I 
 
 i 
 I 
 
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 i'1
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 PATCHWORK 
 
 \
 
 PATCHWORK 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK LOCKER 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1879 
 
 lAli rights res erved]
 
 
 DEDICA TION. 
 
 . While arranging this little book, I have once more 
 enjoyed the society of a few friends atid of many pleasant 
 companions, dead and living, and it would have 
 pleased me to have dedicated it to more than one of 
 them. 
 
 I have a friend who is still with us, and whose 
 name I should have well liked to have seen on this 
 page, but is he not a distinguished dignitary of our 
 National Church ? and could I have asked him to 
 take so incongruous a collection of trifles under his 
 I decanal wings? 
 
 . If I had asked him, he might not have denied me. 
 
 I think I will dedicate my collection to my friends 
 yet living, and to the memory of those who are gone. 
 
 FREDERICK LOCKER. 
 25 Chesham Street, S.W.: 1878. 
 
 593910 
 
 ENGLISH
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I DO not know whether a reference to Dr. Johnson's 
 Dictionary would show that a Commonplace-book 
 is a book kept by a commonplace sort of person, 
 but I should not be surprised if the Doctor had 
 thought so, and, certainly, there is a very general 
 opinion that collections of such scraps are mighty 
 poor reading : in sustained and coherent interest 
 not a whit better than the Doctor's own lexicon. 
 
 Such volumes are generally a miscellaneous 
 gathering of fragments, which the editor fancies, in a 
 vague sort of way, will be amusing or edifying to the 
 general public. Now as my detached pieces were 
 brought together with no idea of pleasing anybody 
 but myself, I hope they will have a more individual 
 flavour, and so, in some measure, escape this very 
 serious charge. 
 
 I fear that I may annoy some readers, for, though 
 I have taken pains, no doubt I have sorely mal- 
 treated many of the extracts, picked up, as they 
 were, from all sorts of people, in all kinds of places, 
 from the corners of newspapers, and such like.
 
 VIU PREFACE. 
 
 For instance, I remember hearing one of the 
 stories — one of the very best of them, mind — in a 
 Turkish bath ; it was related by a personage with 
 whom I was not acquainted, I could not even see 
 him, and, as, like our first parents in Paradise, I 
 had neither pencil nor paper about me, I was not 
 able to secure chapter and verse. 
 
 Dear Reader, if you find your pet story has 
 been especially massacred, make up your benevolent 
 mind that it was the very story (which there is no 
 doubt at all it was !) which I picked up in the 
 Turkish bath. 
 
 I have often refrained from citing authorities, 
 either because I did not know them, or for fear of 
 ascribing wrongly, and thus giving just cause of 
 offence to my accomplished friend the author of 
 ' Pearls and Mock Pearls of History.' By this, and by 
 other sins of omission I fear I have often defrauded 
 authors of their just dues. I repeat that when I 
 penned these paragraphs and made these extracts I 
 had no notion of printing them, or I should have 
 taken more care in their transcription, and I should 
 certainly have been a little less vernacular in my 
 style, which is, I own, occasionally unworthy of the 
 dignity of print— but I feared that if I re-wrote them 
 they might lose any little freshness they possess. 
 
 r. L.
 
 PATCHWORK. 
 
 WANT OF EARNESTNESS. 
 
 Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) could not tolerate people 
 who looked on life merely from the grotesque or 
 ludicrous point of view. 'If it is true,' said he, 'that 
 nothing has for you any relish except painted comfits 
 and unmeaning trifles, that not even wisdom will 
 please you, unless without its own peculiar flavour, nor 
 truth, unless seasoned with a jest, nor reason, unless 
 cloaked in fun, then in an unlucky hour have I been 
 assigned as your purveyor, neither born nor bred 
 in such a frivolous confectionery. The insatiable 
 appetite for laughter keeps itself within no bounds. 
 Have you crowded to this place for the purpose of 
 listening, and studying, and making progress, or only 
 for the sake of laughing at this thing, and making a 
 jest of that other? There is nothing so remote from 
 levity which you do not instantly transmute into mirth 
 and absurdity, and let a discourse be such as to move 
 no laughter, nothing else will please, neither dignity, 
 nor gravity, nor solidity, neither strength, nor point, 
 nor polish.' 
 '^ B
 
 PATCHWORK. 
 
 PETS. 
 
 Human nature is not thoroughly base, it must have 
 something to cling to ; for instance, a husband or a 
 wife, a father or a mother, a son or a daughter — if it 
 can't have these, it puts up with an uncle or even a 
 grandmother. The same with la belle passion, but I 
 will not enter on that now, it is too suggestive, and 
 would take far too long. And it is the same with 
 friendship. Some people are entirely dependent on 
 their friendships, ' they cling to the beloved as ivy 
 embraces the oak, and they do not look unlovely as 
 they so cling. I believe those who have this capacity 
 are not the less happy for it. Life runs very pleasantly 
 for them, their hours dance away with down upon 
 their feet ! There are others, again, who are much 
 more independent, if they cannot find a human being 
 handy, they put up with a pug or a cockatoo. I know 
 one or two very worthy people who find old china- 
 monsters, or even a rare postage-stamp, all-sufficing, 
 but I think I have never come across any one who 
 was entirely self-contained. 
 
 I have a friend who is blessed with a charming 
 wife and very fine children — he is a model husband 
 and father, but his heart is so capacious that he has 
 also found accommodation for a huge brute of a 
 Patagonian poodle, and this too in a not by any means 
 capacious establishment. The animal came to him
 
 PATCHWORK. 
 
 from that country as a puppy, and it increased in 
 
 weight and size at such a bewildering rate that it 
 
 almost took his poor wife's breath away. She hopes 
 
 'Fang' has at last done growing. The enormous 
 
 beast, who under that murderous name makes the 
 
 earth to quake beneath him, and the population to 
 
 tremble before him, is supremely good-natured, but, I 
 
 suspect, he is out-of-the-common stupid, and he is 
 
 useless too, for, as you may suppose, he is nothing of a 
 
 mouser. The house is a fair size. 
 
 But if it's entered by a rat 
 There is no room to bring a cat. 
 
 ' Fang ' completely fills every chamber ! and he empties 
 it, too ; for does not one whisk of his tail make hay 
 with those little occasional tables, and the objets d'art 
 that cover them ? those tables which are so much in 
 the way, and which might well be called traps to catch 
 unwary visitors. It would be interesting to see the 
 statistics of Fang's butcher's account. 
 
 His gracious mistress (it would seem a mockery to 
 call anybody his master) is not fanciful, but ' Fang' is 
 so monstrous, and has such a threatening black jowl, 
 that if any one of the children is out of sight longer 
 than usual, she cannot get rid of the idea that perhaps 
 ' Fang ' has swallowed it. My friend is not a giant, 
 and therefore, as he and his pet are inseparable, if I 
 should ever chance to meet the dog without his 
 master (it is impossible I could ever meet the master 
 
 B 2
 
 PATCHWORK. 
 
 without the dog) I should feel sure that the dog had 
 made one gulp of him. It is diverting to see my 
 friend return from a walk, and squeeze back into his 
 house, for the hall will not hold him and his pet at 
 the same moment. 
 
 Fang's master (I believe he is known in the 
 neighbourhood as Fang's slave) lives within an easy 
 walk of the metropolis, and he delights in the humours 
 of the capital, and the grateful capital simply adores 
 him, but we never see him now ! Poor fellow, he is 
 such a slave to his pet that he is afraid to leave him 
 at home, he cannot sJhmt him, and he dares not take 
 him with him to London. We never see our poor 
 friend now. See how disastrous it is to have bow- 
 wow on the brain ! 
 
 The following story of a pet is not to be read by 
 anybody who is more than twelve years old : — 
 
 I have another pair of friends. They possess a 
 delightful pet — a tame rook. He quits his own kind, 
 by preference, to visit these fascinating but feather- 
 less bipeds. I happened to be staying with them in 
 Cheshire. The hour was very early morning. There 
 was a tap-tap at my window — what could it portend ? 
 Like the adorer of la belle qui fiU Hemilmih'e, I 
 have tapped at other people's casements before now ! 
 I know the sound, in fact, and appreciate the situation. 
 I listened consciously and I opened the lattice coyly, 
 and I was on the point of peeping out, when in
 
 PATCHWORK. 5 
 
 flapped the rook, and in a perfectly well-bred manner 
 immediately made himself at home with my soap-dish. 
 His visit at an end, out he hopped again, and proceeded 
 to call on one or two other friends ; and, at breakfast, 
 we were able to compare notes about him, and bear 
 testimony to his discreet behaviour. 
 
 The same evening I saw him in the lofty elm-trees, 
 flopping about and cawing with his natural nest- 
 fellows, who, ' deliberate birds and prudent aU,' were 
 tearing each other's habitats to pieces. 
 
 I must now tell you how it was that my friends 
 first made the rook's friendship. It would appear 
 that at a very early age he was kicked out of ' the 
 family tree,' and broke his leg. My benevolent friends 
 succoured him, made much of him, and, when he 
 was strong enough to fly, he, for a time, returned to 
 his wild life, but he did not forget them, he often 
 came back, and paid them a more than flying visit. 
 He also made friends with the pairot, which although a 
 cynical fowl, afterwards did him a good turn, and in 
 this wise. One day, while he and the parrot were on the 
 lawn together, a bird of prey suddenly swooped down, 
 and without doubt, if it had not been for poor Polly, 
 would have carried him off, there and then. But, as it 
 happened, the parrot set up an unearthly screech-screech, 
 whereupon the kite dropped his victim and vanished. 
 Since that day the bond between my friends, and the 
 parrot, and the rook, has been continually drawn closer.
 
 PATCHWORK. 
 
 The rook, though still a worshipper of nature, is now 
 their daily visitor. 
 
 He has always been accounted a moral bird, who 
 never did anything to discredit his clerical garb, but 
 he has his weaknesses, and for instance — a young lady 
 was staying in the house who was warmly attached to 
 him, and, one day, on the lawn, she gave him her ring 
 to play with, he accepted it in his beak, gave a hop 
 and a wriggle, and off he flew with it. It was a most 
 valuable diamond ring and yet this delightful young 
 person was as cheerful as possible under her loss, she 
 was rather amused about it than otherwise. She was 
 interested in the rook, and really it looked as if he was 
 going to be married. She was rewarded for her good 
 nature, for the impudent fellow soon brought back the 
 ring, and next morning, when he tapped at her case- 
 ment, and carried in with him a delicious perfume of 
 the morning roses and the newly-mown hay, he paid 
 her a much longer visit than usual. So much for pets. 
 
 AN ENVIABLE GIFT. 
 
 Richard Crashaw sent George Herbert's book of 
 sacred poems intituled 'The Temple,' to a gentle- 
 woman, with the following lines : 
 
 Know you, Fair, on what you look.'' 
 Divinest love lies in this book,
 
 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Expecting fire from your eyes 
 
 To kindle this his sacrifice. 
 
 "When your hands untie these strings, 
 
 Think you've an Angel by the wings — 
 
 One that gladly would be nigh 
 
 To wait upon each morning sigh, 
 
 To flutter in the balmy air 
 
 Of your well-perfumed prayer. 
 
 These white plumes of his he'll lend you. 
 
 Which every day to Heaven will send you, 
 
 To take acquaintance of the sphere, 
 
 And all the smooth-faced kindred there ! 
 
 And tho' Herbert's name do owe 
 These devotions. Fairest, know 
 That while / lay them on the shrine 
 Of your white hand, they are mitie. 
 
 BLACK BLOOD. 
 
 A lady of my acquaintance, a brunette, happened 
 to show her maid one of those little sticking-plaster 
 profiles which they used to call Silhouettes. It was the 
 portrait of the lady's aunt, whom the girl had never 
 seen ; and she said quite innocently, ' La, ma'am, I 
 always thought as how you had some black relations, 
 you are so dark-like yourself, you know.'
 
 8 PATCHWORK. 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 'What is there (in that romantic interest, and 
 patriarchal simplicity, which goes to the heart of a 
 people) equal to the story of Joseph and his brethren, 
 of Rachel and Laban, of Jacob's dream, of Ruth and 
 Boaz, the descriptions in the book of Job, the deliver- 
 ance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their 
 captivity and return from Babylon ? There is in all these 
 parts of the Scripture, and numberless more of the 
 same kind, to pass over the Orphic hymns of David, 
 the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous 
 visions of Ezekiel, an originality, a vastness of concep- 
 tion, a depth and tenderness of feeling, and a touching 
 simplicity in the mode of narration, which he who does 
 not feel need be made of no penetrable stuff. 
 
 ' There is something in the character of Christ, too 
 (leaving religious faith quite out of the question), of 
 more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work 
 a change in the mind of man, by the contemplation of 
 its idea alone, than any to be found in history whether 
 actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublimed 
 humanity, such as was never seen on earth before or 
 since. This shone manifestly both in His words and 
 actions, we see it in His washing the disciples' feet the 
 night before His death, that unspeakable instance of 
 humility and love, above all art, all meanness, and all 
 pride, and in the leave He took of them on that occasion,
 
 PATCHWORK. 
 
 " My peace I give unto you ; that peace which the world 
 cannot give, give I unto you," and in His last command- 
 ment that they should " love one another." Who can 
 read the account of His behaviour on the cross, when 
 turning to His mother He said "Woman, behold thy 
 son," and to the disciple John, " Behold thy mother," 
 and "from that hour that disciple took her to his own 
 home," without having his heart smote within him ! We 
 see it in His treatment of the woman taken in adultery ; 
 His religion was the religion of the heart. We see it 
 in His discourses with His disciples, as they walked 
 together towards Emmaus, when their hearts burned 
 within them; in His Sermon from the Mount, in His 
 parable of the Good Samaritan, and in that of the 
 Prodigal Son. In every act and word of His life a 
 grace, a mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and 
 wisdom worthy of the Son of God. His whole life 
 and being were imbued, steeped in this word Charity. 
 
 ' It was the spring, the well-head from which every 
 thought and feeling gushed into act, and it was this 
 that breathed a mild glory from His face in that last 
 agony on the cross, "when the meek Saviour bowed 
 His head and died," praying for His enemies. 
 
 * He was the first true teacher of morality, for He 
 alone conceived the idea of a pure humanity. He re- 
 deemed man from the worship of that idol self, and 
 instructed him by precept and example to love his 
 neighbour as himself, to forgive his enemies, to do
 
 10 PATCHWORK. 
 
 good to those that curse us and despitefully use us, He 
 taught the love of good for the sake of good, without 
 regard to personal or sinister views, and made the 
 affections of the heart the sole seat of morality, instead 
 of the pride of the understanding, or the sternness of 
 the will. In answering the question " Who is our neigh- 
 bour?" as one who stands in need of our assistance, 
 and whose wounds we can bind up. He has done more 
 to humanize the thoughts and tame the unruly passions 
 than all who have tried to reform and benefit man- 
 kind.' William Hazlitt. 
 
 "Tis very vain for me to boast. 
 How small a price my Bible cost ; 
 The Day of Judgment will make clear 
 'Twas very cheap, or very dear.' 
 
 Michael Scott. 
 
 ALMOST TOO CEREMONIOUS. 
 A gentleman walked up to another gentleman, who 
 was standing before the fire in a Coffee Room, and 
 immediately said, ' I beg your pardon, Sir, but may I 
 ask your name ?' 'I am not in the habit. Sir,' said, 
 the other man, ' of giving my name to strangers, but, 
 as you are so pertinacious, Sir,my name is Thompson, 
 Sir.' 'Then, Mr. Thompson, Sir,' said the first 
 speaker, ' now I know your name, I beg. Sir, to inform 
 you that your coat tails are on fire.'
 
 PATCHWORK. 1 1 
 
 PATRIOTISM. 
 
 It is recorded of Dr. W. P. Alison, the celebrated 
 physician, who died in 1859, that, as a child, he had 
 spoken to a man, who had spoken to Henry Jenkins, 
 who lived to the age of 169, and had, when a boy, 
 carried arrows to the English archers, who won the 
 battle of Flodden in 15 13. 
 
 There is a story in Lockhart's ' Life of Scott ' of a 
 blacksmith, whom Scott had known as a horse-doctor, 
 and whom he afterwards found at a small country 
 town south of the border, practising medicine with a 
 reckless use of ' laudamy and calomy.' The man 
 apologised for the mischief he might be doing, by the 
 assurance that, ' at any rate,' it ' would be lang before 
 it made up for Flodden.' 
 
 It may be presumed that, if it had been possible, 
 the ci-devant blacksmith would not have altogether 
 objected to prescribe for Henry Jenkins ; but, if so, 
 would Jenkins have survived to converse with Alison's 
 informant ? 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 ' If thou must love me, let it be for nought 
 Except for love's sake only. Do not say 
 " I love her for her smile — her look — her way 
 Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought
 
 12 PATCHWORK. 
 
 That falls in well with mine, and certes brought 
 A sense of pleasant ease on such a day " — 
 For these things, in themselves, Beloved, may 
 Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so 
 
 wrought. 
 May be unwrought so. Neither love me for 
 Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, — 
 A creature might forget to weep, who bore 
 Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby ! 
 But love me for love sake, that evermore 
 Thou may'st love on, thro' love's eternity.' 
 
 Elizabeth B. Browning. 
 
 ^*^ This has been said before, but never more 
 touchingly or eloquently. 
 
 EDGAR POE. 
 
 Some one has observed that ' Edgar Poe's muse 
 by the side of his abominable life ' (I believe it has 
 been lately ascertained that his life was anything but 
 abominable, which is unfortunate for this remark) 'was 
 like a nunnery in the heart of a disorderly and immoral 
 city, surrounded, but not contaminated by it.' 
 
 It is a great advantage for a man of literary genius 
 to have been an unfortunate scamp, and almost as 
 lucky to have been a worthy simple-minded creature 
 of singularly evil fortunes. How much Cowper has 
 gained by his craziness, and Goldsmith would have
 
 PATCHWORK. 13 
 
 lost if he had not been so absurd and impecunious ! 
 Then we have Marlowe and Byron. We should never 
 have heard of Savage had he been a respectable man. 
 
 If there were a tradition that Southey had got tipsy, 
 and had tried to kiss Miss Maria Edgeworth, or that 
 he had pledged the ' Curse of Kehama ' at the pawn- 
 broker's, perhaps people would think a good deal more 
 of the ' Curse of Kehama.' 
 
 The first flight of virtuous biographers fill in all 
 the dark shadows, laying them on thick ; then come 
 a party of wild white-washers, and all the time the 
 game is kept alive, the Author is talked about, his 
 works sell, and are perhaps read. This reaction about 
 Poe is really too hard upon him — if ever his character 
 should be entirely rehabilitated the world will find out 
 he was something of a literary charlatan. 
 
 THE STYLE AND SPIRIT OF THE CLASSIC 
 WRITERS. 
 
 * Let us consider, too, how differently young and 
 old are aiifected by the words of some classic author, 
 such as Homer or Horace. Passages, which to a boy 
 are but rhetorical commonplaces, neither better nor 
 worse than a hundred others which any clever writer 
 might supply ; which he gets by heart and thinks very 
 fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully in his own
 
 14 PATCHWORK. 
 
 flowing versification, at length come home to him, 
 when long years have passed, and he has had ex- 
 perience of life, and pierce him as if he had never 
 before known them, with their sad earnestness and 
 vivid exactness. 
 
 ' Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, 
 the birth of some chance morning or evening at an 
 Ionian festival or among the Sabine Hills, have lasted 
 generation after generation, for thousands of years ; 
 with a power over the mind, and a charm, which the 
 current literature of his own day, with all its obvious 
 advantages, is utterly unable to rival.' 
 
 ' Grammar of Assent.' 
 
 ^*^ How transparent is this thought — how simple 
 are the words, and yet the whole seems to tingle with 
 a suppressed emotion ! 
 
 BE A UMARCHAIS. 
 
 Beaumarchais was blame by the Court, and the 
 effect of that blame was very serious. It made a man 
 legally infamous. But the public feeling was so 
 strongly with Beaumarchais that he paraded his 
 stigma as if it were a mark of honour. He gave him- 
 self such airs that somebody said to him, ' Monsieur, ce 
 n'est pas assez que d'etre blamd; il faut etre modeste?"
 
 PATCHWORK. 1 5 
 
 THE LAMENT FOR CULLODEN. 
 
 Burns's beautiful lament for Culloden is composed of 
 
 two stanzas, in the first the lovely lass of Inverness 
 
 mourns the loss of her father and her three brothers ; 
 
 and it is only in the concluding stanza that she 
 
 says 
 
 And by them lies the dearest lad 
 That ever blest a woman's ee ! 
 
 Not mentioning the lad in the first stanza makes it 
 much more impressive, and more pathetic when he is 
 mentioned. 
 
 WITHOUT AND WITHIN. 
 
 ' My coachman, in the moonlight there. 
 Looks thro' the side-light of the door ; 
 
 I hear him with his brethren swear, 
 As I could do, — but only more. 
 
 ' Flattening his nose against the pane, 
 He envies me my brilliant lot, 
 
 Breathes on his frozen fist in vain. 
 And dooms me to a place more hot. 
 
 ' He sees me in to supper go, 
 A Silken Wonder by my side. 
 
 Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row 
 Of flounces for the door too wide.
 
 1 6 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' He thinks how happy is my arm, 
 
 'Neath its white-gloved and jewell'd load ; 
 
 And wishes me some dreadful harm, 
 Hearing the merry corks explode. 
 
 ' Meanwhile I inly curse the bore 
 Of hunting still the same old coon, 
 
 And envy him, outside the door, 
 The golden quiet of the moon. 
 
 ' The winter wind is not so cold 
 As the bright smile he sees me win. 
 
 Nor the host's oldest wine so old 
 As our poor gabble, sour and thin. 
 
 ' I envy him the rugged prance 
 
 By which his freezing feet he warms, 
 
 And drag my lady's chains, and dance. 
 The galley slave of dreary forms. 
 
 'O, could he have my share of din, 
 
 And I his quiet ! past a doubt 
 'Twould still be one man bored within, 
 
 And just another— bored without.' 
 
 J. Russell Lowell.
 
 PATCHWORK. 1 7 
 
 PANACEA FOR SEASICKNESS. 
 
 Lady was crossing in the steamer from Hon- 
 
 fleur to Havre, a passage of about one hour, and oc- 
 casionally rather rough. Among the passengers was 
 a cocky and very absurd little Frenchman. Before 
 they started he had talked a good deal about sea-sick- 
 ness, and the remedies usually employed — 'Quant k 
 moi, quand je suis en mer je ferme les yeux, et je pense 
 a une jolie femme — ^je pense k Marie Stuart.' Very 
 shortly afterwards his fellow -passengers had proof 
 positive of the utter inadequacy of this vaunted 
 charm. 
 
 K>« 
 
 THE POPE. 
 
 Miss D., on her return to the Highlands of Scotland, 
 
 from Rome, went to see an auld Scottish wife, and 
 
 said, to interest the old woman, ' I have been to Rome 
 
 since I saw you — I have seen all sorts of great people 
 
 I have seen the Pope.' The sympathetic old dame 
 
 replied with animation, ' The Pope of Rome !— Honest 
 mam ! — haze he ony faimly ? ' 
 
 A LOVER'S ATTENTIONS. 
 
 ' Alas, I had not rendered up my heart 
 Had he not loved me first ; but he preferred me 
 
 c
 
 1 8 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Above the maidens of my age and rank ; 
 
 Still shunn'd their company, and still sought mine ; 
 
 I was not won by gifts, but still he gave ; 
 
 And all his gifts, tho' small, yet spoke his love. 
 
 He pick'd the earliest strawberries in woods, 
 
 The cluster'd filberds, and the purple grapes : 
 
 He taught a prating stare to speak my name ; 
 
 And when he found a nest of nightingales, 
 
 Or callow linnets, he would show 'em me, 
 
 And let me take 'em out.' John Dryden. 
 
 MR. ROGERS S POETRY. 
 
 I have always been very fond of Mr. Rogers's poem 
 called ' A Wish.' This is the first stanza : 
 
 Mine be a cot beside a hill ; 
 
 A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear ; 
 A willowy brook, that turns a mill. 
 
 With many a fall, shall linger near. 
 
 The words printed in italics are singularly happy, 
 their sound is very suggestive of a winding stream of 
 water ; and though the ideas may be commonplace 
 enough, and the wish could hardly be sincere — at 
 least I should judge so from my recollection of No. 
 22 St. James's Place — it is a graceful little poem, 
 and I should think it might survive many more 
 pretentious productions.
 
 PATCHWORK. 19 
 
 Rogers never offends against taste, and, if he does 
 not greatly stimulate his reader, at any rate he does 
 not exasperate him. There are poems, and there are 
 pictures, which one would not think half so bad if they 
 were not quite so good. For instance, let us suppose 
 that the artist is a man of vigour, there is a blowsy 
 sentiment about his work, or a bloated power, and it 
 arrests you, you cannot ignore him, and at last you 
 get to hate him. 
 
 It is somewhat the same with a face. I know a 
 woman, she is desperately ugly, as ugly as sin, and (I 
 venture to think) almost as agreeable ; but she has 
 big, bright eyes, and if it were not for those eyes her 
 extreme plainness might never have arrested me ; as 
 it is, when I look at her, I am always arrested, and her 
 ugliness makes me gasp again. 
 
 The two next anecdotes are . taken from Dean 
 Ramsay's ' Reminiscences.' It is pleasant to read that 
 work, and to think that it was compiled by a Scottish 
 ecclesiastic. The Dean was a man of real piety, he 
 was free from cant, a refined and loveable person, and 
 he must have been a bold man to publish such a 
 collection. He has left us a most interesting legacy, 
 and Scotland and England should be grateful for the 
 book, and to the man who gave it. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 PATCHWORK. 
 
 •ITS NO' MY wig: 
 
 ' The Laird of Balnamoon (pronounced Bomiy- 
 tHooti)y dining out, took a little too much wine, and, 
 returning home, his servant had to drive him over a very 
 wild and desolate tract of country, called Munrimmon 
 Moor. While crossing it, the laird's hat and wig fell 
 off, and the servant got down, picked them up, and 
 brought them to his master. He took the hat, but 
 declined the wig^ — " It's no' my wig. Hairy, lad ; it's no' 
 my wig," and he stoutly refused to have anything to do 
 with it. Hairy lost patience, being naturally anxious 
 to get home, and he remonstrated thus with his 
 master : " Ye'd better tak' it, sir, for there's nae 
 waile o' wigs " (choice of perukes) '' on Munrimmon 
 Moor." ' 
 
 A TENDER CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Mr. Wilson, the Scottish vocalist, was taking 
 lessons from Mr. Finlay Dunn, who had just returned 
 from Italy, much impressed with the deep sentiment 
 of the Italian school. Mr. Dunn regretted that his 
 pupil's fine voice was marred by want of expression 
 and feeling ; so, one day, he said to him : ' Now, Mr. 
 Wilson, just try and fancy that I'm your lady-love, the
 
 PATCHWORK. 21 
 
 idol of your soul, and then sing to me as you would 
 sine to her.' Poor Mr. Wilson hesitated and blushed, 
 in doubt how far, in his case, such a personification 
 was altogether justifiable ; at last he hesitatingly 
 remonstrated with — 'Ay, but, Mr. Dunn, sir, ye for- 
 get I'm a married man ! ' 
 
 THE SCOTTISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 A Scot in Canada, who generally spoke favourably 
 of the country of his adoption, could not help making 
 the following exception when he compared it with the 
 land of his birth : ' But, oh, sir, there are nae linties in 
 the wuds.' How touching are the words in his own 
 dialect ! The North American woods, although 
 full of birds of beautiful plumage, have no singing 
 birds. 
 
 Dean Ramsay mentions this story mainly to show 
 the picturesqueness and beauty of the old Scottish 
 language ; he would imply that linnet does not convey 
 so much of simple beauty, and of pastoral ideas, as 
 belong to the Scottish word Untie, and he says the 
 same for Atcld lang syne, and maintains it has no equi- 
 valent in English.
 
 22 PATCHWORK 
 
 THE SEMI-DETACHMENT. 
 
 ' Good-bye, small house, good-bye, 
 Tho' weak in roof and rafter, 
 
 I will not tell a lie 
 
 To him who cometh after : 
 
 I could not meet a charge of guilt 
 
 Were I to say thou wert well built. 
 
 * Yet thou art sweet tho' small, 
 Yet art thou dear tho' crack'd ; 
 
 While fearing thou might'st fall 
 Our faith remain'd intact : 
 
 And lived superior to our fears 
 
 For seven short matrimonial years. 
 
 'Good-bye, old house, good-bye, 
 I brought my bride to thee. 
 
 In thee I taught to fly 
 My little nestlings three, 
 
 So cannot leave thee, my first nest, 
 
 Without a sinking at my breast. 
 
 ' We soar to other fields, 
 To woods and pastures new. 
 
 And if the prospect yields 
 A happiness as true 
 
 We scarce can be so brightly blest 
 
 Elsewhere as here, thou ill-built nest !
 
 PATCHWORK. 23 
 
 * Begone ! ye groundless fears, 
 
 Ye phantoms of the past, 
 Why should our future years 
 
 Be gloomier than the last ? 
 Because we take a loftier flight, 
 Why should they not be still more bright ? 
 
 ' Come, then, whate'er betide. 
 
 Hid in the future's womb, 
 I and my seven-years' bride 
 
 Will love our seven-years' home. 
 Good-bye, thou ill-constructed cot, 
 We love, but recommend thee not.' 
 
 Philip Acton. 
 
 PUBLIC WORSHIP. 
 
 * The religious sentiment of England is not what 
 it was. In most churches the language of public 
 worship is of a kind which can at most be appropriate 
 to a very small fraction of those who use it. The 
 customs of society draw within the church men of all 
 grades of piety and of faith. The selfish, the frivolous, 
 and the sceptical, the worldly, the indifferent, or at 
 least men whose convictions are but half-formed, 
 whose zeal is very languid, and whose religious thoughts 
 are very few, form the bulk of every congregation, and 
 they are taught to employ language expressing the 
 very ecstasy of devotion. The words that pass
 
 24 PATCHWORK. 
 
 mechanically from their lips convey in turn the fervour 
 of a martyr, the self-abasement or the rapture of a 
 saint, a passionate confidence in the reality of unseen 
 things, a passionate longing to pass beyond the veil. 
 The effect of this contrast between the habitual 
 language of devotion, and the habitual dispositions of 
 the devotees, between the energy of religious ex- 
 pression and the languor of religious conviction is, in 
 some respects, extremely deleterious. The sense of 
 truth is dulled, men come to regard it as a natural and 
 scarcely censurable thing to attune their language on 
 the highest of all subjects to a key wholly different 
 from their general feelings and beliefs, and that which 
 ought to be the truest of human occupations becomes 
 in fact the most unreal and the most conventional.' 
 
 William E. H.Lecky. 
 
 ,*^ Doubtless this is an unfortunate condition of 
 things, but I do not seehowthe standard of worship could 
 be lowered to meet the requirements of the majority of 
 an average congregation. I think it will be agreed on 
 all hands that absolute simplicity and veracity of mind 
 are the prime conditions of all piety, but if liturgic and 
 dogmatic teaching endanger these conditions, surely it 
 is more from a too great dictation of doctrinal behef 
 than from a too fervent cry of personal devotion. It 
 seems to me that to profess before God any doctrine 
 which one doubts or rejects, is a definite act of falsehood; 
 but an aspiration to join the flight of more saintly
 
 PATCHWORK. 25 
 
 natures that are leading the way, and to try to join in 
 their ascent, by mingling one's voice with theirs, 
 is, at the worst, a substitution of what we wish to 
 feel, and hope to feel, for that which as yet we do not 
 feel. 
 
 Ought we to reduce the fervour of public worship 
 till it sinks to the pitch of the average unawakened 
 soul ? Must we protect the people, in proportion 
 as they are dull or indifferent, from contact with any 
 spirit higher than their own.? Surely not. Inmost 
 of us there are two natures, a superficial, and a deeper 
 nature. And experience every day proves that the 
 one thing needful to awaken the deeper nature is the 
 appeal of a profound, and I would add, an impas- 
 sioned faith, a faith already familiar with its sorrows 
 and its aspirations. 
 
 LUTHER. 
 
 Luther married Catherine Bora, a nun of good 
 family, left homeless and poor ; she was plain in person 
 and mind. ' The first year of married life,' says 
 Luther, ' is an odd business ; at meals, where you 
 used to be alone, you are yourself and somebody else ; 
 when you wake in the morning there are a pair of 
 tails close to you on the pillow. My Katie used to sit 
 with me when I was at work ; she thought she ought
 
 26 PATCHWORK. 
 
 not to be silent, she did not know what to say, so she 
 would ask me, " Herr Doctor, is not the master of the 
 ceremonies, in Prussia, the brother of the Margrave ? " 
 She was an odd woman.' 
 
 Froude's ' Times of Erasmus and Luther.' 
 
 BENVENUTO CELLINI. 
 
 Benvenuto Cellini tells us that once when in boy- 
 hood he saw a Salamander come out of the fire, his 
 grandfather, forthwith, gave him a sound beating, that 
 he might the better remember so unique a prodigy. 
 
 THEOCRITUS. 
 
 'That which distinguishes Theocritus from all 
 other poets is the inimitable tenderness of his pas- 
 sions, and the natural expression of them in words so 
 becoming of a pastoral. A simplicity shines through 
 all he writes ; he shows his art and learning by 
 disguising both. His shepherds never rise above their 
 country education. Even his Doric dialect has an 
 incomparable sweetness in his clownishness, like a 
 fair shepherdess in her country russet, talking in a 
 
 Yorkshire tone.' John Dryden (1631-1701).
 
 PATCHWORK. 27 
 
 STONEHENGE. 
 
 ' That huge dumb heap, which stands on the 
 blasted heath, and looks like a group of giants, be- 
 wildered, not knowing what to do, encumbering the 
 earth, and turned to stone while in the act of warring 
 on Heaven,' wiuiam HazHtt. 
 
 THE 'ST. PETER MARTYR' BY TITIAN. 
 
 ' Yet why not describe it as we see it still in our 
 mind's eye, standing on the floor of the Tuileries, 
 with none of its brightness impaired, through the long 
 perspective of waning years ? There it stands, and 
 will for ever stand in our imagination, with the dark 
 scowling terrific face of the murdered monk looking up 
 to his assassin, the horror-struck features of the flying 
 priest, and the skirts of his vest waving in the wind. 
 The shattered branches of the autumnal trees that 
 feel the coming gale, with that cold convent spire 
 rising in the distance amidst the sapphire hills and 
 golden sky, and overhead are seen the cherubim, 
 bringing with rosy fingers the crown of martyrdom, 
 and (such is the feeling of truth, and soul of faith in 
 the picture) you hear floating near, in dim harmonies, 
 the pealing anthem and the heavenly choir.' 
 
 William Hazlitt. 
 
 ^^*^ When I last saw this glorious picture it was also
 
 28 PATCHWORK. 
 
 on the ground, but in the sacristy in SS. Giovanni 
 e Paolo. It was destroyed by fire in 1867. 
 
 LUDOVICO CARRACCiS PICTURE OF ' SUSANNA.' 
 
 ' Our heart thrilled with its beauty, and our eyes 
 filled with tears. How often have we thought of it 
 since ! How often spoken of it. There it was still, 
 the same lovely phantom as ever. . . The young 
 Jewish beauty had been just surprised in that un- 
 guarded spot, crouching down in one corner of the 
 picture, the face turned back with a mingled expression 
 of terror, shame, and unconquerable sweetness, and 
 the whole figure shrinking into itself with bewitching 
 grace and modesty.' William Hazlitt. 
 
 C. E. VON K LEI ST. 
 
 Kleist,* the Poet, killed at Kunersdorf, laughed 
 loudly just before he expired, at the recollection of the 
 very extraordinary grimaces a Cossack, who had been 
 plundering him on the field of battle, made over the 
 prize he had found.
 
 PATCHWORK. 29 
 
 A COMPROMISE. 
 
 Judge. — ' Your client had better make a com- 
 promise, ask her what she will take.' 
 
 Counsel. — ' My good woman, his Lordship asks 
 what you will take.' 
 
 Old woma7i. — 'I'm obliged to his Lordship' (curtsey) 
 as he's so kind (curtsey). ' I'll just take a glass o' warm 
 ale.' 
 
 A RHYME OF ONE. 
 
 You sleep upon your mother's breast. 
 
 Your race begun, 
 
 A welcome, long a wish'd-for guest, 
 
 Whose age is One. 
 
 A baby-boy, you wonder why 
 
 You cannot run ; 
 You try to talk— how hard you try ! — 
 
 You're only One. 
 
 Ere long you won't be such a dunce ; 
 
 You'll eat your bun, 
 And fly your kite, like folk, who once 
 
 Were only One. 
 
 You'll rhyme, and woo, and fight, and joke, 
 
 Perhaps you'll pun ! 
 
 Such feats are never done by folk 
 
 Before they're One.
 
 30 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Some day, too, you may have your joy, 
 
 And envy none ; 
 
 Yes, you, yourself, may own a boy, 
 
 Who isn't One. 
 
 He'll dance, and laugh, and crow, he'll do 
 
 As you have done : 
 
 (You crown a happy home, tho' you 
 
 Are only One). 
 
 But when he's grown shall you be here 
 
 To share his fun, 
 
 And talk of times, when he (the dear !) 
 
 Was hardly One ? 
 
 Dear Child, 'tis your poor lot to be 
 
 My little son ; 
 
 I'm glad, tho' I am old, you see, — 
 
 While you are One. 
 
 1876. 
 
 LITTLE DINKY. 
 (A RHYME OF LESS THAN ONE.) 
 
 The hair she means to have is gold, 
 Her eyes are blue, she's twelve weeks old, 
 
 Plump are her fists and pinky. 
 She fluttered down in lucky hour 
 From some blue deep in yon sky bower — 
 
 I call her Little Dinky,
 
 PATCHWORK. 3 1 
 
 A Tiny now, ere long she'll please 
 To totter at my parent-knees, 
 
 And crow, and try to chatter : 
 And soon she'll take to fair white frocks, 
 And frisk about in shoes and socks, — 
 
 Her totter changed to patter. 
 
 And soon she'll play, ay, soon enough, 
 At cowshp ball and bhndman's-buff ; 
 
 And, some day, we shall find her 
 Grow weary of her toys — indeed 
 She'll fling them all aside, to heed 
 
 A footstep close behind her. 
 
 And years to come she'll still be rich 
 In what is left, the joys with which 
 
 Our love can aye supply us ; 
 For hand in hand we'll sit us down 
 Right cheerfully, and let the town — 
 
 This foolish town, go by us. 
 
 Dinky, we must resign our toys 
 To yottnger girls, to finer boys, — 
 
 But weUl not care a feather : 
 For then {i-efiectio7i 's not regret) 
 Tho' you'll be rather old / we'll yet 
 
 Be boy and girl together.
 
 32 PATCHWORK. 
 
 1878. 
 
 As I was climbing Ludgate Hill 
 I met a goose who dropt a quill,— 
 
 You see my thumb is inky ; — 
 I fell to scribble there and then, 
 And this is how I came to pen, 
 
 These rhymes on Little Dinky. 
 
 STOJ?Y TELLERS. 
 
 Some two or three years ago I was dining out and 
 
 met S , and I chanced to tell the company my 
 
 funny story of Aunt Amabel, that very gentle and be- 
 nign old being. I will relate it again ! My aunt was 
 on a visit to London, and had climbed into an omnibus 
 to go and hear the Reverend Baptist Noel preach, and 
 after a long delay she was obliged to remonstrate with 
 the conductor. He had beguiled her into his vehicle, 
 and then, having secured her, halted before a public- 
 house while the driver thoroughly enjoyed himself 
 within. The crushed worm will X.\irn (though, by the 
 way, not if the crushing is done effectually), so my 
 aunt mildly expostulated with him for being ' really so 
 exceedingly dilatory.' 
 
 The point of the anecdote turns on the conductor 
 becoming exceedingly impertinent, and saying, ' Now, 
 this is too bad of you, old gal, a-comin' here, a-kickin' 
 up a row of a Sunday — you ought to be ashamed o' 
 yourself.' It so happened that my story fell rather flat,
 
 PATCHWORK. 33 
 
 nobody seemed to care much for it. Well, oddly- 
 enough, the very next day I met S at another 
 
 dinner-party at another house. I suppose he had recog- 
 nised the capabilities of my little anecdote, for we had 
 not been five minutes in the room before he favoured 
 the company with the whole of it (of course, he did not 
 remember that I had narrated it — or else he was a 
 more impudent fellow than I would even give him 
 
 credit for). As S was very comical, and had the 
 
 art de narrer in perfection, he sent the company into 
 convulsions of laughter — which reminded me that 
 when a man laughs he is not ver^' merry but very 
 proud. The only variations that he condescended to 
 make in my story were the substitution of ' Spurgeon ' 
 for the Reverend Baptist Noel, and 'my old house- 
 keeper ' for Aunt Amabel — the last not altogether 
 respectful to my virtuous relative. 
 
 A certain Mr. Archer, well known as an expert in 
 drawing the long-bow, also at a dinner-party, was 
 describing a man being washed overboard during a fear- 
 ful hurricane in the Atlantic, and how, just as the poor 
 wretch was sinking, Archer, with infinite presence of 
 mind, threw him a hen-coop — 'and,' said he, 'if I 
 were to live ten thousand years I should never forget 
 the agonised expression of that poor fellow's face as 
 I threw him the hen-coop.' Then a person sitting 
 opposite to Archer, gravely said, ' Are you quite sure 
 Mr. 'Archer, you could never forget that man's face 1 ' 
 
 D
 
 34 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' I am quite sure of it,' said Archer. ' Then,' said the 
 man, slowly and solemnly, gazing at him, and then 
 round upon the company, with his hand upon his 
 breast, ' Look at me, sir, / am that man to whom you 
 flung that hen-coop.' And of course everybody fell 
 a-laughing. 
 
 Sir Arthur C. was telling long rhodomontade stories 
 about America, and the Red Indians, at Lord Barry- 
 more's table, and Barrymore (winking at the company) 
 asked him — ' Did you ever see anything of the Chick- 
 ChoTVS ? ' — ' Oh, a good deal,' said Sir Arthur, ' a very 
 cruel tribe, the Chick-Chows.^ 'And the Cherry- 
 Chows, eh ? ' — ' Oh, very much among the Cherry- 
 Chows^ continued Sir Arthur, ' the Cherry-Chows 
 were singularly kind to my fellows.' ' And pray, Sir 
 Arthur, did you see much of the Tol-de-roddy-bow- 
 wowsf This was rather too much for Sir Arthur, 
 who then, for the first time, perceived that Barrymore 
 had been quizzing him. 
 
 This reminds me of another traveller who was 
 describing the Indians, and their modes of life to a 
 lady of an inquiring mind, and who said, ' Now about 
 wig- warns, you know, are they so very venomous ? ' 
 
 Apropos of story-tellers, Charles Lamb describes a 
 young man he was shut up with on board the old 
 Margate Hoy — the greatest liar he had ever met. 
 ' He was dark and handsome, with an officer-like 
 assurance, and unsuppressible volubility of assertion.
 
 PATCHWORK. 35 
 
 He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers, who 
 go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as 
 much as they see you can swaUow at a time. He did 
 not stand shivering upon the brink, but was a hearty 
 thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once into the 
 depths of your credulity. I believe he made pretty 
 sure of his company, for we were a set of as unseasoned 
 Londoners as that time of day could have supplied. 
 Something, too, must be conceded to the ge7iius loci. 
 Had the fellow told us half the legends on land, which 
 he favoured us with on the other element, I flatter my- 
 self the good sense of most of us would have revolted. 
 But we were in a new world, with everything imfamiliar 
 about us, and the time and the place disposed us to the 
 reception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever. 
 
 * He had been aide-de-camp (among other rare 
 accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, and at one 
 blow had stricken off the head of the King of Carimania. 
 He, of course, married the Prince's daughter. I for- 
 get what unlucky turn in the politics of the Court, com- 
 bining with the loss of his consort, was the reason of 
 his quitting Persia ; but, with the rapidity of a magician, 
 he transported himself, along with his hearers, back to 
 England, where he was still found in the special con- 
 fidence of illustrious ladies. There was some story of 
 a Princess, but, as I am not certain of her name, I 
 must leave it to the Royal Daughters of England to 
 settle the honour among themselves — in private. I 
 
 D 2
 
 ^6 PATCHWORK. 
 
 cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders ; but I 
 perfectly remember that in the course of his travels he 
 had seen a phoenix, and he obligingly undeceived us of 
 the vulgar error that there is but one of that species at 
 a time, assuring us that they are by no means uncom- 
 mon in some parts of Upper Egypt,' &c., &c. 
 
 One story more, and I have done, and we will dis- 
 miss these cheery liars, for whom, I confess, I have a 
 
 considerable weakness. My friend S was one of 
 
 the kindest beings I ever knew. Alas ! he has gone 
 over to the majority. 
 
 Now for 'Mr. Joseph Addison.' Two gentlemen — 
 I believe, Mr. George Augustus Sala, and the late 
 Mr. James Hannay — happened to be in a coffee-house 
 where, for privacy, the seats were divided into separate 
 boxes. They were extolling the character and writings 
 of Addison, with all the enthusiasm which the subject 
 deserved. In the middle of their discourse a hungry, 
 shabby-looking fellow suddenly popped his head round 
 the corner from the next box, and said, with a very 
 broad Irish accent, 'Your pardon, gentlemen, but my 
 name's Joseph Addison, I am lineally descended from 
 that great gentleman himself, and just now I have 
 certain temporary embarrassments of a pecuniary 
 nature, &c., &c., &c. Then Mr. Hannay or Mr. Sala, 
 1 do not know which, and anyhow I beg Mr. Sala's 
 pardon, with perfect presence of mind and remarkable 
 readiness of resource^ at once replied to him thus :
 
 PATCHWORK. 37 
 
 * You have intruded yourself on our privacy, but, having 
 heard what you have just said, I will merely remark 
 that when Addison died he left an only daughter, and 
 she was an idiot, and therefore, so far, there would 
 seem to be some colour for the truth of your assertion, 
 but seeing that this idiot daughter died in childhood, I 
 am bound to say you are a thorough-paced impostor 
 and liar.' 
 
 A DILEMMA. 
 
 St. Paul writes to Titus (ch. i. ver. 12) : ' One of 
 themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The 
 Cretans are alway liars.' 
 
 If the prophet (Epimenides) was a liar (which, 
 being a Cretan, he ought to have been), then this senti- 
 ment was false of the Cretans. If he was a truthful 
 man, it was still untrue, because it proved that there 
 was one Cretan (namely himself) who was not a liar. 
 
 CAPITAL IN THE WRONG PLACE. 
 
 A very High Church clergyman, in Norfolk, under- 
 took to do duty for a neighbour, who, as it turned out, 
 did not carry on the ceremonial of his Church in
 
 38 PATCHWORK. 
 
 altogether a sympathetic manner. He was about to 
 ascend the pulpit stairs when the Clerk plucked him 
 by the sleeve, and whispered his hopes that he would 
 not mind delivering his sermon from the reading desk, 
 for, ' Your pardon, sir, but there's a hen tukkey a-settin' 
 in the pul-pit ! ' 
 
 HIGH OR LO W CHURCH. 
 
 A clergyman, of Brownwich, called at the Inn to 
 order dinner for a clerical meeting. ' 'igh Church or 
 Low Church, sir?' said the waiter. 'What can that 
 matter ? ' said the clergyman. ' Oh, werry important, 
 sir,' says the waiter ; ' 'igh Church — better wine, sir'; 
 Low Church — more wittles.' 
 
 THOMAS FULLER. 
 (1608— 1661.) 
 
 FOOLS. 
 
 There are fools with little heads, and there are 
 fools with big heads : in the one case there is no room 
 for so much wit, and in the other case there is no wit 
 for so much room. 
 
 THE GOOD YEOMAN. 
 
 The good yeoman is a gentleman in ore, whom the 
 next age may see refined.
 
 PATCHWORK. 39 
 
 THE WOUNDED SOLDIER. 
 
 Halting is the stateliest march of a soldier. 
 
 WILLIAM CO WPER. 
 I have lately seen some of Cowper's little poems, 
 especially those to Mary Unwin, described as the love- 
 songs of old age. Mr. F. T. Palgrave says of one of 
 these : ' I know no sonnet more remarkable than this 
 which records Cowper's gratitude to the lady whose 
 affectionate care for many years gave what sweetness 
 he could enjoy to a life radically wretched. Petrarch's 
 sonnets have a more ethereal grace, and a more per- 
 fect finish ; Shakespeare's more passion ; Milton's 
 stand supreme in stateliness ; Wordsworth's in depth 
 and delicacy. But Cowper's unites with an exquisite- 
 ness in the turn of thought which the ancients would 
 have called Irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness 
 peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature. There is 
 much mannerism, much that is unimportant or of now 
 exhausted interest in his poems, but where he is great 
 it is with that elementary greatness which rests on the 
 most universal human feelings. Cowper is our highest 
 master in simple pathos. 
 
 Cowper's ' Poplar Field ' is a very skilful effort of 
 versification. Byron, Moore, Campbell, and others, 
 have written in this metre; but I think Cowper is the
 
 40 PATCHWORK. 
 
 most successful of all. It is the easiest metre in which 
 to write badly, but one of the most difficult in which 
 to write exceedingly well. 
 
 TO HIS COY MISTRESS. 
 
 ' Had we but world enough, and time — 
 This coyness, Lady, were no crime : 
 We would sit down, and think which way 
 To walk, and pass our long love's day. 
 Thou by the Indian Ganges' side 
 Should'st rubies find : I by the tide 
 Of Humber would complain. I would 
 Love you ten years before the flood ; 
 And you should, if you please, refuse 
 Till the conversion of the Jews. 
 My vegetable love should grow 
 Vaster than empires, and more slow. 
 An hundred years should go to praise 
 Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze : 
 Two hundred to adore each breast : 
 But thirty thousand to the rest. 
 An age at least to every part. 
 And the last age should show your heart. 
 For, Lady, you deserve this state ; 
 Nor would I love at lower rate. 
 
 * But at my back I always hear 
 Time's winged chariot hurrying near :
 
 PATCHWORK. 41 
 
 And yonder all before us lye 
 
 Deserts of vast eternity. 
 
 Thy beauty shall no more be found ; 
 
 Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound 
 
 My echoing song : then worms shall try 
 
 That long preserved virginity : 
 
 And your quaint honour turn to dust ; 
 
 And into ashes all my lust. 
 
 The grave's a fine and private place, 
 
 But none, I think, do there embrace. 
 
 ' Now, therefore, while the youthful hue 
 Sits on my skin like morning dew. 
 And while thy willing soul transpires 
 At every pore with instant fires, 
 Now let us sport us while we may : 
 And now, like amorous birds of prey, 
 Rather at once our time devour, 
 Than languish in his slow-chaped power. 
 Let us roll all our strength, and all 
 Our sweetness, up into one ball ; 
 And tear our pleasures with rough strife. 
 Thorough the iron gates of life. 
 Thus, tho' we cannot make our sun 
 Stand still, yet we will make him run.' 
 
 Andrew Marvell(i620-i678 . 
 
 * * 
 
 poem. 
 
 • I hope that all my readers will like this little
 
 42 PATCHWORK. 
 
 BULLS. 
 
 Bulls admit apparent relations that are not real. 
 The following is an unconscious self-contradiction : 
 \st Democrat. — Are not [all men equal ? is not one 
 man just as good as another ? 
 
 ind Democrat. — Ay, and better too ! 
 
 IRISH BULLS. 
 
 An Irish physician asserted that sterility was 
 hereditary in some Irish families. 
 
 A patriotic Irishman insisted that absenteeism was 
 the curse of Tipperary. ' The whole county,' said he, 
 ' is swarming with 'em.' 
 
 A SCOTTISH BULL. 
 
 ' A Scottish Judge had occasion to consult a dentist, 
 and was courteously placed in the professional chair ; 
 but when the operator said, " You must now let me 
 put my fingers into your Lordship's mouth," his Lord- 
 ship exclaimed, " Na, na ! ye'll aiblins itte me." ' 
 
 ' Scottish Life and Character.'
 
 PATCHWORK. 43 
 
 W/T AND HUMOUR. 
 
 The Scots, as a people, possess a very peculiar, and 
 a very delightful humour. It is seen at its best in the 
 writings of Burns and Scott, and it may be met with 
 in perfection in Dean Ramsay's ' Reminiscences,' but 
 they would appear almost entirely to lack what is now 
 usually understood by wit. At this moment, unless an 
 exception is made in favour of Tobias Smollett, I cannot 
 remember any strikingly witty Scottish writer — witty 
 in the sense that Fuller and Donne, Butler and Swift, 
 Congreve and Farquhar, Sheridan and O Keefe, and 
 a host of other English and Irish writers were witty. 
 It is probable that Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith 
 recognised this limitation when they were so facetious 
 about matter-of-fact Scots : and, if so, it would have 
 been well if they had defined the kind of wit or 
 humour of which they were treating. 
 
 Johnson, Lamb, and Sydney Smith were undeniable 
 judges as to the quality of the article, and they made 
 very merry at the expense of the Scots ; and this leads 
 me to consider whether there may not be something 
 in their national foibles which peculiarly lays them 
 open to ridicule. One can hardly conceive an Edin- 
 burgh Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 GENIUS. 
 ' The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely 
 subtle, without being at all acute, hence there is so
 
 44 PATCHWORK. 
 
 much humour and so Uttle wit in their literature. The 
 genius of the Itahans,on the contrary, is acute, profound 
 and sensuous, but not subtle, hence what they think 
 to be humorous is merely witty. 
 
 Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the 
 company of vulgar people, because they have a power 
 of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of 
 another race altogether. Few men of genius are keen, 
 but almost every man of genius is subtle. To split a 
 hair is no proof of subtlety, for subtlety acts in dis- 
 tinguishing differences, in showing that two things 
 apparently one are in fact two, whereas to split a hair 
 is to cause division, and not to ascertain difference. 
 
 'To carry on the feelings of childhood into the 
 powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of 
 wonder and novelty with the appearances which every 
 day, for perhaps forty years, has rendered familiar ; 
 this is the character and privilege of genius, and one 
 of the marks which distinguishes genius from talent.' 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 »o« 
 
 THE LAST LEAF. 
 ' I saw him once before, 
 As he passed by the door. 
 
 And again 
 The pavement stones resound. 
 As he totters o'er the ground 
 
 With his cane.
 
 PATCHWORK. 45 
 
 ' They say that in his prime, 
 Ere the pruning-knife of Time 
 
 Cut him down, 
 Not a better man was found 
 By the Crier on his round 
 
 Thro' the town. 
 
 * But now he walks the streets, 
 And he looks at all he meets 
 
 Sad and wan, 
 And he shakes his feeble head, 
 That it seems as if he said, 
 
 " They are gone." 
 
 * The mossy marbles rest 
 On the lips that he has pr est 
 
 In their bloom, 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for fnany a year 
 
 On the tomb. 
 
 * My grandmamma has said, — 
 Poor old lady, she is dead 
 
 Long ago,— 
 That he had a Roman nose, 
 And his cheek was hke a rose 
 
 In the snow.
 
 46 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' But now his nose is thin, 
 And it rests upon his chin 
 
 Like a staff, 
 And a crook is in Ms back, 
 And a melancholy crack 
 
 In his laugh. 
 
 ' I know it is a sin 
 For me to sit and grin 
 
 At him here ; 
 But the old three=cornered hat, 
 And the breeches, and all that, 
 
 Are so queer ! 
 
 ' And if I should live to be 
 The last leaf upon the tree 
 
 In the spring, — 
 Let them smile, as I do now. 
 At the old forsaken bough 
 
 Where I cling.' 
 
 O. W. Holmes. 
 
 Dr. Holmes is very popular is England as a prose 
 writer, and as a poet he is also much admired, but 
 not so much as he ought to be, and yet he seems to 
 have most of the qualities to make an author popular. 
 Perhaps the many-headed beast would like to have its 
 nostrils tickled with more highly seasoned stuff than 
 Dr. Holmes cares to give them.
 
 PATCHWORK. 47 
 
 The lines quoted above are all very happy, but 
 especially the fourth stanza, and the conclusion of the 
 sixth. I have long had a kindly affection for this 
 poem, and feel much indebted to Dr. Holmes, and 
 here tender him my thanks. 
 
 MY GUARDIAN ANGEL. 
 
 ' Abra was ready when I called her name, 
 And tho' I called another Abra came.' 
 
 Some eight years ago I called on certain friends in 
 Pentonville (I do not care to reveal the exact address) ; 
 they were not at home ; however, as I had come 
 a long distance, and really wished to see them, I asked 
 the servant to let me wait their return. This hand- 
 maid was past her giddy youth, but had not nearly 
 arrived at middle age. Some people might have 
 called her comely, and some attractive ; / found her 
 anything but cordial ; in fact, she had a slightly 
 chilling manner, as if she was not immensely pleased 
 to see me, and would not break her heart if she never 
 saw me again. However, in I walked, and was taken 
 to a drawing-room, on the ground-floor, with French 
 windows (open) to the garden. 
 
 The apartment was gorgeously furnished. Gold 
 wall-paper, sumptuous hangings, and an aggressive 
 crimson and orange carpet. It was brand new, of the
 
 48 PATCHWORK. 
 
 kind which, I think, is called velvet pile. There were 
 books on the inlaid tables, depressing books — Books of 
 Beauty, Views in the Holy Land, and Gems from our 
 Poets, all elaborately bound. Humming-birds were 
 stifling under glass shades, frail carved ivory ab- 
 surdities, only waiting for some one to smash them, 
 and magnificent paper knives, smelling-bottles, and all 
 the rest of it, in velvet cases, but there was no inkstand 
 and no writing material. 
 
 I resented this. Eight years ago — alas, I was eight 
 years younger than I am now, and rhymes were then 
 more often trotting in my head — it happened that 
 such became the case as I sat waiting for my. friends, 
 and I felt if I did not at once secure them they might 
 be lost to me, and for ever. I had no pencil, and only 
 the back of a letter. So, rather cautiously, for I felt 
 ashamed of what I was doing, I opened the drawing- 
 room door, and stole across the passage to the library. 
 There I found pens and a gigantic glass inkstand. It 
 was somewhat this shape : — 
 
 I had never seen the form betore, and I am not 
 ambitious of beholding it again. I bore it across the 
 hall, and as far as the centre of the drawing-room, 
 and then, all of a sudden, without any warning, the 
 lower portion (till that moment I had thought the
 
 PATCHWORK. 49 
 
 bloated monster was one piece of glass) detached 
 itself from that which I held in my hand, and to which 
 it had hitherto clung corroded, and fell to the floor, 
 rolling over and over, along the wretched crimson and 
 orange velvet pile, and emptying its ample contents 
 as it rolled. 
 
 Can you conceive my feelings ? I spun round the 
 room in an agony. I tore at the bell, then at the 
 other bell, then at both the bells, then I dashed into 
 the library and rang the bells there, and then back 
 again to the drawing-room. The qiaid who had 
 admitted me, came up almost immediately, looking as 
 calm as possible, and when she saw the mischief, she 
 seemed, all at once, to rise to the gravity of the occasion. 
 She did not say a word — she did not even look 
 dismayed — but, in answer to my frenzied appeal, she 
 smiled and vanished. In the twinkling of a bed-post, 
 however, she was back again with hot water, soap, 
 sponge, (S:c., and was soon mopping up the copious 
 stains with a damp flannel, kneeling, and looking 
 beautiful as she knelt. 
 
 Then did I throw myself into a chair, exhausted 
 with excitement, and, I may say agony of mind, and I 
 said to myself, ' Good heavens, if the blessed creature 
 does really help me in this frightful emergency, I will 
 give her a sovereign. It will be cheap at a sovereign ; 
 yes, she shall have her 205-.' Well, what with sponging 
 and dabbing, the great black stains began gradually to 
 
 E
 
 50 PATCHWORK. 
 
 wax fainter, and my spirits revived in proportion, and, 
 all the while, this angelic being spoke so cheerfully, 
 and had altogether such a fetching air (I believe that 
 is the correct expression) that I longed to twine my 
 arms about her modest waist and assure her how 
 deeply I respected her. 
 
 Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, 
 The power of beauty I remember yet. 
 
 However, at this juncture, I am almost ashamed to 
 confess it, I began to revolve in my mind whether ten 
 shillings might' not be a sufficient recompense, for, 
 after all, she had not been much more than ten 
 minutes about the whole affair. Well, the scrubbing 
 went on, and then she took to her brush, and in 
 certainly less than twenty minutes, the stains had 
 entirely disappeared, and my Guardian Angel rose to 
 her feet, and asked me, with a quiet little smile, as 
 though it were all the most natural thing in the world, 
 if I should like to have a cup of tea. I accepted her 
 pious offer with joy and gratitude, and there I sat me 
 down and gazed complacently at the again gorgeous 
 crimson and orange'velvet pile, and sipped my tea, and 
 by the time I had finished it (and my rhyme) my 
 friends made their appearance. 
 
 You may suppose that at first I felt a little un- 
 comfortable, especially so, when in something less than 
 five seconds my good friend bawled to his wife,
 
 PATCHWORK. 5 1 
 
 ' Millicent, Millicent, look here ! now this is too bad, 
 just look at my carpet ! ' (my soul died within me !) I 
 had my back to him. He was not far from the 
 window ; he seemed close to the spot where the cata- 
 strophe had happened. * Yes,' said he, ' they will leave 
 the windows open, and your brute of a pug has 
 brought all this filthy gravel in on his paws.' I breathed 
 again, and feeling constrained to say something, I 
 observed, with a sickly smile, * So our friend Oscar is 
 very particular about his carpet, eh ? ' ' Particular,' 
 said his little wife, ' indeed he is particular, and awfully 
 so just now, for this is a new purchase, it was only laid 
 down yesterday. You don't know how awfully fidgety 
 Oscar is about his carpets — won't you have some tea ? ' 
 This was not reassuring ! I lost heart, I became 
 completely demoralised, and I am ashamed to say I 
 made a hurried excuse, and bolted out of the room, 
 and out of the house, without telling my friends a word 
 of what had occurred. On my honour I had intended 
 to tell them, but could not muster up courage to begin ; 
 indeed, they never gave me the chance of domg so. 
 
 As I journeyed home I speculated whether that 
 dreadful stain, like the crimson traces of a foul murder, 
 might not reappear next day, or, horrid thought, 
 whether my beloved Parlour Maid might not betray 
 me. I feared she might do so ; I felt she would be 
 justified in doing so — indeed, that it was her bounden 
 duty to do so ; therefore, and before I went to bed, 
 
 E 2
 
 52 PATCHWORK 
 
 I wrote my friends a penitential, I might almost 
 describe it as a pitiful letter, and gave a full and true 
 account of what had happened. I threw myself on 
 their mercy, — but . . . 
 
 I forgot to say that I presented my Guardian 
 Angel with a handsome donation of five shillings. 
 And this is the end of a true story. 
 
 FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT. 
 
 Robert McQueen (Lord Braxfield), a Scottish judge 
 of the old school, playing at whist, exclaimed to a 
 lady of rank, his partner, and of whose play he did not 
 
 entirely approve, ' What are ye doin', ye auld 
 
 ?' and then suddenly recollecting himself, said ^ 
 
 ' Your pardon's begged, my Lady, / took ye for my ntJi 
 wife.' 
 
 Some of the merit of this little anecdote is its extreme 
 raciness ; so I have been careful to omit the exple- 
 tive and epithet, in order that the intelligent reader may 
 select those which he, or she, may consider the most 
 effective. The story is given in Mr. Trevelyan's most 
 admirable biography of his uncle, Lord Macaulay.
 
 PATCHWORK. 53 
 
 AN UNFEELING RASCAL. 
 
 Old Hopkinson was walking in London streets 
 when a man suddenly approached, snatched off his 
 hat, and bolted with it. Hopkinson gave chase, and 
 another man, who had observed the outrage, joined 
 him. Away they both ran. At last old Hopkinson 
 stopped, being completely out of breath, but the man 
 who had joined him, encouraged him to go on. * Run a 
 little longer, sir,' said he. 'No,' gasped old Hopkinson, 
 •I can't.' 'Can't you run a step farther, sir?' said 
 the man. ' No,' gasped old Hopkinson, ' not a step.' 
 ' Then,' said the unfeeling rascal, ' hang you, I'll have 
 your wig'— and he twitched off poor old Hopkinson's 
 wig, and disappeared. 
 
 SURNAMES. 
 
 I very often see the name of Piirsey over a tailor's 
 shop, No. 4, Swallow Street, Regent Street, and I have 
 no reason for doubting that the owner, though only 
 the ninth part of a man, is an excellent tradesman, not 
 to say an artist, and, to judge by the way he spells his 
 name, we may presume that he does not go in for 
 giving himself the airs which would be perfectly ex- 
 cusable in the cadet of a powerful and ancient family. 
 Certainly, the name, as I read it over his place of
 
 54 PATCHWORK. 
 
 business, has nothing special to recommend it ; and 
 this leads me to reflect how much the beauty or ugli- 
 ness or dignity of a name springs from its associations. 
 There is nothing noble in the name of Piirsey. Anson 
 and Nelson are well-sounding titles, yet, after all, one is 
 only the son of 'Ann' and the other of Nel.' What 
 should we think of ' Pitt ' and * Fox ' without their 
 illustrious surroundings ? In reality they are very poor 
 names. Surely there ought to be a considerable 
 future for the queer name of Cobden. 
 
 You hear the Earl of Mar announced, and in 
 imagination you are at once transported to the dim 
 romance of our early Scottish History. What a proud 
 title ! ^ but ma)'^ in itself, is no better than jar, and 
 not half so fine as the Right Honourable the Earl of 
 Marmalade, K.G. 
 
 ' The Blues ' happen to be mentioned, the sound 
 is rather overpowering ; all the glory of H.M. Life 
 Guards, their gold helmets and social splendours, are 
 at once almost dazzling, but is there any such feeling 
 as regards the Browns. I think Judas ought to be a 
 pretty name, and what say you to Jezebel .'' In Eng- 
 land the plebeians have the shorter names. Planta- 
 genetismore patrician than Dick (the briefest-sounding 
 name I know). I am assured it is entirely the reverse 
 of this in China, where the most exalted personage in 
 
 ' ' An eye like Ma's to threaten and command ! '
 
 PATCHWORK. 55 
 
 the realm has next to no name at all — only a click — 
 very like ' Dick,' (but shorter) more like that noise 
 which people make to urge along their cattle. 
 
 CHARLES FOX. 
 
 ' In his tour to Switzerland, Mr. Fox gave me two 
 days of free and private society. He seemed to feel 
 and even to envy the happiness of my situation, while 
 I admired the powers of a superior man, as they are 
 blended in his attractive character with the softness 
 and simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being 
 was ever more perfectly exempted from the taint of 
 malevolence, vanity and falsehood.' — 
 
 Edmund Gibbon (1737 — 1794). 
 
 A MA FUTURE. 
 
 * Where waitest thou, 
 Lady, I am to love ? Thou comest not, 
 Thou knowest of my sad and lowly lot — 
 
 I looked for thee ere now ! 
 
 ' It is the May, 
 And each sweet sister soul hath found its brother. 
 Only we two seek fondly each the other, 
 
 And seeking still delay.
 
 56 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' Where art thou, sweet ? 
 I long for thee as thirsty lips for streams, 
 O gentle promised angel of my dreams, 
 
 Why do we never meet ? 
 
 ' Thou art as I, 
 Thy soul doth wait for mine as mine for thee ; 
 We cannot live apart, must meeting be 
 
 Never before we die ? 
 
 • Dear soul, not so. 
 For time doth keep for us some happy years. 
 And God hath portion'd us our smiles and tears. 
 
 Thou knowest, and I know. 
 
 'Therefore I bear 
 This winter-tide as bravely as I may. 
 Patiently waiting for the bright spring day 
 
 That Cometh with thee, dear. 
 
 ' 'Tis the May light 
 That crimsons all the quiet college gloom. 
 May it shine softly in thy sleeping room, 
 And so, dear wife, good night.' 
 
 Edwin Arnold.
 
 PATCHWORK. 57 
 
 RELIGIOUS TRAINING. 
 
 A Presbyterian minister concluded his pulpit ex- 
 hortations, and arguments on free will, predestination, 
 * foreknowledge absolute,' etc., with the following highly 
 consoling words ^ye canna be gude, an\ if ye weregude, 
 it wad do ye na gude.' This story might divert some 
 people, but it is no laughing matter for my friend 
 Eugenius. 
 
 Eugenius has a very sensitive, and perhaps a 
 spiritual nature, and I presume he has a sceptical 
 mind. He tells me that his very early Calvinistic, 
 and gloomy religious training and teaching, and per- 
 petual chapel-going, has warped and embittered his 
 soul, in such a manner, and to such a degree, that, I 
 fear, I shall never see Eugenius in a haven of spiritual 
 peace. It is remarkable how that early teaching sticks 
 by a man, and, as it were, takes possession of him, and 
 how, as he grows old, he reverts to the hopes or the 
 fears of his childhood. What a blessing, then, if the 
 influence has been a healthy one ! 
 
 The other day I heard that whimsical fellow, G , 
 
 make a rather foolish remark, to the effect that the 
 pleasure of twt going to church was a pleasure that 
 never palled. I should have liked to have sent his 
 address to my poor Eugenius.
 
 58 TATCIIWORK. 
 
 EPITAPH. 
 ON AN ANCESTOR OF DAVID ELGINBROD. 
 
 Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod. 
 Hae mercy on my soul, Lord God, 
 As I wad do were I Lord God, 
 And ye were Martin Elginbrod. 
 
 LENFER. 
 
 ' Ne nous imaginons pas que I'enfer consiste dans 
 ces ^tangs de feu et de soufre, dans ces flammes dter- 
 nellement devorantes, dans cette rage, dans ce de'ses- 
 poir, dans cet horrible grincement de dents. L'enfer, 
 si nous Tentendons, c'est le pech^ meme : l'enfer, c'est 
 d'etre ^loign^ de Dieu.' Bishop Bossuet (1627— 1704). 
 
 GASTIBELZA. 
 
 ' Gastibelza, I'homme h la carabine, 
 
 Chantait ainsi : 
 Quelqu'un a-t-il connu Doiia Sabine ? 
 
 Quelqu'un d'ici ? 
 Dansez, chantez, villageois ! la nuit gagne 
 
 Le Mont Falu. 
 Le vent qui vient h. travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou.
 
 PATCHWORK. 59 
 
 ' Quelqu'un de vous a-t-il connu Sabine, 
 
 Ma Seiiora? 
 Sa mere dtait la vieille maugrabine 
 
 d'Antequera 
 Qui chaque nult criait dans la Tour Magne 
 
 Comma un hibou ... — 
 Le vent qui vient h. travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou. 
 
 * Dansez, chantez ! Des biens que I'heure envoie 
 
 II faut user. 
 Elle ^tait jeune, et son ceil plein de joie 
 
 Faisaif penser. — 
 (A ce vieillard qu'un enfant accompagne 
 
 Jetez un sou ! . . . — ) 
 Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou. 
 
 'Vraiment, la reine eut, pr^s d'elle, 6t6 laide 
 
 Quand, vers le soir, 
 Elle passait sur le pont de Tol^de 
 
 En corset noir. 
 Un chapelet du temps de Charlemagne 
 
 Ornait son cou ... — 
 Le vent qui vient k travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou.
 
 60 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' Le roi disait, en la voyant si belle, 
 
 A son neveu : 
 " Pour un baiser, pour un sourire d'elle, 
 
 Pour un cheveu, 
 Infant Don Ruy, je donnerais I'Espagne 
 
 Et le P^rou ! " 
 Le vent qui vient k travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou. 
 
 ' Je ne sais pas si j'aimais cette dame, 
 
 Mais je sais bien 
 Que, pour avoir un regard de son ame, 
 
 Moi, pauvre chien, 
 J'aurais gaiment pass^ dix ans au bagne 
 
 Sous le verrou . . . 
 Le vent qui vient k travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou. 
 
 ' Un jour d'^t^ quand tout dtait lumifere, 
 
 Vie et douceur, 
 EUe s'en vint jouer dans la riviere 
 
 Avec sa soeur : 
 Je vis le pied de sa jeune compagne 
 
 Et son genou ... — 
 Le vent qui vient k travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou.
 
 PATCHWORK. 6 1 
 
 ' Quand je voyais cet enfant, moi, le pat 
 
 De ce canton, 
 Je croyais voir la belle Cleopatre 
 
 Qui, nous dit-on, 
 Menait Cdsar, empereur d'AUemagne, 
 
 Par le licou ... — 
 Le vent qui vient h. travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou. 
 
 ' Dansez, chantez, villageois, la nuit tombe ! 
 
 Sabine un jour 
 A tout vendu, sa beaul^ de colombe 
 
 Et son amour, 
 Pour I'anneau d'or du comte de Saldagne, 
 
 Pour un bijou ... — 
 Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou. 
 
 ' Sur ce vieux banc soufifrez que je m'appuie, 
 
 Car je suis las. 
 Avec ce comte elle s'est done enfuie ! 
 
 Enfuie, helas ! 
 Par le chemin qui va vers la Cerdagne, 
 
 Je ne sais ou . . . — 
 Le vent qui vient a travers la montagne 
 
 Me rendra fou.
 
 62 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' Je la voyais passer de ma demeure, 
 
 Et c'dtait tout. 
 Mais k present je m'ennuie k toute heure, 
 
 Plain de degout, 
 Reveur, oisif, I'ame dans la campagne, 
 
 La dague au clou ... — 
 Le vent qui vient k travers la montagne 
 
 M'a rendu fou ! ' victor Hugo. 
 
 TAKING STOCK. 
 
 A worthy man, with a little capital, set up a wool- 
 mill. Coming home one evening, at the end of the 
 first year, he appeared in great good humour, and 
 meeting his wife at the door, he said, * Ye'll mak' a drop 
 tea till's, gudewife.' Tea was then a considerable 
 rarity and looked upon in the light of a luxury. ' Ou, 
 ay,' says the wife, ' but what's ado wi' ye the nicht ? ' 
 ' Eh, 'oman, the milly's doin' fine. She's cleared hersel' 
 a'ready, and somethin' forby.' The next night he was 
 looking rather disconsolate, and on his wife inquiring 
 if again he was to have tea — * Na, na,' says he, ' nae 
 mair o' thot stuff, that stupid blockhead Jock, in 
 balancin' the books, added in the Anno Domzm along 
 wi' the punds.' 
 
 This reminds me of the small trader who revealed 
 that he had sold for only two sous what he had bought
 
 PATCHWORK. 6^ 
 
 for two and a half sous — and he was told that at that 
 rate, he would ruin himself. ' Non/ said he. *Je me 
 sauve sur la quantitd.' 
 
 THE BULLY. 
 
 At old Bliss's school there was a big, foulmouthed 
 
 Bully, who tyrannised over the other boys ; and he held 
 
 the lesser fellows in such abject subjection, that, long 
 
 before the arrival of their plum-cakes, they had been 
 
 heavily mortgaged to propitiate him. He was a 
 
 regular land-pirate of the most shameless type, he 
 
 preyed upon our toffy and tarts, he confiscated our 
 
 neckerchiefs and knives, and he even made free with 
 
 our pocket-money. I can see him now, he was fat, 
 
 with a broad nose and face. I remember how he 
 
 would tear down the centre of the long dormitory, 
 
 when the younger ones were a-bed, and give a yell, 
 
 and a great laugh as he dragged the bedclothes off 
 
 each boy as he passed. 
 
 I can conceive no wickedness of which this young 
 monster could not have been capable : and anybody 
 might have supposed him to be utterly callous, and in- 
 capacitated for any kind of remorse. On looking back 
 I cannot help suspecting he was a coward (even now 
 I hardly dare to say what I think of him, lest he should 
 still be alive, and i/ns should tneet his eye /) Yes, he
 
 64 PATCHWORK. 
 
 was a coward, he would tempt other boys to mischief 
 for which he had not the pluck himself. It was he 
 who incited Wentworth to convey the bumble-bees to 
 church in a whity-brown paper bag, and then let 
 them out, one by one, during the sermon. 
 
 There was a hideous old usher (I call him old, but, 
 really, I do not the least know whether he was thirty 
 or sixty) whom we branded as ' Gu77is ' (he had a 
 horrid way of grinning when he called us up to be 
 flogged). This usher was a mysterious animal. I 
 fancy now that he may have been, deadly poor, for 
 there were thick worsted bell-ropes in his bed-chamber, 
 and it was darkly whispered that when he hadn't any 
 tobacco, he would cut off pieces of the bell-ropes, and 
 put them into his pipe, and smoke them. Yes, his 
 position was shrouded in mystery ; he remained, high 
 and dry, up at the school-house during the holidays, 
 and the only circumstance I know to the credit of the 
 Bully was that he bought some mustard and cress 
 (with another boy's money) and sowed GUMS in 
 gigantic characters under Gums's window, the day 
 before the school broke up. I doubt if he would have 
 ventured to do this if it had not been his last half at 
 the school. Yes, I believe the Bully was an arrant 
 coward, and now I will tell you why I have wasted so 
 much of your time upon him ; and remember, dear 
 reader, I am about to deal with a serious subject— a
 
 PATCHWORK. 69 
 
 very serious subject, and, believe me, I do so with all , 
 reverence ; pray remember this. 
 
 There was a certain small apartment at the corner 
 of the schoolroom, which was called ' Old Gums's crib,' 
 where the biggest boys washed their hands and brushed 
 their hair during the day. It was a darkish room, and, 
 one afternoon, when I chanced to be alone there, 
 the Bully came up to me abruptly, and said, with 
 abject terror in his face,—' I say, you fellow, look here, 
 I hope I haven't sinned against the Holy Ghost.' 
 This was all he said, he then grasped me by the arm, 
 as he repeated the starthng question and glared at me, 
 and then, as I was taken aback, and also in consider- 
 able alarm, and did not reply, he gave me a vicious 
 kick, which sent me flying. 
 
 I found out afterwards that there was hardly a 
 little boy in the school to whom the poor v/retch, in his 
 agony, had not, at some time or other, put the same 
 question (and given the same kick) and tried, as it 
 were, to get comfort out of him. His name was. . . . 
 
 WHAT WIGHT HE LOVED. 
 
 ' Shall I tell you whom I love ? 
 
 Hearken then awhile to me ; 
 And if such a woman move 
 
 As I now shall versifie ; 
 
 F
 
 C6 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Be assured, 'tis she, or none 
 That I love, and love alone. 
 
 ' Nature did her so much right. 
 
 As she scorns the help of art, 
 In as many virtues dight 
 
 As ere yet imbraced a hart. 
 So much good so truly tride, 
 Some for lesse were deified. 
 
 ' Wit she hath without desire 
 
 To make knowne how much she hath ; 
 And her anger flames no higher 
 
 Than may fitly sweeten wrath. 
 Full of pity as may be, — 
 Tho' perhaps not so to me ! 
 
 ' Reason masters every sense, 
 And her virtues grace her birth ; 
 
 Lovely as all excellence. 
 
 Modest in her most of mirth : 
 
 Likelihood enough to prove 
 
 Onely worth could kindle love. 
 
 ' Such she is ;— and if you know 
 
 Such a one as I have sung, 
 Be she browne, or faire, or so. 
 
 That she be but somewhile young ; 
 Be assured, 'tis she, or none 
 That I love, and love alone.' 
 
 William Browne (1590-1645).
 
 PATCHWORK. 6^ 
 
 WHAT IS A MIRACLE? 
 
 Clergyman. What is a miracle ? 
 
 Boy. Dunno. 
 
 Clergyman. Well, if the sun were to shine in the 
 middle of the night, what should you say it was ? 
 
 Boy. The moon. 
 
 Clergyman. But if you were told it was the sun, 
 what should you say it was ? 
 
 Boy. A lie. 
 
 Clergyman. I don't tell lies. Suppose I told you 
 it was the sun, what would you say then ? 
 
 Boy. That yer wasn't sober. 
 
 A LENGTHY PAUSE. 
 
 An old gentleman, riding over Putney Bridge, 
 turned round to his servant, and said, ' Do you like 
 eggs, John ?' ' Yes, Sir,' answered John. Here their 
 conversation ended. The same old gentleman, riding 
 across the same bridge, that day year, again turned to 
 John, and said, ' How ? ' ' Poached, Sir,' was John's 
 instant reply. This is the longest pause on record. 
 
 It is evident that there were the makings of an 
 excellent domestic in John. A really good servant 
 should never be in the way and never out of the way. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 PATCHWORK. 
 
 STATISTICS OF FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Apropos of the loss of friends, some one, in the 
 presence of Morgan, the great calculator of lives, de- 
 plored that he had been bereaved of so many friends, 
 mentioning their number, in a certain space of time. 
 Morgan, for the moment, said nothing, but taking 
 down a huge book from his office shelf, and consulting 
 it, coolly remarked, ' So you ought. Sir, and three 
 more.' 
 
 A SUITABLE BRIDE. 
 
 My friend Admiral E. E., shortly after his return 
 from a cruise, met an old acquaintance in the streets 
 
 of , who said, after the usual salutations had 
 
 passed, * They tell me. Admiral, that ye had got 
 married.' The Admiral, hoping for a compliment, 
 replied, 'Why, BaiUie, I'm getting on, I'm not so 
 young as I was, you see, and none of the girls will 
 have me.' On which the Baillie, with perfect good 
 faith and simplicity, rephed, ' 'Deed, Admiral, I was 
 na evenin' yer to a lassie, but there's mony a flne, 
 respeckit, half worn wumman wud be glad to tak ye.'
 
 PATCHWORK. 69 
 
 SONG. 
 
 ' Love in fantastic triumph sat 
 
 Whilst bleeding hearts around him flow'd, 
 From whom fresh pains he did create, 
 
 And strange tyrannic power he showed. 
 From thy bright eyes he took his fires, 
 
 Which round about in sport he hurl'd ; 
 But 'twas from mine he took desires, 
 
 Enough t' undo the amorous world. 
 
 ' From me he took his sighs and tears, 
 
 From thee his pride and cruelty ; 
 From me his languishment and fears, 
 
 And every killing dart from thee : 
 Thus, thou and I, the god have arm'd, 
 
 And set him up a deity ; 
 But my poor heart alone is harm'd 
 
 Whilst thine the victor is, and free.' 
 
 From Abdelazer, or t/ie Moor's Revenge, Aphra Behn(i642 1689). 
 
 TOM CAMPBELL. 
 A great many years ago an acquaintance of mine, 
 a festive but very stupid fellow, who, to use one of his 
 own homely similes, had no more feeling for poetry 
 than a cow would have for a clean shirt, told me that 
 he had known Tom Campbell. He used to meet him
 
 •JO PATCHWORK. 
 
 at a small club in (I think) Regent Street : where he, 
 and others, occasionally dined. Poor Tom would 
 sometimes take a little too much wine. In those days 
 almost everybody did so, and my acquaintance said 
 that on one occasion, after dinner, Campbell got up 
 and staggered towards the door. There were some 
 providential pillars that supported the roof of the 
 apartment, and he reached them with difficulty, and, 
 having done so, he clung to one of them tenaciously, 
 fearing to go further and afraid to return — and that he 
 remained there ! 'And,' said I, who worshipped Camp- 
 bell with all a boy's enthusiasm, ' what did you do ? ' 
 ' Oh,' says he, ' we left him there, but every now and 
 again, you know, we -wovl^. flick a walnut at him.' 
 
 Campbell is well known to have been an interest- 
 ing converser ; he rarely left you without having 
 made some observation that was singularly suggestive, 
 and which lingered agreeably in the memory. It was 
 he who said 
 
 To live in hearts we leave behind 
 Is not to die ! 
 
 but the graceless animal (my acquaintance) knew 
 nothing of this, he was only able to tell me that 
 Campbell was a little fellow, that he spoke with a 
 broad Scottish accent, and that he wore a wig. 
 
 Yet wandering I found in my ruinous walk, 
 
 By the dial-stone aged and green, 
 One rose of the wilderness left on its stalk 
 
 To mark where a garden had been.
 
 PATCHWORK. 7 1 
 
 A SYMPATHETIC DAIRYMAID. 
 
 Sir James on one occasion had ventured to 
 
 buy a cow, without consulting his dairy-maid, a great 
 authority on such matters : when the new purchase 
 was first exhibited to her she found herself divided 
 between her love of truth, and her amiable desire 
 not to wound the feelings of her beloved master by 
 expressing her candid opinion. She looked medita- 
 tively at the new acquisition, and then said, 'She's 
 a bonnie beastie ' (pause). ' She's some hee (high) at 
 the root o' the tail ' (longer pause) — ' but we're a' that ! ' 
 
 DANGERS OF THE (FAR) WESTERN CIRCUIT. 
 
 ' We remember reading in an American newspaper, 
 some years ago, that the United States lost one of 
 their most upright and erudite judges by bees, which 
 stung him to death in a wood while he was going the 
 circuit. About a year afterwards, we read in the 
 same newspaper, "We are afraid we have just lost 
 another judge by bees," and then followed a somewhat 
 frightful description of the assassination of the Ameri- 
 can Blackstone by these insects.' 
 
 Professor Wilson (1785-1S54).
 
 72 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ATALANTA IN CAMDEN TOWN. 
 
 ' A)', 'twas here, on this spot, 
 
 In that summer of yore, 
 Atalanta did not 
 
 Vote my presence a bore, 
 Nor reply, to my tenderest talk, she had "heard a 
 that nonsense before." 
 
 ' She'd the brooch I had bought, 
 
 And the necklace and sash on, 
 And her heart, as I thought, 
 
 Was alive to my passion : 
 And she'd done up her hair in the style that the 
 Empress had brought into fashion. 
 
 ' I had been to the play 
 
 With my pearl of a Peri : 
 But, for all I could say. 
 
 She declared she was weary. 
 That " the place was so crowded and hot," and she 
 "couldn't abide that Dundreary." 
 
 ' Then I thought " 'tis for me 
 
 That she whines and she whimpers," 
 And it soothed me to see 
 
 Those sensational simpers : 
 And I said, " This is scrumptious," — a phrase I had 
 learned from the Devonshire shrimpers.
 
 PATCHWORK. 73 
 
 And I vowed, " 'Twill be said 
 I'm a fortunate fellow, 
 When the breakfast is spread, 
 
 When the topers are mellow, 
 When the foam of the bride-cake is white, and the 
 fierce orange blossoms are yellow." 
 
 ' Oh, that languishing yawn ! 
 
 Oh, those eloquent eyes ! 
 I was drunk with the dawn 
 
 Of a splendid surmise^ 
 I was stung by a look— I was slain by a tear, by a 
 tempest of sighs. 
 
 'And I whispered, "I guess 
 
 The sweet secret thou keepest. 
 And the dainty distress 
 
 That thou wistfully weepest : 
 And the question is 'license or banns?' — Though 
 undoubtedly banns are the cheapest." 
 
 ' Then her white hand I clasp'd. 
 
 And with kisses I crowned it. 
 But she glared, and she gasp'd, 
 
 And she mutter'd, " Confound it ! " 
 Or at least it was something like that, but the noise 
 
 of the omnibus drown'd it.' Lewis Carroll.
 
 74 PATCHWORK. 
 
 SUPERSTITION. 
 
 James Mitchell was my gamekeeper, and he com- 
 plained to me that his cow was * witched.' I told him 
 he was talking nonsense, that the cow had merely 
 gone off its milk in consequence of his wife being 
 confined to bed, and the cow given over to the 
 management of his daughter, a girl of fourteen years 
 of age. He said, ' I ken weel wha has " witched " my 
 coo, it wasna for naething that Mistress Watson stood 
 glowrin' at her wi' her arms at her sides.' 
 
 I advised him to be careful as to what he said, as 
 Mrs. Watson's son, being a writer, would certainly 
 prosecute him for libel. ' Na, na,' said he, ' 1 ken weel 
 what 1 say. I ken it wor her, for one day I gied to the 
 kennel to feed my daugs, an' I laid my gun again' the 
 rails — and what should run past but a hare : there 
 was na a daug in the kennel that didna cower when 
 that hare run past.' (He was always accustomed to 
 flog them if they chased hares.) I up wi' my gun, 
 and takes a good aim at it, and I didna miss it, but 
 the shot was never cast that would kill that hare. The 
 next day was the Sarbbath, and I gangs up to the 
 kirk, an' wha' should I see but Mistress Watson wi 
 her heed tied up. . . . I keniit I kadnn missed /ler f 
 
 C. L. C. 13.
 
 PATCHWORK. 75 
 
 A MAN OF FEW WANTS. 
 
 An Irishman with a very scanty wardrobe, was 
 strongly advised to buy a portmanteau which was 
 offered him at what appeared an exceedingly reason- 
 able price. Said Pat, ' But what should I do wid it } ' 
 ' Why, put your clothes into it, to be sure,' said his 
 adviser. ' What ? ' says Pat, quite puzzled—' What .? 
 and go Jiaked ." 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Thomas Campbell said of Goldsmith's poetry : 
 ' It enjoys a calm and steady popularity,' (I fear this 
 is hardly the case just now,) ' and it presents us, within 
 its narrow limits, a distinct and unbroken view of 
 poetical delightfulness. His descriptions and senti- 
 ments have the pure zest of nature. He is refined 
 without false delicacy, and correct without insipidity.' 
 
 I suppose everybody knows Goldsmith's delightful 
 'Elegy on a Mad Dog.' It has been remarked that 
 Maiion Lescaidt is the great-great-grandmamma of 
 the modern school of French Novel, of which La 
 Datne aiix Canielias is typical ; surely this elegy of 
 Goldsmith's might bear the same relationship to many 
 of Thomas Hood's inimitable comicalities. It is not 
 so vigorous in versification, it may not be so wildly or 
 fancifully comic, but it is more delicate, and, if I may
 
 'j6 PATCHWORK. 
 
 be allowed the expression, much more, gracioits, and if 
 it were read now, for the first time, it might pass for a 
 very happy specimen of the gifted author of ' Nelly 
 Gray.' I should like to think that Goldsmith and 
 Hood were now discussing it, pleasantly, in some 
 spiritual cosmos ! 
 
 Perhaps there is no couplet in English rhyme 
 more perspicuously condensed than Goldsmith's on 
 the French nation : 
 
 ' They please — are pleased — they give to get esteem. 
 Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.' 
 
 Goldsmith excelled as novelist, poet, dramatist, 
 essayist, and satirist, and, in this respect, I doubt if 
 he is equalled by any English writer. 
 
 THOMAS HOODS COMICALITY. 
 
 Thomas Hood plays off his tricks on the most 
 knowing readers : he carries on his double-dealing 
 with apparently the utmost simple-mindedness. 
 
 ' And Christians love in the turf to lie, 
 
 Not in watery graves to be — 
 Nay the very fishes would sootier die 
 
 On the land than in the sea.' 
 
 He treats logic with a mock ceremonial of respect, as 
 in the case of
 
 PATCHWORK. ^7 
 
 His head was turned, and so he chewed 
 His pig-tail till he died. 
 
 Hood supplied titles for sham books in the Chatsworth 
 library ; he invented many, here are four of them : 
 
 Novel. — Percy Vere, in forty volumes. 
 The Life of Zimmerman — by himself. 
 Tadpoles — or tales out of my own head. 
 Voltaire, Volney, Volta — three vols. 
 
 A LETTER OF DEAN SWIFT. 
 
 ' Dublin, Oct. 6, 1694. 
 ' May it please your Honor, — 
 
 ' That I might not continue by any means the many 
 troubles I have given you, 1 have all this while avoyded 
 one, which I fear proves necessary at last. I have taken 
 all due methods to be ordayned and one Time of Or- 
 dination is allready elapsed since my Arrivall without 
 effecting it. Two or three Bishops, acquaintances of 
 our P^amily, have signified to me and them that after so 
 long a standing in the University it is admired I have 
 not entered upon something or other (above half the 
 Clergy in this Town being my Juniors) and that it 
 being so many Years since I left this Kingdom, they 
 could not admit me to the Ministry without some cer- 
 tificate of my Behavior where I lived : And my Lord
 
 78 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Archbishop of Dublin was pleased to say a good deal 
 of this kind to me Yesterday, concluding against all I 
 had to answer that He expected I should have a Cer- 
 tificate from Your Honor of my Conduct in your Family. 
 The sense I am in, how low I am fallen in Your Honor's 
 Thoughts has denyed me Assurance enough to beg 
 this Favor till I find it impossible to avoyd, And I 
 entreat Your Honor to understand, that no Person is 
 admitted to a Living here, without some Knowledge of 
 His Abilityes for it ; which it being reckon'd impossible 
 to judge in those who are not ordained, the usuall 
 Method is to admit them first to some small Reader's 
 Place till by Preaching upon Occasions they can value 
 themselves for better Preferment : This (without great 
 Friends) is so generall that if I were four score years 
 old, I must go the same way, and should at that age 
 be told, every one must have a Beginning. I entreat 
 tliat Your Honor will consider this, and will please to 
 send me some Certificate of my Behavior during almost 
 three years in Your Family : Wherein I shall stand in 
 need of all Your Goodness to excuse my many Weak- 
 nesses and FoUyes and Oversights, much more to say 
 any Thing to my Advantage. The Particulars expected 
 of me, are what relate to Morals and Learning, and 
 the Reasons of quitting Your Honor's family, that is, 
 whether the last was occasioned by any ill Actions of 
 mine. They are all entirely left to Your Honor's
 
 PATCHWORK. 79 
 
 Mercy, tho' in the first, I think I cannot reproach 
 myself any further than for Infirmityes. 
 
 'This is all I dare beg at present from Your 
 Honor, under Circumstances of Life not worth your 
 Regard : What is left me to wish (next to the Health 
 and Felicity of Your Honor and Family) is that 
 Heaven would one Day allow me the Opportunity to 
 leave my Acknowledgments at your feet, for so many 
 Favors I have received, which, whatever effect they 
 have had upon my Fortune, shall never fayl to have 
 the greatest upon my Mind, in approving myself upon 
 all occasions 
 
 ' Your Honor's most obedient and most dutifull 
 Servant ' J. Swift, 
 
 ' I beg my most humble duty and Service, be pre- 
 sented to my Ladyes, Your Honor's Lady and Sister. 
 
 ' The ordination is appointed by the Arch-Bishop 
 by the Beginning of November, so that if Your Honor 
 will not grant this Favor immediatly I fear it will 
 come too late. 
 
 ' For the Honorable S'' William Temple, Bart., at 
 His House at Moor Park near Farnham in Surrey, 
 England. 
 
 ' By way of London.' 
 
 ^*^ This letter has never before been printed in 
 extenso. I lent it to Mr. John Forster, but not soon 
 enough to appear in his fragment of the Life of Swift.
 
 So PATCHWORK. 
 
 I have a short note in Dean Swift's autograph 
 addressed to Alexander Pope, in which, after referring 
 to Lord Peterborough and Dr. Arbuthnot, he says : ' I 
 am weary of the Town, so that the kind lodging in 
 your Heart must be large indeed if it holds me ; mine 
 cannot hold the Esteem and Friendship I have for 
 you.' 
 
 On the back of this note is written, in Pope's auto- 
 graph, the following reflections : 'A King — a scarecrow 
 of straw, yet protects your corn.' 
 
 ' A tine Lady is like a Catt, when young the most 
 gamesome and lively of all creatures — when old, the 
 most melancholy.' 
 
 A FAIRY FUNERAL. 
 
 ' There it was on a little river island, that once, 
 whether sleeping or waking I know not, I saw cele- 
 brated a fairy's funeral. First, I heard small pipes 
 playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that 
 whisper in the night winds, and more piteous than 
 aught that trills from earthly instrument was the scarce 
 audible dirge. It seemed to pass over the stream, 
 every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the fairy 
 anthem floated over our couch, and then alighting, 
 without footsteps, among the heather. 
 
 ' The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if
 
 PATCHWORK. 8 1 
 
 living creatures were arranging themselves in order, 
 and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn. 
 The harmony was like the melting of musical dew- 
 drops, and sung, without words, of sorrow and death, 
 I opened my eyes, or, rather, sight came to them when 
 closed, and dream was vision. Hundreds of creatures, 
 no taller than the crest of a lapwing, and all hanging 
 down their veiled heads, stood in a circle, in a green 
 plot among the rocks. In the midst of the circle, was 
 a bier, framed, as it seemed, of flowers, unknown to the 
 Highland Hills ; and on the bier a fairy, lying with un- 
 covered face pale as a lily, and motionless as the snow. 
 The dirge grew fainter, and fainter, and then died away. 
 Then two of the creatures came from the circle, and 
 took their station one at the head, and the other at the 
 foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures not 
 louder than the twittering of the awakened woodlark, 
 before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous and full of 
 the desolation of death. 
 
 ' The flower-bier stirred — for the spot on which it 
 lay sank slowly down, and in a few moments the green 
 sward was smooth as ever, the very dews glittering 
 above the buried fairy. A cloud passed over the moon, 
 and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed ' 
 duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight 
 solitude of the glen. Then the disenthralled Orchy 
 began to rejoice as before, through all her streams and 
 
 G
 
 82 PATCHWORK. 
 
 falls, and at the sudden leaping of the waters, and out- 
 bursting of the moon, I awoke.' 
 
 Professor Wilson (1785-1854). 
 
 ' Where once such fairies dance no grass 
 Doth ever grow.' a. Cowley (1618-1667). 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 (Poet and Painter). 
 
 "^A lovely child of Wealthy parents was one day 
 brought to Blake. Sitting in his old worn clothes, 
 amidst poverty, decent indeed, but only one degree 
 above absolute bareness, he looked at her very 
 kindly for a long while without speaking, and then 
 gently stroking her head, and long bright curls, said, 
 "May God make this world to you, my child, as 
 beautiful as it has been to me ! " ' Francis t. Palgrave. 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE'S 'SONGS OF INNOCENCE: 
 
 '■ The lovely and luminous setting of designs, which 
 makes the songs precious and pleasurable to those 
 who know or care for little else of the master's doing, 
 the infinite delight of those drawings, sweeter to see 
 than music to hear, where herb and stem break into 
 grace of shape and blossom of form, and the branch 
 work is full of little flames and flowers, catching as it 
 were from the verse enclosed the fragrant heat and deh-
 
 PATCHWORK. S^ 
 
 cate sound they seem to give back, where colour lapses 
 into light, and light assumes feature in colour. If else- 
 where the artist's strange strength of thought and hand 
 is more visible, nowhere is there such pure sweetness 
 and singleness of design in his work. All the tremulous 
 and tender splendour of Spring is mixed with the 
 written word and coloured draught. Every page has 
 the smell of April, over all things given — the sleep of 
 flocks, and the growth of leaves, the laughter in divid- 
 ing hps of flowers, and the music of the moulded mouth 
 of the flute-player — there is cast a pure fme veil of 
 light, softer than sleep and keener than sunshine.' 
 
 A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 ^% This is a very eloquent and a very truthful tribute 
 to the Songs of Innocence, I entirely agree with it. 
 Yet I do not know any man of genius who is more 
 often unreadable in his writings, and more repellent in a 
 great many of his designs, than Blake. 
 
 MA TRIMONY. 
 ' There lived a carle on Kellyburnbraes ' who had a 
 considerable grudge against marriage, and no wonder, 
 but, to my mind, though matrimony may be a homely, 
 at any rate, it is a respectable, and, I may safely say, a 
 necessary condition of existence, and everybody, time 
 being given them, at last comes round to this opinion. 
 Let me instance that noble creature Mary Wollstone- 
 
 G 2
 
 84 PATCHWORK. 
 
 craft (among women) and her gifted son-in-law (among 
 men),— but they were slow to find it out. 
 
 It has been often asserted that if Chancellor Cairns 
 had the arrangement of all our marriages (his own, of 
 course, not included) there would be quite as many 
 happy ones as at present, and certainly fewer that are 
 simply deplorable. It strikes me, however, that such 
 an interference is not necessary, for the component 
 parts of all the wedded couples I happen to know seem 
 to get on fairly well with each other ; though I admit 
 that in one or two cases she may have married him for 
 his money, and that in another he was fascinated by her 
 face. I lately heard of one very blessed union where 
 the gentleman proposed because the lady exactly har- 
 monised with his drawing-room draperies, but then that 
 gentleman was a Fine-Art Connoisseur. 
 
 How they loved. 
 Witness, ye days and nights, and all ye hours 
 That danced away with down upon your feet. 
 
 And yet everyone knows that the holy estate has 
 its drawbacks ! We have all pretty well made up 
 our minds on that subject. Hark to the wretch ! how 
 playfully he sings about it ! 
 
 We are scratched, or we are bitten 
 
 By the pets to whom we cling ; 
 Oh, my Love she is a kitten. 
 
 And my heart 's a ball of string. 
 
 And then this is a woman's advice to a woman : 
 
 Prcnez a dcxtre, et a scnestre — n'ipargtiez hommc, je voiis prie.
 
 PATCHWORK. 85 
 
 A lady once wrote to Prince Talleyrand, that heart- 
 less nobleman, who found his pleasure between 
 double-dealing at Downing Street and short whist at 
 the Travellers', informing him, in high-flown terms of 
 grief, of the death of her husband. She expected an 
 eloquent answer of condolence, and this is what she 
 got: 'He'las! madame, votre aflectionne <S:c. &c., 
 Talleyrand.' 
 
 In less than a year another letter, from the same 
 lady, informed the Prince that she had married again. 
 To which he returned an equally curt response, as 
 follows : ' Oh, ho ! madame, votre affectionne &c. &c., 
 Talleyrand.' 
 
 But is there not something to be said for second 
 marriages ? It is not merely pouring hot water on the 
 used tea-leaves. Surely not. And speaking of second 
 marriages, I have a queer story for you. Have you 
 ever been in Scotland ? If so, you may have noticed 
 that the bereaved ones often continue to wear 
 ' weepers ' (those blowsy symbols of woe) long after 
 the funeral is past and over. One is always coming 
 across people with this outrageous decoration, it 
 streams from their hats, or reposes between their 
 shoulders, as they hurry along intent on their every- 
 day avocations. 
 
 Dear ladies, this is my story. A gentleman left 
 his home, heart-broken for the loss of his young wife. 
 He fled abroad — he remained there. He was never
 
 S6 PATCHWORK. 
 
 heard of, though there was a vague rumour that he had 
 been seen somewhere in the Valley of the Euphrates, 
 or some such unlikely locality. All his friends were 
 distressed for him. Several months elapsed, and at last 
 a letter arrived from him to say that he was in England, 
 that he would be at home immediately, and that he 
 would bring a new wife with him. Here was a sur- 
 prise ! There was no time for preparation, but his 
 faithful old housekeeper did what she could, and 
 by a great effort she succeeded in getting rid of 
 everything that could possibly remind him of his 
 terrible loss. 
 
 The old house was made as cheery as possible. 
 The day arrived, the carriage drove up, the bride 
 descended. She was handed out by her husband. 
 He still wore the hat he had carried at his first wife's 
 funeral, and the weeper was still hanging from it ! 
 This Scot, to say the least of it, had an imperfect 
 appreciation of the fitness of things. 
 
 Here is another Scottish story. It may be called 
 a Drawback. 
 
 A lady went to call on a young woman who had 
 been in her service, and who had got married. The 
 girl was out, but she saw her mother, who did the 
 honours, showing her over the house, which was very 
 neat, and clean, and comfortable ; and the lady said, 
 ' Really, how very nice, I am sure Fanny must be very 
 happy;' to which the mother replied, ' Ou, ay, but
 
 PATCHWORK. 87 
 
 there's joost ana little draback.' She was shown the 
 garden ; the same remark was made, and the same 
 reply ; and then the poultry-house, &c., and again the 
 same reply. On which the lady very naturally said, ' But 
 if your daughter has such an exceedingly nice home, 
 and is so very comfortable, what, may I ask, is this 
 drawback you speak of?' It was then that the mother 
 spoke out, exclaiming energetically, 'she canna bide 
 
 HER MARN ! ' 
 
 Here is even a queerer story, this time of a widow, 
 perhaps the same lady after she was quit of her 
 encumbrance. 
 
 A lady in a widow's cap, and possessed of a 
 certain amount of fascination, startled a gentleman in 
 whose company she was unexpectedly thrown, by 
 bursting into tears. 'Why do you weep, madam?' 
 politely asked the gentleman. 'Oh, sir,' replied the 
 lady, gazing at him through her tears, 'you do so 
 remind me of my poor dear husband.' Upon the 
 gentleman inquiring with still pohter, and, perhaps, 
 warmer sympathy, ' Dear madam, am I then so very 
 like him ? ' she replied, with a fresh gush of weeping, 
 ' Oh, dear, no, sir, it is because you are the very 
 hopposite of him.' 
 
 This was Thomas Fuller's notion of what a good 
 wife should be : ' She is none of your dainty dames 
 who love to appear in a variety of suits, every day 
 new ; but our good wife sets up a sail according to the
 
 88 PATCHWORK. 
 
 keel of her husband's estate, and, if of high parentage, 
 she does not so remember what she was by birth, that 
 she forgets what she is by rng^tch.' 
 
 One word more, — I have a well-considered opinion 
 as to the proper ages for man and wife. A wife 
 should be half the age of her husband with seven 
 years added. Thus, if the gentleman is twenty, his 
 wife should be seventeen. If he is thirty-six, she should 
 be twenty-five ; and so on. No lady of the ripe age of 
 fifty-seven has a right to indulge in the luxury of a 
 spouse who (even though he may not be a magnificent 
 ruin) is less than a century. 
 
 BARLEY BROTH. 
 (Cumberland Dialect.) 
 
 ' If tempers were put up to seale. 
 
 Our Jwohn's wad bear a duced preyce ; 
 
 He vow'd 'twas barley i' the broth, — 
 " Upon my word," says I, " it's reyce." 
 
 ' " I mek nea faut," our Jwohnny says, 
 " The broth is guid and varra neyce ; 
 
 I only say — it's barley broth." 
 
 " You says what's wrang," says I, " it's reyce."
 
 PATCHWORK, ' 89 
 
 ' '' Did ever mortal hear the leyke ! 
 
 As if I hadn't sense to tell ! 
 Tou may think reyce the better thing, 
 
 But barley broth dis just as well." 
 
 ' " And say is mud, if it was there ; 
 
 The deil a grain is i' the pot ; 
 But tou mun ayways threep yen down,— 
 
 I've drawn the deevil of a lot ! " 
 
 ' •' And what's the lot that I have drawn ? 
 
 Pervarsion is a woman's neame ! 
 Sae fares-te-weel ! I'll sarve my King, 
 
 And never, never, mair come heame." 
 
 ' Now Jenny frets frae mworn to neet ; 
 
 The Sunday cap's nae longer neyce ! 
 She aye puts barley i' the broth, 
 
 And hates the varra neame o' reyce. 
 
 ' Thus treyfles vex, and treyfles please, 
 And treyfles mek the sum o' leyfe ; 
 
 And treyfles mek a bonny lass 
 A wretched or a happy weyfe I ' 
 
 Susanna Blamire (1747-1794)- 
 
 ^*^ This lady's Poems were collected and published 
 in 1842 ; some of them are well worth reading. This 
 is by no means the best of them.
 
 90 PATCHWORK. 
 
 A RUSTIC LOVE-LETTER. 
 
 ' Dear John,' the letter ran, ' it can't, can't be, — 
 For father's gone to Chorley Fair with Sam, 
 
 And mother's storing apples. Prue and me 
 Up to our elbows making damson jam : 
 
 But we shall meet before a week is gone, 
 
 'Tis a long lane that has no turning, John. 
 
 ' Only till Sunday next, and then you'll wait 
 Behind the white thorn, by the broken stile. 
 
 We can go round, and catch them at the gate, 
 All by ourselves, for nearly one long mile. 
 
 Dear Prue won't look, and father he'll go on. 
 
 And Sam's two eyes are all for Cissy, John. 
 
 ' John, she's so smart ; with every ribbon new. 
 Flame-coloured sac, and crimson Padesoy, 
 
 As proud as proud, and has the vapours too, 
 Just like my lady ! calls poor Sam a boy. 
 
 And vows no sweetheart's worth the thinking on 
 
 Till he's past thirty. I know better, John. 
 
 ' My dear, I don't think that I thought of much 
 Before we knew each other, I and you ; 
 
 And now, why, John, your least, least finger touch 
 Gives me enough to think a summer through. 
 
 See, for I send you something ! there, 'tis gone ! 
 
 Look in this corner ; mind you find it, John.' 
 
 Austin Dobson.
 
 PATCHWORK. 91 
 
 ^*^ Surely these are very happy stanzas, simple and 
 not flat, tender and not sentimental. I see no reason 
 why they should not be as acceptable fifty years 
 hence as they are to-day, but certairdy fifty years is a 
 long time ! 
 
 Sli7SS MOUNTAINS. 
 
 ' I well recollect the walk on the winding road from 
 Sallenche, sloping up the hills towards St.-Gervais, 
 one cloudless Sunday afternoon. The road circles 
 softly between bits of rocky bank and mounded 
 pasture, little cottages and chapels gleaming out from 
 among the trees at every turn. Behind me, some 
 leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the moun- 
 tains of the Reposoir ; on the other side of the valley, 
 the mass of the Aiguille de Varens, heaving its seven 
 thousand feet of cliff into the air at a single effort, its 
 gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d'Arpenaz, like a 
 pillar of cloud at its feet ; Mont Blanc and all its 
 aiguilles, one silver flame, in front of me : marvellous 
 blocks of mossy granite, and dark glades of pine 
 around me.' j^hn Ruskin. 
 
 A LUCKY NUMBER. 
 
 H tells me that his cook has lately won a good 
 
 sum of money in a lottery, with the number iivcnfy-
 
 92 PATCHWORK. 
 
 three. H asked her how it was she had happened 
 
 to tumble on such a lucky number, and she replied, 
 * Oh, sir, I had a dream, I dreamt of number seven, and 
 I dreamt it three times, and as three times seven is 
 twenty-three, I chose that number, sir.' This proves 
 that an ignorance of the multiplication-table is not 
 always a calamity. 
 
 I was relating this anecdote to a distinguished 
 friend, who holds rather a responsible position, and is 
 usually anything but slow in apprehending a joke. 
 When I had concluded, I observed a wistful expression 
 on his countenance, as if he were ready, nay anxious, 
 to be amused, but could not for the life of him quite 
 manage it. Then suddenly his face brightened, and 
 he said, but with a tinge of dejection in his manner, 
 'Ah, yes, I see — yes — I suppose three times seven is 
 not twenty-three.' 
 
 EDUCATION OF THE MIND. 
 
 ' There are few men whose minds are not more or 
 less in that state of sham knowledge against which 
 Socrates made war. There is no man whose notions 
 have not been first got together by spontaneous, 
 unexamined, unconscious, uncertified association, rest- 
 ing upon forgotten particulars, blending together 
 disparates or inconsistencies, and leaving in his mind
 
 PATCHWORK. 93 
 
 old and familiar phrases, and oracular proposi- 
 tions, of which he has never rendered to himself 
 account. There is no man who, if he be destined for 
 vigorous and profitable scientific effort, has not found 
 it a necessary branch of self-education to break up, 
 disentangle, analyse, and reconstruct these ancient 
 mental compounds, and who has not been driven to 
 do it by his own lame and solitary efforts, since the 
 giant of the Colloquial Elenchus no longer stands in 
 the market-place to lend him help and stimulus.' 
 
 George Grote. 
 
 DOOMSDA Y BOOK. 
 I have heard that while the Houses of Parliament 
 were burning, the then Dean of Westminster (Ireland) 
 stood on the leads of the Chapter-house with Sir 
 Francis Palgrave, and they saw the fire rapidly 
 approaching them. Sir F. Palgrave suggested that 
 they should run and secure Doomsday Book, &c. &c., 
 and place them somewhere in safety, but Dean 
 Ireland assured him it would not be possible to do so 
 without an order from the First Lord of the Treasury. 
 
 AMERICAN RESTAURANTS. 
 In American places of refreshment, where time is 
 precious, and everybody is in a desperate hurry, the
 
 94 PATCHWORK. 
 
 people bolt their food at a furious rate, and if you stop 
 for only one instant, the waiter comes up close to you, 
 and says quickly, and curtly, in your ear, 'Are you 
 through ? ' (Have you finished ? ) At one of these 
 places a hungry man broke his tooth with a large iron 
 nail that had been served in the dish, and showed it 
 to the waiter with an injured air. ' Wall,' said the 
 man, looking equally injured, 'What did you expect.-* 
 You didn't expect, did you, to find a silk umbrella in 
 a ten cent hash ! ' 
 
 THE GREENLANDERS- HEAVEN. 
 
 The poor Greenlanders fear that the Christian 
 Heaven will not be altogether satisfactory to them, 
 because the missionaries, very unwisely, and certainly 
 very unwarrantably, tell them that there are no seals in 
 Heaven. 
 
 A HAPPY RETORT. 
 
 I am told that a certain friend of mine, as an 
 undergraduate at Cambridge, was of an extreme 
 nimbleness, an agility which he could not well control. 
 One day that grave and reverend personage, the 
 Master of his college, happening to meet him, remon- 
 strated with him thus : ' Mr. Dash, I am sorry to say 
 I never look out of my window but I see you jumping
 
 PATCHWORK. 95 
 
 over those railings.' Mr. Dash was equal to the 
 emergency, for he respectfully replied, ' And it is a 
 curious fact, sir, that I never leap over those railings 
 without seeing you looking out of that window.' 
 
 Mr. Dash now confines his nimbleness to metrical 
 exercises. He is still a wag, and, what is more, he is 
 champion of our Lyrical Light Weights. 
 
 THE TIGHT BOOTS. 
 
 ' My boots are tight : the hour is late ; 
 My faltering footsteps deviate : 
 And through the stillness of the night 
 A wail is heard— " My boots are tight ! " 
 
 ' O weary hour ! O wretched woe ! 
 It's only half-past three, or so. 
 We've not had much ; I feel all right, 
 Except my boots ; they're very tight, 
 
 ' Old friend ! I love you more and more. 
 Though we have met but once before. 
 Since then I've had a deal of sorrow ; — 
 You'll come and dine with me to-morrow .'' 
 
 ' What's this ? A tear ? I do not think 
 You gave us half enough to drink. 
 The moon up there looks precious queer. 
 She's winking. Ha ! Another tear !
 
 96 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' I'm not a man who courts a row. 
 But you insulted me, just now. 
 By Jove^ my friend, for what you've said, 
 I've half a mind to punch your head. 
 
 ' You won't forget to-morrow, eh ? 
 I'm sure to be at home all day. 
 Policeman, have you got a light ? 
 Thanks. Yes, they are, as you say, tight. 
 
 * The man I like's the sort of man 
 A man can trust, you un'erstan'. 
 
 I call that man a man, you know : 
 He is a man. Precisely so. 
 
 ' If any man addresses me, 
 No matter who that man may be ; 
 I always say, 'twixt man and man. 
 This man's a man — you un'erstan' ? 
 
 * The houses have a quivering look : 
 That corner one distinctly shook ; 
 I've got another fellow's hat ; 
 Well, never mind ! all's one for that. 
 
 The gas goes leaping up and down, 
 We can't be right for Camden Town. 
 This road went east the other day ; 
 I think south-west's a shorter way.
 
 PATCHWORK, 97 
 
 ' There used to be a place near here 
 Where one could get a glass of beer, 
 I wish we had some bottled Bass — 
 What is the matter with the gas ? 
 
 ' There's hardly wind enough to blow 
 The reedy lamp-posts to and fro : 
 And yet you see how each one leans — 
 I wonder what the deuce it means ? 
 
 ' My pipe's gone out: the air is chill ; 
 Is this Mile End or Maida Hill? 
 Remember — six o'clock we dine : 
 Bring several friends — say eight or nine. 
 
 ' The tavern bar was warm and bright, 
 And cheerful with a ruddy light. 
 Let's go back there and stop all night ; — 
 I can't walk home : my boots are tight.' 
 
 'Fun.' 
 
 A DISTINCTION. 
 
 ' Not drunk is he who from the floor 
 Can rise alone, and still drink more ; 
 But drunk is he who prostrate lies, 
 Without the power to drink or rise.' 
 
 H
 
 98 PATCHWORK. 
 
 GHOSTS. 
 
 ' Ghost stories are absurd. Whenever a real ghost 
 appears, by which I mean some man or woman dressed 
 up to frighten another, if the supernatural character of 
 the apparition has been for an instant believed, the 
 effect on the spectator has always been most terrible. 
 Convulsions, madness, idiocy, or even death on the 
 spot ; but in our common ghost stories you always find 
 that the seer, after a most appalling apparition, as you 
 are led to believe, is quite well the next day ! This 
 shows that the apparition was the creature of his 
 
 own mind.' Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1S34). 
 
 JOHN WICKLIFFE. 
 
 ' It was to the schism in the Papacy that Wickliffe 
 was probably indebted for permission to end his 
 turbulent life in peace, in his own parish, and in his 
 own bed. The real disposition of Rome towards this 
 arch-heretic was sufficiently testified when, forty-one 
 years afterwards, the Council of Constance, in impotent 
 rage, condemned his bones to be exhumed, burnt, and 
 cast into the brook. But the Swift, such is its name, 
 bore them to the Avon, that to the Severn, the Severn 
 to the sea, to be dispersed unto all lands— which 
 things are an allegory.' Thomas Fuller.
 
 PATCHWORK. 99 
 
 En virtutem mortis nesciam. 
 Vivet Lancinus Curtius 
 Saecula per omnia 
 Ouascunque lustrans oras, 
 Tantum possunt Camoenfe. 
 
 QUANTITY V. QUALITY. 
 
 ' One of the strangest parts of Pagan worship in 
 the East is the Mani, or praying machine. The dei- 
 ties are believed to be operated upon by the number 
 of prayers, and as the devout cannot say them fast 
 enough, a wheel is used, which enormously accelerates 
 the process. In this way a man may sit talking of 
 ordinary subjects to his friend while turning the 
 wheel which repeats his prayers. 
 
 ' In public places in Japan wheels with three 
 spokes are benevolently mounted on stout posts for the 
 gratuitous use of travellers. In a Buddhist monastery 
 at Lahore there are about thirty wheels arranged 
 along a gallery, capable of being moved at the slightest 
 touch. Our guide ran his hand along the wall, setting 
 all the wheels in motion, and thus, in one minute, 
 saying, by proxy, more prayers than, by the ordinary 
 method, he could get through in a day. There was 
 a wheel outside the monastery, situate on the banks 
 
 H 2
 
 lOO PATCHWORK. 
 
 of a small stream, and, by a cog-wheel underneath, it 
 was kept in perpetual praying motion by the water. 
 
 ' The Maori have a string attached to their idols ; 
 the worshipper sits on a praying stone, at a little 
 distance, holding in his hand the flax cord which is 
 fastened about the idol's neck. Every now and again 
 he gives it a jerk to make quite sure that the idol is 
 not disregarding his petitions.' 
 
 ' Day of Rest,' Aug. i, 1876. 
 
 A FUNERAL SERMON. 
 
 A clergyman, an original, preached a funeral dis- 
 course on the beloved Princess Charlotte of Wales, and 
 chose for his text : ' Go, see now this cursed woman, 
 and bury her, for she is a king's daughter.' After this 
 sufficiently startling keynote, he began his sermon : 
 ' If this was said of Jezebel, what honour should 
 not be paid to one who was so virtuous, and so well 
 beloved?' &c., &c. 
 
 GUSTO. 
 
 ' Gusto in art is power or passion defining any 
 object. There is gusto in the colouring of Titian ; not 
 only do his heads seem to think, his bodies seem to 
 feel. This is what the Italians mean by the mor- 
 bidezza of his flesh-colour. It seems sensitive and
 
 PATCHWORK. 10 1 
 
 alive all over, not merely to have the look and texture 
 of flesh, but the feeling in itself. For example, the 
 limbs of his female figures have a luxurious softness 
 and delicacy which appears conscious of the pleasure 
 of the beholder. As the objects themselves in nature 
 would produce an impression on the sense, distinct 
 from every other object, and having something divine 
 in it which the heart owns, and the imagination 
 consecrates, the objects of the picture preserve the 
 same impression, absolute, unimpaired, stamped with 
 all the truth of passion, the pride of the eye, and the 
 charm of beauty. Rubens makes his flesh-colour like 
 flowers. Titian's is like flesh, and like nothing else. 
 It is as different from that of other painters as the 
 skin is from a piece of white or red drapery thrown 
 over it. The blood circulates here and there, the blue 
 veins just appear, the rest is distinguished throughout 
 only by that sort of tingling sensation to the eye which 
 the body feels within itself. This is gusto. Again, 
 Titian's landscapes have a prodigious gusto, both in 
 the colouring and in the forms. We shall never forget 
 one we saw many years ago in the Orleans Gallery, of 
 Actaeon hunting. It had a brown, mellowed, autumnal 
 look. The sky was of the colour of stone. The winds 
 seemed to sing through the rustling branches of the 
 trees, and already you might hear the twanging of bows 
 resound through the tangled mazes of the wood. 
 
 ' Rubens has a great deal of gusto in his fauns and
 
 102 PATCHWORK. 
 
 satyrs, and in all that expresses motion, but in nothing 
 else. Rembrandt has it in everything ; everything in 
 'his pictures has a tangible character. There is gusto 
 in Pope's compliments, in Dryden's satires, and Prior's 
 tales. " The Beggar's Opera " is full of it.' 
 
 William Hazllu (1778-1S30). 
 
 NOTHING. 
 
 What the contented man desires — 
 The poor man has, the rich requires —   
 The miser gives, the spendthrift saves, 
 And all men carry to their graves. 
 
 MILESIAN HUMOUR. 
 
 There was a row in the gallery of a r3ublin theatre, 
 a scuffle, and one voice shouted, ' Turn him out ; ' 
 another, ' Throw him over.' ' Ay,' added a third, a 
 very bloodthirsty Milesian, ' and don't waste him, 
 boys — kill a fiddler with him.' 
 
 TO A PROUD KINSWOMAN. 
 
 ' Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries, 
 Nor seen thy girlish sweet vicissitude, 
 Thy mazy motions, striving to elude
 
 PATCHWORK. 103 
 
 Yet wooing still a parent's watchful eyes, 
 Thy humours, many as the opal's dyes. 
 
 And lovely all : methinks thy scornful mood,— 
 And bearing high of stately womanhood, 
 Thy brow where beauty sits to tyrannize 
 O'er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee ; 
 For never, sure, was seen a Royal Bride 
 Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride. 
 My very thoughts would tremble to be near thee. 
 
 But when I see thee at thy father's side. 
 Old times unqueen thee, and old loves endear thee. 
 
 Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849). 
 
 RHYME. 
 
 Seven or eight years ago an amusing controversy 
 was held in the ' Graphic,' between Messrs. Burnand 
 and Gilbert, that captivating pair ! on the subject of 
 Rhyme, and not without reason too, for there is no 
 doubt that, at present, the English rhymer has an 
 uncommon hard time of it. 
 
 There are some quite common words which have 
 no rhyme at all, and which ought to have one, and 
 there are others which have only one or tv/o rhymes, 
 and which ought to have more. 
 
 To lessen this difficulty, a difficulty which troubled 
 Milton, and which now encourages a large number of
 
 r04 PATCirVVORK. 
 
 otherwise well-behaved people to take refuge in, what 
 they are pleased to call, Milton's blank verse. Mr. Gilbert 
 ingeniously suggested .that as inventors, often- gave 
 arbitrary and irrational names to their inventions, they 
 might become still further public benefactors, if here- 
 after in selecting these names thev would have an eye 
 to enriching our language with rhymes to words which 
 at present are rhjTneless. Such, for instance, as * sil- 
 ver,' and ' month ; ' and he added something to this 
 effect, that if only the mechanist had been stUI more 
 ingenious, and had called his invention a ' C/u'lver,' 
 and the chemist had christened his discover}- a 
 ' Ronih^ there would not have been the necessity- for 
 such a controversy. 
 
 I agree with Mr. Gilbert, but I am inclined to go 
 fiirther. \S"hy should not the Poet- Laureate, and Mr. 
 Gilbert, and Mr. Bumand, and the other sons of song, 
 agree, in conclave, to select, say a couple of dozen 
 words (I would limit them to a couple of dozen or so) 
 as rh\-mes to parts of speech which, at present, have 
 either no rh\-me at all, or only one or two ? Angvisk, 
 for instance, has not it been long enough doomed to 
 languish for a fresh echo to itself ; and is not it annoy- 
 ing that when we mention the one, our readers know 
 that the other is not far off ? WTien once these words 
 have been selected, their exact signincarce can be 
 decided upon ; and, after that, there should be no 
 power of appeal.
 
 PATCmvORK. lO: 
 
 To give an idea of what I propose, it might be 
 determined that a new word, lupid for instance, should 
 hereafter, and for all time, represent the crescent-moon 
 (the crescent-mObn is usefiil in poetry). Ranguisk, for 
 the same reason, might signify a half-blown rose. 
 And could not a pladaw do duty for a blonde beaut}-, 
 and a graiden for a brunette"? A few such words, well 
 chosen, would be an immense boon on the slopes of 
 Parnassus, — a boon to all the poets, excepting Mr. 
 Browning, who finds an echo to every part of speech 
 in the language, and as many as he desires. 
 
 ABSENCE OF MIND. 
 
 ' Some people like lizards, but there is too much 
 affectation about the lizard to make him altogether 
 admirable. In the first place, his laborious assump- 
 tion of a thoughtfiil demeanour. Pretending to be 
 abstracted in deepest cogitation, he wUl remain mo- 
 tionless on vour wall for the hour together : and I 
 deny, with "Christopher North," that any man has a 
 right " to leave his carcase in a room without :he mind " 
 (or without appearing to have the mind) " :1— : _;long3 
 
 tolL"' Mr. P. ? ; : = In My L-dian Garicn.- 
 
 * * 
 
 It had occurred :o Tr.e rh2.t lizards m:ght te
 
 I06 PATCHWORK. 
 
 listening intently — sensible to sounds altogether in- 
 audible to our dull ears. How well Bernard Palissy has 
 given them on his quaint reptile dishes, to say nothing 
 of the bronze paper-weights to be bought in Rome. 
 
 A landed proprietor, a kind and sympathizing 
 person, but at the same time curiously absent-minded, 
 called on a tenant to condole on the death of a 
 valuable cow — a very valuable cow. The cause of 
 the misfortune had been enveloped in mystery. The 
 farmer began a long-winded history of the untoward 
 event, his landlord soon going off into the clouds. The 
 last words of the narrative were, ' And, can you believe 
 it, my Lord ? when we opened her, we found she had 
 been choked by a large turnip that was sticking in her 
 gullet.' At this point the sympathetic but absent- 
 minded landlord woke up, and said, in rather a con- 
 gratulatory tone of voice too, ' Ah, yes, and so you got 
 your turnip.' 
 
 Speaking of absence of mind, Samuel Rogers said 
 that his old friend Maltby, the brother of the Bishop, 
 was a very absent man. ' One day at Paris, in the 
 Louvre, we were looking at the pictures, when a lad/ 
 entered who spoke to me, and kept me some minutes 
 in conversation. On rejoining Maltby, I said, " That 
 
 was Mrs. ; we had not met for so long that she had 
 
 almost forgotten me, and asked me if my name was
 
 PATCHWORK. 107 
 
 "Rogers." Maltby, still looking at the pictures, said, 
 « And was it .? ' " 
 
 A certain old Scottish divine was singularly absent- 
 minded. One day strolling with a pupil in the fields 
 near Edinburgh, and reading a book, he walked up 
 against a cow that was grazing. He took off his hat 
 to the animal and said, gravely, ' I beg your pardon, 
 madam.' The pupil said, ' It is not a lady, sir, it is a 
 cow.' The next day he was in Princes Street, and 
 happened to come against a lady, and immediately 
 exclaimed, ' Ah, there you are again, you beast.' 
 
 A hospitable but absent-minded gentleman was 
 dining out where the dinner was anything but good, 
 and for the moment, forgetting where he was, and 
 fancying he was in his own house, he began to apolo- 
 gize for the wretchedness of the repast. 
 
 SCOTTISH METAPHYSICS. 
 Sydney Smith said that he overheard a young lady 
 of his acquaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, ejtclaim 
 in a sudden pause of the music, ' What you say, my 
 
 lord, is very true of love in the aibstract, but ' 
 
 Here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the 
 rest was lost.
 
 I08 PATCHWORK. 
 
 You see the Scots are very metaphysical. They 
 even make love meta,physically ! It was the Rev. S. 
 Smith who furnished the following definition : — 
 
 ' When one man is talking to another, who does 
 not understand him, and when he that is talking does 
 not understand himself, why, you know, these are 
 metaphysics.' 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOR TO JOHN EVELYN. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, — I am in some disorder by reason of the 
 death of a little child of mine. A boy that lately 
 made us very glad, but now he rejoices in his little 
 orbe, while we sigh, and think, and long to be as safe 
 as he is.' 
 
 INFANCY. 
 
 ' The human infant is a picture of such deformity, 
 weakness, nakedness, and helpless distress, as is not to 
 be found among the home-born animals of this world. 
 The chicken has its birth from no sin, and therefore 
 comes forth in beauty; it runs and pecks as soon as its 
 shell is broken. The calf and the lamb go both to 
 play as soon as the dam is delivered of them. They 
 are pleased with themselves, and please the eye that 
 beholds their frolicsome state and beauteous clothing ; 
 whilst the babe newly born of a woman, that is to
 
 PATCHWORK. 109 
 
 have an upright form, and view the heavens, and 
 worship the God that made it; lies for months in 
 gross ignorance, weakness, and impurity, as sad a 
 spectacle when he first breathes the life of this world, 
 as when, in the agonies of death, he breathes his last.' 
 
 Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471). 
 
 A SLEEPLESS NIGHT. 
 
 A young fellow, an Irishman, in the Marshalsea 
 prison, the last thing, as he dropt off to sleep at night, 
 having seen his companion brushing his teeth, and 
 then, on awaking in the morning, seeing him again at 
 the same work, exclaimed ' Och, a weary night ye 
 must have had of it, Mr. Fitzgerald.' 
 
 A THEISM. 
 
 ' The Emperor Tiberius was one of the ablest men 
 who ever sat on a throne. His State Papers, if we 
 may use the term, are singularly luminous and 
 masterly. Yet it was the Emperor Tiberius, the 
 world's undisputed master, who thus wrote to the 
 Senate : — ■" May all the gods and goddesses, if there 
 be any, damn me worse than I am damned already, 
 if I know what to write to you." ' 
 
 •The Atheistic Life,' by Rev. T. B. Brown.
 
 no PATCHWORK. 
 
 I quote this passage in ignorance of the context, 
 but, it is quite possible that Tiberius may have 
 written in a moment of extreme irritabihty or de- 
 pression ; such as might be occasioned by even a 
 passing aihnent. 
 
 THE MAID OF ATHENS. 
 
 An admirer of Lord Byron wrote to Mrs. Black 
 (the ' Maid of Athens ' ), after she had grown old, for 
 her autograph, and a lock of her ' tresses unconfined,' 
 with neither of which requests she could possibly 
 comply, as she had never learnt to write, and had 
 no hair left. 
 
 AUTOGRAPHS. 
 
 There are a good many autograph books, and 
 there are autographs of many different kinds — Mr. 
 Thomas Hood describes several of them ; of one he 
 says :— 'A friend of mine possesses an autograph — 
 " Remember Jim Hoskins " — done with a red-hot 
 poker on the back kitchen door' — and then he 
 adds : ' This, however, is an awkward autograph to 
 bind 7:fi.'
 
 PATCHWORK. 1 1 1 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 ' We are accustomed to hear the South of Italy 
 spoken of as a beautiful country; its mountain forms 
 are graceful above others, its sea bays exquisite in 
 outline and hue ; but it is only beautiful in superficial 
 aspect. In closer detail it is wild and melancholy. 
 Its forests are sombre-leaved, labyrinth-stemmed ; the 
 carubbe, the olive, laurel, and ilex are alike in that 
 strange feverish twisting of their branches, as if in 
 spasms of half-human pain. Avernus forests ; one 
 fears to break their boughs, lest they should cry to us 
 from the rents : the rocks they shade are of ashes, or 
 thrice-molten lava : iron sponge, whose every pore 
 has been filled with fire. Silent villages, earthquake- 
 shaken, without commerce, without industry, without 
 knowledge, without hope, gleam in white ruin from 
 hill-side to hillside ; far-winding wrecks of immemorial 
 walls surround the dust of cities long forsaken ; the 
 mountain streams moan through the cold arches of their 
 foundations, green with weed, and rage over the heaps 
 of their fallen towers. Far above, in thunder-blue 
 serration, stand the eternal edges of the angry 
 Apennine, dark with rolling impendence of volcanic 
 
 cloud.' John Ruskin.
 
 112 PATCHWORK. 
 
 PICTURE POEMS FOR YOUNG FOLK'S. 
 
 ' Is the yellow bird dead ? 
 
 Lay your dear little head 
 Close, close to my heart, and weep, precious one, 
 there : 
 
 ' While your beautiful hair 
 On my bosom lies light, like a sun-lighted cloud ; 
 
 No, you need not keep still, 
 
 You may sob as you will ; 
 There is some little comfort in crying aloud. 
 
 ' But the days they must come 
 
 When your grief will be dumb : 
 Grown women, like me, must take care how they cry, 
 
 You will learn, by-and-bye ; 
 'Tis a womanly art to hide pain out of sight, 
 
 To look round with a smile, 
 
 Tho' your heart aches the while, 
 And to keep back your tears till you've blown out the 
 light.' 
 
 Marian Douglas. 
 
 TALL TALKING. 
 
 A gentleman from Kentucky boasted that he could 
 ' jump higher, and stay up /onger— dive deeper, afid 
 come up dryer— than any other man in Kentuck.'
 
 PATCHWORK. 113 
 
 BORES. 
 
 I have a friend who is a most respectable man, and 
 a most intolerable Bore. He is a considerable talker, 
 but, at the same time, his conversation is curiously 
 elementary : he will tell you, and half a dozen times 
 over for that matter, that coalscuttles are hard and 
 that feather-beds are soft, and he will get quite excited 
 about it. 
 
 Then he is a moralist : he has quite made up his —   
 what shall we call it ? — his mind that honesty is the 
 best policy : he is a sagacious man too — a man of the 
 world — for he maintains, earnestly — strenuously (he 
 takes off his coat to it, as it were) that a bird in the 
 hand is worth two birds in the bush : and he does so 
 as if he were in the process of making the discovery. 
 It is impossible to get a fresh idea into his head ; you 
 try to do so, and you feel you might quite as well play 
 jigs to a milestone. A young friend, who chanced to 
 be in a cynical mood, remarked of him that his talk 
 was as dull as ditch water, without the animalculze. 
 People complain of Club Bores and such like, but what 
 are Club Bores ? You need not go to your Club, but 
 here he is. Yes, commend me to your domestic Bore ! 
   — that being who walks in with the breakfast urn, and 
 only leaves you with his flat candlestick. 
 
 My brother ! have you ever been afflicted by a 
 Bore ? If so, go forth, refresh yourself with Charles 
 
 I
 
 I 14 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Dickens' essay on the species, and you will feel the 
 better for it. Among many other pleasant things he 
 says : ' Our Bore is admitted on all hands to be a good- 
 hearted man. He may put fifty people out of temper, 
 but he keeps his own. He preserves a sickly, stolid 
 smile upon his face when other faces are ruffled by the 
 perfection he has attained in his art, and has an equable 
 voice which never travels out of one key, or rises 
 above one pitch. His manner is a manner of tranquil 
 interest. None of his opinions are startling. Among 
 his deepest rooted convictions, it may be mentioned 
 that he considers the air of England damp, and holds 
 that our lively neighbours— he always calls the French 
 our lively neighbours — -have the advantage of us in 
 that particular. Nevertheless, he is unable to forget 
 that John Bull is John Bull all the world over, and 
 that England with all her faults is England still' . . . 
 
 Do you remember what Ben Jonson said about 
 Bores ? He said * a tedious person is one a man would 
 leap a steeple from.' But there are worse people than 
 Bores. Commend me, I say, to your regular Old Man 
 of the Sea, who may be spiteful, or conceited, or con- 
 sequential, as well as prosy, and perhaps all four. 
 ' Some men have souls so dull and stupid that they 
 serve for little else than to keep their bodies from 
 putrefaction.' 
 
 I only wish we could treat our Bores as we treat 
 our worst criminals — quench them for the public good ;
 
 PATCHWORK. I I 5 
 
 and I do not see why we should not do so. Surely 
 there is such a thing as Free Will. The malefactor, 
 whether he belong to a low type of humanity or not, 
 and a good many belong to a very low type indeed, 
 ought to have known better ; he has committed murder, 
 it is his own fault, and he must be held responsible. 
 String him up ! Even supposing there is no such 
 thing as Free Will, surely we should be equally 
 justified. The Bore might, and probably would, in a 
 stolid, boring sort of way, remonstrate that he could 
 not help it, but our reply would be, ' You have bored 
 us to death, you waste our time, your opinions are 
 antiquated, you converse prosily on previously ex- 
 hausted subjects, you wear your hearers out, and you 
 are altogether unendurable — you are of no use to any- 
 body, and the comfort of the public is of more import- 
 ance than the very limited chance of your moral 
 renovation. You offend because you cannot help 
 offending — we shall punish you because we cannot 
 help punishing. Our aim is the public good— String 
 HIM UP ! 
 
 RICHARD B. SHERIDAN. 
 (1751-1816). 
 
 By all accounts R. B. Sheridan must have been 
 a delightfully easy-going fellow. I have heard that 
 Mr. and Mrs. Creevy happened to be dining with the 
 
 I 2
 
 Il6 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Sheridans, and, after dinner, Sheridan seemed preoc- 
 cupied ; and when Creevy rallied him about it, Sheridan 
 said, ' The fact is, Creevy, that just before your carriage 
 drove up to our door a letter had arrived, acquainting 
 Mrs. Sheridan and me that a sum of money had been 
 left us. We had just time to agree, solemnly agree, 
 that we would not breathe a syllable about it to any- 
 one ; and it is only my certain and entire conviction 
 that Mrs. Sheridan upstairs is at this moment telling 
 the good news to Mrs. Creevy which justifies me in 
 telling it to you down here.' On another occasion 
 Sheridan was rather bored by the society of a lady 
 who wished to go out walking with him ; but a lucky 
 shower of rain coming on, they were obliged to remain 
 in doors, so he escaped the infliction. After a short 
 time, however, it began to clear up, and Sheridan 
 stole to the door to escape ; on this the lady also got 
 up, saying, ' Ah, I see there's a little blue sky now.' 
 ' Yes, there is,' said Sheridan ; ' enough for one, but not 
 enough for two.' 
 
 REGRET. 
 
 ' Mild is the parting year, and sweet 
 The odour of the falling spray ; 
 
 Life passes on more rudely fleet. 
 And balmless is its closing day.
 
 PATCHWORK. 117 
 
 I wait its close, I court its gloom, 
 But mourn that never must there fall 
 
 Or on my breast or on my tomb 
 The tear that would have sooth'd it all.' 
 
 W. S. Landor (1775 — 1SD4). 
 
 A PORTRAIT BY VELASQUEZ. 
 
 ' A dwarf seated in a heap on the ground, with a 
 book on his knee, and an inkstand at his feet. 
 
 * There were differences among Philip's dwarfs 
 which Velasquez perceived with his keen, artistic in- 
 telligence, and profound observation of mankind ; one 
 of them was merely silly, another scowled hatred and 
 envy from under his beetling brows, but this one whose 
 image is here before us bears the pain of a nobler suffer- 
 ing. O, sad and thoughtful face, looking out upon us 
 from the serious canvas of \'elas4uez, though the grave 
 has closed upon thee for two hundred years, we know 
 what were thy miseries I To be the butt of idle princes 
 and courtiers, and, worse than that, to be treated by the 
 most beautiful women as a thing that could have no 
 passion, to be admitted to an intimacy which ^\•as but 
 the negation of thy manhood, to have ridicule for th)- 
 portion, and buffoonery for thy vocation, and yet to be 
 at the same time fully conscious of an inward human 
 dignity, continually outraged, of a capacity for learning 
 
 and for thought ! ' Mr. Philip G. Haraerton.
 
 Il8 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' Railing at a man for his bodily infirmities is like 
 beating a cripple with his own crutches.' 
 
 Thomas Fuller. 
 
 PLEAD FOR ME. 
 
 ' Stern Reason is to judgment come, 
 Array'd in all her forms of gloom ; 
 Wilt thou, my advocate, be dumb ? 
 No, radiant angel, speak and say 
 Why I did cast the world away, 
 
 ' Why I have persevered to shun 
 The common path that others run, 
 And on a strange road journeyed on, 
 Heedless alike of wealth and power, 
 Of glory's crown and pleasure's flower. 
 
 ' These once indeed seemed Beings Divine; 
 And they, perchance, heard vows of mine, 
 And saw my offerings on their shrine ; 
 But careless gifts are seldom prized, 
 And mine were worthily despised. 
 
 ' So with a weary heart I swore 
 To seek their altar- stone no more ; 
 And gave my spirit to adore 
 
 Thee, ever present, phantom-thing ; 
 My slave, my comrade, and my King! 
 
 Emily Bronte (1818— 1S48).
 
 PATCHWORK. 119 
 
 FAMIL Y PR A VERS. 
 
 Lady P used to tell a story of a household who 
 
 were pious and proper, and had rather an absurd way 
 of showing it. After prayers the male servants left the 
 dining-room by one door, and the female servants by 
 another. ' But, you know,' added she, ' when they got 
 to the bottoms of their respective staircases ' (which 
 met) 'the kissin' was like the crackin' o' whips.' Lady 
 P lisped, which made the story funnier. 
 
 SOCIETY IN LONDON. 
 
 A distinguished diplomatist from the United States 
 of America, a very genial and social being, soon after 
 his arrival in London made the round of the sights, 
 Madame Tussaud 's among the number. ' And what 
 do you think of our wax-work ? ' said a friend. ' Well,' 
 replied the General, ' it struck me as being very like 
 any ordinary English party.' 
 
 UNBECOMING CURIOSITY. 
 
 A tradesman, to whom Talleyrand was indebted 
 a considerable sum, having made many unsuccessful 
 efforts to obtain payment, planted himself in ihe. parte 
 cochere of the Prince's hotel, and resolutely accosted
 
 I20 PATCHWORK. 
 
 him as he was entering his carriage. ' Que me voulez- 
 voiis, monsieur?' asked the minister. ' Monsieur, je 
 veux seulement savoir qiiand son Excellence voudrait 
 bien me payer "i ' ' Vous etes bien curieux,' observed 
 his Excellency, pulling up the window. 
 
 NA TURE. 
 
 ' I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in 
 of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors 
 of cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn rocks 
 on a square mile or two of earth which was green once. 
 The trees look down from the hill-sides and ask each 
 other, as they stand on tiptoe — " What are these people 
 about 1 " And the small herbs at their feet look up and 
 whisper back — " We will go and see." Then the wind 
 steals to them at night, and they go softly with it into 
 the great city, — one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a 
 spout on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over 
 a rich gentleman's bones, and one to a grave without a 
 stone where nothing but a man is buried,— and there 
 they grow, looking down on the generations of men 
 from mouldy roofs, looking up from between the less- 
 trodden pavements, looking out through iron cemetery- 
 railings. 
 
 ' Listen to them, when there is only a light breath 
 stirring, and you will hear them saying to each other — '
 
 TATCHWORK. I 2 I 
 
 " Wait awhile ! " The words run along the telegraph 
 of those narrow green lines that border the roads 
 leading from the city, until they reach the slope of 
 the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to 
 each other, — " Wait awhile ! " 
 
 ' By-and-by the flow of life in the streets ebbs, and 
 the x)ld leafy inhabitants, the smaller tribes always in 
 front — saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, 
 but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great 
 stones gape from each other with the crowding of their 
 roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the 
 granite to find them food. At last the trees take up 
 their solemn line of march, and never rest until they 
 have encamped in the market-place. Wait long 
 enough and you will find an old doting oak hugging a 
 huge worn block in its yellow underground arms ; 
 that was the corner-stone of the State House. O, so 
 patient She is, this imperturbable Nature ! ' 
 
 Dr. O. W. Holmes. 
 
 A LIVELY CHEESE. 
 
 At a friend's house Chailes Lamb was presented with 
 a cheese ; it was a very ripe, not to say a very lively 
 cheese, and, as Lamb was leaving, his friend offered 
 him a piece of paper in which to wrap it, so that he 
 might convey it mere conveniently. ' Thank you.
 
 122 PATCHWORK. 
 
 said Charles, ' but would not several yards of twine 
 be better, and then, you know I could lead it home ? ' 
 
 MR. SAMUEL ROGERS SITTING FOR 
 HIS PORTRAIT. 
 
 It is said that Mr. Rogers once asked the Rev. 
 Sydney Smith's advice as to the position in which he 
 should have his portrait taken t ' Oh,' said Sydney 
 Smith, 'have it taken as if you were at church, in an 
 attitude of devotion, %vWi your coiiiitcjiance in your 
 hat: 
 
 It is almost needless to say that Mr. Rogers was 
 a singularly plain person, but it is not possible that 
 Sydney Smith ever made so unkind or ill-bred a speech 
 to him, or anybody else. 
 
 AN ANONYMOUS LETTER. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Raikes, who published a diary, was 
 pitted with the small-pox, even to the tip of his nose. 
 It seems that he wrote an anonymous, and rather 
 ofifensive letter to Count D'Orsay, and as an additional 
 insult he secured the envelope with a red wafer and 
 stamped it with a thimble. D'Orsay guessed who was 
 the sender, and, soon after happening to meet Raikes, 
 he mildly counselled him thus — 'The next time, man
 
 PATCHWORK. 12 
 
 J 
 
 cher, you write anyone an anonymous letter and 
 would rather not be found out, do not seal it with the 
 tip of your nose.' 
 
 MR. WHO ? 
 ' That's empire, that which I can give away.' 
 
 Charles Lamb said the greatest pleasure he knew 
 was to do a good action by stealth, and to have it 
 found out by accident. 
 
 There is nothing exciting in the following paper, 
 indeed it is prosy enough, so let no one read it unless 
 he takes pleasure in hearing of a kindly action. 
 
 On a certain occasion, with an impulse of singular 
 magnanimity, I had abstained from bidding against 
 the British Museum for a little book, on the pos- 
 session of which I had much set my heart. When 
 the prize was irrevocably gone I lamented my loss, 
 and cursed my magnanimity. I cursed it loudly and 
 frequently, for as the volume was almost unique, there 
 seemed to be no chance of my ever meeting with 
 another copy. It was a book for which I had long 
 pined, it would have exactly filled a most important 
 gap in my slender collection ; indeed, its possession 
 would have considerably enhanced the value of all the 
 books on a certain short shelf 'What,' groaned I, 
 as Job himself might have groaned, ' what is the use
 
 1 24 PATCHWORK. 
 
 of having these other books if 1 haven't that particular 
 
 book?' 
 
 ' That little [volume] unpossessed, 
 Corrodes and cankers all the rest.' 
 
 Yes, it is too provoking — ' Life is a burthen.' 
 Some time afterward?, and by the merest accident, 
 I heard of another copy of the same book; there are 
 not four copies known, and, strange to say, this copy 
 belonged to a man I knew, an opulent being, and a 
 collector of books. All this was disheartening, for if 
 he was rich, I felt sure he would be selfish ; and if he 
 was a collector, would he not be infinitely more selfish? 
 However, after pondering, I may say brooding over 
 the matter for some weeks, 1, at last, made up my 
 mind. 
 
 I determined to employ an agent, one who would 
 have my welfare at heart. He should negotiate an 
 exchange, or a purchase. The agent I selected was a 
 very wily fellow, as sagacious as a serpent. When I 
 proposed my plan to him, // vie 7-it an ncz, he knew 
 there would not be the remotest chance of my getting 
 the book, its possessor being himself a collector ; that 
 the very fact of my wishing to possess it would make 
 ' the other party ' reluctant to disgorge it. Alas ! I 
 feared my agent was right, for were not those exactly 
 my own sentiments as regarded my brother collectors ? 
 However, the application was made ; and, would you 
 believe it, astounding as it may seem to any collector
 
 PATCHWORK. 125 
 
 who chances to read this httle paper, the very next day 
 my acquaintance, I may now venture to call him my 
 friend, walked into my agent's place of business, with 
 the book in his pocket. I ought to say that my friend is 
 a learned man, a cultivated man, and he understood as 
 well as I did the peculiar interest that attached to the 
 book with which he was parting. 
 
 The title of the book is 'England's Helicon,' ist 
 edition, 1600, and my friend's name and address are — 
 why may not I tell you my friend's name and address ? 
 Charles Lamb said the greatest pleasure he knew was 
 to do a good action by stealth and to have it found 
 out by accident. I think my friend knows a greater 
 pleasure — he is quite satisfied to do a kindness, 
 and then to have done with it. I know, however, he 
 agrees with Charles Lamb in a great many things. 
 
 MR. DOO ! 
 
 'On the 15th instant, at his residence in Eaton 
 Square, deeply regretted by all who knew him, John 
 Doo, Esquire, F.S.A., F.G.S., F.R.G.S., J. P., in the 
 80th year of his age. Friends are requested ' &c. 
 
 Apropos of this announcement, and as a pendant 
 to what you have just been reading, I must tell you 
 a long history concerning another little Book, also a 
 volume of extraordinary rarity, of which, at one time,
 
 126 PATCHWORK. 
 
 I very greatly coveted the possession. It had the 
 scarce title-page, you know, without the date ; there is 
 only one other copy known with this peculiarity, and 
 that copy is locked up at Sion College. 
 
 This curious little book is intimately connected, in 
 my mind, with the above-named Mr. Doo. He was 
 an old gentleman whom I frequently met at the club. 
 I fancy I can see him now ; he had a way of standing 
 before the fire with a pinch of snuff between his 
 fingers and the ' Art Journal ' in the other hand ; he 
 had a slow — a deliberate cough ; and also a turn-up 
 nose, round watery eyes, with red rims, and white 
 hair and whiskers, and he looked for all the world 
 exactly like a very old bull-dog m a snow-storm. Mr. 
 Doo was a pompous old patron of the Fine Arts, a 
 person whose conversation was so empt)', and so 
 extremely fatiguing that his fellow creatures, myself 
 included, gave him a wide berth ; though he had once 
 beguiled me into going to see his pictures in Eaton 
 Square, and had often bored me to go and see them 
 again, and, as he phrased it, to ' overhaul his port- 
 folios.' 
 
 One day, while he was holding forth on Art and 
 art matters generally, and the fountains in Trafalgar 
 Square in particular, and I was meditating how it 
 would be possible for me to give him the slip, he 
 chanced to mention the title of the rare little book at 
 Sion College. I instantly pricked up my ears. But
 
 PATCHWORK. 127 
 
 when he casually remarked that he possessed a copy 
 of it, I was indeed surprised, and instantly became 
 interested in everything concerning him— his collec- 
 tion — his conversation — and even his cough ! I am 
 ashamed, too, to confess it, but from that moment I 
 was more attentive to him than I had hitherto been, 
 I even sought him out and listened respectfully while 
 he bragged of his influence in the Art world ; I even 
 stultified myself by defending him behind his back. 
 And now when we talked our converse somehow 
 always got round to the rare little book, without the 
 date on the title. 
 
 One day, it was a memorable day for me, Mr. Doo 
 cleared his throat, and said, in his hum-drum, comfor- 
 table sort of tone, ' I have been thinking about that 
 shabby little old book of mine, it is tossing about 
 somewhere in my town house ; I begin to think it's 
 quite wrong for me to keep the little fellow all to 
 myself, I'm not worthy of such a treasure, it's much 
 more in your way, now,' and then he paid me one or 
 two rancid compliments, which I am ashamed to 
 detail here, and which I am more ashamed to have 
 half- swallowed then. ' I wish,' said he, ' you would 
 name a day, and come to Eaton Square, and have a 
 good overhauling of my portfolios,' and he added, 
 'and then, you know, about that book, now I really 
 don't think I ought to keep such an interesting little 
 gem all to myself. When you come I shall just put it
 
 128 PATCHWORK. 
 
 on the corner of the table, and you'll slip it into your 
 pocket as you leave, without saying anything, you 
 know, and that will be all about it, eh? It's quite a 
 gem — you know it has got the scarce title without 
 the date, etc' Conceive my feelings ! I at once, there 
 and then, fixed a day — I nailed him to it — Yes, 'to- 
 morrow at eleven o'clock' would suit me down to the 
 ground ; and the next morning, punctual to the minute, 
 I found myself in his library. 
 
 Of course, when I entered, I -naturally looked at 
 all the corners of the tables — 1 did not see the book, 
 but I quite made up my mind that it would be forth- 
 coming at the right time, and I was cheerful, not to 
 say festive. We again went through all his pictures, this 
 time we went through them thoroughly — his Haydons, 
 his Hiltons, his Fuselis (all masters that I loathe), and 
 a smirking Romney or two — very flagrant specimens 
 of what may be called the '■roguish school,' and he 
 had a long, long history about each, and all to his Own 
 glorification. At length I began to grotv rather weary, 
 a little jaded, in fact, for there was no end to the 
 stories, and no mention of the precious little book. At 
 last, to my horror, he brought out his 'folios' — they 
 were a caution to snakes/ heaps and heaps of seven- 
 teenth-century prints, worn-out impressions after Golt- 
 zius, and the schools of M. Angelo and Rubens, the 
 sort of rubbish one used to see exposed for sale in 
 an old umbrella in the New Cut. I feigned as deep
 
 PATCHWORK. 129 
 
 an interest in them as I could, but my nerves were 
 fast giving way under all this strain. I was growing 
 very weary, — twelve o'clock had struck, — one o'clock 
 had struck, — I wish'dOld Doo at the deuce, and I began 
 to perceive an ominous something in his manner that 
 made me suspect he was beginning to have the same 
 .sort of feeling about myself. It was close on two o'clock, 
 and as we turned over the last Goltzius 1 nearly yawned 
 in his face. I began to despair. 1 murmured some- 
 thing about its being ' time to go,' and of 'an appoint- 
 ment at the Zoological Gardens,' — I thanked him — I 
 spoke with effusion of his ' extreme kindness,' I begged 
 he would excuse me — ' I must be off, — due at the monkey 
 house at two o'clock ' — not a word about my precious 
 little book ! ' But you have not yet seen my folio of 
 Everdingen's,' said Old Doo, with a grin. ' Oh, hang 
 your Everdingens,' I mentally ejaculated, ' where's my 
 book ? ' — not a word was uttered about it. I a^ain said, 
 ' I fear I must go,' and again I glanced at all the corners 
 of all the tables — I think Old Doo knew I was doing so 
 — we shook hands — I moved to go — I went, but as I had 
 my hand on the handle of the door I turned round, 
 and with a forced, and, I daresay^ a cadaverous smile, 
 I said, ' By the by, Mr. Doo ' (just as if it was 
 occurring to me now for the first time), ' 1 haven't seen 
 that little old book of yours.' ' Oh !' said Doo, in his 
 abominably deliberate way, ' the book, eh ! Ah, yes, I've 
 been considering about that shabby little fellow ; yes, 
 
 K
 
 1 30 PATCHWORK. 
 
 he is a gem, isn't he ? and really, I don't kno:v, but 
 the fact is, you see, I think I ought to consult my 
 relations ' (he was close on seventy years of age !) 
 ' before I proceed further in the matter, but I've got 
 my will to make, you know. It has the scarce title, 
 eh ! — good morning.' 
 
 I never felt in such a rage in my life, and I nearly 
 bawled out, ' You and your relatives may go to ' (any 
 where you like) ' sir, for aught I care, and be hanged 
 to you.' I was furious, I felt I had been so completely 
 bamboozled and made such an utter fool of, but I did 
 stifle my wrath, and I got out of the room and out of 
 the house as quickly as I could. 
 
 All this occurred several years ago, and I have 
 thought much about it ever since, and to this day I 
 am in doubt as to what the old villam's exact intentions 
 were ; but I am inclined to think it was from begin- 
 ning to end an artfully devised scheme to humiliate 
 me — a plot carried out with deliberate malice and 
 infinite cunning. On my soul, I believe he had never 
 possessed the book at all, but I shall go to the sale of 
 his library ; and, only think too — he was nearly seventy 
 years of age at the time ! 
 
 What a malicious old cus' ! if ever I meet him in a 
 spirit world, my spiritual finger and thumb shall tweak 
 his spiritual pug-nose.
 
 PATCHWORK. I 3 I 
 
 A DELICIOUS PICTURE. 
 
 ' 'Twas in the road betwixt A'ismes and Lunel, where 
 there is the best Muscatto 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 pre- 
 paring for a carousal. 
 
 ' My mule made a dead point — " 'Tis the fife and 
 tambourin," said I—" I will never 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." 
 
 ' A sun-burnt daughter of Labour rose up from the 
 groupe to meet me, as I advanced towards them ; her 
 hair, which was of a dark chestnut approaching rather 
 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 1, taking hold of both of them. . . . 
 " We could not have done without you," said she, letting 
 go one hand, with self-taught politeness, leading me 
 up with the other. 
 
 '■ A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with 
 a pipe, and to which he had added a tambourin of his 
 own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat 
 upon the bank—" Tie me up this tress, instantly," said 
 Natiette, putting a piece of string into my hand.— It 
 
 K 2
 
 132 PATCHWORK. 
 
 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 tambourin — his 
 pipe followed, 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. 
 
 '" Vhia la joia ! fido7i la tristessa/" the nymphs 
 join'd in unison, and their swains an octave below them. 
 
 ' Viva la joia .' was in Nanette's lips, viva la joia ! 
 was 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 — ' 
 
 Laurence Sterne. 
 
 KX 
 
 A FABLE. 
 ' A little boy had bought a Top, 
 The best in all the toyman's shop ; 
 He made a whip with good eel's-skin : 
 He lash'd the Top, and made it spin ; 
 All the children within call,
 
 PATCHWORK. 133 
 
 And the servants, one and all, 
 
 Stood round to see it and admire. 
 
 At last the Top began to tire, 
 
 He cried out, " Pray don't whip me, Master, 
 
 You whip too hard, — I can't spin faster, 
 
 I can spin quite as well without it." 
 
 The little Boy replied, " I doubt it ; 
 
 I only whip you for your good, 
 
 You were a foolish lump of wood. 
 
 By dint of whipping you were raised 
 
 To see yourself admired and praised, 
 
 And if I left you, you'd remain 
 
 A foolish lump of wood again." ' 
 
 H. Frere (1769-1846X 
 
 *^ The moral is so evident that it is omitted. 
 
 QUAKERS AND BLUE-COAT BOYS. 
 
 The Rev. Sydney Smith wrote thus to Lady 
 Morley : — 
 
 ' Did you say a Quaker Baby ? Impossible ! there 
 is no such thing, there never was : they are always 
 born broad-brimmed, and in full quake . . . Well, all 
 I can say is, I never saw one, and what is still more 
 remarkable I never met with any one who had. Have 
 you heard the report that they are fed on drab- 
 coloured pap ? I have a theory about them and the 
 Blue-Coat Boys.
 
 1 34 PATCHWORK 
 
 ' At a very early age young Quakers disappear, — at 
 a very early age the Blue-Coat Boys are seen, — at the 
 age of 17 or 18 young Quakers are again seen, — at the 
 same age the Blue- Coat Boys disappear. Who has 
 ever heard of a blue coat man ! The thing is utterly un- 
 known in Natural History. Upon what other evidence 
 does the migration of the grub into the aureUa rest ? 
 Dissection would throw great light upon this question : 
 
 and if our friend would receive two boys into his 
 
 house about the time of their changing their coats, great 
 service would be rendered to science.' 
 
 This was Lady Morley's reply : ' I should have said 
 your theory and arguments were perfectly convincing, 
 but I have come across a person who gives me inform- 
 ation which puts us all at sea again. That the Blue- 
 Coat Boy should be the larva of the Quaker in Great 
 Britain is possible, and even probable. The Blue- 
 Coat is an indigenous animal, not so the Quaker ; and 
 now be so good as to give your whole mind to the 
 facts I have to communicate. Sir R. K. Porter has 
 travelled over the whole habitable globe ; he has lived 
 for years in Philadelphia (the natural nest of the 
 Quakers) and yet he has never seen a Quaker baby, 
 and what is new, and most striking, never did he see 
 a Quaker lady in a situation, which gave hope that 
 a Quaker baby might be seen hereafter. This is a 
 stunning fact, and involves the question in such 
 impenetrable mystery as will, I fear, defy even your
 
 PATCHWORK. 135 
 
 sagacity, acuteness, and industry to elucidate it, but let 
 us not despair,' &c., &c. 
 
 This gracious fooling was carried on for some time 
 longer. I believe the Rev. Sydney Smith ended by 
 suggesting that an order should be obtained, through 
 the Secretary of State, for the dissection of a Blue- 
 Coat Boy, as he felt confident that, in doing so, the 
 rudimentary Quaker would be discovered. 
 
 THE MORALS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 It requires a certain capacity to be really good, the 
 goodness of a great many people seems to be a mere 
 incapacity for evil. Perhaps the superior morality of 
 the present day is only an inferior criminality. 
 
 I heard Mr. Thomas Carlyle say something very 
 like the above. 
 
 I know a good sort of man who began by 'going in 
 for ' being spirituel and wicked, and, failing in that, he 
 is now a shining light in a company of respectable, but, 
 as he would then have thought, htun-dricm luminaries. 
 
 MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED 
 WIFE'S SISTER. 
 It is asserted that if the advocates for marriage 
 with a deceased wife's sister ever got the upper hand, 
 they would become so tyrannical that they would 
 make it obligatory on you to marry your deceased 
 wife's sister.
 
 136 PATCHWORK. 
 
 FINE-ART COLLECTORS. 
 
 Your fastidious fine-art collector is often an 
 unhappy wretch. There is no end of mortification 
 in store for him, and he has mainly himself to thank. 
 It is his curse that from having been too credu- 
 lous he ends by becoming over-sceptical, and be- 
 lieves everything that tells against himself and his 
 collection. 
 
 You give your wife a Rose die Barry cup and saucer, 
 which she mightily esteems, and of which you feel she 
 has indeed just reason to be proud. It is exhibited 
 with a good deal of pardonable vanity among your 
 circle of acquaintance. A connoisseur spies it, whips 
 It out of her little cabinet, examines it, praises it, 
 smoothes its surface with his callous thumb, turns it 
 round and round, turns it up, again admires it, and 
 finally points out that, although the paste is all right, 
 the decoration is dubious. You turn for comfort to 
 another, an expert. He insists that the painting is 
 entirely genuine, that your amateur is notoriously 
 ignorant, and does not know ' a hawk from a hand- 
 saw ' ; but that, perhaps as regards the gilding, the less 
 that is said about that the better, and then, horrid 
 idea ! he has a suspicion — only a suspicion, mind — that 
 the saucer did not originally belong to the cup, and 
 you are left in a pleasing state of doubt as to whether
 
 PATCHWORK. 137 
 
 you should reveal your misgivings to your poor little 
 wife. 
 
 The same with your favourite intaglio — a jacinth ; 
 you purchased it as an antique, you paid a fabulous 
 price for it, and yet you were given to understand by 
 the vendor that he was doing you a great favour in 
 letting you have it at all. You show it to a very ex- 
 perienced amateur, who has published a thick book 
 upon the subject, he at once pronounces that it certainly 
 is an antique, and he warmly congratulates you on 
 having secured it ; but, says he, after a pause, ' My dear 
 fellow, what a pity it has been repolished ' (and there- 
 fore spoilt I) and ' dear me,' as if he were making an 
 agreeable and interesting discovery, 'perhaps a little 
 worked upon, and at a comparatively recent date too, 
 but what a charming specimen ! ' Another assures you 
 it is of the renaissance, a capo d'opera, that that par- 
 ticular subject is never found on an antique gem ; while 
 a third insists that it is altogether modern, that he has 
 seen the original (a splendid sard) in a continental 
 museum, in some out-of-the-way corner of the earth, 
 say the museum at Cortona. It is of no use your 
 assuring them that your poor little ring has been pro- 
 nounced genuine at the British Museum ; all the cono- 
 scentt, outside the doors of that building, agree (and 
 this is the only point on which they do agree) in 
 declaring that the Museum is utterly and deplorably 
 ignorant about gems.
 
 138 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Then your superb pen-drawing — a magnificent 
 landscape by Titian ; it appears that, after all, it is 
 not by Titian ; you are a lucky fellow, however, for 
 there is no doubt it is, or rather was, a most important 
 specimen of Dominico Campagnola, at least as far as 
 it can be seen ; for, as another says, it has been a good 
 deal rubbed, and restored, and gone over, so that it is 
 difficult, at first, to say whom it is by. A third does not 
 believe it is even of the sciiola of Campagnola, he has 
 come upon exactly the same composition in the 
 Albertina, a sumptuous silver-point drawing, and he 
 suggests that your drawing is by an adroit copyist of 
 the eighteenth century, whose name is not even 
 known, but whose works, your informant says, are 
 to be found in every collection on the Continent, and 
 are, in fact, as plentiful as blackberries. 
 
 It is much the same with your poor old books. 
 You gave 10/. for, say, the ' Salisbury' edition of the 
 ' Vicar of Wakefield,' and had it bound in morocco, by 
 Bedford ; and your friend, and rival collector, tellsyou 
 he has just secured the same book IN THE ORIGINAL 
 BLUE COB's-paper COVERS, out of a country book- 
 seller's catalogue for eighteen-pence ! ' and altogether 
 a more interesting copy, for that matter,' for, it would 
 appear, his has certain ' cancelled leaves,' which yours 
 does not possess. Indeed, you may esteem yourself 
 lucky if, after all, you do not find out that one of your 
 title-pages is in 'such admirable facsimile as almost
 
 PATCHWORK. 139 
 
 to defy detection.' Heigh ho ! Hark how the poet 
 moralizes on what the miserable collector has to look 
 forward to : — 
 
 ' Then, Richard, then should we sit down, 
 Far from the tumult of this town ; 
 I fond of my well-chosen seat, 
 My pictures, medals, books complete. 
 Or, should we mix our friendly talk, 
 O'er-shaded in that favourite walk 
 Which thy own hand had whilom planted, 
 Both pleased with all we thought we wanted : 
 Yet then, even then, one cross reflection 
 Would spoil thy grove, and my collection : 
 Thy son (and his, ere that) may die. 
 And time some uncouth heir supply ; 
 Who shall for nothing else be known 
 But spoiling all that thou hast done. 
 Who set the twigs shall he remember 
 That is in haste to sell the timber? 
 And what shall of thy goods remain — 
 Except the box that threw the main ? 
 
 Nay, may not time and death remove 
 The dear relations whom I love ? 
 And my coz Tom, or his coz Mary 
 (Who hold the plough, or skim the dairy). 
 My favourite books and pictures sell, 
 To Smart, or Doily by the ell ?
 
 I40 PATCHWORK, 
 
 Those who could never read their grammar, 
 When my dear Volumes touch the hammer, 
 May think books best as richest bound ; 
 My copper medals by the pound 
 May be with learned justice weigh'd ; 
 To turn the balance, Otho's head 
 May be thrown in : and, for the metal, 
 The coin may mend a tinker's kettle,' 
 &c., &c. 
 
 'Alma,' Matthew Prior (1664-1721). 
 
 ' Little children, keep yourselves from idols.' 
 
 MUSIC AND PALY TING. 
 
 Some one remarked of the portrait of the Rev. 
 Holwell Carr (who, tradition declares, was a carping 
 and sceptical art-critic) that it looked as if in the act 
 of saying ' Yes, but the original is in the Borghese 
 Gallery.' I should rather like to see a collection of 
 the portraits of the art-critics of the present day. 
 
 Art-criticism in England is in a very unsatisfactory 
 condition. There is very little which is really sound, 
 and that is the criticism which is least heard of. Then 
 all the art-critics are at odds, and about everything, 
 and this will continue to be the case as long as ' the 
 many-headed beast ' is so indifferent, so presumptuous, 
 and so ignorant. We judge of music by the eye and
 
 PATCHWORK. 141 
 
 painting by the ear. I respect that honest fellow who 
 remarked that Jenny Lind would have been an entirely 
 delightful person — but for her singing. 
 
 FINE- ART COLLECTORS. 
 
 A collector of pictures, going abroad, innocently 
 asked where genuine works by the Old Masters were 
 to be picked up. ' Go to Bologna,' said his friend, 
 confidently. ' Go to Bologna — there are no bad pic- 
 tures in Bologna now, for Lord Blank has just bought 
 them all.' 
 
 RIDDLE. 
 
 Why are the birds unhappy in their nests in the 
 early morning ? 
 
 Because their poor little bills are all over due (dew). 
 
 THEODORE HOOK. 
 
 In Theodore Hook the passion for mischief was 
 inveterate and ineradicable. There is a registering 
 barometer in the hall of the Athen^um Club, close to 
 the door, placed there for the convenience and guidance 
 of members ; and Hook, even after middle life, had a 
 difficulty in passing this instrument without disarrang-
 
 142 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ing it, and thus rendering it an entirely false guide 
 to those who would consult it. He was an impudent 
 fellow, too, for, in his younger days, in the street, he 
 would walk up to any rather pompous, self-satisfied 
 looking gentleman, and^ taking off his hat, say, with a 
 respectful and inquiring air, ' I beg your pardon, sir, 
 but are you anybody in particular ? ' An acquaintance 
 of Douglas Jerrold's once came up to him and said, in 
 an aggrieved tone, ' What is this, Jerrold ? I hear you 
 have been saying my nose is like the ace of clubs.' 
 ' No, I didn't,' said Jerrold, ' but, now that I look at 
 your nose, I see it is very like.' Theodore Hook would 
 have been quite capable of saying this. He was once 
 asked what kind of sport leap-frog was ; and to describe 
 it, he rather irreverently made use of the tuneful names 
 of Stern-hold and Hop-kins. 
 
 LOVE IN THE VALLEY. 
 
 ' Under yonder beech-tree, standing on the green 
 sward, 
 
 Couch'd with her arms behind her little head. 
 Her knees folded up, and her tresses on her bosom. 
 
 Lies my young love, sleeping in the shade. 
 Had I the heart to slide one arm beneath her ! 
 
 Press her dreaming lips as her waist I folded slow, 
 Waking on the instant, she could not but embrace me — 
 
 Ah, would she hold me, and never let me go 1
 
 PATCHWORK. 143 
 
 ' Shy as the squirrel, and wayward as the swallow, 
 
 Swift as the swallow when athwart the western 
 flood, 
 Circleting the surface, he meets his mirror'd winglets, 
 
 Is that dear one in her maiden bud. 
 Shy as the squirrel whose nest is in the pine-tops ; 
 
 Gentle, ah, that she was jealous as the dove ! 
 Full of all the wildness of the woodland creatures, 
 
 Happy in herself is the maiden that I love ! 
 
 ' What can have taught her distrust of all I tell her ? 
 
 Can she truly doubt me when looking on my brows ? 
 Nature never teaches distrust of tender love-tales. 
 
 What can have taught her distrust of all my vows ? 
 No, she does not doubt me ! on a dewy eve-tide 
 
 Whispering together beneath the listening moon, 
 I pray'd till her cheek flush'd, implored till she 
 faltered, 
 
 Flutter'd to my bosom — ah, to fly away so soon ! 
 
 ' When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, 
 
 Tying up her laces, looping up her hair. 
 Often she thinks — "Were this wild thing wedded, 
 
 I should have more love — and much less care." 
 When her mother tends her before the bashful mirror. 
 
 Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, 
 Often she thinks—" Were this wild thing wedded, 
 
 I should lose but one for so many boys and girls."
 
 144 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' Clambering roses peep into her chamber, 
 
 Jasmine and woodbine breathe sweet, sweet, 
 White-neck'd swallows twittering of summer, 
 
 Fill her with balm, and nested peace from head to 
 feet. 
 Ah, will the rose-bough see her lying lonely, 
 
 When the petals fall, and fierce bloom is on the 
 leaves ? 
 Will the autumn garners see her still ungather'd, 
 
 When the fickle swallows forsake the weeping eaves? 
 
 ' When at dawn she wakens, and her fair face gazes 
 
 Out on the weather, thro' the window panes, 
 Beauteous she looks ! like a white water-lily. 
 
 Bursting out of bud on the rippled river plains. 
 When from bed she rises, clothed from neck to ankle 
 
 In her long night-gown, sweet as boughs of May, 
 Beauteous she looks, like a tall garden-lily. 
 
 Pure from the night, and perfect for the day ! 
 
 ' Happy, happy time when the grey star twinkles 
 
 Over the fields, all fresh with blooming dew ; 
 When the cold-cheeked dawn grows ruddy up the 
 twilight, 
 
 And the gold sun wakes, and weds her in the blue. 
 Then when my darling tempts the early breezes, 
 
 She the only star that dies not with the dark ! 
 Powerless to speak all the ardour of my passion 
 
 I catch her little hand as we listen to the lark.
 
 TATCHWORK. 1 45 
 
 ' Shall the birds in vain then, Valentine, their sweet- 
 hearts,   
 
 Season after season, tell a fruitless tale ? 
 Will not the virgin listen to their voices. 
 
 Take the honey'd meaning, wear the bridal veil ? 
 Fears she frosts of winter, fears she the bare branches. 
 
 Waits she the garland of spring for her dower ? 
 Is she a nightingale that will not be nested 
 
 Till the April woodland has built her bridal bower ? 
 
 ' Then come, merry April, with all thy birds and 
 beauties ! 
 With thy crescent brows, and thy flowery, showery 
 glee; 
 With thy budding leafage, and fresh green pastures ; 
 And may thy lustrous crescent grow a honeymoon 
 for me ! 
 Come, merry month of the cuckoo and the violet ! 
 
 Come, weeping loveliness, in all thy blue delight ! 
 Lo ! the nest is ready, let me not languish longer, 
 Bring her to my arms on the first May night.' 
 
 George Meredith. 
 
 ^*, We can picture to ourselves the boy Poet 
 of these charming lines, like Keats, hardly out of his 
 teens.
 
 146 PATCHWORK. 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 (1703-1791). 
 
 I have a very long and curious autograph letter 
 addressed by John Wesley to his wife, ' Dear Molly,' 
 and dated Coleford, Oct 23, 1759. 
 
 It is a curious and most pitiable complaint of her 
 conduct. He remonstrates with her for appropriating 
 his money, and stealing his papers, for lying, and for 
 treating his servants like dogs. In conclusion he says, 
 ' These are the advices which I now give you, in the 
 fear of God, and in tender love to your soul. Nor 
 can I give you a stronger proof that I am your affec- 
 tionate husband.' 
 
 I do not know whether Mrs. Wesley laid this letter 
 to heart, but she had evidently read it very carefully, 
 for she has made autograph notes upon it in three or 
 four places ; for instance, where her husband says her 
 conduct may drive him further off, she has written the 
 word ' imposable^ 
 
 A GOOD REASON. 
 
 A large landed proprietor had been murdered in 
 Ireland, and a car-driver was telling his fare how 
 universally he had been execrated on his estate, when 
 the gentleman naturally enough remarked, ' Then the 
 wonder is that he was not put to death long ago.' ' Och,
 
 rATCHWORK. 147 
 
 your Honour,' said Paddy, ' that's how it is, you 
 know — what's everybody's business is nobody's busi- 
 ness.' 
 
 THE CLIMATE OF IRELAND. 
 
 Irislwtan. — ' Ireland's the finist dimate in the 
 world.' 
 
 Strajiger. — 'Yes, I believe you have very little 
 frost or snow.' 
 
 Irishmati. — ' Oh, plinty, sir, plinty of frost and 
 snow, but frost and snow is not cold in Ireland.' 
 
 (Probably he meant to say not disagreeable.) 
 
 REAL HUMILITY. 
 
 The Vicar met a poor parish girl, who had been in 
 service, and had got married the week before. ' Well, 
 Sally,' said he, ' and how do you like matrimony ? ' 
 She replied, and with exquisite humility, ' I like it 
 very much , sir ' (curtsey). ' It's beautiful, sir ' (curtsey). 
 ' It's too good for a poor girl like me.' 
 
 AN INTRACTABLE BRIDEGROOM AND ONE 
 MORE TRACTABLE. 
 
 A couple presenting themselves to be married, the 
 clergyman objected that the bridegroom was tipsy, and 
 
 L 2
 
 148 PATCHWORK. 
 
 therefore, very properly, refused to perform the cere- 
 mony. A few days afterwards the same thing occurred 
 with the same couple ; whereupon the clergyman gravely 
 expostulated with the bride, and said that they must not 
 present themselves again with the bridegroom in that 
 condition. ' But, sir,' — she naively exclaimed — ' he 
 won't come when he's sober.' 
 
 This could hardly be the bridegroom who when the 
 clergyman said 'Wilt thou have this woman to be thy 
 wedded wife,' unhesitatingly replied — ' In course I will, 
 sir, why I come here a-purpose.' 
 
 THE LADY AND THE CABMAN. 
 
 Lady C , a very agreeable and amiable woman, 
 
 took a cab to the house of a friend ; on alighting she 
 observed that cabby was tipsy. After she had taken 
 the precaution of ringing the bell, she gave him his 
 fare, and said, with severity and reproachfully, ' I have 
 hired many cabs, and this is the first time I have been 
 driven by a tipsy cabman.' This was cabby's emphatic 
 and incisive rejoinder — ' I was never soberer in my life ; 
 it's yoii that have been a-drinkin' — yoii knows you have. 
 You ought to be ashamed o' yourself.' 
 
 Lady C was not sorry that at that moment the 
 
 front door opened.
 
 PATCHWORK. 149 
 
 A LOVER'S MESSAGE. 
 
 ' Ye little nymphs that hourly wait 
 To bring from Ctelia's eyes my fate, 
 Tell her my pain in softest sighs, 
 And gently whisper Strephon dies. 
 But if this won't her pity move, 
 And the coy nymph disdains to love, 
 Tell her, again, 'tis all a lie, 
 And haughty Strephon scorns to die.' 
 
 Earl of Kelhe. 
 
 SPORT. 
 
 ' He had catched a great cold had he had none 
 other clothes to wear than the skin of a bear not yet 
 killed.' 
 
 The other day I tumbled on this passage in Fuller, 
 and here, among the lonely hills, it has set me athink- 
 ing on all the curious vicissitudes of sport, whether it 
 be the pursuit of fishes, or of birds, or of four-footed 
 creatures — including bears. 
 
 Let us suppose, now, that I go a-fishing. I am 
 encouraged to do so by those who are reputed to be 
 weather-wise, but who prove to be cjuite otherwise. 
 My pony takes me in less than half-an-hour to the 
 loch. The wind is in the south. There is enough cf 
 it. I whip the water, I go on whipping it ; but, some-
 
 1 50 PATCHWORK. 
 
 how, I cannot get a rise out of it. The sky is fairly 
 covered. The water is of the right colour, in fact 
 everything seems as favourable for the sport as pos- 
 sible, but, at last the old Gael (not the old Gael who 
 phes the sculls, but the other, the more ancient Gael, 
 who superintends the sport) suggests, ' Maybe there's 
 joost a wee bit thunner in the air.' ' I think he says 
 this, but his vocabulary is so scant, and his accent so 
 individual that 1 can't be certain. Yesterday he had 
 assured me that the sun was too bright. The day 
 before that there was much too little ' wund,' and the 
 day before that, that I had not the proper description 
 of fly — I happened to have a ' Jiare^s lug,' when, of 
 course, I ought to have had a ' coacJnnan.' He now 
 tells me that if I had only brought a ' phantom ' 
 minnow with me, I might have done something, but 
 that, as it is, he fears it is a bad look-out : and then 
 he relates a tantalising anecdote of a certain General 
 Foster who had fished the loch some years before, on 
 just such another day as this, and in just this part of 
 the loch, too, and how he had caught twelve-score 
 trout before luncheon, and not one of them less than 
 a pound and a half. All this time I have been whip- 
 ping away without any result whatever, and I begin to 
 despair, and this being the case I make up my mind 
 that my twelve-score fish shall be secured after lun- 
 cheon, so I fall to. I hate sandwiches without mustard 
 — but, hillo ! — here's a little pat of that excellent butter
 
 PATCHWORK. I 5 I 
 
 — but Where's the knife ? They've forgotten the knife ! 
 So I am obhged to spread my butter with the cork- 
 screw. After luncheon I again whip, whip, whip the 
 water, but without avail, so for exercise, and also 
 because I have nothing better to do, before returning 
 home, I row the two old gentlemen about the loch, and 
 so ends my long day's fishing. 
 
 Then as regards the grouse, or the partridge, or 
 the pheasant, or the capercailzie, or the tom-tit, for 
 it is all one which it is, there are no end of disappoint- 
 ments and humiliations in store for those who pursue 
 them. Let me tell you two little anecdotes on the 
 subject, and they are foolish enough, so I beg that 
 I may not be identified with the hero of either of 
 them. 
 
 A friend of mine had a game- keeper who was an 
 original, and often expressed himself very incisively. 
 One day he was in the cover with a neighbour who in- 
 variably missed everything he aimed at. A pheasant 
 got up, the neighbour blazed away, some feathers flew, 
 and he exclaimed in a voice of natural exultation, ' I 
 hit him that time. Cox, and no mistake.' The man's 
 reply was characteristic : ' Ah, sir, they will fly into 
 it, sometimes.' 
 
 The other story was of a foreigner, rabbit-shooting 
 in the shires, and continually missing his quarry — who 
 complained that the rabbits were so very short in 
 England ! Sportsmen have their troubles, and so
 
 152 PATCHWORK. 
 
 have the ornithologists, and so have the poor birds 
 
 themselves, for that matter. Hearken to the poet 
 
 laureate of 1670 : 
 
 'As callow birds 
 Whose mother's killed in seeking of the prey, 
 Cry in their nest, and think her long away. 
 And at each leaf that stirs, each blast of wind. 
 Gape for the food which they must never find.' 
 
 All that has been previously said, however, is as 
 nothing to the stalking of deer. I was on the hill 
 yesterday, the weather was misty as we left the lodge, 
 it grew worse as we climbed Ben Pityoulish, and it 
 ended in our having to sit two full hours in the drizzle, 
 communing with our own hearts ; during the whole of 
 which time we were subjects of considerable interest to 
 the flies ; at last the mist arose, then we arose also, 
 and got out our glasses and spied for two hours 
 more. 
 
 It would be weariful for me to tell you of all the 
 vicissitudes connected with trying for «. stag, indeed 
 you would lose your patience if I attempted it, but just 
 let us suppose you are on the stalking-ground, and that 
 you have sighted your quarry. The herd consists, say, 
 of ten stags, some are rather small, some are in velvet, 
 and there is a switch head, but one of them is a mag- 
 nificent fellow, a royal, weighing, as near as your 
 stalker can judge, full eighteen stone, and quite clean.
 
 PATCHWORK. 153 
 
 They are ' a wee wust ' of you on the sky line, and 
 there are only a few knobbies, composed of scars and 
 peat hags, between you and them. You are stiffish, 
 for you have been crouching for some hours in a slack 
 behind a humpie, with your feet in a shallow pool ot 
 water, and your person devoured by mosquitoes, but 
 you are now to be rewarded for your masterly inactivity; 
 yes, the hour for action is at hand — that is to say, if the 
 wind does not change ; if it shifts, or as Donald Bean, 
 the stalker, would put it, ' if the wund swirls maybe 
 they'll get a blink o't.' That means if the herd gets 
 your wind you are done for. Luckily there is a shal- 
 lowish burn, and you commence working your way 
 along it, through the ripple, on your hands and knees, 
 for about a quarter of an hour — your stalker is before 
 you, and your second on the stalk is behind you. Your 
 stalker, every now and again, straightens himself, and 
 stops to spy. Your royal is still where he was, just 
 at the edge of a clearing, but three of the herd have 
 moved on, feeding : however, your royal is still there, 
 and improves on nearer acquaintance ; he is over eigh- 
 teen stone, per Bacco, there is no doubt about it, and he 
 has a ^r^ black head with white points ! Will the 
 wind shift ? If it does shift you are digotie cooJi. Just 
 at this moment you hear the croak croak of a pair of 
 ravens over your head, and you esteem it a good omen. 
 Well, the affair is becoming exciting. Your stalker
 
 154 PATCHWORK. 
 
 is getting dreadfully keen, I may say as keen as mustard. 
 He whispers that you are now within some eighty 
 yards of the herd. Your royal is feeding, but he is 
 feeding/rom you. You can't let fly for fear of disturb- 
 ing his haunches, but jou can now count his points. 
 Your stalker slips your rifle out of its case, and reaches 
 it to you ; you cock it — when — all of a sudden — not 
 twenty yards in front of you — ^just above a big blue- 
 stone, you catch the twinkle of a pair of ears — exas- 
 perating sight ! zV z's a ]ii)id ! — a hind that none of you 
 had observed ! She is between you and your quarry, 
 and you know she will give the alarm. She does give 
 the alarm, for off springs the royal (alas now no longer 
 voids), end on, and he and the rest of the herd disappear 
 behind the shoulder of the knobbie in front of you, and 
 you sit down on a stone in collapse. 
 
 So much for your luck. Yes ! that's it — the luck is 
 against you ; if it had not been a hind, it would have 
 been a covey of grouse, or a roe, or a black-cock, and 
 either would have been fatal — yes, your stag would 
 have been equally scared, and as inevitably lost — 
 hang you luck ! 
 
 The day thus described may be considered a fairly 
 successful one. For you did get your stalk, and, tins 
 time, your rifle did not miss fire, and your foot did not 
 slip on a loose stone at the instant of pulling the trigger, 
 or a thousand other contingencies equally condemnable. 
 Yes, it was not so bad, for are you not out day after
 
 PATCHWORK. 155 
 
 day from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M., passing the majority of those 
 hours drenched to the skin, and devoured by the flies, 
 as you sweep the distant corries with your glass, or 
 take a wistful spy at the sanctuary ? 
 
 When after such an expedition you get back to the 
 lodge, and are in cool blood, it might perchance occur 
 to you that after all you have never been much nearer 
 to your stag than you were ere you set out in the 
 morning — that your wife has been almost as near while 
 she sat before her peat fire, with her embroidery in her 
 lap, or her nose in a book. 
 
 And what book shall we give her ? Shall it be 
 some gentle protest against what is, or rather ought 
 to be, going forward on the hill yonder? Is it the 
 music of one whose delight it was, in summer shade, 
 to pipe a simple song for thinking hearts ? We 
 hearken to the old wizard, and lo, we are at once 
 on enchanted ground. He tells us of a forlorn 
 place, where, many and many a year before, a pitiless 
 deed had been done, and he says that to judge 
 from its aspect it would seem as if the spring-time 
 came not there, and nature there seemed willing to 
 decay. How the lovely verses linger in the memory ! 
 Then he approaches that Being who maintains a deep 
 and reverential care for the unoffending creatures whom 
 He loves. And then, with solemn sweetness, he adjures 
 us never to blend our pleasure or our pride with sorrow
 
 1 56 PATCHWORK. 
 
 of the meanest thing that feels. Fair lady, we might 
 give you a worse book than that ! 
 
 As I sit here, beneath a fair sky, and listen to the 
 sound of running waters; the everlasting hills, a shining 
 circle around me, and an abounding ocean of deep 
 purple heather about me, the keen air gives a sting 
 to my blood, and sends it more buoyantly through my 
 veins, and my regenerate spirit recoils from all this 
 cockney babble in mockery of a robust emprise, the 
 vicissitudes and triumphs of which have interested me 
 so long, and given me such genuine delight. 
 
 But may not there be some luckless yet sympa- 
 thetic soul, some tearful jester, some toiler within 
 sound of St. Stephen's big bell, who (a stranger to 
 this noble strath and its enchanting surroundings) 
 may yet be able to extract amusement, I would fain 
 have said solace, from my poor little sketch 1 If so, 
 I thank him, but let him not come here to read it : 
 this is the last spot on God's earth that he should 
 choose. 
 
 Dear reader, if you are such a man, whoever or 
 whatever you may be, I wish you well ; and what better 
 could I desire for you than that you should toss this 
 volume into the kennel, and come and enjoy the 
 sports about which I have so gracelessly jested ?
 
 PATCHWORK. 157 
 
 A DAYS SPORT. 
 
 I believe this was Thomas Hood's account of his 
 friend's day's shooting : ' What he hit is history, and 
 what he missed is mystery '—(/zz J story and my story). 
 
 A STRANGE NOISE. 
 
 Archdeacon M. was calhng on one of his parish- 
 ioners, who suffered grievously from a noise in his 
 head. In reply to his sympathetic inquiries, the 
 sufferer's wife told him that the noise was occasionally 
 ' so bad,' that sometimes she ' thought it must be the 
 people in the next public house ! ' 
 
 A CURIOUS PANACEA. 
 
 A woman who was not a physiologist, and whose 
 husband had some internal malady, said to a friend 
 of mine, ' You see, madam, I gives him a deal of bread 
 and milk. It flies to the part, you know, and acts as a 
 poultice.' 
 
 A BAPTISMAL DIFFICULTY. 
 
 A French priest was baptising an infant ; he had 
 a new livre iVojffice and he could not find the service,
 
 158 PATCHWORK. 
 
 and said, with irritability, ' C'est un enfant tres 
 difficile a baptiser.' 
 
 HEIRS. 
 
 A clergyman catechising a class in a village school, 
 and speaking of their being heirs to the kingdom of 
 heaven, asked a small boy, 'What is an heir ?' S/nall 
 boy : ' A little beastie, like a rabbut.' 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHING DOWN WEST. 
 
 An American newspaper states that a Nevada 
 photographer takes very decided measures for turning 
 out a good portrait. The sitter being in his place, the 
 artist produces a navy revolver, cocks it, and levels 
 it at the sitter's head, and says, ' Now, just you sit 
 perfectly still, and don't move a hair ; put on a calm 
 pleasant expression of countenance, and look right into 
 the muzzle of this revolver, or I'll blow the top of 
 your head off. My reputation as an artist is at 
 stake, and I don't want no nonsense about this 
 picture.' 
 
 SETTLERS. 
 
 An Englishman met a party of American settlers 
 journeying westward, and got into conversation with
 
 PATCHWORK. 1 59 
 
 their leader, a practical man. He said, ' We only take 
 useful people with us. This,' pointing to a man, ' is our 
 joiner ; ' of another, ' this is our blacksmith ; ' of a third, 
 ' this is our baker,' and so on. ' But,' said the Englishman, 
 ' That very old fellow, surely he can't be of much use 
 to you.' ' Oh yes,' says the man, ' he is. That's grand- 
 father ; we shall open our new cemetery with him.' 
 
 EPITAPH ON DENYS ROLLE, OF BICTON. 
 
 ' His earthly part within this tomb doth rest. 
 
 Who kept a court of honour in his breast ; 
 
 Birthe, Beauty, witt, and wisedome sate as Peeres, 
 
 Till Death mistook his virtues for his yeares, 
 
 Or else Heaven envied Earth so rich a treasure. 
 
 Wherein too fine the ware, too scant the measure. 
 
 His mournful wife, her love to show in part. 
 
 This tombe buik here ; a better in her heart. 
 
 Sweet Babe, his hopeful Heyre (Heaven grant this 
 
 boon). 
 Live but so well ; but, oh, dye not so soon.' 
 
 Thomas Fuller (1608-1661). 
 
 INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 ' Our ideas, like the children of our youth, often die 
 before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs
 
 l6o PATCHWORK. 
 
 tx) which we are fast approaching — where, though the 
 brass and marble may remain, the inscriptions are 
 effaced by time and the imagery moulders away.' 
 
 John Locke (1632-1704). 
 
 THE MILLENNIUM IN INVERNESS. 
 
 Miss C , an old spinster lady of Inverness, 
 
 tired of hearing some of her friends continually talking 
 of the Millennium, and thinking, perhaps, they talked 
 nonsense about it, indignantly broke forth one day in 
 these words : ' What for are they always talkin' aboot 
 the Millennium ? I mind when there was a Mil- 
 lennium in Inverness ; if ye met a friend in the street, 
 it was always, " When are ye comin' to my hoos ? — ye 
 maun fust cum to my hoos " — and balls and pairties, and 
 the gentlemen comin' in sae merry after denner— that 
 was a Millennium indeed ! ' 
 
 AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART. 
 
 A gentleman was seated in the stage coach opposite 
 to a young lady who looked delicate, and appeared 
 suffering. When the coach stopped, and the young 
 lady alighted, the gentleman took the opportunity of 
 asking her female attendant if she was consumptive. 
 ' No, sir,' replied her nurse, ' it is her heart that is
 
 PATCHWORK. l6l 
 
 affected.' 'How very sad ! Is it aneurism?' 'Oh, 
 no, sir,' said the woman, ' it is a young Lieutenant in 
 the Royal Navy.' 
 
 SHORT PEOPLE. 
 
 ' Tall men are like tall houses, often poorly furnished 
 in the top story.' 
 
 My dear father was a little man, and a rigid 
 moralist. One day, when I was quite a small child, 
 I was walking with him in London, he leading me by 
 the hand, and we met a Sir Joseph Greensides, a fat- 
 headed old Christian, and a very big man. Sir Joseph 
 stopped, and spoke a few words to my father, and I 
 noticed that my father gazed up at him with a keen 
 expression of distaste. When they parted, my father 
 looked down at me with a sardonic smile, and said (as 
 if he were taking me into his confidence) : ' That's a 
 nice little infant, eh ! ' After a minute, he added, and 
 with energy, ' He is a jobber,' and then said no more. 
 
 I could not have been above seven years old when 
 this happened, yet I have never forgotten it. 1 was 
 afraid of my father, but somehow, even then, it 
 occurred to me that he would not have felt quite so 
 strongly if the old boy had not been quite so big. 
 
 Sir Joseph has long gone over to the majority ; he 
 had a bald head, and large carroty whiskers, which 
 made some people call him Sir Joseph /?^rtfsides, a 
 
 M
 
 1 62 PATCHWORK. 
 
 circumstance hardly worth recording. I ought to 
 add that my excellent father was fully justified in both 
 his remarks. 
 
 BARONETS. 
 
 A man had a title conferred upon him. A cynical 
 friend congratulated him on the honour. ' A knight- 
 hood, eh ? ' ' No,' says he, with dignity, 'a baronetcy.' 
 ' I'm sorry for you,' said his friend. ' Why so ? ' 
 replied the baronet. ' Oh, because if you had been 
 made a knight, you know, at any rate the infamy 
 would have died with you.' 
 
 Apropos of baronets, some people say they know 
 when there is a ' comely careful mousing cat ' in the 
 room. I know a man, a queer creature, who has made 
 up his mind that he hates baronets, and in a similar 
 way he pretends he is instantly aware of the presence 
 of one when he enters a room. 
 
 LOVES LAST MESSAGE. 
 
 ' Merry, merry little stream, 
 
 Tell me, hast thou seen my dear? 
 
 I left him with an azure dream, 
 Calmly sleeping on his bier — 
 But he has fled !
 
 PATCHWORK. 163 
 
 " I passed him in his churchyard bed, 
 A yew is sighing o'er his head, 
 And grass-roots mingle with his hair." 
 ' What doth he there ? 
 O cruel, can he lie alone ? 
 
 Or in the arms of one more dear ? 
 Or hides he in the bower of stone, 
 
 To cause, and kiss away my fear ? 
 
 ' " He doth not speak, he doth not moan- 
 Blind, motionless he lies alone : 
 But ere the grave-snake flesh'd his sting. 
 This one warm tear he bade me bring: 
 And lay it at thy feet 
 Among the daisies sweet." 
 
 ' Moonlight whisperer, summer air. 
 Songster of the groves above. 
 Tell the maiden-rose I wear 
 
 Whether thou hast seen my love. 
 " This night in heaven I saw him lie, 
 Discontented with his bliss ; 
 And on my lips he left this kiss. 
 For thee to taste and then to die." ' 
 
 Thomas Loveli Beddoes (1802-1S49). 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 PATCHWORK. 
 
 STRONG LANGUAGE. 
 
 Oaths are not altogether to be commended, but, at 
 the same time, it has been remarked that nobody can 
 swear with all his heart and soul unless he has a real 
 belief in a special Providence and a future state. 
 
 I was once in a well-filled omnibus, and something 
 occurred which excited the wrath of an elderly gentle- 
 man who sat by the door. He took to swearing at the 
 conductor, and at such a rate that the passengers 
 began to think he would never leave off ; he did, how- 
 ever, at last, and after glaring fiercely about him, he 
 bounced out of the vehicle — stem last. 
 
 There was a meek-looking old lady seated near me, 
 and when he was gone she remarked to me in a low 
 voice, ' / think, sir, that gentleman imist have been 
 an AdmiraU I was struck with the observation, and 
 I now recognise its force. There is no doubt that 
 old Adniifals are, as a body, more or less devout, and 
 it is equally true they are addicted to— what shall I call 
 it ? — to forcible language. 
 
 For instance, there was my father's friend, Admiral 
 
 Sir R K . When I was a child he sometimes 
 
 patted my head, and I stood in great awe of him. He 
 was a most distinguished officer, and the only polished 
 gentleman I can call to mind who swore habitually and 
 lustily in the society of ladies, and that, too, in the most 
 high-bred manner. Sir R , a staunch champion for
 
 PATCHWORK. 165 
 
 church and king, was not an old Admiral of many words, 
 * he did na say muckle, but, oh, he damned bonny ! ' 
 
 Then I have been told that Sir Herbert Taylor 
 once found himself in the presence of that gallant old 
 Admiral, as well as really good man, his Royal master, 
 when he happened to be admonishing his tailor, 
 who had not carried out his sartorial engagements m 
 a satisfactory manner. ' B/ess you to Heaven, sir," 
 shouted his Majesty, and bless your wife, sir, and your 
 blest children, and all your blest family,' and then, 
 having provided for all the tailor's relations, His 
 Majesty, as the Highlander would have described it, 
 "juist stude in ta middle of ta room, and swoor at 
 lairge," during which exercise Sir Herbert discreetly 
 put his helm hard a-port, and withdrew. I am sure 
 the old lady in the omnibus was right. 
 
 Apropos of this style of conversation, it has never 
 been confined to high life. Not long ago I was walk- 
 ing in York Street, Westminster, which used to be the 
 favourite rendezvous of some of the poorest and most 
 abject wretches in all London. I noticed a young 
 woman, with a baby in her arms, standing upon the 
 door-step of a public-house. She was bending over 
 her child, and I was struck with the look of rapture on 
 her homely countenance — that expression of motherly 
 love and joy, than which there is nothing more beauti- 
 ful in nature, and which for the moment seemed to 
 glorify her. She was fondling and talking to it, and
 
 1 66 PATCHWORK 
 
 there was little to object to in the sentiments she ex- 
 pressed, excepting that all her expletives were breaches 
 of the Third Commandment, and her few terms of 
 endearment were so coarse that you would not care 
 that they should be recorded here. It was her ordinary 
 language, she knew no other. We are taught that 
 mortals are answerable for all their idle words — it 
 is not for me to gauge that young person's responsi- 
 bihties. 
 
 In recent hill warfare with the Afreedees, who are 
 human beings not a whit more degraded than the 
 aborigines of Westminster, some of the native popu- 
 lation zealously took our side. On one occasion an 
 officer on duty pointed out to a native sentry a certain 
 black fellow whom he had observed skulking, with 
 others round the fort, evidently with sinister intentions. 
 ' I see him, sar,' said the sentry — 'had two shots at him 
 a'ready, him dam hard to hit, he hardest man to hit 
 I know.' * Oh, you know him, do you ?' said the officer. 
 ' Oh, yes, sar, I know de dam rascal. I been tryin' to 
 shoot him all de week.' 'Well, who is he? What's 
 his name ?' ' Oh, de dam rascal — he my father.' 
 
 Something of the same kind may be said of an 
 elderly South Sea Islander, who was observed peering 
 over a pool in the rocks, and on being asked how he 
 lived, and what he did, he replied, with his very 
 limited command of English, ' Pokin' dam crabs, out 
 dam hole, with dam stick '—an unconscious satire
 
 PATCHWORK 167 
 
 on the scope of English invention in the art of 
 cursing. 
 
 Oaths are occasionally used in the very queerest 
 fashion and on the most incongruous occasions. I 
 have heard of a man anathematising the law of gravi- 
 tation because he had tumbled down and hurt himself. 
 Then Hogg, the Shepherd-Poet, was a touchy man, 
 and after his quarrel with Scott (who never quarrelled 
 with anybody) he wrote Scott a fierce letter, which 
 began, 'Damned Sir,' &c. ; and again, if you turn to 
 that interesting reprint of the first edition of the 
 ' Pilgrim's Progress ' (Mr. Holford has the only, or almost 
 the only, copy of the original known to exist), you will 
 see that John Bunyan describes Christian's path to the 
 valley of the Shadow of Death as being ' Damnably 
 muddy.' 
 
 A citizen of the United States of America, on being 
 admonished for using strong language, thus excused 
 himself : ' You wouldn't say the Lord's Prayer if 
 you'd trod upon the business end of a tin tack.' 
 
 THE GRAVES OF THE COVENANTERS. 
 
 'There are few more interesting episodes in 
 Modern Ecclesiastical History than that of the 
 Scottish Covenanters. But the school in which that 
 episode must be studied is Scotland itself. The
 
 1 68 PATCHWORK. 
 
 caves, and moors, and moss-hags of the Western 
 Lowlands ; the tales, which linger still, of the black 
 charger of Claverhouse, of the strange encounters 
 with the Evil One, of the cry of the plover and peewit 
 round the encampments on the hill-side, are more 
 instructive than many books. The rude gravestones 
 which mark the spots where those were laid who bore 
 testimony to " the covenanted work of reformation," 
 and " Christ's kingly government of His house," bring 
 before us in the most lively, because in the most 
 condensed, authentic, original form, the excited feel- 
 ing of the time, and the most peculiar traits of the 
 religion of the Scottish people. Their independence, 
 their fervour, their fierceness, may have belonged to 
 the age. But hardly out of Scotland could be found 
 their stubborn endurance, their thirst for vengeance, 
 their investment of the narrowest questions of disci- 
 pline and ceremony with the sacredness of universal 
 principles. We almost fancy that we see the 
 survivors of the dead spelling and scooping out their 
 savage rhymes on the simple monuments — each 
 catching from each the epithets, the texts, the names, 
 almost Homeric in the simplicity and the sameness 
 with which they are repeated on those lonely tomb- 
 stones from shore to shore of the Scottish kingdom.' 
 
 Arthur P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster.
 
 PATCHWORK. 169 
 
 CONUNDRUM. 
 
 A. What do you do with your eyes ? 
 
 B. I do not know. 
 
 A. Do not you dot them ? 
 
 B. Oh yes, of course, I dot them. 
 
 A. But you ought not to dot them. 
 
 B. Why not? 
 
 A. Why, because they are capital eyes. 
 
 CHAOS AND THE CREATION. 
 
 Hans Sachs (who Hved 1494-1576) describing 
 Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark that even the cats 
 ran against each other. 
 
 I do not know whether the exigencies of the 
 drama require it, but there is a German play, in 
 which, when the curtain rises, our first parent Adam 
 is discovered crossing the stage — going to be created. 
 
 AN ENGLISH CLERGYMAN. 
 
 The following was a black Austrahan's description 
 of an English clergyman : ' White fellow, belonging 
 to Sunday, wear 'im shirt over trouser, get up in tree, 
 and make long corrobory-bobbery all 'bout debil, 
 debil.'
 
 I/O PATCHWORK. 
 
 AN ENTHUSIAST IN GRAMMAR. 
 
 The good Abbd de Dangeau, when he received the 
 tidings of the disasters of Ramillies and Blenheim, 
 said, as he affectionately laid his hand on his old 
 bureau, ' Come what may, I have safe here three 
 thousand verbs all correctly conjugated.' 
 
 TO HIS SONNE. 
 
 ' Three things thear bee, that prosper all apace. 
 And flourish while they are asunder farr ; 
 
 But on a day, they meet all in a place. 
 
 And when they meet they one another marre. 
 
 ' And they be these ; the Wood, the Weed, the Wagge : 
 The Wood is that that makes the gallowes tree ! 
 
 The Weed is that which strings the hangman's bagge ; 
 The Wagge, my pretty knave, betokens thee. 
 
 'Now marke, dear boy, while these assemble not, 
 Greene springes the tree, hemp growes, the Wagge 
 is wild ; 
 But when they meet it makes the timber rot, 
 It fretts the halter, and it choakes the child. 
 God bless the child ! ' 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618).
 
 PATCHWORK. 171 
 
 HA YDN. 
 
 In setting the Ten Commandments to music, 
 Haydn, the composer, with grim humour, stole a 
 melody for the eighth. 
 
 FORTITUDE AND PIETY. 
 
 'After the robbers' (who had plundered and 
 stripped him) ' were gone, I sat for some time looking 
 around me with amazement and terror. Whichever way 
 I turned, nothing appeared but danger and difficulty. 
 I saw myself in the midst of a vast wilderness, in the 
 depth of the rainy season, naked and alone, surrounded 
 by savage animals, and men still more savage. I was 
 five hundred miles from the nearest European settle- 
 ment. All these circumstances crowded at once 
 upon my recollection, and I confess that my spirits 
 began to fail me. I considered my fate as certain, 
 and that I had no alternative but to lie down and 
 perish. The influence of religion, however, aided and 
 supported me. I reflected that no human prudence or 
 foresight could possibly have averted my present 
 sufferings. I was indeed a stranger in a strange land, 
 yet I was still under the protecting eye of that Provi- 
 dence who has condescended to call Himself the 
 stranger's friend. 
 
 ' At this moment, painful as my reflections were.
 
 1/2 PATCHWORK 
 
 the extraordinary beauty of a small moss in fructifica- 
 tion irresistibly caught my eye. I mention this to show 
 from what trifling circumstances the mind will some- 
 times derive consolation, for though the whole plant 
 was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I 
 could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its 
 roots, leaves and capsula, without admiration. Can that 
 Being, thought I, who planted, watered, and brought to 
 perfection, in this remote part of the world, a thing 
 which appears of so small importance, look with 
 unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of 
 creatures formed after His own image ? Surely not. 
 Reflections like these would not allow me to despair. 
 I started up, and, disregarding both hunger and fatigue, 
 travelled forwards, assured that relief was at hand.' 
 
 Mungo Park (1771-1805). 
 
 And he was not disappointed, for shortly afterwards 
 he reached a village where he found shelter and succour. 
 
 HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 . . . . ' This earthy load 
 Of Death called life, which us from Life doth sever." 
 
 Speaking of Philistinism, Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 says : ' We have not the expression in English ; per- 
 haps we have not the word because we have so much of 
 the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they did not talk of sole- 
 cisms, and here, at the very head-quarters of Goliath,
 
 PATCHWORK. 173 
 
 nobody talks of Philistinism. It means a strong, 
 dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, 
 of the children of light— the would-be remodellers 
 of the old traditional European order, the invokers 
 of reason against custom, the representatives of the 
 modern Spirit in every sphere where it is applic- 
 able. Regarding themselves, with the robust self- 
 confidence natural to reformers, as a chosen people, 
 as children of the light, they regarded the Philistines 
 as humdrum people, slaves to routine, enemies to 
 light, stupid and oppressive; but, at the same time, 
 very strong. . . The born lover of ideas, the born 
 hater of commonplaces, must feel, in this country, 
 that the sky over his head is of brass or iron.' 
 
 It has often struck us that Phihstines are a 
 nuisance, but our dissatisfaction and discouragement 
 goes deeper than Philistinism. We complain that we 
 have been pitched-forked on a planet for which 
 morally and physically we are altogether unsuited, 
 where our existence is a long drawn-out malady, for 
 which there is no certain cure but churchyard mould. 
 Yes, you have only to walk into the street, and you 
 will observe that this consuming care and incurable 
 melancholy is written on every face you meet. We do 
 what we can, we cling to our illusions, we try to forget 
 our disappointments and to dissemble our miseries, 
 and what is the comfort held out to us ? We are as- 
 sured that it is quite an illusion, that we are not miser-
 
 174 PATCHWORK. 
 
 able, we are happy, and ought to be so, that we have 
 been placed on this earth for a wise purpose, by a 
 Power which takes a personal interest in our well- 
 being, that whatever misery and crime there are, are 
 mysteries, and mysteries we cannot fathom, but that all 
 is working for our ultimate welfare ; that the free will 
 accorded to us ' is a kind of natural sovereignty over 
 ourselves, to govern ourselves ; ' in fine, that the worth 
 of our life is to be measured by its activity in the path 
 of duty ; that the measure of its worth is not the joy 
 or misery found in the world, but in the satisfaction 
 that follows free and right activity. All this sounds 
 comforting, and, indeed, we would fain believe it ; and 
 sometimes, when the wind is not in the east, we do 
 believe it : 
 
 ' Ah, yes, when all is thought and said, 
 The heart still overrules the head ; 
 Still what we hope we must believe, 
 And what is given us receive. 
 
 ' Must still believe, for still we hope 
 That in a world of larger scope 
 What here is faithful!}' begun, 
 Will be completed, not undone.' 
 
 And so we continue to look, and look wistfully to that 
 other possible illusion, that shadowy land of promise 
 that far-away country — the Arcadia of the blest, where 
 there will be no worry, no abominable damps, and fogs, 
 and sudden changes of atmosphere, and no bores, and 
 perhaps no Philistines ; and where, at any rate, the
 
 PATCHWORK. 175 
 
 Bohemian and the Phih'stine will lie down peaceably- 
 together, and the lamb will not necessarily lie down 
 inside the lion. 
 
 ' Now, alas, the poor sprite is 
 Imprisoned for some fault of his 
 In a body like a grave — 
 From you he only dares' to crave 
 For his service and his sorrow 
 A smile to-day." 
 
 PHILISTINES AND BOHEMIANS. 
 
 Pope said of Dryden that ' he was not a genteel 
 man, — he was intimate with none but poetical men ;' 
 and it is recorded that Prior, after spending the 
 evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, 
 before he went to bed, would go off and smoke 
 a pipe, and drink a bottle of ale with a common 
 soldier and his wife in Long Acre. This is given as a 
 proof of his propensity for sordid converse ; however, 
 before we condemn Prior, we ought to know some- 
 thing of the scope of the soldier's social gifts. 
 
 I was sitting at the Travellers' with an old acquain- 
 tance, and I chanced to say that the Athencettvt, next 
 door, was ' an excellent club, the best club in London,' 
 and I noticed my friend looked inquiringly-surprised; 
 so I backed my assertion with, ' Yes, you meet such 
 interesting people there ; walk in at 5 o'clock, of any 
 afternoon, and if you want information on Politics
 
 176 PATCHWORK. 
 
 or Art, Science or Literature, there you have 
 the first men in England to give it you.' ' Ah,' said 
 my friend, ' it's all very well if one wants to meet 
 those sorts of fellows, but, you see, one doesn't want 
 to meet 'em.' 
 
 Prior's old soldier would have been quite thrown 
 away on my worthy friend, who, I fancy, must be what 
 is called a Philis title. 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 ' When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat ; 
 Yet fool'd with hope men favour the deceit ; 
 Trust on ; and think to-morrow will repay — 
 To-morrow's falser than the former day; 
 Lies on ; and while it says, we shall be bless'd 
 With some new joys, cuts off what we possess'd. 
 Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again. 
 Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain ; 
 And from the dregs of life think to receive 
 What the first sprightly running would not give. 
 I'm tired with waiting for this chymic gold, 
 Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.' 
 
 John Dryden (1631-1701).
 
 PATCHWORK. 177 
 
 THE FIRST REAL GENTLEMAN. 
 
 ' There have been persons who, being sceptics as 
 to the divine mission of Christ, have taken an un- 
 accountable prejudice to His doctrines, and have been 
 disposed to deny the merit of His character, but this 
 was not the feeling of the great men in the age of 
 Elizabeth (whatever might be their belief). One of 
 them says of Him, with a boldness equal to its piety, 
 
 " The best of men 
 That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer ; 
 A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; 
 The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 
 
 ' This was old honest Decker, and the lines ought 
 to embalm his memory to every one who has a sense 
 either of religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true 
 
 genius.' William Hazlitt. 
 
 THE CNR /ST/ AN REL/G/ON. 
 
 ' The internal evidence of the Christian religion is 
 greater than the external. In the matter of external 
 evidence, other religions compete with the Christian ; 
 but in purity, wisdom, and power of cleansing the 
 human heart, it is alike original and supreme ; one of 
 its greatest characteristics is its opposition to the 
 monster vices of humanity.' sir Philip Francis (1740-iSiS). 
 
 N
 
 178 PATCHWORK. 
 
 THE OLD STOIC. 
 
 ' Riches I hold in Hght esteem, 
 And love I laugh to scorn ; 
 And lust of fame was but a dream 
 That vanished with the morn : 
 
 * And if I pray, the only prayer 
 
 That moves my lips for me 
 Is, " Leave the heart that now I bear, 
 And give me liberty ! " 
 
 * Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 
 
 'Tis all that I implore ; 
 In life and death, a chainless soul. 
 With courage to endure.' 
 
 Emily Bronte (1818-1848). 
 
 ARCHDEACON PA LEY A JESTER. 
 
 Archdeacon Paley, seated at dinner, and annoyed 
 by a draught of air, called out ' Shut this window 
 behind me, and open that lower down, behind one of 
 the curates.' This anecdote might have been told of 
 the Rev. Sydney Smith. The clergy, when they con- 
 descend to jest, have a great advantage over the laity.
 
 PATCHWORK. 179 
 
 WITH A BOOK OF SMALL SKETCHES. 
 
 In days gone by, and year by year 
 
 I gleaned the sketchlets garner'd here : 
 
 Some pains they cost me, much shoe leather, 
 
 Before they all were got together. 
 
 Dear Children, I must flit anon ; 
 
 O guard them kindly when I'm gone. f. l. 
 
 A MOTTO FOR A PAPER-KNIFE. 
 Avia Pieridum peragro loca nuUius ante trita solo. 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 AN EXCUSE FOR DRINKING. 
 ' He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the 
 
 pain of being a man.' Samuel Johnson. 
 
 FIVE MORE EXCUSES. 
 
 Good wine, a friend, or being dry, 
 Or lest we should be, bye and bye — 
 Or any other reason why. 
 
 An American had three reasons for not drinking, 
 and one of them a cogent one : — , 
 
 N 2
 
 l8o PATCHWORK. 
 
 I. — 'I can't drink, for I've just lost a near relative.' 
 2, — (when he was much pressed) ' No, I really can't, 
 
 you know — I'm president of a teetotal society.' 
 
 3. — (when he was much more pressed) ' No, I can't 
 
 indeed — I'm liquor'd up to the bung.' 
 
 A LETTER OF HENRY FIELDING. 
 
 ' On board the Queen of Portugal, Richard Veal, at 
 anchor on the Mother Bank, off Ryde. To the care of 
 the Post-master of Portsmouth — This is my date and y 
 direction. 
 
 July 12 (?), 1754. 
 
 ' Dear Jack, — After receiving that agreeable 10/. (?) 
 from Messrs. Fielding and Co., we weighed on Monday 
 morning, and sailed from Deal to the Westward. Four 
 Days long but inconceivably pleasant Passage brought 
 us yesterday to an anchor on the Mother Bank, at the 
 Back of the Isle of Wight, where we had last night in 
 Safety the Pleasure of hearing the Winds roar over 
 .our heads in as violent a Tempest as I have known, 
 and where my only Consideration were the Fears 
 which must possess any Friend of ours (if th^re is 
 happily any such) who really makes our Well being 
 the Object of his Concern ; especially if such Friend 
 should be totally inexperienced in Sea afifair§. I there- 
 fore beg that on the Day you receive this Mrs. Daniel
 
 PATCHWORK. l8l 
 
 may know that we are just risen from Breakfast in 
 Health and Spirits this twelfth Instant at nine in the 
 morning. 
 
 ' Our Voyage hath proved fruitful in adventures, 
 all which being to be written in the Book, you must 
 postpone y"" Curiosity. As the Incidents which fall 
 under your Cognizance will possibly be consigned to 
 oblivion, do give them to us as they pass. Tell your 
 Neighbour I am much obliged to him for recommend- 
 ing me to the Care of a most able and experienced 
 Seaman, to whom other Captains seem to pay such 
 Deference that they attend and watch his Motions, 
 and think themselves only safe when they act under 
 his Direction and Example. Our Ship in Truth seems 
 to give Laws on the Water with as much Authority 
 and Superiority as you Dispense Laws to the Pubhc 
 and Examples to your Brethren in Commission. 
 Please to direct y"' answer to me on Board as in the 
 Date, if gone to be returned, and then send it by the 
 Post and Pacquet to Lisbon to 
 
 '¥■■ affectionate Brother, 
 
 ' H. Fielding. 
 
 ' To John Fielding Esq., at his House in Bow 
 Street, Covent Garden, London.' 
 
 ^^*^^ I believe autograph letters of Henry Fielding 
 are very rarely met with. The above is in very good 
 preservation.
 
 1 82 PATCHWORK. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 ' When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year, 
 
 And her young, artless words began to flow, 
 
 One day we gave the child a coloured sphere 
 
 Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know 
 
 By tint and outline all its sea and land. 
 
 She patted all the world ; old empires peeped 
 
 Between her baby fingers ; her soft hand 
 
 Was welcome at all frontiers ; how she leaped, 
 
 And laughed, and prattled in her pride of bliss ! 
 
 But when we turned her sweet, unlearned eye 
 
 On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry, 
 
 " Oh yes ! I see it, — Letty's home is there ! " 
 
 And while she hid all England with a kiss. 
 
 Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.' 
 
 Rev. Charles Tennyson Turner. 
 
 THE TOUCAN. 
 (REVIEW OF WATERTON'S 'WANDERINGS.') 
 
 * How astonishing are the freaks and fancies of 
 nature ! To what purpose, we say, is a bird placed 
 in the woods of Cayenne, with a bill a yard long, 
 making a noise like a puppy-dog, and laying eggs in 
 hollow trees ? To be sure the toucan might retort. 
 To what purpose were gentlemen in Bond Street
 
 PATCHWORK. l8^ 
 
 created ? To what purpose were certain members of 
 Parliament created? pestering the House of Commons 
 with their ignorance and folly, and impeding the 
 business of the coimtry? There is no end to such 
 questions. So we will not enter into the metaphysics 
 
 of the toucan.' Sydney Smith (1769-1S45). 
 
 PR A YER. 
 
 ' For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of 
 grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and 
 hoping to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds ; 
 but the poor bird was beaten back by the loud sighings 
 of an Eastern wind, and his motion made irregular 
 and inconstant, descending more at every breath of 
 the tempest, than it could recover by the libration, and 
 frequent weighing of its wings, till the little creature 
 was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the 
 storm was over, and then it made a prosperous flight, 
 and did rise and sing as if it had learnt music and 
 motion of an angel as he passed sometimes thro' the 
 air about his ministries here below. So is the prayer 
 
 of a good man.' Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). 
 
 THERE /S A SEASON FOR EVERYTHING. 
 
 A good woman, in conversation with her pastor, 
 was inveighing against the self-indulgence and pro-
 
 1 84 PATCHWORK. 
 
 digality of some neighbours, whom she prophesied 
 would come to grief in consequence. ' Such extrava- 
 gance, Sir,' said she ; ' they deny themselves nothing — 
 bulter'd toast, in season and out of season^ 
 
 FIRE. 
 
 ' Sweet maiden, for so calm a life 
 Too bitter seem'd thine end ; 
 But thou had'st won thee, ere that strife, 
 A more than earthly Friend. 
 
 ' We miss thee in thy place at school. 
 And on thine homeward way, 
 Where violets by the reedy pool 
 Peep out so shyly gay : 
 
 ' Where thou, a true and gentle guide, 
 
 Would'st lead thy little band, 
 With all an elder sister's pride, 
 And rule with eye and hand. 
 
 ' And xiwe miss, O, who may speak 
 What thoughts are hovering round 
 The pallet where thy fresh young cheek 
 Its evening slumber found ?
 
 PATCHWORK. 185 
 
 ' How many a tearful longing look 
 In silence seeks thee yet, 
 Where in its own familiar nook 
 Thy fireside chair is set ? 
 
 ' And oft when little voices dim 
 Are feeling for the note 
 In chanted prayer, or psalm, or hymn, 
 And wavering wildly float, 
 
 ' Comes gushing o'er a sudden thought 
 Of her who led the strain. 
 How oft such music home she brought — 
 But ne'er shall bring again. 
 
 ' O say not so ! The springtide air 
 Is fraught with whisperings sweet ; 
 Who knows but heavenly carols there 
 With ours may duly meet ? 
 
 ' Who knows how near, each holy hour. 
 The pure and childlike dead 
 May linger where, in shrine or bower. 
 The mourner's prayer is said ? 
 
 ' And He who will'd thy tender frame 
 (O, stern yet sweet decree !) 
 Should wear the martyr's robe of flame, 
 He hath prepared for thee
 
 1 86 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' A garland in that region bright 
 
 Where infant spirits reign, 
 Tinged faintly with such golden light 
 As crowns his martyr train. 
 
 ' Nay, doubt it not : his tokens sure 
 Were round her death-bed shown : 
 The wasting pain might not endure, 
 'Twas calm ere life had flown. 
 
 * E'en as we read of Saints of yore : 
 Her heart and voice were free 
 To crave one quiet slumber more 
 Upon her mother's knee.' 
 
 John Keble (1792-1S66). 
 
 ANTICIPATION OF DEATH. 
 
 ' People who have not long to live sometimes appear 
 aware of the fact before it is even suspected by thos6 
 about them, and this is because their living powers 
 have become weak, and their nerves have communi- 
 cated the intelligence to the brain.' 
 
 John Hunter (1728-1793). 
 
 DISRUPTION. 
 
 It is on record that, not a great many years ago, a 
 Free church minister of Scotland introduced into his
 
 PATCHWORK. I ^7 
 
 pulpit devotions a petition that ' we may all be 
 baptized into the spirit of disruption.' 
 
 It was to such as he that Voltaire referred, when 
 he said that the uncharitably righteous, in heaven, 
 would have to be content with their own salvation ; 
 they could not expect to have the satisfaction of seeing 
 their friends condemned. 
 
 A JOKE. 
 
 'What is a modern poet's fate ? 
 To write his thoughts upon a slate — 
 The critic spits on what is done — 
 Gives it a uiipe — and all is gone ! ' 
 
 Thomas Hood. 
 
 I showed these lines to a distinguished friend. 
 ' That is a joke,' said he ; ' now I will write something 
 that is not a joke. 
 
 'A TRUTH. 
 
 ' While he lives — the Owls ! 
 When he's dead — the Ghouls ! ! ' 
 
 AN AMERICAN IN LONDON. 
 
 Two or three years ago, having made the acquaint- 
 ance of an interesting American who had just arrived
 
 1 88 PATCHWORK. 
 
 in London straight from the Far West, I took him to 
 the Tyburnian side of Hyde Park, to introduce him to 
 a distinguished friend, whom he was very desirous to 
 know. Our visit over, as we walked away, he said to 
 me, ' Does not Mr. Blank's poetry sell very well .'' ' 
 and I replied (not knowing anything about the matter), 
 ' Oh, yes, remarkably well ;' and then he said something 
 which showed me he thought my friend Blank must 
 be enormously rich ; and well he might, for it turned 
 out afterwards that he had supposed the Crescent in 
 which Blank dwelt was all one house, that Blank 
 owned the whole of it, and that the canal and villas 
 in the immediate neighbourhood belonged to and 
 were on his estate. After all it was natural enough 
 that he should think so, having, as it were, so lately 
 dropt from the skies. 
 
 THE PILGRIMS OF PALL MALL. 
 
 My little friend, so small, so neat. 
 Whom years ago I used to meet 
 
 In Pall Mall daily. 
 How cheerily you tript away 
 To work, it might have been to play. 
 You tript so gaily. 
 
 And Time trips too ! This moral means 
 You then were midway in the teens 
 
 That I was crowning ;
 
 PATCHWORK. 189 
 
 We never spoke, but when I smiled 
 At morn or evej I know, dear child, 
 
 You were not frowning. 
 
 Each morning that we met, I think 
 One sentiment us two did link, 
 
 Not joy, nor sorrow ; 
 And then at eve, experience-taught, 
 Our hearts were lighter for the thought, — 
 
 We meet to-morrow / 
 
 And you were poor, so poor ! and why } 
 How kind to come, it was for my 
 
 Especial grace meant ! 
 Had you a chamber near the stars, — 
 A bird, — some treasured plants in jars 
 
 About your casement ? 
 
 Often I wander up and down. 
 
 When morning bathes the silent town 
 
 In dewy glory, 
 Perhaps, unwitting, I have heard 
 Your thrilling-toned canary-bird 
 
 From that third story. 
 
 I've seen some change since last we met — 
 A patient little seamstress yet. 
 
 On small wage striving, 
 Have you a Lilliputian spouse ? 
 And do you dwell in some doll's house ? — 
 
 Is baby thriving?
 
 190 PATCHWORK. 
 
 My heart grows chill ! Can soul like thine, 
 Weary of this dear World of mine, 
 
 Have loosed its fetter, 
 To find a world, whose promised bliss 
 Is better than the best of this ? — 
 
 And is it better ? 
 
 Sometimes to Pall jNIall I repair, 
 And see the damsels passing there ; 
 
 But if I try to . , . 
 To get one glance, they look discreet, 
 As tho' they'd some one else to meet : — 
 
 As have not / too ? 
 
 Yet still I often think upon 
 Our many meetings, come and gone, 
 July — December ! 
 Now let us make a tryst, and when, 
 Dear little soul, we meet again. 
 In some serener sphere, why then 
 
 Thy friend remember. 
 1856, 
 
 MANY YEARS AFTER. 
 
 1 saw some books exposed for sale — 
 Some dear, and some — drama and tale- 
 As dear as any :
 
 PATCHWORK. 191 
 
 A few, perhaps more orthodox 
 Or torn, were tumbled in a box — 
 
 ' All these a penny.'' 
 
 I open'd one at hazard, but 
 
 Its leaves tho' soil'd were still uncut ; 
 
 And yet before 
 I'd read a page, I felt indeed 
 A wish to cut that leaf, and read 
 
 Some pages more. 
 
 A poet sang of what befel 
 
 When, years before, he'd paced Pall Mall 
 
 While walking thus — 
 A boy — he'd met a maiden. (Then 
 Fair women all were brave, and men 
 
 Were virtuous.) 
 
 They oft had met, he wonder'd why ; 
 He praised her sprightly bearing, (I 
 
 Believe he meant it :) 
 No word had pass'd, but if he smiled 
 Her eyes had seem'd to say (poor child !) 
 
 '• I do7i't resent it.'' 
 
 And then this poet mused and grieved. 
 And spoke some kindly words, relieved 
 
 By kindlier jest : 
 Then he, with sad, prophetic glance, 
 Bethought him she, ere then, perchance, 
 
 Had found her rest.
 
 192 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Then I was minded how my Joy 
 Sometimes had told me of a boy 
 
 With curly head — 
 ' You know,' she'd laugh — (she then was well !) 
 ' I used to meet him in Pall Mall — 
 
 Ere I was wed.' 
 
 And then, in fun, she'd vow, ' Good lack, 
 I'll go there now and fetch thee back 
 
 At least a curl ! ' 
 She once was here, now she is gone ! — 
 And so, you see, my wife was yon 
 
 Bright little girl. 
 
 I am not one for shedding tears — 
 
 That boy's now dead, or bow'd with years — 
 
 But see — sometimes 
 He'd thought of Her ! — that made me weep ; 
 That's why I bought — and why I keep 
 His book of rhymes. 
 1878. 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 According to Charles Lamb there are two races of 
 men, the borrowers and the lenders. 
 
 ' Your borrowers belong to the great race. What a 
 careless even deportment hath your borrower ! what 
 rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Providence
 
 PATCHWORK. 193 
 
 doth he manifest, taking no more thought than Hlies ! 
 What contempt for money — accounting it (yours and 
 mine especially) no better than dross ! Your borrower 
 makes use of his money while it is yet fresh ; a good 
 part he drinks away, some he gives away, the rest he 
 throws away, hterally tossing and hurling it violently 
 from him.' 
 
 ' Ah,' says Charles Lamb, ' when I compare your 
 borrower with the companions with whom I have as- 
 sociated lately, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, 
 and regret that I am now fallen into the society of 
 lenders and little men.' 
 
 The versatile Richard B. Sheridan was of course 
 an illustrious example of the great race. He was for 
 ever borrowing and hurling money violently from him ; 
 and yet, considering the innumerable sources from 
 which he drew his supplies, it was remarkable, and 
 indeed a wonderful proof of his ability, that he some- 
 how contrived to keep his treasury always empty. 
 When he heard the rumour that the lost ten tribes of 
 Israel had turned up he was immensely elated. ' What 
 luck ! ' said the light-hearted being, rubbing his hands 
 cheerily, ' I had well-nigh exhausted the patience of 
 the other two.' 
 
 o
 
 194 PATCHWORK, 
 
 ' WHAT AILS HIM AT THE LASSIE?' 
 
 A friend tells me a funny little story of Mrs. 
 
 (the grandmother of Colonel M ), who was shown a 
 
 picture of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, in which of course 
 the patriarch exhibited his usual desire to withdraw 
 
 himself from her society. Mrs. looked at it for 
 
 a little while, and then said, ' Eh, now, and what ails 
 him at the lassie ? ' 
 
 I am sorry I cannot give the lady's name, as the 
 story says so much for her naive simplicity. 
 
 ■QUAKERS. 
 
 ' Though I reverence the philanthropy of the Quakers, 
 I cannot but remember that if the taste of one of that 
 body could have been consulted at the Creation, what 
 a silent and drab-coloured Creation it would have been ! 
 not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a 
 bird been permitted to sing.' 
 
 GREEK. 
 
 ' The best Greek linguist now living does not under- 
 stand Greek so well as a Grecian ploughman did, or a 
 Grecian milkmaid ; and, with respect to pronunciation 
 and idiom, not so well as the cow she milked.'
 
 PATCHWORK. 195 
 
 A MIRACLE. 
 
 ' The account of the whale swallowing Jonah, though 
 a whale may have been large enough to do so, borders 
 greatly on the marvellous ; but it would have ap- 
 proached nearer to the just idea of a miracle if Jonah 
 had swallowed the whale.' 
 
 Thomas Paine (1737-1S09). 
 
 EPITAPH IN THE CATACOMBS. 
 
 ' I was born sickly, poor, and mean, 
 
 A slave ; no misery could screen 
 
 The holders of the pearl of price 
 
 From Cesar's envy ; therefore twice 
 
 I fought with beasts, and three times saw 
 
 My children suffer by his law. 
 
 At last my own release was earn'd ; 
 
 I was sometime in being burned. 
 
 But, at the close, a hand came through 
 
 The fire above my head, and drew 
 
 My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 
 
 Sergius, a brother, writes for me 
 
 This testimony on the wall — 
 
 For me, I have forgot it all.' 
 
 Robert Browning; 
 O 2
 
 196 PATCHWORK. 
 
 THE COMMON LOT. 
 
 An ecclesiastic who was preaching before Louis 
 XIV., happened to say during his discourse, ' Nous 
 mourrons tous.' Then, remembering himself, the poor 
 fellow turned in the direction of his monarch, and 
 humbly bowing, added ' presque tous.' 
 
 CHURCHING A 'LADY.' 
 
 A clergyman was churching a lady of very distin- 
 guished rank, and in consequence modified the formula 
 thus : — ' God save this lady (woman) thy servant.' 
 His clerk was also equal to the emergency, for he 
 added : — ' Who putteth her ladyships trust in Thee.' 
 
 A PORTRAIT BY VANDYKE. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt thus describes the portrait of Lady 
 Venetia Digby, at Windsor : * It is an allegorical 
 composition, but what truth, what purity, what delicacy, 
 ii^ the execution ! You are introduced into the presence 
 of a beautiful woman of quality, of a former age, and 
 it would be next to impossible to perform an un- 
 becoming action with that portrait hanging in the room. 
 It has an air of nobility about it, a spirit of humanity
 
 PATCHWORK. • 197 
 
 within it. There is a dove-hke innocence and softness 
 about the eyes ; in the clear dehcate complexion, health 
 and sorrow contend for the mastery. The mouth is 
 sweetness itself, the nose highly intelligent, and the 
 forehead is one of clear spirited thought. But misfor- 
 tune has touched all this grace and beauty, and left its 
 canker there.' 
 
 A WHIMSICAL INVERSIUA\ 
 
 ' If once a man indulges himself in murder, he very 
 soon comes to think little of robbery ; and from robbery 
 he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and 
 there is but one step from that to incivility and pro- 
 crastination. 
 
 ' Once begin upon the downward path, you never 
 know where you will stop. Many a man has dated 
 his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he 
 
 thought little of at the time.' Thomas de Quincey. 
 
 DIVES AND LAZARUS. 
 
 A Scottish divine was preaching on the petition of 
 Dives that Lazarus should dip his finger in water and 
 cool his tongue, and he commenced his discourse as 
 follows : — ' This appeareantly rezonable, but under the 
 succumstances tottally inadmissable requast,' (Sec, (S:c.
 
 198 PATCHWORK. 
 
 AN OPIUM DREAM. 
 
 'Then suddenly would come a dream of a far 
 different character, a tumultuous dream, commencing 
 with a music such as now I often heard in sleep. 
 Music of preparation and of awakening suspense ; the 
 undulations of vast gathering tumults were like the 
 opening of the Coronation Anthem, and like that, gave 
 the feeling of a multitudinous movement, of infinite 
 cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable 
 armies. The morning was come of a mighty day, a 
 day of crisis, and of ultimate hope for human nature, 
 then suffering mysterious eclipse, and labouring in 
 some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not 
 where ; somehow, but I knew not how ; by some beings, 
 but I knew not by whom, a battle, a strife, an agony 
 was travelling through all its stages, was evolving 
 itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with 
 which my sympathy was the more insupportable from 
 deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its 
 nature, and its indecipherable issue. I (as is usual in 
 dreams, in which, by necessity, we make ourselves 
 central to every movement) had the power, and yet 
 had not the power to decide it. I had the power, if I 
 could raise myself to will it, and yet again I had not the 
 power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, 
 or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. " Deeper than 
 ever plummet sounded/' I lay inactive ; then, like a
 
 PATCHWORK. 199 
 
 chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest 
 was at stake, some mightier cause than ever yet the 
 sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then 
 came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepida- 
 tions of innumerable fugitives. I knew not whether 
 from the good cause or the bad, darkness and lights, 
 tempests, and human faces ; and at last, with the sense 
 that all was lost, female forms, and the features that 
 were worth all the world to me, and but a moment 
 allowed, and clasped hands, with heart-breaking 
 partings, and then everlasting farewells ; and with a 
 sigh such as the caves of hell sighed, when the 
 incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of 
 Death, the sound was reverberated, everlasting fare- 
 wells ! and again, and yet again reverberated, — ever- 
 lasting farewells ! ' Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859). 
 
 TENPENCE HALF-PENNY. 
 
 A tall, thin man had a fat wife and a crooked little 
 daughter. George Selwyn remarked that the as- 
 sembled family always made him think of lo^d. 
 
 AN ACCOMMODATING VISION. 
 
 In the ' Iter Subterraneum ' of Baron de Holberg 
 (an imitation of 'Gulliver's Travels') there is a priest.
 
 200 PATCHWORK. 
 
 whose appointment to some lucrative post depends 
 on his beheving the sun to be triangular. In vain he 
 looks, and looks through his telescope ; he cannot 
 think it otherwise than round ; so another ecclesiastic, 
 of more accommodating vision, gets the place. The 
 unsuccessful candidate afterwards questions the suc- 
 cessful one as to how it was possible he could think 
 the sun to be triangular, for, as for him, let him gaze at 
 it how cr when he might, it always looked round. The 
 only reply the other gave was — ' Certainly, it must be 
 confessed, that for a triangular body it is very round,' 
 
 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Voltaire spoke highly of Haller, and then was told 
 he was very magnanimous to do so, as Haller had 
 spoken in quite a contrary way of him. ' Perhaps,' 
 remarked Voltaire, reflectively, and after a pause — 
 ' Perhaps we are both of us mistaken.' Much the 
 same repartee was made long before. 
 
 Voltaire was one day listening to a dramatic author 
 reading his comedy, and who said, ' Ici le chevalier 
 rit,' and he exclaimed, ' Le chevalier est bic7i heureux.' 
 
 JOHNSON'S CLUB-ROOM. 
 'The club-room is before us, and the table, on 
 which stands the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons
 
 PATCHWORK. 20 1 
 
 for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which • 
 live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are 
 the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of 
 Langton ; the courtly sneer of Beauclerc, and the 
 beaming smile of Garrick ; Gibbon tapping his snuff- 
 box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In 
 the foreground is that strange figure which is as 
 familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we 
 have been brought up — the gigantic body, the huge, 
 massy face, seamed with the scars of disease ; the 
 brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig, 
 with the scorched fore top ; the dirty hands, the nails 
 bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and 
 nose moving with convulsive twitches, and we see the 
 heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; and then 
 comes the " Why, sir ! " and the " What then, sir ? " 
 and the " No, sir ! " and the "You don't see your way 
 through the question, sir ! " ' Lord Macauky (iSoo-1859). 
 
 DR. JOHNSON'S FATHER. 
 
 Mr. Michael Johnson suffered from a weariness of 
 life, an unconcern about those things which agitate 
 the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation 
 of gloomy wretchedness.
 
 202 PATCHWORK. 
 
 EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 
 
 A lady (probably ' a fond, maternal ass ') asked 
 Johnson what subjects she should first teach her 
 children. His reply was characteristic : ' It is no 
 matter what you teach them first, any more than what 
 leg you shall put into your breeches first, madam ; you 
 may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in 
 the meantime your breech is cold.' 
 
 WOMEN PREACHING. 
 
 ' Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog walking on 
 his hind legs ; it is not done well, but you are sur- 
 prised to find it done at all.' 
 
 Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). 
 
 SOCIAL RANK. 
 
 Boswell — ' I consider distinction of rank to be of so 
 much importance in civilised society, that if I were 
 asked on the same day to dine with the greatest duke 
 in England, and with the first man in Britain for 
 genius, I should hesitate which to prefer.' 
 
 Johtison — ' To be sure, sir, if you were to dine 
 only once, and it were never to be known where you 
 dined, you would choose rather to dine with the first 
 man of genius ; but to gain most respect, you should 
 dine with the first duke in England, for nine people 
 in ten that you met with would have a higher opinion
 
 PATCHWORK. 203 
 
 of you for having dined with a duke, and the great 
 genius himself would receive you better because you 
 had been with the great duke.' 
 
 *^* In these days it is not impossible but that you 
 may meet the duke at the table of the genius. 
 
 RADICALS. 
 
 ' Sir, your levellers wish to level down to themselves, 
 but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.' 
 
 Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). 
 
 A NEW RELIGION. 
 
 Lepaux, of the French Directory, invented theo- 
 philanthropy, and had a great wish to impose it on 
 France, but found, spite of his passionate endeavours, 
 that he made little progress. He sought the advice 
 and assistance of Talleyrand. ' I am not surprised,' 
 said Talleyrand, * at the difficulty you experience ; it is 
 no easy matter to introduce a new religion ; but I will 
 tell you what you might, at any rate, try : I recommend 
 you to be crucified, and to rise again on the third day.' 
 
 A BAD TEMPER. 
 
 There was a good bishop whose brother, though 
 possessed of many estimable virtues, had one serious
 
 204 TATCHWORK. 
 
 fault ; he had a very hasty temper. He was an un- 
 married man. One day, when he had got into a great 
 passion about some trifle or other, the bishop, instead 
 of reproving him, merely said, ' Ah, brother, I cannot 
 help thinking you have done a great kindness to 07te 
 woman — the woman who might have been your wife.' 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 Lord Jeffrey says, speaking of the tone of good 
 society, 'It has that air of gaiety and playfulness in 
 which persons of high rank seem, from time imme- 
 morial, to have thought it necessary to array, not their 
 courtesy only, but their generosity and hostility. The 
 constraint experienced by those who have not been 
 accustomed to high society arises from a difficulty, or 
 sense of propriety, in adopting the unceremonious 
 indifference that reigns around. The polished rude- 
 ness, the easy unconcern which goes straight to the 
 point, without the ceremonies that formerly were 
 considered polite, and which still remain, in some 
 measure, in the middle classes.' 
 
 The author of ' Friends in Council ' says there is a 
 light, jesting, flippant tone of talking about things and 
 persons now very common in society (exceedingly 
 different from wit), which stifles good conversation and 
 gives a sense of general hostility, rather than socia-
 
 PATCHWORK. 205 
 
 bility ; just as if men came together chiefly for the 
 purpose of ridiculing their neighbours and talking 
 slightingly of matters of great concern. 
 
 A TYRANNICAL CONGREGATION. 
 
 A dignitary of the Greek Church ventured to 
 alter the form of his ritual, and the historian, who 
 relates the event, gravely remarks : ' And his congre- 
 gation, /wji'/j/ incensed, tore their bishop to pieces.' 
 
 POOR HUMANITY. 
 
 * Man is a bubble . . . he is born in vanity and sin ; 
 he comes into the world like morning mushrooms, 
 soon thrusting up their heads unto the air, and con- 
 versing with their kindred of the same production, and 
 as soon they turn unto dust and forgetfulness ; some 
 of them without any other interest in the affairs of the 
 world, but that they made their parents a little glad, 
 and very sorrowful. Others ride longer in the storm, 
 it may be until seven years of vanity be expired, and 
 then, peradventure, the sun shines hot upon their heads, 
 and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of 
 death and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if 
 the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and out- 
 lives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of
 
 206 PATCHWORK. 
 
 drowning in a pail of water, of being overlaid by a 
 sleepy servant, or such little accidents, then the 
 young man dances like a bubble, empty and gay, and 
 shines like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, 
 which hath no substance, and whose very imagery and 
 colours are fantastical ; and so he dances out the 
 gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a storm, 
 and endures, only because he is not knocked on the 
 head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the 
 pressure of a load of indigested meat, or quenched by 
 the disorder of an ill-placed humour ; and to preserve 
 a man alive, in the midst of so many chances and 
 hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him ; to 
 preserve him from rushing into nothing, as at first to 
 draw him up from nothing, were equally the issues of 
 
 an Almighty power.' jeremy Taylor. 
 
 HYMNS. 
 
 Devotional verse is one of the oldest and most 
 natural forms of song, and it is met with wherever the 
 instinct for worship takes outward form. 
 
 The following is Lord Selborne's admirable defini- 
 tion of what a good hymn should be : 'It should have 
 simphcity, freshness, and reality of feeling ; a consistent 
 elevation of tone, and a rhythm easy and harmonious, 
 but not jingling or trivial. Its language may be 
 homely, but should not be slovenly or mean. Afifecta-
 
 TATCHWORK. 20/ 
 
 tion or visible artifice is worse than excess of home- 
 liness : a hymn is easily spoiled by a single falsetto 
 note. Nor will the most exemplary soundness of 
 doctrine atone for doggrel, or redeem from failure a 
 prosaic didactic style.' 
 
 I believe a martial ode is understood to be one of 
 the most difficult forms of metrical composition, and I 
 suppose we might say the same of devotional poetry, 
 seeing how very few fine hymns we possess. 
 
 It is thus that Dr. Johnson accounts for the 
 difficulty: ' The paucity of its topics enforces perpetual 
 repetition, and the sanctity of the m.atter rejects the 
 ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for 
 Dr. Watts to have done better than others what no 
 man has done well.' This is trenchant enough, but it 
 seems hardly adequate, and I think the reasons are 
 not far to seek. 
 
 A hymn ought to be simple, clear, and direct, and 
 we know that rapt devotional feehng is apt to be 
 tinged with mysticism, which, in itself, is opposed to 
 lucidity of expression. Then the literary and devo- 
 tional element must be harmoniously blended and 
 balanced, and it must be neither prosaic nor ornate. 
 Unity of subject and purpose is also essential ; indeed, 
 many hymns lose themselves in generalities ; and, last 
 of all, it must be the perfection of form. 
 
 It is very difficult to write a good hymn, and it is 
 remarkable that even our best hymn writers, like
 
 108 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Charles Wesley, have seldom succeeded in producing 
 more than one specimen of first-rate excellence ; his 
 ' Wrestling Jacob,' as a poetic allegory, is perhaps the 
 most perfectly sustained work in all English hymnody. 
 Then we have Toplady's ' Rock of Ages,' where the 
 harmony of the emblems, incongruous in themselves, 
 is secured by the devotional fervour that welds them 
 together. These are both powerful hymns. Then 
 there is the Rev. H. F. Lyte's beautiful * Abide 
 with me,' which should be confined to its five best 
 stanzas ; and lastly. Dr. J. H. Newman's exquisite 
 ' Lead, Kindly Light.' I do not know any expression in 
 English poetry more beautiful in its way than the turn 
 of the thought in the last half of the last stanza. 
 
 Most of John Keble's hymns are on a fairly high 
 level ; but the best of them are not equal to these I 
 have quoted. Keble wants clearness and simplicity in 
 thought or diction, and usually in both. This may 
 be said of even his best pieces, such as ' Morning' and 
 ' Evening.' And it seems to me that the devotional 
 poetry of the present day, in spite of its lyric sweetness 
 and delicacy, lacks the vigour and exaltation of the 
 older hymns. 
 
 Among other admirable hymns are the Rev. H. 
 Twells' 'At Even when the Sun ;' Dr. Arthur Stanley's 
 ' O Master, it is good to be upon the mountain here ; ' 
 Dr. Watts' ' Fairest of all the Lights above,' and several 
 in Dr. Martineau's excellent ' Hymns of Praise,' such
 
 PATCHWORK. 209 
 
 as ' Let no tears to-day be shed,' and ' Come tread 
 once more the path with song.' 
 
 What is it that gives a hymn its popularity ? Is it 
 merely the music to which it has been set? Let us 
 hope not. Very few hymns reach the great heart of 
 the people : some, like Dr. Watts's, endure for genera- 
 tions, and English mothers are now singing them to 
 their children in the back-woods of America, on the 
 Himalayas, and wherever English mothers find them- 
 selves. Other hymns, apparently as beautiful, die 
 unrecognised. It is difficult to account for this. 
 
 Sternhold and Hopkins's old version was rendered 
 into a metrical form direct from the Hebrew. The 
 Scottish version was by an Englishman, Dr. Rous ; and 
 now we have Lord Lome's skilful and harmonious 
 rendering. The 23rd Psalm is lovely in all its versions, 
 no effort of man can stale it, or quench its exquisite 
 beauty. 
 
 PRUDERY. 
 
 I have read that some societies in America are so 
 very prudish that they actually object to using the 
 honest word leg. For instance, a girl calls in hot 
 haste on the doctor to say that her sister had broken 
 her ' li7nb.^ ' Which limb is it ? ' says the doctor. ' Oh, 
 I — can't — tell — you — which — limb,' says the girl. ' But 
 you must,' says the doctor. ' Oh, dear, I — can't — 
 
 P
 
 2IO PATCHWORK. 
 
 indeed, sir,' says the girl. ' Hang it,' says the doctor, 
 losing all patience, 'Is it the limb she threads her 
 needle with ? ' ' No, sir,' says the girl, immensely 
 relieved. ' It's the limb she wears her garter on.' 
 
 CYNICS. 
 
 The world has pretty well made up its mind that 
 your Cyme, pitr ct simple, is an odious being, and that 
 our most lovable fellow-creatures have not a tinge 
 of cynicism in their composition. I grant this, and 
 yet, if Diogenes can only supplement his pessimist 
 nature with a certain amount of playfulness, a fair 
 dash of sensibility, and a sufficiency of benevolence, he 
 blossoms into very pleasant company indeed. Our 
 friend T. (as a writer) was an illustrious instance of 
 this, and perhaps it is this mixture that makes War- 
 rington so agreeable, and, I may say, so very attractive. 
 But the most delightful example of all did not live a 
 thousand miles from the Bridge of Allan. 
 
 ELOQUENCE IS EASILY MARRED. 
 
 As my revered friend was very anxious that his 
 sermon should be a success, he had taken more than 
 ordinary pains over it. However, during its delivery he
 
 PATCHWORK. 2 1 1 
 
 did not feel that he had that hold on his congregation 
 which he desired and which he usually obtained. There 
 was a disturbing force, although he could not tell where. 
 When the sermon was over, and not till then, he dis- 
 covered that during the whole time of its delivery one 
 of his soft thin silk gloves had been reposing on the 
 crown of his head. 
 
 It requires very little to distract the attention of a 
 congregation. If the famous Dr. South were exhorting 
 us, or our Canon at St. Paul's, or even St. Paul himself, 
 their eloquence would be seriously impaired if a 
 sparrow chanced to fly into the church. 
 
 TO HIS MISTRESS. 
 
 ' There is none, oh none but you, 
 Who from me estrange the sight. 
 Whom mine eyes affect to view ; 
 And chain'd ears hear with delight. 
 
 Others' beauties others move : 
 In you I all the graces find ; 
 
 Such are the effects of love, 
 
 To make them happy that are kind. 
 
 ' Women in frail beauty trust, 
 
 Only seem you kind to me ! 
 Still be truly kind and just, 
 For that can't dissembled be. 
 p 2
 
 2 1 2 PATCHWORK. 
 
 ' Dear, afford me then your sight, 
 That, surveying all your looks, 
 Endless volumes I may write. 
 And fill the world with envied books. 
 
 * Which, when after ages view, 
 All shall wonder and despair, — 
 Women, to find a man so true, 
 And men, a woman, half so fair ! ' 
 
 Robert, Earl of Essex (1567-1601). 
 
 GOLOSHES AND SWINE. 
 
 I am told that the Americans call their india- 
 rubber goloshes their gums. A man would quite 
 naturally say, * My friend will be here directly ; he is 
 only wiping his " gums," on the mat.' 
 
 The hogs in Illinois are, or used to be, so thin that 
 it required two of them to cast a shadow. 
 
 WIT. 
 Heine says that wit in its isolation is worthless. 
 Then only is wit tolerable, when it rests on an earnest 
 basis ; ordinary wit is no more than a sneeze of the 
 reason.
 
 PATCHWORK. 2 1 3 
 
 S WITZERLAND. 
 
 * Go out in the Spring-time among the meadows 
 that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the 
 roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with 
 the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass 
 grows deep and free, and, as you follow the winding 
 mountain paths (beneath arching boughs, all veiled 
 and dim with blossom, paths that for ever droop, and 
 rise over the green banks, and mounds sweeping down 
 in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded 
 here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the 
 air with fainter sweetness), look up towards the higher 
 hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll 
 silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the 
 
 pines.' John Rusldn. 
 
 REPARTEE. 
 
 The Duke of Clarence, when Lord High Admiral 
 of England, went down to Portsmouth to inspect the 
 naval establishment. The first person he met was 
 his jolly old messmate and friend Captain Jack Towers. 
 The Prince took him by the hand, and laughingly 
 said, ' Why, Jack, my boy, they tell me you are the 
 greatest blackguard in all Portsmouth!' 'Oh,' quoth 
 Towers, ' I hope your Royal Highness has not come 
 down here to deprive me of my character ! '
 
 214 PATCHWORK. 
 
 BENEVOLENT TACT. 
 
 Louis XIV., or some such mighty potentate, held 
 a Court, and, what was most unusual with him, he 
 broke it up suddenly, even abruptly. He afterwards 
 privately explained his reason for so doing. He had 
 
 observed M. de, who was very poor, and for whom 
 
 he had a considerable regard, pocket a handsome 
 chronometer repeating watch ; it only wanted a few 
 minutes to the hour, and he was afraid that M. de 
 , would be discovered and disgraced, if he re- 
 mained till the watch struck, so he decided to get rid 
 of him as quickly as he could. 
 
 CALCULA TION. 
 
 'Jedediah Buxton could multiply nine figures by 
 nine, in his head. The only good thing I heard come 
 of this man's singular faculty of memory was the 
 following : A gentleman was mentioning his (Buxton's) 
 having been sent up to London, from the place where 
 he lived, to see Garrick act : when he returned to the 
 country he was asked what he thought of the player 
 and of the play. " Oh," said Buxton, " I do not know ; 
 I only saw a little man strut about the stage, and repeat 
 7,956 words." We all laughed at this, but a person in the 
 corner of the room, holding one hand to his forehead, 
 and seeming mightily delighted, called out, "Ay,
 
 TATCHWORK. 2 1 5 
 
 indeed, and was he found to be correct?" This was 
 the supererogation of literal-matter-of-fact curiosity. 
 Buxton's counting the number of words was idle 
 enough, but here was a fellow who wanted someone 
 to count them over again, to see if he was correct. 
 " The force of dulness could no further go."' 
 
 William Hazlitt (1778-1830). 
 
 ST. TERESA. 
 
 ' Since 'tis not to bee had at home, 
 
 Sheel travell to a martyrdome. 
 
 No home for her confesses shee, 
 
 But where shee may a martyr bee. 
 Sheel to the Moores, and trade with them. 
 For this unvalued Diadem, 
 Shee offers them her dearest breath, 
 With Christ's name in't, in change for death. 
 Sheel bargain with them, and will give 
 Them God, and teach them how to live 
 In him, or if they this denye, 
 For him sheel teach them how to dye. 
 So shall shee leave amongst them sowne 
 Her Lord's blood, or at least her own. 
 
 Farewell then all the world, adieu, 
 
 Teresa is no more for you :
 
 2l6 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Farewell all pleasures, sports and joyes, 
 Never till now esteemed toyes, 
 Farewell whatever deare may bee, 
 Mother's arms or father's knee. 
 Farewell house, and farewell home : 
 Shees for the Moores and martyrdome.' 
 
 Richard Crashaw (1650). 
 
 ' THE brothers: 
 
 I have the original MS. of Wordsworth's 'The 
 Brothers.' At line 98 of the first edition (1800) the 
 following passage occurs : — 
 
 ' By this the Priest, who down the field had come 
 Unseen by Leonard, at the church-yard gate 
 Stopped short, and thence at leisure, limb by limb 
 He scann'd him with a gay complacency.' 
 
 In my MS. it runs as follows : 
 
 * By this the Priest, who down the field had come 
 Unseen by Leonard, at the church-yard gate 
 Stopped short, and pr>'ing through his natural eyes 
 As through two opera-glasses, limb by limb,' &c. 
 
 W. W's. second thoughts were best.
 
 PATCHWORK. 217 
 
 DICK STEELE. 
 
 Sir Richard Steele, in the ' Tatler,' No. 49, says of 
 Lady Ehzabeth Hastings : ' Though her mien carries 
 much more invitation than command, to behold her is 
 an immediate check to loose behaviour, and to love 
 her is a liberal education.' 
 
 Mr. Thackeray observes that the name of Richard 
 Steele ought to be dear to all women, as he was the 
 first of our writers who really seemed to respect them 
 as well as admire them. His wife appears to have 
 been very pretty, but to have had a temper, and to 
 have been as prudish as he was impassioned, irregular, 
 and reckless. Thus he writes to her a month after 
 their marriage : 
 
 'Oct. 16, 1707. 
 
 ' Dearest being on earth, — Pardon me if you do not 
 see me till eleven o'clock ' (very late hours for those 
 times I), ' having met a school-fellow from India, by 
 whom I am to be informed on things this night which 
 expressly concern your obedient husband, 
 
 'Rich. Steele.' 
 
 And again on March 11, 1708-9 : 
 
 ' Dear Prue, — I enclose five guineas, but cannot 
 come home to dinner. Dear little woman, take care 
 of thyself, and eat and drink cheerfully. Let my best 
 periwig be put into the coach-box, and my new shoes,
 
 2l8 PATCHWORK. 
 
 for it is a comfort to be well dressed in agreeable 
 
 company. 
 
 ' You are vital life to your obliged, affectionate 
 
 husband, 
 
 'Rich. Steele.' 
 
 Then :— 
 
 ' Tennis-Court Coffee-House, May 5, 1708. 
 
 ' Dear wife, — I hope I have done this day what will 
 be pleasing to you : in the mean time I shall be this 
 night at a bakei^'s, one Leg, over against the Devil 
 Tavern at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront 
 the fools' (his creditors !) 'who wish me uneasy. 
 
 ' If the printer's boy be at home send him hither, 
 
 and let Mrs. Todd send by the boy my night-gown, 
 
 slippers, and clean linen ; you shall hear from me 
 
 early in the morning. 
 
 'Rich. Steele.' 
 
 Another : — 
 
 ' Five in the evening, Sept. 19, 1708. 
 'Dear Prue, — I send you seven penny-worth of 
 walnuts, at five a penny, which is the greatest proof I 
 can give you, at present, of my being, with my whole 
 heart, ' Yours, 
 
 ' Rich. Steele. 
 'P.S. There are but twenty-nine walnuts.' 
 
 ' Sept. 20, 1708. 
 'Dear Prue, — If a servant I sent you last night got 
 to Hampton Court, you received twenty-nine walnuts
 
 PATCHWORK. 219 
 
 and a letter from me. I enclose the " Gazette," and 
 
 am, with all my soul, your passionate lover and faithful 
 
 husband, 
 
 ' Rich. Steele. 
 
 '■ Since I wrote the above I have found half a 
 hundred more of walnuts' (I suppose she was very 
 fond of walnuts, and that he knew it) 'which I send 
 herewith. 
 
 ' Dear Prue, — I am a little in drink, but at all times 
 
 your faithful servant, 
 
 * Rich. Steele.' 
 
 Dozens of similar letters follow with occasional 
 parcels of tea, walnuts, &c. 
 
 The following is dated April 7, 1710 : — 
 
 * I know no happiness in this life in any degree 
 comparable to the pleasure I have in your person and 
 society. I only beg of you to add to your other 
 charms a fearfulness to see a man that loves you, in 
 pain and uneasiness, to make me as happy as it is 
 possible to be in this life. Rising a little in a morning 
 and being disposed to a cheerfulness .... would not 
 be amiss.' 
 
 In another he is found excusing his coming home, 
 being invited out to supper, and says, ' Do not send 
 after me, for I shall be ridiculous.'
 
 220 TATCHWORK. 
 
 THE TURNSTILE. 
 
 * Ah, sad wer' we as we did peace 
 
 The wold church road, wi' downcast feace, 
 
 The while the bells, that mwoan'd so deep 
 
 Above our child, aleft asleep, 
 
 Wer now a-zingen all alive 
 
 Wi' t'other bells to meake the vive. 
 
 But up at woone pleace we come by, 
 
 'Twer hard to keep woone's two eyes dry ; 
 
 On steam-cliff road, 'ithin the drong, 
 
 Up where, as vo'k do pass along, 
 
 The turnen-stile, a-painted white, 
 
 Doo sheen by day, an' show by night. 
 
 Vor always there, as we did goo 
 
 To church, thik stile did let us drough, 
 
 Wi' spreaden earms, that wheel'd to guide 
 
 Us each, in turn, to t'other zide. 
 
 An' vu'st ov all the train he took 
 
 My wife, wi' winsome gait and look : 
 
 An' then zent on my little ma'id 
 
 A-skippen onward, overjay'd 
 
 To reach ageiin the pleace o' pride. 
 
 Her comely mother's left han' zide. 
 
 An' then a-wheelen roun', he took 
 
 On me, 'ithin his third white nook. 
 
 An' in the fourth, a shreaken wild, 
 
 He zent us on our giddy child.
 
 PATCHWORK. 221 
 
 But yesterday he guided slow 
 
 My downcast Jenny, vull o' woe, 
 
 An' then my little maid in black, 
 
 A-walken softly on her track ; 
 
 An' after he'd a-turn'd agean, 
 
 To let me goo along the leane. 
 
 He had no little bwoy to vill 
 
 His last white earms, an' they stood still.' 
 
 Rev. William Barnes. 
 
 RETIREMENT. 
 
 ' Here, even here, on Salisbury plain, with a few old 
 authors, I can manage to get through the summer or the 
 winter months, without ever knowing what it is to feel 
 ennui. They sit with me at breakfast, they walk out 
 with me before dinner. After a long walk through un- 
 frequented tracks, after starting the hare from the fern, 
 or hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my 
 head, or being greeted by the woodman's " stern good- 
 night," as he strikes into his narrow homeward path, I 
 can "take mine ease at mine inn," beside the blazing 
 hearth, and shake hands with Signer Orlando Frisco- 
 baldo, as the oldest acquaintance I have. Ben Jonson, 
 learned Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Hey- 
 wood are there, and, seated round, discourse the silent 
 hours away. Shakspeare is there himself, not in
 
 222 PATCHWORK. 
 
 Gibber's manager's coat. Spenser is hardly yet returned 
 from a ramble through the woods, or is concealed be- 
 hind a group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies 
 on the table as on an altar, never taken up or laid down 
 without reverence. Lyly's " Endymion " sleeps with the 
 moon that shines in at the window, and a breath of wind, 
 stirring at a distance, seems a sigh from the tree under 
 which he grew old. Faustus disputes in one corner of 
 the room with fiendish faces, and reasons of divine as- 
 trology. Bellafront soothes Matheo. Vittoria triumphs 
 over her judges, and old Chapman repeats one of the 
 hymns of Homer in his own fine translation ! I 
 should have no objection to pass my hfe in this 
 manner, out of the world, not thinking of it, or it of 
 me, neither abused by my enemies, nor defended by 
 my friends — careless of the future, but sometimes 
 dreaming of the past, which might as well be forgotten.' 
 
 William Hazlitt. 
 
 THE ADVANTAGE OF EMPLOYING AN 
 AMANUENSIS. 
 
 A pedantic author told Sydney Smith that his ideas 
 flowed more easily, and that he altogether composed 
 better, when he employed an amanuensis. ' But are 
 you quite sure,' said Sydney Smith, 'that he always 
 puts down what you tell him ? '
 
 PATCHWORK. 223 
 
 CON SOLA TION. 
 
 Dean was seated in a railway-carriage with 
 
 a lady in deep mourning, when a roughish-looking 
 man got in, and sat opposite to her. He regarded her 
 long and curiously, and then said rather abruptly, ' In 
 trouble, marm?' 'Yes, sir.' "Usband or parent, 
 marm.?' 'Neither, sir.' 'Son or daughter, marm?' 
 ' Son, sir.' ' Army or Navy, marm 1 ' ' Navy, sir.' 
 ' Killed in action or died from natural causes, marm.?' 
 ' Killed in action, sir.' ' Got his chest, marm ? 'cos 
 you know you've a right to that, marm ! ' 'Yes, sir.' 
 ' 'Appy about his soul, marm } ' ' Yes, sir.' ' Well, 
 I guess if you've got his chest, marm, and you had a 
 right to that, and you're 'appy about his soul, — not so 
 much of a trial, marm.' 
 
 DIFFERENT NATIONS HAVE DIFFERENT 
 MODES OF INSTRUCTION, &=€. 
 
 ' In Britain's Isle, as Heylin notes. 
 The ladies trip in petticoats ; 
 Which, for the honour of their nation, 
 They quit but on some great occasion. 
 There men in breeches clad you view, 
 They claim that garment as their due.
 
 224 PATCHWORK. 
 
 In Turkey the reverse appears — 
 Long coats the haughty husband wears, 
 And greets his wife with angry speeches 
 If she be seen without her breeches. 
 
 I mentioned different ways of breeding : 
 Begin we in our children's reading. 
 To Master John, the English maid 
 A horn-book gives of ginger-bread. 
 And, that the child may learn the better, 
 As he can name, he eats the letter. 
 Proceeding thus, with vast delight, 
 He spells and gnaws from left to right? 
 
 Matthew Prior. 
 
 * * 
 
 These extracts are very pleasant, get ' Alma,' 
 and read it, and you will find more delightful things 
 than these. 
 
 PRIDE. 
 
 Lord Nobs was at least an arrogant man. Long after 
 he had grown up he chanced to meet his old French 
 schoolmaster. ' Do you remember, monsieur, that you 
 once nearly had me flogged .? ' ' Ah, milor,' was the 
 reply, ' that was the one flogging that you did always 
 want.'
 
 -PATCHWORK. 225 
 
 VANITY. 
 
 The Duke de Levi, a ridiculous man, had a picture 
 painted of the Virgin Mary, and himself taking off his 
 hat to her, the Virgin saying (as appeared by a scroll 
 out of her mouth), ' Couvrez votis, mon cousin^ 
 
 A FAITHFUL PAGE. 
 
 Nearly one hundred years ago, my grandfather, 
 Captain William Locker, was at dinner, and a servant- 
 boy, lately engaged, was handing him a tray of liqueurs, 
 in different-sized glasses. Being in the middle of an 
 anecdote to his neighbour, he mechanically held 
 out his hand towards the tray, but, as people often do 
 when they are thinking of something else, he did not 
 take a glass. The boy thought he was hesitating 
 which liqueur he would have, and, like a good fellow, 
 wishing to help his master, he pointed to one parti- 
 cular glass, and whispered, ' That's the biggest, sir.'
 
 226 PATCHWORK. 
 
 POETIC AND PROSE DICTION. 
 
 Poetic diction is picturesque, it often eschews 
 generic terms, such as tree ox Jlower , axyd. prefers to 
 mention some particular tree or flower, as : 
 
 • And every shepherd tells his tale 
 Under the hawthorn in the dale.' 
 
 Under ' some tree's shade ' would have been less 
 picturesque. In the same way, ' Go, lovely rose,' is far 
 more fitted for poetry than ' Go, lovely flower.' The 
 same for prose, when it is impassioned. We prefer 
 ' Solomon in all his glory ' to ' a glorious monarch ;' but 
 why do we prefer 'an ancient mariner' to ' an elderly 
 seaman ' ? 
 
 In Shakspeare's Plays prose and poetry serve, as 
 a rule, for distinct purposes. Prose is used in the 
 dialogue between servants, and in jest, and in light 
 conversation. 
 
 For instance, Falstafif always speaks in prose, even 
 in scenes where the other characters speak verse. 
 Casca speaks prose when Brutus and Cassius speak 
 in verse. One remarkable instance, where prose is 
 used instead of verse, is in the speech of Brutus to the 
 populace, after the murder of CiEsar. Elsewhere 
 Brutus always speaks verse, but, in addressing the 
 people, he refuses to appeal to their feelings, and
 
 PATCHWORK. 227 
 
 affects a studiously cold, and unimpassioned style. 
 
 His speech serves, in this respect, as a useful foil 
 
 to Antony's highly-impassioned harangue. But even 
 
 in this studiously frigid speech it is noticeable how, 
 
 as soon as the speaker begins to appeal to the feelings 
 
 of the audience, he approaches metre, and finally falls 
 
 into it. 
 
 'As Caesar loved me,' &c. 
 
 A good deal of this is taken from that excellent 
 
 book ' English for English People.' 
 
 A TEST. 
 
 If you wish to judge of a man's character and 
 nature, you have only to find out what he thinks 
 
 laughable.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABS 
 
 A BSENCE of mind, 105 
 
 Accommodating vision, an, 
 199 
 Acton, Philip, ' The Semi-detach- 
 ment ' (poem), 22 
 ' Addison, Mr. Joseph,' 36 
 Admirals swear, old, 164 
 
 AfFair of the heart, an, 160 
 
 A • 
 
 menca, photographing down 
 
 west in, 158 
 
 — settlers in, 158 
 American restaurants, 93 
 American tall-talking, 112 
 American in London, an, 187 
 
 — prudery, 209 
 
 — exaggeration, 212 
 Angel, my guardian, 47 
 Arnold, Mr. Matthew, Philistines, 
 
 173 
 
 — Mr. Edwin, ' A ma Future ' 
 (poem), 55 
 
 Art collectors, 136, 141 
 
 — critics, 140 
 
 Atalanta in Camden Town (poem), 
 
 72 
 Atheism, log 
 Autographs, the Maid of Athens, 
 
 I] 
 
 — Thomas Hood on, no 
 
 gAPTISMAL difficulty, a, 157 
 Barnes, Rev. William, 'The 
 Turnstile ' (poem), 220 
 Baronets, 162 
 
 BRO 
 
 Barrow, Rev. Dr. Isaac, on want 
 
 of earnestness, i 
 Beaumarchais (P. A. Caron de) 
 
 blague by the Court, 14 
 Beddoes, Thomas L., ' Love's Last 
 
 Message' (poem), 162 
 Behn, Aphra (song), 69 
 Benevolent tact of Louis XIV., 214 
 Bible, William Hazlitt on the, 8 
 
 — Michael Scott on the, 10 
 Black blood, 7 
 
 Blake, William, anecdote of, 82 
 
 'The Songs of Innocence,' 82 
 
 Blamire, Susanna, ' Barley Broth ' 
 
 (poem), 88 
 Bohemians and Philistines, 175 
 Boots, The Tight (poem), 95 
 Bores, 113 
 Borrowers, 192 
 
 Bossuet, Bishop J. B., 'L'Enfer.'sS 
 Braxfield, Lord, anecdote of, 52 
 Bride, a suitable, 68 
 Bridegroom, an intractable, 147 
 
 — a tractable, 147 
 
 Bronte, Emily, ' Plead for Me ' 
 
 (poem), 118 
 
 The Old Stoic (poem), 178 
 
 Browne, William, 'What wight he 
 
 loved ' (poem), 65 
 Browning, Mrs. Elizabeth B. 
 
 (sonnet), 11 
 
 — Mr. Robert, 'In the Cata- 
 combs ' (poem), 195 
 
 — rhyme, 105
 
 2^0 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 BUL 
 
 Bulls, 42 
 
 — Irish, 42 
 
 — Scottish, 42 
 Bully, the, 63 
 
 Bunyan, John, swearing, 167 
 Burnand, Mr. F. C, on Rhyme, 
 
 103 
 Bums, Robert, his ' Lament for 
 
 CuUoden,' 15 
 Byron, Lord, with reference to 
 
 Edgar Poe, 13 
 ' The Maid of Athens,' no 
 
 r^ABMAN, the lady and the, 148 
 Calculation, by Jedediah 
 
 Buxton, 214 
 Campbell, Thomas, 69 
 Capital in the wrong place, 37 
 Carlyle, Mr. Thomas, the morals 
 
 of the Nineteenth Century, 135 
 Carracci, Ludovico, his ' Susanna,' 
 
 28 
 Carroll, Lewis, 'Atalanta in 
 
 Camden Town ' (poem), 72 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, and his grand- 
 father, 26 
 Ceremonious, almost too, 10 
 Church, High and Low, 38 
 Churching a lady, 196 
 Oarence, the Duke of, and Jack 
 
 Towers, 213 
 Clergyman, Australian's notion of 
 
 a, 166 
 Coleridge, Samuel T., on genius, 
 
 43 
 
 , on ghosts, 98 
 
 — Hartley, to his proud kins- 
 woman (poem), 102 
 
 Collectors, fine-art, 136, 141 
 Common lot, the, 196 
 Compromise, a, 29 
 Consolation, 223 
 
 EAR 
 
 Cowper, William, with reference 
 
 to Edgar Poe, 12 
 
 his poetry, 39 
 
 Crashaw, Richard, Herbert's 
 
 ' Temple ' (poem), 6 
 
 'St. Teresa' (poem), 215 
 
 Cretans liars ? are the, 37 
 Critics, Fine-art, 140 
 Cynics, 210 
 
 jQAIRYMAID, a sympathetic, 
 71 
 
 Dangeau, Abbe de, on grammar, 
 170 
 
 Decker, Thomas, the first gen- 
 tleman, 177 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, a whim- 
 sical inversion, 197 
 
 — — an Opium Eater, 198 
 Dickens, Charles, on Bores, 114 
 Diction, poetic and prose, 226 
 Dilemma, a, 37 
 Disruption, a prayer for, 186 
 Distinction, a (poem), 97 
 Dives and Lazarus, 197 
 Dobson, Mr. Austin, a Love Letter 
 
 (poem), 90 
 Dogmatic teaching, 23 
 Doo, Mr., 125 
 
 Doomsday Book in danger, 93 
 D'Orsay, Count Alfred, and Mr. 
 
 Raikes, 122 
 Douglas, Marian (poem), 112 
 Drinking, excuses for, 179 
 
 — excuses for not, 179 
 Dryden, John, ' A Lover's Atten- 
 tions ' (poem), 17 
 
 — — Theocritus, 26 
 
   What is Life ? 176 
 
 T7ARNESTNESS, Isaac Bar- 
 row on the want of. 1
 
 INDEX. 
 
 231 
 
 ELC. 
 Elginbrod, Epitaph on Martin 
 
 (poem), 58 
 Eloquence is easily marred, 210 
 Essex, Earl of, to his mistress 
 
 (poem), 211 
 
 ■pAIRY funeral, a, 80 
 
 Family prayers, iig 
 Few wants, a man of, 75 
 Fielding, Henry, letter from, 180 
 Fine-art collectors, 136, 141 
 
 critics, 140 
 
 Fox, Charles J., S5 
 
 Francis, Sir Philip, the Christian 
 
 religion, 177 
 Frere, J. H., a Fable (poem), 132 
 Froude, Mr. J. A., Luther and his 
 
 wife, 25 
 Fuller, Thomas, fools, 38 
 
 — — the good yeoman, 38 
 
 the wounded soldier, 39 
 
 a good wife, 87 
 
 on John Wyclif, 98 
 
 on a cripple, 118 
 
 bear-hunting, 149 
 
 — — epitaph on Denys Rolle 
 (poem), 159 
 
 Funeral sermon, a, 100 
 
 QENIUS, S. T. Coleridge on, 
 
 43 
 Gibbon, Edward, on C. J. Fox, 55 
 Gilbert, Mr. W. S., on Rhyme, 
 
 103 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, with reference 
 
 to Edgar Poe, 12 
 
 and Thomas Hood, 75 
 
 Grammar, an enthusiast in, 170 
 Greek, Thomas Paine on, 194 
 Greenlander's Heaven, the, 94 
 Grote, George, education of the 
 
 mind, 92 
 
 HYM 
 
 Guardian Angel, my, 47 
 Gusto, 100 
 
 p^AMERTON, Mr. Philip G., 
 on a portrait by Velasquez, 
 117 
 Hannay, Mr. James, ' Mr. Jo- 
 seph Addison,' 36 
 Happy retort, a, 94 
 Haydn, Francis Joseph, his grim 
 
 humour, 171 
 Hazlitt, William, on the Bible, 8 
 
 the St. Peter MartjT, 27 
 
 description of Stonehenge, 27 
 
 on a picture of Susanna, 28 
 
 on gusto, 100 
 
 on Thomas Decker, 177 
 
 on a portrait by Vandyke, 196 
 
 story of Jedediah Buxton, 
 
 214 
 
 retirement, 221 
 
 Heart, an affair of the, 160 
 Heine, Heinrich, on wit, 212 
 Heirs, 158 
 
 Helps, Sir Arthur, on Society, 204 
 Herbert, George, his ' Temple,' 6 
 High or Low Church, 38 
 Holmes, Dr. Oliver W., ' The Last 
 Leaf (poem), 44 
 
 on Nature, 120 
 
 Hood, Thomas, and Oliver Gold- 
 smith, 75 
 
 his comicality, 76 
 
 The Poet's Fate, 187 
 
 Hook, Theodore, 141 
 
 Hugo, M. Victor, 'Gastibelza 
 
 (poem), 58 
 Humility, real, 147 
 Humour and wit, the Scots', 43 
 Hunter, John, anticipation of 
 — Death. 186 
 Hymns, 206
 
 232 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 IND 
 • INDIAN Garden, My,' 105 
 Ireland, a Murder in, 146 
 
 — the Climate in, 147 
 
 JEFFREY, Lord, on Society, 
 204 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 142 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, anecdotes, 
 
 200-Z03 
 on Hymns, 207 
 
 — Michael, 201 
 
 Jonson, Ben, on Bores, 114 
 
 TREBLE, Rev. John, 'Fire' 
 (poem), 184 
 
 Hymns, 208 
 
 Kempis, Thomas a, infancy, 108 
 Kleist, C. E. von, the poet, 28 
 
 T AMB, Charles, on liars, 34 
 a lively cheese, 121 
 
 borrowers and lenders, 192 
 
 Landor, Walter S., 'Regret' 
 (poem), 116 
 
 Lecky, Mr. William E. H., on 
 public worship, 23 
 
 Leigh, Mr. H. S., ' My Love she is 
 a Kitten,' 84 
 
 Lepau-x, Monsieur, a New Reli- 
 gion, 203 
 
 Liars, 32 
 
 Life, 172, 176 
 
 Locke, John, innate ideas, 159 
 
 Locker, Captain William, a 
 faithful page, 225 
 
 London Lyric, 'A Rhyme of 
 One,' 29 
 
 'A Rhyme of Less than One,' 
 
 30 
 ' The Pilgrims of Pall Mall,' 
 
 188 
 ' Many Years After,' 190 
 
 PAL 
 
 London Society from an American 
 
 point of view, 119 
 Lome, John, Marquis of, hymns, 
 
 209 
 Louis XIV., his benevolent tact, 
 
 214 
 Lowell, Mr.- J. Russell, 'Within 
 
 and Without' (poem), 15 
 Lucky number, a, 91 
 Luther, Martin, and his wife, 25 
 Lyte, Rev. H. F., Hymns, 208 
 
 TV/TACAULAY, Thomas B. 
 (Lord), on Dr. Johnson, 200 
 
 Marlow, Christopher, compared 
 to Edgar Poe, 13 
 
 Marriage, 83 
 
 — with a deceased wife's sister, 135 
 
 Martineau, Rev. Dr. James, col- 
 lection of hymns, 208 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, To his coy 
 Mistress (poem), 40 
 
 Meredith, Mr. George (poem), 142 
 
 Metaphysics, Scottish, 107 
 
 Milesian humour, 102 
 
 Millennium in Inverness, the, 160 
 
 Miracle ? what is a, 67 
 
 Miracle, a, 195 
 
 Morley, Lady, Quakers and Blue- 
 coat Boys, 133 
 
 TVJEWMAN, Rev. Dr. John 
 Henry, the style and spirit 
 of the classic writers, 13 
 
 Hymns, 208 
 
 Noise, a strange, 157 
 
 pAINE, Thomas, 194 
 
 Paley, Archdeacon, a jester, 
 
 178 
 Palgrave, Mr. F. T., on William 
 
 Cowper, 39
 
 INDEX. 
 
 233 
 
 PAL 
 Palgrave, Mr. F. T., on William 
 
 Blake, 82 
 Panacea for sea-sickness, 17 
 
 — a curious, 157 
 Paper-knife, motto for a, 179 
 Park, Mungo, his fortitude and 
 
 piety, 171 
 Patriotism, 11 
 Pause, a lengthy, 67 
 Pets, 2 
 Philistines, 172 
 
 — and Bohemians, 175 
 Poe, Edgar, 12 
 
 Pope Pius the gth, 17 
 
 Pope Jonathan Swift and Alex- 
 ander, 80 
 
 Praying machines, 99 
 
 Pride, 224 
 
 Prior, Matthew, extract from 
 'Alma' (poem), 139, 223 
 
 Prudery in America, 209 
 
 Public Worship, 23 
 
 QUAKER, Adam a, 194 
 
 ''-' Quakers and Blue-coat Boys, 
 
 133 
 Quantity and quality, 99 
 
 "DAIKES, Thomas, his anony- 
 mous letter, 122 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 'To his 
 
 Sonne' (poem), 170 
 Ramsay, Dean, ' It's no' my wig,' 
 
 20 
 
 — — a tender conscience, 20 
 
 the Scottish language, 21 
 
 Religion, a new, 203 
 Religious training, 57 
 Retort, a happy, 94, 213 
 Rhyme, 103 
 
 Riddle on Nothing, 102 
 
 — a, 141, 169 
 
 SMI 
 
 Robinson, Mr. P., 'My Indian 
 
 Garden,' 105 
 Rogers, Samuel, his poetr>-, 18 
 
 on absence of mind, 106 
 
 • sitting for his portrait, 122 
 
 Ruskin, Mr. John, Swiss moun- 
 tains, 91 
 
 on Italy, iii 
 
 on Switzerland, 213 
 
 CALA, Mr. George Augustus, 
 
 ' Mr. Joseph Addison,' 36 
 Savage, R.ichard, compared with 
 
 Edgar Poe, 13 
 Scott, Michael,ontheBible(poem), 
 
 10 
 
 — Sir Walter, and James Hogg, 
 167 
 
 Scottish language, the, 21 
 
 — humour and wit, 43 
 Scottish metaphysics, 107 
 
 Seals in Heaven? are there any, 94 
 Sea-sickness, panacea for, 17 
 Season for everything, there is a, 
 
 183 
 Sel borne. Lord, on Hymns, 206 
 Selwyn, George, ' loj^/.,' 199 
 Sheridan, Richard B., 115 
 
 a borrower, 193 
 
 Short People, 161 
 
 Sketches, With a book of (poem). 
 
 179 
 Sleepless night, a, 109 
 Smith, Rev. Sydney, Scottish 
 
 metaphysics, 107 
 portrait of Samuel Rogers. 
 
 122 
 Quakers and Blue-^oat Boys, 
 
 133 
 
 the toucan, 182 
 
 the advantage of employ- 
 ing an amanuensis, 222 
 
 R
 
 234 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 SMO 
 
 Smollett, Tobias, a wit, 43 
 Society, 204 
 
 Southey, Robert, as distinguished 
 from Edgar Poe, 13 
 
 Sport, 149 
 
 — a day's, 157 
 
 Stanley, Arthur P., Dean, the 
 graves of the Covenanters, 167 
 
 Hymns, 208 
 
 Statistics of friendship, 68 
 
 Steele, Sir Richard, letters to his 
 wife, 217 
 
 Sterne, Rev, Laurence, a delicious 
 picture, 131 
 
 Sternhold and Hopkins, 142, 209 
 
 Stonehenge, William Hazlitt on, 27 
 
 Story-tellers, 32 
 
 Superstition, 74 
 
 Surnames, 53 
 
 Swearing, 164 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, a letter, 77 
 
 Alexander Pope and Jona- 
 than, 80 
 
 Swinburne, Mr. Algernon Chailes, 
 on William Blake, 82 
 
 "yAKING stock, 62 
 
 Talleyrand, Prince C. M., 
 letters to a lady, 85 
 
 — — unbecoming curiosity in 
 his creditor, 119 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, Letter to John 
 
 Evelyn, 108 
 prayer, 183 
 
 — — poor humanity, 205 
 
 WYC 
 Temper, a hasty, 203 
 Test, a, 227 
 
 Theocritus, John Dryden on, 26 
 Tight boots, the (poem), 95 
 Titian, the St. Peter Martyr by, 26 
 Toplady, Rev. A. M., hymn.s, 208 
 Turner, Rev. Charles Tennyson 
 
 (sonnet), 182 
 Twells, Rev. Henry, hymns, 20S 
 Tyrannical congregation, a, 205 
 
 TJ NFEELING rascal, an, 53 
 
 WANDYKE, a portrait by, 196 
 
 Vanity, 225 
 Velasquez, Mr. Philip G. Hamer- 
 
 ton on, T17 
 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, Bon-mots, 
 
 186, 200 
 
 VXTATTS, Dr. Isaac, hymns, 
 207, 209 
 
 Wesley, Rev. John, letter to his 
 wife, 146 
 
 — Rev. Charles, hymns, 208 
 
 ' What ails him at the lassie ? ' 194 
 
 Who, Mr., 123 
 
 Wilson, Professor John, the dan- 
 gers of the (far) Western Circuit, 
 
 71 
 a fairy funeral, 80 
 
 Wit and humour, the Scots', 43 
 
 Wordsworth, William, ' The 
 
 Brothers,' 216 
 
 Wyclif, John, 98 
 
 SpottiiWoodeandCo., Printers, New-street Square, London.
 
 2s. 6d. 
 LONDON LYRICS. By Frederick Locker. 
 
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