons of the companions in exile of the prisoner of the infante Hudson," says a French writer, were passengers on board the frigate. Marchand, Denis, Pierret, Novaret, his old and faith- ful servants, were likewise in the vessel. It was commanded by his Royal Highness Francis Ferdinand Philip Louis Marie d'Orleans, Prince de Joinville, a young prince two-and-twenty years of age, who was already distinguished in the service of his country and king. On the 8th of October, after a voyage of six-and-sixty days, the " Belle Poule " arrived in James Town harbor ; and on its THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 559 arrival, as on its departure from France, a great firing of guns took place. First, the " Oreste " French brig-of-war began roar- ing out a salutation to the frigate ; then the " Dolphin " English schooner gave her one-and-twenty guns ; then the frigate returned the compliment of the " Dolphin " schooner ; then she blazed out one-and-twenty guns more, as a mark of particular politeness to the shore — which kindness the forts acknowledged by similar detonations. These little compliments concluded on both sides. Lieutenant Middlemore, son and aide-de-camp of the Governor of St. Helena, came on board the French frigate, and brought his father's best respects to his Royal Highness. The Governor was at home ill, and forced to keep his room ; but he had made his house at James Town ready for Captain Joinville and his suite, and begged that they would make use of it during their stay. On the 9th, H. R. H. the Prince of Joinville put on his full uniform and landed, in company with Generals Bertrand and Gourgaud, Baron Las Cases, M. Marchand, M. Coquereau, the chaplain of the expedition, and M. de Rohan Chabot, who acted as chief mourner. All the garrison were under arms to receive the illustrious Prince and the other members of the expedition — who forthwith repaired to Plantation House, and had a con- ference with the Governor regarding their mission. On the loth, nth, 12th, these conferences continued: the crews of the French ships were permitted to come on shore and see the tomb of Napoleon. Bertrand, Gourgaud, Las Cases wandered about the island and visited the spots to which they had been partial in the lifetime of the Emperor. The 15 th October was fixed on for the day of the exhumation : that day five-and-twenty years, the Emperor Napoleon first set his foot upon the island. On the day previous all things had been made ready : the grand coffins and ornaments brought from France, and the ar- ticles necessary for the operation were carried to the valley of the Tomb. The operations commenced at midnight. The well-known friends of Napoleon before named and some other attendants of his, the chaplain and his acolytes, the doctor of the " Belle Poule," the captains of the French ships, and Captain Alexander of the Engineers, the English Commissioner, attended the dis- interment. His Royal Highness Prince de Joinville could not be present because the workmen were under English command. The men worked for nine hours incessantly, when at length 560 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. the earth was entirely removed from the vault, all the horizontal strata of masonry demolished, and the large slab which covered the place where the stone sarcophagus lay, removed by a crane. This outer coffin of stone was perfect, and could scarcely be said to be damp. " As soon as the Abbe Coquereau had recited the prayers, the coffin was removed with the greatest care, and carried by the engineer-soldiers, bareheaded, into a tent that had been prepared for the purpose. After the religious ceremonies, the inner coffins were opened. The outermost coffin was slightly injured : then came one of lead, which was in good condition, and enclosed two others — one of tin and one of wood. The last coffin was lined inside with white satin, which having become detached by the effect of time, had fallen upon the body and enveloped it like a winding-sheet, and had become slightly attached to it. " It is difficult to describe with what anxiety and emotion those who were present waited for the moment which was to expose to them all that death had left of Napoleon. Notwitli- standing the singular state of preservation of the tomb and coffins, we could scarcely hope to find anything but some misshapen remains of the least perishable part of the costume to evidence the identity of the body. But when Doctor Guillard raised the sheet of satin, an indescribable feeling of surprise and affection was expressed by the spectators, many of whom burst into tears. The Emperor was himself before their eyes 1 The features of the face, though changed, were perfectly recog- nized ; the hands extremely beautiful ; his well-known costume had suffered but little, and the colors were easily distinguished. The attitude itself was full of ease, and but for the fragments of the satin lining which covered, as with a fine gauze, several parts of the uniform, we might have believed we still saw Napoleon before us lying on his bed of state. General Bertrand and M. Marchand, who were both present at the interment quickly pointed out the different articles which each had de- posited in the coffin, and remained in the precise position in which they had previously described them to be. " The two inner coffins were carefully closed again ; the old leaden coffin was strongly blocked up with wedges of wood, and both were once more soldered up with the most minute precau- tions, under the direction of Dr. Guillard. These different op- erations being terminated, the ebony sarcophagus was closed as well as its oak case. On delivering the key of the ebony sarcophagus to Count de Chabot, the King's Commissioner, THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON 561 Captain Alexander declared to him, in the name of the Governor, that this coffin, containing the mortal remains of the Emperor Napoleon, was considered as at the disposal of the French Government from that day, and from the moment at which it should arrive at the place of embarkation, towards which it was about to be sent under the orders of General Middlemore. The King's Commissioner replied that he was charged by his Government, and in its name, to accept the coffin from the hands of the British authorities, and that he and the other persons composing the French mission were ready to follow it to James Town, where the Prince de Joinville, superior comman- dant of the expedition, would be ready to receive it and conduct it on board his frigate. A car drawn by four horses, decked with funereal emblems, had been prepared before the arrival of the expedition, to receive the coffin, as well as a pall, and all the other suitable trappings of mourning. When the sarcoph- agus was placed on the car, the whole was covered with a magnificent imperial mantle brought from Paris, the four corners of which were borne by Generals Bertrand and Gourgaud, Baron Las Cases and M. Marchand. At half-past three o'clock the funeral car began to move, preceded by a chorister bearing the cross, and the Abbe Coquereau. M. de Chabot acted as chief mourner. All the authorities of the island, all the principal inhabitants, and the whole of the garrison, followed in proces- sion from the tomb to the quay. But with the exception of the artillerymen necessary to lead the horses,and occasionally support the car when descending some steep parts of the way, the places nearest the coffin were reserved for the French mission. Gen- eral Middlemore, although in a weak state of health, persisted in following the whole way on foot, together with General Churchill, chief of the staff in India, who had arrived only two days before from Bombay. The immense weight of the coffins, and the unevenness of the road, rendered the utmost carefulness necessary throughout the whole distance. Colonel Trelawney commanded in person the small detachment of artillerymen who conducted the car, and, thanks to his great care, not the slightest accident took place From the moment of the departure to the arrival at the quay, the cannons of the forts and the ' Belle Poule ' fired minute-guns. After an hour's march the rain ceased for the first time since the commencement of the operations, and on arriving in sight of the town we found a brilliant sky and beau- tiful weather. Fronj the morning the three French vessels of war had assumed the usual signs of deep mourning : their yards crossed and their flags lowered. Two French merchantmen. 36 562 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON, ' Bonne Amie ' and ' Indien,' which had been in the roads for two days, had put themselves under the Prince's orders, and followed during the ceremony all the manoeuvres of the ' Belle Poule.' The forts of the town, and the houses of the consuls, had also their flags half-mast high. " On arriving at the entrance of the town, the troops of the garrison and the militia formed in two lines as far as the extrem- ity of the quay. According to the order for mourning pre- scribed for the English army, the men had their arms reversed and the officers had crape on their arms, with their swords re- versed. All the inhabitants had been kept away from the line of march, but they lined the terraces commanding the town, and the streets were occupied only by the troops, the 91st Regiment being on the right and the militia on the left. The cortege advanced slowly between two ranks of soldiers to the sound of a funeral march, while the cannons of the forts were fired, as well as those of the ' Belle Poule ' and the ' Dolphin ; ' the echoes being repeated a thousand times by the rocks above James Town. After two hours' march the cortege stopped at the end of the quay, where the Prince de Joinville had stationed himself at the head of the officers of the three French ships of war. The greatest official honors had been rendered by the English authorities to the memory of the Emperor — the most striking testimonials of respect had marked the adieu given by St. Helena to his cofBn ; and from this moment the mortal remains of the Emperor were about to belong to France. When the funeral-car stopped, the Prince de Joinville advanced alone, and in presence of all around, who stood with their heads uncovered, received, in a solemn manner, the imperial coffin from the hands of General Middlemore. His Royal Highness then thanked the Governor, in the name of France, for all the testimonials of sympathy and respect with which the authorities and inhabitants of St. Helena had surrounded the memorable ceremonial. A cutter had been expressly prepared to receive the coffin. During the embarkation, which the Prince directed himself, the bands played funeral airs, and all the boats were stationed round with their oars shipped. The moment the sarcophagus touched the cutter, a magnificent royal fiag, which the ladies of James Town had embroidered for the occasion, was unfurled, and the ' Belle Poule' immediately squared her masts and unfurled her colors. All the manoeuvres of the frigate were immediately followed by the other vessels. Our mourning had ceased with the exile of Napoleon, and the French naval division dressed itself out in all its festal ornaments to receive the imperial coffin under the French fiag. The sarcophagus was covered in the cutter with THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 563 the imperial mantle. The Prince de Joinville placed himself ta the rudder, Commandant Guyet at the head of the boat ; Gen- erals Bertrand and Gourgaud, Baron Las Cases, M. Marchand, and the Abbe Coquereau occupied the same places as during the march. Count Chabot and Commandant Hernoux were astern, a little in advance of the Prince. As soon as the cutter had pushed off from the quay, the batteries ashore fired a salute of twenty-one guns, and our ships returned the salute with all their artillery. Two other salutes were fired during the passage from the quay to the frigate ; the cutter advancing very slowly, and surrounded by the other boats. At half-past six o'clock it reached the ' Belle Poule,' all the men being on the yards with their hats in their hands. The Prince had had arranged on the deck a chapel, decked with flags and trophies of arms, the altar being placed on the foot of the mizenmast. The coffin, carried by our sailors, passed between two ranks of officers with drawn swords, and was placed on the quarter-deck. The absolution was pronounced by the Abbe Coquereau the same evening. Next day, at ten o'clock, a solemn mass was celebrated on the deck, m presence of the officers and part of the crews of the ships. His Royal Highness stood at the foot of the coffin. The cannon of the ' Favorite ' and ' Oreste ' fired minute-guns during this ceremony, which terminated by a solemn absolution ; and the Prince de Joinville, the gentlemen of the mission, the officers, and the premiers maitres of the ship, sprinkled holy water on the coffin. At eleven, all the ceremonies of the church were accomplished, all tie honors done to a sovereign had been paid to the mortal remains of Napoleon. The coffin was carefully lowered between decks, and placed in the chapelle ardente which had been prepared at Toulon for its reception. At this moment, the vessels fired a last salute with all their artillery, and the frigate took in her flags, keeping up only her flag at the stern and the royal standard at the maintopgallant-mast. On Sunday, the i8th, at eight in the morning, the 'Belle Poule' quitted St. Helena with her precious deposit on board. " During the whole time that the mission remained at James Town, the best understanding never ceased to exist between the population of the island and the French. The Prince de Joinville and his companions met in all quarters and at all times with the greatest good-will and the warmest testimonials ot sympathy. The authorities and the inhabitants must have felt, no doubt, great regret at seeing taken away from their island the coffin that had rendered it so celebrated ; but they repressed their feelings with a courtesy that does honor to the frankness of their character." 564 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 11. ON THE VOYAGE FROM ST. HELENA TO PARIS. On the i8th October the French frigate quitted the island with its precious burden on board. His Royal Highness the Captain acknowledged cordially the kindness and attention which he and his crew had received from the English authorities and the inhabitants of the Island of St. Helena ; nay, promised a pension to an old soldier who had been for many years the guardian of the imperial tomb, and went so far as to take into consideration the petition of a certain lodging- house keeper, who prayed for a compensation for the loss which the removal of the Emperor's body would occasion to her. And although it was not to be expected that the great French nation should forego its natural desire of recovering the remains of a hero so dear to it for the sake of the individual interest of the landlady in question, it must have been satisfactory to her to find that the peculiarity of her position was so delicately appreci- ated by the august Prince who commanded the expedition, and carried away with him animce dimiditnn sua — the half of the genteel independence which she derived from the situation of her hotel. In a word, politeness and friendship could not be carried farther. The Prince's realm and the landlady's were bound together by the closest ties of amity. M. Thiers was Minister of France, the great patron of the English alliance. At London M. Guizot was the worthy representative of the French good-will towards the British people : and the remark frequently made by our orators at public dinners, that " France and England, while united, might defy the world," was con- sidered as likely to hold good for many years to come, — the union that is. As for defying the world, that was neither here nor there ; nor did English politicians ever dream of doing any such thing, except perhaps at the tenth glass of port at " Free- mason's Tavern." Little, however, did Mrs. Corbett, the Saint Helena landlady, little did his Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand Philip Marie de Joinville know what was going on in Europe all this time (when I say in Europe, I mean in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt) ; how clouds, in fact, were gathering upon what you call the political horizon ; and how tempests were rising that were to blow to THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 565 pieces our Anglo-Gallic temple of friendship. Oh, but it is sad to think that a single wicked old Turk should be the means of setting our two Christian nations by the ears ! Yes, my love, this disreputable old man had been for some time past the object of the disinterested attention of the great sovereigns of Europe. The Emperor Nicholas (a moral charac- ter, though following the Greek superstition, and adored for his mildness and benevolence of disposition), the Emperor Fer- dinand, the King of Prussia, and our own gracious Queen, had taken such just offence at his conduct and disobedience tow- ards a young and interesting sovereign, whose authority he had disregarded, whose fleet he had kidnapped, whose fair provinces he had pounced upon, that they determined to come to the aid of Abdul Medjid the First, Emperor of the Turks, and bring his rebellious vassal to reason. In this project the French nation was invited to join ; but they refused the invitation, saying, that it was necessary for the maintenance of the balance of power in Europe that his Highness Mehemet Ali should keep posses- sion of what by hook or by crook he had gotten, and that they would have no hand in injuring him. But why continue this argument, which you have read in the newspapers for many months past ? You, my dear, must know as well as I, that the balance of Power in Europe could not possibly be maintained in any such way ; and though, to be sure, for the last fifteen years, the progress of the old robber has not made much dif- ference to us in the neighborhood of Russell Square, and the battle of Nezib did not jn the least affect our taxes, our homes, our institutions, or the price of butcher's meat, yet there is no knowing what might have happened had Mehemet Ali been allowed to remain quietly as he was : and the balance of power in Europe might have been — the deuce knows where. Here, then, in a nutshell, you have the whole matter in dis- pute. While Mrs. Corbett and the Prince de Joinville were in- nocently interchanging compliments at Saint Helena, — bang ! bang ! Commodore Napier was pouring broadsides into Tyre and Sidon ; our gallant navy was storming breaches and rout- ing armies ; Colonel Hodges had seized upon the green stand- ard of Ibrahim Pacha ; and the powder-magazine of St. John of Acre was blown up sky-high, with eighteen hundred Egyptian soldiers in company with it. The French said that Tor Anglais had achieved all these successes, and no doubt believed that the poor fellows at Acre were bribed to a man. It must have been particularly unpleasant to a high-minded nation like the French — at the very moment when the Egyptian 566 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. . affair and the balance of Europe had been settled in this abrupt way — to find out all of a sudden that the Pasha of Egypt was their dearest friend and ally. They had suffered in the person of their friend ; and though, seeing that the dispute was ended, and the territory out of his hand, they could not hope to get it back for him, or to aid him in any substantial way, yet Monsieur Thiers determined, just as a mark of politeness to the Pasha, to fight all Europe for maltreating him, — all Europe, England in- cluded. He was bent on war, and an immense majority of the nation went with him. He called for a million of soldiers, and would have had them too, had not the King been against the project and delayed the completion of it at least for a time. Of these great European disputes Captain Joinville received a notification while he was at sea on board his frigate ; as we find by the official account which has been published of his mission. " Some days after quitting Saint Helena," says that docu- ment, " the expedition fell in with a ship coming from Europe, and was thus made acquainted with the warlike rumors then afloat, by which a collision with the English marine was ren- dered possible. The Prince de Joinville immediately assembled the officers of the ' Belle Poule,' to deliberate on an event so unexpected and important. " The council of war having expressed its opinion that it was necessary at all events to prepare for an energetic defence, preparations were made to place in battery all the guns that the frigate could bring to bear against the enemy. The provisional, cabins that had been fitted up in the battery were demolished, the partitions removed, and, with all the elegant furniture of the cabins, flung into the sea. The Prince de Joinville was the first 'to execute himself,' and the frigate soon found itself armed with six or eight more guns. " That part of the ship where these cabins had previously been, went by the name of Lacedaemon ; everything luxurious being banished to make way for what was useful. " Indeed, all persons who were on board agree in saying that Monseigneur the Prince de Joinville most worthily acquitted himself of the great and honorable mission which had been confided to him. All affirm not only that the commandant of the expedition did everything at St. Helena which as a French- man he was bound to do in order that the remains of the Em- peror should receive all the honors due to them, but moreover that he accomplished his mission with all the measured solemn- ity, all the pious and severe dignity, that the son of the Emperor THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 567 himself would have shown upon a like occasion. The comman- dant had also comprehended that the remains of the Emperor must never fall into the hands of the stranger, and being him- self decided rather to sink his ship than to give up his precious deposit, he had inspired every one about him with the same energetic resolution that he had himself taken ' against an extreme eventnality' " Monseigneur, my dear, is really one of the finest young fellows it is possible to see. A tall, broad-chested, slim-waisted, brown-faced, dark-eyed young prince, with a great beard (and other martial qualities no doubt) beyond his years. As he strode into the Chapel of the Invalides on Tuesday at the head of his men, he made no small impression, I can tell you, upon the ladies assembled to witness the ceremony. Nor are the crew of the "Belle Poule" less agreeable to look at than their commander. A more clean, smart, active, well-limbed set of lads never " did dance" upon the deck of the famed " Belle Poule" in the days of her memorable combat with the " Saucy Arethusa." " These five hundred sailors," says a French newspaper, speaking of them in the proper French way, " sword in hand, in the severe costume of board-ship {la senere tenue du bord), seemed proud of the mission that they had just accomplished. Their blue jackets, their red cravats, the turned-down collars of blue shirts edged with white, above all their resolute appearance and mar- tial air, gave a favorable specimen of the present state of our marine — a marine of which so much might be expected and from which so little has been required." — Le Commerce: i6th December. There they were, sure enough ; a cutlass upon one hip, a pistol on the other — a gallant set of young men indeed." I doubt, to be sure, whether ihe severe tenue du ^^-^/v/ requires that the seaman should be always furnished with these ferocious weapons, which in sundry maritime manoeuvres, such as going to sleep in your hammock for instance, or twinkling a binnacle, or luffing a marlinspike, or keelhauling a maintopgallant (all naval operations, my dear, which any seafaring novelist will explain to you) — I doubt, I say, whether these weapons are always worn by sailors, and have heard that they are commonly, and very sensibly too, locked up until they are wanted. Take another example : suppose artillerymen were incessantly com- pelled to walk about with a pyramid of twenty-four-pound shot in one pocket, a lighted fuse and a few barrels of gunpowder in the other — these objects would, as you may imagine, greatly inconvenience the artilleryman in his peaceful state. ^68 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. The newspaper writer is therefore most likely mistaken in saying that the seamen were in the severe tenice dii bord, or by " bo?'d" meaning " abordage'' — which operation they were not, in a harmless church, hung round with velvet and wax-candles, and filled with ladies, surely called upon to perform. Nor indeed can it be reasonably supposed that the picked men of the crack frigate of the French navy are a " good specimen " of the rest of the French marine, any more than a cuirassed colossus at the gate of the Horse Guards can be considered a fair sample of the British soldier of the line. The sword and pistol, however, had no doubt their effect — the former was in its sheath, the latter not loaded, and I hear that the French ladies are quite in raptures with these charming loiips-de-mer. Let the warlike accoutrements then pass. It was necessary, perhaps, to strike the Parisians with awe, and therefore the crew was armed in this fierce fashion ; but why should the Captain begin to swagger as well as his men ? and why did the Prince de Joinville lug out sword and pistol so early ? or why if he thought fit to make preparations, should the official jour- nals brag of them afterwards as proofs of his extraordinary courage ? Here is the case. The English Government makes him a present of the bones of Napoleon : English workmen work for nine hours without ceasing, and dig the coffin out of the ground : the English Commissioner hands over the key of the box to the French representative. Monsieur Chabot ; English horses carry the funeral-car down to the sea-shore, accompanied by the English Governor, who has actually left his bed to walk in the procession and to do the French nation honor. .After receiving and acknowledging these politenesses, the French captain takes his charge on board, and the first thing we afterwards hear of him is the determination " qit^il a sufaire passer " into all his crew, to sink rather than yield up the body of the Emperor mix mams de letranger — into the hands of the foreigner. My dear Monseigneur, is not this par trop fort ! Suppose " the foreigner " had wanted the coffin, could he not have kept it ? Why show this uncalled-for valor, this extraor- dinary alacrity at sinking ? Sink or blow yourself up as much as you please, but your Royal Highness must see that the genteel thing would have been to wait until you were asked to do so, before you offended good-natured, honest people, who — heaven help them ! — have never shown themselves at all mur- derously inclined towards you. A man knocks up his cabins forsooth, throws his tables and chairs overboard, runs guns into THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 569 the portholes, and calls le qtiartier dii bord oil existaient ces chatn- bres, Lacedcernon. Lacedaemon ! There is a province, O Prince, in your royal father's dominions, a fruitful parent of heroes in its time, which would have given a much better nickname to your quartier du bord : you should have called it Gascony, " Sooner than strike we'll all ex-pi-er On board of the Bell-e Pou-le." Such fanfaronnading is very well on the part of Tom Dibden, but a person of your Royal Highness's "pious and severe dig- nity " should have been above it. If you entertained an idea that war was imminent, would it not have been far better to have made your preparations in quiet, and when you found the war-rumor blown over, to have said nothing about what you intended to do ? Fie upon such cheap Lacedsemonianism ! There is no poltroon in the world but can brag about what he would have done : however, to do your Royal Highness's nation justice, they brag and fight too. This narrative, my dear Miss Smith, as you will have re- marked, is not a simple tale merely, but is accompanied by many moral and pithy remarks which form its chief value, in the writer's eyes at least, and the above account of the sham Lacedaemon on board the "Belle Poule " has a double-barrelled morality, as I conceive. Besides justly reprehending the French propensity towards braggadocio, it proves very strongly a point on which I am the only statesman in Europe who has strongly insisted. In the "Paris Sketch Book" it was stated that i/ie French hate us. They hate us, my dear, profoundly and desperately, and there never was such a hollow humbug in the world as the French alliance. Men get a character for patriotism in France merely by hating England. Directly they go into strong opposition (where, you know, people are always more patriotic than on the ministerial side), they appeal to the people, and have their hold on the people by hating England in common with them. Why ? It is a long story, and the hatred may be accounted for by many reasons, both political and social. Any time these eight hundred years this ill-will has been going on, and has been transmitted on the French side from father to son. On the French side, not on ours : we have had no, or few, defeats to complain of, no invasions to make us angry ; but you see that to discuss such a period of time would demand a considerable number of pages, and for the present we will avoid the examination of the question. But they hate us, that is the long and short of it ; and you 57° THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. see how this hatred has exploded just now, not upon a serious cause of difference, but upon an argument : for what is the Pasha of Egypt to us or them but a mere abstract opinion ? For the same reason the Little-endians in Lilliput abhorred the Big-endians ; and I beg you to remark how his Royal High- ness Prince Ferdinand Mary, upon hearing that this argument was in the course of debate between us, straight way flung his furniture overboard and expressed a preference for sinking his ship rather than yielding it to the etranger. Nothing came of this wish of his, to be sure ; but the intention is everything. Unlucky circumstances denied him the power, but he had the will. Well, beyond this disappointment, the Prince de Joinville had nothing to complain of during the voyage, which terminated happily by the arrival of the " Belle Poule " at Cherbourg, on the 30th of November, at five o'clock in the morning. A tele- graph made the glad news known at Paris, where the Minister of the Interior, Tannegny-Duchatel (you will read the name, Madam, in the old Anglo-French wars), had already made " immense preparations " for receiving the body of Napoleon. The entry was fixed for the 15 th of December. On the Sth of December at Cherbourg the body was trans- ferred from the " Belle Poule " frigate to the " Normandie " steamer. On which occasion the mayor of Cherbourg depos- ited, in the name of his town, a gold laurel branch upon the coffin — which was saluted by the forts and dikes of the place with ONE THOUSAND GUNS ! There was a treat for the inhab- itants. There was on board the steamer a splendid receptacle for the coffin : " a temple with twelve pillars and a dome to cover it from the wet and moisture, surrounded with velvet hangings and silver fringes. At the head was a gold cross, at the foot a gold lamp : other lamps were kept constantly burning within, and vases of burning incense were hung around. An altar, hung with velvet and silver, was at the mizen-mast of the vessel, and four silver eagles at each comer of the altar y It was a compli- ment at once to Napoleon and — excuse me for saying so, but so the facts are — to Napoleon and to God Almighty. Three steamers, the " Normandie," the " Veloce," and the " Courrier," formed the expedition from Cherbourg to Havre, at which place they arrived on the evening of the 9th of De- cember, and where the " Veloce " was replaced by the Seine steamer, having in tow one of the state-coasters, which was to fire the salute at the moment when the body was transferred into one of the vessels belonging to the Seine. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 57^ The expedition passed Havre the same night, and came to anchor at Val de la Haye on the Seine, three leagues below Rouen. Here the next morning (loth), it was met by the flotilla of steamboats of the Upper Seine, consisting, of the three " Dorades," the three " Etoiles," the " Efbeuvien," the " Pa- risien," the " Parisienne," and the "Zampa." The Prince de Joinville, and the persons of the expedition, embarked imrae- , diately in the flotilla, which arrived the same day at Rouen. At Rouen salutes were fired, the National Guard on both sides of the river paid military honors to the body : and over the middle of the suspension-bridge a magnificent cenotaph was erected, decorated with flags, fasces, violet hangings, and the imperial arms. Before the cenotaph the expedition stopped, and the absolution was given by the archbishop and the clergy. After a cou]5le of hours' stay, the expedition proceeded to Pont de I'Arche. On the nth it reached Vernon, on the 12th Mantes, on the 13th Maisons-sur-Seine. " Everywhere," says the ofiicial account from which the above particulars are borrowed, " the authorities, the National Guard, and the people flocked to the passage of the flotilla, desirous to render the honors due to his glory, which is the glory of France. In seeing its hero return, the nation seemed to have found its Palladium again, — the sainted relics of vic- tory." At length, on the 14th, the coffin was transferred from the " Dorade " steamer on board the imperial vessel arrived from Paris. In the evening, the imperial vessel arrived at Courbe- voie, which was the last stage of the journey. Here it was that M. Guizotwent to examine the vessel, and was very nearly flung into the Seine, as report goes, by the patriots assembled there. It is now lying on the river, near the Invalides, amidst the drifting ice, whither the people of Paris are flocking out to see it. The vessel is of a very elegant antique form, and I can give you on the Thames no better idea of it than by requesting you to fancy an immense wherry, of which the stern has been cut straight off, and on which a temple on steps has been elevated. At the figure-head is an immense gold eagle, and at the stern is a little terrace, filled with evergreens and a profusion ot banners. Upon pedestals along the sides of the vessel are tripods in which incense was burned, and underneath them are garlands of flowers called here " immortals." Four eagles surround the temple, and a great scroll or garland held in their 572 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. beaks, surrounds it. It is hung with velvet and gold ; four gold caryatides support the entry of it ; and in the midst, upon a large platform hung with velvet, and bearing the imperial arms, stood the coffin. A steamboat, carrying two hundred musicians playing funeral marches and military symphonies, preceded this magnificent vessel to Courbevoie, where a funeral temple was erected, and " a statue of Notre Dame de Grace, before which the seamen of the ' Belle Poule ' inclined themselves, in order "to thank her for having granted them a noble and glorious voyage." Early on the morning of the 15th December, amidst clouds of incense, and thunder of cannon, and innumerable shouts of people, the coffin was transferred from the barge, and carried by the seamen of the " Belle Poule " to the Imperial Car. And now having conducted our hero almost to 4he gates of Paris, I must tell you what preparations were made in the capital to receive him. Ten days before the arrival of the body, as you walked across the Deputies' Bridge, or over the Esplanade of the Invalides, you saw on the bridge eight, on the esplanade thirty-two, mys- terious boxes erected, wherein a couple of score of sculptors were at work night and day. In the middle of the Invalid Avenue, there used to stand, on a kind of shabby fountain or pump, a bust of Lafayette, crowned with some dirty wreaths of " immortals," and looking down at the little streamlet which occasionally dribbled below him. The spot of ground was now clear, and Lafayette and the pump had been consigned to some cellar, to make way for the mighty procession that was to pass over the place of their habitation. Strange coincidence ! If I had been M. Victor Hugo, my dear, or a poet of any note, I would, in a few hours, have made an impromptu concerning that Lafayette-crowned pump, and compared its lot now to the fortune of its patron some fifty years back. From him then issued, as from his fountain now, a feeble dribble of pure words ) then, as now, some faint circle of disciples were willing to admire him. Certainly in the midst of the war and storm without, this pure fount of eloquence went dribbling, dribbling on, till of a sudden the revolutionary workmen knocked down statue and fountain, and the gorgeous imperial cavalcade trampled over the spot where they stood. As for the Champs Elysees, there was no end to the prepara- tions : the first day you saw a couole of hundred scaffoldings THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 573 erected at intervals between the handsome gilded gas-lamps that at present ornament that avenue ; next day, all these scaffold- ings were filled with brick and mortar. Presently, over the bricks and mortar rose pediments of statues, legs of urns, legs of goddesses, legs and bodies of goddesses, legs, bodies, and busts of goddesses. Finally, on the 13th December, goddesses complete. On the 14th, they were painted marble-color : and the basements of wood and canvas on which they stood were made to resemble the same costly material. The funeral urns were ready to receive the frankincense and precious odors which were to burn in them. A vast number of white columns stretched down the avenue, each bearing a bronze buckler on which was written, in gold letters, one of the victories of the Emperor, and each decorated with enormous imperial flags. On these columns golden eagles were placed ; and the news- papers did oot fail to remark the ingenious position in which the royal birds had been set : for while those 'on the right-hand side of the way had their heads turned towards the procession, as if to watch its coming, those on the left were looking exactly the other way, as if to regard its progress. Do not fancy I am joking : this point was gravely and emphatically urged in many newspapers ; and I do believe no mortal Frenchman ever thought it anything but sublime. Do not interrupt me, sweet Miss Smith. I feel that you are angry. I can see from here the pouting of your lips, and know what you are going to say. You are going to say, " I will read no more of this Mr. Titmarsh ; there is no subject, however solemn, but he treats it with flippant irreverence, and no char- acter, however great, at whom he does not sneer." Ah, my dear ! you are young now and enthusiastic ; and your Titmarsh is old, very old, sad, and gray-headed. I have seen a poor mother buy a halfpenny wreath at the gate of Mont- martre burying-ground, and go with it to her little child's grave, and hang it there over the little humble stone ; and if ever you saw me scorn the mean offering of the poor shabby creature, I will give you leave to be as angry as you will. They say that on the passage of Napoleon's coffin down the Seine, old soldiers and country people walked miles from their villages just to catch a sight of the boat which carried his body, and to kneel down on the shore and pray for him. God forbid that we should quarrel with such prayers and sorrow, or question their sincerity. Something great and good must have been in this man, some- thing loving and kindly, that has kept his name so cherished in the popular memory, and gained him such lasting reverence and affection. 574 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON But, Madam, one may respect the dead without feeling awe- stricken at the plumes of the hearse ; and I see no reason why one should sympathize with the train of mutes and undertakers, however deep may be their mourning. Look, I pray you, at the manner in which the French nation has performed Napoleon's funeral. Time out of mind, nations have raised, in memory of their heroes, august mausoleums, grand pyramids, splendid statues of gold or marble, sacrificing whatever they had that was most costly and rare, or that was most beautiful in art, as tokens of their respect and love for the dead person. What a fine example of this sort of sacrifice is that (recorded in a book of which Simplicity is the great characteristic) of the poor woman who brought her pot of precious ointment — her all, and laid it at the feet of the Object which, upon earth, she most loved and respected. " Economists and calculators " there were even in those days who quarrelled with the manner in which the poor woman lavished so much " capital ; " but you will remember how nobly and generously the sacrifice was appreciated, and how the economists were put to shame. With regard to the funeral ceremony that has just been per- formed here, it is said that a famous public personage and statesman. Monsieur Thiers indeed, spoke with the bitterest indignation of the general style of the preparations, and of their mean and tawdry character. He would have had a pomp as magnificent, he said, as that of Rome at the triumph of Aurelian : he would have decorated the bridges and avenues through which the procession was to pass, with the costliest marbles and the finest works of art, and have had them to remain there forever as monuments of the great funeral. The economists and calculators might here interpose with a great deal of reason ] for, indeed, there was no reason why a nation should impoverish itself to do honor to the memory of an individual for whom, after all, it can feel but a qualified enthusiasm : but it surely might have employed the large sum voted for the purpose more wisely and generously, and recorded its respect for Napoleon by some worthy and lasting memorial, rather than have erected yonder thousand vain heaps of tinsel, paint, and plaster, that are already cracking and crumbling in the frost, at three days old. Scarcely one of the statues, indeed, deserves to last a month : some are odious distortions and caricatures, which never should have been allowed to stand for a moment. On the very day of the fete, the wind was shaking the canvas pedestals, and the flimsy wood-work had begun to gape and give way. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 575 At a little distance, to be sure, you could not see the cracks ; and pedestals and statues lookedX'iS?.^ marble. At some distance, you could not tell but that the wreaths and eagles were gold embroidery, and not gilt paper — the great tricolor flags damask, and not striped calico. One would think that these sham splendors betokened sham respect, if one had not known that the name of Napoleon is held in real reverence, and observed some- what of the character of the nation. Real feelings they have, but they distort them by exaggeration ; real courage, which they render ludicrous by intolerable braggadocio ; and I think the above official account of the Prince de Joinville's proceedings, of the manner in which the Emperor's remains have been treated in their voyage to the capital, and of the preparations made to receive him in it, will give my dear Miss Smith some means of understanding the social and moral condition of this worthy people of France. III. ON THE FUNERAL CEREMONY. Shall I tell you, my dear, that when Francois woke me at a very early hour on this eventful morning, while the keen stars were still glittering overhead, a half-moon, as sharp as a razor, beaming in the frosty sky, and a wicked north wind blowing, that blew the blood out of one's fingers and froze your leg as you put it out of bed ; — shall I tell you, my dear, that when Francois called me, and said, " Via vot' cafe. Monsieur Tite- masse, buvez-le, tiens, il est tout chaud," I felt myself, after imbibing the hot breakfast, so comfortable under three blankets and a mackintosh, that for at least quarter of an hour no man in Europe could say whether Titmarsh would or would not be present at the burial of the Emperor Napoleon. Besides, my dear, the cold, there was another reason for doubting. Did the French nation, or did they not, intend to offer up some of us English over the imperial grave ? And were the games to be concluded by a massacre ? It was said in the newspapers that Lord Granville had despatched circulars to all the English resident in Paris, begging them to kept their homes. The French journals announced this news, and warned 576 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. US charitably of the fate intended for us. Had Lord Granville written ? Certainly not to me. Or had he written to all except VIC ? And was I the victim — the doomed one ? — to be seized directly I showed my face in the Champs Elysees, and torn in pieces by French Patriotism to the frantic chorus of the " Marseillaise?" Depend on it, Madam, that high and low in this city on Tuesday were not altogether at their ease, and that the bravest felt no small tremor ! And be sure of this, that as his Majesty Louis Philippe took his nightcap off his royal head that morning, he prayed heartily that he might, at night, put it on in safety. Well, as my companion and I came out of doors, being bound for the Church of the Invalides, for which a Deputy had kindly furnished us with tickets, we saw the very prettiest sight of the whole day, and I can't refrain from mentioning it to my dear, tender-hearted Miss Smith. In the same house where I live (but about five stories nearer the ground), lodges an English family, consisting of — i. A great-grandmother, a hale, handsome old lady of seventy, the very best-dressed and neatest old lady in Paris. 2. A grand- father and grandmother, tolerably young to bear that title. 3. A daughter. And 4. Two little great-grand, or grand-children, that may be of the age of three and one, and belong to a son and daughter who are in India. The grandfather, who is as proud of his wife as he was thirty years ago when he married, and pays her compliments still twice or thrice in a day, and when he leads her into a room looks round at the persons as- sembled, and says in his heart, " Here, gentlemen, here is my wife — show me such another woman in England," — this gentleman had hired a room on the Champs Elyse'es, for he would not have his wife catch cold by exposing her to the balconies in the open air. When I came to the street, I found the family assembled in the following order of march : — ■ No. I, the great-grandmother walking daintily along, supported by No. 3, her granddaughter. — — A nurse carrying No. 4 junior, who was sound asleep, and a huge basket containing saucepans, bottles of milk, parcels of infants' food, certain dimity napkins, a child's coral, and a little horse belonging to No 4 senior. A servant bearing a basket of condiments. No. 2, grandfather, spick and span, clean shaved, hat brushed, white buck- skin gloves, bamboo cane, brown great-coat, walking as upright and solemn as may be, having his lady on his arm. ■ No. 4, senior, with mottled legs and a tartan costume, who was frisking about between his grandpapa's legs, who heartily wished him at home. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 577 " My dear," his face seemed to say to his lady, " I think you might have left the little things in the nursery, for we shall have to squeeze through a terrible crowd in the Champs Elyse'es." The lady was going out for a day's pleasure, and her face was full of care • she had to look first after her old mother who was walking ahead, then after No. 4 junior with the nurse — he might fall into all sorts of danger, wake up, cry, catch cold ; nurse might slip down, or heaven knows what. Then she had to look her husband in the face, who had gone to such expense and been so kind for her sake, and make that gentle- man believe she was thoroughly happy ; and, finally, she had to keep an eye upon No. 4 senior, who, as she was perfectly certain, was about in two minutes to be lost forever, or trampled to pieces in the crowd. These events took place in a quiet little street leading into the Champs Elysees, the entry of which we had almost reached by this time. The four detachments above described, which had been straggling a little in their passage down the street, closed up at the end of it, and stood for a moment huddled to- gether. No. 3, Miss X — , began speaking to her companion the great-grandmother. " Hush, my dear," said that old lady, looking round alarmed at her daughter. " Speak French^ And she straightway be- gan nervously to make a speech which she supposed to be in that language, but which was as much like French as Iroquois. The whole secret was out : you could read it in the grand- mother's face, who was doing all she could to keep from cry- ing, and looked as frightened as she dared to look. The two elder ladies had settled between them that there was going to be a general English slaughter that day, and had brought the children with them, so that they might all be murdered in company. God bless you, O women, moist-eyed and tender-hearted ! In those gentle silly tears of yours there is something touches one, be they never so foolish. I don't think there were many such natural drops shed that day as those which just made their appearance in the grandmother's eyes, and then went back again as if they had been ashamed of themselves, while the good lady and her little troop walked across the road. Think how happy she will be when night comes, and there has been no murder of English, and the brood is all nestled under her wings sound asleep, and she is lying awake thanking God that the day and its pleasures and pains are over. Whilst we were 37 c^g THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. considering these things, the grandfather had suddenly elevated No. 4 senior upon his left shoulder, and I saw the tartan hat of that young gentleman, and the bamboo-cane which had been transferred to him, high over the heads of the crowd on the opposite side through which the party moved. After this little procession had passed away — you may laugh at it, but upon my word and conscience, Miss Smith, I saw nothing in the course of the day which affected me more — after this little procession had passed away the other came, accom- panied by gun-banging, flag-waving, incense-burning, trumpets pealing, drums rolling, and at the close, received by the voice of six hundred choristers, sweetly modulated to the tones of fifteen score of fiddlers. Then you saw horse and foot, jack- boots and bearskin, cuirass and bayonet, national guard and line, marshals and generals all over gold, smart aids-de-camp galloping about like mad, and high in the midst of all, rising on his golden buckler, Solomon in all his glory, forsooth — Im- perial Caesar, with his crown over his head, laurels and stand- ards waving about his gorgeous chariot, and a million of people looking on in wonder and awe. His Majesty the Emperor and King reclined on his shield, with his head a little elevated. His Majesty's skull is volumi- nous, his forehead broad and large. We remarked that his Im- perial Majesty's brow was of a yellowish color, which appear- ance was also visible about the orbits of the eyes. He kept his eyelids constantly closed, by which we had the opportunity of observing that the upper lids were garnished with eye- lashes. Years and climate have effected upon the face of this great monarch only a trifling alteration ; we may say, indeed, that Time has touched his Imperial and Royal Majesty with the lightest feather in his wing. In the nose of the Conqueror of Austerlitz we remarked very little alteration : it is of the beautiful shape which we remember it possessed five-and- twenty years since, ere unfortunate circumstances induced him to leave us for a while. The nostril and the tube of the nose appear to have undergone some slight alteration, but in ex- amining a beloved object the eye of affection is perhaps too critical. Vive V Evipereiir ! The soldier of Marengo is among us again. His lips are thinner, perhaps, than they were be- fore ! how white his teeth are ! you can just see three of them pressing his under lip ; and pray remark the fullness of his cheeks and the round contour of his chin. Oh, those beau- tiful white hands! many a time have they patted the cheek of poor Josephine, and played with the black ringlets of her hair. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 579 She is dead now, and cold, poor creature; and so are Hor- tense and bold Eugene, " than whom the world never saw a curtier knight," as was said of King Arthur's Sir Lancelot. What a day would it have been for those three could they but have lived until now, and seen their hero returning ! Where's Ney ? His wife sits looking out from M. Flahaut's window yon- der, but the bravest of the brave is not with her. Murat too is absent : honest Joachim loves the Emperor at heart, and repents that he was not at Waterloo : who knows but that at the sight of the handsome swordsman those stubborn English " canaille " would have given way ? A king. Sire, is, you know, the greatest of slaves — State affairs of consequence — his Maj- esty the King of Naples is detained, no doubt. When we last saw the King, however, and his Highness the Prince of Elchingen, they looked to have as good health as ever they had in their lives, and we heard each of them calmly calling out " Fire ! " as they had done in numberless battles before. Is it possible ? can the Emperor forget ? We don't like to break it to him', but has he forgotten all about the farm at Pizzo, and the garden of the Observatory .? Yes, truly : there he lies on his golden shield, never stirring, never so much as lifting his eyelids, or opening his lips any wider. O vaniias vanitatum ! Here is our sovereign in all his glory, and they fired a thousand guns at Cherbourg and never woke him ! However, we are advancing matters by several hours, and you must give just as much credence as you please to the sub- joined remarks concerning the Procession, seeing that your humble servant could not possibly be present at it, being bound for the church elsewhere. Programmes, however, have been published of the affair, and your vivid fancy will not fail to give liffe to them, and the whole magnificent train will pass before you. Fancy then, that the guns are fired at Neuilly : the body landed at daybreak from the funereal barge, and transferred to the car ; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine, rolling on four wheels of an antique shape, which supported a basement adorned with golden eagles, banners, laurels, and velvet hangings. Above the hangings stand twelve golden statues with raised arms supporting a huge shield, on which the coffin lay. On the coffin was the imperial crown, covered with violet velvet crape, and the whole vast machine was livery. drawn by horses in superb housings, led by valets in the imperial S8o THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. Fancy at the head of the procession first of all — The Gendarmerie of the Seine, with their trumpets and Colonel. The Municipal Guard (horse) with their trumpets, standard, and Colonel. Two squadrons of the 7th Lancers, witli Colonel, standard, and music. The Commandant of Paris and his StaiT. A battalion of Infantry of the Line, with their flag, sappers, drums, music, and Colonel. The Municipal Guard (foot), with flag, drums, and Colonel. The Sapper-pumpers, with ditto. Then picture to yourself more squadrons of Lancers and Cuirassiers. The General of the Division and his Staff; all officers of all arms employed at Palis, and unattached ; the Military School of Saint Cyr, the Polytechnic School, the School of the Etat-Major ; and the Professors and Staff of each. Go on imagining more battalions of Infantry, of Artillery, com- panies of Engineers, squadrons of Cuirassiers, ditto of the Cavalry, of the National Guard, and the first and second legions of ditto. Fancy a carriage, containing the Chaplain of the St. Helena expedition, the only clerical gentleman that formed a part of the procession. Fancy you hear the funeral music, and then figure in your mind's eye — The Emperor's Charger, that is. Napoleon's own saddle and bridle (wiien First Consul) upon a white horse. The saddle (which has been kept ever since in the Garde Meuble of the Crown) is of amaranth velvet, embroidered in gold : the holsters and housings are of the same rich material. On them you remark the attributes of Was, Commerce, Science and .^Vrt. The bits and stirrups are silver-gilt chased. Over the stirrups, two eagles were placed at the time of the empire. The horse was covered with a violet crape embroidered with golden bees. After this came more Soldiers, General Officers, Sub-Officers, Marshals, and what was said to be the prettiest sight almost of the whole, the ban- ners of the eighty-six Departments of France. These are due to the invention of M. Thiers, and were to have been accompanied by federates from each Department. But the Government very wisely mistrusted this and some other projects of Monsieur Thiers • and as for a federation, my dear, it has been tried. Next comes — His Royal Highness the Prince de Joinville. The 500 sailors of the " Belle Poule '' marching in double file on each side of THE CAR. [Hush ! the enormous crowd thrills as it passes, and only some few voices cry Vive P Empereur .' Shining golden in the frosty sun — with hundreds of thousands of eyes upon it, from houses and housetops, from balconies, black, purple, and tricolor, from tops of leafless trees, from behind long lines of glittering bayonets under schakos and bearskin caps, from behind the Line and the National Guard again, pushing, struggling, heav- •'ng, panting, eager, the heads of an enormous multitude stretching out to meet and follow it, amidst long avenues of columns, and statues gleaming white, of stand- ards rainbow-colored, of golden eagles, of pale funeral urns, of discharging odors amidst huge volumes of pitch-black smoke, THE GREAT IMPERIAL CHARIOT ROLLS MAJESTICALLY ON. The cords of the pall are held by two Marshals, an Admiral and General Bertrand ; who are followed by — The Prefects of the Seine and Police, &c. The Mayors of Paris, &c. The Members of the Old Guard, &c. A Squadron of Light Dragoons, &c. Lieutenant-General Schneider, &c. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 581 More cavalry, more infantry, more artillery, more everybody ; and as the procession passes, the Line and the National Guard forming line on each side of the road fall in and follow it, until it arrives at the Church of the Invalides, where the last honors are to be paid to it.] Among the company assembled under the dome of that edifice, the casual observer would not perhaps have remarked a gentleman of the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, who nevertheless was there. But as, my dear Miss Smith, the descriptions in this letter, from the words in page 578, line 15 — the party moved — up to the words paid to it, on this page, have purely emanated from your obedient servant's fancy, and not from his personal observation (for no being on earth, except a newspaper reporter, can be in two places at once), permit me now to communicate to you what little circumstances fell under my own particular view on the day of the 15th of December. As we came out, the air and the buildings round about were tinged with purple, and the clear sharp half-moon before-men- tioned was still in the sky, where it seemed to be lingering as if it would catch a peep of the commencement of the famous procession. The Arc de Triomphe was shining in a keen frosty sunshine, and looking as clean and rosy as if it had just made its toilette. The canvas or pasteboard image of Napoleon, of which only the gilded legs had been erected the night previous, was now visible, body^ head, crown, sceptre and all, and made an imposing show. Long gilt banners were flaunting about, the imperial cipher and eagle, and the names of the battles and victories glittering in gold. The long avenues of the Champs Elysees had been covered with sand for the convenience of the great procession that was to tramp across it that day. Hun- dreds of people were marching to and fro, laughing, chattering, singing, gesticulating as happy Frenchmen do. There is no pleasanter sight than a French crowd on the alert for a festival, and nothing more catching than their good-humor. As for the notion which has been put forward by some of the opposition newspapers that the populace were on this occasion unusually solemn or sentimental, it would be paying a bad compliment to the natural gayety of the nation, to say that it was, on the morn- ing at least of the 15th of December, affected in any such absurd way. Itinerant merchants were shouting out lustily their commodities of segars and brandy, and the weather was so bitter cold, that they could not fail to find plenty of cus- tomers. Carpenters and workmen were still making a huge banging and clattering among the sheds which were built for the accommodation of the visitors. Some of these sheds were 582 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. hung with black, such as one sees before churches in funerals ; some were robed in violet, in compliment to the Emperor whose mourning they put on. Most of them had fine tricolor hang- ings with appropriate inscriptions to the glory of the French arms. All along the Champs Elyse'es were urns of plaster-of-Paris destined to contain funeral incense and flames ; columns decor- ated with huge flags of blue, red, and white, embroidered with shining crowns, eagles, and N's in gilt paper, and statues of plaster representing Nymphs, Triumphs, Victories, or other female personages, painted in oil so as to represent marble. Real marble could have had no better effect, and the appear- ance of the whole was lively and picturesque in the extreme. On each pillar was a buckler of the color of bronze, bearing the name and date of a battle in gilt letters .- you had to walk through a mile-long avenue of these glorious reminiscences, telling of spots where, in the great imperial days, throats had been victoriously cut. As we passed down the avenue, several troops of soldiers met us : the garde-tminicipale a c/iei'a/, in brass helmets and shining jack-Jboots, noble-looking men, large, on large horses, the pick of the old army, as I have heard, and armed for the special occupation of peace-keeping : not the most glorious, but the best part of the soldier's duty, as I fancy. Then came a regiment of Carabineers, one of Infantry — little, alert, brown- faced, good-humored men, their band at their head playing sounding marches. These were followed by a regiment or detachment of the Municipals on foot — two or three inches taller than the men of the Line, and conspicuous for their neat- ness and discipline. By and by came a squadron or so of dra- goons of the National Guards : they are covered with straps, buckles, aiguillettes, and cartouche-boxes, and made under their tricolor cock's-plumes a show sufficiently warlike. The point which chiefly struck me on beholding these military men of the National Guard and the Line, was the admirable man- ner in which they bore a cold that seemed to me as sharp as the weather in the Russian retreat, through which cold the troops were trotting without trembling and in the utmost cheerfulness and good-humor. An aide-de-camp galloped past in white pantaloons. By heavens ! it made me shudder to look at him. With this profound reflection, we turned away to the right towards the hanging-bridge (where we met a detachment of young men of the Ecole de I'Etat Major, fine-looking lads, but THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 583 sadly disfigured by the wearing of stays or belts, that make the waists of the French dandies of a most absurd tenuity), and speedily passed into the avenue of statues leading up to the Invalides. All these were statues of warriors from Ney to Charlemagne, modelled in clay for the nonce, and placed here to meet the corpse of the greatest warrior of all. Passing these, we had to walk to a little door at the back of the In- valides, where was a crowd of persons plunged in the deepest mourning, and pushing for places in the chapel within. The chapel is spacious and of no great architectural preten- sions, but was on this occasion gorgeously decorated in honor of the great person to whose body it was about to give shelter. We had arrived at nine : the ceremony was not to begin, they said, till two : we had five hours before us to see all that from our places could be seen. VVe saw that the roof, up to the first lines of architecture, was hung with violet ; beyond this with black. We saw N's, eagles, bees, laurel wreaths, and other such imperial emblems, adorning every nook and corner of the edifice. Between the arches, on each side of the aisle, were painted trophies, on which were written the names of some of Napoleon's Generals and of their principal deeds of arms — and not their deeds of arms alone, pardi, but their coats of arms too. O stars and garters ! but this is too much. What was Ney s paternal coat, prithee, or honest Junot's quarterings, or the venerable escut- cheon of King Joachim's father, the innkeeper? You- and I, dear Miss Smith, know the exact value of heraldic bearings. We know that though the greatest pleasure of all is to act like a gentleman, it is a pleasure, nay a merit, to be one — to come of an old stock, to have an honorable pedi- gree, to be able to say that centuries back our fathers had gentle blood, and to us transmitted the same. There is a good in gentility : the man who questions it is envious, or a coarse dullard not able to perceive the difference between high breed- ing and low. One has in the same way heard a man brag that he did not know the difference between wines, not he — give him a good glass of port and he would pitch all your claret to the deuce. My love, men often brag about their own dulness in this way, In the matter of gentlemen, democrats cry, " Psha ! Give us one of Nature's gentlemen, and hang your aristocrats." And so indeed Nature does make some gentlemen — a few here and there. But Art makes most. Good birth, that, is, good hand- some well-formed fathers and mothers, nice cleanly nursery- 584 '^HE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON maids, good meals, good physicians, good education, few cares, pleasant easy habits of life, and luxuries not too great or enervating, but only refining — a course of these going on for a few generations are the best gentleman-makers in the world, and beat Nature hollow. If, respected Madam, you say that there is something better than gentility in this wicked world, and that honesty and per- sonal worth are more valuable than all the politeness and high- breeding that ever wore red-heeled pumps, knights' spurs, or Hoby's boots, Titmarsh for one is never going to say you nay. If you even go so far as to say that the very existence of this super-genteel society among us, from the slavish respect that we pay to it, from the dastardly manner in which we attempt to imitate its airs and ape its vices, goes far to destroy honesty of intercourse, to make us meanly ashamed of our natural affec- tions and honest, harmless usages, and so does a great deal more harm than it is possible it can do good by its example — ■ perhaps. Madam, you speak with some sort of reason. Potato myself, I can't help seeing that the tulip yonder has the best place in the garden, and the most sunshine, and the most water, and the best tending — and not liking him over well. But I can't help acknowledging ihat Nature has given him a much finer dress than ever I can hope to have, and of this, at least, must give him the benefit. Or say, we are so ma'.^y cocks and hens, my dear {sans arriere pensee)^ with our crops pretty full, our plumes pretty sleek, decent picking here and there in the straw-yard, andto lerable siiug roosting in the barn : yonder on the terrace, in the sun, walks Peacock, stretching his proud neck, squealing every now and then in the most pert fashionable voice and flaunting his great supercilious dandified tail. Don't let us be too angry, my dear, with the useless, haughty, insolent creature, because he despises us. Sotnet/iingis there about Peacock that we don't possess. Strain j^our neck ever so, you can't make it as long or as blue as his — cock your tail as much as you please, and it will never be half so fine to look at. But the most absurd, disgusting contemptible sight in the world would you and I be, leaving the barn-door for my lady's flower-garden, for saving our natural sturdy walk for the peacock's genteel rickety stride, and adopting the squeak of his voice in the place of our gallant lusty cock-a-doodledooing. Do you take the allegory ? I love to speak in such, and the above types have been presented to my mind while sitting opposite a gimcrack coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 585 in the Invalides Church, and assigned to one of the Emperor's Generals. Vcntrebleii ! Madam, what need have they of coats-of-arms and coronets, and wretched imitations of old exploded aristo- cratic gewgaws that they had flung out of the country — with the heads of the owners in them sometimes, for indeed they were not particular — a score of years before ? What business, for- sooth, had they to be meddling with gentility and aping its ways, who had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and a pride of their own to support, if proud they were inclined to be ? A clever young man (who was not of high family himself, but had been bred up genteely at Eton and the university) — young Mr. George Canning, at the commencement of the French Revolution, sneered at " Roland the Just, with ribbons in his shoes," and the dandies, who then wore buckles, voted the sarcasm monstrous killing. It was a joke, my dear, worthy of a lackey, or of a silly smart parvenu, not knowing the society into which his luck had cast him (God help him ! in later years, they taught him what they were !), and fancying in his silly intoxication that simplicity was ludicrous and fashion respect- able. See, now, fifty years are gone, and where are shoebuckles ? Extinct, defunct, kicked into the irrevocable past off the toes of all Europe ! How fatal to the parvenu, throughout history, has been this respect for shoebuckles. Where, for instance, would the Empire of Napoleosn have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported such a thing as a coat-of-arms, and had only written their simple names on their shields, after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon yonder ? — the bold Republican who led the crowning charge at Marengo, and sent the best blood of the Holy Roman Empire to the right-about, before the wretched misbegotten imperial heraldry was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the father of it. It has always been so; They won't amalgamate. A country must be governed by the one principle or the other. But give, in a republic, an aristocracy ever so little chance, and it works and plots and sneaks and bullies and sneers itself into place, and you find democracy out of doors. Is it good that the aristocracy should so triumph ? — that is a question that you may settle according to your own notions and taste ; and permit me to say, I do not care twopence how you settle it. Large books have been written upon the subject in a variety of languages, and coming to a variety of conclusions. Great statesmen are there in our country, from Lord Londonderry down to Mr. Vincent, each in his degree maintaining his different opinion. But here, 586 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. in fhe matter of Napoleon, is a simple fact ; he founded a great, glorious, strong, potent republic, able to cope with the best aristocracies in the world, and perhaps to beat them all ; he converts his republic into a monarchy, and surrounds his monarchy with what he calls aristocratic institutions ; and you know what becomes of him. The people estranged, the aristo- cracy faithless (when did they- ever pardon one who was not themselves ?) — the imperial fabric tumbles to the ground. If it teaches nothing else, my dear, it teaches one a great point of policy — namely, to stick by one's party. While these thoughts (and sundry others relative to the hor- rible cold of the place, the intense dullness of delay, the stupidity of leaving a warm bed and a breakfast in order to witness a procession that is much better performed at a theatre) — while these thoughts were passing in the mind, the church began to fill apace, and you saw that the hour of the ceremony was drawing near. Imprimis, came men with lighted staves, and set fire to at least ten thousand wax-candles that were hanging in brilliant chandeliers in various parts of the chapel. Curtains were dropped over the upper windows as these illuminations were effected, and the church was left only to the funereal light of the spermaceti. To the right was the dome, round the cavity of which sparkling lamps were set, that designed the shape of it brilliantly against the darkness. In the midst, and where the altar used to stand, rose the catafalque. ;\nd why not ? Who is God here but Napoleon ? and in him the skeptics have already ceased to believe ; but the people does still somewhat. He and Louis XIV. divide the worship of the place between them. As for the catafalque, the best that I can say for it is that it is really a noble and imposing-looking edifice, with tall pillar^ supporting a grand dome, with innumerable escutcheons, stand- ards, and allusions military and funereal. A great eagle of course tops the whole : tripods burning spirits of wine stand round this kind of dead man's throne, and as we saw it (by peer- ing over the heads of our neighbors in the front rank), it looked, in the midst of the black concave, and under the effect of half-a-thousand flashing cross-lights, properly grand and tall. The effect of the whole chapel, however (to speak the jargon of the painting-room), was spoiled by being cut up : there were too many objects for the eye to rest upon : the ten thousand wax candles, for instance, in their numberless twinkling chan- deliers, the raw tranchant colors of the new banners, wreaths, bees, N's, and other emblems dotting the place all over, and incessantly puzzling, or rather bothering the beholder. THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. 587- High overhead, in a sort of mist, with the glare of their original colors worn down by dust and time, hung long rows or dim ghostly-looking standards, captured in old days from the enemy. They were, I thought, the best and most solemn part of the show. To suppose that the people were bound to be solemn during the ceremony is to exact from them something quite needless and unnatural. The very fact of a squeeze dissipates all solemnity. One great crowd is always, as I imagine, pretty much like another. In the course of the last few years 1 have seen three ; that attending the coronation of our present sov- ereign, that which went to see Courvoisier hanged, and this which witnessed the Napoleon ceremony. The people so assembled for hours together are jocular rather than solemn, seeking to pass away the weary time with the best amuse- ments that will offer. There was, to be sure, in all the scenes above alluded to, just one moment — one particular moment — when the universal people feels a shock and is for that second serious. But except for that second of time, I declare I saw no seriousness here beyond that of ennui. The church began to fill with personages of all ranks and conditions. First opposite our seats came a company of fat grenadiers of the National Guard, who presently, at the word of command, put their muskets down against benches and wainscots, until the arrival of the procession. For seven hours these men formed the object of the most anxious solicitude of all the ladies and gentlemen seated on our benches : they began stamp their feet, for the cold was atrocious, and we were frozen where we sat. Some of them fell to blowing their fingers ; one executed a kind of dance, such as one sees often here in cold weather — the individual jumps repeatedly upon one leg, and kicks out the other violently, meanwhile his hands are flapping across his chest. Some fellows opened their cartouche-boxes, and from them drew eatables of various kinds. You can't think how anxious we were to know the qualities of the same. " Tiens, ce gros qui mange une cuisse de volaille ! " — " II a du Jambon, celui-la." " I should like some, too,** growls an Englishman, "for I hadn't a morsel of breakfast," and so on. This is the way, my dear, that we see Napoleon buried. Did you ever see a chicken escape from clown in a pan- tomime, and hop over into the pit, or amongst the fiddlers .'' and have you not seen the shrieks of enthusiastic laughter that the wondrous incident occasions ? We had our chicken, of course ; ^88 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. there never was a public crowd without one. A poor unhappy woman in a greasy plaid cloak, with a battered rose-colored plush bonnet, was seen taking her place among the stalls allotted to the grandees. " Voyez done I'Anglaise," said everybody, and it was too true. You could swear that the wretch was an Englishwoman : a bonnet was never made or worn so in any other country. Half an hour's delightful amusement did this lady give us all. She was whisked from seat to seat by the huissiers, and at every change of place woke a peal of laughter. I was glad, however, at the end of the day to see the old pink bonnet over a very comfortable seat, which somebody had not claimed and she had kept. Are not these remarkable incidents ? The next wonder we saw was the arrival of a set of tottering old Invalids, who took their places under us with drawn sabres. Then came a superb drum-major, a handsome smiling good-humored giant of a man, his breeches astonishingly embroidered with silver lace. Him a dozen little drummer-boys followed — "the little dar- lings ! " all the ladies cried out in a breath : they were indeed pretty little fellows, and came and stood close under us : the huge drum-major smiled over his little red-capped flock, and for many hours in the most perfect contentment twiddled his mustaches and played with the tassels of his cane. Now the company began to arrive thicker and thicker. A whole covey of ConseiUers d' JStat C2im& in, in blue coats, em- broidered with blue silk, then came a crowd of lawyers in toques and caps, among whom were sundry venerable Judges in scarlet, purple velvet, and ermine — a kind of Bajazet cos- tume. Look there ! there is the Turkish Ambassador in his red cap, turning his solemn brown face about and looking preternaturally wise. The Deputies walk in in a body. Guizot is not there : he passed by just now in full ministerial costume. Presently little Thiers saunters back: what a clear, broad, sharp-eyed face the fellow has, with his gray hair cut down so demure ! A servant passes, pushing through the crowd a shabby wheel-chair. It has just brought old Mon9ey the Gov- ernor of the Invalids, the honest old man who defended Paris so stoutly in 1814. He has been very ill, and is worn down almost by infirmities : but in his illness he was perpetually ask- ing, " Doctor, shall I live till the 15th? Give me till then, and I die contented." One can't help believing that the old man's wish is honest, however one may doubt the piety of another illustrious Marshal, who once carried a candle before Charles X. in a procession, and has been this morning to Neuilly to THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON.' 589 kneel and pray at the foot of Napoleon's cofiin. He might have said his prayers at home, to be sure ; but don't let us ask too much : that kind of reserve is not a Frenchman's charac- teristic. ' ■' Bang — bang ! At about half-past two a dull sound of can- nonading was heard without the church, and signals took place between the Commandant of the Invalids, of the National Guards, and the big drum-major. Looking to these troops (the fat Nationals were shuffling into line again) the two Com- mandants uttered, as nearly as I could catch them, the follow- ing words — " Harrum Hump ! " At once all the National bayonets were on the present, and the sabres of the old Invalids up. The big drum-major looked round at the children, who began very slowly and solemnly on their drums, Rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — (count two between each) — rub-dub-dub, and a great procession of priests came down from the altar. First, there was a tall handsome cross-bearer, bearing a long gold cross, of which the front was turned towards his grace the Archbishop. Then came a double row of about sixteen incense-boys, dressed in white surplices : the first boy, about six years old, the last with whiskers and of the height of a man. Then followed a regiment of priests in black tippets and white gowns : they had black hoods, like the moon when she is at her third quarter, wherewith those who wete bald (many were, and fat too) covered themselves. All the reverend men held their heads meekly down, and affected to be reading in their bre- viaries. After the Priests came some Bishops of the neighboring dis- tricts, in purple, with crosses sparkling on their episcopal bosoms. Then came, after more priests, a set of men whom I have never seen before — a kind of ghostly heralds, young and hand- some men, some of them in stiff tabards of black and silver, their eyes to the ground, their hands placed at right angles with their chests. Then came two gentlemen bearing remarkable tall candle- sticks, with candles of corresponding size. One was burning brightly, but the wind (that chartered libertine) had blown out the other, which nevertheless kept its place in the procession — • 1 wondered to myself whether the reverend gentleman who car- ried the extinguished candle, felt disgusted, humiliated, mor- tified — perfectly conscious that the eyes of many thousands of 59° THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. people were bent upon that bit of refractory wax. We all of us looked at it with intense interest. Another cross-bearer, behind whom came a gentleman carry- ing an instrument like a bedroom candlestick. His Grandeur Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris : he was in black and white, his eyes were cast to the earth, his hands were together at right angles from his chest; on his hands were black gloves, and on the black gloves sparkled the sacred episcopal — what do I say .'' — archiepiscopal ring. On his head was the mitre. It is unlike the godly coronet that figures upon the coachpanels of our own Right Reverend Bench, The Archbishop's mitre may be about a yard high : formed within probably of consecrated pasteboard, it is without covered by a sort of watered silk of white and silver. On the two peaks at the top of the mitre are two very little spangled tassels, that frisk and twinkle about in a very agreeable manner. Monseigneur stood opposite to us for some time, when I had the opportunity to note the above remarkable phenomena. He stood opposite me for some time, keeping his eyes steadily on the ground, his hands before him, a small clerical train follow- ing after. Why didn't they move ? There was the National Guard keeping on presenting arms, the little drummers going on rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — in the same steady, slow way, and the Procession never moved an inch. There was evidently, to use an elegant phrase, a hitch somewhere, \E?itt'r a fat priest, who bustles up to the drum-ma;'or.^ Fat priest — " Taisez-vous." Liitle drummer — Rub-dub-dub — rub-dub-dub — rub-dub- dub, &c. Drum-major — " Qu'est-ce done ? " Fat priest — " Taisez-vous, vous dis-je ; ce n'est pas le corps. II n'arrivera pas — pour une heure." The little drums were instantly hushed, the procession turned to the right about, and walked back to the altar again, the blown-out candle that had been on the near side of us before was now on the off side, the National Guards set down their muskets and began at their sandwiches again. We had to wait an hour and a half at least before the great procession arrived. The guns without went on booming all the while at intervals, and as we heard each, the audience gave a kind of " ahahah !'* such as you hear when the rockets go up at Vauxhall, At last the real Procession came, Then the drums began to beat as formerly, the Nationals to get under arms, the clergymen were sent for and went, and pres THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLJ^ON 591 entl}^ — yes, there was the tall cross-bearer at the head of the procession, and they came back I They chanted something in a weak, snuffling, lugubrious manner, to the melancholy bray of a serpent. Crash ! however, Mr. Habeneck and the fiddlers in the organ- loft pealed out a wild shrill march, which stopped the reverend gentleman, and in the midst of this music — And of a great trampling of feet and clattering, And of a great crowd of Generals and Officers in fine clothes. With the Prince de Joinville marching quickly at the head of the procession, And while ever^^body's heart was thumping as hard as possible. Napoleon's coffin passed. It was done in an instant. A box covered with a great red cross — a dingy-looking crown lying on the top of it — seamen on one side and Invalids on the other — they had passed in an in^ stant and were up the aisle. A faint snuffling sound, as before, was heard from the offi- ciating priests, but we knew of nothing more. It is said that old Louis Philippe was standing at the catafalque, whither the Prince de Joinville advanced and said, " Sire, I bring you the body of the Emperor Napoleon." Louis Philippe answered, " I receive it in the name of France." Bertrand put on the body the most glorious victor- ious sword that ever has been forged since the apt descendants of the first murderer learned how to hammer steel; and the coffin was placed in the temple prepared for it. The six hundred singers and the fiddlers now commenced the playing and singing of a piece of music ; and a part of the crew of the " Belle Poule " skipped into the places that had been kept for them under us, and listened to the music, chew- ing tobacco. While the actors and fiddlers were going on, most of the spirits-of-wine lamps on altars went out. When we arrived in the open air we passed through the court of the Invalides, where thousands of people had been as- sembled, but where the benches were now quite bare. Then we came on to the terrace before the place : the old soldiers were firing off the great guns, which made a dreadful stunning noise, and frightened some of us, who did not care to pass be- fore the cannon and be knocked down even by the* wadding. The guns were fired in honor of the King, who was going home by a back door. All the forty thousand people who covered the great stands before the Hotel had gone away too. The Im« 592 THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. perial Barge had been dragged up the river, and was Ij'ing lonely along the Quay, examined by some few shivering people on the shore. It was five o'clock when we reached home : the stars were shining keenly out of the frosty sky, and Frangois told me that dinner was just ready. In this manner, my dear Miss Smith, the great Napoleon was buried. Farewell. CRITICAL REVIEWS. <993> GEORGE CRUIKSHANK* Accusations of ingratitude, and just accusations no doubt, are made against every inhabitant of this wielded world, and the fact is, that a man who is ceaselessly engaged in its trouble and turmoil, borne hither and thither upon the fierce waves of the crowd, bustling, shifting, struggling.to keep himself some- what above water — fighting for reputation, or more likely for bread, and ceaselessly occupied to-day with plans for appeasing the eternal appetite of inevitable hunger to-morrow — a man in such straits has hardly time to think of anything but himself, and, as in a sinking ship, must make his own rush for the boats, and fight, struggle, and trample for safety. In the midst of such a combat as this, the " ingenious arts, which prevent the ferocity of the manners, and act upon them as an emollient " (as the philosophic bard remarks in the Latin Grammar) are likely to be jostled to death, and then forgotten! The world will allow no such compromises between it and that which does not belong to it — no two gods must we serve ; but (as one has seen in some old portraits) the horrible glazed eyes of Necessity are always fixed upon you ; fly away as you will, black Care sits behind you, and with his ceaseless gloomy croaking drowns the voice of all more cheerful companions. Happv he whose fortune has placed him where there is calm and plenty, and who has the wisdom not to give up his quiet in quest of vision- ary gain. Here is, no doubt, the reason why a man, after the period of his boyhood, or first youth, makes so few friends. Want and ambition (new acquaintances which are introduced to him along with his beard) thrust away all other society from him. Some old friends remain, it is true, but these are become as a habit — a part of your selfishness ; and, for new ones, they are selfish as you are. Neither member of the new partnership has the capital of affection and kindly feeling, or can even afford * Reprinted from the Westminster Review for June, 1840. (No. 66.) (595) 596 CRITICAL REVIEWS. the time that is requisite for the establishment of the new firm. Damp and chill the shades of the prison-house begm to close round us, and that " vision splendid " which has accompanied our steps in our journey daily farther from the east, fades away and dies into the light of common day. And what a common day ! what a foggy, dull, shivering apology for light is this kind of muddy twilight through which we are about to tramp and flounder for the rest of our exist- ence, wandering farther and farther from the beauty and fresh- ness and from the kindly gushing springs of clear gladness that made all round us green in our youth ! One wanders and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise — to mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink a stone to the bottom. The reader who has seen the name affixed to the head of this article scarcely expected to be entertained with a decla- mation upon ingratitude, youth, and the vanity of human pur- suits, which may seem at first sight to have little to do with the subject in hand. But (although we reserve the privilege of discoursing upon whatever subject shall suit us, and by no means admit the public has any right to ask in our sentences for any meaning, or any connection whatever) it happens that, in this particular instance, there is an undoubted connection, In Susan's case, as recorded by Wordsworth, what connection •had the corner of Wood Street with a mountain ascending, a vision of trees, and a nest by the Dove ? Why should the song of a thrush cause bright volumes of vapor to glide through Lothbury, and a river to flow on through the vale of Cheapside? As she stood at the corner of Wood Street, a map and a pail in her hand most likely, she heard the bird singing, and straightway began pining and yearning for the days of her youth, forgetting the proper business of the pail and mop. Even so we are moved by the sight of some of Mr. Cruikshank's works — the " Busen fiihlt sich jugendlioh erschiittert," the " schwankende Gestalten " of youth flit before one again, — Cruikshank's thrush begins to pipe and carol, as in the days of boyhood ; hence misty moralities, reflections, and sad and pleasant remembrances arise. He is the friend of the young especially. Have we not read all the story-books that his wonderful pencil has illus- trated t Did we not forego tarts, in order to buy his " Break- ing-up," or his " Fashionable Monstrosities " of the year eight- een hundred and something 1 Have we not before us, at this GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 597 very moment, a print, — one of the admirable " Illustrations of Phrenology " — which entire work was purchased by a joint-stock company of boys, each drawing lots afterwards for the separate prints, and taking his choice in rotation ? The writer of this, too, had the honor of drawing the fifst lot, and seized imme- diately upon " Philoprogenitiveness " — a marvellous print (our copy is not at all improved by being colored, which operation we performed on it ourselves} — a marvellous print, indeed, — full of ingenuity and fine jovial humor. A father, possessor of an enormous nose and family, is surrounded by the latter, who are, some of them, embracing the former. The composition writhes and twists about like the Kermes of Rubens. No less than seven little men and women in nightcaps, in frocks, in bibs, in breeches, are clambering about the head, knees, and arms of the man with the nose ; their noses, too, are preternat- urally developed — the twins in the cradle have noses of the most considerable kind. The second daughter, who is watch- ing them ; the youngest but two, who sits squalling in a certain wicker chair ; the eldest son, who is yawning ; the eldest daugh- ter, who is preparing with the gravy of two mutton-chops a savory dish of Yorkshire pudding for eighteen persons ; the youths who are examining her operations (one a literary gentle- man, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding) \ the- genius who is at work on the slate, and the two honest lads who are hugging the good- humored washerwoman, their mother, — all, all, save this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome certainly are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture. It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of his own skull, we are certain, a huge bump of philoprogenitive- ness. He loves children in his heart ; every one of those he has drawn is perfectly happy, and jovial, and affectionate, and innocent as possible. He makes them wdth large noses, but he loves them, and you always find something kind in the midst of his humor, and the ugliness redeemed by a sly touch of beauty. The smiling mother reconciles one with all the hideous family ; they have all something of the mother in them — some- thing kind, and generous, and tender. Knight's, in Sweeting's Alley ; Fairburn's, in a court off Ludgate Hill ; Hone's, in Fleet Street — bright, enchanted palaces, which George Cruikshank used to people with grinning, fantastical imps, and merry, harmless sprites, — where are they ? Fairburn's shop knows him no more ; not only has Knight disappeared from Sweeting's Alley, but, as we are given to 598 CRITICAL REVIEWS. understand, Sweeting's Alley has disappeared from the face of the ^lobe. Slop, the atrocious Castlereagh, the sainted Caro- line (in a tight pelisse, with feathers in her head), the " Dandy of sixty," who used to glance at us from Hone's friendly win- dows — where are they ? •Mr. Cruikshank may have drawn a thousand better things since the days when these were ; but they are to us a thousand times more pleasing than anything else he has done. How we used to believe in them ! to stray miles out of the way on holidays, in order to ponder for an hour before that delightful window in Sweeting's Alley ! in walks through Fleet Street, to vanish abruptly down Fairburn's passage, and there make one at his " charming gratis " exhibi- tion. There used to be a crowd round the window in those days, of grinning, good-natured mechanics, who spelt the songs, and spoke them out for the benefit of the company, and who received the points of humor with a general sympathizing roar. Where are these people now .'' You never hear any laughing at HB. ; his pictures are a great deal too genteel for that — • polite points of wit, which strike one as exceedingly clever and pretty, and cause one to smile in a quiet, gentlemanlike kind of way. There must be no smiling with Cruikshank. A man who does not laugh outright is a dullard, and has no heart ; even the old dandy of sixty must have laughed at his own wondrous grotesque image, as they say Louis Philippe did, who saw all the caricatures that were made of himself. And there are some of Cruikshank's designs which have the blessed faculty of creating laughter as often as you see them. As Diggory says in the play, who is bidden by his master not to laugh while waiting at table — " Don't tell the story of Grouse in the Gun- room, master, or I can't help laughing." Repeat that history ever so often, and at the proper moment, honest Diggory is sure to explode. Every man, no doubt, who lov&s Cruikshank has his " Grouse in the Gun-room." There is a fellow in the *' Points of Humor " who is offering to eat up a certain little general, that has made us happy any time these sixteen years • his huge mouth is a perpetual well of laughter — buckets full of fun can be drawn from it. We have formed no such friend- ships as that boyish one of the man with the mouth. But though, in our eyes, Mr. Cruikshank reached his apogee some eighteen years since, it must not be imagined that such is really the case. Eighteen sets of children have since then learned to love and admire him, and may many more of their successors be brought up in the same delightful faith. It is not the artist GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 599 who fails, but the men who grow cold — the men, from whom the illusions (why illusions ? realities) of youth disappear one by one ; who have no leisure to be happy, no blessed holidays, but only fresh cares at Midsummer and Christmas, being the inevitable seasons which bring us bills instead of pleasures. Tom, who comes bounding home from school, has the doctor's account in his trunk, and his father goes to sleep at the panto- mime to which he takes him. Pater vifelix, you too have laughed at clown, and the magic wand of spangled harlequin; what delightful enchantment did it wave around you, in the golden days " when George the Third was king ! " But our clown lies in his grave ; and our harlequin, Ellar, prince of how many enchanted islands, was he not at Bow Street the other day,* in his dirty, tattered, faded motley — seized as a law-breaker, for acting at a penny theatre, after having well- nigh starved in the streets, where nobody would listen to his old guitar ? No one gave a shilling to bless him : not one of us who owe him so much. We know not if Mr. Cruikshank will be very well pleased at finding his name in such company as that of Clown and Harlequin ; but he, like them, is certainly the children's friend. His drawings abound in feeling for these little ones, and hid- eous as in the course of his duty he is from time to time com- pelled to design them, he never sketches one without a certain pity for it, and imparting to the figure a certain grotesque grace. In happy schoolboys he revels ; plum-pudding and holidays his needle has engraved over and over again ; there is a design in one of the comic almanacs of some young gentle- men who are employed in administering to a schoolfellow the correction of the pump, which is as graceful and elegant as a drawing of Stothard. Dull books about children George Cruikshank makes bright with illustrations — there is one pub- lished by the ingenious and opulent Mr. Tegg. It is entitled " Mirth and Morality," the mirth being, for the most part, on the side of the designer — the morality, unexceptionable cer- tainly, the author's capital. Here are then, to these moralities, a smiling train of mirths supplied by George Cruikshank. See yonder little fellows butterfly-hunting across a common ! Such a light, brisk, airy, gentlemanlike drawing was never made upon such a theme. Who, cries the author — " Who has not chased the butterfly, And crushed its slender legs and wings, And heaved a moralizing sigh : Alas ! how frail are human things ! " ♦ This was written in 1840. 6op CRITICAL REVIEWS. A very unexceptionable morality truly; but it would have puzzled another than George Cruikshank to make mirth out of it as he has done. Away, surely not on the wings of these verses, Cruikshank's imagination begins to soar ; and he makes us three darling little men on a green common, backed by old farm-houses, somewhere about May. A great mixture of blue and clouds in the air, a strong fresh breeze stirring, Tom's jacket flapping in the same, in order to bring down the insect queen or king of spring that is fluttering above him, — • he renders all this with a few strokes on a little block of wood not two inches square, upon which one may gaze for hours, so merry and life-like a scene does it present. What a charming creative power is this, what a privilege — to be a god, and create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of smiling, jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose portraits are carried abroad, and have the faculty of making us monsters of six feet curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine that an artist could make anything of such a subject as this ? The writer begins by stating, — " I love to go back to the days of my youth, And to reckon my joys to the letter. And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world, Ay, and those who are gone are to a better.''^ This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. " Of all the men I have ever known," says he, " my uncle united the greatest degree of cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. Though a man when I was a boy, he was yet one of the most agreeable companions I ever possessed. * * * He embarked for America, and nearly twenty years passed by before he came back again; * * * but oh, how altered! — he was in every sense of the word an old man, his body and mind were enfeebled, and second childishness had come upon him. How often have I bent over him, vainly endeavoring to recall to his memory the scenes we had shared together : and how fre- quently, with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and lustreless eye, while he has amused himself in clapping his hands and singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm." Alas ! such are the consequences of long residences in America' and of old age even in uncles ! Well, the point of this mo- rality is, that the uncle one day in the morning of life vowed that he would catch his two nephews and tie them together, ay, and actually did so, for all the efforts the rogues made to run away from him ; but he was so fatigued that he declared he never would make the attempt again, whereupon the nephew GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 60 1 remarks, — " Often since then, when engaged in enterprises be- yond my strength, have I called to mind the determination of my uncle." Does it not seem impossible to make a picture out of this ? And yet George Cruikshank has produced a charming design, in which the uncles and nephews are so prettily portrayed that one is reconciled to their existence, with all their moralities. Many more of the mirths in this little book are excellent, es- pecially a great figure of a parson entering church on horse- back, — an enormous parson truly, calm, unconscious, unwieldy. As Zeuxis had a bevy of virgins in order to make his famous picture — his express virgin — a clerical host must have passed under Cruikshank's eyes before he sketched this little enor- mous parson of parsons. Being on the subject of children's books, how shall we enough praise the delightful German nursery-tales, and Cruik- shank's illustrations of them t We coupled his name with pantomime awhile since, and sure never pantomimes were more charming than these. Of all the artists that ever drew, from Michael Angelo upwards and downwards, Cruikshank was the n: an to illustrate these tales, and give them just the proper admixture of the grotesque, the wonderful, and the graceful. May all Mother Bunch's collection be similarlj^ indebted to him ; may "Jack the Giant Killer," may "Tom Thumb," may " Puss in Boots," be one day revivified by his pencil. Is not Whittington sitting yet on Highgate Hill, and poor Cinderella (in the sweetest of all fairy stories) still pining in her lonely chimney nook ? A man who has a true affection for these de- lightful companions of his youth is bound to be grateful to them if he can, and we pray Mr. Cruikshank to remember them. It is folly to say that this or that kind of humor is too good for the public, that only a chosen few can relish it. The best humor that we know of has been as eagerly received by the public as by the most delicate connoisseur. There is hardly a man in England who can read but will laugh at Falstaff and the humor of Joseph Andrews ; and honest Mr. Pickwick's story can be felt and loved by any person above the age of six. Some may have a keener enjoyment of it than others, but all the world can be merry over it, and is always ready to welcome- it. The best criterion of good-humor is success, and what a share of this has Mr. Cruikshank had ! how many millions of mortals has he made happy ! We have heard very profound persons talk philosophically of the marvellous and mysterious 6o2 CRITICAL REVIEWS. manner in which he has suited himself to the time— ^// vibrer la fibre populaire {?is Napoleon boasted of himself), supplied a peculiar want felt at a peculiar period, the simple secret of which is, as we take it, that he, living amongst the public, has with them a general wide-hearted sympathy, that he laughs at what they laugh at, that he has a kindly spirit of enjoyment, with not a morsel of mysticism in his composition ; that he pities and loves the poor, and jokes at the follies of the great, and that he addresses all in a perfectly sincere and manly way. To be greatly successful as a professional humorist, as in any other calling, a man must be quite honest, and show that his heart is in his work. A bad preacher will get admiration and a hearing with this point in his favor, where a man of thre^ times his acquirements will only find indifference and coldness. Is any man more remarkable than our artist for telling the truth after his own manner ? Hogarth's honesty of purpose was as conspicuous in an earlier time, and we fancy that Gilray would have been far more successful and more powerful but for that unhappy bribe, which turned the whole course of his humor into an unnatural channel. Cruikshank would not for any bribe say what he did not think, or lend his aid to sneer down anything meritorious, or to praise any thing or person that deserved censure. When he levelled his wit against the Regent, and did his very prettiest for the Princess, he most certainly believed, along with the great body ol the people whom he represents, that the Princess was the most spotless, pure-mannered darling of a Princess that ever married a heart- less debauchee of a Prince Royal. Did not millions believe with him, and noble and learned lords take their oaths to her Royal Highness's innocence.'' Cruikshank would not stand by and see a woman ill-used, and so struck in for her rescue, he and the people belaboring with all their might the party who were making the attack, and determining, from pure sym- pathy and indignation, that the woman must be innocent be- cause her husband treated her so foully. To be sure we have never heard so much from Mr. Cruik- shank's own lips, but any man who will examine these old drawings, which first made him famous, will see what an hon- est, hearty hatred the champion of woman has for all who abuse her, and will admire the energy with which he flings his wood-blocks at all who side against her. Canning, Castle- reagh, Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all ; and as for the Prince, up to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he tie that unfortunate old man ! And do not let squeamish GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 603 Tories cry out about disloyalty ; if the crown does wrong, the crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of course, for the crown. In those days, and by those people who so bitterly attacked the son, no word was ever breathed against the father, simply because he was a good husband, and a sober, thrifty, pious, orderly man. This attack upon the Prince Regent we believe to have been Mr, Cruikshank's only effort as a party politician. Some early manifestoes against Napoleon we find, it is true, done in the regular John Bull style, with the Gilray model for the little upstart Corsican : but as soon as the Emperor had yielded to stern fortune our artist's heart relented (as Beranger's did on the other side of the water), and many of our reader will doubt- less recollect a fine drawing of " Louis XVIII. trying on Na- poleon's boots," which did not certainly fit the gouty son of Saint Louis. Such satirical hits as these, however, must not be considered as political, or as anything more that the expression of the artist's national British idea of Frenchmen. It must be confessed that for that great nation Mr. Cruik- shank entertains a considerable contempt. Let the reader ex- amine the " Life in Paris," or the five-hundred designs in which Frenchmen are introduced, and he will find them almost invari- ably thin, with ludicrous spindle-shanks, pigtails, outstretched hands, shrugging shoulders, and queer hair and mustaches. He has the British idea of a Frenchman ; and if he does not believe that the inhabitants of France are for the most part dancing-masters and barbers, yet takes care not to depict such in preference, and would not speak too well of them. It is curious how these traditions endure. In France, at the pres- ent moment, the Englishman on the stage is the caricatured Englishman at the time of the war, with a shock red head, a long white coat, and invariable gaiters. Those who wish to study this subject should peruse Monsieur Paul de Kock's histories of " Lord Boulingrog " and " Lady Crockmilove." On the other hand, the old emigre hzs taken his station amongst us, and we doubt if a good British gallery would understand that such and such a character was a Frenchman unless he appeared in the ancient traditional costume. A curious book, called " Life in Paris," published in 1822, contains a number of the artist's plates in the aquatint style ; and though we believe he has never been in that capital, the de- signs have a great deal of life in them, and pass muster very well, A villanous race of shoulder-shrugging mortals are his French- men indeed. And the heroes of the tale, a certain Mr, Dick 6o4 CRITICAL REVIEWS. Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, are made to show the true British superiority, on every occasion when Britons and French are brought together. This book was one among the many that tlie designer's genius has caused to be popular ; the plates are not carefully executed, but, being col- ored, have a pleasant, lively look. The same style was adopted in the once famous book called " Tom and Jerry, or Life in London," which must have a word of notice here, for, although by no means Mr. Cruikshank's best work, his reputation was extraordinarily raised by it. Tom and Jerry were as popular twenty years since as Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller now are \ and often have we wished, while reading the biographies of the latter celebrated personages, that they had been described as well by Mr. Cruikshank's pencil as by Mr. Dickens's pen. As for Tom and Jerry, to show the mutability of human affairs and the evanescent nature of reputation, we have been to the British Museum and no less than five circulating libraries in quest of the book, and " Life in London," alas, is not to be found at any one of them. We can only, therefore, speak of the work from recollection, but have still a very clear remembrance of the leather-gaiters of Jerry Hawthorn, the green spectacles of Logic, and the hooked nose of Corinthian Tom. They were the schoolboy's delight ; and in the days when the work appeared we firmly believed the three heroes above named to be types of the most elegant, fashionable young fellows the town afforded, and thought their occupations and amusements were those of all high-bred English gentlemen. Tom knocking down the watchman at Temple Bar ; Tom and Jerry dancing at Almack's ; or flirting in the saloon at the theatre ; at the night-houses, after the play ; at Tom Cribb's, examining the silver cup then in the possession of that cham- pion ; at the chambers of Bob Logic, who, seated at a cabinet piano, plays a waltz to which Corinthian Torn and Kate are dancing ; ambling gallantly in Rotten Row ; or examining the poor fellow at Newgate who was having his chains knocked oiT before hanging : all these scenes remain indelibly engraved upon the mind, and so far we are independent of all the circu- lating libraries in London. As to the literary contents of the book, they have passed sheer away. It was, most likely, not particularly refined ; nay, the chances are that it was absolutely vulgar. But it must have had some merit of its own, that is clear ; it must have given striking descriptions of life in some part or other of Lon- don, for all London read it, and went to see it in its dramatic GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 605 shape. The artist, it is said, wished to close the career of the three heroes by bringing them all to ruin, but the writer, or pub- lishers, would not allow any such melancholy subjects to dash the merriment of the public, and we believe Tom, Jerry, and Logic, were married off at the end of the tale, as if they had been the most moral personages in the world. There is some goodness in this pity, which authors and the public are disposed to show towards certain agreeable, disreputable characters of romance. Who would mar the prospects of honest Roderick Random, or Charles Surface, or Tom Jones ? only a very stern moralist indeed. And in regard of Jerry Hawthorn and that hero without a surname, Corinthian Tom, Mr. Cruikshank, we make little doubt, was glad in his heart that he was not allowed to have his own way. Soon after the "Tom and Jerfy " and the "Life in Paris," Mr. Cruikshank produced a much more elaborate set of prints, in a work which was called " Points of Humor." These " Points " were selected from various comic works, and did not, we believe, extend beyond a couple of numbers, containing about a score of co2>per-plates. The collector of humorous designs cannot fail to have them in his portfolio, for they con- tain some of the very best efforts of Mr.^ Cruikshank 's genius, and though not quite so highly labored as some of his later pro- ductions, are none the worse, in our opinion, for their compara^ tive want of finish. All the effects are perfectly given, and the expression is as good as it could be in the most delicate en- graving upon steel. The artist's style, too, was then completely formed ; and, for our parts, we should say that we preferred his manner of 1825 to any other which he has adopted since. The first picture, which is called "The Point of Honor," illus- trates the old story of the officer who, on being accused of cowardice for refusing to fight a duel, came among his brother officers and flung a lighted grenade down upon the floor, before which his comrades fled ignominiously. This design is capital, and the outward rush of heroes, walking, trampling, twisting, scuffling at the door, is in the best style of the grotesque. You see but the back of these gentlemen ; into which, nevertheless, the artist has managed to throw an expression of ludicrous agony that one could scarcely have expected to find in such a part of the human figure. The next plate is not less good. It represents a couple who, having been found one night tipsy, and lying in the same gutter, were, by a charitable though mis- guided gentleman, supposed to be man and wife, and put comfortably to bed together. The morning came ; fancy the 6o6 CRITICAL REVIEWS. surprise of this interesting pair when they awoke and discovered their situation. Fancy the manner, too, in which Cruikshank has depicted them, to which words cannot do justice. It is needless to state that this fortuitous and temporary union was followed by one more lasting and sentimental, and that these two worthy persons were married, and lived happily ever after. We should like to go through every one of these prints. There is the jolly miller, who, returning home at night, calls upon his wife to get him a supper, and falls to upon rashers of bacon and ale. How he gormandizes, that jolly miller ! rasher after rasher, how they pass away frizzling and smoking from the gridiron down that immense grinning gulf of a mouth. Poor wife ! how she pines and frets, at that untimely hour of mid- night to be obliged to fry, fry, fry perpetually, and minister to the monster's appetite. And yonder in the clock : what agon- ized face is that we see ? By heavens, it is the squire of the parish. What business has he there ? Let us not ask. Suffice it to say, that he has, in the hurry of the moment, left up stairs his br ; his — psha ! a part of his dress, in short, with a number of bank-notes in the pockets. Look in the next page, and you will see the ferocious, bacon-devouring ruffian of a miller is actually causing this garment to be carried through the village and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to say that the demoralized miller never offered to return the bank-notes, although he was so mighty scrupulous in endeavor- ing to find an owner for the corduroy portfolio in which he had found them. Passing from this painful subject, we come, we regret to state, to a series of prints representing personages not a whit more moral. Burns's famous " Jolly Beggars " have all had their portraits drawn by Cruikshank. There is the lovely " hempen widow," quite as interesting and romantic as the famous Mrs. Sheppard, who has at the lamented demise of her husband adopted the very same consolation. " My curse upon them every one, They've hanged my braw John Highlandman; * * * * * And now a widow I must mourn Departed joys that ne'er return ; No comfort but a hearty can When I think on John Highlandman." Sweet " raucle carlin," she has none of the sentimentality of the English highwaymen's lady ; but being wooed by a tinker and " A pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle Wha us'd to trystes and fairs to driddle," GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 607 prefers the practical to the merely musical man. The tinker sings with a noble candor, worthy of a fellow of his strength of body and station in life — " My bonnie lass, I work in brass, A tinker is my station ; I've travell'd round all Christian ground In this my occupation. I've ta'en the gold, I've been enroU'd In many a noble squadron ; But vain they search' d when oft I march'd To go an' clout the caudron." It was his ruling passion. What was military glory to him, for- sooth ? He had the greatest contempt for it, and loved freedom and his copper kettle a thousand times better — a kind of hard- ware Diogenes. Of fiddling he has no better opinion. The picture represents the " sturdy caird " taking " poor gut- scraper" by the beard, — drawing his "roosty rapier," and swearing to " speet him like a pliver " unless he would relin- quish the bonnie lassie forever — " Wi' ghastly ee, poor tweedle-dee Upon his hunkers bended, An' pray'd for grace vvi' ruefu' face. An' so the quarrel ended." Hark how the tinker apostrophizes the violinist, stating to the widow at the same time the advantages which she might expect from an alliance with himself : — " Despise that shrimp, that withered imp, Wi' a' his noise and caperin' : And take a share with those that bear The budget and the apron ! 'And by that stowp, my faith an' houpe, An' by that dear Kiibaigie ! If e'er ye want, or meet wi' scant, May I ne'er weet my craigie." Cruikshank's caird is a noble creature ; his face and figure show him to be fully capable of doing and saying all that is above written of him. In the second part, the old tale of " The Three Hunchbacked Fiddlers " is illustrated with equal felicity. The famous classical dinners and duel in " Peregrine Pickle " are also excellent in their way ; and the connoisseur of prints and etchings may see in the latter plate, and in another in this volume, how great the artist's mechanical skill is as an etcher. The distant view of the city in the duel, and of a market-place in " The Quack Doctor," are delightful specimens of the artist's skill in depicting build- ings and backgrounds. They are touched with a grace, truth, 6o8 CRITICAL REVIEWS. and dexterity of workmanship that leave nothing to desire. We have before mentioned the man with the mouth, which appears in this number emblematical of gout and indigestion, in which the artist has shown all the fancy of Callot. Little demons, with long saws for noses, are making dreadful incisions into the toes of the unhappy sufferer ; some are bringing pans of hot coals to keep the wounded member warm ; a huge, solemn nightmare sits on the invalid's chest, staring solemnly into his eyes ; a monster, with a pair of drumsticks, is banging a devil's tattoo on his forehead ; and a pair of imps are nailing great tenpenny nails into his hands to make his happiness complete. The late Mr. Clark's excellent work, " Three Courses and a Dessert," was published at a time when the rage for comic stories was not so great as it since has been, and Messrs. Clark and Cruikshank only sold their hundreds where Messrs. Dickens and Phiz dispose of their thousands. But if our recommenda- tion can in any way influence the reader, we would enjoin him to have a copy of the " Three Courses," that contains some of the best designs of our artist, and some of the most amusing tales in our language. The invention of the pictures, for which Mr. Clark takes credit to himself, says a great deal for his wit and fancy. Can we, for instance, praise too highly the man who invented that wonderful oyster ? Examine him well ; his beard, his pearl, his little round stomach, and his sweet smile. Only oysters know how to smile in this way ; cool, gentle, waggish, and yet inexpressibly innocent and winning. Dando himself must have allowed such an artless native to go free, and consigned him to the glassy, cool, translucent wave again. In writing upon such subjects as these with which we have been furnished, it can hardly be expected that we should fol- low any fixed plan and order — we must therefore take such ad- vantage as we may, and seize upon our subject when and wherever we can lay hold of him. For Jews, sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, beadles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predi- lection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," and the immortal Fagin of " Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies the comic vis in these persons and things ? Why should a GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 609 beadle be comic, and his opposite a charity boy ? Why should a tall life-guaiTlsman have something in him essentially absurd ? Why are short breeches more ridiculous than long -' What is there particularly jocose about a pump, and wherefore does a long nose always provoke the beholder to laughter ? These points may be metaphysically elucidated by those who list. It is probable that Mr. Cruikshank could not give an accurate definition of that which is ridiculous in these objects, but his instinct has told him that fun lurks in them, and cold must be the heart that can pass by the pantaloons of his charity boys, the Hessian boots of his dandies, and the fan-tail hats of his dustmen, without respectful wonder. He has made a complete little gallery of dustmen. There is, in the first place, the professional dustman, who, having in the enthusiastic exercise of his delightful trade, laid hands upon property not strictly his own, is pursued, we presume, by the right owner, from whom he flies as fast as his crooked shanks will carry him. What a curious picture it is — the horrid rickety houses in some dingy suburb of London, the grinning cobbler, the smothered butcher, the very trees which are covered with dust — it is fine to look at the different expressions of the two in- teresting fugitives. The fiery charioteer who belabors the poor donkey has still a glance for his brother on foot, on whom punishment is about to descend. And not a little curious is it to think of the creative power of the man who has arranged this little tale of low life. How logically it is conducted, how cleverly each one of the accessories is made to contribute to the effect of the whole. What a deal of thought and humor has the artist expended on this little block of wood ; a large picture might have been painted out of the very same materials, which Mr. Cruikshank, out of his wondrous fund of merri- ment and observation, can afford to throw away upon a draw- ing not two inches long. From the practical dustmen we pass to those purely poetical. There are three of them who rise on clouds of their own raising, the very genii of the sack and shovel. Is there no one to write a sonnet to these ? — and yet a whole poem was written about Peter Bell the Wagoner, a character by no means so poetic. And lastly, we have the dustman in love : the honest fellow having seen a young beauty stepping out of a gin shop on a Sun- day morning, is pressing eagerly his suit. Gin has furnished many subjects to Mr. Cruikshank, who 39 6io CRITICAL REVIEWS. labors in his own sound and hearty way to teach his country- men the dangers of that drink. In the " Sketch-Book " is a plate upon the subject, remarkable for fancy and beauty of design ; it is called the " Gin Juggernaut," and represents a hideous moving palace, with a reeking still at the roof and vast gin-barrels for wheels, under which unhappy millions are crushed to death. An immense black cloud of desolation covers over the country through which the gni monster has passed, dimly looming through the darkness whereof you see an agreeable prospect of gibbets with men dangling, burnt houses, Src. The vast cloud comes sweeping on in the wake of this horrible body-crusher ; and you see, by way of contrast, a distant, smiling, sunshiny tract of old English country, where gin as j''et is not known. The allegory is as good, as earnest, and as fanciful as one of John Bunyan's, and we have often fancied there was a similarity between the men. The reader will examine the work called " My Sketch- Book " with not a little amusement, and may gather from it, as we fancy, a good deal of information regarding the character of the individual man, George Cruikshank : what points strike his eye as a painter ; what move his anger or admiration as a moralist ; what classes he seems most especially disposed to observe, and what to ridicule. There are quacks of all kinds, to whom he has a mortal hatred ; quack dandies who assume under his pencil, perhaps in his eye, the most grotesque appearance possible — their hats grow larger, their legs infinitely more crooked and lean ; the tassels of their canes swell out to a most preposterous size ; the tails of their coats dwindle away, and finish where coat-tails generally begin. Let us lay a wager that Cruikshank, a man of the people if ever there was one, heartily hates and depises these supercilious, swaggering young gentlemen ; and his contempt is not a whit the less laudable because there may be tant soit pen of prejudice in it. It is right and wholesome to scorn dandies, as Nelson said it was to hate Frenchmen ; in which sentiment (as we have before said) George Cruikshank undoubtedly shares. In the " Sunday in London," * Monsieur the Chef is instructing a kitchen-maid * The following lines — ever fresh — by the author of " Headlong Hall," published yeara ago in the Globe and Traveller, are an excellent comment on several of the cuts from the ** Sunday in London : " — " The poor man's sins are glaring ; In the face of ghostly warning He is cau'iht in the fact Of an overt act, Buying greens on Sunday morning. ' The rich mar's sins are hidden In the pomp of wealth and station, And escape the sight Of the children of light, Who are wise in their generation. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 6n how to compound some rascally French kickshaw or the other ■ — a pretty scoundrel truly ! with what an air he wears that nightcap of his, and shrugs his lank shoulders, and chatters, and ogles, and grins : they are all the same, these mounseers ; there are other two fellows — morbletc ! one is putting his dirty fingers into the saucepan ; there are frogs cooking in it, no doubt ; and just over some other dish of abomination, another dirty rascal is taking snuff ! Never mind, the sauce won't be hurt by a few ingredients more or less. Three such fellows as these are not worth one Englishman, that's clear. There is one in the very midst of them, the great burly fellow with the beef : he could beat all three in five minutes. We cannot be certain that such was the process going on in Mr. Cruikshank's mind when he made the design ; but some feelings of the sort were no doubt entertained by him. Against dandy footmen he is particularly severe. He hates idlers," pretenders, boasters, and punishes these fellows as best he may. Who does not recollect the famous picture, " What is Taxes, Thomas ? " What is taxes indeed ; well may that vast, over-fed, lounging flunkey ask the question of his associate Thomas : and yet not well, for all that Thomas says in reply is, " / dofi't hiow." " O beati plushicolce" what a charming state of ignorance is yours ! In the " Sketch-Book " many foot- men make their appearance : one is a huge fat Hercules of a Portman Square porter, who calmly surveys another poor fel- low, a porter likewise, but out of liver}', who comes staggering forward with a box that Hercules might lift with his little finger. Will Hercules do so .'' not he. The giant can carry nothing heavier than a cocked-hat note on a silver tray, and his labors are to walk from his sentry-box to the door, and from the door back to his sentry-box, and to read the Sunday paper, and to poke the hall fire twice or thrice, and to make five meals a day. Such a fellow does Cruikshank hate and scorn worse even than a Frenchman. ' The rich man has a kitchen, And cooks to dress his dinner ; The poor who would roast, To the baker's must post, And thus becomes a sinner. ' The rich man's painted windows Hide the concert's of the quality ; The poor can but share A crack'd fiddle in the air, Which offends all sound morality. " The rich man has a cellai, And a ready butler by him ; The poor must steer For his pint of beer Where the saint can't choose but spy hinw The rich man is invisible In the crowd of his gay society But the poor man's delight Is a sore in the sight And a stench in the nose of piety?" 6i2 CRITICAL REVIEWS. The man's master, too, comes in for no small share of our artist's wrath. There is a company of them at church, who humbly designate themselves " miserable sinners ! " Miserable sinners indeed ! Oh, what floods of turtle-soup, what tons of turbot and lobster-sauce must have been sacrificed to make those sinners properly miserable. My lady with the ermine tippet and draggling feather, can we not see that she lives in Portland Place, and is the wife of an East India Director ? She has been to the Opera over-night (indeed her husband, on her right, with his fat hand dangling over the pew-door, is at this minute thinking of Mademoiselle Leocadie, whom he saw be- hind the scenes) — she has been at the Opera over-night, which with a trifle of supper afterwards — a white-and-brown soup, a lobster-salad, some woodcocks, and a little champagne — sent her to bed quite comfortable. At half-past eight her maid brings her chocolate in bed, at ten she has fresh eggs and muffins, with, perhaps, a half-hundred of prawns for breakfast, and so can get over the day and the sermon till lunch-time pretty well. What an odor of musk and bergamot exhales from the pew ! — how it is wadded, and stuffed, and spangled over with brass nails ! what hassocks are there for those who are not too fat to kneel ! what a flustering and flapping of gilt prayer-books ; and what a pious whirring of bible leaves one hears all over the church, as the doctor blandly gives out the text ! To be miserable at this rate you must, at the very least, have four thousand a year : and many persons are there so en- amored of grief and sin, that they would willingly take the risk of the misery to have a life-interest in the consols that accom- pany it, quite careless about consequences, and skeptical as to the notion that a day is at hand when you must ixAiiX your share of the bargain. Our artist loves to joke at a soldier ; in whose livery there appears to him to be something almost as ridiculous as in the uniform of the gentleman of the shoulder-knot. Tall life- guardsmen and fierce grenadiers figure in many of his designs, and almost always in a ridiculous way„ Here again we have the honest popular English feeling which jeers at pomp or pre- tension of all kinds, and is especially jealous of all display of military authority. " Raw Recruit," " ditto dressed," ditto " served up," as we see them in the " Sketch-Book," are so many satires upon the army : Hodge with his ribbons flaunting in his hat, or with red coat and musket, drilled stiff and pom- pous, or at last, minus leg and arm, tottering about on crutches, does not fill our English artist with the enthusiasm that GEORGE CRUIKSHANIC. 613 follows the soldier in every other part of Europe. Jean- jean, the conscript in France, is laughed at to be sure, but then it is because he is a bad soldier , when he comes to have a huge pair of mustaches and the croix-iV hoinieur to brillcr on his poitrine cicatrisec, Jeanjean becomes a member of a class that is more respected than any other in the French nation. The vet- eran soldier inspires our people with no such awe — we hold that democratic weapon the fist in much more honor than sabre and bayonet, and laugh at a man tricked out in scarlet and pipe-clay. That regiment of heroes is " marching to divine service," to the tune of the " British Grenadiers." There they march in state, and a pretty contempt our artist shows for all their gimcracks and trumpery. He has drawn a perfectly English scene — the little blackguard boys are playing pranks round about the men, and shouting, '* Heads up, soldier," " Eyes right, lobster," as little British urchins will do. Did one ever hear the like sentiments expressed in France ? Shade of Na- poleon, we insult you by asking the question. In England, however, see how different the case is : and designedly or un- designedly, the artist has opened to us a piece of his mind. In the crowd the only person who admires the soldiers is the poor idiot, whose pocket a rogue is picking. There is another pic- ture, in which the sentiment is much the same, only, as in the former drawing we see Englishmen laughing at the troops of the line, here are Irishmen giggling at the militia. We have said that our artist has a great love for the droll- eries of the Green Island. Would any one doubt what was the country of the merry fellows depicted in his group of Paddies .'' " Place me amid O'Rourkes, O'Tooles, The ragsjted royal race (if Tara ; Or place me where Dick Martin rules The pathless wilds of Connemara." We know not if Mr. Cruikshank has ever had any such good luck as to see the Irish in Ireland itself, but he certainly has obtained a knowledge of their looks, as if the country had been all his life familiar to him. Could Mr. O'Connell himself desire anything more national than the scene of a drunken row, or could Father Mathew have a better text to preach upon ? There is not a broken nose in the room that is not thoroughly Irish. ' We have then a couple of compositions treated in a graver manner, as characteristic too as the other. We call attention 6i4 CRITICAL REVIEWS to the comical look of poor Teague, who has been pursued and beaten by the witch's stick, in order to point out also the singu- lar neatness of the workmanship, and the pretty fanciful little glimpse of landscape that the artist has introduced in the back- ground. Mr. Cruikshank has a fine eye for such homely land- scapes, and renders them with great delicacy and taste. Old villages, farm-yards, groups of stacks, queer chimneys, churches, gable-ended cottages, Elizabethan mansion-houses, and other old English scenes, he depicts with evident enthusiasm. Famous books in their day were Cruikshank's "John Gil- pin " and " Epping Hunt; " for though our artist does not draw horses very scientifically, — to use a phrase of the atelier, — he feels them very keenly ; and his queer animals, after one is used to them, answer quite as well as better. Neither is he very happy in trees, and such rustical produce ; or rather, we should say, he is very original, his trees being decidedly of his own make and composition, not imitated from any master. But what then 1 Can a man be supposed to imitate every- thing ? We know what the noblest study of mankind is, and to this Mr. Cruikshank has confined himself. That postilion with the people in the broken-down chaise roaring after him is as deaf as the post by which he passes. Suppose all the ac- cessories were away, could not one swear that the man was stone-deaf, beyond the reach of trumpet ? What is the pecu- liar character in a deaf man's physiognomy ? — can any person define it satisfactorily in words ? — not in pages ; and Mr. Cruik- shank has expressed it on a piece of paper not so big as the tenth part of your thumb-nail. The horses of John Gilpin are much more of the equestrian order ; and as here the artist has only his favorite suburban buildings to draw, not a word is to be said against his design. The inn and old buildings are charmingly designed, and nothing can be more prettily or play- fully touched. "At Edmonton his loving wife From the balcony spied Her tender husband, wond'ring much To see how he did ride. " ' Stop, stop, John Gilpin ! Here's the house t ' They all at once did cry ; 'The dinner waits, and we are tired — ' Said Gilpin — ' So am I ! ' " Six gentlemen upon the road Thus seeing Gilpin fly, With post-boy scamp' ring in the rear. They raised the hue and cry : — GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 615 " Stop thief! stop thief! — a highway manl Not one of them was mute ", And all and each that passed that way Did join in the pursuit. " And now the turnpike gates again Flew open in short space ; The toll-men thinking, as before, That Gilpin rode a race." The rush, and shouting, and clatter are excellently depicted by the artist ; and we, who have been scoffing at his manner of designing animals, must here make a special exception in favor of the hens and chickens; each has a different action, and is curiously natural. Happy are the children of all ages who have such a ballad and such pictures as this in store for them ! It is a comfort to think that wood-cuts never wear out, and that the book still may be had for a shilling, for those who can command that sum of money. In the *' Epping Hunt," which we owe to the facetious pen of Mr. Hood, our artist had not been so successful. There is here too much horsemanship and not enough incident for him ; but the portrait of Roundings the huntsman is an excellent sketch, and a couple of the designs contain great humor. The first represents the Cockney hero, who, " like a bird, was sing- ing out while sitting on a tree." And in the second the natural order is reversed. The stag having taken heart, is hunting the huntsman, and the Cheapside Nimrod is most ignominiously running away. The Easter Hunt, we are told, is no more ; and as the Quarterly Review recommends the British public to purchase Mr. Catlin's pictures, as they form the only record of an inter- esting race now rapidly passing away, in like manner we should exhort all our friends to purchase Mr. Cruickshank's designs of another interesting race, that is run already and for the last time. Besides these, we must mention, in the line of our duty, the notable tragedies of " Tom Thumb " and " Bombastes Furi- oso," both of which have appeared with many illustrations by Mr, Cruikshank. The " brave army " of Bombastes exhibits a terrific display of brutal force, which must shock the sensi- bilities of an English Radical. And we can well understand the caution of the general, who bids this soldatesque effenere to begone, and not to kick up a row. Such a troop of lawless ruffians let loose upon a populous city would play sad havoc in it ; and we fancy the massacres of 6i6 CRITICAL REVIEWS. Birmingham renewed, or at least of Badajoz, which, though not quite so dreadful, if we may belie\-e his Grace the Duke of Wellington, as the former scenes of slaughter, were neverthe- less severe enough : but we must not venture upon any ill- timed pleasantries in presence of the disturbed King Arthur and the awful ghost of Gaffer Thumb. We are thus carried at once into the supernatural, and here Ave find Cruilcshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his time a little comic pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, good-natured fiends possible. We have before us Chamisso's " Peter Schlemihl," with Cruikshank's designs translated into German, and gaining nothing by the change. The " Kinder und Hans-Maerchen " of Grimm are likewise ornamented with a frontispiece, copied from that one which appeared to the amusing version of the English work. The books on Phrenol- ogy and Time have been imitated by the same nation ; and even in France, whither reputation travels slower than to any country except China, we have seen copies of the works of George Cruikshank. He in return has complimented the French by illustrating a couple of Lives of Napoleon, and the " Life in Paris " before mentioned. He has also made designs for Victor Hugo's " Hans of Iceland." Strange, wild etchings were those, on a strange, mad subject ; not so good in our notion as the designs for the German books, the peculiar humor of which latter seemed to suit the artist exactly. There is a mixture of the awful and the ridiculous in these, which perpetually excites and keeps awake the reader's attention ; the German writer and the English artist seem to have an entire faith in their sub- ject. The reader, no doubt, remembers the awful passage in " Peter Schlemihl," where the little gentleman purchases the shadow of that hero — " Have the kindness, noble sir, to ex- amine and try this bag." " He put his hand into his pocket, and drew thence a tolerably large bag of Cordovan leather, to which a couple of thongs were fixed. I took it from him, and immediately counted out ten gold pieces, and ten more, and ten more, and still other ten, whereupon I held out my hand to him. Done, said I, it is a bargain ; you shall have my shadow for your bag. The bargain was concluded ; he knelt down before me, and I saw him with a wonderful neatness take my shadow from head to foot, lightly lift it up from the grass, roll and fold it up neatly, and at last pocket it. He then rose up, bowed to me once more, and walked away again, disappearing behind the rose-bushes. I don't know, but I thought I heard GEORGE CRUIKSIIANK. 617 him laughing a little. I, however, kept fast hold of the bag. P^verj'thing around me was bright in the sun, and as yet I gave no thought to what I had done." This marvellous event, narrated by Peter with such a faith- ful, circumstantial detail, is painted by Cruikshank in the most wonderful poetic way, with that happy mixture of the real and supernatural that makes the narrative so curious, and like truth. The sun is shining with the utmost brilliancy in a great quiet park or garden ; there is a palace in the background, and a statue basking in the sun quite lonely and melancholy ; there is a sun-dial, on which is a deep shadow, and in the front stands Peter Schlemihl, bag in hand : the old gentleman is down on his knees to him, and has just lifted ofif the ground the shadow of one leg ; he is going to fold it back neatly, as one does the tails of a coat, and will show it, without any creases or crumples, along with the other black garments that lie in that immense pocket of his. Cruikshank has designed all this as if he had a very serious belief in the story ; he laughs, to be sure, but one fancies that he is a little frightened in his heart, in spite of all his fun and joking. The German tales we have mentioned before. " The Prince riding on the Fox," " Hans in Luck," " The Fiddler and his Goose," " Heads off," are all drawings which, albeit not be- fore us now, nor seen for ten years, remain indelibly fixed on the memory. " Hcisst dii etwa Riimpelstihchen 2 " There sits the Queen on her throne, surrounded by grinning beef-eaters, and little Rumpelstiltskin stamps his foot through the floor in the excess of his tremendous despair. In one of these Ger- man tales, if we remember rightly, there is an account of a little orphan who is carried away by a pitying fairy for a term of seven years, and passing that period of sweet apprenticeship among the imps and sprites of fairy-land. Has our artist been among the same company, and brought back their por- traits in his sketch-book? He is the only designer fairy-land has had. Callot's imps, for all their strangeness, are only of the earth earthy. Fuseli's fairies belong to the infernal re- gions ; they are monstrous, lurid, and hideously melancholy. Mr Cruikshank alone has had a true insight into the character of the "little people." They are something like men and wo- men, and yet not flesh and blood ; they are laughing and mis- chievous, but why we know not. Mr. Cruikshank, however, has had some dream or the other, or else a natural mysterious instinct (as the Seherinn of Prevorst had for beholding ghosts), or else some preternatural fairy revelation, which has made 6i8 CRITICAL REVIEWS. him acquainted with the looks and ways of the fantastical sub- jects of Oberon and Titania. We have, unfortunately, no fairy portraits ; but, on the other hand, can descend lower than fai:ry-land, and have seen 6ome fine specimens of devils. One has already been raised, and the reader has seen him tempting a fat Dutch burgomaster in an ancient gloomy market-place, such as George Cruik- shank can draw as well as Mr. Prout, Mr. Nash, or any man living. There is our friend once more ; our friend the bur- gomaster, in a highly excited state, and running as hard as his great legs will carry him, with our mutual enemy at his tail. What are the bets ; will that long-legged bond-holder of a devil come up with the honest Dutchman? It serves him right ; why did he put his name to stamped paper ? And yet we should not wonder if some lucky chance should turn up in the burgomaster's favor, and his infernal creditor lose his labor ; for one so proverbially cunning as yonder tall individual with the saucer eyes, it must be confessed that he has been very often outwitted. There is, for instance, the case of " The Gentleman in Black," which has been illustrated by our artist. A young French gentleman, by name M. Desonge, who having ex- pended his patrimony in a variety of tjiverns and gaming-houses, was one day pondering upon the exhausted state of his finances, and utterly at a loss to think how he should provide means for future support, exclaimed, very naturally, " What the devil shall I do ? " He had no sooner spoken than a Gentleman in Black made his appearance, whose authentic portrait Mr. Cruikshank has had the honor to paint. This gentleman produced a black- edged book out of a black bag, some black-edged papers tied up with black crape, and sitting down familiarly opposite M. Desonge, began conversing with him on the state of his affairs. It is needless to state what was the result of the interview. M. Desonge was induced by the gentleman to sign his name to one of the black-edged papers, and found himself at the close of the conversation to be possessed of an unlimited command of capital. This arrangement completed, the Gentleman in Black posted (in an extraordinary rapid manner) from Paris to London, there found a young English merchant in exactly the same situation in which M. Desonge had been, and concluded a bargain with the Briton of exactly the same nature. The book goes on to relate how these young men spent the money so miraculously handed over to them, and how both, when the period drew near that was to witness the performance GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 619 of tkeir part of the bargain, grew melancholy, wretched, nay, so absolutely dishonorable as to seek for every means of breaking through their agreement. The Englishman living in a country where the lawyers are more astute than any other lawyers m the world, took the advice of a Mr. Bagsby, of Lyon's Inn; whose name, as we cannot find it in the " Law List," we presume to be fictitious. Who could it be that was a match for the devil ? Lord very likely ; we shall not give his name, but let every reader of this Review fill up the blank according to his own fancy, and on comparing it with the copy purchased by his neighbors, he will find that fifteen out of twenty have writ- ten down the same honored name. Well, the Gentleman in Black was anxious for the fulfilment of his bond. The parties met at Mr. Bagsby's chambers to consult, the Black Gentleman foolishly thinking that he could act as his own counsel, and fearing no attorney alive. But mark the superiority of British law, and see how the black pettifog- ger was defeated. Mr. Bagsby simply stated that he would take the case into Chancery, and his antagonist, utterly humiliated and defeated, refused to move a step farther in the matter. And now the French gentleman, M. Desonge, hearing of his friend's escape, became anxious to be free from his own rash engagements. He employed the same counsel who had been successful in the former instance, but the Gentleman in Black was a great deal wiser by this time, and whether M. Desonge escaped, or whether he is now in that extensive place which is paved with good intentions, we shall not say. Those who are anxious to know had better purchase the book wherein all these interesting matters are duly set down. There is one more diabolical picture in our budget, engraved by Mr. Thompson, the same dexterous artist who has rendered the former diab- kries so well. We may mention Mr, Thompson's name as among the first of the engravers to whom Cruikshank's designs have been en- trusted ; and next to him (if we may be allowed to make such arbitrary distinctions) we may place Mr. Williams ; and the reader is not possibly aware of the immense difficulties to be overcome in the rendering of these little sketches, which, traced by the designer in a few hours, require weeks' labor from the engraver. Mr. Cruikshank has not been educated in the regular schools of drawing (very luckily for him, as we think), and con- sequently has had to make a manner for himself, which is quite unlike that of any other draftsman. There is nothing in the 62 o CRITICAL REVIEWS. least mechanical about it ; to produce his peculiar effects he uses his own particular lines, which are queer, free, fantastical, and must be followed in all their infinite twists and vagaries by the careful tool of the engraver. Those three lovely heads, for instance, imagined out of the rinds of lemons, are worth exam- ining, not so much for the jovial humor and wonderful variety of feature exhibited in these darling countenances as for the engraver's part of the work. See the infinite delicate cross- lines and hatchings which he is obliged to render ; let him go, not a hair's breadth, but the hundredth part of a hair's breadth, beyond the given line, and i\\q. feeling of it is ruined. He re- ceives these little dots and specks, and fantastical quirks of the pencil, and cuts away with a little knife round each, not too much nor too little. Antonio's pound of flesh did not puzzle the Jew so much ; and so well does the engraver succeed at last, that we never remember to have met with a single artist who did not vow that the wood-cutter had utterly ruined his design. Of Messrs. Thompson and Williams we have spoken as the first engravers in point of rank ; however, the regulations of professional precedence are certainly very difficult, and the rest of their brethren we shall not endeavor to class. Why should the artists who executed the cuts of the admirable " Three Courses " yield \\\q pas to any one ? There, for instance, is any engraving by Mr. Landells, nearly as good in our opinion as the very best wood-cut that ever was made after Cruikshank, and curiously happy in ren- dering the artist's peculiar manner : this cut does not come from the facetious publications which we have consulted ; but is a contribution by Mr. Cruikshank to an elaborate and splendid botanical work upon the Orchidacece of Mexico, by Mr. Bateman. M. Bateman despatched some extremely choice roots of this valuable plant to a friend in England, who, on the arrival of the case, consigned it to his gardener to unpack. A great deal of anxiety with regard to the contents was manifested by all concerned, but on the lid of the box being removed, there issued from it three or four fine specimens of the enormous Blatta beetle that had been preying upon the plants during the voyage ; against these the gardeners, the grooms, the porters, and the porters' children, issued forth in arms, and this scene the artist has immortalized. We have spoken of the admirable way in which Mr, Cruik- shank has depicted Irish character and Cockney character ; English country character is quite as faithfully delineated in GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 621 the person of the stout porteress and her children, and of the " Chawbacon " with the shovel, on whose face is written "Zum- merzetsheer." Chawbacon appears in another plate, or else Chawbacon's brother. He has come up to Lunnan, and is looking about him at raaces. How distinct are these rustics from those whom we have just been examining ! They hang about the purlieus of the metropolis : Brook Green, Epsom, Greenwich, Ascot, Good- wood, are their haunts. They visit London professionally once a year, and that is at the time of Bartholomew fair. How one may speculate upon the different degrees of rascality, as ex- hibited in each face of the thhnblerigging trio, and from little histories for these worthies, charming Newgate romances, such as have been of late the fashion ! Is any man so blind that he cannot see the exact face that is writhing under the thimble- rigged hero's hat ? Like Timanthes of old, our artist ex- presses great passions without the aid of the human counte- nance. There is another specimen — a street row of inebriated bottles. Is there any need of having a face after this ? " Come on ! " says Claret-bottle, a dashing, genteel fellow, with his hat on one ear — " Come on ! has any man a mind to tap me ? " Claret-bottle is a little screwed (as one may see by his legs), but full of gayety and courage ; not so that stout, apoplectic Bottle-of-rum, who has staggered against the wall, and has his hand upon his liver : the fellow hurts himself with smoking, that is clear, and is as sick as sick can be. See, Port is making away from the storm, and Double X is as flat as ditch-water. Against these, awful in their white robes, the sober watchmen come. Our artist then can cover up faces, and yet show them quite clearly, as in the thimblerig group ; or he can do without faces altogether ; or he can, at a pinch, provide a countenance for a gentleman out of any given object — a beautiful Irish physi- ognomy being moulded upon a keg of whiskey ; and a jolly English countenance .frothing out of a pot of ale (with the spirit of brav^e Toby Philpot come back to reanimate his clay); while in a fungus may be recognized the physiognomy of a mushroom peer. Finally, if he is at a loss, he can make a living head, body, and legs out of steel or tortoise-shell, as in the case of the vivacious pair of spectacles that are jockeying the nose of Caddy Cuddle. Of late years Mr. Cruikshank has busied himself very much with steel engraving, and the consequences of that lucky invention have been, that his plates are now sold by 622 CRITICAL REVIEWS. thousands, where they could only be produced by hundreds be- fore. He has made many a bookseller's and author's fortune (we trust that in so doing he may not have neglected his own). Twelve admirable plates, furnished yearly to that facetious little publication, the Comic Almanac, have gained for it a sale, as we hear, of nearly twenty thousand copies. The idea of the work was novel ; there was, in the first number especially, a great deal of comic power, and Cruikshank's designs were so admirable that the Almanac at once became a vast favorite with the public, and has so remained ever since. Besides the twelve plates, this almanac contains a prophetic wood-cut, accompanying an awful Blarneyhum Astrologicum that appears in this and other almanacs. There is one that hints in pretty clear terms that with the Reform of Municipal Corporations the ruin of the great Lord Mayor of London is at hand. His lordship is meekly gomg to dine at an eight- penny ordinary, — his giants in pawn, his men in armor dwin- dled to " one poor knight," his carriage to be sold, his stalwart aldermen vanished, his sheriffs, alas ! and alas ! in jail ! An- other design shows that Rigdum, if a true, is also a moral and instructive prophet. John Bull is asleep, or rather in a vision; the cunning demon. Speculation, blowing a thousand bright bubbles about him. Meanwhile the rooks are busy at his fob, a knave has cut a cruel hole in his pocket, a rattlesnake has coiled safe round his feet, and will in a trice swallow Bull, chair, money and all ; the rats are at his corn-bags (as if, poor devil, he had corn to spare) ; his faithful dog is bolting his leg of mutton — nay, a thief has gotten hold of his very candle, and there, by way of moral, is his ale-pot, which looks and winks in his face, and seems to say, O Bull, all this is froth, and a cruel satirical picture of a certain rustic who had a goose that laid certain golden eggs, which goose the rustic slew in expec- tation of finding all the eggs at once. - This is goose and sage too, to borrow the pun of "-learned Doctor Gill;" but we shrewdly suspect that Mr. Cruikshank is becoming a little con- servative in his notions. We love these pictures so that it is hard to part us, and we still fondly endeavor to hold on, but this wild word, farewell, must be spoken by the best friends at last, and so good-by, brave wood-cuts : we feel quite a sadness in coming to the last of our collection. In the earlier numbers of the Comic Almanac all the man- ners and customs of Londoners that would afford food for fun were noted down ; and if during the last two years, the mys- GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 623 terious personage who, under the title of " Rigdum Funnidos," compiles this ephemeris, has been compelled to resort to ro- mantic tales, we must suppose that he did so because the great metropolis was exhausted, and it was necessary to discover new worlds in the cloud-land of fancy. The character of Mr. Stubbs, who made his appearance in the Abmviac for 1839, had, we think, great merit, although his adventures were somewhat of too tragical a description to provoke pure laughter. We should be glad to devote a few pages to the " Illustra- tions of Time," the " Scraps and Sketches," and the "Illustra- tions of Phrenology," which are among the most famous of our artist's publications ; but it is very difficult to find new terms of praise, as find them one must, when reviewing Mr. Cruik- shank's publications, and more difficult still (as the reader of this notice will no doubt have perceived for himself long since) to translate his design into words, and go to the printer's box for a description of all that fun and humor which the artist can produce by a few skilful turns of his needle. A famous ar- ticle upon the " Illustrations of Time " appeared some dozen years since in Blackzaood's Magazine, of which the conductors have always been great admirers of our artist, as became men of honor and genius. To these grand qualities do not let it be supposed that we are laying claim, but, thank heaven, Cruik- shank's humor is so good and benevolent that any man must love it, and on this score we may speak as well as another. Then there are the " Greenwich Hospital " designs, which must not be passed over. " Greenwich Hospital " is a hearty, good-natured book, in the Tom Dibdin school, treating of the virtues of British tars, in approved nautical language. They maul Frenchmen and Spaniards, they go out in brigs and take frigates, they relieve women in distress, and are yard-arm and yard-arming, athwart-hawsing, marlinspiking, binnacling, and helm's-a-leeing, as honest seamen invariably do, in novels, on the stage, and doubtless on board ship. This we cannot take upon us to say, but the artist, like a true Englishman, as he is, loves dearly *these brave guardians of Old England, and chron- icles their rare or fanciful exploits with the greatest good-will. Let any one look at the noble head of Nelson in the " Family Library," and they will, we are sure, think with us that the designer must have felt and loved what he drew. There are to this abridgment of Southey's admirable book many more cuts after Cruikshank ; and about a dozen pieces by the same hand will be found in a work equally popular, Lockhart's ex- 624 CRIl-rCAL REVIEWS. cellent " Life of Napoleon." Among these the retreat from Moscow is very fine ; the Mamlouks most vigorous, furious, and barbarous, as they should be. At the end of these three volumes Mr. Cruikshank's contributions to the " Family Li- brary " seem suddenly to have ceased. We are not at all disposed to undervalue the works and genius of Mr. Dickens, and we are sure that he would admit as readily as any man the wonderful assistance that he has derived from the artist who has given us the portraits of his ideal per- sonages, and made them familiar to all the world. Once seen, these figures remain impressed on the memory, which otherwise would have had no hold upon them, and the heroes and hero^ ines of Boz become personal acquaintances with each of us. Oh, that Hogarth could have illustrated Fielding in the same way ! and fixed down on paper those grand figures of Parson Adams, and Squire Allworthy, and the great Jonathan Wild. With regard to the modern romance of " Jack Sheppard," in which the latter personage makes a second appearance, it seems to us that Mr. Cruikshank really created the tale, and that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were, only put words to it. Let any reader of the novel think over it for a while, now that it is some months since he has perused and laid it down — let him think, and tell us what he remembers of the tale ? George Cruik- shank's pictures — always George Cruikshank's pictures. The storm in the Thames, for instance : all the author's labored description of that event has passed clean away — we have only before the mind's eye the fine plates of Cruikshank : the poor wretch cowering under the bridge arch, as the waves come rushing in, and the boats are whirling away in the drift of the great swollen black waters. And let any man look at that second plate of the murder on the Thames, and he must ac- knowledge how much more brilliant the artist's description is than the writer's, and what a real genius for the terrible as well as for the ridiculous the former has ; how awful is the gloom of the old bridge, a few lights glimmering from the houses here and there, but not so as to be reflected on the water at all, which is too turbid and raging : a great heavy rack of clouds goes sweeping over the bridge, and men with flaring torches, the murderers, are borne away with the stream. The author requires many pages to describe the fury of the storm, which Mr. Cruikshank has represented in one. First, he has to prepare you with the something inexpressibly melan- choly in sailing on a dark night upon the Thames : " the ripple of the water," " the darkling current," " the indistinctively seen GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 625 craft," " the solemn shadows " and other phenomena visible on rivers at night are detailed (with not unskilful rhetoric) in order to bring the reader into a proper frame of mind for the deeper gloom and horror which is to ensue. Then follow pages of description. " As Rowland sprang to the helm, and gave the signal for pursuit, a war like a volley of ordnance was heard aloft, and the wind again burst its bondage. A moment before, the surface of the stream was as black as ink. It was now whitening, hissing, and seething, like an enormous cauldron. The blast once more swept over the agitated river, whirled off the sheets of foam, scattered them far and wide in rain-drops, and left the raging torrent blacker than before. Destruction everywhere marked the course of the gale. Steeples toppled and towers reeled beneath its fury. All was darkness, horror, confusion, ruin. Men fled from their tottering habitations and returned to them, scared by greater danger. The end of the world seemed at hand. * * * The hurricane had now reached its climax. The blast shrieked, as if exulting in its wrathful mission. Stunning and continuous, the din seemed almost to take away the power of hearing. He who had faced the gale 7uoiild have been instantly stifled,^'' &c., &c. See with what a tremendous war of words (and good loud words too ; Mr. Ainsworth's description is a good and spirited one) the author is obliged to pour in upon the reader before he can effect his purpose upon the latter, and inspire him with a proper tCiTor. The painter does it at a glance, and old Wood's dilemma in the midst of that tremendous storm, with the little infant at his bosom, is remembered afterwards, not from the words, but from the visible image of them that the artist has left us. It would not, perhaps, be out of place to glance through the whole of the "Jack Sheppard " plates, which are among the most finished and the most successful of Mr. Cruikshank's per- formances, and say a word or two concerning them. Let us begin with finding fault with No. i, " Mr. Wood offers to adopt little Jack Sheppard." A poor print, on a poor subject ; the figure of the woman not as carefully designed as it might be, and the expression of the eyes (not an uncommon fault with our artist) much caricatured. The print is cut up, to use the artist's phrase, by the number of accessories which the engraver has thought proper, after the author's elaborate description, elaborately to reproduce. The plate of " Wild discovering Darrell in the loft " is admirable — ghastly, terrible, and the treatment of it extraordinarily skilful, minute, and bold. The 40 626 CRITICAL REVIEWS. intricacies of the tile-work, and tlie mysterious twinkling of light among the beams, are excellently felt and rendered ; and one sees here, as in the two next plates of the storm and mur- der, what a fine eye the artist has, what a skilful hand, and what a sympathy for the wild and dreadful. As a mere imita- tion of nature, the clouds and the bridge in the murder picture may be examined by painters who make far higher pretensions than Mr. Cruikshank. In point of workmanship they are equally-good, the manner quite unaffected, the effect produced without any violent contrast, the whole scene evidently well and philosophically arranged in the artist's brain, before he began to put it upon copper. The famous drawing of "Jack carving the name on the beam," which has been transferred to half the play-bills in town, is overloaded with accessories, as the first plate ; but they are much better arranged than in the last-named engraving, and do not injure the effect of the principal figure. Remark, too, the conscientiousness of the artist, and that shrewd pervading idea oiform which is one of his principal characteristics. Jack is surrounded by all sorts of implements of his profession ; he stands on a regular carpenter's table : away in the shadow under it lie shavings and a couple of carpenter's hammers. The glue-pot, the mallet, the chisel-handle, the planes, the saws, the hone with its cover, and the other paraphernalia are all rep- resented with extraordinary accuracy and forethought. The man's mind has retained the exact drawing of all these minute objects (unconsciously perhaps to himself), but we can see with what keen eyes he must go through the world, and what a fund of facts (as such a knowledge of the shape of objects is in his profession) this keen student of nature has stored away in his brain. In the next plate, where Jack is escaping from his mistress, the figure of that lady, one of the deepest of the liadi'y/oX-ot^ strikes us as disagreeable and unrefined ; that of Winifred is, on the contrary, very pretty and graceful , and Jack's puzzled, slinking look must not be forgotten. All the accessories are good, and the apartment has a snug, cosy air ; which is not remarkable, except that it shows how faithfully the designer has performed his work, and how curiously he has en- tered into all particulars of the subject. Master Thames Darrell, the handsome young man of the book is, in Mr. Cruikshank's portraits of him, no favorite of ours. The lad seems to wish to make up for the natural in- significance of his face by frowning on all occasions most por- tentously. This figure, borrowed from the compositor's desk, GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 627 * # ^ will give a notion of what we mean. Wild's face is "^^^u*^ too violent for the great man of history (if we may |, call Fielding history), but this is in consonance with ~ the ranting, frowning, braggadocio character that Mr. Ainsworth has given him. The " Interior of Willesden Church " is excellent as a com- position, and a piece of artistical workmanship ; the groups are well arranged ; and the figure of Mrs. Sheppard looking around alarmed, as her son is robbing the dandy Kneebone, is charming, simple, and unaffected. Not so " Mrs. Sheppard ill in bed," whose face is screwed up to an expression vastly too tragic. The little glimpse of the church seen through the open door of the room is very beautiful and poetical : it is in such small hints that an artist especially excels ; they are the morals which he loves to append to his stories, and are always appropriate and welcome. The boozing ken is not to our liking ; Mrs. Sheppard is there with her horrified eyebrows again. Why this exaggeration — is it necessary for the public ? We think not, or if they require such excitement, let our artist, like a true painter as he is, teach them better things.* The " Escape from Willesden Cage " is excellent ; the "Burglary in Wood's house " has not less merit; "Mrs. Shep- pard in Bedlam," a ghastly picture indeed, is finely conceived, but not, as we fancy, so carefully executed ; it would be better for a little more careful drawing in the female figure. " Jack sitting for his picture," is a very pleasing group, and savors of the manner of Hogarth, who is introduced in the company. The " Murder of Trenchard " must be noticed too as remarkable for the effect and terrible vigor which the artist has given to the scene. The " Willesden Churchyard " has great merit too, but the gems of the book are the little vig- nettes illustrating the escape from Newgate. Here, too, much anatomical care of drawing is not required ; the figures are so small that the outline and attitude need only to be indicated, and the designer has produced a series of figures quite remark- able for reality and poetry too. There are no less than ten of Jack's feats so described by Mr. Cruikshank. (Let us say a * A gentleman (whose wit is so celebrated that one should be very cautious in repeating his stories) gave the writer a good illustration of the philosophy of exaggeration. Mr. was once behind the scenes at the Opera when the scene-shifters were preparing for the bal- let. Flora v/as to sleep under a bush, whereon were growing a number of roses, and amidst which was fluttering a gay covey of butterflies. In size the roses exceeded the most expensive sim-flnwers, and the butterflies were as large as cocked hats ; — the scene-shifter explained to Mr. , who asked the reason why everything was so magiiifipd, that the galleries could never see the objects unless they were enormously exaggerated. How many of our writers and designers work for the galleries ? 628 CRITICAL REVIEWS. word here in praise of the excellent manner in which the author has carried us through the adventure.) Here is Jack clattering up the chimney, now peering into the lonely red room, now opening " the door between the red room and the chapel." What a wild, fierce, scared look he has, the young ruffian, as cautiously he steps in, holding light his bar of iron. You can see by his face how his heart is beating ! If any one were there ! but no ! And this is a very fine characteristic of the prints, the extreme loneliness of them all. Not a soul is there to disturb him — woe to him who should — and Jack drives in the chapel gate, and shatters down the passage door, and there you have him on the leads. Up he goes ! it is but a spring of a few feet from the blanket, and he is gone — abiit, evasif, erupit ! Mr. Wild must catch him again if he can. We must not forget to mention " Oliver Twist," and Mr. Cruikshank's famous designs to that work.* The sausage scene at Fagin's, Nancy seizing the boy ; that capital piece of humor, Mr. Bumble's courtship, which is even better in Cruik- shank's version than in Boz's exquisite account of the inter- view ; Sykes's farewell to the dog ; and the Jew, — the dreadful Jew — that Cruikshank drew ! What a fine touching picture of melancholy desolation is that of Sykes and the dog ! The poor cur is not too well drawn, the landscape is stiff and formal ; but in this case the faults, if faults they be, of execu- tion rather add to than diminish the effect of the picture : it has a strange, wild, dreary, broken-hearted look ; we fancy we see the landscape as it must have appeared to Sykes, when ghastly and with bloodshot eyes he looked at it. As for the Jew in the dungeon, let us say nothing of it — what can we say to describe it .'' What a fine homely poet is the man who can produce this little world of mirth or woe for us ! Does he elaborate his effects by slow process of thought, or do they come to him by instinct ? Does the painter ever arrange in his brain an image so complete, that he afterwards can copy it exactly on the canvas, or does the hand work in spite of him ? A great deal of this random work of course every artist has done in his time ; many men produce effects of which they never dreamed, and strike off excellences, haphazard, which gain for them reputation ; but a fine quality in Mr. Cruikshank, the quality of his success, as we have said before, is the extraor- dinary earnestness and good faith with which he executes all he attempts — the ludicrous, the polite, the low, the terrible. In * Or liis new work, " The Tower of London," which promises even to surpass Mr, Cruikshank's former productions. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 629 the second of these he often, in our fancy, fails, liis figures lacking elegance and descending to caricature ; but there is somethmg fine in this too : it is good that he s/iould fail, that he should have these honest nawe notions regarding the l>eaii fnonife, the characteristics of which a namby-pamby tea-party painter could hit off far better than he. He is a great deal too downright and manly to appreciate the flimsy delicacies of small society — you cannot expect a lion to roar you like any sucking dove, or frisk about a drawing-room like a lady's little spaniel. If then, in the course of his life and business, he has been occasionally obliged to imitate the ways of such small animals, he has done so, let us say it at once, clumsily, and like as a lion should. Many artists, we hear, hold his works rather cheajD ; they prate about bad drawing, want of scientific knowl- edge ; — they would have something vastly more neat, regular, anatomical. Not one of the whole band most likely but can paint an Academy figure better than himself ; nay, or a portrait of an alderman's lady and family of children. But look down the list of the painters and tell us who are they ? How many among these men are f>oets (makers), possessing the faculty to create, the greatest among the gifts with which Providence has endowed the mind of man ? Say how many there are, count up what they have done, and see what in the course of some nine-and-twenty years has been done by this indefatigable man. What amazing energetic fecundity do we find in him ! As a boy he began to fight for bread, has been hungry (twice a day we trust) ever since, and has been obliged to sell his wit for his bread week by week. And his wit, sterling gold as it is, will find no such purchasers as the fashionable painter's thin pinchbeck, who can live comfortably for six weeks, when paid for and painting a portrait, and fancies his mind prodigi- ously occupied all the while. There was an artist in Paris, an artist hairdresser, who used to be fatigued and take restoratives after inventing a new coiffure. By no such gentle operation of head-dressing has Cruikshank lived : time was (we are told so in print) when for a picture with thirty heads in it he was paid three guineas — a poor week's pittance, truly, and a dire week's labor. We make no doubt that the same labor would at present bring him twenty times the sum ; but whether it be ill- paid or well, what labor has Mr. Cruikshank's been ! Week by week, for thirty years, to produce something new ; some smiling offspring of painful labor, quite independent and dis- 630 CRITICAL REVIEWS. tinct from its ten thousand jovial brethren ; in what hours of sorrow and ill-health to be told by the world, " Make us laugh or you starve — Give us fresh fun ; we have eaten up the old and are hungry." And all this has he been obliged to do — to wring laughter day by day, sometimes, perhaps, out of want, often certainly from ill-health or depression — to keep the fire of his brain perpetually alight : for the greedy public will give it no leisure to cool. This he has done and done well. He has told a thousand truths in as many strange and fascinating ways ; he has given a thousand new and pleasant thoughts to millions of people ; he has never used his wit dishonestly ; he has never, in all the exuberance of his frolicsome humor, caused a single painful or guilty blush : how little do we think of the extraordinary power of this man, and how ungrateful we are to him ! Here, as we are come round to the charge of ingratitude, the starting-post from which we set out, perhaps we had better conclude. The reader will perhaps wonder at the high-flown tone in which we speak of the services and merits of an indi- vidual, whom he considers a humble scraper on steel, that is wonderfully popular already. But none of us remember all the benefits we owe him ; they have come one by one, one driving out the memory of the other . it is only when we come to ex- amine them altogether, as the writer has done, who has a pile of books on the table before him — a heap of personal kind- nesses from George Cruikshank (not presents, if you please, for we bought, borrowed, or stole every one of them) — that we feel what we owe him. Look at one of Mr, Cruikshank's works, and we pronounce him an excellent humorist. Look at all : his reputation is increased by a kind of geometrical pro- gression ; as a whole diamond is a hundred times more valu- able than the hundred splinters into which it might be broken would be. A fine rough English diamond is this about which we have been writing. JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 631 yOHN LEECH'S PICTURES OF LIFE AND CHARACTER. * We, who can recall the consulship of Plancus, and quite respectable, old fogeyfied times, remember amongst other amusements which we had as children the pictures at which we were permitted to look. There was Boydell's Shakspeare, black and ghastly gallery of murky Opies, glum Northcotes, straddling Fuselis ! there were Lear, Oberon, Hamlet, with starting muscles, rolling eyeballs, and long pointing quivering fingers ; there was little Prince Arthur (Northcote) crying, in white satin, and bidding good Hubert not put out his eyes ; there was Hubert crying; there was little Rutland being run through the poor little body by bloody Clifford ; there was Cardinal Beaufort (Reynolds) gnashing his teeth, and grinning and howling demoniacally on his death-bed (a picture frightful to the present day) ; there was Lady Hamilton (Romney) wav- ing a torch, and dancing before a black background, — a melan- choly museum indeed. Smirke's delightful " Seven Ages " only fitfully relieved its general gloom. We did not like to inspect it unless the elders were present, and plenty of lights and company were in the room. Cheerful relatives used to treat us to Miss Linwood's. Let the children of the present generation thank their stars that tragedy is put out of the way. Miss Linwood's was worsted- work. Your grandmother or grandaunts took you there, and said the pictures were admirable. You saw " the Woodman " in worsted, with his axe and dog, trampling through the snow; the snow bitter cold to look at, the woodman's pipe wonderful ; a gloomy piece, that made you shudder. There were large dingy pictures of woollen martyrs, and scowling warriors with limbs strongly knitted ; there was especially, at the end of a black passage, a den of lions, that would frighten any boy not born in Africa, or Exeter 'Change, and accustomed to them. Another exhibition used to be West's Gallery, where the pleasing figures of Lazarus in his grave-clothes, and Death on the pale horse, used to impress us children. The tombs of • Reprinted from the Quarterly Review, No. 191, Dec. 1854, by permission of Mr. John Murray. 632 CRITICAL REVIEWS. Westminster Abbey, the vaults at St. Paul's, the men in ar- mor at the- Tower, frowning ferociously out of their helmets, and wielding their dreadful swords ; that superhuman Queen Elizabeth at the end of the room, a livid sovereign, with glass eyes, a ruff, and a dirty satin petticoat, riding a horse covered with steel : who does not remember these sights in London in the consulship of Plancus ? and the wax-work in Fleet Street, not like that of Madame Tussaud's, whose chamber of death is gay and brilliant ; but a nice old gloomy waxwork, full of murderers ; and as a chief attraction, the Dead Baby and Princess Charlotte lying in state ? Our story-books had no pictures in them for the most part. Frank (dear old Frank !) had none ; nor the " Parent's Assist- ant ; " nor the "'Evenings at Home;" nor our copy of the " Ami des Enfans ; " there were a few just at the end of the Spelling-Book ; besides the allegory at the beginning, of Edu- cation leading up Youth to the temple of Industry, where Dr. Dilworth and Professor Walkinghame stood with crowns of laurels. There were, we say, just a few pictures at the end of the Spelling-Book, little oval gray wood-cuts of Bewick's, mostly of the Wolf and the Lamb, the Dog and the Shadow, and Brown, Jones, and Robinson with long ringlets and little tights ; but for pictures, so to speak, what had we ? The rough old wood-blocks in the harlequin-backed fairy-books had served hundreds of years ; before oicr Plancus, in the time of Priscus Plancus — in Queen Anne's time, who knows ? We w-ere flogged at school ; we were fifty boys in our boarding-hoifse, and had to wash in a leaden trough, under a cistern, with lumps of fat yellow soap floating about in the ice and water. Are our sons ever flogged ? Have they not dressing-rooms, hair- oil, hip-baths, and Baden towels ? And what picture-books the young villains have 1 What have these children done that they should be so much happier than we were ? We had the " Arabian Nights " and Walter Scott, to be sure. Smirke's illustrations to the former are very fine. We did not know how good they were then ; but we doubt whether we did not prefer the little old " Miniature Library Nights " with fronti^ieces by Uwins ; for these books the pictures don't count. Every boy of imagination does his own pictures to Scott and the " Arabian Nights " best. Of funny pictures there were none especially intended for us children. There was Rowlandson's "Doctor Syntax:" Doctor Syntax, in a fuzz-wig, on a horse with legs like sausages, riding races, making love, frolicking with rosy exuberant dam- JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 633 sels. Those pictures were very funny, and that aquatinting and the gay-colored plates very pleasant to witness ; but if we could not read the poem in those days, could we digest it in this ? Nevertheless, apart from the text which we could not master, we remember Doctor Syntax pleasantly, like those cheerful painted hieroglyphics in the Nineveh Court at Syden- ham. What matter for the arrow-head, illegible stuff? give us the placid grinning kings, twanging their jolly bows over their rident horses, wounding those good-humored enemies, who tumble gayly off the towers, or drown, smiling in the dimpling waters, amidst the anerithmon gelasma of the fish. After Doctor Syntax, the apparition of Corinthian Tom, Jerry Hawthorn, and the facetious Bob Logic must be recorded — a wondrous history indeed theirs was! When the future student of our manners comes to look over th.e pictures and the writing of these queer volumes, what will he think of our society, customs, and language in the Consulship of Plancus ? " Corinthian," it appears, was the phrase applied to men of fashion and ton in Plancus's time : they were the brilliant pre- decessors of the "swell" of the present period — brilliant, but somewhat barbarous, it must be confessed. The Corinthians were in the habit of drinking a great deal too much in Tom Cribb's parlor . they used to go and see " life " in the gin-shops ; of nights, walking home (as well as they could), they used to knock down " Charleys," poor harmless old watchmen with lanterns, guardians of the streets of Rome, Planco Consule. They perpetrated a vast deal of boxing ; they put on the "muf- flers " in Jackson's rooms ; they " sported their prads " in the Ring in the Park ; they attended cock-fights, and were enlight- ened patrons of dogs and destroyers of rats. Besides these sports, the delassemens of gentlemen mixing with the people, our patricians, of course, occasionally enjoyed the society of their own class. What a wonderful picture that used to be of Corinthian Tom dancing with Corinthian Kate at Almack's ! What a prodigious dress Kate wore ! With what graceful abafidon the pair flung their arms about as they swept through the mazy quadrille, with all the noblemen standing round in their stars and uniforms ! You may still, doubtless, see the pictures at the British Museum, or find the volumes in the corner of some old country-house library. You are led to sup- pose that the English aristocracy of 1820 did dance and caper in that way, and box and drink at Tom Cribb's, and knock down watchmen ; and the children of to-day, turning to their elders, may say, " Grandmamma, did you wear such a dress as 634 CRITICAL REVIEWS. that when you danced at Almack's ? There was very little of it, grandmamma. Did grandpapa kill many watchmen when he was a young man, and frequent thieves' gin-shops, cock- fights and the ring, before you married him ? Did he used to talk the extraordinary slang and jargon which is printed in this book ? He is very much changed. He seems a gentlemanly old boy enough now." In the above-named consulate, when we had grandfathers alive, there would be in the old gentleman's library in the country two or three old mottled portfolios, or great swollen scrap-books of blue paper, full of the comic prints of grand- papa's time, ere Plancus ever had the fasces borne before him. These prints were signed Gilra}^, Bunbury, Rowlandson, Wood- ward, and some actually George Cruikshank — for George is a veteran now, and he took the etching needle in hand as a child. He caricatured " Boney," borrowing not a little from Gilray in his first puerile efforts. He drew Louis XVHI, trying on Boney's boots. Before the century was actually in its teens we believe that George Cruikshank was amusing the public. In those great colored prints in our grandfathers' portfolios in the library, and in some other apartments of the house, where the caricatures used to be pasted in those days, we found things quite beyond our comprehension. Boney was represent- ed as a fierce dwarf, with goggle eyes, a huge laced hat and tricolored plume, a crooked sabre, reeking with blood : a little demon revelling in lust, murder, massacre. John Bull was shown kicking him a good deal : indeed he was prodigiously kicked all through that series of pictures ; by Sidney Smith and our brave allies the gallant Turks ; by the excellent and patriotic Spaniards ; by the amiable and indignant Russians, ■ — all nations had boots at the service of poor Master Boney. How Pit used to defy him ! How good old George, King of Brobdingnag, laughed at Gulliver-Boney, sailing about in his tank to make sport for their Majesties ! This little fiend, this beggar's brat, cowardly, murderous, and atheistic as he was (we remember in those old portfolios, pictures representing Boney and his family in rags, gnawing raw bones in a Corsican hut ; Boney murdering the sick at Jaffa ; Boney with a hookah and a large turban, having adopted the Turkish religion, &c.) — this Corsican monster, nevertheless, had some devoted friends in England, according to the Gilray chronicle, — a set of villains who loved atheism, tyranny, plunder, and wickedness in general, like tlieir French friend. In the pictures these men were all represented as dwarfs, like their ally. The miscreants JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 635 got into power at one time, and, if we remember right, were called the Broad-backed Administration. One with shaggy eyebrows and a bristly beard, the hirsute ringleader of the ras- cals, was, it appears, called Charles James Fox; another mis- creant, with a blotched countenance, was a certain Sheridan ; other imps were hight Erskine, Norfolk (Jockey of), Moira, Henry Petty. As in our childish innocence we used to look at these demons, now sprawling and tipsy in their cups , now scaling heaven, from which the angelic Pitt hurled them down ; now cursing the light (their atrocious ringleader Fox was re- presented with hairy cloven feet, and a tail and horns) ; now kissing Boney's boot, but inevitably discomfited by Pitt and the other good angels : we hated these vicious wretches, as good children should ; we were on the side of Virtue and Pitt and Grandpapa. But if our sisters wanted to look at the port- folios, the good old grandfather used to hesitate. There were some prints among them very old indeed ; some that girls could not understand ; some that boys, indeed, had best not see. We swiftly turn over those prohibited pages. Flow many of them there were in the wild, coarse, reckless, ribald, generous book of old English humor ! How savage the satire was — how fierce the assault — what garbage hurled at opponents — what foul blows were hit — what language of Billingsgate fiung ! Fancy a party in a country- house now looking over Woodward's facetiae or some of the Gilray comicalities, or the slatternly Saturnalia of Rowlandson ! Whilst we live we must laugh, and have folks to make us laugh. We cannot afford to lose Satyr with his pipe and dances and gambols. But we have washed, combed, clothed, and taught the rogue good manners : or rather, let us sav, he has learned them himself; for he is of nature soft and kindly, and he has put aside his mad pranks and tipsy habits ; and frolicsome always, has become gentle and harmless, smitten into shame by the pure presence'of our women and the sweet confiding smiles of our children. Among the veterans, the old pictorial satirists, we have mentioned the famous name of one humorous designer who is still alive and at work. Did we not see, by his own hand, his own portrait of his own famous face, and whisk- ers, in the Illustrated London News the other day .'' There was a print in that paper of an assemblage of teetotallers in " Sad- ler's Well's Theatre," and we straightway recognized the old Roman hand — the old Roman's of the time of Plancus — George Cruikshank's. There were the old bonnets and droll faces and shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 1820 sure enough. 636 CRITICAL REVIEWS And there was George (who has taken to the water-doctrine, as all the world knows) handing some teetotalleresses over a plank to the table where the pledge was being administered. How often has George drawn that picture of Cruikshank ! Where haven't we seen it ? How fine it was, facing the effigy of Mr.. Ainsworth in Ainsworth' s Magazine when George illustrated that periodical ! How grand and severe he stands in that de- sign in G. C.'s " Omnibus," where he represents himself tonged like St. Dunstan, and tweaking a wretch of a publisher by the nose ! The collectors of George's etchings — oh the charming etchings! — oh the dear old "German Popular Tales!" — the capital " Points of Humor " — the delightful " Phrenology " and " Scrap-books," of the good time, our time — Plancus's in fact! — the collectors of the Georgian etchings, we say, have at least a hundred pictures of the artist. Why, we remember him in his favorite Hessian boots in " Tom and Jerry " itself ; and in wood-cuts as far back as the Queen's trial. He has rather de- serted satire and comedy of late years, having turned his atten- tion to the serious, and warlike, and sublime. Having confessed our age and prejudices, we prefer the comic and fanciful to the historic, romantic, and at present didactic George. May re- spect, and length of days, and comfortable repose attend the brave, honest, kindly, pure-minded artist, humorist, moralist ! It was he first who brought English pictorial humor and children acquainted. Our young people and their fathers and mothers owe him many a pleasant hour and harmless laugh. Is there no way in which the country could acknowledge the long services and brave career of such a friend and benefactor.' Since George's time humor has been converted. Gomus and his wicked satyrs and leering fauns have disappeared, and fled into the lowest haunts ; and Gomu3's lady_(if she had a taste for humor, which may be doubted) might take up our funny picture-books without the slightest precautionary squeam- ishness. What can be purer than the charming fancies of Richard Doyle ? In all Mr. Punch's huge galleries can't we walk as safely as through Miss Pinkerton's school-rooms ? And as we look at Mr. Punch's pictures, at the Illustrated News pictures, at all the pictures in the book-shop windows at this Christmas season, as oldsters, we feel a certain pang of envy against the youngsters — they are too well off. Why hadn't we picture-books ? Why were we flogged so ? A plague on the lictors and their rods in the time of Plancus ! And now, after this rambling preface, we are arrived at the subject in hand — Mr. John Leech and his " Pictures of Life and JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES 637 Character," in the collection of Mr. Punch, This book is better than plum-cake at Christmas. It is an enduring plum- cake, which you may eat and which you may slice and deliver to your friends ; and to which, having cut it, you may come again and welcome, from year's end to year's end. In the frontispiece you see Mr. Punch examining the pictures in his gallery — a portly, well-dressed, middle-aged, respectable gentle- man, in a white neck-cloth, and a polite evening costume — smiling in a very bland and agreeable manner upon one of his pleasant drawings, taken out of one of his handsome portfolios. Mr. Punch has very good reason to smile at the work and be satisfied with the artist. Mr. Leech, his chief contributor, and some kindred humorists, with pencil and pen have served Mr. Punch admirably. Time was, if we remember Mr. P.'s history rightly, that he did not wear silk stockings nor well-made clothes (the little dorsal irregularity in his figure is almost an ornament now, so excellent a tailor has he). He was of humble begin- nings. It is said he kept a ragged little booth, which he put up at corners of streets ; associated with beadles, policemen, his own ugly wife (whom he treated most scandalously), and persons in a low station of life; earning a precarious livelihood by the cracking of wild jokes, the singing of ribald songs, and halfpence extorted from passers-by. He is the Satyric genius we spoke of anon ; he cracks his jokes still, for satire must hve ; but he is combed, washed, neatly clothed, and perfectly presentable. He goes into the very best company ; he keeps a stud at Melton , he has a moor in Scotland ; he rides in the Park ; has his stall at the Opera; is constantly dining out at clubs and in private society ; and goes every night in the sea- son to balls and parties, where you see the most beautiful women possible. He is welcomed amongst his new friends the great ; though, like the good old English gentleman of the song, he does not forget the small. He pats the heads of street boys and girls ; relishes the jokes of Jack the coster- monger and Bob the dustman ; good-naturedly spies out Molly the cook flirting with policeman X, or Mary the nursemaid as she listens to the fascinating guardsman. He used rather to laugh at guardsmen, " plungers," and other military men ; and was until latter days very contemptuous in his behavior towards Frenchmen. He has a natural antipathy to pomp, and swag- ger, and fierce demeanor. But now that the guardsmen are gone to war, and the dandies of " The Rag " — dandies no more — are battling like heroes at Balaklava and Inkermann * by the • This was written in 1S54. 638 CRITICAL REVIEWS. side of their heroic allies, Mr. Punch's laughter is changed to hearty respect and enthusiasm. It is not against courage and honor he wars : but this great moralist — must it be owned ? ■ — has some popular British prejudices, and these led him in peace time to laugh at soldiers and Frenchmen. If those hulking footmen who accompanied the carriages to the opening of Parliament the other day, would form a plush brigade, wear only gunpowder in their hair, and strike with their great canes on the enemy, Mr. Punch would leave off laughing at Jeames, who meanwhile remains among us, to all outward appearance regardless of satire, and calmly consuming his five meals per diem. Against lawyers, beadles, bishops and clergy, and authorities, Mr. Punch is still rather bitter. At the time of the Papal aggression he was prodigiously angry ; and one of the chief misfortunes which happened to him at that period was that, through the violent opinions which he expressed regarding the Roman Catholic hierarchy, he lost the inv^aluable services, the graceful pencil, the harmless wit, the charming fancy of Mr. Doyle. Another member of Mr. Punch's cabinet, the biographer of Jeames, the author of the " Snob Papers," re- signed his functions on account of Mr. Punch's assaults upon the present Emperor of the French nation, whose anger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse. Mr. Punch parted with these contributors : he filled their places with others as good. The boys at the railroad stations cried Punch just as cheerily, and sold just as many numbers, after these events as before. There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is the right-hand man. Fancy a number of Piaich without Leech's pictures ! What would you give for it .-• The learned gentlemen who write the work must feel that, with- out him, it were as well left alone. Look at the rivals whom the popularity of Punch has brought into the field ; the direct imitators of Mr. Leech's manner — the artists with a manner of their own^ — how inferior their pencils are to his in humor, in depicting the public manners, in arresting, amusing the nation. The truth, the strength, the free vigor, the kind humor, the John Bull pluck and spirit of that hand are approached by no competitor. With what dexterity he draws a horse, a woman, a child ! He feels them all, so to speak, like a man. What plump young beauties those are with which Mr. Punch's chief contributor supplies the old gentleman's pictorial harem ! What famous thews and sinews Mr. Punch's horses have, and how Briggs, on the back of them, scampers across country ! You see youth, strength, enjoyment, manliness in those drawings, JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 639 and in none more so, to our thinking, than in the hundred pictures of children which this artist loves to design. Like a brave, hearty, good-natured Briton, he becomes quite soft and tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their sports, their jokes, laughter, caresses. Eiifans terribks come home from Eton ; young Miss practising her first flirtation ; poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the gutter, or stag- gering under the weight of Jacky, her nursechild, who is as big as herself — all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with curious nicety by this amiable observer. We remember, in one of those ancient Gilray portfolios, a print which used to cause a sort of terror in us youthful spec- tators, and in which the Prince of Wales (his Royal Highness was a Foxite then) was represented as sitting alone in a mag- nificent hall after a voluptuous meal, and using a great steel fork in the guise of a toothpick. Fancy the first young gentle- man living employing such a weapon in such a way ! The most elegant Prince of Europe engaged with a two-pronged iron fork — the heir of Britannia with a bident ! The man of genius who drew that picture saw little of the society which he satirized and amused. Gilray watched public characters as they walked by the shop in St. James's Street, or passed through the lobby of the House of Commons. His studio was a garret, or little better ; his place of amusement a tavern-parlor, where his club held its nightly sittings over their pipes and sanded floor. You could not have society represented by men to whom it was not familiar. When Gavarni came to England a few years since — one of the wittiest of men, one of the most brilliant and dex- terous of draughtsmen — he published a book of " Les Anglais," and his Anglais were all Frenchmen. The eye, so keen and so long practised to observe Parisian life, could not perceive Eng- lish character. A social painter must be of the world which he depicts, and native to the manners which he portrays. Now, any one who looks over Mr. Leech's portfolio must see that the social pictures which he gives us are authentic. What comfortable little drawing-rooms and dining-rooms, what snug libraries we enter, what fine young-gentlemanly wags they are, those beautiful little dandies who wake up gouty old grandpapa to ring the bell ; who decline aunt's pudding and custards, saying that they will reserve themselves for an anchovy roast with the claret , who talk together in ballroom doors, where Fred whispers Charley — pointing to a dear little partner seven 640 CRITICAL REVIEWS. years old — " My dear Charley, she has very much gone off ; you should have seen that girl last season ! " Look well at everything appertaining to the economy of the famous Mr. Briggs : how snug, quiet, appropriate all the appointments are ! What a comfortable, neat, clean, middle-class house Eriggs's is (in the Bayswater suburb of London, we should guess from the sketches of the surrounding scenery) ! What a good stable he has, with a loose box for those celebrated hunters which he rides ! How pleasant, clean, and warm his breakfast- table looks ! What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which horrify Mrs. B ! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on the delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire ! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room : Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp ; Mamma and Grannie with their respective needleworks ; the children clustering round a great book of prints — a great book of prints such as this before us, which, at this season, must make thou- sands of children happy by as many firesides ! The inner life of all these people is represented . Leech draws them as natur- ally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables. It is your house and mine , we are lookmg at every- body's family circle. Our boys coming from school give them- selves such airs, the young scapegraces ! our girls, going to parties, are so tricked out by fond mammas — a social history of London in the middle of the nineteenth century. As such, future students — lucky they to have a book so pleasant — will regard these pages . even the mutations of fashion they may follow here if they be so inclined. Mr. Leech has as fine an eye for tailory and millinery as for horse-flesh. How they change those cloaks and bonnets. How we have to pay mil- liners' bills from year to year ! Where are those prodigious chutelaines of 1S50 which no lady could be without ? Where those charming waistcoats, those '* stunning " waistcoats, which our young girls used to wear a few brief seasons back, and which cause 'Gus, in the sweet little sketch of " La Mode," to ask Ellen for her tailor's address. 'Gus is a young warrior by this time, very likely facing the enemy at Inkerman ; and pretty Ellen, and that love of a sister of hers, are married and happy, let us hope, superintending one of those delightful nursery scenes which our artists depicts with such tender humor. Fortunate artist, indeed ! You see he must have been bred at a good public school ; that he has ridden many a good horse in his day ; paid, no doubt, out of his own purse for the originals JOHN LEECH'S PICTURES. 641 of some of those lovely caps and bonnets ; and watched pa- ternally the ways, smiles, frolics, and slumbers of his favorite little people. As you look at the drawings, secrets come out of them, — ■ private jokes, as it were, imparted to you by the author for your special delectation. How remarkably, for instance, has Mr. Leech observed the hair-dressers of the present age J Look at " Mr. Tongs," whom that hideous old bald woman, who ties on her bonnet at the glass, informs that " she has used the whole bottle of Balm of California, but her hair comes off yet." You can see the bear's-grease not only on Tongs' head but on his hands, which he is clapping clammily together. Remark him who is telling his client " there is cholera in the hair ; " and that lucky rogue whom the young lady bids to cut off " a long thick piece " — for somebody, doubtless. All these men are different, and delightfully natural and absurd. Why should hair-dressing be an absurd profession ? The amateur will remark what an excellent part hands play in Mr. Leech's pieces : his admirable actors use them with perfect naturalness. Look at Betty, putting the urn down ; at cook, laying her hands on the kitchen table, whilst her police- man grumbles at the cold meat. They are cook's and house- maid's hands without mistake, and not without a certain beauty too. The bald old lady, who is tying her bonnet at Tongs', has hands which you see are trembling. Watch the fingers of the two old harridans who are talking scandal : for what long years past they have pointed out holes in their neighbors' dresses and mud on their flounces. " Here's a go ! I've lost my diamond ring." As the dustman utters this pathetic cry, and looks at his hand, you burst out laughing. These are among the little points of humor. One could indicate hun- dreds of such as one turns over the pleasant pages. There is a little snob or gent, whom we all of us know, who wears little tufts on his little chin, outrageous pins and panta- loons, smokes cigars on tobacconists' counters, sucks his cane in the streets, struts about with Mrs. Snob and the baby (Mrs. S. an immense woman, whom Snob nevertheless bullies), who is a favorite abomination of Leech, and pursued by that savage humorist into a thousand of his haunts. There he is, choosing waistcoats at the tailor's — such waistcoats ! Vender he is giv- ing a shilling to the sweeper who calls him " Capting ; " now he is offering a paletot to a huge giant who is going out in the rain. They don't know their own pictures, very likely ; if they did, they would have a meeting, and thirty or forty of them 41 642 CRITICAL REVIEWS. would be deputed to thrash Mr. Leech. One feels a pity for the poor little bucks. In a minute or two, when we close this discourse and walk the streets, we shall see a dozen such. Ere we shut the desk up, just one word to point out to the unwary specially to note the back grounds of landscapes in Leech's drawings — homely drawings of moor and wood, and sea-shore and London street — the scenes of his little dramas. They are as excellently true to nature as the actors themselves ; our respect for the genius and humor which invented both in- creases as we look and look again at the designs. May we have more of them ; more pleasant Christmas volumes, over which we and our children can laugh together. Can we have too much of truth, and fun, and beauty, and kindness ? .a THACKERAY'S COMPLETE WORKS. LO FELL'S POPULAR ILLUSTRATED EDITION. This is an entirely new edition of Mr. Thackeray's writings. It is beautifully printed from new electrotype plates, large, clear type, on fine paper, handsomely illustrated with over 200 full-page illustrations, and bound in cloth, gilt. It is the only large type edition printed in this country, and is the best, cheapest, and handsomest edition published. PRICES. 11 volumes, i2mo., about 800 pages each, cloth, $16 50 11 " '« " " half calf or morocco, 33 00 I. VANITY FAIR. II. THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS. III. THE NEWCOMES. IV. THE VIRGINIANS. V. THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP, to which is prefixed A SHABBY GEN- TEEL STORY. VI. HENRY ESMOND, CATHARINE, DENIS DUVAL, AND LOVEL THE WIDOWER. VII. PARIS, IRISH, AND EASTERN SKETCHES. VIII. BARRY LYNDON, GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND, ETC.: Barry Lyndon. I Sketches and Travels in London. Great Hoggarty Diamond. | Character Sketches. Men's Wives. IX. ROUNDABOUT PAPERS, THE FOUR GEORGES, ETC.: Roundabout Papers. The Four Georges. English Humorists. Second Funeral of Napolson Critical Reviews. Selections from Punch. X. BURLESQUES, YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, ETC.: Novels by Eminent Hands. Jeames's Diary. Adventures of Major Gahagan. A Legend of the Rhine. Rebecca and Rowena. The History of the next French Revolution. Cox's Diary. Yellowplush Papers. Fitzboodle Papers. The Wolves and the Lamb. The Bedford Row Conspiracy. A Little Dinner at Timmins's. The Fatal Boots. Little Travels. XI. CHRISTMAS BOOKS, BOOK OF SNOBS, AND BALLADS: Mrs. Perkins's Ball. I The Kickleburys on the Rhinb. Dr. Birch. The Rose and the Ring. Our Street. | Book of Snobs. Ballads. *5^* Any volume will be sold separately, bound in cloth, price ?5i.5o. The first six volumes, containing Mr. Thackeray's novels only, are put up sepa< rately in neat paper box, price in cloth, J9.00. NEW YORK: JOHN W LOVELL, 24 BOND STREET. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: May 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111