THE COMPANION. BY LEIGH HUNT. The first quality in a Companion is Truth." Sir William Temple. LONDON: PRINTED FOR HUNT AND CLARKE, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1828. LONDON : rniSltV BY C. H. REYNELI., BROAD 5TRIET, GOLDEN SQlJkK£. TITLES OF PAPERS IN THE COMPANION. Page On Pantomime - - - - - --1 Books, Politics, and Theatricals - ... 5 Bad Weather - - - - - - . <) Going to the Play again. " Native Land." Character of Ros- sina. A Hint in behalf of Love and the Sex - - 1 2 French Plays in London. Moliere's Tartuffe. Anecdotes of the Author. A Specimen of the Piece itself, and Remarks on the Performci*s - - - - . . 17 Fine Days in January and February - - - - 25 Tragedy of the Serf - - - - --27 Italian Opera. Tancredi. Re-appearance of Madame Pasta - 29 Notice of a change in size and price of the Companion - - 31 Madame Pasta. An objection to Concerts and Oratorios. The beauty of Truth, even as an accomplishment - - 33 Walks Home by Night in bad Weather. Watchmen - - 10 The Royal Line 47 The True Story of Vertumnus and Pomona - - 40 Comedy of the Merchant's Wedding - - - - 6 1 Large Bonnets. A New Want of Gallantry. Secret of some existing Fashions - - - - - - 6j Rain out of a clear Sky - - - - - TO Opera of the White and Red Rose. Madame Pasta in the Lover. French Dancing - - - . - 71 The Mountain of the Two Lovers - - - - 75 Philosophy of Revolutionary History (from Mr Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon) - - - - - .-78 Sir John Suckling, with Specimens of his Poetry - 83, 104 Remarks on French Opera Dancing resumed. Dancing in gene- ral, with a word on our English Balls - - - 07 Remarks suggested by the perusal of Mr Hazlitt's " Plain Speaker" - - - - - - 113, 130 Chapelle's Trip to Languedoc and Provence - 136, 145, 204 The Graces and Anxieties of Pig-driving - - - 158 An Earth upon Heaven - - - - - 161 The Lover's Leap - - - - - - 165 M'^GIC/^) IV CONTENTS. Page Sketches from the Club-book - - - _ - 170 Sonnets ------.. 175 Life of Sir William Davenant, with Specimens of his Poetry - 177 Yes and No------. 191 Brother Lubin . - - - - --192 Miscellaneous Intentions of the Companion - - - 1 93 The Roue ------- 199 New Splendours at Windsor - - - . . 209 Domestic News from China - - - - - 213 Mistakes in Matrimony - . - - -217 The " miserable Methodists" - - - - - 221 Lord Holland and the Duke of Wellington - . - - 223 Subjects for Dissection ----- 225 The Drawing-room and the Duchess of St Albans - - 232 May-day and Shakspeare's Birth-day^ - - - - 239 Celebration of May-day at Holly Lodge - - - - 241 Marriages Royal and of Doubtful Propriety - - - 247 Letter of Madame Pasta ------ 252 Love at the Plough ------ 256 A Kiss in Reason - - - - - - - 256 Progress of Liberal Opinion, and what becomes the highest ambi- tion accordingly ------ 257 Specimens of British Poetesses - - 261, 284, 329, 364, 374, 385, 413 Anatomical Subjects - - - - - - 269 " Only once" - - - - - - - 271 Pasta and Sontag - - - - - - 274 Musipal Ramble 277 A Father Avenged - ... - 289, 305 Mr Huskisson and the Duke of Wellington - - - 221 Pasta in Desdemona --.--- 225 Redi's Bacchus in Tuscany - - - - - 337 A Walk from Dulwich to Brockham - - 353, 417 The late Fires 363 The Fencing-master's Choice - - - - - 366 The Pantofles (from the Italian) - - - - 369 A Battle of Ants. Desirableness of drawing a distinction be- tween powers common to other Animals and those peculiar to Man 401 Adam's Foresight of the Evils of the Married System as now prevailing ------- 412 The Companion's Farewell to his Readers - - - 428 THE COMPANION No. I.— WEDNESDAY, JAN. 9, 1828. " Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sin W. Temple. PANTOMIME. [This article is not upon the Pantomimes now playing at the two houses, but upon the general spirit of the entertainment so called, and its proper appreciation.] He that says he does not Hke a Pantomime, either says what he does not think, or is not so wise as he fancies himself. He should grow young again, and get wiser. " The child," as the poet says, " is father to the man ;" and in this instance, he has a very degenerate offspring. Yes : John Tomkins, aged 35, and not liking pantomimes, is a very unpromising little boy. Consider, Tomkins, you have still a serious regard for pudding, and are ambitious of being thought clever. Well, there is tlie Clown who will sym- pathize with you in dumplings ; and not to see into the cleverness of Harlequin's quips and metamorphoses, is to want a perception which other little boys have by nature. Not to like pantomimes, is not to like animal spirits; it is not to like motion; not to like love ; not to like a jest upcn dulness and formality ; not to smoke one's uncle; not to like, or see, a thump in the face; not to laugh ; not to fancy ; not to like a holiday ; not to know the pleasure of sitting up at Christmas ; not to sympathize with one's children; not to remember that we have been children ourselves; nor that we shall grow old, and be as gouty as Pantaloon, if we are not as wise and as active as they. Not wishing to be dry on so pleasant a subject, we shall waive the learning that is in us on the origin of these ])opiilar enter- tainments. It will be sufficient to observe, that among the Italians, from whom we borrowed them, they consisted of a run of jokei VOL. I. 1 2 THE COMPANION. upon the provincial peculiarities of their countrymen. Harlequin, with his giddy vivacity, was the representative of the inhabitant of one state. Pantaloon, of the imbecile carefulness of another. The Clown, of the sensual, macaroni-eating Neapolitan, with his instinct for eschewing danger; and Columbine, Harlequin's mis- tress, was the type, not indeed of the outward woman (for the young ladies were too restrained in that matter), but of the inner girl of all the lasses in Italy, — the tender, fluttering heart, — the little dove fcolombina) , ready to take flight with the first lover, and to pay oft^ old scores with the gout and the jealousy, that had hitherto kept it in durance. The reader has only to transfer the character to those of his own countrymen, to have a lively sense of the effect which these national pictures must have had in Italy. Imagine Harlequin a gallant adventurer, from some particular part of the empire, full of life and fancy, sticking at no obstacles, leaping gates and win- dows, hitting off' a satire at every turn, and converting the very scrapes he gets in, to matters of jest and triumph. The old gentleman that pursues him is a miser from some manufacturing town, whose ward he has run away with. The Clown is a London cockney, with a prodigious eye for his own comfort and muffins, — a Lord Mayor's Fool, who loved "everything that was good;" and Columbine is the boarding-school girl, ripe for running away with, and making a dance of it all the way from Chelsea to Gretna Green. Pantomime is the only upholder of comedy, when there is nothing else to shew for it. It is the satirist, or caricaturist of the times, ridiculing the rise and fall of hats and funds, the growth of aldermen, or of top-knots, the pretences of quackery ; and watching innovations of all sorts, lest change should be too hasty. But this view of it is only for the older boys. For us, who, upon the strength of our sympathy, boast of being among the young ones, its life, its motion, its animal spirits, are the thing. We sit among the shining faces on all sides of us, and fancy ourselves now enjoying it. What whim! what fancy ! what eternal movement. The performers are like the blood in one's veins, never still ; and the music runs with equal vivacity through the whole spectacle, like the pattern of a watered ribbon. In comes Harlequin, demi-masked, party-coloured, nimble-toed, lithe, agile; bending himself now this way, now that; bridling up like a pigeon : tipping out his toe like a dancer : then taking a fantastic skip; then standing ready at all points, and at right ane;les with his omnipotent lath-sword, the emblem of the con- THE COMPANMOX. 3 verting power of fancy and light-heartedness. Giddy as wc think him, he is resolved to shew us that his head can bear more pddi- ness than we fancy, and lo! beginning with it by dco:ress, he whirls it round into a very spin, with no more remorse than if it were a button. Then he draws his sword, slaps his enemy, who has just come upon him, into a settee ; and springing upon him, dashes through the window like a swallow. Let us hope that Columbine and the high road are on the other side, and that he is already a mile on the road to Gretna: for Here comes Pantaloon, with his stupid servant; not the Clown, but a proper grave blockhead, to keep him in heart with himself. What a hobbling old rascal it is ! How void of any handsome infirmity ! His verv gout is owing to his having lived upon two-pence farthing. Not finding Harlequin and Columbine, he sends his servant to look on the further part of the house, while he hobbles back to see what has become of that lazy fellow the Clown. He, the cunning rogue, who has been watching mid-way, and now sees the coast clear, enters in front, — round-faced, goggle-eyed, knock-kneed, but agile to a degree of the dislocated, with a great smear from his mouth, and a cap on his head, half fool's and half cook's. Commend him to the dinner that he sees on table, aM that was laid for Harlequin and his mistress. Merry be their hearts: there is a time for all things ; and while they dance through a dozen inns to their hearts' content, he will eat a Sussex dumpling or so. Down he sits, making himself a luxurious seat, and inviting himself with as many ceremonies as if he had the whole day before him: but when he once begins, he seems as if he had not a moment to lose. The dumpling vanishes at a cram: — the sausages are abolished: — down go a dozen yards of macaroni : and he is in the act of paying his duties to a gallon of rum, when in come Panta- loon and his servant at opposite doors, botii in search of the glutton, both furious, and both resolved to pounce on the rascal headlong They rush forward accordingly; he slips from between with a "Hallo, I say;" and the two poor devils dash their heads against one another, like rams. They rebound fainting asunder to the stage-doors: while the Clown, laughing with all his shoulders, nods a health to each, and finishes his draught. He then holds a gallon cask or a snuff-box to each of their noses, to bring them to; and while they are sneezing and tearing their souls out, jogs off at his leisure. Ah — here he is again on his road, Harlequin with his lass, fifty miles advanced in an hour, and caring nothing for his pursuers. 4 THE COMPANION. though they have taken the steam-coach. Now the lovers dirie indeed ; and having had no motion to signify, join in a dance. Here Columbine shines as she ought to do. The little slender, but plump rogue ! How she winds it hither and thither with her trim waist, and her waxen arms ! now with hand against her side, trip- ping it with no immodest insolence in a hornpipe ; now undulating it in a waltz; or " caracoling" it, as Sir Thomas Urquhart would say, in the saltatary style of the opera; — but always Columbine; always the little dove who is to be protected; something less than the opera-dancer, and greater; more unconscious, yet not so; and ready to stretch her gauze wings for a flight, the moment Riches would tear her from Love. But these introductions of the characters by themselves do not give a sufficient idea of the great pervading spirit of the pantomime; which is motion ; motion for ever, and motion all at once. Mr Jacob Bryant, who saw everything in anything, and needed nothing but the taking a word to pieces to prove that his boots and the constellation Bootes were the same thing, would have recognized in the word Pantomime the Anglo-antediluvian compound, a PanU -mimes', that is to say, a set of Mimes or Mimics, all panting together. Or he would have detected the obvious Anglo-Greek meaning of a set of Mimes expressing Pan, or Every-thing, by means of the Toe, — Pan-Toe-Mime. Be this as it may, Pantomime is certainly a lively representation of the vital principle of all things, from the dance of the planets down to that of Damon and Phiilis. Everything in it keeps moving; there is no more cessation than there is in nature; and though we may endeavour to fix our atten- tion upon one mcfver or set of movers at a time, we are conscious that all are going on. The Clown, though we do not see him, is jogging somewhere ; — Pantaloon and his servant, like Saturn and his ring, are still careering it behind their Mercury and Venus; and when Harlequin and Columbine come in, do we fancy they have been resting behind the scenes ? The notion ! Look at them : they are evidently in full career; they have been, as well as are, dancing; and the music, which never ceases whether they are visible or not, tells us as much. Let readers, of a solemn turn of mistake, disagree with us if they please, provided they are ill humoured. The erroneous, of a better nature, we are interested in ; having known what it is to err like them. These are apt to be mistaken out of modesty, (sometimes out of a pardonable vanity in wishing to be esteemed); and in the case before us, they will sin against the natural candour of their THE COMPANION. $ hearts by condemning an entertainment they enjoy, because they think it a mark of sense. Let those know themselves to be wiser than tliose who are really of that opinion. There is nothing wiser than a cheerful pulse, and all innocent things which tend to keep it so. The crahbedest philosopher that ever lived (if he was a philosopher, and crabbed against his will,) would have given thousands to feel as they do ; and would have known that it re- dounded to his honour and not to his disgrace, to own it. BOOKS, POLITICS, AND THEATRICALS. Books being a main part of our existence (for when we are not writing or enjoying the company of our friends, the reader may pretty safely predicate that we are reading, — perhaps during a walk, — perhaps with the book by the side of our plate at dinner) we intend occasionally to review new publications. We shall do this, either at large, or only in brief notices, as it happens ; and in nothing do we undertake to be regular. We shall obey, in all cases, the impulse of the moment, answering only for sincerity and good intention. The opinion that we give upon any book, will be, such as it is, our own. We stake upon it our character for veracity, whatever may be thought of it as criticism. To say that a book is good, knowing it to be bad, will not be in us; much less to say that a book is bad, knowing it to be good ; and as for our power to know a good book from a bad one (a qualification by no means a matter of course now-a-days with the critics) we have at least some portion of reputation to lose ; which is what cannot be said of us all. This portion, whatever the amount of it may be, we stake accordingly. What the Companion says of anything in public, will most assuredly be one and the same thing with what he thinks of it in private; and he is willing to be thought ill or well of, according as he is found capable or otherwise of departing from this principle. There will be no wish to disguise names, if any body chuse to know them. The mask of anonymousness, which has been turned to so ill a purpose at all times, and to such atrocious ones of late years, will be no more than the most innocent of pre- tensions; such as a friend wears at a masquerade, wken he wishes, not to be hidden, but to be known: and if the wearer offend any one, he will with pleasure take it off; equally prepared to shew a serene countenance to threat, and a remorseful one to conviction. 6 THE COMPANION. In short, criticism having done its best for many years, to induce the pubhc not to believe it, we will see, in our small way, whether we cannot force the acknowledgment of at least one sample of trustworthiness ; and this we hope to do, not only with sincerity, but with good-humour. Writers, who do not despair of entertain- ing, can afford to dispense with the excitements of abuse and calumny. Chatting comfortably and in good faith with our com- panion the reader, we shall not think it requisite for his amusement to get up occasionally and thrust out a neighbour's eye. Authors fated to die a natural death will not be troubled by us. Sims may retain, as long as he can, the left leg of his understanding. Hop- kins may walk on, hke the shade in Milton, with *' what seems his head." Above all, live in peace all ye who would fain do so. If we attack any body, it will be those who attack without manliness ; and the fair sex are hereby informed, that in the Companion they have a knight-errant at their service, the motto on whose shield is " Fair play to all, to the fair especially." Our Politics will be addressed to those, who caring little for them in detail, are desirous of becoming acquainted with anything that concerns mankind at large. Politics, in this sense, are a part of humane literature ; and they who can be taught to like them in common with wit and philosophy, insensibly do an infinite deal of good by mingling them with the common talk of life, and helping to render the stream of public opinion irresistible. In these latter times, the press has become a mighty power, which has taken its stand openly in the face of old assumptions, and is contesting the government of the world. That it will succeed is not to be doubted, if for this reason only,— that it is the interest of intel- lectual power to leave no part of a dispute untouched, whereas authority and assumption dare not appeal to a thousand points of knowledge. It is on this account, that the one insensibly re- mains master of the question, while the other (unless it be wise and make an alliance with it) is left like a sullen idiot on its throne, to starve with desertion. In our own country, we have lately had the agreeable spectacle of a prince, in whom the early lessons of liberality, which he appeared to have forgotten in his passage to the throne, seem to have retained their power of issuing forth again with a two-fold splendour, as if, in the very best sense of the word, he would shew the indestructible youth of his nature. But we have learnt to be cautious in our hopes about kings ; and if an anti-liberal ministry should return, wc sliould be more grieved THE COMPANION. 7 than surprised. Kings, like other people in the present state of society, are the victims of inconsistent education; and a man may do good and graceful things when he has liberal people about him, without being able to retain the liberalities that have moved him, or being superior to the will of the moment, which ever way that royal quality may turn. If his Majesty preserve Mr Canning's policy to the last, and choose to remain crowned with the good wishes of mankind, there is no regret we shall not feel at ever hav- ing mistaken him. If it be otherwise, he is but a king, subject to the common error of kings; and we have at least learnt to know, for our parts, that it is not by attacking any one for mistake, but by helping to throw the light of truth on the mistake itself, that the world with its new amount of knowledge is to be benefited. Book societies, ^ew schools. Libraries of Useful Knowledge, '' Twopenny trash'' (as it has been called, and which is fast ad- vancing beyond a great deal of Six-shilling trash, purely because it can speak the truth) all these are every day adding to the sovereign force of opinion, by increasing the consciousness of what it can do, and the calmness which is ever the accompaniment and the evi- dence of superiority. The winds have blown enough. Let the sun shine forth, warming and irresistible. Meanwhile, to descend from these grand generalities, we find ourselves in a very new position — that of being ministerialists, if not absolute courtiers. How long this will last, we cannot say: but we can safely affirm, that the pleasure of finding ourselves among any crowd of human beings, (and a court is but one, and none of the very pleasantest,) can never seduce us into a pre- ference of the few above the many. We would only add, to the old and prood-intentioncd opinion on that subject, that in not pre- ferring the few to the many, we do not prefer even the many to the few: for we think, that what is good for all, is only and truly good when it is good for every one. It is justifiable that individuals should suffer in their progress to a general blessing; but society had better be dissolved at once, than remain stationary to the sorrow and discomfiture of any such bodies of human beings, as some, in their want of thought, would fain leave sacrificed to what they consider a necessity. There is no necessity, except that the common pulse of the world should continue, and that it should be fed with a healthy distribution of life and joy. With respect to Theatricals, we have only room left to say, that we hope to have a criticism on some play or performer every week ; and that, old stagers as we are, we have had a long intenal 8 THE COMPANION. of absence from the theatres, owing to being abroad and other circumstances; so that *' going to the play" again is a sort of new and juvenile thing with us, and we anticipate the pleasure of it accordingly. As there are many living performers whom we long to see again, so there are many we have not seen at all. We hereby give the ladies notice to put on their best airs and graces ; the tragic actors to prepare their happiest miseries ; the comic ones to out-do them in bringing the tears into one's eyes; and all, male and female, to study their most unstudied excellencies, and behave as if there was no such thing as a critic in hfe. '* You dog!" says Sir Anthony Absolute ; " if you have not been lying and cheating your father, I'll never forgive you." So we say to the performers: — " If you do not give way to your impulses and animal spirits, and act as if you cared no more for a critic than an pld crust, we shall have no respect for you." The publication of this paper having been resolved upon very suddenly, and only a few days before the commencement of the new year, some perplexities arose with regard to the size of it in general, the consequent price of it, and the articles that were to appear in the first number. The advertisements in the daily papers varied accordingly ; and among the articles which the change of the publishing day has rendered it advisable to omit, is one upon "Twelfth-Night." It shall be kept (if we live so long) till next year. And so, with this new piece of prefatory matter, and hoping that all will go smoothly, now that we have begun, we remain, like a suburb letter, the reader's very sincere friend, price Three-pence. To Correspondents.— We have received the verses of P., and hope to find room for them. Erratum in the second page of the Prospectos :— For " which keep the ear young for ever," read " keep the heart young for ever." Published by Hunt and Clahkk. York street, Covent garden ; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsveuders in town and country. — Price 3rf, PRINTED BY C. 11. REYNKLL, BROAD STRBBT, GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. II.— WEDNESDAY, JAN. 16, 1828. " Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. BAD WEATHER. After longing these two months for some " real winter weather," the public have had a good sharp specimen, a little too real. We mean to take our revenge by writing an article upon it after a good breakfast, with our feet at a good fire, and in a room quiet enough to let us hear the fire as well as feel it. Outside the casement (for we are writing this in a cottage) the east-wind is heard, cutting away like a knife; snow is on the ground; there is frost and sleet at once ; and the melancholy crow of poor chanticleer at a distance seems complaining that nobody will cherish him. One imagines that his toes must be cold ; and that he is drawing comparisons between the present feeling of his sides, and the warmth they enjoy next his plump wife on a perch. But in the country there is always something to enjoy. There is the silence, if nothing else ; you feel that the air is healthy ; and you can see to write. Think of a street in London, at once narrow, foggy, and noisy ; the snow thawing, not because the frost has not returned, but because the union of mud and smoke prevails against it ; and then the unnatural cold sound of the clank of milk-pails (if you are up early enough); or if you are not, the chill, damp, strawy, ricketty hackney-coaches going by, with fellows inside of them with cold feet, and the coachman a mere bundle of rags, blue nose, and jolting. (He'll quarrel with every fare, and the passenger knows it, and will resist. So they will stand with their feet in the mud, haggling. The old gentleman saw an extra charge of a shilling in his face.) To complete the misery, the pedestrians kick, as they go, those detestable Hakes of united snow and mud ; — at least thei; VOL. I, 2 10 THE COMPANION. ought to do so, to complete our picture; and at night-time, people coming home hardly know whether or not they have chins. But is there no comfort then in a London street in such weather? Infinite, if people will but have it, and families are good-tenrapered. We trust we shall be read by hundreds of such this morning. Of some we are certain ; and do hereby, agreeably to our ubiquitous privi- leges, take several breakfasts at once. How pleasant is this rug! How bright and generous the fire ! How charming the fair makers of the tea ! And how happy that they have not to make it them- selves, the drinkers of it! Even the hackney-coachman means to get double as much as usual to day, either by cheating or being pathetic : and the old gentleman is resolved to make amends for the necessity of his morning drive, by another pint of wine at dinner, and crumpets with his tea. It is not by grumbling against the elements, that evil is to be done away ; but by keeping one's-self in good heart with one's fellow-creatures, and remembering that they are all capable of partaking our pleasures. The contemplation of pain, acting upon a splenetic temperament, produces a stirring re- former here and there, who does good rather out of spite against wrong, than sympathy with pleasure, and becomes a sort of disagree- able angel. Far be it from us, in the present state of society, to wish that no such existed ! But they will pardon us for labouring in the vocation, to which a livelier nature calls us, and drawing a dis- tinction between the dissatisfaction that ends in good, and the mere common-place grumbling that in a thousand instances to one ends in nothing but plaguing everybody as well as the grumbler. In almost all cases, those who are in a state of pain themselves, are in the fairest way for giving it; whereas, pleasure is in its nature social. The very abuses of it (terrible as they sometimes are) cannot do as much harm, as the violations of the common sense of good-humour ; simply because it is its nature to go with, and not counter, to humanity. The only point to take care of, is, that as many innocent sources of pleasure are kept open as possible, and affection and imagination brought in to shew us what they are, and how surely all may partake of them. We are not likely to forget that a human being is of importance, when we can discern the merits of so small a thing as a leaf, or a honey-bee, or the beauty of a flake of snow, or of the fanciful scenery made by the glowing coals in a fire-place. Professors of sciences may do this. Writers the most enthusiastic in a good cause, may sometimes lose sight of their duties, by reason of the very absorption in their enthusiasm. Imagination itself cannot always be abroad and at home at the THE COMPANION. 11 »ame time. But the many are not likely to think too deeply of any- thing; and the more pleasures that are taught them by dint of an agreeable exercise of their retlection, the more they will learn to reflect on all round them, and to endeavour that their reflections may have a right to be agreeable. Any increase of the sum of our enjoyments almost invariably produces a wish to communicate them. An over-indulged human being is ruiiied by being taught to think of nobody but himself; but a human being, at once gratified and made to think of others, learns to add to his very pleasures in the act of diminishing them. But how, it may be said, are we to enjoy ourselves with reflection, when our very reflection will teach us the quantity of suffering that exists ? How are we to be happy with breakfasting and warming our hands, when so many of our fellow-creatures are, at that instant, cold and hungry? — It is no parodox to answer, that the fact of our remembering them, gives us a right to forget them : — we mean, that '' there is a time for all things," and that having done our duty at other times in sympathizing with pain, we have not only a right, but it becomes our duty, to shew the happy privileges of virtue by sympathising with pleasure. The best person in a holiday-making party is bound to have the liveliest face ; or if not that, a face too happy even to be lively. Suppose, in order to complete the beauty of it, that the face is a lady's. She is bound, if any uneasy reflec- tion crosses her mind, to say to herself, " To this happiness I have contributed; — pain I have helped to diminish; I am sincere and wish well to everybody; and I think everybody would be as good as I am, perhaps better, if society were wise. Now society, I trust, is getting wiser; perhaps will beat all our wisdom a hundred years hence : and meanwhile, I must not shew that goodness is of no use, but let it realize all it can, and be as merry as the youngest." So saying, she gives her hand to a friend for a new dance, and really forgets what she has been thinking of, in the blithe spinning of her blood. A good-hearted woman, in the rosy beauty of her joy, is the loveliest object in But every body knows that. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, has rebuked Thomson for his famous apostrophe in ' Winter' to the " gay, licentious proud;'' where he says, that amidst their dances and festivities they little think of the misery that is going on in the world : — because, •observes the philosopher, upon this principle there never could be any enjoyment in the world, unless every corner of it were happy ; which would be preposterous. We need not say how entirely we agree with the philosopher in the abstract : and certainly the poet 12 THE COMPANION. would deserve the rebuke, had he addressed himself only to the "gay;" but then his gay are also "licentious," and not only licentious, but " proud." Now we confess we would not be too squeamish even about the thoughtlessness of these gentry ; for is not their very thoughtlessness their excuse? And are they not brought up in it, just as a boy in St Giles's is brought up in thiev- ery, or a girl to callousness and prostitution ? It is not the thought- less in high life from whom we are to expect any good, lecture them as we may : and observe — Thomson himself does not say how cruel they are; or what a set of rascals to dance and be merry in spite of their better knowledge. He says, " Ah little think the gay, licentious proud :" and so they do. And so they will, till the diffusion of thought, among all classes, flows, of necessity, into their gay rooms and startled elevations ; and forces them to look out upon the world, that they may not be lost by being under the level. We had intended a very merry paper this week, to bespeak the favour of our new readers : — *' A very merry, dancing, drinking. Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking" paper, — as Dryden has it. But the Christmas holidays are past ; and it is their termination, we suppose, that has made us serious. Sitting up at night also is a great inducer of your moral remark ; and if we are not so pleasant as we intended to be, it is because some friends of ours, the other night, were the pleasantest people in the world till five in the morning. GOING TO THE PLAY AGAIN — •*' NATIVE LAND.'* CHARACTER OF ROSSINI. A HINT IN BEHALF OF LOVE AND THE SEX. With the exception of Oberon, we have not witnessed a thea- trical performance till the other night for these six or seven years. Fortune took us another way ; and when we had the opportunity, we did not dare to begin again, lest our old friends should beguile y us. We mention the circumstance, partly to account for the no:iice we shall take of many things which appear to have gone by ; THE COMPANION. 13 and partly out of a communicativeness of temper, suitable to a Companion. For the reader must never lose sight of our claims to that title. On ordinary occasions, he must remember that we are discussing morals or mince-pie with him ; on political ones, reading the newspaper with him ; and in the present instance, we are sitting together in the pit, (the ancient seat of criticism,) seeing zuho is icho in the play-bill, and hearing the delicious discord of the tuning of instruments, — the precursor of harmony. If our companion is an old gentleman, we take a pinch of his snufF, and lament the loss of Bannister and Mrs Jordan. Tooth-ache and his nephew occupy also a portion of our remark ; and we cough with an air of authority. If he is a young gentleman, we speak of Vestris and Miss Foote; wonder whether little Goward will shew herself improving to night; denounce the absurdity of somebody's boots, or his bad taste in beauty ; and are loud in de- precating the fellows who talk loudly behind us. Finally, if a lady, we bend with delight to hear the remarks she is making, *' far above" criticism ; and to see the finer ones in her eyes. We criticise the ladies in the boxes ; and the more she admires them, the more we find herself the lovelier. May we add, that ladies in the pit, this cold weather, have still more attractions than usual ; and that it is cruel to find ourselves sitting, as we did the other night, behind two of them ; when we ought to have been in the middle, partaking of the genial influence of their cloaks, their comfortable sides, and their conversation ? We were going to say, that we hope tins is not too daring a remark for a Companion : — but far be it from us to apologize for anything so proper. Don't we all go to the theatre to keep up our love of nature and soci- ality ? It was delightful to see *' the house" again, and to feel ourselves recommencing our old task. How pleasant looked the ceiling, the boxes, the pit, everything! Our friends in the gallery were hardly noisy enough for a beginning ; nor on the other hand could we find it in our hearts to be angry with two companions behind us, who were a little noisier than they ought to have been, and who enter- tained one another with alternate observations on the beauty of the songs, and the loss of a pair of gloves. All is pleasant in these recommencements of a former part of one's life ; this new morn- ing, as it were, re-begun with the lustre of chandeliers and a thou- sand youthful remembrances. Anon, the curtain rises, and we are presented with a view of the lighthouse of Genoa, equally delicious and unlike; — some gun-boats, returning from slavery, 14 THE COMPANION. salute us with meek puffs of gunpowder, about as audible as pats on the cheek, — the most considerate cannon we ever met with: — then follow a crowd and a chorus, with embraces of redeemed captives, meeting their wives and children, at which we are new and uncritical enough to feel the tears come into our eyes; and finally, in comes Mr "Atkins," with a thousand memories on his head,- — • husband that was of a pretty little singer some twenty years back, now gone, heaven knows where, like a blackbird. It seemed wrong in Atkins to be there, and his wife not with him. Yet we were glad to see him notwithstanding. We knew him the instant we heard him speak. *' Native Land" (a title, by the bye, which looks like one of the captives, with an arm off,) is worth going to see, for those who care little about plot or dialogue, provided there be good music. Part of the music is by Mr Bishop; the rest from Rossini. It is seldom that any of Mr Bishop's music is not worth hearing, and one or two of the airs are among Rossini's finest. There is Di piacer for instance; and we believe another, which we did not stay to hear. We fear it is a little out of the scientific pale to think Rossini a man of genius; but we confess, with all our preference for such writers as Mozart, with whom indeed he is not to be compared, we do hold that opinion of the lively Italian. There is genius of many kinds ; and of kinds very re- mote from one another, even in rank. The greatest genius is so great a thing, that another may be infinitely less, and yet of the stock. Now Rossini, in music, is the genius of sheer animal spirits. It is a species as inferior to that of Mozart, as the clever- ness of a smart boy is to that of a man of sentiment; but it is genius nevertheless. It is rare, effective, and a part of the pos- sessor's character :— we mean, that like all persons who really effect anything beyond the common, it belongs and is peculiar to him, like the invisible genius that was supposed of old to wait upon individuals. This is what genius means: and Rossini undoubtedly has one. " He hath a devil," as Cowley's friend used to cry out when he read Virgil; and a merry devil it is, and graceful withal. It is a pity he has written so many common-places; so many bars full of mere chatter; and overtures so tuU of cant and puffing. But this exuberance appears to be a constituent part of him. It is the hey-day in his blood; and perhaps we could no more have the good things without it, than some men of wit can talk well without a bottle of wine and in the midst of a great deal of nonsense. Now and then he gives us something worthy THE C;OMPANIOiH. 15 of the most popular names of his country, as in the instance above- mentioned. D i piacer h fuW of smihng; delight and anticipation, as the words imply. Sometimes he is not deficient even in tender- ness, as in one or two airs in his Othello; but it is his liveli- est operas, such as the Barbiere di Siviglia and the Italiana in Algkri that he shines. His mobs make some of the pleasantest riots conceivable; his more gentlemanly proceedings, his bows and compliments, are full of address and even elegance; and he is a prodigious hand at a piece of pretension or foppery. Not to see into his merit in these cases, surely implies only, that there is a want of animal spirits on the part of the observer. As we are not so fond of sharp criticism, as when we were young and knew not what it was to feel it, we shall say nothing of one or two of the fair singers on this occasion, except that they did not appear to have a sufficient stock of the spirits we have been speaking of. To animal spirits, animal spirits alone can do justice. A burst of joy will be ill- represented by the sweetest singing in the world that is not joyous, and that does not burst forth like a shower of blossoms. Of Miss Goward's singing we can yet form no judgment, as she had a very bad cold ; but she did her best with it, and did not apologise; which gave us a favourable opinion of her; and her acting increased it. If she does not turn out to be a very judicious person, with a good deal of humour, she will dis- appoint us. Madame Vestris, though she does not insinuate a sufficient stock of sentiment through her gaieties to complete the proper idea of a charmer to our taste, is always charming after her fashion ; but from what we recollect of her, we doubt whether her performance in this piece is one of her favourite ones. The song Q^^'-Istart, I pray, or nature?'' she gave with too little vivacity; and her part in the bolero she seemed to go through more as a duty than a pleasure— which is anything but bolercsque. Mr Wood has great sweetness of voice, with taste and sensibility; and the sweetness is manly. He was encored in the " romance" — Deep in a dungeon: but we preferred him in his first pleasing air. Farewell^ thou coast of glory. We shall be glad to see him again, and to sav more of him. We suspect he has more power than he yet puts forth. There is no necessity to criticise the dialogue. The author him- self probably regards it as being nothing more than one of our old unpretending acquaintances, yclept ''vehicles for music;" — carriers of song, as Messrs. dementi's are of piano-fortes. There is one scene however upon which we shall say a word. It is that in which a maimed husband comes back from the wars, and is re- 16 THE COMPANION. ceived by his wife with aversion and ridicule. It is true, the carica- ture is evident ; it is the only way in which such feelings can be made ludicrous ; but there is something in it from which the heart revolts. It is a dangerous point to divert ridicule from its proper objects, and give degrading representations of humanity. There is something too on these especial occasions, when the joke is carried far, (as is the case in violent double-meanings in company,) by which privacy itself is turned into publicity, and we become painfully conscious of the presence of those, with whom we could best interchange the most pleasurable ideas. We profess to be anything but prudes; we have no objection for instance to Zanina's being reconciled to "little fellows," whose ways are delightful; — but because we are not prudish, we become the more jealous in behalf of what may be called the humanities of licence. We must own we could not help laughing at some passages of Miss Goward's acting in this scene ; and perhaps we scan the matter somewhat too nicely. Those who laughed most would probably have been among the first to hug the remnant of their maimed friends to their heart. But the experiment is dangerous. There is not too much sentiment in society after all ; and it is better not to risque what there is. With what relief did we not call to mind, in our graver moments, the sight we had once, in those boxes on the left hand, of a charming woman sitting next her gallant husband, Colonel C, who had returned from the wars with the frightful loss of his lower jaw. His wife married him after his return ; and this we were told was she. He had his mouth and chin muffled up. But how did he not seem more than repaid in her sweet and loving presence, which we fancied that she pressed still closer to him than was visible in that of any other woman seated by her husband's side. When she looked in his face, we felt as if we could almost have been content to have lost the power of kissing with lips, that we might have received in all its beauty that kiss of the soul. LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden ; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 3d. flllNTED BY C. If. RKYNEr.I,, BROAD STRICKT. GOLDEN SQl'ARK. THE COMPANION. No. HI.— WEDNESDAY, JAN. 23, 1828 " Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend."-S,n W.Tempce. FRENCH PLAYS IK LOXDON.-MOLIERb's TARTUFFE. ANECDOTES OF THE AUTHOR. A SPECIMEN OF THE PIECE ITSELF, AND REMARKS ON THE PERFORMERS. There is something very delightful in the friendliness of inter- course that has sprung up between France and England, s.nce the late troubles. Cabinets may quarrel again, and wars be renewed . but the more intimacy there is '^^ '^^^^^'^'^'^ T7Zo\hZ nations, the less they will be disposed to be gulled >nto those royal a;usements. Formerly, this kind of intercourse was confinul to kings and courtiers; and whenever these gentlemen were dis- posed to pick a quarrel with one another, the people were set on to fight, like retainers to a couple of great houses ; thetr employers all the while making no more of the business, than .f Uvey -- !• a)-.ng a eame of chess. Nations are growing wiser on this head and no' iT. will serve better to secure their wisdom, than an interchange of U'efr socialities, and an acquaintance with the great writers thai have made them what they are. ^ i ,i ,^, U was with singular pleasure therefore that we found ourselves, the oZ night, fitting at a French play in the British r^etropohs atlthatphyMoliere-l There, on the stage, was "o-e as. were himself; there spoke his very words, warm as when he firs uttered them; there he triumphed over hypocrisy, and was wi.e and entertaining and immortal. But what in the meantime had become of Louis XI V and his splendour ? What of all those lords and eourUers who «;ed to make a brilliant assemblage around him (we could not help fancying them in this very pit), and pra.smg or wUhholdmg VOL. I, 18 THE COMPANION. their praise of the immortal man, as the king spoke or held his tongue? Gone is all that once filled that splendid " parterre," like the flowers of any other garden : gone all their plumes, and ribbons, and pulvilio, and their bowing gallantries, and the very love that here and there lurked among them, like a violet among the tulips : but there stood the spirit of Moliere, as fresh as ever, and casting on their memory (when you thought of it) its only genuine lustre. It is curious to think how this great writer had to win his way into toleration through the prejudices attached to a stage life; and how he depended upon men who were comparatively nothing, for an intimation to the rest of the world, that a great and original genius was really worth something. It is to the credit of Louis, that he managed his kingship in this matter in good taste, and allowed the genius of Moliere to be pitted against the marquises and grimaciers of his court. If he had not stood by him, those butter- flies the petits-maitres, and those blackbeetles the priests, had fairly stifled him. It was lucky that he wrote when the king was no older, and before he had become superstitious. It gives one a pro- digious idea of the assumption of those times, and the low pitch at which an actor could be rated in spite of his being a great genius, that a shallow man of quality having found something ridiculous in Moliere's mention of a " cream-tart'' in one of his comedies, and not liking the raillery with which the author treated his criticism, contrived to lay hold of his head one day as the actor made him a bow, and crying out " Tarte d la creme, Moliere, tarte a la creme,' rubbed his face against his cut-steel buttons, till it was covered with blood. For this brutality, it never entered any one's head that an actor could have a remedy, except in complaining to the king ; which the poet did, and the peer was disgraced. Another anecdote, to the same purport, is more agreeably relieved. Moliere, by way of being honoured, and set on a level with gentlemen, had been made one of his Majesty's valets-de-chambre. Presenting himself one day to make the royal bed, his helper abruptly retired, saying that he should" not make it "with an actor." Bellocq, another valet-de- chambre, a man of a good deal of wit, and a maker of pretty verses, happening to come in at this juncture, said, " Perhaps M. de Mo- liere will do me the honour of allowing me to make the king's bed with him." Moliere was a man of great heart, very generous ; but sensitive also, and subject in the midstof his pleasantries to that melancholy which is so often found in the company of wit. Any delicacy towards him must therefore have been extremely felt; though on the subject of scorn and arrogance, he doubtless had no THE COMPANION. 19 proportionate soreness at heart. His wisdom and genuine superi- ority must have saved him from that. It was on the side of his sympathies and not his antipathies, that Mohere was weak. He troubled himself with a wife too young for him; and after having ridiculed jealousy in his comedies, was fain to acknowledge that he felt it in all its bitterness himself. Candour takes away the degrad- ing part of these mortifications : but the sting is there nevertheless. What endears us the more to his sincerity, and to the habitual kind- ness of his heart, is his saying to his friend Chapelle, whom he made his father-confessor on this occasion, that *' finding how im- possible it was to conquer his jealousy, he began to think that it might be equally impossible in the object of his affections to get rid of her coquetry." The worst of it was, that their ages were un- equal. His young wife (the daughter of an actress in his corps dramatique, which gave rise to a scandal refuted by the date of their connection) was herself an actress, beautiful, and surrounded with admirers. She probably loved the poet as well as she could, but found that she loved people of her own age better; while he, taking his undying admiration of beauty for a right to possess it, forgot tilJ too late that poets' hearts remain young much longer than their persons. The consequence was, that two people, both of them per- haps very worthy, became a grief and torment to one another, merely because incompatible marriages are permitted ; for Moliere had been a great ridiculer of marriage, and there no doubt lay a good part of the sting. He should have gone abroad more out of the society of his corps dramatique, and found some charmer to love less unsuitable to his time of life. There are born poetesses, in their way, among the women, whom temperance and the graces help to keep young even in person, and often in a more touching manner than the young and thoughtless. Moliere should have laid his laurelled head in the lap of one these. She might have repaid his candour and tenderness v.-ith a like generosity. But we are forgetting the play. — The house (the Lyceum) opened for these performances last Wednesday. It has been newly fitted up for the purpose, with fresh mouldings or compartments round the boxes (we forget exactly what) and a drapery of scarlet and white, very handsome. The prices, to nearly the whole of the pit, remain the same as before, three and sixpence ; but six shillings are paid for seats on a bench or two, and seven for those in a part of the orchestra. Some boxes may be taken by the evening, at two, three, and four guineas, according to the number of persons and the situation of the box. The rest are let for the season at prices which look enormous; being 80, 120, or 160, guineas for 40 nights. 20 THE COMPANION. The performances will be three times a-week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, till Lent. Money is not taken at the door. There is a list of the places where you can get them, at the bottom of the play-bill; such as the booksellers in Bond street; Marsh's, in Oxford street ; Wilson's, at the Royal Exchange, &c. We bought ours at Mr Neele's, a door or two on the left of the main entrance to the theatre out of the Strand; which we mention, in order to shew, that people may go as usual, with no more trouble than if they paid at the door. The performances of the evening were Tartuffe, followed by a coronation of the bust of Moli^re ; La Fille Mai Gardee, a vau- deville in one act; and V Ambassadeur , another, in which Perlet, who acted Tartuffe, and who is the principal performer of the com- pany, reappeared in the chief character. We shall confine our- selves to the first piece, which indeed is the only one we saw, and which is quite sufficient to see and to think about for one time. Our observations upon it will not be directed to scholars only, and readers of French ; but, agreeably to the plan pursued by us in a former publication, we shall endeavour to give all such readers as have a relish for what is good, a taste of it somehov/ or other, let them have missed scholarship, great or small, as they may. French is a very common acquirement; yet there are numbers unable to read even French, who very much deserve to do so, and who have a genuine perception of a good thing when it comes before them. Few readers need be informed, but all will be glad to know, that the comedy of Tartuffe (from which our popular play of the Hypocrite is taken, which made the selection of it on this occasion every way judicious) may be ranked among the avant couriers of the knowledge and liberality of these times. It is a masterly satire upon religious hypocrisy ; and on its first appearance at Paris, in an age full of well-fed devotees and gallant confessors, was re- ceived accordingly. The first three acts were ])rought out originally before the court at Versailles in the year 1664; but what may be called the first public representation of the entire piece, did not take place till 1667, when it was performed at Paris, and pro- hibited next day by an order from the First President of Parlia- ment. Moliere himself had to announce the prohibition, which he did in the following manner: — "Gentlemen, we reckoned this even- ing upon having the honour of presenting you with the Hypocrite ; but Monsieur the First President does not wish us to play him." Our author must have reckoned very confidentially on the king's protection, to be able to joke in this manner.* The time indeed * Another turn was given to this bon-mot in one of the provinces. The bishop, in a place where they were going to perform the comedy, had lately died. His suc- cessor was not equally disposed in favour of theatrical representations ; and orders were given to the actors, that they should quit the town before he made his appear- ance, which he was to do the next day. Accordingly, when the time was come for giving out the performances of the next evening, the announcer, afl'ecting not to know that his lordship was to arrive so soon, said " The Hypocrite, g;entlemen, to- morrow." THE COMPANION. 21 was lucky for him so far. Louis was then young and gay, and equally victorious in war and gallantry. He had a minister the avowed patron of men of letters (Colbert), and a general who loved humour and original genius (Turenne).* He did not think fit to let the piece re-appear for a year or two; but Moliere re- mained on the best terms with him; and in 1669, TartuflPe rose again in spite of its enemies, and has remained ever since a stock acting piece, — the glory of the French stage, and the hatred of bigots and impostors. Perhaps they are more bitter against it in their hearts this very moment, than they have been for these hundred years ; the Jesuits having trimmed their dark lanterns once more, and pieces of this kind offering the most insurmountable barriers against the re-action of priestcraft.f It has been thought curious by some, that in the English Hypocrite the ridicule should be confined to sectarians, while in the original it attacks hypocrites of the establishment. This is to be accounted for on a variety of grounds. In the first place the Catholic esta- blishment, especially as it existed in France at that time, did not make such an exclusive matter of difference of opinion, as the hierarchy in England ; while on the other hand certain disputes in it were so fierce, and yet all parties pretended pretty nearly to such an equal measure of piety, that to make an heterodox person of the Turtuffe would have been absolutely to neutralize the satire on hypocrisy. It would have been a mere party libel. An English Methodist pretends to peculiar sanctity ; but formalists of a simi- lar description in France were hardly known till a later period. Again, a Catholic establishment is of a much more miscellaneous nature than a Protestant; admits a host of lay members ; and other- wise affords pretences for quacks and hypocrites of all sorts. It is a much larger world ; in which vice may be found in the particular, with less offence to the main body. Then again, there is confession, and the admission of interferers and regulators into the tenderest privacies of life. These people were very often at variance with the rest of the families whose heads they lorded it over (as Moliere has taken care to shew); they were sometimes very officious in state matters and at court, where indeed the clerical power claimed a kind of sovereignty of its own, independent of that of the civil and executive, (a pretension, against which our anti-popery men are still warning us) ; and above all, at the time when Moliere wrote, the king was not only young, and gay, and inclined to " cut," * See in the works of La Fontaine a pleasant account of a chat that took place on the road between Turenne and that poet, when the former was on his way to one of his campaigns. t The speech of Father Nitard to the Duke of Lerma may be taken as a speci- men of the pitch of the insolence, worthy of Tartuffe, to which priests could be transported in those days. He was a Jesuit, and confessor to Louis's mother-in-law, tlie Queen of Spain. He told the Duke one day " that he ought to treat liim with more respect ; as he had every day his God in his hands (the Euciiarist) and his Queen at his feet." 22 THE COMPANION. his religious mortifiers, but the Great Conde, then in favour, was a sworn enemy of bigots ; the Pope had not long since been bearded by the French authorities in Rome ; Cardinals and Bishops were for the most part laymen at heart, and mixed not only with politics but with the pleasures of life ; in short, " the cloth," as a matter of any solemnity, was at a disadvantage ; and to pretend to an unusual measure of sanctity, was in some sort to offend priests as well as laymen. Moliere himself tells us, that he had the approbation of the Legate ; and that the greater part of the Bishops, to whom he had taken care to read his work, were " of the same way of think- ing as his Majesty."* Nevertheless, a tremendous cry was raised against it, even before it appeared. The author was called, he tells us, a libertine, a blasphemer, a devil incarnate ; and no sooner was it brought out, than very worthy people, acted upon by the cries of bigotry, joined in the wish to have it suppressed. The President of Parhament, who agreed to become the instrument of the sup- pression, was the celebrated Lamoignon, the friend of Boileau, and reckoned one of the best men in the world. Boileau helped him perhaps afterwards to a better judgment. Menage tells us ex- pressly, that he himself spoke to the President about it, and told him that the moral of the play was excellent, and calculated to be of public service. f Menage, in the same passage of his book, ventures to prefer Moli^re's prose to his verses. That learned wit had no very great taste in verses at any time, and had been accustomed to a very bad taste in particular, which Moliere rooted out. The classical scholar was judicious and generous enough at the time to acknow- ledge the reformation; but perhaps he never heartily forgot his old propensities. Perhaps also he grudged Moliere that extraor- dinary facility in versifying, which Boileau has recorded with asto- nishment.]: The happy power for which Boileau here praises his friend, is one of the most remarkable things in the Tartuffe. Thos'e who know the Hypocrite of the English stage, know the other in a certain way; and know it well. But there is no comparison in the two styles ; every word telling with double force in the Frenchman's mouth, and uniting with the familiarity of prose the terseness of wit in rhyme. Let the reader imagine the best colloquial verses of Dryden or Pope, full or wit and humour, uttering the finest know- ledge of life, comprising a plot no less interesting than simple, agitating the feelings deeply before they have done, and dismissing the audience in the most generous disposition for truth ; and they have a picture of this great and perfect comedy. An English * *' Premier Placet, pr6sentay have been better suited to the character than we took it for. The Page, in that very breath-suspended and conscious piece, which is always hovering on the borders of strange things, is in reality in a very awkward position, and extremely sensi- ble of it ; and we are not sure, if we could have seen Madame Pasta in it, with as much knowledge of her then, as we persuade ourselves we have now, that we should not have found her the exact person for the character, and presenting a portrait, full of truth, in its very ungainness and want of teaching. Truth is the great charm of this fine vocal actress. She waits upon it, without claim or misgiving; and like a noble mistress, truth in turn waits upon her, and loves her like her child. We never saw anybody before on the stage who impressed us with a sense of this sort of moral charm in its perfection. Even Mrs Siddons had always a queen-like air in her nature, which seemed to be conscious of the homage paid it, and to crown itself with its glory. Madame Pasta, as the occasion demands, is tranquil, grave, smiling, trans- ported, angry, affectionate, voluptuous ; intent at one minute as a bust, radiant as a child with joy at the next ; intellectual as a Muse, full of wily and sliding tones as a Venus; in short, the occasion itself, and whatever it does with the human being. Imagine a female brought up in solitude, with a natural sincerity that nothing has injured, walking quietly about a beautiful spot, THE COMPANION. 31 reading everything that comes in her way, accomplished, at ease, getting even a little too t\it with the perfection of her comfort and her ignorance of anything ungraceful; and imagine this same female gifted with as much sensibility as truth, and weeping, laugh- ing, and undergoing every emotion that books can furnish her with, as she turns over the leaves ; and you have a picture of this noble performer, and tiie extraordinary effect she produces without any- thing like theatrical eftbrt. Not\hat she cannot indulge the critics now and then with the idea of a stage-actress, and set herself to make her bravura effective ; but truth is at the bottom even of that, and she is sure to throw in some tone, and sweet reference to nature ; as much as to say to the lovers of it, " Do not imagine I have forgotten you." She is like a nature full of truth, brought out of solitude into the world ; — and too much habituated to sincerity, too sweet in the use of it, and too conscious of the power it gives her, to forego so rare, so charming, and so triumphant a distinction. We do not pretend to make any discovery in this matter. The accounts we heard of her in Medea shewed us that the discovery had been made already ; and it has been set forth by a critic, worthy of that name, in an article comparing this *' perfection of natural acting" with that of the French. With a reference to this article, which is to be found in the " Plain Speaker," vol. 2, and which we regret we have no room to quote, for nothing need be said of the opera itself, we must conclude. Tancredi is said to be one of the most popular of Rossini's operas, but is by no means one of his best; being crammed, in fact, as full ofcommon-places and old thread- bare recitative, as nine-tenths of it can hold. It is theatrical clothes- man's music. But there is good in the remainder; and the fine air, Di ianti palpiti, is part of it. If any one thinks he has heard this air a hundred times, till he has got tired of it, let him never mind, but go and hear it from Madame Pasta; he will then find he has never heard it before. We have left ourselves as little room to speak of the other performers, some of them excellent in their way, especially Madame Caradori ; but after our new, true, and most original acquaintance, even the best of conventional singers become comparatively uninteresting. Caradori is like a sweet and perfect musical instrument, by the side of her; not that she does not act too better than most singers ; she even contrives, in her manners, to give us an amiable as well as clever idea of her ; but Pasta, coming upon all this, even in her most tranquil moments, seems like the very noon-tide of humanity risen upon a cold morning of it. There is more effective grace in the least of her movements, though she is too fat, and sometimes looks heavily so, than in all the received elegancies of the stage,- — so beautiful as well as great is truth. By the way, we had forgotten to say that her voice is not perfect. Who asks whether any voice is so, when sensibility and sincerity speak together, and the sound is hugged into one's heart! 32 THE COMPANION. SIZE AND PRICE OF THE COMPANION. The major part of our Correspondents this time will find answers on the wrapper which accompanies this number ; but having been shorter in it than we supposed, we beg-in with them here. Medium and a fVell-wisher (both of them very agreeably and sin- cerely, which is hitting the two points most worthy of each other) object to the small size of the Companion, considering the price. We have had the same objection from several private quarters, and acknowledge that it is well-founded. When w^e hear of other per- sons, who object to our price without saying a word of our merits, we, of course, feel all the indifference of wounded authorship ; but we like those who tell us, as these our friends do, that they are sorry they come to the end of their reading so soon. The former put us upon the hard task of comparing our little work with those heaps of compilation and common-place with which the economical faculties of the public have been so long beguiled into heavy dinners; that is to say, a tart, or a cheesecake, compared with themajesty of a peck of dough: which is unfair. Our other admonishers we love and agree with, and could find it in our hearts to give them as many Compa- nions as they chose for nothing. The truth is, our minds misgave us on this point, when we set up the paper ; but by universal agreement, we had given the public a former paper, the Indicator, at a price below what it ought to have been ; we recollected under what circumstances of trouble and ill-health we wrote those closely- filled pages, and how little we gained by them ; and, in our new publication we allowed ourselves to go to something of the other extreme, till we could see what our head would bear, as well as our pocket. We did not desire to write so little; on the contrary, we have found the space insufficient for what we had to say ; and we no sooner found also that we could write thus much more with impunity, than we resolved upon making some addition. It is now in contemplation to double the size of the Companion ; but we cannot say at what addition of pence. At all events, we trust we shall do our best to make it worth the enormity. It was not desirable to begin in this manner at once, because diminution would have had an ill look ; but addition is another matter ; and we are happy in being able to state, that our facts are in accordance with appearances, and that we make the addition not in consequence of failure, but of success. LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clarke. York street, Covent garden ; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 3d. PUINTED DY C. U. IIEY.NELL, BROAO STRKICT, GOLDEN SQl'ARE. THE COMPANION. No. V. WEDNESDAY, F^B. 6, 1828. " Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Siu William Temple. MADAME PASTA. AN OBJECTION TO CONCERTS AND ORATORIOS. THE BEAUTY OF TRUTH, EVEN AS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. We wish to add something to our last article respecting the truth and beauty of this singer's performance. It has been suggested to us, that Madame Pasta is not so much absorbed as people may think her in the business of the scene ; that she finds time, like other singers at the opera, for those little interchanges of bye-jokes and grown-children's play, by which they occasionally refresh themselves from a sense of their duties ; and that in a concert- room, or an oratorio, where no illusion is going forward, we should find more defects in her as a singer than we are aware of. Finally, another friend tells us, that we make a good deal of what we see ; and in our gratitude for a favourite quality, find more of it to be grateful for, than exists anywhere but in our own imaginations. We doubt whether we are not committing the dignity of the critical character, in thus admitting that our opinion can be dis- puted privately. A correspondent is another matter. He ap- proaches his critic with a curtain between ; and the latter retreats further into the mystery and multiplicity of his plural " we," leaving his questioner uncertain how many secret faculties and combined resources of experience he may not have ventured to differ with. But to acknowledge that we are mortal and individual men, '' singular good" fellows, who can be disputed with over one's VOL. I. 5 34 THE COMPANION. wine and tea, face to face; and be forced to say '^ I;" and give a reason, with no more privilege to be wrong than any other man's reason ; all this would be very frightful to us, if instead of being critics or judges, sitting aloof above sympathy, and periwigged with imposture, we did not profess to be what we really are, nothing but Companions ; men, who get from sympathy all they know, and do not care twopence for anything but truth and good-fellowship. We say then to these our objectors, public or private (for after all there is no difference between them then, except as to the dry matter of fact ; we take a real bottle with one, and an imaginary one with the other) — we say, filling our glass, and looking them in the face, with all that bland beatitude of certainty, so convincing in any man, especially if he does not proceed to argue the point (as we have an unfortunate propensity to do) — My dear So-and-so, you are most horribly in the wrong. I wonder at a man of your intelligence. You surprise me. Do you think so indeed ? Well, you astonish me. I'm sure, if you would but reflect a little — Well, I never — You are the last man I should have thought capable of using that argu- ment. Nothing will ever persuade me, &c. These answers ought to be convincing. But as some unreason- able persons may remain, who are not so easily convinced, and as we have a conscience that induces us not to leave them out, we shall proceed to observe, that all which is urged against us on the point in question may be very true, and Pasta yet remain just what we have described her. In the first place, it is not necessary to suppose her absorbed in the business of the scene, in order to do it justice. ,It would be impossible she could do so, if she were. ^' If a man," said Johnson, " really thought himself Richard the Third, he would deserve to be hung." All we contend for is, that Madame Pasta has the power, to a surprising extent, of pitching herself into the character of the person she represents. The greater this power the more suddenly she can exercise it. She touches the amulet of her imagination in an instant, and is the person she wishes to appear. It is a voluntary power of the extremest degree, in one sense; and yet, in another, it is the most involuntary; that is to say, she can abstract herself at a moment's notice from circumstances not belonging to the scene, and yet in the next she is under the influence of the character imagined, as THE COMPANION. 35 much as if she were a child. We will venture to illustrate this by a reference to authorship and to ourselves. We shall be talking- for instance in the midst of half-a-dozen friends : they shall all be talkin-j with us : and we shall be thinkinj^ no more of authorship than of the Emperor Nicholas. On a sudden, it becomes necessary that we should look at our paper, and give a turn to some story or other piece of writing, serious or merry. In a moment, we are as abstracted as if we were a hun- dred miles off. We hear the conversation no more than people hear the rumbling of the coaches when they are not thinking about them; and with the laugh hardly off our lips, become as grave as the heroine of our story ; or, with the tears almost in our eyes, sit down to give the finish to a joke, and tickle ourselves into laughter with the point of it. Now why should we not believe, that what we ourselves can do, others cannot do twenty times as well? That Madame Pasta should not feel everything just as strongly as she imagines it, and that she should give evidences to near observers that she can occasionally amuse herself, as other favourite performers do, with certain quips and cranks among one another, takes away nothing of the imaginative truth of what she has to do, and only adds to the evidences of the voluntary power. We cer- tainly doubt whether she could do this so well in some characters as in others. We should guess that she was least able to do it much, and most inclined to do it at all, when performing charac- ters that tried her feelings the most severely. There are stories of Garrick's turning round with a comic grin in the thick of the dis- tresses of King Lear; and similar stories have been related of Mr Kean. Believe them, if you will ; but do not believe that those great performers felt less the truth of what they were about. Per- haps what they did was necessary, as a relief to their feelings; just as sensitive men will shock company sometimes by cracking jokes upon some topic of distress. It is not because they do not feel it, but because they do, and because some variety of sensation is necessary to enable them to endure their feelings. If an actor were to feel, unmixed, all he seems to feel in such characters as Lear, he would go nigh to lose his senses in good earnest. Tragic actresses, the most eminent, have been known to faint and 36 THE COMPANION. go into fits upon the performance of a trying character. Perhaps they would not have done so, had their personal character contained variety and resource enough in it to call in the aid of this occa- sional volatility. Even Garrick is known to have looked pre- maturely old. Yet Garrick had everything to support him — for- tune, prudence, and a good constitution. When we hear actors, equally great in their way, but less happy in bodily frame, rebuked severely for certain excesses alleged against them, we sometimes think it a pity that the rebukers do not know what it is to go through all that wear and tear of sensation, and to be at a loss how to keep up a proper level of excitement in their general feelings. We are not sure that Madame Pasta does not unconsciously let herself grow fatter than might be wished, out of an uneasy feeling of something to be supported and strengthened in this way ; especially when it is considered that persons of her profession lead artificial lives, and cannot so well be kept healthy as others, by good hours, and a life otherwise uninterfered with. As to a concert-room or an oratorio, it is a dull business com- pared with singing amidst the feelings of a scene. Such places are fittest for instrumental performances, and for instrument-like singers. In the concert-room, the audience expect little passion, and find it. They are themselves in a dull and formal state ; there is often a majority of musicians present, and a majority of musicians cannot be of the first order, nor do they desire anything of the first order in others. They wish the singers to act up simply to their own notions of excellence, which are but a reflection of themselves. All is quiet, mechanical, mediocre. Up gets a lady or gentleman, book in hand, and out of this is to disburse us the proper quantity of notes, checked by that emblem of reference to the dead letter. She does so ; is duly delivered of a B, or a D ; and everything is ** as well as can be expected." So in an oratorio. The audience are all assembled, as grave as need be; the season, and the usual dull character of oratorios, helps to formalize them ; there is a good deal of mourning in the house ; and sacred music is to be performed, mixed with a little illegal profane. That is to say, there is nothing real in the busi- ness, and nobody can be either properly merry or mournful. Which is just the case. In comes a gentleman dressed in black. THE COMPANION. 37 liitcliing his way along sideways, and leading a lady up the alley l)ehind the orchestra ; another follows, and another, equally polite and preparatory ; it is Madame So-and-so, in a hat and feathers ; it is Miss W. or Mrs. Z., all dressed like other gentlewomen, which is odd; and like otlier gentlewomen they take their seats, and look as if they ought to drink tea. Music-books make their appear- ance, as in the concert-room ; and up rises the lady or gentleman to sing in the same formal manner, and be discreet in their flats. The sacred music drags ; the profane music hops ; and the audience wish themselves in their beds. ]\Iadame Pasta may probably not excel at such exhibitions as these. We do not desire that she should. It would not be easy to persuade us that, sing where she may, her singing would not be better than the most formal perfection ; but the worst thing we can say of an oratorio is, that not even she can take us there. Put her on the stage, or in a company among friends ; let loose her feelings ; and then we have the soul of music ; and this is the only real music in the world. That we make what we find on such occasions, and listen with our imaginations upon us, is only saying in other words that the occasion is fit to excite the enthusiasm ; otherwise how does it happen that it is not equally excited on others ? Doubtless there must be enthusiasm and imagination to do fit justice to the same qualities in the performer. Loveliness must have love. But how is it that love is excited by some things and not by others ? How is it that multitudes are wound up to enthusiasm by one orator and not by another, and that Madame Pasta produces the same sensa- tion from Naples to Berlin ? She is not an unknown singer, trumped up by a solitary enthusiast. Cities are her admirers ; and she would take hearts by storm everywhere, whether critics explained or not by what magic she did it. It is nevertheless very pleasant to us to know what the magic is. We never feel the value of criticism, except when it enables us to double our delight in this manner ; for none can hold in greater contempt than we do the common cant of criticism, or less pride themselves in finding out those common defects to which critics in p^eneral have a natural attraction. It is truth that gives Madame 38 THE COMPANION. Pasta her advantage ; the same truth, yes, the very same spirit of sincerity and strait-forwardness, which is charming in conversation, and in matters of confidence ; which enables one face to look at another, unalloyed with a contradiction, and makes the heart sometimes gush inwardly with tenderness at the countenance that little suspects it. The reason is, that some of the most painful infirmities with which the state of society besets us, are then taken away, and we not only think we have reason to be delighted, but are sure of it. For this we know no bounds to our gratitude ; and it is just ; for you could not more transport a man shaken all over with palsy by suddenly gifting him with firmness, than you do any human being, in the present state of things, by making him secure upon any one point which he ardently desires to believe in. There is therefore a moral charm, of the most liberal kind, in Madame Pasta's performances, which argues well for her personal character ; and personal character, wish as we may, always mingles more or less with the impression created by others upon us. It is indeed a part of them, which helps to make them what they are, off a stage or on it, pretending or not pretending. It is true there is a differ- ence between moral truth and imaginative ; and it does not follow that, because Madame Pasta tells the truth in everything she does on the stage, she should be an example of the virtue elsewhere. It is an argument, however, that she would be so ; just as the taste for an accomplishment implies that a person is more likely to excel in it, than if there were no such taste. Madame Pasta has to look sorrowful, and no sorrow can be completer : — she has to look joyful^ and her face is all joy, — as true and total a beaming, as that of a girl without a spectator, who sees her lover hailing her from a distance. We have seen such looks ; and they have stood us in stead of any other certainty. Madame Pasta knows the truth well, and knows how to honour it; and this is an evidence that the inclination of her nature is true, whatever the world may have done to spoil it. We are aware, mind, of no such spoliation. Our impulse, if we knew this charming performer (which is a pleasure incompatible with the confounded critical office we have taken upon us) would be to give as implicit belief to everything she said off the stage^ as on it. But we wish to guard against THE COMPANION. 39 it wrong argument; and to show the triumph and the beau- tiful tendencies of truth, whether borne out in all their quarters or not. We will conclude with the extract we alluded to last week, and which our new dimensions allow us to indulge in. It is from a book written by one of the deepest thinkers of the time ; so that the reader will see we are not the only critics, nor the best, whom Madame Pasta has rendered enthusiastic. Now if she can do this with critics as well as communities, what greater proof of her merits can any party desire? ** I liked Mademoiselle Mars exceedingly well, till I saw Madame Pasta whom I liked so much better. The reason is, the one is the perfection of French, the other of natural acting. JMadame Pasta is Italian, and she might be English — Mademoiselle Mars belongs emphatically to her country ; the scene of her triumphs is Paris. She plays naturally too, but it is French nature. Let me explain. She has, it is true, none of the vices of the French theatre, its extravagance, its flutter, its grimace, and affectation, but her merit in these respects is as it were negative, and she seems to put an artificial restraint upon herself. There is still a pettiness, an attention to minutice, an eticpiette, a mannerism about her acting : she does not give an entire loose to her feelings, or trust to the unpremeditated and habitual impulse of her situation. She has greater elej2^ance, perhaps, and precision of style, than Madame Pasta, but not half her boldness or grace. In short, everything she does is voluntary, instead of being spontaneous. It seems as if she might be acting from marginal directions to her part. WTien not speaking, she stands in general quite still. When she speaks, she extends first one hand and then the other, in a way that you can foresee every time she does so, or in which a machine might be elaborately constructed to develope ditterent successive movements. When she enters, she advances in a straight line from the other end to the middle of the stage with the slight unvarying trip of her countrywomen, and then stops short, as if under the drill of a J'ug-al-man. When she speaks, she articulates with perfect clearness and ])ropriety, but it is the facility of a singer executing a difficult passage. The case is that of habit, not of nature. Whatever she does, is right in the intention, and she takes care not to carry it too far ; but she a])pears to say beforehand, " This I will do, I must not do thatP Her acting is an inimitable study or consummate rehearsal of the part as a preparatory performance : she hardly yet ajjpcars to have assumed the character j something more is wantino:, and that something you find in Madame Pasta. If Mademoiselle Mars has to smile, a shglit and evanescent expression of pleasure passes across the surface of her face ; twinkles in her eyelids, dimples her chin, compresses her lips, and plays on each feature : when Madame Pasta smiles, a beam of joy seems to have struck upon her heart, and to irradiate her countenance. Her whole face is bathed and melted in expression, instead of its glancing from particular points. Wlien she speaks, it is in music. When she moves, it is without thinking whether she is graceful or not. When she weeps, it is a fountain of tears, not a few trickling drops, that glitter and vanish the instant after. Thp French themselves admire i\l adame Pasta's acting, ^who 40 THE COMPANION. indeed can help it?) but they go away thinking how much one of hev simple movements would be improved by their extravagant gesticulations, and that her noble, natural expression would be the better for having twenty airs of mincing affectation added to it. In her Nina there is a listless vacancy, an awkward grace, a want of bienseance, that is like a child or a changeling, and that no French actress would venture upon for a moment, lest she should be suspected of a want of esprit or of bon mien. A French actress always plays before the court ; she is always in the presence of an audience, with whom she first settles her personal pretensions by a significant hint or side-glance, and then as much nature and simplicity as you please. Poor Madame Pasta thinks no more of the audience than Nina herself would, if she could be observed by stealth, or than the fawn that wounded comes to drink, or the flower that droops in the sun or wags its sweet head in the gale. She gives herself entirely up to the impression of the part, loses her power over herself, is led away by her feelings either to an expression of stupor or of artless joy, borrows beauty from deformity, charms unconsciously, and is trans- formed into the very being she represents. She does not act the character — she is it, looks it, breathes it. She does not study for an eflfect, but strives to possess herself of the feeling which should dictate what she is to do, and which gives birth to the proper degree of grace, dignity, ease, or force. She makes no point all the way through, but her whole style and manner is in perfect keeping, as if she were really a love-sick, care- crazed maiden, occupied with one deep sorrow, and who had no other idea or interest in the world. This alone is true nature and true art. The rest is sophistical ; and French art is not free from the imputation ; it never places an implicit faith in nature, but always mixes up a certain portion of art, that is, of consciousness and affectation with it." — HazUtfs Plain Speaher. WALKS HOME BY NIGHT IN BAD WEATHER. WATCHMEN. The readers of these our fourpenny lucubrations need not be informed that we keep no carriage. The consequence is, that being visitors of the theatre, and having some inconsiderate friends who grow pleasanter and pleasanter till one in the morning, we are great walkers home by night; and this has made us great acquaintances of watchmen, moonlight, wiwd-light, and other accompaniments of that interesting hour. Luckily we are fond of a walk by night. It does not always do us good ; but that is not the fault of the hour, but our own, who ought to be stouter; and therefore we extract what good wc can out of our necessity, with becoming temper. It is a remarkable thing in nature, and one of the good-naturedest things we know of her, that the mere fact of looking about us, and being conscious of what is going on, is its own reward, if we do but notice it in good-humour, l^ature is a THE COxMPANION. 41 great painter (and art and society are among her works), to whose minutest touches the mere fact of becoming ahve is to enrich the stock of our enjoyment. We confess there are points liable to cavil in a walk home by night in February. Old umbrellas have tiieir weak sides; and the quantity of mud and rain may surmount the picturesque. Mis- taking a soft piece of mud for hard, and so filling your shoe with it, especially at setting out, must be acknowledged to be " aggravat- ing." But then you ought to have boots. There are sights, indeed, in the streets of London, which can be rendered pleasant by no philosophy; things too grave to be talked about in our present paper; but we must premise, that our walk leads us out of town, and through streets and suburbs of by no means the worst descrip- tion. Even there we may be grieved if we will. The farther the walk into the country, the more tiresome we may choose to find it; and when we take it purely to oblige others, we must allow, as in the case of a friend of ours, that generosity itself on two sick legs may find limits to the notion of virtue being its own reward, and reasonably " curse those comfortable people " who, by the lights in their windows, are getting into their warm beds, and saying to one another — " Bad thing to be out of doors to night." Supposing then that we are in a reasonable state of health and comfort in other respects, we say that a walk home at night has its merits, if you choose to meet with them. The worst part of it is the setting out, — the closing of the door upon the kind faces that part with you. But their words and looks on the other hand may set you well off. We have known a word last us all the way home, and a look make a dream of it. To a lover, for instance, no walk can be bad. He sees but one face in the rain and darkness ; the same that he saw by the light in the warm room. This ever accompanies him, looking in his eyes; and if the most pitiable and spoilt face in the world should come between them, startling him with the saddest mockery of love, he would treat it kindly for her sake. But this is a begging of the question. A lover does not walk. He is sensible neither to the pleasures nor pains of walking. He treads on air ; and in the thick of all that seems inclement, has an avenue of light and velvet spread for him, like a sovereign prince. 42 THE COMPANION. To resume then, like men of this world. The advantage of a late hour is, that everything is silent, and the people fast in their beds. This gives the whole world a tranquil appearance. Inani- mate objects are no calmer, than passions and cares now seem to be, all laid asleep. The human being is motionless as the house or the tree ; sorrow is suspended ; and you endeavour to think, that love only is awake. Let not readers of true delicacy be alarmed, for we mean to touch profanely upon nothing that ought to be sacred ; and as we are for thinking the best on these occa- sions, it is of the best love we think ; love, of no heartless order, legal or illegal ; and such only as ought to be awake with the stars. As to cares, and curtain-lectures, and such like abuses of the tranquillity of night, we call to mind, for their sakes, all the sayings of the poets and others, about " balmy sleep," and the soothing of hurt minds, and the weariness of sorrow, which drops into forget- fulness. The great majority are certainly '' fast as a church" by the time we speak of; and for the rest, we are among the workers who have been sleepless for their advantage; so we take out our licence to forget them for the time being. The only thing that shall remind us of them, is the red lamp, shining afar over the apothe- cary's door; which, while it does so, reminds us also that there is help for them to be had. I see him now, the pale blinker, sup- pressing the conscious injustice of his anger at being roused by the apprentice, and fumbling himself out of the house, in hoarseness and great coat, resolved to make the sweetness of the Christmas bill indemnify him for the bitterness of the moment. But we shall be getting too much into the interior of the houses. — By this time the hackney-coaches have all left the stands ; a good symptom of their having got their day's money. Crickets are heard, here and there, amidst the embers of some kitchen. A dog follows us. Will nothing make him " go along?" We dodge him in vain; we run; we stand and " hish" at him; accompanying the prohibition with dehortatory gestures, and an imaginary picking up of a stone. We turn again, and there he is, vexing our skirts. He even forces us into an angry doubt whether he will not starve, if we do not let him go home with us. Now if we could but lame him without being cruel ; or if we were only an overseer ; or a beadle; or a dealer in dog-skin ; or a political economist, to think THE COMPANION. 43 dogs unnecessary. Oh, come ; he has turned a corner; he is £^onc; we think we see him trotting off at a distance, thin and muddy; and our heart misgives us. But it was not our f\iult; we were not "hishing" at the time. His departure was lucky, for he had got our enjoyments into a dilemma; our " article" would not have known what to do with him. These are the perplexities to which your sympathizers are liable. We resume our way, independent and alone; for we have no companion this time, except our never- to-be-forgotten and etherial companion, the reader. A real arm within another's puts us out of the pale of walking that is to be made good. It is good already. A fellow-pedestrian is company; is the party you have left; you talk and laugh, and there is no longer anything to be contended with. But alone, and in bad weather, and with a long way to go, here is something for the temper and spirits to grapple with and turn to account ; and accordingly we are booted and buttoned up, an umbrella over our heads, the rain pelting upon it, and the lamp-light shining in the gutters ; " mud-shine," as an artist of our acquaintance used to call it, with a gusto of reprobation. Now, walk cannot well be worse; and yet it shall be nothing if you meet it heartily. There is a pleasure in overcoming any obstacle; mere action is something; imagination is more; and the spinning of the blood, and vivacity of the mental endeavour, act well upon one another, and gra- dually put you in a state of robust consciousness and triumph. Every time you set down your leg, you have a respect for it. The umbrella is held in the hand, like a roaring trophy. We are now reaching the country: the fog and rain are over; and we meet our old friends the watchmen, staid, heavy, indiffe- rent, more coat than man, pondering yet not pondering, old but not reverend, immensely useless. No; useless they are not; for the inmates of the houses think them otherwise, and in that imagi- nation they do good. We do not pity the watchmen as we used. Old age often cares little for regular sleep. They could not be sleeping perhaps, if they were in their beds ; and certainly they would not be earning. What sleep they get, is perhaps sweeter in the watch-box, — a forbidden sweet ; and they have a sense of im- portance, and a claim on the persons in-doors, which together with 44 THE COMPANION. the amplitude of their coating and the possession of the box itself, make them feel themselves, not without reason, to be "some- body." They are peculiar and official. Tomkins is a cobbler as well as they ; but then he is no watchman. He cannot speak to " things of night ;" nor bid " any man stand in the King's name." He does not get fees and gratitude from the old, the infirm, and the drunken ; nor " let gentlemen go ;" nor is he "■ a parish-man." The church wardens don't speak to him. If he put himself ever so much in the way of " the great plumber," he would not say " How do you find yourself, Tomkins?" — "An ancient and quiet watch- man." Such he was in the time of Shakspeare, and such he is now. Ancient, because he cannot help it ; and quiet, because he will not help it, if possible; his object being to procure quiet on all sides, his own included. For this reason, he does not make too much noise in crying the hour, nor is offensively particular in his articulation. No man shall sleep the worse for him, out of a horrid sense of the word " three." The sound shall be three, four, or one, as suits their mutual convenience. Yet characters are to be found even among watchmen. They are not all mere coat, and lump, and indiflference. By the way, what do they think of in general? How do they vary the monotony of their ruminations from one to two, and from two to three, and so on? Are they comparing themselves with the unofficial cobbler; thinking of what they shall have for dinner tomorrow; or what they were about six years ago ; or that their lot is the hardest in the world, (as insipid old people are apt to think, for the pleasure of grumbling) ; or that it has some advantages nevertheless, besides fees ; and that if they are not in bed, their wife is? Of characters, or rather varieties among watchmen, we remember several. One was a Dandy Watchman, who used to ply at the top of Oxford street, next the park. We called him the dandy, on account of his utterance. He had a mincing way with it, pro- nouncing the a in the word "past" as it is in /mi,— making a little preparatory hem before he spoke, and then bringing out his " Past ten" in a style of genteel indifference, as if, upon the whole, he was of that opinion. Another was the Metallic Watchman, who paced the same street THE COMPANION. 45 towards Hanover square, and liad a clang in his voice like a trumpet. He was a voice and nothing else; but any ditierence is something iu a watchman. A third, who cried the hour in Bedford square, was remarkable in his calling for being abrupt and loud. There was a fashion among his tribe just come up at that time, of omitting the words " Past" and " o'clock," and crying only the number of the hour. I know not whether a recollection I have of his performance one night is entire matter of fact, or whether any subsequent fancies of what might have taken place are mixed up with it ; but my impression is, that as I was turning the corner into the square with a friend, and was in the midst of a discussion in which numbers were concerned, we were suddenly startled, as if in solution of it, by a brief and tremendous outcry of — One. This paragraph ought to have been at the bottom of the page, and the word printed abruptly round the corner. A fourth watchman was a very singular phenomenon, a Reading Watchman. He had a book, which he read by the light of his lantern ; and instead of a pleasant, gave you a very uncomfortable idea of him. It seemed cruel to pitch amidst so many discomforts and privations one who had imagination enough to wish to be relieved from them. Nodiing but a sluggish vacuity befits a watchman. But the oddest of all was the Sliding Watchman. Think of walking up a street in the depth of a frosty winter, with long ice in the gutters, and sleet over head, and then figure to yourself a sort of bale of a man in white, coming sliding towards you with a lantern in one hand, and an umbrella over his head. It was the oddest mixture of luxury and hardship, of juvenihty and old age! But this looked agreeable. Animal spirits carry everything before them ; and our invincible friend seemed a watchman for Rabelais. Time was run at and butted by him like a goat. The slide seemed to bear him half through the night at once ; he slipped from out of his box and his common-places at one rush of a merry thought, and seemed to say, " Everything's in imagination; — here goes the whole weight of my office." But we approach our home. How still the trees ! How delici- ously asleep the country ! How beautifully grim and nocturnal 46 THE COMPANION. this wooded avenue of ascent, against the cold white sky ! The watchmen and patroles, which the careful citizens have planted in abundance within a mile of their doors, salute us with their " good mornings;" — not so welcome as we pretend; for we ought not to be out so late ; and it is one of the assumptions of these fatherly old fellows to remind us of it. )Some fowls, who have made a strange roost in a tree, flutter as we pass them; — another pull up the hill, unyielding; a few strides on a level; and there is the light in the window, the eye of the warm soul of the house, — one's home. How particular, and yet how universal, is that word; and how surely does it deposit every one for himself in his own nest! NEW PIECES AT DRURY-LANE. A AVORD TO THE MANAGER. We are sorry to have nothing favourable to say of the new after- piece at this house (the Haunted Inn) ; nor yet of the grand operatical piece, the Black Prince, which has been got up with great care. Mr Peake, the author of the farce^ is a clever man, with a real turn for humour, and even for invention, as his immortal old Charity-boy testifies, that Wilkinson used to perform. Item, Mr Reynolds, the adapter of the grand piece, is an old dramatic acquaintance of ours, whom we long to speak well of, especially after his good-humoured Memoirs ; and finally, we like extremely what we hear of the fair and straight-forward dealing of the Mana- ger, Mr Price, who is just the man to get this long-suffering theatre up again, if he takes care not to encumber it with mediocrity. Good actors in good pieces ought to be his motto. We began to think it was, when we heard of the way in which he had got up the Critic ; and he seems to have speculated in the same manner, by the actors that appear in the new afterpiece. The Black Prince put us out of this reckoning, Not that there is no good actor in it; but there is a dearth of good actors. We are sorry, on the other account, that the new afterpiece has failed ; and we would suggest to Mr Price, that it has not failed the less, because the play-bills tell us that it has " decidedly " succeeded. — THE COMPANION. 47 That word " decidedly" was added out of the consciousness of the reverse. Now Mr Price is a man of energy, with a great desire (if we mistake not) to be sincere. Let him in future not mince these matters with the pubhc, of success and failure. Let him say boldly that a thing has not succeeded ; and tlie public will as surely take his word for the contrary, whenever that is the case, as they will take it in neither case, if he goes the way of all managerial flesh. But then, it may be asked, how is he to secure the success ? By securing a good piece, let it be never so old, provided there be plenty of good performers in it. Only let the public be sure, that there is something to be seen at the theatre, in which the talents of good performers are really fetched out, and they will go to see it, let it be as old as Methusalem. We never knew an instance to fail. The success of the Critic, night after night, is an evidence of it. Is the reader old enough to remember the way in which Love-d-la-Mode was got up, and what a treat it was, when we used to have on the stage, all at once, Lewis in Squire Groom, Simmonds in Beau Mordecai, Irish Johnstone in Sir Callagan, and Cooke in Sir Archy ? These are the things to draw crowded houses, and to make people as fond of a set of performers, as of a room full of old friends. Good parts, and good actors will not disdain to play in them. Good actors, and the people will no more refuse to enjoy them than they would any other good. THE ROYAL LINE. William I. The sturdy Conq'ror, politic, severe; William II. Light-minded Rufus, dying like the deer; Henry I. Beau-clerc, who everything but virtue knew; Stephen. Stephen, who graced the lawless sword he drew; Henry II. Fine Henry, hapless in his sons and priest; Richard I. Richard, the glorious trifler in the East; John. John, the mean wretch, tyrant and slave, a liar; Henry III. Imbecile Henry, worthy of his sire; Edward I. Long-shanks, well nam'd, a great encroacher he; Edward II. Edward the minion, dying dreadfully; Edward III. The splendid veteran, weak in his decline; 48 THE COMPANION. Richard IT. Another minion, sure untimely sign ; Henry IV. Usurping Lancaster, whom wrongs advance; Henry V. Harry the Fifth, the tennis-boy of France; Henry VI. The beadsman, praying while his Margaret fought ; Edward IV. Edward, too sensual for a kindly thought: Edward V. The little head, that never wore the crown ; Richard III. Crookback, to Nature giving frown for frown; Henry VII. Close-hearted Henry, the shrewd carking sire; Henry VIII. The British Bluebeard, fat, and full of ire; Edward VI. The sickly boy, endowing and endow'd ; Mary. Ill Mary, lighting many a living shroud; Elizabeth. The lion-queen, with her stiff musHn mane ; James I. The shambling pedant and his minion train; Charles I. Weak Charles, the victim of the dawn of right ; Cromwell. Cromwell, misuser of his home-spun might ; Charles II. The swarthy scape-grace, all for ease and wit; James II. The bigot out of season, forc'd to quit ; William III. The Dutchman, call'd to see our vessel through ; Anne. Anna, made great by conquering Marlborough; George I. George, vulgar soul, a woman-hated name; George II. Another, fonder of his fee than fame; George III. A third, too weak, instead of strong, to swerve ; George IV. And fourth, whom Canning and Sir Will preserve. TO CORRESPONDENTS. The advice of a Constant Reader will meet with due consideration. Correspondents shall be noticed in our pages, and not in the covers, if it be only to gratify our " fast and faithful friend, F. F." We trust we have settled the matter of pence in our present number. The PoeVs Corner in our correspondent's letter was highly welcome to us. We only wish we may deserve it. The merits of our rival companions, Tabitha Single's cat, poodle, and parrot, shall undergo the requisite meditation. Published by Hunt and Clakke, York street, Covent garden : and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4(/. PRINTED BY C, H. REYNELL, BROAD STREET, GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. VI. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 13, 1828, '* Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. THE TRUE STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA. Weak and uninitiated are they who talk of things modern as opposed to the idea of antiquity; who fancy that the Assyrian monarchy must have preceded tea-drinking ; and that no Sims or Gregson walked in a round hat and trowsers before the times of Inachus. Plato has informed us (and therefore everybody ought to know) that at stated periods of time, everything which has taken place on earth is acted over again : there have been a thousand or a million reigns, for instance, of Charles the Second, and there will be an infinite number more: the tooth-ache we had in the year 1811, is making ready for us some thousands of years hence; again shall people be wise and in love, as surely as the May -blossoms reappear ; and again will Alexander make a fool of himself at Babylon, and Bonaparte in Russia. Among the heaps of modern stories, which are accounted ancient, and which have been deprived of their true appearance by the al- teration of colouring and costume, there is none more decidedly belonging to modern times than that of Vertumnus and Pomona. Vertumnus was, and will be, a young fellow, remarkable for his accomplishments, in the several successive reigns of Charles the VOL. I. 6 50 THE COMPANION. Second ; and, I find, practised his story over again in the autumn of the year 1680. He was the younger brother of a respectable family in Herefordshire ; and from his genius at turning himself to a variety of shapes, came to be called, in after-ages, by his clas- sical name. In like manner, Pomona, the heroine of the story, being the goddess of those parts, and singularly fond of their scenery and productions, the Latin poets, in after-ages, transformed her adventures according to their fashion, making her a goddess of mythology, and giving her a name after her beloved fruits. Her real name was Miss Appleton. I shall therefore waive that matter once for all ; and, retaining only the appellation which poetry has rendered so pleasant, proceed with the true story. Pomona was a beauty, like her name, all fruit and bloom. She was a ruddy brunette, luxuriant without grossness ; and had a spring in her step, like apples dancing on a bough. (I'd put all this into verse, to which it has a natural tendency ; but I have'nt time.) It was no poetical figure to say of her, that her lips were cherries, and her cheeks a peach. Her locks, in clusters about her face, trembled heavily as she walked ; the colour called Pomona- green was named after her favourite dress. Sometimes in her clothes she imitated one kind of fruit and sometimes another, phi- losophizing in a pretty poetical manner on the common nature of things, and saying there was more in the similes of her lovers than they suspected. Her dress now resembled a burst of white blos- soms, and now of red; but her favourite one was green, both coat and boddice, from which her beautiful face looked forth like a bud. To see her tending the trees in her orchard (for she would work herself, and sing all the while like a railk-maid) — to see her, I say, tending the fruit-trees, never caring for letting her boddice slip a little off her shoulders, and turning away now and then to look up at a bird, when her lips would glance in the sunshine like cherries bedewed, — such a sight, you may imagine, was not to be had every- where. The young clowns would get up in the trees for a glimpse of her, over the garden wall; and swear she was like an angel in Paradise. Everybody was in love with her. The squire was in love with her; the attorney was in love; the parson was particularly in love. THE COMPANION. 51 The peasantry in their smock-frocks, old and young-, were all in love. You never saw such a loving place in your life ; yet some- how or other the women were not jealous, nor fared the worse. The people only seemed to have grown the kinder. Their hearts overflowed to all about them. Such toasts at the great house! The Squire's name was Payne, which afterwards came to be called Pan. Pan, Payne (Paynim), Pagan, a villager. The race was so numerous, that country-gentlemen obtained the name of Paynim in general, as distinguished from the nobility ; a circumstance which has not escaped the learning of JMilton : '' Both Paynim and the Peers." Silenus was Cy or Cymon Lenox, the host of the Tun, a fat merry old fellow, renowned in the song as Old Sir Cymon the King. He was in love too. All the Satyrs, or rude wits of the neighbourhood, and all the Fauns, or softer-spoken fellows, — none of them escaped. There was also a Quaker gentleman, I forget his name, who made himself conspicuous. Pomona con- fessed to herself that he had merit ; but it was so unaccompanied with anything of the ornamental or intellectual, that she could not put up with him. Indeed, though she was of a loving nature, and had every other reason to wish herself settled, (for she was an heiress and an orphan), she could not find it in her heart to re- spond to any of the rude multitude around her ; Avhich at last occasioned such impatience in them, and uneasiness to herself, that she was fain to keep close at home, and avoid the lanes and country assemblies for fear of being carried off. It was then that the clowns used to mount the trees outside her garden wall to get a sight of her. Pomona wrote to a cousin she had in town, of the name of Ce- rintha. — " Oh, my dear Cerintha, what am I to do! I could laugh while I say it, though the tears positively come into my eyes ; but it is a sad thing to be an heiress with ten thousand a-year, and one's guardian just dead. Nobody will let me alone. And the worst of it is, that while the rich animals that pester me, disgust one with talking about their rent-rolls, the younger brothers force me to be auspicious of their views upon mine. I could throw all my money 52 THE COMPANION. into the Wye for vexation. God knows I do not care twopence for it. Oh Cerintha ! I wish you were unmarried, and could change yourself into a man^ and come and deliver me ; for you are disin- terested and sincere, and that is all I require. At all events, I will run for it, and be with you before winter ; for here I cannot stay. Your friend the Quaker has just rode by. He says 'verily,' that I am cold ! I say verily he is no wiser than his horse; and that I could pitch him after my money." Cerintha sympathized heartily with her cousin, but she was per- plexed to know what to do. There were plenty of wits and young fellows of her acquaintance, both rich and poor; but only one whom she thought fit for her charming cousin, and he was a younger brother, as poor as a rat. Besides, he was not only liable to suspicion on that account, but full of delicacies of his own, and the last man in the world to hazard a generous woman's dislike. This was no other than our friend Vertumnus. His real name was Vernon. He lived about five miles from Pomona, and was almost the only young fellow of any vivacity, who had not been curious enough to get a sight of her. He had got a notion that she v/as proud. " She may be handsome," thought he ; " but a handsome proud face is but a handsome ugly one to my thinking, and I'll not venture my poverty to her ill-humour." Cerintha had half made up her mind to undeceive him through the medium of his sister, who was an acquaintance of hers ; but an accident did it for her. Vertumnus was riding one day with some friends, who had been rejected, when passing by Pomona's orchard, he saw one of her clownish admirers up in the trees, peeping at her over the wall. The gaping, unsophisticated admiration of the lad made them stop. '•' Devil take me^," said one of our hero's companions, " if they are not at it still. Why, you booby, did you never see a proud woman before, that you stand gaping there, as if your soul had gone out of ye?" "Proud," said the lad, looking down: — '' a woudn't say nay to a fly, if gentlefolks wouldn't teaze 'un so." " Come," said our hero, " I'll take this opportunity, and see for myself." He was up in the tree in an instant, and almost as speedily exclaimed, " God! What a face!" " He has it, by the lord!" cried the others, laughing:—" fairly THE COMPANION. 53 stuck through the ribs, by Jove. Look, if looby and he arn't sworn friends on the thought of it !" It looked very like it certainly. Our hero had scarcely gazed at her, when, without turning away his eyes, he clapped his hand upon that of the peasant with a hearty shake, and said *' You're right, my friend. If there is pride in that face, truth itself is a lie. What a face ! What eyes ! What a figure!" Pomona was observing her old gardener fill a basket. From time to time he looked up at her, smiling and talking. She was eating a plum; and as she said something that made them laugh, her rosy mouth sparkled with all its pearls in the sun. " Pride !" thought Vertumnus : — " there's no more pride in that charming mouth, than there is folly enough to relish my fine com- panions here." Our hero returned home more thoughtful than he came, replying but at intervals to the raillery of those with him, and then giving them pretty savage cuts. He was more out of humour with his poverty than he had ever felt, and not at all satisfied with the accomplishments which might have emboldened him to forget it. However, in spite of his delicacies, he felt it would be impossible not to hazard rejection like the rest. He only made up his mind to set about paying his addresses in a difterent manner; — though how it was to be done, he could not very well see. His first impulse was to go to her and state the plain case at once; to say how charming she was, and how poor her lover, and that nevertheless he did not care twopence for her riches, if she would but believe him. The only delight of riches would be to share them with her. " But then," said he, " how is she to take my word for that?" On arriving at home he found his sister prepared to tell him what he had found out for himself, — that Pom.ona was not proud. Unfortunately she added, that the beautiful heiress had acquired a horror of younger brothers. ''Ay," thought he, " there it is. I shall not get her, precisely because I have at once the greatest need of her money and the greatest contempt for it. Alas, yet not sol I have not contempt for anything that belongs to her, even her money. How heartily could I accept it from her, if she knew 54 THE COMPANION. me, and if she is as generous as I take her to be I How delightful would it be to plant, to build, to indulge a thousand expenses in her company ! O those rascals of rich men, without sense or taste, that are now going about, spending their money as they please, and buying my jewels and my cabinets, that I ought to be making her presents of. I could tear my hair to think of it." It happened luckily or unluckily for our hero, that he was the best amateur actor that had ever appeared. Betterton could not perform Hamlet better, nor Lacy a friar. He disguised himself, and contrived to get hired in his lady's household as a footman. It was a difficult matter, all the other servants having been there since she was a child, and just grown old enough to escape the passion common to all who saw her. They loved her like a daughter of their own, and were indignant at the trouble her lovers gave her. Vertumnus however made out his case so well, that they admitted him. For a time all went on smoothly. Yes : for three or four weeks he performed admirably, confining himself to the real footman. Nothing could exceed the air of indifferent zeal with which he waited at table. He was re- spectful, he was attentive, even officious ; but still as to a footman's mistress, not as to a lover's. He looked in her face, as if he did not wish to kiss her; said "yes, ma'am" and "no, ma'am" like any other servant; and consented, not without many pangs to his vanity, to wear proper footman's clothes : namely, such as did not fit him. He even contrived, by a violent effort, to suppress all appearance of emotion, when he doubled up the steps of her chariot, after seeing the finest foot and ancle in the world. In his haste to subdue this emotion, he was one day nigh betraying him- self. He forgot his part so far, as to clap the door to with more vehemence than usual. His mistress started, and gave a cry. He thought he had shut her hand in, and opening the door again with more vehemence, and as pale as death, exclaimed, " God of Heaven ! What have I done to her !" " Nothing, James," — said his mistress, smiling; " only another time you need not be in quite such a hurry." She was surprised at the turn of his words, and at a certain air which she observed for the first time; but the same experience which might have THE COMPANION. 55 enabled her to detect him, led her, by a reasonable vanity, to think that love had exalted lier footman's manners. This made her observe him with some interest afterwards, and notice how good- looking he was, and that his shape was better than his clothes: but he continued to act his part so well, that she suspected nothing further. She only resolved, if he gave any more evidences of being in love, to dispatch him after his betters. By degrees, our hero's nature became too much for his art. He behaved so well among his fellow-servants, that they all took a liking to him. Now, when we please others, and they shew it, we wish to please them more: and it turned out, that James could play on the viol di gamba. He played so well, that his mistress must needs enquire "what musician they had in the house.'* *' James, Madam." — A week or two after, somebody was reading a play, and making them all die with laughter. — '' Who is reading so well there, and making you all a parcel of mad-caps?" — "It's only James, Madam." — " I have a prodigious footman," thought Pomona. Another day, my lady's-maid came up all in tears to do something for her mistress, and could hardly speak. '^ What's the matter, Lucy ?" " Oh James, Madam !" Her lady blushed a little, and was going to be angry. " I hope he has not been uncivil." " Oh no. Ma'am : only I could not bear his being turned out o'doors !" " Turned out of doors !" " Yes, Ma'am; and their being so cruel as to singe his white head." " Singe his white head! Surely the girl's head is turned. What is it, poor soul!" *' Oh nothing, Ma'am. Only the old king in the play, as your ladyship knows. They turn him out o' doors, and singe his white head; and Mr James did it so natural like, that he has made us all of a drown of tears. T'other day he called me his Ophelia, and was so angry with me, I could have died." — " This man is no footman,', said the lady. She sent for him up stairs, and the butler with him *' Pray, Sir, may I beg the favour of knowing who you are ?" The abruptness of this question totally confounded our hero. 56 THE COMPANION. " For God's sake, Madam, do not think it worth your while to be angry with me, and I will tell you all." " Worth my while, Sir ! 1 know not what you mean by its being worth my while,'' cried our heroine, who really felt more angry than she wished to be: *'but when an impostor comes into the house, it is natural to wish to be on one's guard against him." " Impostor, Madam !" said he, reddening in his turn, and rising with an air of dignity. " It is true," he added, in an humbler tone, — " I am not exactly what I seem to be ; but I am a younger brother of a good family, and" " A younger brother!" exclaimed Pomona, turning away with a look of despair. "Oh those d — d words!" thought Vertumnus: "they have undone me. I must go; — and yet it is hard." " I go. Madam," said he in a hurry: — " believe me in only this, that I shall give you no unbecoming disturbance: and I must vindicate myself so far as to say, that I did not come into this house for what you suppose." Then giving her a look of inex- pressible tenderness and respect, and retiring as he said it, with a low bow, he added, " May neither imposture nor unhappiness ever come near you." Pomona could not help thinking of the strange footman she had had. " He did not come into the house for what I supposed." She did not know whether to be pleased or not at this phrase. What did he mean by it? What did he think she supposed? Upon the whole, she found her mind occupied with the man a little too much, and proceeded to busy herself with her orchard. There was now more caution observed in admitting new servants into the house ; yet a new gardener's assistant came, who behaved like a reasonable man for two months. He then passionately ex- claimed one morning, as Pomona was rewarding him for some roses, "I cannot bear it!" — and turned out to be our hero, who was obliged to decamp. My lady became more cautious than ever, and would speak to all the new servants herself. One day a very remarkable thing occurred. A whole side of the green-house was smashed to pieces. The glazier was sent for, not without suspicion of being the perpetrator; and the man's way of behaving strength- THE COMPANION. 57 ened it, for he stood looking about him, and handling; the glass to no purpose. His assistant did all the work, and yet somehow did not seem to get on with it. The truth was, the fellow was innocent and yet not so, for he had brought our hero with him as his journeyman. Pomona, watching narrowly, discovered the secret, but for reasons best known to herself, pretended otherwise, and the men were to come again next day. That same evening my lady's maid's cousin's husband's aunt came to see her, — a free jolly maternal old dame, who took the liberty of kissing the mistress of the house, and thanking her for all favours. Pomona had never received such a long kiss. " Excuse" cried the housewife, " an old body, who has had daughters and grand-daughters, aye, and three husbands to boot, God rest their souls ; but dinner always makes me bold, — old and bold, as we say in Gloucestershire, — old and bold; and her ladyship's sweet face is like an angel's in heaven." All this was said in a voice at once loud and trembling, as if the natural jollity of the old lady was counteracted by her years. Pomona felt a little confused at this liberty of speech ; but her goodnature was always uppermost, and she respected the privileges of age. So, with a blushing face, not well knowing what to say, she mentioned something about the old lady's three husbands, and said she hardly knew whether to pity her most for losing so many friends, or to congratulate the gentlemen on so cheerful a compa- nion. The old lady's breath seemed to be taken away by the elegance of this compliment; for she stood looking and saying not a word. At last she made signs of being a little deaf, and Betty repeated as well as she could what her mistress had said. " She is an angel for certain," cried the gossip, and kissed her again. Then perceiving that Pomona was prepared to avoid a repetition of this freedom, she said, " But lord ! why doesn't her sweet ladyship marry herself, and make somebody's life a heaven upon earth? They tell me she's frightened at the cavaliers and the money- hunters, and all that ; but God-a-mercy, must there be no honest man that's poor? and mayn't the dear sweet soul be the jewel of some one's eye, because she has money in her pocket?" Pomona, who had entertained some such reflections as these 58 THE COMPANION. herself, hardly knew what to answer; but she laughed, and made some pretty speech. " Ay, ay," resumed the old woman. ** Well, there's no knowing.** (Here she heaved a great sigh). *' And so my lady is mighty curious in plants and apples, they tell me, and quite a gardener, lord love her, and rears me cart-loads of peaches. Why, her face is a peach, or I should like to know what is. But it didn't come of itself neither. No, no; for that matter, there were peaches before it; and Eve didn't live alone, I warrant me, or we should have had no peaches now, for all her gardening. Well, well, my sweet young lady, don't blush and be angry, for I am but a poor foolish old body, you know, old enough to be your grandmother ; but I can't help thinking it a pity, that's the truth on't. Oh dear ! Well ; gentlefolks will have their fegaries, but it was very different in my time, you know ; and lord ! now to speak the plain scripter truth ; what would the world come to, and where would her sweet ladyship be herself, I should like to know, if her own mother that's now an angel in heaven had refused to keep company with her ladyship's father, because she brought him a good estate, and made him the happiest man on God's yearth?" The real love that existed between Pomona's father and mother, being thus brought to her recollection, touched our heroine's feelings ; and looking at the old dame, with tears in her eyes, she begged her to stay and take some tea, and she would see her again before she went away. "Ay, and that I will, and a thousand thanks into the bargain from one who has been a mother herself, and can't help crying to see my lady in tears. I could kiss 'em off, if I warn't afraid of being troublesome ; and so God bless her, and I'll make bold to make her my curtsey again before I go." The old body seemed really affected^, and left the room with more quietness than Pomona had looked for, Betty meanwhile shewing an eagerness to get her away, which was a little remarkable. In less than half an hour there was a knock at the parlour door, and Pomona saying "Come in," the door was held again byjsomebody for a few seconds, during which there was a loud and apparently angry whisper of voices. Our heroine, not without agitation, heard the words " no, no," and <* yes," repeated with vehemence, and THE COMPANION. 59 then " I tell you I must and will ; she will fors^ive you, be assured, and me too, for she'll never see me ag;ain." And at these words the door was opened by a gallant-looking young man, who closed it behind him, and advancing with a low bow, spoke as follows: — "If you are alarmed, Madam, which I confess you reasonably may be at this intrusion, I beseech you to be perfectly certain, that you will never be so alarmed again, nor indeed ever again set eyes on me, if it so please you. You see before you. Madam, that unfor- tunate younger brother (for I will not omit even that title to your suspicion) who, seized with an invincible passion as he one day beheld you from your garden wall, has since run the chance of your displeasure, by coming into the house under a variety of pretences, and inasmuch as he has violated the truth, has deserved it. But one truth he has not violated, which is, that never man entertained a passion sincerer; and God is my witness. Madam, how foreign to my heart is that accursed love of money, (I beg your pardon, but I confess it agitates me in my turn to speak of it), which other people's advances and your own modesty have naturally in- duced you to suspect in every person situated as I am. Forgive me, jMadam, for every alarm I have caused you, this last one above all. I could not deny to my love and my repentance, the mingled bliss and torture of this moment; but as I am really and passionately a lover of truth as well as of yourself, this is the last trouble I shall give you, unless you are pleased to admit what I confess I have very little hopes of ; which is, a respectful pressure of my suit in future. Pardon me even these words, if they displease you. You have nothing to do but to bid me — leave you ; and when he quits this apartment, Harry Vernon troubles you no more." A silence ensued for the space of a few seconds. The gentleman was very pale; so was the lady. At length she said, in a very under tone, " This surprise, sir 1 was not insensible — I mean, I perceived — Sure, sir, it is not Mr Vernon, the brother of my cousin's friend, to whom I am speaking?" ** The same, Madam." " And why not at once, sir — I mean — that is to say — Forgive me, sir, if circumstances conspire to agitate me a little, and to throw me in doubt what I ought to say. I wish to say what is 60 THE COMPANION. becoraing, and to retain your respect." And the lady trembled as she said it. '^ My respect, Madam, was never profounder than it is at this moment, even though I dare begin to hope that you will not think it disrespectful on my part to adore you. If I might but hope, that months or years of service — " Be seated, sir, I beg; — I am very forgetful. I am an orphan, Mr Vernon, and you must make allowances as a gentleman" (here her voice became a little louder) " for anything in which I may seem to forget, either what is due to you, or to myself," The gentleman had not taken a chair, but at the end of this speech he approached the lady, and led her to her own seat with an air full of reverence. "Ah, Madam, "said he, "if you could but fancy you had known me these five years, you would at least give me credit for enough truth, and I hope enough tenderness and respectfulness of heart (for they all go togedier) to be certain of the feelings I enter- tain towards your sex in general, much more towards one, whose nature strikes me with such a gravity of admiration at this moment, that praise even faulters on my tongue. Could I dare hope that you meant to say anything more kind to me than a common expres- sion of good wishes, I would dare to say that the sweet truth of your nature not only warrants your doing so, but makes it a part of its humanity." " Will you tell me, Mr Vernon, what induced you to say so decidedly to my servant (for I heard it at the door) that you were sure I should never see you again." "Yes, Madam, I will; and nevertheless I feel all the force of your enquiry. It was the last little instinctive stratagem that love induced me to play, even when I was going to put on the whole force of my character and my love of truth ! for I did indeed believe that you would discard me, though I was not so sure of it as I pretended." "There, sir," said Pomona, colouring in all the beauty of joy and love, — "there is my hand. I give it to the lover of truth ; but truth no less forces me to acknowledge, that my heart had not been unshaken bv some former occurrences." THE COMPANION. 61 " Charming and adorable creature!" cried 0111* hero, after he had recovered from the kiss which he gave her. But here we leave them to themselves. Our heroine confessed, that from what she now knew of her feelings, she must have been inclined to look with compassion on him before; but added, that she never could have been sure she loved him, — much less had the courage to tell him so, till she had known him in his own candid shape. And this, and no other, is the True Story of Vertumnus and Pomona. XEW COMEDY OF THE MERCHANTS WEDDING. The Black Prince, produced the other day at Drury lane, was founded on some of the greatest writers of the greatest age of our poetry ; and it did not succeed. The new piece produced at Covent garden, called the Merchant's Wedding, is founded on some of the least writers of that age (great men nevertheless); and it has succeeded. The reason is, that the noble limbs of the former were torn asunder to patch up a modern body ; and a poor mon- ster was made up, not the less absurd for having a left leg not his own, and a fine eye put in his head with no brain behind it. In the latter case, the adapter has shewn a proper reverence for his work ; the play is almost entirely to be found in the two authors (Mayne and Rowley), on whom it is founded ; and if the rest is Mr Planche's own, it does great credit to his taste. There was a pretty passage in this gentleman's preface to his Oheron (the piece that Weber composed) which shewed that he knew how to be in the company of men of genius ; and his modesty has been rewarded * A letter, by the way, has appeared in the newspapers, wonder- ing how it was that certain passages from Beaumont and Fletcher nearly got the Black Prince condemned, while certain other pas- sages, the invention of the ingenious adapter, were loudly applauded. We know not how this might have been the first night. It was not so the night we saw it. But you may piece-meal anything * We allude to his quotaiion from Saadi, the Persian moralist. 62 THE COMPANION. with incongruous materials, till the very incongruity makes the best things in it appear the worst. It is an involuntary parody, in which the nobler the original the more humiliating the joke. What is the use of a piece of gold stuffed in a pudding, but to jar one's teeth ? Is a casement the better for a broken pane, stopped up with velvet? When we heard such lines out of Beaumont and Fletcher, as that exquisite one spoken by the poor dying boy — " 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away," we only hoped that the rest of the house might not hear it, lest finding it where they did, they might mistake and receive it pro- fanely. We hurried it onward in imagination, as we should a beauty throuofh a mob. The Merchant's Wedding has not succeeded because it is eminent either for plot or character, still less because it can have a tenth part of the effect, which the originals produced when all its localities were alive, and the audience knew to what the wit referred. The adapter has even been obliged on this account to leave out a good deal of smart imagery, and has sometimes cut short (not so wisely, we think) the most robust and original of the speeches, where the passion would have carried them through with the audience; which is not the case, we admit, with mere ventures of joke and double-meaning : nor ought to be. But the piece has succeeded for several reasons : first, that audiences are more discerning than they used to be, owing, we doubt not, to the large increase of popular knowledge and the publications that give it eyes ; second, that the scenes are numerous and ftdl of action, the persons coming and going as if in some bustle of real life ; third, that there is good stuff in the dialogue, the words being as lively as the action ; fourth, that the scenery and costume are excellent, old, picturesque, and of a peculiar interest, being old English, and exhibiting our ancestors as they lived in doors, and the streets as they walked about them ; and last not least, because this crowd of people is represented by a crowd of good actors, — at least, the best parts are in good hands, and the others in hands not unworthy. Nothing languishes, for default of action. There is Farren (excel- lent) in the old usurer, with a groan a mile long ; Blanchard, in THE COMPANION. 6S the other old merchant, with little to say, but looking it admirably, a perfect stock-fish of the Exchange; Charles Kemble, in the confident wooer, victorious, and looking as if he ought to be so ; Keeley, made a real fish of by his '* insolent companions," who dress him up in scales and fins when he is drunk, and shew him, — a most helpless and meek monster; Bartley, who wears his size gallantly, and bullies as if he had really grown big in a tavern; Miss Chester, " a fine woman. Sir," as the old gentlemen say ; — (there was one, and a very polite one, near us, who seemed to have come on purpose to see her) ; — she looked just such an heiress as the gallant Plotwell would carry oflf, whether for love or money; Mrs J. Hughes, in the cunning and wooden-faced Dorcas, as odd a little body, with a head to match, as if she had escaped out of a pantomime ; and Mrs Chatterley, not so loud or imposing as she used to be some years back, but with more ideas in her head ; besides others, who really all do well what they have to do, and never let the ball to the ground. We have no room to detail the plot, nor is it necessary. There is a fool shewn for a fish, — a ticklish point for the stage, — out of our old friend Lazarillo de Tormes ; but the language and the real animal spirits carry it off; — an old usurer, whose sins are paid off by the torture or" a marriage with a young pretended devotee, who first astonishes him with her extravagance, and then turns out to have been falsely married to him, to get an estate back for her lover ; — a heap of jokes and tavern-plots among the would-be gallants of those times — (Charles Kemble in his first simple dress, between two of them in their gorgeous ones, looked like Milton when his two court-friends used to visit him on " gaudy days "); — and a very gallant scene, but more ticklish than the other, though we doubt not it finally turned out the most popular of all, in which Plotwell gets into the heiress's chamber at night, and forces her to marry him by dint of certain perils to her character. There is as gallant a want of sentiment in it as need be, and about as much compliment to the sex ; in both of which points it is worthy of remark, that the writers of those times take the unfavourable or the favourable side, in proportion as they were mere wits, or wits ennobled with poetry ; Shakspeare being at the top of those who 64 THE COMPANION. have said the sweetest things of womankind. But some amends is made for the scene before us, by the generosity with whicli Plotwell afterwards tears up the forced deed of marriage ; and in the scene itseK, and all other scenes where the spirit is superior to the letter, there is an instinctive sense on the part of the audience, that the spirit only, and the gallant sketch of the thing, is to be taken as the real business, — something beyond the matter-of-fact, surmounting it with its plumes of wit and vivacity, and prepared to do anything else that real gallantry may require, as it afterwards does in the circumstance just mentioned. Thus Ranger, in the pleasant hey-day comedy of the Suspicious Husband, in a scene which the old play may have suggested, rattles away to the borders of what might seem even unfeeling; but one touch of genuine womanhood on the part of the lady, though moved by the thoughts of another man, enables him to show us, that he has never lost his good-nature ; and even Ranger becomes grave and affectionate under the fall of that sweet shadow of tenderness. TO CORRESPONDENTS. A Correspondent of a very companionable nature, an old play-goer, encourages us to proceed, and ssiys that our " theatricals will carry us through." We are happy to sit with him in the pit, and do hereby offer him an imaginary pinch of snuff, the only sort that we take. On the other hand, S. G. says he must drop our acquaintance, if we have nothing but plays and the weather to talk about ; which is hard, if he be an Englishman, furthermore, he does not like our verses ; and concludes by asking our opinion of the *' new-fashioned system of Scientific Institutions." We fear our Correspondent would like our science still less than our verses ; for we know still less about it. We profess only to be ardent and most expectant admirers of that mighty part of knowledge ; and on that account we recommend to his notice the prospectus of a scientific weekly paper, which is to appear on the 1st of March, and is entitled the Very lam. After the receipt of S. G.'s letter, our friend W. W. will not wonder that we translated his initials into " doubly welcome." E. C. and F. C. N. will oblige us by consulting the answers to Correspondents on the wrapper of the iMonliily Part ; or in case they have it not, we may as well repeat in this place, for their benefit and that of other correspondents whose taste for verse surpasses their practice in writing it, that for reasons which they will be good enough to surmise and to give a handsome construction to, we are obliged to be cautious how we supersede our own quantity of labour with contributions from hands less accustomed to composition. In looking over again the letter of F. F. we fear we have committed a violation of courtesy in giving it public notice ; but the mistake was involuntary, and must be excused by the nature of the letter itself; which was so well written, and turned with so much delicacy and cordiality, that in our enjoyment of the spirit of it, we overlooked the passage we allude to. LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clauke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4rf. PRINTED BY C. H. BEYNELL, BROAD STREET, C'.OI.DEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. VII.— WEDNESDAY, FEB. 20, 1828. " Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. LARGE BONNETS. A NEW WANT OF GALLANTRY. SECRET OF SOME EXISTING FASHIONS. We have been requested to remonstrate with the huge bonnets that are now in fashion, and that are found by play-goers to be very inconvenient in the pit. A lady (provided she has no other lady before her similarly dressed) can see out of it as comfortably as if she were sitting in a chaise, and perhaps feels the snugger for that sort of calash ; but the unfortunate persons behind her, deprived both of the pleasure of the scene, and of the consolation of behold- ing the back part of a human head, are as much at a loss as if the chaise were actually before them. Imagine thirty or forty of those vehicles, placed unaccountably about the pit, with a fair mystery in each, like the lady in the lobster ! The lady would be speedily detached, with a merry violence, and the vehicles rolled away. But head and bonnet are not to be divorced. In vain the fair wearers are requested to take them off. They wonder at you ; they frown ; they " cannot think of such a thing." The ladies who make the request (for this is a difficult office for a gentleman) acknowledge that compliance is hardly to be expected. The head is dressed for the bonnet; and besides, where is so huge a machine to be put? Thus then the ladies sit on, seeing but not allowing to see. The persons in the shadow of their borders contrive, by leaning their heads sideways, cribbing a bit on the seat, and other desperate VOL. I. 7 C6 THE COMPANION. resources, to partake painfully of what is going forward; but those more immediately in the dark, particularly the unhappy person right behind, give the thing up as hopeless. The bonneted lady intercepts the main part of the scene. Charles Kemble is swal- lowed up. The wing of an army is made no more of than that of a chicken. Enter a house and grounds : — no matter : — the yawn of the bonnet engulphs them like a lawyer's bag. At the opera, you may get a leg now and then, or the point of a shoe. Nothing that we can say could remedy an evil of this description. The fashion must change of its own accord. Opposition meanwhile would only make it worse ; modes of this kind going upon no principle of reason or convenience, but upon pure will and novelty. Masterless fashion sways us to the mood Of what it likes or loathes. Its sole object being to differ with those who are not of it, difference of any sort only convinces it that it is just what it ought to be. When the many take to it, then and then only it alters, disobliging them in its vicissitude, and changing to some equally wilful shape. Its very death is out of the spirit of contradiction. There is one thing indeed : Ladies may choose to stop away, who find themselves much worried. They may also suffer from like bonnets, and be perplexed between the wish to be relieved and their disinclination to relieve others. Here and there a goodnatured conscience may take a bonnet with it another time, which shall be removeable. We sat near a lady the other night, who said very prettily, " A bonnet has come in my way, and I have not the face to ask for its removal ; for I have been sitting all the while, never thinking of my own." This inclined us to make application to the intercepter ; but we desisted, for fear of being refused, not liking to see a woman at a disadvantage. A word upon that point, — suggested by what we have heard of refusals given to gentlemen who have been bolder. We are very much for equalizing the principles of right and wrong in both sexes; and in accordance with this notion of ours (which we do not mean to insist upon in this work, but which we conceive to be anything but hostile to womanhood) we will venture to remark, that there may be a want of gallantry in women as well as in men. THE COMPANION. 67 Gallantry, in the sense we mean it, and indeed in the only true and good sense, may be defined — the inclination of one sex to oblige tiie other, in the manner most fitted to imply a delicate conscious- ness, and a g^rateful wish to be thought well of. A man actuated with this spirit, and performing- the least service for a woman, seems, though with the least possible ostentation, or the least claim in return for shewing it, to evince his gratitude to the whole sex, and to all that he has ever known of them, gentle and lovely. A woman, acting in the same spirit, and on a similar occasion, evinces the like tenderness of respect for the whole circle of manhood ; and by the very waiving of an exclusive homage (too often implying her weak- ness instead of her strength) shews her right to the equal participa- tion of a throne of power and esteem. In love, for instance, there is nothing more touching than the equality to which it brings both parties, and the delight they take in being neither less tender, humble, or grateful, the one than the other. Imagine under these circumstances an adored mistress reversing the usual order of com- pliment, and kissing in a transport of thankfulness the lover's hand ! The case will be still stronger, if she suspect that the love is greater on his side than her own. This is what we should call the height of gallantry in a woman ; and assuredly, if the man be worthy of her, and she of him, she will gain everything by it, instead of losing. We put an extreme case; but excess often lets us better into the merits of a question, than a more moderate way of putting it. It includes all the letter, and is sure to lose none of the spirit. From bonnets to the eyes within them, and from the eyes to love, the steps are not great ; and so we come back to our fair friends in the pit ; and do hereby show them, that when they give sharp answers respecting those enormities to the sex in whose eyes they ought to be fairest, they commit precisely the same mistake which they would be the loudest in exclaiming against, were a man deficient towards them in polite- ness and gallantry. They take an unhandsome advantage of him. To be ungallant towards a woman, is to use a man's power where it is least becoming, and there is nothing to resist it. To be un- gallant towards a man, is to take advantage of the opiiiions that are held respecting the deference he owes the sex, and do just 68 THE COMPANION. what a woman pleases, let manhood think of it as it may. To settle the rights of this matter, and at the same time to relieve both the sexes from the hitherto unheard-of enormity of ungallant women, we propose, that as a man without gallantry is metaphori- cally and fearfully pronounced by the other sex to be " no man," so a woman, labouring under a similar deficiency, be hereafter pro- nounced to be no woman. She must take her place with him in the third sex, or non-sex, lately discovered by a periodical writer, and entitled iVzmmew .• — Man, Men; Woman, Women ; Noman, Nim- men. The case is clear, and the sex vindicated. As to fashions, nothing can alter those but the setters of them. They have a short life or a long one, according as it suits the makers to startle us with a variety, or save themselves observation of a defect. Hence fashions set by young or handsome people are fugitive, and such are, for the most part, those that bring custom to the milliner. If we keep watch on an older one, we shall gene- rally trace it, unless of general convenience, to some pertinacity on the part of old people. Even fashions of popular convenience, as the trowsers that have so long taken place of smallclothes, con- tinue very often on the strength of some general defect, to which they are useful. The old are glad to retain them, and so be con- founded with the young ; and among the latter, there are more limbs perhaps, to which loose clothing is acceptable, than tight. More legs and knees, we suspect, rejoice in those cloaks, than would be proud of themselves in a shoe and stocking. The male fashions of the last twenty years, we think we can trace to a par- ticular source. If it be objected, that the French partook of them, and that our modes have generally come from that country, we suspect that the old court in France had more to do with them, than Napoleon's, which was confessedly masculine and military. The old French in this country, and the old noblesse in the other, wore bibs and trowsers, when the Emperor went in a plain stock and delighted to show his good leg. For this period, if for this only, we are of opinion that whether the male fashions did or did not originate in France, other circumstances have conspired to retain them in both countries, for which the revolutionary govern- ment cannot account. It is true, Mr Hazlitt informs us in his THE COMPANION. 69 ** Life of Napoleon," that during the Consulate, all the countries were watching the head of the state to know whether mankind were to wear their own hair or powder ; and that Bonaparte luckily settled the matter by deciding in favour of nature and cleanliness. But here the revolutionary authority stopped : nor in this instance did it begin: for it is understood, that it was the plain head of Dr Franklin, Avhen he was ambassador at Paris, that first amused, and afterwards interested, the giddy polls of his new acquaint- ances ; who went and did likewise. Luckily, this was a fashion that suited all ages, and on that account it has survived. But the bibs, and the trowsers, and the huge neckcloths, whence come they? How is it, at least, that they have been so long retained? Observe that polished old gentleman, who bows so well, and is conversing with the most agreeable of physicians. He made a great impression in his youth, and was naturally loth to give it up. On a sudden, he finds his throat not so juvenile as he could wish it. Up goes his stock; and enlarges. He rests both his cheeks upon it, the chin settling comfortably upon a bend in the middle, as becomes its delicacy. By and bye, he thinks the cheeks themselves do not present as good an aspect as with so young a heart might in reason be expected ; and forth issue the points of his shirt-collar, and give them an investiture at once cherishing and spirited. Thirdly, he suspects his waist to have played him a trick of good living, and surpassed the bounds of youth and elegance before he was well aware of it. Therefore, to keep it seemingly, if not actually within limits, forth he sends a frill in the first instance, and a padded set of lapels afterwards. He happens to look on the hand that does all this, and discerns with a sigh that it is not quite the same hand to look at, which the handsomest women have been transported to kiss ; though for that matter they will kiss it still, and be transported too. The wrist-band looks forth, and says, " Shall I help to cover it?" and it is allowed to do so, being a gentlemanly finish, and impossible to the mechanical. But finally the legs : they were among the handsomest in the world ; and how did they not dance! What conquests did they not achieve in the times of hoop-petticoats and toupees ! And long afterwards, were not Apollo and Hercules in them together, to the delight of 70 THE COMPANION. dowagers ? And shall the gods be treated with disrespect when the heaviness of change comes upon them? No. Round comes the kindly trowserian veil (as Dyer of ' The Fleece' would have had it); the legs retreat, like other conquerors, into retirement; and only the lustre of their glory remains, such as Bonaparte might have envied. RAIN OUT OF A CLEAR SKY. In a work ' De Varia Historia,' written after the manner of jElian by Leonico Tomeo, an elegant scholar of the fifteenth century, we meet with the following pretty vStory. — When Phalantus led his colony out of Sparta into the south of Italy, he consulted the oracle of Apollo, and was informed that he should know the region he was to inhabit, by the fall of a plentiful shower out of a clear sky. Full of doubt and anxiety at this answer, and unable to meet with any one who could interpret it for him, he took his departure, arrived in Italy, but could succeed in occupying no region, — in capturing no city. This made him fall to considering the oracle more particularly; upon which he came to the conclusion, that he had undertaken a foolish project, and that the gods meant to tell him so ; for that a sky should be clear, and yet the rain out of it plentiful, now seemed to him a manifest impossibility. Tired out with the anxious thoughts arising from this conclusion, he laid his head in the lap of his wife, who had come with him, and took such a draught of sleep as the fatigue of sorrow is in- dulged with, like other toil. His wife loved him ; and as he lay thus tenderly in her lap, she kept looking upon his face ; till thinking of the disappointments he had met with, and the perils he had still to undergo, she began to weep bitterly, so that the tears fell plentifully upon him, and awoke him. He looked up, and seeing those showers out of her eyes, hailed at last the oracle with joy, for his wife's name was yEthra, which signifies " a clear sky;" and thus he knew that he had arrived at the region where he was to settle. The next night he took Tarentum, which was the greatest city of those parts ; and he and his posterity reigned in that quarter of Italy, as you may see in Virgil. THE COMPANION. 71 OPERA OF THE WHITE AND RED ROSE MADAME PASTA IN THE LOVER. FRENCH DANCING. Mayer's opera of the White and Red Rose (La Rosa Bianca e la Rosa Rossa) was brought out at the King's Theatre on Saturday evening, Madame Pasta being the hero of it. We remember noticing a play-bill of this piece once at Genoa, and making up our minds not to go and see it, because it was historical. Song is for passion in its own shape, and not mixed up with the squabbles and pretences of history. Great writers, as a musical friend observed to us, have rarely laid their scenes in the midst of these impertinences, which augur ill for the composer. It is true, there is apt to be very little history after all in such pieces; but what there is, does them injury. We do not want a singing Earl of Derby, singing foot-guards, and a warbling sheriff. These matters of the Court Calendar jar against one's enthusiasm, and the case is worse, be- cause it comes home to us in our own country. Fancy a love adventure mixed up two centuries hence with the differences between our Military Premier and Mr Huskisson ; the King going in and out, sincrino: Oh Dio ; Lord Goderich tender in a cavatina ; the ladies all mystified; and a chorus of journalists at midnight f^Numi and lumij calling on the powers above to throw a little light on the business. Signor Huski. Dice di si, come io, il Vellingtonne. (Entra il Duca.) Di si? Di no. Coro di Giornalisti. Or cosa dice Huskisonne? [Mr H. The Noble Duke says Yes ; so all is done. (EnteT Duke.) Says Yes ? Says No. Chorus of Journalists. Now what says Huskisson?] Reader. But, Sir, this is a caricature. Com p. It is so, like the subject; but the spirit of our objection is good, and opera-goers feel it to be so. Signor Mayer's opera is not of the highest order, nor is it by any means of the lowest. We do not know whether this is the same composer who has written several pleasing airs, — one of them with 72 THE COMPANION. a very striking and characteristic exordium; we mean Chi dice mal d'amore. The emphatic drop on the last syllable of the word falsitd in that air, is a touch of real genius. Madame Pasta would give it with a corresponding beauty of gesture, impressing her firm and indignant hand upon it with all the grace of a noble scorn. There are two Mayers, we believe, both writers of pleasing melodies ; though perhaps we are naming together two unequal men. One of them is the author of a graceful ballad, beginning Donne, Vamore e scaltro pargoletto. At all events, the name led us to expect more melody than we found in the new opera; or perhaps we should say, more original airs ; for there is a vein of rambling melody through- out the piece, and, if not much invention, a great deal of taste and feeling. The music is so good, that we expect it every minute to be better. There is now and then a very delicate commentary of accompaniment, throwing out little unexpected passages both learned and to the purpose. The best of the regular compositions, are the duets. There are two between Madame Pasta and Curioni, {In tal momento in the first act, and E deserto il bosco in the second) for which alone the opera is worth going to hear. Curioni, who has a manner of feebleness and indiiFerence in general, seems inspired when he comes to sing with Pasta. Her part is one of the least effective ones she has had ; but everything becomes elevated by that fine face of hers, and that voice breathing the soul of sincerity. The words core and amore are never common-places in her mouth. They resume all their faith and passion. They are no more like the same words in ordinary, than gallantry is like love, or than scipio, any walking-stick, was Scipio who supported his father. Pasta has a large heart in her bosom, or she could not have a voice so full of it. This it is that gives her the ascendancy m the scene ; that lifts her, " dolphin-like, above the element she lives in ;" and sports, and rules, and is a thing of life, in those deep waters of her song. Not that other singers have no hearts, and may not be excellent people; but they have not the same faith in the very sounds and symbols of cordiality, and cannot be at a moment's notice in the world which they speak of. The common world hampers and pulls them back. It was well noticed by a lady in the pit, that she is not hindered of THE COMPANION. 73 her purpose by a break now and then in her voice, the bubble of a note or so. She shdes over it, as if it were a mole-hill under her chariot-wheels, and abates nothing of her triumpliant progress ; nay, adds a grace and a dignity on the strength of it, as if it were a new proof how indifferent to the spirit of a passage was the ground the most material to those who can look no higher. Be- sides, there is a suffering and permission in it that belongs empha- tically to passion. If it were for want of skill or deliberation, it would be another thing. But in the rich haste of emotion, pearls are dropt as of no consequence. The profusion of real wealth allows us to notice them only as things that would make others poor. Being closer to Madame Pasta than usual this night, we had a completer opportunity of noticing the extraordinary grace of her movements. She is never at a loss, because she never thinks of being so. She leaves the whole matter to truth and nature, and these settle it for her, as completely as they do for an infant. You might make a picture from any one of her postures. A favourite action of her's, and one extremely touching, is, after venting a passion of more than usual force, to put up her hands before her eyes, laying and shutting up, as it were, her looks in them, as if to hide from herself the sight of her own emotion. When she opens her arms in a transport of affection, leaning at the same time a little back, and breathing and looking as true as truth could wish, her heart seems to come forward for one as real, and her arms to wait the sanction of its acknowledgment. For all arms, be it observed, are not arms, whatever they pretend ; any more than all that pretends to be love is love, or all eyes have an insight. Some arms are a sort of fore- legs in air, merely to help people's walking. Others have machines at the end of them, to take up victuals and drink with, or occasionally to scratch out one's eyes. Others, more amiable, are to hang armlets and bracelets on, or to be admired for a skin or a shape ; and then ladies put them in kid gloves, on purpose to take them off, and lift them indifferently to their cheek with rings on their fingers, and people say, what an arm Mrs Timson has ! But the real arms are to serve and love with ; to clasp witli ; to be honest and true arms. 74 THE COMPANION. content to be admired for their own sakes if the possessor be wor- thy, but happy to enable you to lose sight of them for the sake of the heart and the honest countenance. It is out of an instinct to this purpose (for the least of our gestures have their reason, if we did but scan it) that Madame Pasta throws back her arms, as if things only in waiting, and brings forward her heart, as if the approbation of that alone would sanction their use. It is for a similar reason, that we admire those women who can afford to make no display of the beauty of any particular limb, but reserve it for the objects of their love and respect to find out. It shows they are richer than in mere limbs. And for the same reason, one hates all that French dancing with fine showy limbs and senseless faces, which follows the musical performances at this house, and is just the antipodes of all that charms us in Pastas singing. If her limbs were among the poorest in the world, they would become precious as warmth and light, with that smile and those eyes ; whereas if a French dancer could by any possibility have limbs like a Venus, with a face no fitter to look at for ten minutes, or for one, than nineteen out of twenty of them possess, she might as well, to our taste, be as wooden and pointed all over as a Dutch doll ; which indeed in her inanimate posture-makings and senseless right- angles of toe, she very much resembles. These people are made up out of the toy-shop. They are dolls in their quieter moments, and tee-totums in their livelier. A mathematician should marry one of them for a pair of compasses. We must not forget to mention, that Madame Caradori, whose illness had been previously stated to the pubhc, went through her part in the opera in spite of it, though evidently in a state of suffering. She could of course be expected to do little ; but what she did was good, and at least wanted nothing of its touchingness. There is at all times something amiable in the manner and appear- ance of this singer. Her more than usual delicacy the other night, together with her white dress which had a long boddice, with a cross over it, and her hanging uniform-looking sleeves, gave her the appearance of a Madonna in one of Raphael's pictures. THE COMPANION. 15 M'e must relate an anecdote of Madame Pasta, highly corrobo- rative of what has been said of her. Some gentlemen who knew her well, informed a friend of ours when he was in Paris, that she would come home from the opera, and sit in a passion of tears at tlie recollection of what she had been acting. They told him that nothing could be more unaffected, and that she would say she knew it to be idle, but that she " could not get the thing out of her head." This is just what imaginative people would expect her to say. She never pretended that she had taken herself for the character she represented ; but she had sympathized with it so strongly, that it became the next thing to reality ; and if our hearts can be touched, and our colour changed, by the mere perusal of a tragedy, how much more may not a woman's nature be moved that has been almost identified with the calamities in it; that by force of imagination has brought the soul of another to inhabit her own warm being ; and has entertained it there as the very guest of humanity, giving it her own heart to agitate, and taking upon herself the burden of its infirmities ! THE MOUNTAIN OF THE TWO LOVERS. We forget in what book it was, many years ago, that we read the story of a lover who was to win his mistress by carrying her to the top of a mountain, and how he did win her, and how they ended their days on the same spot. We think the scene was in Switzerland ; but the mountain, though high enough to tax his stout heart to the uttermost, must have been among the lowest. Let us fancy it a good lofty hill in the summer-time. It was, at any rate, so high, that the father of the lady, a proud noble, thought it impossible for a young man so burdened to scale it. For this reason alone, in scorn, he bade him do it, and his daughter should be his. The peasantry assembled in the valley to witness so extraordinary a sight. They measured the mountain with their eyes; they com- muned with one another, and shook their heads; but all admired the young man ; and some of his fellows, looking at their mis- tresses, thought they could do as much. The father was on horse- 76 THE COMPANION. back, apart and sullen, repenting that he had subjected his daughter even to the shew of such a hazard ; but he thought it would teach his inferiors a lesson. The young man (the son of a small land-proprietor, who had some pretensions to wealth, though none to nobility) stood, respectful-looking but confident, rejoicing in his heart that he should win his mistress, though at the cost of a noble pain, which he could hardly think of as a pain, considering who it was that he was to carry. If he died for it, he should at least have had her in his arms, and have looked her in the face. To clasp her person in that manner was a pleasure which he con- templated with such transport, as is known only to real lovers; for none others know how respect heightens the joy of dispensing with formality, and how the dispensing with the formality ennobles and makes grateful the respect. The lady stood by the side of her father, pale, desirous, and dreading. She thought her lover would succeed, but only because she thought him in every respect the noblest of his sex, and that nothing was too much for his strength and valour. Great fears came over her nevertheless. She knew not Avhat might happen in the chances common to all. She felt the bitterness of being her- self the burden to him and the task ; and dared neither to look at her father nor the mountain. She fixed her eyes now on the crowd (which nevertheless she beheld not) and now on her hand and her fingers' ends, which she doubled up towards her with a pretty pretence, — the only deception she had ever used. Once or twice a daughter or a mother slipped out of the crowd, and coming up to her, notwithstanding their fears of the lord baron, kissed that band which she knew not what to do with. The father said, " Now, Sir, to put an end to this mummery;" and the lover, turning pale for the first time, took up the lady. The spectators rejoice to see the manner in which he moves off, slow but secure, and as if encouraging his mistress. They mount the hill ; they proceed well ; he halts an instant before he gets midway, and seems refusing something ; then ascends at a quicker rate; and now being at the midway point, shifts the lady from one side to the other. The spectators give a great shout. The baron, with an air of indifleieuce, bites the tip of his gauntlet, and then THE COMPANION. 77 casts on them an eye of rebuke. At the shout the lover resumes his way. Slow but not feeble in his step, yet it gets slower. He stops again, and they think they see the lady kiss him on the fore- head. The women begin to tremble, but the men say he will be victorious. He resumes again ; he is half-way between the middle and the top ; he rushes, he stops, he staggers ; but he does not fall. Another shout from the men, and he resumes once more ; two-thirds of the remaining part of the way are conquered. They are certain the lady kisses him on the forehead and on the eyes. The women burst into tears, and the stoutest men look pale. He ascends slowlier than ever, but seeming to be more sure. He halts, but it is only to plant his foot to go on again ; and thus be picks his way, planting his foot at every step, and then gaining ground with an effort. The lady lifts up her arms, as if to lighten him. See : he is almost at the top ; he stops, he struggles, he moves side- ways, taking very little steps, and bringing one' foot every time close to the other. Now — he is all but on the top : he halts again ; he is fixed ; he staggers. A groan goes through the mul- titude. Suddenly, he turns full front towards the top ; it is luckily almost a level ; he staggers, but it is forward : — Yes : — every limb in the multitude makes a movement as if it would assist him : — see at last : he is on the top ; and down he falls flat with his burden. An enormous shout! He has won : he has won. Now he has a right to caress his mistress, and she is caressing him, for neither of them gets up. If he has fainted, it is with joy, and it is in her arms. The baron put spurs to his horse, the crowd following him. Halfway he is obliged to dismount; they ascend the rest of the hill together, the crowd silent and happy, the baron ready to burst with shame and impatience. They reach the top. The lovers are face to face on the ground, the lady clasping him with both arms, his lying on each side. " Traitor !" exclaimed the baron, " thou hast practised this feat before on purpose to deceive me. Arise !" " You cannot expect it. Sir," said a worthy man, who was rich enough to speak his mind : '' Samson himself might take his rest after such a deed." " Part them !" said the baron. 78 THE COMPANION. Several persons went up, not to part them, but to congratulate and keep them together. These people look close; they kneel down ; they bend an ear; they bury their faces upon them. " God forbid they should ever be parted more," said a venerable man ; *' they never can be." He turned his old face streaming with tears, and looked up at the baron : — " Sir, they are dead.'' PHILOSOTHY OF REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY! Being an Extract from Mr HazlitCs " Life of Napoleon " Going to our printer's yesterday to look over the proofs of the present number, we were met by the startling information, that two or three pages more copy were wanting. The mis-calculation originated in our having written upon a different- sized paper to what we are accustomed ; and it was so complete a one, that we thought we had been superabundant in our provision, and had sent accordingly the day before to say that one or two little side-dishes and entremets might, if necessary, be omitted. As it was, the time became pressing; so we seized upon the piquant work which Mr Hazlitt has lately put forth, and have furnished out our table in a manner with which the company will have better reason to be pleased, than if all had been of our own cookery. We speak of this gentleman's " Life of Napoleon." It is not a superior work to many others, in point of incident and record, though the French Revolution and its consequences are always interesting to read about. It is also a party-work, if the cause of humanity can be said to be that of a party. But it is so admirably written ; the incidents are accompanied with such unusual and remarkable reasons given for them ; and these reasons are fetched out of such a deep, humane, and even impartial faculty of investigation (for tyranny and corruption themselves, however roughly handled, here find their best excuses), that readers of this old subject find it, in the best sense of the word, become a new one ; and v/e will ven- ture to say, that a man may take it as a test of his own power to think or receive thought, whether he can discern the superiority of this work above all others on the Revolution. THE COxMPANION, 79 Take the following specimen ; in which Mr Hazlitt grapples at once with the most startlinjb:^ point in this ghastly period, and shows us that by the very reason of our humanity we ought not to think of it, as its foolish producere would have had us think. He is speaking of the mob at Paris in their worst excesses : — " They did not proceed out of the revolution, but out of the ancient monarchy: their squalidness and frantic gestures were the counterpart of the finery and haughty airs of the old court. The state of degradation of the French populace at the time of the revolution was not an argument against it, but the strongest argument for it. They wished to better theii* condition, to get rid of some part of their ' hideousness' (moral and physical) — so much light, at least, had broken in upon them — and because this was denied them, they naturally flew out into rage and madness. Whose was the fault ? If a regiment of soldiers in smart uniforms had been ordered by a mai'tinet otHcer in cold blood, and without any distortion of features, to fire upon this group of wretched fanatics, there would have been nothing * hideous' in it — so much do we judge by rule and appearances, and so little by reason ! Did these men parade the streets with this tragic apparatus for nothing? [A head on a pike.] Did they challenge impunity for nothing ? Was the voice of justice and humanity stifled ? No ! It had now for the first time called so loud, that it had reached the lowest depths of misery, ignorance, and depravity, and dragged from their dens and lurking-places men whose aspect almost scared the face of day, and who having been regarded as wild beasts, did not all at once belie their character. * Ecquid sentitis in quanto contemptu vivatis? Lucis vobis hujus partem, si liceat, adimant. Quod spiratis, quod vocem mittitis, quod formas hominum habetis indignantur !' Is it wonderful that in throwing off this ignominy, and in trying to recover this form, they were guilty of some extravagances and convulsive movements ? This genteel horror, as well as callous in- diflTerence, is exceedingly misplaced, and is the source of almost all the mischief. The mind is disgusted with an object, conceives a hatred and prejudice against it, and proceeds to act upon this feeling, without waiting to consider whether its anger ought not rather to be directed against the system that produced it, and which is not entitled to the smallest partiality or favour in such an exami- nation. There is a kind of toilette or drawing-room politics, which reduces the whole principle of civil government to a question of personal appearance and outward accomplishments. The partisans of this school (and it is a pretty large one, consisting of all the vain, the superficial, and 80 THE COMPANION. the selfish) tell you plainly that " they hate the smell of the people, the sight of the people, the touch of the people, their language, their occupa- tions, their manners," — as if this was a matter of private taste and fancy, and because the higher classes are better off than they, that alone gave them a right to treat the others as they pleased, and make them ten times more wretched than they are. It is true, the people are coarsely dressed — is that a reason they should be stripped naked? They are ill-fed — is that a reason they should be starved? Theu: language is rude — is that a reason they should not utter their com- plaints ! They seek to redress their wrongs by rash and violent means — is that a reason they should submit to everlasting oppression ? This is the language of spleen and passion, which only seek for an object to vent themselves upon, at whatever price, not of truth or rea- son, which aim at the public good. At this rate, the worse the govern- ment, the more sacred and inviolable it ought to be j for it has only to render the people brutish, degraded, and disgusting, in order to bereave them of every chance of deliverance, and of the common claims of huma- nity and compassion. The cowardice and foppery of mankind make them ashamed to take part with the people, lest they should be thought to belong to them ; and they would sooner be seen in the ranks of their oppressors, who have so many more advantages — fashion, wealth, power, and whatever flatters imagination and prejudice, on their side. But * the whole need not a physician ;' it is the wants, the ignorance, and corruption of the lower classes that demonstrate the abuses of a government, and call loudly for reform ; and the family physician would not be more excusable who refused to enter a sick room or to administer to the cure of a patient in the paroxysms of a fever, than the state physi- cian who gives up the cause of the people from affecting to be disgusted with their appearance, or shocked at their excesses I" TO CORRESPONDENTS. S. and " A Well-wi»l)er " have been received, and will be duly noticed in our ensuincr number. LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden ; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4d. PRINTED BY C. U. UEYNEI.L, BUOAD STUEKT, OOLDBN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. VIII. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 27, 1828. *' Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Siu William Temvle. SIR JOHN SUCKLING. MEMOIR OF IIIM, WITH SPECIMENS OF HIS POETRY. Sir John Suckling, "the greatest gallant of his time," and one that set off the sparkling of his wit by a ground of sentiment, was the son of Sir John Suckling, Comptroller of the Household to Charles the First. He was born at his father's house at Whitton in Middlesex, and baptized the 10th of February 1608-9. Tlie marvels about his speaking Latin at five, and writing it at nine, we omit as of little importance, whether false or true. Aubrey says, on the authority of Davenant, that he went to Cambridge at eleven years of age, and remained there till fourteen or fifteen. He then travelled both at home and abroad, and made a campaign under Gustavus Adolphus, with whom, in the course of six months, he was present at three battles and five sieges, besides lesser engage- ments. With this new feather in his cap, he returned home ; and was thought to have made an agreeable selection from the virtues of other countries, unalloyed by their vices, with the exception of a little supcrfliiousness on the score of the French manner. Others however looked upon this as a part of his natural temperament, especially as he carried it oft' with great goodnature and openness of heart. The truth is, that the Court of Charles the First, though of sober principles, was enough given to the encouragement of VOL. I. 8 82 THE COMPANION. gallantry and luxury, which had their natural effect on the rising generation ; and Suckling was but the foremost of a new race of wits, who were checked by the troubles that succeeded, only to re-appear with greater licence in a day of re-action. There was a marked line at that time between the old people in possession, aud the race that were coming up. Davenant told Aubrey, that Suckling did not much care for a lord's converse, for they were in those days " damnably proud and arrogant," and the French would say^ that '' My Lord d'Angleterre lookt comme un mastif-dog ; but now," adds the reporter, *' the age is much more refined, and much by the example of his most gracious Majestic (Charles II.) who is the patterne of courtesie." Sir William said, that Suckling's " readie sparkling witt," for which he became famous at court, subjected him to envy, and " he was the bull that was bayted," his wit becoming more spark- ling, the more it was chafed. His confidence in his powers, united to an open temper, probably betrayed him sometimes into airs of superiority, from which his account of himself in the Session of the Poets is not exempt. Sir John succeeded his father in the possession of the family residence at Whitton ; but it is probable that he spent little of his time there. The absence of rural images in his writings is remark- able. Neither love, nor poetry, nor philosophical reflection (of which he was far from incapable) led him among the groves. His Account of Religion by Reason be wrote at West-Kington, near Bath ; but it was in company with " Will Davenant " and ^' Jack Young," at the house of " Parson Robert Davenant," the poet's brother, a jovial priest. Our author was one of the greatest bowlers of his time, and bowling-greens were attached to the gardens of the gentry in those days ; but unfortunately, as he gambled as well as bowled, his necessities, like his love of show, forced him upon the town. Without taking for granted all the stories which a man's infirmities naturally give rise to, and which other people's infirmities exaggerate, it is clear that Suckling experienced all the vicissitudes, no very honourable ones, of a gambler's life. He was a star, as Johnson would say, alternately triumphing in lustre, and drowned in eclipse. THE COMPANION. 83 Unluckily, the notions of morality itself are different at different periods. It was said the other day of a celebrated politician, that although he was a dishonest man, and not to be trusted, ho could not be charged with immorality ; meaning, that his love of the fair sex was confined to the lady he had married. On the other hand. Pope said of Sir John Suckling, that he was " an immoral man, as well as debauched ;" meaning, that he was dis- honest and not to be trusted. " The story of the French cards was told me," says he, " by the late Duke of Buckingham (Shef- field) who had it from old Lady Dorset herself."* These were cards made in France, and marked in such a way, as to be known only to the possessor. Now my Lady Dorset was of a third opinion in ethics, and appears to have considered neither the gal- lantry nor the gambling immoral. " That lady," says Pope, " took a very odd pride in boasting of her familiarities with Sir John Suckling. She is the Mistress and Goddess in his poems ; and several of those pieces were given by herself to the printer. This the Duke of Buckingham used to give as one instance of the fondness she had to let the world know, how well they were acquainted." We know what was done, with good reputation, in Charles the Second's time, from the Memoirs of the gambling Count de Granimont ; but even in the preceding age, which is the one before us, Evelyn accuses *' the ladies of taking all advantages at play." My Lady Dorset was probably one of them. It is cer- tain that, in attributing stratagems of this kind to her admirer, she was far from thinking she dishonoured the memory of one, whose notice she considered an honour. We may see, from her lady- ship's notions, how lightly they regarded in those times what would * Frances, daughter to Lionel Cranfield, first Earl of INIiddlesex She became Countess of Middlesex in her own right on the death of her brother Lionel, the third Earl ; and by marrying Richard, Earl of Dorset, brought the title into that noble- man's family. Slie was mother of Charles, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, the celebrated wit ; and died very old in 1692. Her husband, who was born in Sep- tember 1622, could not have been fifteen years old when Charles, in January 1637, came into the world. There was great intimacy among the Suckling, Middlesex, and Dorset families. Tlie two former were neighbours as well as friends; and the writer of the Life prefixed to Suckling's Works calls him a kinsman of the Earl of Dorset. Our author, in his dramas, has a remarkable fondness for a name of his invention, Francelia. In the Goblins he gives it to the country in which the scene is laid ; and the heroines of Brennoralt and the Sad One are both called Francelia. Is not this likely to have been a compliment to the Lady Frances ? 84 THE COMPANION. justly be considered in our own as practices unworthy of a man of honour. What completes the curiosity of this anecdote, is, that Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, from whom Pope had the story, was the most notorious gambler of his time, even when the vice had gone out of fashion. He is accused of giving an annual dinner to the reigning sharpers, whom he welcomed with a remarkable toast, " Gentlemen, may we all remain unhung this time next year." It is to be observed, that Aubrey, who says no shopkeeper would trust our poet for sixpence on account of his being such a gamester, insinuates nothing against his honesty ; and Sir William Davenant, who survived him, and who was " no immoral man, though debauched,'^ is mentioned as his " intimate friend," and one that " loved him intirely." The way in which Suckling used to *' envisage" his losses, and surmount them and shake his plumes in their teeth, has something in it highly characteristical. When he was at his lowest ebb, said Davenant, then would he make himself most gorgeous in apparel, and say it exalted his spirits, and gave him the greatest chance of good luck. His magnificence accompanied him wherever he went, and was made to bear upon all his pursuits. W^hen he took his journey into Somersetshire, to rake with cavaliers and write on Socinianisra, he rode like a prince " for all manner of equipage," and had a cart-load of books in his train. At London he gave an entertainment to a great number of ladies of quality, all beauties and young, where every delicacy to be found in England was brought upon table, and the last service consisted of silk stockings, garters, and gloves. This is like poetry inviting its heroines, and sitting down to table in a gallant sliape. Loves and " winged words" take a circuit of the board, and fan up the lustre in their looks. But Suckling was also " a serious man," or the ladies would have found his perfections wanting. After feasting his beauties over-night, and adding his own music, if he pleased, to the enter- tainment (for he was a performer), he could go and discuss politics with Lord Falkland, and divinity with Hales of Eton. Hales, Carew, and Davenant, were his intimate friends. He is said also, besides Falkland, to have been the associate of Ben Jonson and Digby; and was probably acquainted with Selden. THE COMPANION. ^ Among these, his beauties, and his gamblers (a luckless anli- climax !) our poet divided his time and his fortune, occasionally amusing himself with writing, particularly plays; which succeeded beyond what a modern reader might have conjectured. This was owing, most likely, to his popularity with the circles, and to his hesitating at no expense in dresses and decoration. He carried everything before him at the play-house, as he did elsewhere, by dint of the will to do it, and the generosity in which the will was clothed. But pride will have a fall, especially if it docs not take care of its muscles. Sir John was not so robust as he was sprightly: his mode of living did not tend to harden his nerves ; and the reputa- tion for courage which he acquired under Gustavus, he appears to have shaken by an unfortunate rencontre with Sir John Digby, brother of Sir Kenelm, whom he is accused of having first assailed with unequal numbers, and then disgracefully fled from. If he did, there is another example, in addition to that of Lord Rochester, to shew '* men of wit and pleasure" the danger which they run above others in hazarding the loss of their courage; for w^hat may be summoned up in the place of it by men of less reflection, or of more, is in their hands likely to fail them, either from their having other grounds of reputation to go upon, as Suckling had; or from their power to sophisticate upon the nature of the quality demanded, as was openly done by Rochester. At the same time, the baseness of setting upon a man with unequal numbers (though not without countenance in those days) is so unlike what might be expected from the spirit evinced in Suckling's writings, and from the affection entertained for his memory by gallant men, that as it rests upon no authority but Aubrey's, whose veracity was equalled by his credulity, and who does not state the circumstance of his own knowledge, it is not improbable that the story might have sprung up in the usual course of envy and scandal.* * From the following testimony of " Mr Snowdon," it looks as if there was soinelliing true in the story. " Memorand : I\Ir Snowdon tells me," says Aubrev> " that after Sr- John's unluckie rencounter, or quarrell, wtb S""- John Di^^by, wlierem ho was baflled, 'twas strange to see the envie and ill-nature of people to trample and scofFe at, and deject one in disgrace ; inhumane as well as unchristian. The Lady Moray had made an entertainment for several I persons of (piality at Ashley (in Surrey, near Chertsey), whereat Mr Snowdon then was. — There was the Countess 86 THE COMPANION. A more authentic misfortune befell him, which is said by one of his biographers to have shortened his days. This was the conduct of a troop of horse which he raised, when Charles, in the year 1639, invited his nobility and gentry to attend him in his expedition to Scotland. There was a notion, that the mere parade of such a movement would do wonders ; and as the courtiers acted accord- ingly, and made as gallant a shew as possible, our author was pleased to have an opportunity of displaying his lustre. His troop, as far as clothes went, was the bravest of the brave. It consisted of a hundred handsome young men, well horsed and armed, and gallantly attired in white and scarlet, with feathers in their hats. They encountered the enemy, and fled. That a misadventure of this kind must have particularly vexed him, is obvious, especially as it became a subject of merriment to his brother wits; but that it ended in killing him, appears to have been a fancy originating in the weak imagination of Lloyd, author of the " Worthies," who suffered in the cause of royalty,— a feeble and credulous partisan. The year following our author wrote his admirable letter to Henry Jermyn, in which he seems to have lost nothing of his composure ; and there is reason to believe that, in 1641, he was engaged in those plots against the Parliament which brought Davenant and others into trouble. The same month that Davenant was arrested on his way to France, Suckling, also on his way to France, was arrested by a '' feller Serjeant." Aubrey says, that he died in Paris, and that he killed himself by poison ; being conveniently situated for that purpose by " lying at an apothecary's house." The story of his death, given by Oldys in his MS. notes on Langbaine, and repeated with a variation in Spence, is the one that is now received. Lord Oxford informed Oldys, on the authority of Dean Chetwood, who said he had it from Lord Roscommon, that Sir John Suckling, on his way to France, was robbed of a casket of gold and jewels by his valet, who, to provide against all contingencies, not only gave him poison, but stuck the blade of a penknife in such a manner in his boot, as to wound him mortally when he attempted pursuit. From Lord Oxford the story most probably camiC to Spence, who drops the incident of the poison, and turns the penknife into a rusty blade; adding, of ]Middlesex,t whom Sr- John had highly courted, and had spent on her, and in treating her, some thousands of pounds. At this entertainment she could not forbear, but was so severe and ingrate as to upbraid S""- John of his late received baffle ; and some other ladies had their fliits. The Lady Moray (who invited them) seeing S""' John out of countenance, for whose worth she alwaies had a respect; ' Well/ sayd shee, ' I am a merry wench, and will never forsake an old friend in disgrace, so come sitt down by me, Sr- John' (said she), and seated him on her right hand, and countenanced him. This raysed Sr- John's dejected spirites, that he threw his repartees about the table with much sparkliness and gentileness of witt, to the admiration of them all." + The Lady Dorset aforesaid, who was so proud of his verses, when they came to be printed. Perhaps her Ladyship was jealous of somebody in the room. THE COMPANION. 87 that Sir John clapped on his boots in a passionate hurry. Under all these circumstances, the story is very likely. Sir John, a fugitive, with his casket under his pillow, was just in the right condition to be robbed; and tlie robbery was a blow sufficient to put him in '' a desperate mind." He died May 7th, 1641, in the thirty-second year of his age. According to Aubrey, he was of slight make, and had discoloured his face with ill living. He had a lively round eye, a head not very big, and hair of a kind of sand colour. ** His beard turned up naturally, so that he had a brisk and graceful look." None of Suckling's writings were printed in his life-time, except a play or two, which he privately distributed. It cannot have been from these copies that his dramas were printed, as we have them now; for the text is as incorrect as some of the old folios of Beaumont and Fletcher. We have been obliged, like others, to disentangle his verses.* The rest of his works were collected and published after his death by his friend the Earl of Denbigh (a Fielding), well known for the part' he took in the civil war. They have been reprinted six times, including their appearance in Ander- son and Chalmers. Suckling was popular among the wits of Queen Anne's day, and will always be so in times of peace and luxury. He is more than once quoted by Steele in the Tatler. One of the quotations we may as well insert here, as the nature of the verses will not allow us to give the whole poem. The Tatler is speaking (No. 57) of a coxcomb of a new sort, who possessing cou- rage, *' takes himself to be obliged to give proofs of it every hour he lives. He is ever,'' says he, " fighting with the men, and con- tradicting the women. A lady, who sent to me, superscribed him with this description, out of Suckling : '* I am a man of war and might. And know thus much, that I can fight, Whether I'm in the wrong or right. Devoutly. '' No woman under heav'n I fear, New oaths I can exactly swear, And forty healths my brain will bear, Most stoutly." Addison's celebrated comparison of an ant-hill with a court was suggested by a passage at the beginning of the tragedy of Bren- noralt, where Sheffield has also been for a couplet that might be mistaken for one of Dryden's. Perhaps it was touched by him : '' Bren. I say the court is but a narrow circuit. Though something elevate above the common ; A kind of ant's nest in the great wide field, O'ercharged with multitudes of quick inhabitants, Who still are miserably busied to get in • Mr Chalmers has said that our author's works were printed " very correctly" by Tonson. Tonson's is the edition we have used ; and tlie dran^atic part is full of errors ; to say nothing of the rest. 88 THE COMPANION. What the loose foot of prodigality As fast does throw abroad. *' Doran. Good : A most eternal place of low affronts, And then as low submissions." * Sir John Suckling is one of those happy wits, who having faith in nature, and prizing, after all, the flesh and blood of humanity- above its sophistications, are never forsaken of her; but surprise posterity by becoming immortal upon the strength of a few appa- rent nothings. He was allied to the preceding age by his power to be serious, and calculated as much as the airiest of his succes- sors to lead the gallantry of the next. It is a mistake to think him deficient in sentiment, because he joins the vulgar in railing at love. This was part of his pretensions, as a careless fellow, — as a youth who had '' seen the world," and was to be past taking in. It belonged to his hat and feather, — to his table over night. Next morning he could be as deep in love as in meditation. There are feelings in him, which a heartless wit could not even pretend. Such are those which he indulges in the two copies of verses to his Rival. To every one of his railleries, gay and indifferent as he could make them appear, may be opposed some piece of romance as a set-ofF; and while the jokes enabled him to keep heart-whole with the lighter part of the sex, the gravities would retain his interest for him with the more cordial. They are chiefly to be found in his dramas, which, amidst a world of confused incidents, and a glimmer of meaning- like a twilight, contain passages of extreme beauty, moral and de- scriptive. He was a passionate lover of Shakspeare, from whom he repeats phrases, and even whole sentences, with a fondness which cannot be mistaken for plagiarism, for Shakspeare was too well known. His Ballad on a Wedding is delicious, and has a dew on the lip. He has put it in the mouth of a countryman, that he maybe able to dispense with the more received forms of panegyric, and talk of lips and cheeks after nature. The surprise at the end of Prythee, why so pale, fond lover ? never ceases to be as good as new. Few poems can boast a conclusion, at once so startling and so reasonable. The other pieces, that assume the high town air, do it to perfection, particularly the stanzas beginning — " 'Tis now, since I sat down before That foolish fort, a heart." Nothing can be more exquisitely cavalier. The Session of the Poets has been thought to be too careless in its versification; but its excess that way proves that the carelessness was intentional. The author seems to have written it while he was dressing, with his stockings down at heel. Regarded in this light, the negligence becomes a beauty, and would be no easy thing to imitate. * ** A life so infamous were better quitting, . , Spent in base injury and low submitting." — Speaking of Eochcsler, m the Essay on Satire, THE COMPANION. 80 Suckling, in bis prose writings, exhibits his usual vivacity, and a fund of good sense. His Account of Religion by Reason may be lield to contain Httlc or much, according as the reader is incHned. Some perhaps M'ill tliink it contains more than it appears to do. We shall give a specimen or two of his ])rose style in our next. It is as manly and to the purpose as Clarendon's, without any of his long-winded Chancery sentences; and in the Letter to Henry Jermyn the reader may see what was thought of the troubles then exist- ing, by some of the most active and rcMccting partisans of the court. His Familiar Letters have disappointed us. There are sprightly passages ; but they are not free from the pedantry and conceits of the reigning taste. None of our author's works were collected till after his death ; and probably those who possessed his happiest letters were not so ready to come forward with them as my Lady Dorset. We shall give one or two of the best. They are no ill specimens of the politeness and vivacity of his manners, and at least serve to shew how well he must have written when he was in the vein. In his letter to a Noble Lord, we fancy we see all the deference paid to rank in those days, beginning with that entire air of acknowledgment, and ending with that high-bred self-respect and resumption, which combined to give it a look of something solid and valuable. The letter containing the Epitaph on Don Alonzo is full of airy self-possession ; and in two others we have a taste of his generous turn of mind, first under the im- pulse of an ordinary gratitude, and next of a very lively and tender one. Sir John Suckling had no pretensions to be called a poet, in the greater sense of the term ; but he was truly a poet in the less ; that is to say, he could make the incidents of every-day life yield him a good crop of fancy, and fetch out the nature that lies in things artificial. The world of poetry has many territories. There are great empires and petty principalities. Sir John occupied one of the latter; but he ruled it gallantly and with splendour; nor was it all court, like some of the German ones. Milk-maids were had in respect ; and there was room, as at Weimar, even for philosophy. He had the credit of being able to extend his domi- nion, if he would; and if this, as in most cases, was not very likely, it shews that he filled up the sphere of his celebrity to some purpose, and had a repose in his power, more allied to strength than to weakness. THE SIEGE RAISED. 'Tis now, since I sate down before That foolish fort, a heart ; (Time strangely spent) a year and more. And still I did my part : * This is one of the poems, which, Mr Ilazlitt says, '* arc the origin of the style of Prior and Gay in their short fugitive verses, and of tlic songs in the Beggars' Opeia." — Lectures on the English Comic Writers, p. lOG. Cougrcvc is sUll uearei 90 THE COMPANION. Made my approaches, from her hand Unto her lip did rise. And did already understand The language of her eyes. Proceeded on with no less art ; My tongue was engineer ; I thought to undermine the heart By whispering in the ear. When this did nothing, I brought down Great cannon-oaths, and shot A thousand thousand to the town. And still it yielded not. I then resolv'd to starve the place « By cutting off all kisses. Praising and gazing on her face. And all such little bUsses. To draw her out, and from her strength, I drew all batteries in : And brought myself to lie at length. As if no siege had been. When I had done what man cou'd do. And thought the place mine own. The enemy lay quiet too. And smil'd at all was done. I sent to know from whence and where. These hopes, and this relief ? A spy inform' d. Honour was there, And did command in chief. March, march (quoth I), the word strait give. Let's lose no time, but leave her ; That giant upon air will live. And hold it out for ever. To such a place our camp remove As will not siege abide ; I hate a fool that starves her love Only to feed her pride. PASSAGES FROM THE " SESSION OF THE POETS. A SESSION was held the other day. And Apollo himself was at it, they say. The laurel that had been so long reserv'd. Was now to be given to him best deserved. And therefore the wits of the to^vn came thither, 'Twas strange to see how they flocked together. Each strongly confident of his own way. Thought to gain the laurel away that day. to it ; but in no one point has it been surpassed, or perhaps (for the sort of thing) equalled by any writer since the author's time, not excepting in versification, upon which the moderns are so gratuitously apt to pique themselves. The piece that follows is of the same character. I THE COMPANION. 91 There was Selden, and he sat close by the chair; VVainman not far off, which was very fair ; Sands with 'Jownsend, for they kept no order; Digby and Chillingworth a httle further : There was Lucan's Translator too, and he That makes (iod speak so big in's poetry : Selwin and Waller, and Bartlets both the brothers • Jack A aughan and Porter, and divers others. The first that broke silence was good old Ben, Prepar'd before with canary wine, And lie told them plainly he deserv'd the bays. For his were call'd works, where others were but plays. And bid them remember how he had purg'd the stage Of errors that had lasted many an age. And he hop'd they did not think the Silent Woman, Ihe Fox, and the Alch>Tnist outdone, by no man. Apollo stopp'd him there, and bid him not go on, 1 was merit, he said, and not presumption JMust carry 't ; at which Ben turned about And in great choler offer'd to go out. But those that were there thought it not fit To discontent so ancient a wit ; And therefore Apollo call'd him back again. And made him mine host of his own New Inn. * _ * * * ♦ * » Suckling next was call'd, but did not appear. But straight one whisper'd Apollo i' th' ear. That of all men Hving he car'd not for 't. He lov'd not the Muses so well as his sport ; And priz'd black eyes, or a lucky hit At bowls, above all the trophies of wit ; But Apollo was angry and publicly said 'Twere fit that a fine were set upon's head. ****♦♦« Hales sat by himself most gravely did smile To see them about nothing keep such a coil ; Apollo had spy'd him, but knowing his mind. Past by, and call'd Falkland*, that sate just behind. But he was of late so gone with divinity. That he had almost forgot his poetry, Though to say the truth, and Apollo did know it. He might have been both his priest and his poet. At length, who but an alderman did a})pear. At which Will Davenant began to swear ; But wiser Apollo bade him draw nigher. And, when he was mounted a little higher. He openly declar'd, that the best sign Of good store of wit's to have good store of coin, rh!ru^%"°^'t''''""^v'^ ^^'^ Faulkland, who afterwards perished in thecauseof Charles I and may literally be said (though on that side) to have died for hw IZ2\ W '" ^"PPr^^^^^^^ ^''"^ ^^'"i"g to die, the troubles he saw fl around him made him so melancholv. «"wuuu 92 THE COMPANION. And without a syllable more or less said. He put the laurel on the alderman's head. At this all the wits were in such amaze That, for a good while, they did nothing but gaze One upon another ; not a man in the place But had discontent writ at laige in his face. Only the small poets cheer'd up again. Out of hope, as 'twas thought, of borrowing; But sure they were out, for he forfeits his crown When he lends to any poet about the town. SONG. Why 60 pale and wan, fond lover ? Pr'ythee why so pale ? Will, when looking well can't move her. Looking ill prevail ? Pr'ythee why so pale ? -^ Why so dull and mute, young sinner ? ^ Pr'ythee why so mute ? Will, when speaking well can't win her. Saying nothing do't ? Pr'ythee why so mute ? Quit, quit for shame ! this will not move. This cannot take her ; If of herself she Vv'ill not love. Nothing can make her The Devil take her. PASSAGES FROM THE BALLAD ON A AVEDDING.* I TELL thee, Dick, where I have been. Where I the rarest things have seen : Oh things without compare ! Such sights again cannot be found In any place on Enghsh ground. Be it at wake or fair. At Charing Cross, hard by the way Where we (thou know'st) do sell our hay, There is a house with stairs ; And there did I see coming down ; Such folks as are not in our town, Vorty at least, in pairs. Amongst the rest, one pest'lent fine, (His beard no bigger tho' than thine) Walk'd on before the rest : Our landlord looks like nothing to him : The King (God bless him) 'twould undo him ; Shou'd he go still so drest. * The author's masterpiece. IMr Ilazlitt says, that in its class of composition it is "unrivalled for the voluptuous delicacy of the sentiments, and the luxuriant richness of the images. 1 wish," he adtls, " 1 could repeat the whole of it ; but that, from the change of manners, is impossible." — Lectures on ike English Comic Writers, \). lOG. THE COMPANION. 93 At course a-park, without all doubt. He should have first l)een taken out By all the maids i' th' town ; Though lusty Roger there had been. Or httle George upon the green, Or Vincent of the Crown. But wot you what ? The youth was going To make an end of all his wooing ; The parson for him staid : Yet by his leave, for all his haste. He did not so much wish all past (Perchance) as did the maid. Her finger was so small, the ring Wou'd not stay on which they did bring. It was too wide a peck : And to say truth (for out it must) It look'd hke the great collar (just) ■^ About our young colt's neck. Her feet beneath her petticoat. Like little mice stole in and out. As if they fear'd the light : But oh ! she dances such a way ! No sun upon an Easter day Is half so fine a sight. He would have kiss'd her once or twice. But she wou'd not, she was so nice. She wou'd not do't in sight; And then she look'd as who shou'd say I will do what I list to day. And you shall do't at night. Her cheeks so rare a white was on. No daisy makes comparison, (Wlio sees them is undone) : For streaks of red were mingled there. Such as are on a Katherine peai-. The side that's next the sun. Her lips were red, and one was thin Compar'd to that was next her chin. Some bee liad stung it newly. But (Dick) her eyes so guard her face, I durst no more upon them gaze, Than on the sun in July. FROM THE TRAGEDY OF ERENNORALT. Brennoralt, an honourable and unsuccessful lover, comes into his mistress's chamber while she is asleep.* * *• This evening," says the Tatler (No. 40) " some ladies came to visit my sister Jenny: and the discourse, after very many frivolous and public matters, turned upon the main point among women, the passion of love. Sappho, who always leads on this occasion, began to shew her reading, and told us that Sir John Suckling and iMilton had, upon a parallel occasion, said the tendcrest things she ever read. * The circumstance,' said she, * is such as gives us a notion ef that protecting part, which is the duty of men in their honourable designs upon, or 94 THE COMPANION. Bren. (dramiig the curtaim). So misers look upon their gold j Which, while they joy to see, they fear to lose ; The pleasure of the sight scarce equalUng The jealousy of being dispossest by others. Her face is like the milky way i^ th' sky, A meeting of gentle lights without a name. Heavens ! shall this fresh ornament o' the world, These precious love-lines pass with common things Among the wastes of time ? What pity 'twere ! (She wahes.) Francelia. Bless me ! Is it a vision, or Brennoralt ? Bren. Brennoralt, lady. Franc. Brennoralt ! Innocence guard me ! What is't you have done, my lord ? Bren. Alas ! I were In too good estate, if I knew what I did. Why ask you. Madam ? Franc. , It much amazes me To think how you came hither, and what could bring you To endanger thus my honour and your life. Nothing but saving of my brother could Make me preserve you now. Bren. Reproach me not The follies you yourself make me commit. I am reduced to such extremity, That Love himself, high t)Tant as he is. If he could see, would pity me. Franc. I understand you not. Bren. Would heav'n you did, for 'tis a pain to teU you : I come to accuse you of injustice. Madam. You first begot my passion, and was Content (at least you seem'd so) it should live ; Yet since would ne'er contribute unto it, — Not look upon't, — as if you had desired Its being for no other end, but for The pleasure of its ruin. Franc. Why do you labour thus To make me guilty of an injury To you, when it is one, aU mankind's Alike engag'd, and must have quarrel to me ? Bren. I have done ill : you chide me justly, Madam. I'll lay't not on you, but on my wretched self. For I am taught that heav'nly bodies are not Malicious in their influence, but by The disposition of the subject. They tell me You must marry Almerin : sure such excellence Ought to be the recompense of virtue, not The sacrifice of parents : should it not. Madam ? possession of women. In Suckling's tragedy of Brennoralt he makes the lover steal into his mistress's bed-chamber, and draw the curtains: then, when his heart is full of her charms, as she lies sleeping, instead of being carried away by the violence of his desires into thoughts of a warmer nature, sleep, which is the image of death, gives this generous lover reflections of a different kind, which regard rather her safety than his own passion. For, beholding her as she lies sleeping, he u/ers tliese words : * So misers look upon iheir gold, &c.' " THE COMPANION. 95 Franc. 'Twould injure me, were it thought otherwise. Bren. And shall he have you then, that knew you yesterday ? Is there in martyrdom no juster way. But he that holds a finger in the fire A little time should have the crown from them That have endur'd the flame witli constancy ? Franc. If the discovery will ease your thoughts. My lord, know, .Vlmerin is as the man 1 never saw. Bren. You do not marry then ? Condemned men thus hear, and thus receive. Reprieves ! One question more, and I am gone : Is there, to latitude of eternity, A hope for Brennoralt ? Franc. My lord ! Bren. Have I A place at all, when you do think of men ? Franc. My lord, a high one : I must be singular. Did I not value you : the world does set Great rates upon you, and you have deserved them. Bren. Is this all? Franc. All. Bren. Oh be less kind, or kinder ! Give me more pity, or more cnielty : Francelia, I cannot live with this, nor die. Franc. I fear, my Lord, you must not hope beyond it. Bren. Not hope ! {Fieirs himself.) This sure is not the body to This soul : it was mistaken, shuffled in Tlirough haste : why else should that have so much love. And this want loveliness to make that love Received ? I wiU raise honour to a point It never was — do things {StwUes.) Of such a virtuous greatness, she shall love me. She shall : — I will deserve her, though J have her not. There's something yet in that. Madam, will't please you, pardon my offence ? fates ! that I must call thus my atFection ! Franc. I wiU do anything, so you will think Of me, and of yourself, my Lord, and how Your stay endangers both. Bren. Alas ! Your pardon is more necessary to My life, than life to me. But I am gone. Blessings, such as my wishes for you, in Their extacies, could never reach, fall on you ! May everything contribute to preserve That excellence (my destruction) till't meet joys In love, great as the torments I have in it ! [^Ejcit. A PORTRAIT, A LA TITIAN. Gra'mei'crt. And shall we have peace ? I am no sooner sober. But the state is so too. If 't be thy will, A truce for a month only. By this hand, 1 long to refresh my eyes, they've been so tired Witli looking upon faces of this country. 96 THE COMPANION. Filknor (sings). And shall the Danazella, To whom we wish so well-a, Look babies again in our eyes-a ? Gram. Ah — a sprightly girl above fifteen ! Eyes full. And quick ; with breath as sweet as double violets. And wholesome as dying leaves of strav/berries. Thick silken eye-brows, high upon the forehead. And cheeks, mingled with pale streaks of red. Such as the blushing morning never wore. Fill. Oh my chops ! my chops ! Grain. With narrow mouth, small teeth, and lips Swelling as if she pouted — Fill Hold ! Grain. Hair curl'd, like buds of marjoram. Part tied in negligence, part losely flowing — Marinell. Tyrant ! tyrant ! tyrant ! Grain. In pink-colour Taffeta petticoat, lac'd smock-sleeves dangling : This vision, stoll'n from her own bed, and rustling Into one's chamber — Fill. Oh good Grain evert ! Grain. With a wax candle in her hand, looking As if she had lost her way, at twelve at night. TJie specimens from Suckling' will he completed hi part of our next Numher ; so that the reader will have an entire taste of him in this worh. TO CORRESPONDENTS. We shall indulge ourselves with an extract or two from the letter of a Sincere Well-wisher the first opportunity. S., who so interests our self-love by writing to us with a scalded hand, has a claim upon us for the subject on which we are requested to write. We shall do so with pleasure, when the season becomes a little more congenial to it. Our Cor- respondent is right respecting the article in the publication alluded to. More of our ingenuous friend Horatio next week. A Constant Reader, wlio does us the pleasure of hailing us as coming out of the same school, and who is delighted with JMadame Pasta, tells us of a ceitain Noble Marquis, too much in the habit of venting his notions out loud, who pronounced her performance tlie other night " disgusting." Our Correspondent expresses his astonishment at this ; and says that the gentleman to whom the observation was addressed, appeared to be still more so. Now that men of intellect should difter with the Noble JMarquis, is in the due course of things ; but that they should be astonished, astonishes us in our turn ; especially the more Ihey know him. LONDOTs^ Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covcnt garden : and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4 hastened in safety towards the spot where his lady and her companions were. His horse fol- lowing in his master's wake, also gained the landing-place, and was led away by the Chevalier's servants. Love and truth the while achieved a complete victory. IppoHta felt her whole heart dissolve in pity and compassion for her lover, so that to have saved him from the waves she would most wilhngly have put her own life in similar peril ; but knowing no means whereby to assist him, sha called aloud for help, weeping the while and franticly wringing her hands. When Montreville had landed, wet as he was, he respectfully approached the lovely girl, saying, '* I am returned, dearest lady, such as you behold, my heart still burning with unconquerable love — devoted in life and death to your service." Ippolita was surrounded by the flov/er of the Italian nobility; she stood bright in loveliness, power, and youth ; but pride Avas extinguished in her bosom : thus as he stood — the waters dripping from his garments — his hair shedding a thousand dew-drops — his cheek which had glowed with enthusiasm, now became ashy pale from his over-exertion, — thus, as he humbly and gently presented himself before her, she cast herself into his arms, exclaiming, " Love, you have conquered ! — Montreville, you have won me — I am yours for ever !" SKETCHES FROM THE CLUB-BOOK. [We have done a very impudent thing in laying these sketches before the reader. They were sent us by a friend for another purpose, which indeed has been given up, — but we publish them without leave, we hope not without forgiveness or even approba- tion ; for we know we should have had it for asking, and we meant THE COMPANION. 171 to have so had it; but what are we to do with such a purse of guineas in our desk, the consequences of sickness upon us, and a printer's devil cryins^ for payment at the door? O beautiful doc- trine of the community of property! Our liehef in thy beauty must save us. The owner knows, that at any time we would give him ten of our jmragraphs for half-a-dozen such of his ; and we must say for ourselves, that we are a thief in the style of Robin Hood, equally willing to be surpassed by our Companions, and to share with all who are in want of us. So here follow our stolen goods. If we are not forgiven, generosity no longer resides in a house in Bedford square, which we had taken to be full of it. We need not say that these portraits are from the life. They bear their own evidence upon them. They ought to have come after our Dinner-party last week. Old Charlton, it is true, is not a beau ideal in the style of Telephus ; but he is human and Hora- tian, and might illustrate a series of odes, from the Mox rejicit rates of the beginning, to the Est mihi nonum of Book the Fourth.] OLD CHARLTON. *' The first man on our list (he was a sort of President) was Mr Charlton. He was a merry man ; neither old nor young — five- and-thirty — forty — fifty — he changed with the season. A frequent smile had ploughed strong furrows on each side of his mouth ; rough weather and strong waters had given a tone to his com- plexion — eriihuit ; and there was a youthful laughter in his grey glistening eye which betokened a mind used to jest and merriment. Yet he was no humourist. He liked a broad joke, or a practical one, and laughed at it loudly ; but he was not rugged enough for humour, which requires certain points to retain it. A hydropho- biast in his drink, he esteemed water as sacred to ablution, and set it apart for that purpose only. In his early life he had been a traveller. He left the land of whiskey and thistles, and took his passage for India. Forgetting, however, to propitiate the winds, they resented his neglect so eftectually (somewhere south or south- west of the Cape) that he was glad to escape with a bruised body and ragged " trews " to some rock on the Indian ocean. It was upon this occasion, he said, that he first remembered the taste of 172 THE COMPANION. water — " which is saltJ' By an accident almost as sudden as his shipwreck, he was saved, and after having been tossed from wave to wave, finally landed in India. Here, far away from all friends, he wore away his youth. Law and traffic — good fortune and bad — health and sickness came on him by turns, but he bustled through them all ; till at last, with a light heart, and a pocket pocket full of gold rupees, he set sail again for ^' the Land of Cakes." — And now? Is he dead? — No, reader, he still lives, fresh and frolicsome, chirping like a bird in his lusty winter. You may see him (unless he be altered) at WilFs or the Cider Cellar, with a glass of brandy and water and his cigar, making the midnight echoes ring with songs which were considered matchless fifty years ago. Should you feel any doubt about him, you will know him by his Scotch accent, his rosy good-humoured face, and his " Igad, Sir," which I hold to be above imitation. He will not despise your company (if it be good for anything), nor your admi- ration, if kept within reasonable limits. For my own part, I am content to exchange a compliment or two with him occasionally. He has been pleased to say something civil regarding my produc- tions. Once, indeed, he added a wish that I would make a sketch of him in one of my leisure moments. I promised the old gentle- man that I would do so — and here it is ! [W.] Dibbs, who follows our old gentleman, as he ought to do, has still less in him of the ideal. He is not a boy to " let the liquid ruby flow ;" but he could uncork a bottle of good prose port, and was a topping hand at a pot of porter. There were Dibbses among the Romans, — Divesii, — as Horace and Shakspeare well knew, though every learned person may not. Some of the Davuses were of that family. He is one of the fellows who hung up the pipes and lyres too soon, being anxious to steal oif to the contubernium. DIBBS, THE WAITER. DiBBS was a monstrous blockhead, though small ; being of no large circumference, and barely five feet high. He had a little round head which shone like a ball, over which some weak hair straggled, a large mouth, and a couple of eyes like bullets. He THE COMPANION. 173 loved idling, gossiping, eating, drinking (especially drinking) and romancing, beyond any one I ever knew — though he lied so in- differently that his countenance perpetually betrayed him. He possessed the art of mistaking, and of never finding what he sought for, to a degree that is scarcely credible. He was a paradoxical perfection; having arrived, if I may say so, at Q.full stunted growth both of mind and body. He was not wanting in any point, but was as complete in his way as a dwarf-oak or a gooseberry-bush. You never wished him to be handsomer, or bigger, or better — except perhaps when he waited on you. — Dibbs had, moreover, his good qualities. He was sometimes willing, and sometimes (when the public-house was not in the way) expeditious. He could tie a knot (he called it ' a weaver's knot' — not a Gordian) — could beat carpets, or boys — expel children from the gutter, rats from a house, paupers from a parish, and so forth. His sole ambition was to be beadle of the parish. I imagined at first that he had been attracted by the cocked hat (an awful symbol), but I discovered afterwards that it was the dignity only which affected him. " It was a 'sponsible place," as he used to say — ''and Mr and Mr , who had been in office a matter of fifteen years, had brought up their families respectably." Besides these accomplishments, Dibbs had one or two defects. He was (like many persons below the rank of philosopers) a little sullen, and terribly obstinate when he was in the wrong; and he was seldom in the right. He had so little genius for figures, that he would for ever cast up the bill incorrectly ; though it was ob- served that the error was always in his own favour. He had been ostler, gardener, sailor, porter, constable, and door-keeper at a Methodist chapel, and ended by being familiar with his betters on the strength of his mistress's larder. If you praised Dibbs, he admitted his merits. If you joked on him, he looked perplexed : (he did not understand jokes.) But if you abused him outright, he shone full upon you: — he had then a fine sullen dogged drunken look, that Hogarlh himself could never have painted. The pig that will go backwards, the little black-polled bull that goes all ways and confounds even the drover, the ass that will go neither 174 THE COMPANION. one way nor t'other — all similes fail! — This sturdy stupidity, in- accessible to argument and apology, formed his character. His head was as thick as a wall by nature ; and with this armour of angry obstinacy about it, nothing in the world could touch him. — Yet Dibbs had his use, like other animals : — he could draw a cork, froth a tankard, make toast, and tea, and excuses (for himself or another) and turned a beef-steak to perfection. [W.] REMBRANDT AND VANDYKE. Among painters, at least among Flemish painters, Rembrandt and Vandyke may be considered as having each attained the highest step in their several departments of art, — the imaginative and the real. For the former, in his higher works was undoubtedly a most imaginative painter. He did not indeed embody the " ideal'* in the many faces and figures which he completed ; but he let in a flood of light and darkness upon our senses, which has oftener startled imagination from her trance, and sent the human mind into speculation and thinking, than possibly any other painter upon record. He has no grace of figure ; no beauty of aspect ; no fine drawing; and often but little pretensions to colour: and yet by the mere dint of his wonderful chiaro-scuro, he absolutely chains us to his productions. He is like some dark necromancer, from whose spells arise terrible phantasmas, — shapeless things from which daylight shrinks, after having glanced on them for a mo- ment. Whatever may be the mere subject of his labours, all are tinged by the same awful mist of his imagination, and come out like black and fatal secrets half revealed, such as we behold in dreams. We look upon the gloomy fictions of Rembrandt, seeking no interpretation even when we understand them not ; but content ourselves with contemplating them as we would some spectral appearance, or some mystery of night and darkness, which day- light and impertinent investigation seem (and but seem) to destroy. Vandyke, on the other hand, sate at the right-hand of Nature, transcribing whatever she placed before him with unrivalled fidelity. He was, if I may venture to say so, almost too real ; that is to say, he copied what he saw at the moment, and nothing more. It was THE COMPANJON. 175 otherwise with Michael- Angclo, Raffaelle, Correggio, Leonardo, and, I will presume to say, Titian. Each of these great painters, it is true, obtained all their materials from nature ; but they com- bined and reproduced them. And thus it was, also, with the grand Flemish genius, Rembrandt. The following extract from the letter of a friend of mine (dated Gottingen) will show the effect of Rembrandt's and Vandyke's pictures upon a highly poetic temperament. It is an eloquent tribute to the two Flemings, and conveys an admirable idea of the peculiar powers of the artists. *' Here are plenty of sights of all sorts— a picture-gallery con- taining some most extraordinary great historical pictures of Rem- brandt. In his pictorial creations, methinks this Flemish wonder never got further than Fiat Lux. In man and woman making he must have received instructions from some of Nature's worst jour- neymen. Here is one, a Sampson (or Simpson, as the Germans call the poor gate-carrier) betrayed to the Philistines. You stand at the mouth of a great dark wide cave, through which comes an overflow of torch-light glancing and resting on Philistines' heads and beards. The wild beast of Israel is at bay on the foreground ; but then he is the strangest chaos of wild legs and arms ! — One, a dodo-like member, he thrusts into your eye, and the rest are in a state of mutiny against nature and their proprietor. He would have been wiser had he called it a picture of Menenius's fable of The Re- bellion against King Belly. There are many wonderfully mysterious heads of his, which look more like evanescent revelations of people that shall be born, than representations of what men have been. They look out at you as if they were going to dive again into their cloudy elements, and as if they could not last an instant. And they are amazingly contrasted with some of Vandyke's clear and real people, who stand and sit about the walls quietly but quite alive — and knowing that they are so, only they choose to be pictures a little longer." . [W. P.J 176 THE COMPANION SONNETS.* NOON. How all the spirits of Nature love to greet. In mystic recognition from the grass. And cloud, and spray — a warm and vivid class — The eagle-tiring Noon : around whose feet The glories of the brimfull summer meet ; That reeling Time beholds his sober glass Turn to a goblet — and the sands that pass Seem drops of living wine. Oh ! this is sweet To see the heavens all open, and the hood Of crystal Noon flung back : — the earth meanwhile Filhng her veins with sunshine — vital blood Of all that now from her full breast doth smile (Casting no shadow) on that pleasant flood Of light, where every mote is some small minstrel's isle. To one that marks the quick and certain round Of year on year, and finds how every day Brings its gray hair, or bears a leaf away j From the full glory with which life is crowned, ||j Ere youth becomes a shade and fame a sound ; * Surely to one that feels his foot on sand Unsure, the bright and ever- visible hand Of Time points far above the lowly bound Of pride that perishes ; and leads the eye To loftier objects and diviner ends — A tranquil strength, sublime humility, A knowledge of ourselves, a faith in friends, A sympathy for all things born to die, With cheerful love for those whom truth attends. * These two sonnets are from a Correspondent, who describes himself as " young." They are very clever. There is a turn in some of the lines, that reminds us of the late Mr Keats. The enthusiasm of our Correspondent has a look with it, that, unfortunately for the world, is thought to belong peculiarly to youth : but we cannot wish him a greater wisdom, than to hope he may always retain it. The preservation of this sacred fire, for life, among a small number of men would suffice to produce a blaze of warmth and truth, that should make this earth of ours a golden planet. — We shall be happy to hear from the writer again, and to accept the favours he speaks of. LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4(1. rniNTKD BY C. H. KEYNFT.T.j BROAD STHETIT, CiOI.DKN SQUAKE. THE COMPANION. No. XIV. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1828. *' Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. SIR WILLIAM UAVENANT. It is among the objects of the Companion, from time to time, to look into the more curious particulars in the lives of celebrated poets and wits, especially where a settlement of them appears to be wanting. It is remarkable, on turning over biographies even of the greatest repute (Dr Johnson's for one), to see how contented the authors are to repeat what has been told before them, searching for little or nothing in addition, and only giving some new turn of words to the style. We do not mean to undervalue the criticism of John- son, up to a certain pitch. His remarks on the town poets and all beneath them are as masterly, as those upon the higher ones are now understood to be defective and uninformed. But like other biographers, he avoids trouble. He errs also, as Hume did in his History, in omitting anecdotes and characteristics, some of them of the most interesting description, as if he thought them too trifling to mention ; — a mistake, more surprising even in Johnson than Hume ; for the former was a good table companion ; whereas we know of nothing to that effect about the philosopher, except the good round stomach which he condescended to have. If the reader took up Johnson's Lives, and compared them with what might have been added to the stock of amusement, by a dili- VOL. I. 14 178 THE COMPANION. gent perusal of the works of the poets, he would be surprised to find how much the latter process can bring forth. Let him compare Gray for instance, or even Akenside. Pursuits, connexions, pieces of auto-biography, or helps to it, are all overlooked. In these two cases, political prejudice interposed to encourage the Doctor's indo- lence. In others, the want of relish for the finest poetry enabled him to omit some of the greatest names altogether ; as his want of animal spirits did some of the most delightful, and his politics others. We have no Chaucer, no Spenser, no Suckling, no Andrew Marvell ; but on the other hand we have Sprat. Sprat, though a minnow among the Tritons, was a bishop on dry land. There is also the Reverend Mr Stepney, and the Reverend Mr Harte, and the Reverend Mr Pitt, and the Reverend Mr Broome, and the Reverend Dr Yalden, and the Reverend Dr Watts, — all clergy- men ; and there is Mr Hughes, who though no clergyman, ought to have been one ; and Blackmore, who preached the town deaf with bad poetry. But we are wandering out of the record. — We begin with some passages in the life of Davenant, of whom a curious question has been raised, whether or not he was a son of Shakspeare's. By the way, what havoc would be made with people's proper names, if all whose lives were noticed, had their family pretensions inquired into ! What plebeianizing of peers ! What abdicating of monarchs ! How many Tomkinses and Jenkinses would suddenly be found figv.ring among Dukes and Marquisses! How many poor wits patronized by their brothers! And alas ! how many footmen or- dering about theirs! Perhaps there is not a dynasty in Europe (one, of course, excepted) which has any right to the throne. A prince may be like his predecessor ; but what of grandfathers and great-giai (d fathers ? And what of the good old times of Jesuits, and Confe-jsors, and Petits-Maitres, and Carpet-Knights, and Chamber-Musicians? Somebody, speaking to Henry IV of France, called our James the First a Solomon. '' Aye," returned Henry ; " Solomon, the son of David." " Was your mother ever al Rome ?" inquired Augustus of a young man who resembled him. " No, Sir ; but my father was." Many poets, it is presumed, would be found to have as little pretension to their own names, as a multitude of THE COMPANION. 179 other lively people ; except that they generally come out of middle life, where the manners are staider. Davenant's case is certainly not made out, as he wished it to be. fVas Davenant the Natural Son of Shakspeare^ This poet, who united in a more than ordinary degree the active with the contemplative life, and went through a greater number of adventures than falls to the lot of most of his brethren, was born at Oxford, in February 1605, and was the son of John Davenant, a citizen of repute, who kept an inn or tavern in that city. The biographers have not noticed the deduction; but as he had a brother who became chaplain to Bishop Davenant, it is not unlikely that the family were of the same ancient stock of the Davenants of Sible Heningham and Davenants-lands in Essex. Wit and scandal, however, have interfered to give him a profaner genealogy. Shakspeare, it seems, used to put up at Mr Davenant's house in his journies between Stratford and London; and Mr Davenant being a very grave personage, though fond of the drama, and Mrs Davenant on the other hand being equally lively and beautiful, and a woman of good wit and conversation, it has been conjectured that Sir William had more reasons for the talents that were in him tlian tlie honest vintner had warrant for laying claim to. A story is related of little Davenant's being met in the st^''ee^s of Oxford by an acquaintance, who, asking him where he was going in such a hurry, was told, " To see my godfather Shakspeare;** upon which the other advised him to be cautious how he took the name of God in vain. Biographers have very properly called for proofs of this illustrious piece of gossip. Some, with not so much reason, have found a refutation of it in the manners of the time, and the opinions of the great poet of nature himself. What the manners of the time were, at least in those quarters where licence is usually to be found, the memoirs both of court and stage sufficiently inform us; and without entering any deeper into the question as to Shakspeare's opinions, there is no reason to conclude, from what he has left us of them, that such a circumstance would have been absolutely impossible. Thomas Warton was inclined to believe it. 180 THE COMPANION. Steevens treated the report with contempt, and alleged that Davenaut's face was unworthy of such a father : a strange argu- ment! especially as Sir William, before a misadventure that happened to him, is stated to have been very handsome. Aubrey, who was conversant with him, says of his son Charles Davenant, that he inherited " his father's beauty/' On the other hand, the beauty (to say nothing of our ignorance whether Shakspeare was handsome or not), may have come from the mother: the sage Mr John Davenant might have supplied the graver part of his son's genius ; or he might have been as dull as Sir John Suckling's father is said to have been, and the boy have been clever nevertheless. Besides, wit must begin with somebody. We are not to suppose that a race has been facetious ever since the Decline and Fall. The truth seems to be, that all the surmises on this subject originated with Davenant himself. Wood, who first published them, had them from Aubrey ; and Aubrey had them from Davenant. " Sir William," says he, ^' would sometimes, when he was pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate friends,— e. g. Sam. Butler (author of Hudibras) &c. — say, that it seemed to him that he writt with the very spirit that Shakspeare (did), and seemed contented enough to be thought his son." Sir William hit upon the best argument to be found. It is certainly a curious coincidence, that the cast of his genius resembles a good deal what we might conceive of a minor Shakspeare. There is the same propensity to be dramatic ; the same incessant activity of thought ; and, consequent upon both, the same unfitness for narrative. Gondibert looks quite as much the son of Venus and Adonis, as Davenant himself might have been of Shakspeare and his Oxford beauty. His disposition too resembled Shakspeare's, in its romantic turn for friendship. He had the same wish to see fair play between things of good and ill report in this world, as may be observed by what he says in Gondibert of the art of war ; he evinced the same sympathy with human nature in the individual, mixed with contempt for the populace as a body politic ; and though he was liberal in matters of religion to a degree of scepticism (of more than which Shakspeare and his fellows were THE COMPANION. 181 accused in their times), he went beyond him in shewing that same inclination towards an imaginative and deserted faith, which the studiers of Shakspeare have thought they discerned in his gentle treatment of friars and the cloister. But all this, being a mixture of the lively and melancholy, might have been produced by a proper conjunction of the Saturn and Venus of the Oxford inn. Shakspeare himself had not only Shakspeares for his progenitors. Daiwnant's Friendships. There were romantic friendships in those days, which shewed better for human nature than the neutralization of everything seri- ous which came up in Charles the Second's time. Young Milton had Deodati for his friend ; Cowley, his Hervey ; Suckling professed a friendship for Carew. To a volume of miscellaneous poems, Dave- nant prefixed the following pretty inscription : — '* If these poems LIVE, MAY THEIR MEMORIES BY WHOM THEY ARE CHERISHED, Endiraion Porter, Henry Jermin, live with them." With these two gentlemen he had a fast friendship for life. The Defacement of his Beauty. We hardly know how to touch upon this point, without disturb- ing that pretended delicacy which, ignorant of nothing which it conceals, only serves to encourage hypocrisy and hinder the spirit of general investigation. We must vindicate ourselves by our zeal in behalf of that spirit, — the only one fitted to blow over the whole world, and set it spinning clearly and healthily again. Davenant, at an early period of life, underwent a misfortune which must have been very mortifying to a handsome gallant. Aubrey does not mince the matter in his gossiping memorandums; but the biogra- phers, naturally feeling the awkwardness and delicacy of the sub- ject, have agreed upon a formula of insinuation very useful to all who come after them. They tell us, that he was so unfortunate *' as to carry the tokens of his irregular gallantry" in his face; adding, that it " affected him as little, or perhaps less, than it would any other man." Let us not believe them. Such an indif- ference is not natural ; and it would not have been honourable. No man, especially a handsome man, and one in the daily receipt of 182 THE COMPANION. admiration, could write of love as Davenant did, and be indelibly stamped by a spurious and fugitive imitation of it, without feeling a mortification for life. Tiie same writers tell us, that he could not forget the authoress of his misfortune, but has introduced her in his Gondibert, as a black-eyed beauty of Verona.* He laughed, it is true, because others laughed ; for some of the wits were unmerciful upon him ; but imagine a young poet, hand- some, triumphant, with ladies contending for his admiration, and a queen performing in his Masques (as Henrietta Maria did,) and then judge of the bitterness of heart with which his vanity must have received this unconcealable and ineffaceable wound. There is one good it may have done him. It may have set him upon trains of thought in behalf of physical and moral ill, or rather in opposition to the unequal claims and pedantries of supposed exclusive good, such as have been suggested to other acute minds by some natural bodily defect. At all events, it is greatly to his honour (as it was to Shakspeare's, v,dio is supposed to have been lame) that the dis- advantage it put him to with the rest of the world, impaired nothing of his real spirit and good-nature, his character for cheerfulness and kindness being as indelible as his misfortune. Our author had no other reason to complain of the sex. His deformity was so far overlooked for the sake of his wit and good qualities, that it did not hinder him from marrying two wives in succession ; at what period of his life, is not related : and the Queen was so little bent upon withdrawing her countenance, that in the year 1637, on the death of Ben Jonson, she procured for him the office of Poet Laureat. We must own, we could have dispensed with the undistinguishing fondness of his widow, who, to the folio * We are told by these " particular fellows," that she was " a handsome black girl in Axe yard, VVestminster," }51ack, up to a late period, meant black eyes and liair. Sir Richard Steele, in the book of scandal (the New Atalantis) written by his quondam admirer I\Irs Manley, is called a " black beau." Some of the said investigators have doubted, from a passage in Suckling, whether Davenant's misfortune was not occasioned in France. Others think the word France introduced only for the rhyme. The probability is, that it is metaphorical. "Will Dav'nant, asham'd of a foolish mischance. That he had got lately, trav'ling in France, Modestly hop'd ihe handsomeness of 's muse IMiglif any deformity about him excuse,'' &c. See the passage in the * Session of the Poets.' f THE COMPANION. 1&3 edition which she pubhshed of liis works in 1673, prefixed a real Jikeness of him, wiih the laurel to make it worse. Nay, the laurel perhaps rather redeems than makes it worse, being the symbol of his accomplishments ; but my lady Davenant might as well have left that matter to our imaginations. JJavenant's Change of Religion; Aw Mission to Charles the First, and Clarendon s invidious Remarks on it. On the decline of the King's forces, Davenant retired into France, where he was admitted into such confidence by the Queen, (to whom he had recommended himself by embracing her reHgion), that he was sent on a special mission to her husband at Newcastle. This was in the summer of 1646. The change in his reV;:)6n, which looks like the only insincere act of his life (for his works all but prove him to have been a freethinker, and he was regarded as one) was probably reconciled to his conscience by some niceties of con- struction, — some compromise between letter and spirit, and a phi- losophical as well as poetical interpretation of a creed already half- pagan. The church of Rome as well as of Luther has had its Platonism ; and if the Queen and his interest had not appeared to be the converters, Davenant, with Ficinus on one side of him, and the spirit that wrote ' Gondibert' on the other, might have startled Cudworth and More with a new tune on their spheres. Besides, it was very common in those unsettled times for persons to return to the creed of their ancestors. Davenant's mission to the King was to persuade him to give up the church. The poet had, in a manner, done it himself: the King knew him to be a man of great pov/ers of reflection ; and as he was in other respects agreeable to his Majesty, who delighted to shew his superiority in matters of taste over the austere notions of the Puritans, the Queen probably thought she could not have selected a better ambassador. Clarendon, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and out of favour with the Queen, thought otherwise ; and he has given us to understand, that his Ma- jesty was the of same opinion. He tells us, that Davenant (" an honest man, and a witty, but in all respects inferior to such a trust") find- ing the message he had brought with him of no effect, took upon himself to ofier some reasons in aid of it. Among other things, says Clarendon, he told the King, that " it was the opinion and 184 THE COMPANION. advice of all his friends : — his Majesty asking * What friends V and he answering ' that it was the opinion of the Lord Jermyn/ the King said * that the Lord Jermyn did not understand anything of the church.' The other said, *the Lord Colepepper was of the same mind/ The King said, 'Colepepper had no religion,' and asked 'whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer was of that mind?' to which he answered, 'he did not know, for that he was not there, and had deserted the Prince ; and thereupon said somewhat from the Queen, of the displeasure she had conceived against the Chan- cellor ; to which the King said, ' The Chancellor was an honest man, and would never desert him, nor the Prince, nor the church, and that he was sorry he was not with his son, but that his wife was mistaken.' Davenant then offering some reasons of his own, in which he mentioned the church slightingly, as if it were not of importance enough to weigh down the benefit that would attend the concession, his Majesty was transported with so much indignation, that he gave him a sharper reprehension than was usual for him to give to any other man, and forbid him to presume to come again into his presence. Whereupon the poor man, who had in truth very good affections, was exceedingly dejected and afflicted, and returned into France to give an account of his ill-success to those who sent him." Clarendon insinuates that the King was not pleased at having a message of this nature committed to the manager of his plays and revels. This may or may not have been the case, according as the fortune of the message turned out ; neither do we mean to dispute the main issue of it, though Clarendon does not bring forward his autho- rities for the truth of the statement ; but readers of the * History of the Rebellion' will do well to observe, that be- sides the passion with which the writer is apt to colour all the statements in which he is personally concerned, agreeably to his hot and proud complexion, he is never more apt to do so than when the person he differs with is a man of intellectual pretensions like himself. Of all the men of wit whom he has occasion to men- tion as at all differing with his opinions, public or private, he con- trives to say something disparaging. Ben Jonson he leaves off visiting when a young man, because he found him becoming too full of himself; that is to say, not sensible enough of the importance of his visitor. Milton he takes care never once to allude to through- THE COMPANION. 185 out his history ;♦ and May's defection from the royal side he attri- butes to his mortification at the bestowal of the laurel upon Dave- nant. Possibly he was right; but the opinion would have come with more probability from any one else. In short, Clarendon is not to be trusted when speaking of men of wit and talents on the other side of the question, nor even on his own. He cannot come in contact with Montrose, without evincing in his own feelings all the impatience and self-sufficiency which he is so ready to discern in the other. The least opposition chafed him ; and his readiness to deal about him his charges of pride and envy and impertinence, is more than suspicious. Let the reader therefore take for as much as it is worth that tenderness mixed with candour, which some biographers have been so ready to take upon trust from one another in his treatment of his old friend Sir William. It is difficult to think that " the poor man," as he calls him, was not thinking of a man a great deal more to be pitied, when he wrote such stanzas as the following: " Nature too oft by birthright does prefer Less perfect monarchs to an anxious throne; Yet more than she, courts by weak couns'lers err. In adding cyphers where she made but one.'* His Imprisonment. The poem that contained this passage, was Davenant's occupa- tion on his return to France. The cavaliers there had then little to do but to beguile the chagrin of their exile; and Davenant sat down in the Louvre, where he lived with his friend Lord Jermyn, and finished the two first books of Gondibert. These, with an impa- tience for fame more like a bold than a prudent soldier, he proceeded to publish without waiting for the rest ; adding, to make his peril more conspicuous, the Preface addressed to Hobbes, and the philo- * This was not for want of a burning sense of the part that Milton had acted ia those times, but the reverse ; for not to mention that a man like Clarendon mmt have known the powers as well as the politics of the great Defender of the English People, some letters have transpired, in which the minister, advising (if we remem- ber) somebody against publishing or bringing forward some piece of writing, says that he knows no one whom it would please, ** unless it be Mr Milton." We quote from memory, but arc sure of the spirit of the passage. The consciousness and secret rage of it are evident. 186 THE COMPANION. sopher's answer to it. The trumpet of defiance which he blew in that Preface against the followers of Homer and Virgil, roused, in spite of its encouraging echo from the groves of Malmsbury, a host of the most worrying and not the least formidable of the retainers of orthodoxy ; namely, the court wits, backed by their long walls of establishment; for, unfortunately, in those times the wits and the critics were the same people. They were not all indeed against him, but the fray appears to have been sufficient to disturb the common quiet; and whether this put him upon new thoughts of adventures, or the restless thoughts, and the hankering after a life of action, which are strongly discernible in Gondibert, would not suffer him long to sit still, he broke up his literary warfare, to turn his endea- vours elsewhere. Davenant had heard of mighty improvements to be made in the loyal colony of Virginia, provided good hands could be carried thither ; and accordingly, with the spirit of one of the military wanderers of old, he got together a number of industrious men in France, whose fortunes wanted mending, and embarked with them for that country in one of the ports of Normandy. He was destined however to experience more of the epic hindrance of great travellers, terris jactatus et alto Vi superum,- and being intercepted by one of the Parhament ships of war, was taken into the Isle of Wight, and committed close prisoner to Cowes Castle. Here, with an energy which will astonish no one that has tasted of the wants of great calamities, and the strength with which they furnish us to supply them, he resumed his poem ; and having written six cantos of a third book, full of his usual powers of thought, and enlivened with more fancy, he begged the reader's '' leave to desist, being," as he says, *' interrupted by so great an experiment as dying." This he says in a Postscript, as finely written as anything he produced, sweet and manly, — ^with a heart in it beating with as thoughtful yet noble pulses as ever lay down greatly to die. It is glorious to see a man's animal spirits vindicate themselves in this manner from the suspicion both of fear and levity, and shewing that the profoundest contemplations of death are not incompatible with a gallant encounter of it. THE COMPANION. 187 His Epitaph, and Ben Jonson's. Davcnant departed this life, a general favourite, at his house in Little Lincoln's Inn fields, on the 7th of April 1668, in the sixty-third year of his age ; and was interred with great ceremony in Westminster Abbey. " I was at his funerall," quoth Aubrey : " he had a coffin of wallnut-tree. Sir John Denham saidc 'twas the finest coflin that ever he sawe." Upon the stone over his grave was cut, in imitation or rather echo of the epitaph on Ben Jonson, ** O rare Sir William Davenant;" which is as bad as the other was good, bein? an impulse at second-hand. Ben Jonson's epitaph is a genuine thing, and was done on the sudden. It appears to have been owing to a friend of Davenant and Suckling, whom we have mentioned in our account of the latter, " He lies buryed," says Aubrey, speaking of Jonson, " in the north aisle in the path of square stone (the rest is lozenge), opposite to the scutcheon of Robertus de Ros, with this inscription only on him, in a pavement square, blew marble, about 14 inches square, O Rare Ben Jonson — which was donne at the chardge of Jack Young (afterwards knighted) who walking there when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteen-pence to cutt it." — We learn from the same authority, that Davenant lies in the south cross aisle, under a paving stone of marble. Davenant would have shewn himself a greater poet, had he in- dulged less in putting philosophical reflections into verse, and given way in a greater degree to the impulses of his imagination, which were very genuine. His 'Gondibert' is better known than it used to be, in consequence of the remarks of Dr Aikin, Mr Hazlitt, and others. It is too full (as we have before observed) of the fault just men- tioned, howe\'€r noble the reflections are ; and this, and the versifi- cation, will ever hinder it from becoming popular. The versification is heavy and clogged to an inconceivable degree, the lines being laden with spondees, which carry a fresh lump with them at every step ; and this becomes tiresome, though the lumps are of gold. Among his other mistakes, it was he who, rn restoring the theatre among us, was the first to bring over from the continent the seeds of that intermixture of the French and romantic drama, which 188 THE COMPANION. Dryden afterwards carried to such a flourishing height of absurdity ; and in such hnes as the following, we think we can trace the first footsteps of the return of certain classical common-places which will be obvious to the reader. Speaking of Fletcher, he says — 'Twas he reduced Evadne from her scorne. And taught the sad Aspasia how to mournej Gave Arethusa's love a glad reliefe ; And made Panthea elegant in griefe. His most unexceptionable beauties, setting aside a few most noble ones in ' Gondibert,' are to be found in his miscellaneous poems ; some of which, whether for delicacy of feeling, force of imagery, or strength and sweetness of verse, are, we think, not to be sur- passed. We must close this paper with a few specimens. TO THE QUEEN, ENTERTAINED AT NIGHT BY THE COUNTESS OF ANGLESEY. *' Faire as unshaded light ; or as the day In its first birth, when all the year was May ; ^vveet, as the altars smoak, or as the new Unfolded bud, swel'd by the early dew ; Smooth, as the face of waters first appear'd. Ere tides began to strive, or winds were heard : Kind as the willing saints, and calmer farre. Than in their sleeps forgiven hermits are : You that are more, then our discreter feare Dares praise, with such full ai't, what make you here ? Here, where the summer is so little seen. That leaves (her cheapest wealth) scarce reach at green You come, as if the silver planet were Misled awhile from her much-injur'd sphere. And t' ease the travailes of her beames to-night. In this small lanthorn would contract her light." Another little poem, in a similar strain, but still finer, addressed to Lady Olivia Porter, his friend's wife, appeared the other day in the first number of the * Keepsake.' In the Elegy on the Earl of Rutland : — *' Thy bounties if I name ; I'll not admit. Kings when they love, or wooe, to equall it : It shew'd like Nature's self, when she doth bring All she can promise by an early spring ; Or when she payes that promise where she best Makes summers for mankind ; in the rich east. And, as the wise sun silently imployes His lib'rall beames, and ripens without noise ; THE COMPANION. 189 As precious dewes doe iindiscover'd fall. And growth insensibly doth steale on all ;' So what he j^ave, conceal'd in private came, (As in the dark) from one that liad no name ; Like fayries wealth, not given to restore. Or if reveal'd, it visited no more." The following is another specimen of the style in which the Queen was complimented. We here see Henrietta, with her beau- tiful black eyes, painted to the life, and the King's uxoriousness made noble. It is at the beginning of some lines to the Earl of Portland, on the marriage of his son. ** INIy Lord, this night is yours ! each wand'ring star Tliat was unbusi'd, and irregular, IMost gravely now his bright companion leads. To fix o're your glad roofe their shining heads ; And it is said, th' exemplar king's your guest ; And that the rich-ey'd darling of his breast (To ripen all our joys) will there become The music, odor, light of ev'ry roome !" No man has written finer hyperboles on women ; in which we find a certain natural track of philosophy, and a charming taste of nature. The following is out of an elegy on a friend's mistress. ** Lovers (whose wise senses take delight In warm contaction, and in real sight) Are not with lean imagination fed. Or satisfi'd with thinking on the dead. 'Tis fit we seek her then ; but he that finds Her out, must enter friendship \Vith the winds ; Enquire their dwelling and uncertain walks ; Whither they blow, from their forsaken stalks Flowers that are gone, ere they are smelt? or how Dispose o'th' sweeter blossoms of the bough : For she (the treasuress of these) is fled. Not having the dull leasure to be dead ; But t'hoord this wealth ; return, and this wealth bring Still vary'd, and increas'd in ev'ry spring.'* TWO SIMILES. ** Cold as the feet of rocks ; silent in shade As Chaos lay, before the winds were made." See also the song beginning — ** O whither wU you lead the fair And spicy daughter of the morn ?" 190 THE COMPANION. — a dialogue between Endymion Porter and Olivia, — the Dying Lover, — the Philosopher and the Lover, &c. and the ma2:nificent verses to his friend, beginning with those fine pauses — " It is, — lord of my muse and heart, — since last Thy sight inspir'd me, many ages past." But with these, if the printer can find room for them, we will terminate, as with a piece of noble music, the entertainment which our romantic poet has afforded us. TO ENDYMION PORTER. " It is, — lord of my muse and heart,— since last Thy sight inspir'd me, many ages past. In darkness, thick as ill-met clouds can make. In sleeps wherein the last trump scarce could wake The guilty dead, I lay, and hidden more Than truth, which testy disputants explore ; More hid than paths of snakes, to their deep beds ; Or walkes of mountaine-springs from their first heads. And when my long-forgotten eies, and mind, Awak'd, I thought to see the sun declin'd Through age, to th' influence of a star ; and men So small, that they might live in wombes agen. But now, my strength's so giantly, that were The great hill-lifters once more toyling here ; They'd choose me out, for active back, for bone. To heave at Pselion first, and heave alone. Now by the softness of thy noble care. Reason and light my lov'd companions are ; I may too, ere this moon be lost, refine My bloud, and bathe my temples with thy wine ; And then, know, my Endymion, (thou whose name To the world example is, music to fame) I'll trie if art, and nature, able be From the whole strength, and stock of poesie. To pay thee my large debts ; such as the poor. In open blushes, hidden hearts restore." I THE COMPANION. 191 YES AND NO. [The following little natural effusion is one of the most celebrated from the pen of Marot, and made a " great sensation " among the gallants of his time. He alludes to it himself in a famous couplet, often quoted as a motto to his works : Et tant que Guy et Nenny se dira. Par I'univers le monde me lira. As long as Love says Yes and No, The universe shall read Marot. Marot is worth dozens of the French modern poets, even of their " Augustan age." The verses appeared in a court, and were very good and useful for that region ; but for our parts, who love the practice of sincerity and kindness without alloy, we love a woman to give way to the genuine impulses of her heart, and to say " Yes " precisely as she means it.] Un doux Nenni, avec im doux sousru:e. Est tant honneste ; il le vous faut apprendre : Quant est d'Ouy, si veniez a le dire, D'avoir trop dit je voudrois vous reprendre. Non que je sois ennuy^ d'entreprendre D'avoir le fruit, dont le desir me poinct ; Mais je voudrois, qu'en le me laissart prendre, Vous me disiez, " Non, vous ne I'aiuez point." O sweet No, no, — with a sweet smile beneath. Becomes an honest girl :— Pd have you learn it. As for plain Yes, it may be said, i'faith. Too plainly and too oft : — pray well discern it. Not that Pd have my pleas\u:e incomplete. Or baulk the kiss for which my lips beset you ; But that in suffering me to take it, sweet, Pd have you say, *' No, no, — I will not let you." 192 THE COMPANION. BROTHER LUBTN.* (from marot.) To shuffle to town twenty times in a day, Wliy or wherefore no one can tell. To do any thing which nobody may. Brother Lubin will do very well. But in a right conversation to dwell, Or in a life that's wholesome withal. That's for the Christians that heed the gospel ; Brother Lubin will not do at all. To put (in a proper, thief-like style) Another man's property in his own cell. And leave you without either cross or pile. Brother Lubin will do very well. To get and to keep he proceedeth pell-mell. And on his creditors loudly to call ; But to restore what might fill a nut-shell. Brother Lubin will do not at all. To lure some young damsel, by dint of a tongue. Out of the fair house where she doth dwell. No need of a crone that ought to be hung ; Brother Lubin will do very well. Sermons with him are not things to spell : But to drink clear good water, pray call Your dog to drink it, for I can foretell Brother Lubin will not drink it at all. ENVOY. Sooner than good to do ill withal. Brother Lubin hath a natural call ; But if there's any good work to pursue. Brother Lubin is one that won't do. * This is one of the squibs with which Marot used to aunoy the friars. They who have seen a coarse, fat, sly-looking lay-brother of a convent jogging towards a city in Italy in his dirty drugget on a hot day, will recognize the sort of person aimed at. LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4c?. PRINTED BY C. H. RliYNF.LL, BROAD STREET, GOLDEK SQUARE. i THE COMPANION No. XV. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16. 1828. ♦* Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. MISCELLANEOUS INTENTIONS OF THE COMPANION* Owing to illness and other circumstances, the Companion has hitherto been unable to effect the main part of its design; which was to keep an eye upon what is going on in the world, and talk upon any subject whatsoever which liberal observers discuss over their tables. We observed in our Prospectus, that the two main topics of the weekly press are politics and the theatre ; to which have been lately added specimens of new publications, and more lately, reviews as well as specimens : for, in the former instance, the dull rogues had a sufficient instinct of self-preservation to avoid committing themselves with much of their own. The town, there- fore, have enough at present, in a regular way, of politics, and theatricals, and new books ; and upon none of these was it part of our intention to expatiate more largely, than the feeling of the moment should excite us. We only reserved a right, as we still do, to say as much or as little of them, as we please. Some old readers encouraged us to say more than we intended, of the vol.. 1. 1.^ 194 THE COMPANION. theatres ; and this seduced us into late hours, and suppers, and other pleasing enormities, very much to the joy of our hearts, but not at all so to that of our livers ; and these being a very resentful part of the human body, and our weakness (if the critics must know it) lying on that side, we have been obliged to eschew the theatres as a general thing; and to go to bed and get up again, like good, middle-aged boys ; and so quiet this inconvenient mys- tery, the liver; which like an over-conscientious dog at one's side, bites his very master if he does not behave himself. Adieu then, except at rare intervals, dear, delightful Pasta, with your face of truth, and your heart full of song! If we were a sove- reign prince, we would have you sing to us every evening ; and light up our belief in truth at your eyes ; and ask you, as a par- ticular favour, not to get fatter. Adieu, wet nights, and hackney-coaches ; and playbills, pleas- ing to be pestered with ; and the gallant English pit, so ready to take clap-traps to themselves, and keep seats from the women ; and the music between the acts at Covent garden ; and Mr Keau's Othello, the finest piece of acting we ever beheld; and " Had it pleased heaven," &c. the finest speech in it, which we intended to hear again ; and that very disagreeable piece of wit, the Critic, which we intended to go and see at Drury lane, because there is Mathews in it in Sir Fretful, and Listen (who if he does not bestir himself, will make himself as melancholy with his fat, as he makes others merry with his face), and Mrs Orger, a natural actress, born, if we mistake not, to be as full of truth and good-humour, with that genial smile of her's, as her Tilburina is said to be full of humour sophisticate. And adieu, pleasing deteriorators, — things impossible not to take after the theatre, — to wit, suppers, with your fire poked up, and your evening just " begun again," and the faces that shine in your lustre ; sweet runners into the night, but slayers of next morning ; — love you we must, but afford you we cannot. The little eyes are fast asleep, which we must resemble, or not look at. To some other. belongs the happy lot of being The gayest valetudinaire. Most thinking rake alive. THE COiMPANION. 195 — And our infirmities, not being mortal at present, we must not render so without special warrant less pleasurable. And therefore, last not least, adieu also, watchmen ! Farewell, the tranquil box ! Farewell, " good nights :'* Farewell, your drowsy stoop ; and the big coats Tliat make you so much lumber. To frequent the theatre is not in our bond : night-time we have not undertaken to illustrate; but all the rest of the world is before us, from six in the morning: and then we dine, and are the reader's humble servant for any topic of conversation with which books, or newspapers, or town and country, can furnish us. We do not mean to give up our old books. The spirits in them would leap out of their shelves at us, if we did: at least we hope so. But new books will be welcome, if good ; and plenty of extraordinary things are always occurring. There is the' Roue* for instance; or Don Miguel, who means to be one before his time ; or Vesuvius, which has conveniently broken out for us ; or the ground which lately became inflammable, like an author's head, " after boring for salt;" or the subterraneous whispers which have lately frightened the Durham people; or the horse in flower, who has six legs, and is budding two more ; or " respectable'* people, going about picking and stealing, out of pure want of ideas, and inability to have but one at a time ; or the Greenwich holidays ; or the Hyde Park holidays; or the correspondence between Mrs Diana Beaumont and my Lord Howden, in which his Lordship seems to understand well the sympathy between those apparently remote places, and says, he " cannot bring himself to consider" the consequences as *' an inexpiable offence ;" only he thinks it would be insane in a man to be lively in the vicinity of Diana.* * *' We extract," says the Examiner, •' from the report of an action for slander (Northern Circuit) two letters curiously illustrative of t'le character of polite morals. The first is from Mrs Beaumont, the convicted offender, against whose husband a verdict was found for 1,700/ Mrs Beaumont, by virtue of her name of Diana, takes cognizance of a certain alleged inconlinency in her agent, the plaintiff, Mr Horsington ; and here we have to remark on a curious puint in morals, namely, that the gravamen of his sin seems to have been entirely geographical. The corpus delicti was what the lawyers would call tlie venue. Mrs Beaumont clearly indicates that such is the mam substance of the grievance 196 THE COMPANION. We are mistaken if the following remarks, in the Atlas news- paper, upon a criticism of Sir Walter Scott's, are not by the same hand. We know not whether we are trenching on any newspaper delicacies; and whatever might be thought to the contrary from our own connexions, are really not aware whether the author has any regard for ourselves ; nor did we ever so much as see him ; but unless somebody here has been catching his style, he is the only prose author (now writing) whom we look upon as a man of wit in the good old sense of the word, — and who makes us laugh. Elia, it seems, will write no longer, though we have not given up all hopes of his throwing in an eleemosinary joke or so to this our Companion. Mr Hazlitt makes us think and feel ; puts our faculties to the utmost; and renders dishonest critics and politicians very contemptible : but he is not a man of wit, nor does he make us laugh for laughing's sake. Sir Walter Scott (and we have now named the only three writers to whose volumes we are in the habit of turning, for the pleasure of reading them again and again) can paint humorous characters, at which we laugh ; but neither is he a man of wit; his sentences do not tell after the manner of Swift and others; his ideas are not laughable, unconnected with the whole history of a man's character and behaviour : they are not happy in themselves and from immediate juxta-position; and indeed he abounds as little as any man in quotable sentences, whether se- rious or comic. There is perhaps no man of genius that ever wrote (unless it be Smollet) from whom you can less extract mottos or pithy sayings : and the reason is, that he is nothing except as a painter of what has gone before him, and a writer of narrative. Me is a in her letter; and Lord Howden, a tolerant nobleman enough, in his reply concurs so completely in the sentiment as to say, * Situated as ihe world is, and luith so much of the same going on in every direction., nmong the very highest as well as those of an humble class, I cannot bring myself to consider it as an inexpiable offence ; but had he done what you suspected that he had — brought and fixed the person in your village, as it may be said at your very door, I should, as you didf have deemed it a crime and an insult not to be pardoned — an act of insanity scarcely to be conceived.^ " From this position we may arrive at some mathematical conclusions in morals. The crime in question increases in direct proportion to its propinquity to the great lady's house. At her door it is unpardonable ; a league off, the way of the world. It is thus, according to two exalted authorities, argued as entirely a matter of topography, and the degree of peccability is regulated by the distance from the nianslrn of the mistress of the estate." — Rationale ofFolite 'Morals. THE COMPANION. 197 very great novelist; a very mediocre poet; and to our thinking, no critic at all. He is so great a man in one way, that he cannot but interest you in any. Let him talk ever so wide of the mark, he talks agreeably ; but his criticism, we think, is nothing hut agreeable talking, and that of nothing new. He lives entirely in the past; and cannot think, feel, or hope anything, that is not made up of the great mass of conventionality ; the very shadow of which haunts and holds him in like a talisman; so that he cannot laugh but there is something melancholy at the bottom of it; nor feel anything but the anger of timidity and hopelessness, at those who seek for an enlightenment of the darkness. It is curious to find him, in the passage here criticised, expressing his opinion, that mankind at large — the inhabitants of his " vale of blood and tears," (as he has called it) — are more sensible of the comic than the pathetic. We should fancy there was more at the bottom of this mistake, than appears at first sight; but it is only one of the sure and certain errors which he commits, when he undertakes to be critical. He has been taking some other mistake for a principle to go upon, and made an erroneous deduction accordingly. It would be enough for him, for instance, to con- sider that Moliere was more popular in the world at large than Racine; and from this circumstance, as if Racine and pathos were the same thing, because there are pathetic things in that author, he would conclude that comedy is more popular than tragedy. — But to our extract. " Sir Walter Scott, in an article on Moliere, in the Foreign Quarterly Review," says our pleasant critic, "affirms that * the sense of the comic is far more general among mankind, and far less altered and modified by the artificial rules of society, than that of the-pathetic; and that a hundred men of different ranks, or different countries, will laugh at the same jest, when not five of them perhaps would blend their tears over the same point of sentiment. Take, for example, the Dead Ass of Sterne, and reflect how few would join in feeling the pathos of that incident, in comparison witli the numbers who would laugh in chorus till their eyes ran over at the too lively steed of the redoubtable John Gilpin.' " It may be conceded that * a hundred men of different ranks and dif- ferent countries will laugh at the same jest, when not five of them perhaps would blend their tears over the same point of sentiment ' — simply because 198 THE COMPANION. it is not the habit of men to indicate their sensibility by tears, and it is their habit to manifest their mirth by laughter. The test i)roposed is there- fore a false one. Neivspaper editors indeed * shed a tear' over the distress of Ireland, and the ravages of Greece, or the troubles of Portugal; but we are aware of no other class of men who make a boast and parade of their larmoyant propensities ; and we have considerable doubts whether the said editors are as good as their word when they make these shed-a-tear pro- fessions. For this we can vouch, speaking from some experience, that we never caught one of them in the act of weeping over the woes of the world when composing; and we have often wished them to inform us of the op- pr/rtunity they take to drop their tear. — ^We use the word in the singular, as the newspaper establishments in their collective capacity (expressed by the we) only club a tear. ** So much for the test of weeping. **The example we consider as faulty as the test. Few may, we grant, join in feeling the pathos of the incident of the Dead Ass in Sterne, while many will laugh in chorus at the performances of John Gilpin; but will this observation tend to prove that the comic is more generally appre- hended than the pathetic ? Are we quite certain that the Dead Ass of Sterne is as true to the pathetic as the adventures of John Gilpin are to the comic? Our own opinion is, that genuine pathos will be felt by a greater number of persons than genuine comedy, and naturally with increased in- tensity. In youth, tragedy is preferred to comedy ; and it is only as we acquire knowledge of the world that our delight in tragedy gives place to a relish for comedy. Of the million who live, and breathe, and see, and hear, without acquiring this knowledge, or acquiring only a slender por- tion, the large majority retain their admiration for tragedy. Ask the vulgar which they prefer, a tragedy or a comedy, and we are persuaded that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the answer will be tragedy. We are ready to concede to Sir Walter Scott his Dead Ass ; we admit that John Gilpin will ride triumphantly over it ; and we think that if he meets Maria washing on the road, he will prove too much for her also, and her pocket- handkerchief to boot; but we will match Le Fevre against even John Gilpin — and here is the less doubtful pathetic placed in comparison with the tnie broad comic. " From his portable form, Gilpin has an advantage which is scarcely fair over most prose instances; but, in his own metrical lists, we would pit against him, as a candidate for popularity, the ballad of the Babes in the Wood. *• Sir Walter Scott has, we think, erred in \m comparative estimate of THE COMPANION. 199 the sensibility to the pathetic and the comic, from attaching an undue weight to the outward indications. Men generally feel pathos more than they choose to express it, and express more mirth than they feel. The indication of deep feeling is repressed as a weakness, while that of mer- riment is rather volunteered as a sign of good humour. For this reason, independent of other reasons of equal force, we may, as Sir Walter says, find a hundred men to laugh together at a joke, while it is almost imj)Os- sihle to beat up two or three Billy Lackadays to blend their tears over the same ])oint of sentiment. Weeping is, however, not the test of sensi- bility." This is a long extract for our small work ; but our Companions must imagine we are reading it to them at table, It is not the first time. The " other reasons of equal force/' which are numerous, we shall endeavour to supply in a future article ; unless we can get a friend of ours, a true critic, and of the first order, to do it better. Sir Walter has forgotten, among forty other things, that comedy itself is founded in manners and sophistications, and is the greater in proportion as it illustrates some contradiction to what is natural; whereas the pathetic has to do with the whole circle of humanity, in savage nations and civilized, and in the shape, not only of sorrow and mortality, and every tragic experience that is common to us, but of hope, and even joy, and everything beyond the artificial. THE ROUE. [Tlie title of Rou-hs, the head, and then stnh the trunk to the heart. *But there was something extenuatin;? in his case, and the sentence is referred for ratification to Pekinpf. His Majesty has sent it to the Criminal Board. " Tiie offender, Vaou-a-i)a, detected his uncle in incestuous intercourse with his mother, for which his uncle tied him up, and heat him. After which he witnessed his uncle jjoing and spending the whole night in his mother's room. Yaou-a-pa's feelinirs of anger and indignation were now worked up to the highest pitch. He seized a sickle, and made blows at Yaou-tseih, his dear uncle. The uncle slipped and got behind him, and seized the handle of the sickle, with his arms round his nephew. Tlie mother came behind, and reheved the uncle from his embrace. He lied, and the mother threw her arms round the youth without his hcinu- con- scious of the chann'C. The struggle continued until the young man over- powered the woman, and wounded her mortally before he was aware that the stroke of the sickle entered his mother's heart. *' On the 21st of August his INIajesty's decision in the case of Yaou-a-na 216 THE COMPANION. was received. His sentence is decapitation, after a period of imprison- ment ; this sentence usually terminates in strangling on a cross, which, leaving the body entire, is regarded as a lesser punishment than behead- ing. Yaou-tseih, the incestuous uncle, is ordered for immediate execution.* Some amusing- specimens of national manners and feeling accom- pany this tragic story. ^ The Governor of Canton, a personage of the name of Le, who appears to have newly entered upon his office, is, we are told, " a gentleman of mild and conciliating manners, easily satisfied with pecuniary offerings, and desirous of tranquillity. In short, he is considered a good governor." His Excellency the Hoppo also, whose name is Wan, is a very mild, good-natured man, when he is sober ; but he has an unhappy propensity, like most of the Tartars, to strong liquors; and, when under their influence, he is rather violent and unruly.'' Thus it is under all Imperial Governments. " Let observatioHy*' as Johnson says, imth extensive view. Survey mankind from China to Peru, and, besides equally bad poetry written by the critics, it will find that the way to satisfy great men in all countries is to make them pecuniary offerings ; and that they are not above the temptation of drinking strong liquors ; upon which occasion the ruler becomes unruly. The Hoppo however is still a God-send, considering he is a Governor; for he is mild when sober: and Le is still better, for he is "easily satisfied with pecuniary offerings;" which, as fees appear to be ad lihitum in that quarter, is more than you could say of gentlemen in less heathen countries. The religion of the intelligent classes in China is understood to be * The law against parricide stands as follows, in the book translated by Sir George Staunton : — " Any person convicted of a design to kill his or her father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, whether by the father's or mother's side ; and any woman convicted of a design to kill her husband's father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, shall, •whether the blow is or is not struck in consequence, sufl'er death by being beheaded. In punishing this criminal design, no distinction shad be made between principals and accessaries, except as far as regards their respective relationships to the persons a-rainst whose life the design is entertained. If the murder is coriimitted, all parties concerned therein, and related to the deceased, as above-mentioned, shall suffer death by a slow and painful execution. If the criminal should die in prison, an execution similar in mode shall lake place on his body." THE COMPANION. 217 deism: but the public one is polytheistical. They have a gun- powder-plot in November " in honour of the God of Fire," with illuminations and street plays; and last summer, thanks^vings were ordered to the Great Draoron, or God of Water, for visitins: the thirsty province of Pekin with rain. MISTAKES IN MATRIMONY. Spain, as well as China, has furnished us this week with a do- mestic tragedy, arising unfortunately from circumstances much more common. Don Joseph Gutierrez, a married man, an eminent lawyer at Madrid, formed a connexion with " a fair vender of oranges;" which by little and little induced him to desert his house, and neglect his professional duties. Donna Balbina, his wife, at first only addressed to him " simple reproaches;" afterwards, " she had recourse to threats;" and at length, after an angry dis- cussion, they came to a resolution of living quietly apart, without troubling the law about the matter. For some months, Donna Balbina observed the agreement as well as her husband ; but all of a sudden she preferred her com- plaint to the tribunals. The judge, Don Manuel Segovia, a good-natured man, endeavoured to make up the quarrel; the husband consented ; but Donna Balbina " having poured on him a volley of invectives," he " retracted, and obstinately rejected every overture to a reconciliation." The Judge indeed decided that they should live together; the fruit-woman was told that she was to offend again on her peril ; but Don Joseph did not care. He went living on as before ; Donna Balbina renewed her charges again and^again, but to no purpose, the proofs failing her; and this forced her to pay the expenses. — At length an ingenious thought struck her. *' Don Joseph had a dog who followed him everywhere. Donna Bal- bina said to him one day, as he was going out, * Do leave the dog at home,' to which he consented ; but the moment lie departed she sent for a notary and two alguazils, who had been put at her disposal, and taking the dog with them, they proceeded all four to the quarter called La Ccbada, where the dog stopped at the house No. li, and quittinor his mistress, immediately entered it. Donna Balbina and the ministers of the law followed, and found Don Joseph engaged, tr'fe-u-frfr, with Louisa." 218 THE COxMPANION. With this new fact against her husband, Donna Balbina pro- ceeded to the Judge, who refused to listen to the charge ; and five days afterwards the poor woman was found dead; assassinated, they say, by Louisa, at the moment she was preparing to pay the Judge another visit. Louisa, after three interrogatories, was con- demned to death, asserting her innocence. The sentence was carried to the superior court, and confirmed upon new testimony ; and the last intelligence was, that it only waited to receive the sanction of the King. On the face of this story, here is another instance of the dreadful effects produced by what many people appear to think a very innocent thing, — to wit, a^ propensity to scolding. A married man forms a connexion, which induces him " to desert his house and neglect his professional duties." So far, he appears to be the person in error. Indeed, if he has a family, he had no right to neglect his professional duties under any circumstances, if the pursuit of them were necessary to the well-being of the woman he had undertaken to support, and the children she had produced him. But no mention is made of a family ; and in the next sen- tence we learn that the first step taken by the lady was to address to her husband " simple reproaches." Now simple reproaches are very simple things ; but allowance must be made on all sides, especially on that which conceives itself injured, and which society encourages to think so, however it may have contributed to the misfortune. Gentle methods, nevertheless, it is universally agreed, ought to succeed to reproaches, however just. They are expected equally from husbands and wives. Of these we hear nothing. The next information is, that " she had recourse to threats ;" and finally, after angry discussions and a sullen agreement to separate (for it could have been nothing else, and was probably the angriest part of the business) she has recourse to the law. A good-natured lawyer makes his appearance : he endeavours to effect a reconciliation ; and the husband is willing. The lady does not appear unwilling, as far as the mere fact of living upon terms with him is concerned; but even with this prospect before her, and apparently in the very relish of it, she proceeds to give him a foretaste of his old bliss by pouring on him '' a volley of invectives." THE COMPANION. 219 Upon this oar gentleman grows savage in his turn ; retracts his consent to live peaceably ; and " obstinately rejects every overture to a reconciliation." Donna Balbina returns again and again to the charge, but in vain. At length she succeeds in dogging him to his mistress's hxlging; and in a few days the wretclicd woman is found dead, and the mistress condemned to death as her assassin. There is a passage in Shakspeare, which seems very much to the purpose of this narrative. It is in the ' Comedy of Errors.' j4l)fjrss. How long hath this possession held the man ? Adriana. Tliis week he hath been heavy, sour, sad. And much, much different from the man he was ; But till this afternoon, his passion Ne'er brake into extremity of rage. Abh. Hath he not lost much wealth by wTeck at sea ? Buried some dear friend ? Hath not else his eye Strayed his affection in unlawful love ? Which of these sorrows is he subject to ? Adr. To none of these, except it be the last ; Namely, some love, that drew him oft from home. Ahh. You should for that have reprehended him. Adr. Why, so I did. Abb. Aye, but not rough enough. Adr. As roughly, as my modesty would let me. Abb. Haply, in private. Adr. And in assemblies too. Abb. Aye, but not enough. Adr. It was the copy of our conference. In bed, he slept not for my urging it ; At board, he fed not for my urging it ; Alone, it was the subject of my theme ; In company, I often glanced it ; iStill did I tell him it was vile and bad. Abb. And therefore eaine it, that the man was mad. Observe, we only speak of what appears to have been the case, on the face of it. The husband may have been worse than is understood; the wife may have been better. On the other hand, it is she that may have been worse; and even Louisa herself might have had more to say than we are aware of, beset on one side by the tempting tongue of the barrister, and on the other by that of his wife. '* What can we reason but from what we know ?" Oa.v the face of the matter, the husband is faithless, but not averse to reconciliation ; the wife- scoldins; and averse ; and the fair vender of oranges an assassin. This is all we know of the affair; and 220 THE COMPANION. unfortunately it is a situation of things much too common, with the exception of the murder, which, when it happens on such occasions, is generally one of a much worse description, and perpetrated by one of the married parties. We are far from wishing to beg any question against the fair sex, on these or any other points. Our zeal in their behalf is too well known to render it necessary to deprecate any conclusion of that sort. We think, it is true, that scolding is very unworthy of their fairness, physical or moral, and that in the present instance it was very likely the immediate cause of the whole calamity, as it is of a hundred others. But our object in noticing the business lies deeper than that, and goes to first causes ; which are unques- tionably to be found somehow or other in the nature of marriage itself, as at present constituted, and call loudly for the interference of legislation. Men may often be the persons having the more immediate right of complaint ; but if they have not their legal remedies, they take their illegal consolations ; while all the feelings of anger and self-love and desolation, of which the female heart (like every other heart) is susceptible, are not only roused by the force of the mortifying circumstances, but taught and expected to be so by the very sex who complain of them, — the very sex who first made the laws what they are for their own pride and conve- nience, and then monopolize the right to infringe them. It is in this anomaly that the first causes of the fate of this unhappy woman are most likely to be found : — in this anomaly even the alleged assassin may find the origin of her misfortunes : — while the only one of the sex who make these unequal laws, and whose selfishness and bad conscience hinder them from looking them in the face and making them better, walks abroad with the reputation of being a good-natured man (as he probably is) and a living martyr to a couple of violent women. To use a common phrase, it is hardly possible now-a-days to take up a newspaper, at least in England, that does not contain the most frightful evidences of the want of a better legislation respecting the union of the sexes. We shall doubtless have too many occasions to return to the subject; and we shall do so, whatever the selfish and hypocritical might think, with feelings of THE COMPANION. 221 the most serious interest on behalf of both the sexes, and with a reverence and anxiety for the cause of real love and lasting attach- ments, equally foreign from profligacy and superstition. THE '* MISERABLE METHODISTS." ** The Duke of Wellington presented a petition from a Concrrenfation at Lewes, Sussex, praying their Lordsliips not to pass the Bill for rei)eal- iug the Test and Corporation Acts. The Petitioners stated, the Noble Duke said, and in that statement he concurred, the great advantages that arose from toleration. The Petitioners also expressed great apprehensions — in which he hoped they would be deceived — that if the Act passed into a law, they might suffer considerably. "Lord King understood that the Petitioners were Dissenters ; and if they were, they were very strange Dissenters — they were the miserable Wesleyan Methodists, the most intolerant of sects, who would have tolera- tion for themselves, but would not tolerate any other persons. ** The Earl of Falmouth did not know why so respectable a body of people should be called in that House miserable iNIethodists." — Edwniner. Lord King gave a very good reason why they should be called " Miserable Methodists," granting even that there were no other. The Methodists may be divided into two classes, both miserable ; one because they are unhealthy, unhappy men, trying to look for a comfort in the next world, which they cannot find in this ; the other, because they are a parcel of shallow, hard people, just the reverse of the former, with no imaginations, who secure themselves a place in heaven, just as they would in the Buckingham stage. The former try in vain to be happy ; they are too sensitive and good-hearted for their own opinions; and are haunted with a sense of those who are to be left out of Paradise. Of this description was poor Cowpcr ; whose fine understanding was no more fitted to put up with their absurdities, than his frightened and shattered frame was to enable him to throw them off. The other methodists care not who is left out of heaven, so that they are in ; they turn it all to the '■'■ glory of God," whom they make so illustrious for everything inhuman and unjust, that as a philosopher has said, their religion ought to be called Da^monism, not Christianity. It would be frightfuller than it is, if it were not exceedingly foolish : for in truth, there is no Daemonism on earth, much less in heaven ; 222 THE COMPANION. but there is a great deal of folly ; and this, according to the tem- perament it acts upon, produces a gre.at deal of selfishness ; so that men utter doctrines, and are unfortunately influenced by them, which with a Httle help from the physician or " the schoolmaster," they would be ashamed of. We attend here to no distinctions of Wesleyan and Whitfieldian Methodists. Temperament makes the real difference. There are frightened Methodists, and hard, unima- ginative Methodists. This is the proper distinction. The former are miserable in the ordinary sense of the word ; the latter, ac- cording to the poet, may be accounted still more miserable: — They, so perfect is their misery. Not once perceive their foul disfigurement. But boast themselves more lovely than before. The * Chronicle,' speaking of the Earl of Falmouth's uneasiness at hearing the Methodists called miserable, and his vindication of them as a respectable body of people, says it does not augur well for them. " We fear," says the ' Chronicle,' " for a sect, when it is called respectable by Lords. It used to be said, in the country, of a youth when he had done growing, that he had got a knock on the head. During the growth of sects, the rule is to hate them; they become respectable when they become stationary, or are on the decline." There are three things which may be said to have grown up together, and which make a formidable alliteration ; Misery, Methodism, and Manufactures. If you wish to see Methodism in all its ingloriousness, go into the lace-making districts. It is there in all its triumph over the poor, the sedentary, and the frightened. However, another M. has come up, still more for- midable, which is Machinery. This, after a great deal of trouble, will force its way with its giant arms, and insist upon fairer play being shewn to labour and the right of leisure ; and meanwhile the Press is increasing with it; the two giants, the mechanical and the intellectual, have united their forces; and nothing will stand before them. At this moment, hundreds of iron mouths are at work, pouring forth *' knowledge enormous." This it is that makes Methodism on the decline; for the Methodist, like any other bigot, dares argue only so far. Knowledge argues as far as THE COMPANION. 223 it can ; and the Methodist is left behind. " Two-penny trash" is putting: out a world of shiUing;, eifxhtecn-penny, aye, and six- shiUing trash. What is the * Methodist's Magazine' once every four weeks, or the himbering'heap of falsehoods and common -places, called the ' Quarterly/ every three months, to the little weekly and almost every-day papers, that play like spirits about the heads of the comniunity, and keep them fresh and joyous for the rejection of nonsense ? Mr Limbird's * Mirror' alone, merely by circulating a variety of knowledge, throws light upon thousands of human minds, and prepares them to repel with scorn the dark absurdities and frightful shapes, with which bigotry and corruption would hold them bound.* The Examiner speaks of *' a pious brig." We happened once to find ourselves on board one of those vessels of sanctilication. It was a Margate hoy, which sailed " by the grace of God." At night-time, walking about to keep ourselves warm, we hit against something on deck, and stooped to examine it. It was a woman ! The Methodists (for theirs was the hoy) had secured all the beds below; and not one of them could be induced to give up his snug corner to the female. LORD HOLLAND AXD THE DUKE OF ^VELLIXGTON. ** In home news," says the Atlas, " the great event of the past week is the second reading of the Bill for repealing the Test and Corporation Acts, in the House of Lords. It was a marvel peculiar to these latter days, to see Lord Holland, in a measure of such a nature, supported by the King's First Minister, and the whole Episcopal Bench. The last hope of the Ultra-Churchmen was in *' Heaven and the Duke of Wellington." We know not what miracle Heaven may work for them at the twelfth hour ; but the Duke of Wellington cannot afford to keep open, as a continual fiubject of rancorous and useless controversy, a question which the opinion of the Country and of the Clmrch, and the vote of the House of Com- mons, have combined to seal," Lord Holland, *' supported by the King's First Minister and the whole Bench of Bishops," upon a religious question, has cer- * We have just seen a late number of tlie " Mirror," after a long interval. Mr Limbirtl has a right to be impartial, and to make his selections from all quarters ; but he should take care how he repeats, as farts, assertions which have no authority but that of the " Quarterly Review ;"' a work deficient in common honesty. 224 THE COMPANION. tainly a right to a new coat of arms. A Bishop on each side would do very well instead of his Foxes ; and he might ^ive up, for a new motto, the dumb eloquence of his Faire sans dire to the Noble Duke. What does he think of *' Lihertas, otia, lihri ?" This, with " occupationes/' ought to become the motto of the whole world. We happen to have kept our eye upon Lord Holland more than upon any other nobleman, ever since we have had to do with the press ; and we never remember an instance, in which a handsome thing was to be done in the House of Lords, that he did not ad- vocate it, nor an unhandsome one, which was not sure of his Protest. So great a thing it is to unite the humanity of a love of letters, with a genial temperament, and a liberal family name. There are many reasons why the Duke of Wellington is in his present station, and why he acts as he does. It is of use to many people. He is a great cutter of Gordian knots. But they say, that among his recommendations to the royal favour, he has that of being a sincere man, and of saying what he thinks If this be the case, we wonder at no confidence which the King reposes in him. A sincere man, and reasonable withal, must to a King be a god-send inconceivable. Ever since we heard of the Duke's character to that effect, we have had an inclination to like him, and hope we may find additional reasons for it. In friend or enemy sincerity is a noble thing, — the daylight of humanity. It enables us to see what we have to do or to oppose, and is an argument of natural greatness ; if not in the presence of what is great, at least in the absence of what is dark and petty. LONDON : Tublislied by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4d. PKINTtD BY C. H. KLYNELL, BROAD STIlEliT, ClOLDKN SQUAKE. THE COMPANION. No. XVn. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1828. ♦' Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir Willi.am Temple, SUBJECTS FOR DISSECTION. The difficulty of procuring bodies for the anatomist, whose science is so obviously connected with the interests of humanity, has at length obtained the notice of parliament ; and a committee has been appointed to inquire into the means of doing it away. It appears that there are six or seven hundred students of anatomy in London, three parts of whom are obliged to go into other countries to find the means of pursuing their investigations. Mr Warburton said, that " if due facilities of obtaining subjects were afforded, the number of students in this country would not be less than 1,000, and taking the necessary supply of subjects to each student at two, the number required would be 2,000. According to the existing usage, none but the bodies of murderers could be legally obtained for dissection ; but it was quite obvious that the supply thus afforded was totally insufficient. The number of bodies for the county of Middlesex in cases of murder, was only in the proportion of five in seven years." Is it possible that this rate can be true? There is consolation so far, at all events. On the other hand, the necessity for 2,000 dead bodies in hand, is a little startling. Mr Warburton mentioned a circumstance, illustrative of the importance of the human subject to anatomical explanation, from which the House appear to have VOL. I. 17 226 THE COMPANION. expected a more awful impression. '' He was informed," he said, " of a fact which really occurred in this metropolis lately, which he would mention to the House in illustration of this matter. It was at the Mechanics' Institute. Some lectures were given on anatomy and dissection : it was found that without having the actual subject brought in, the lecturer was not able to explain satisfactorily some of the soft parts of the human body. A subject was procured, and brought into the lecture-room care- fully covered. The lecturer then proceeded with the explanation to about 1,200 persons ; one or two of whom, of delicate stomachs, retired — (a laugh) — the rest remained, and immediately compre- hended the complete anatomy before them. The body was now the property of the mechanics." On this piece of illustration, Mr Peel remarked, — " As to the anecdote which the Hon. Member related of the 1,200 mechanics, he (Mr Peel) listened with attention, expecting that the "Hon. Member would follow it up, by telling the House that those ad- miring mechanics, one and all, instantly volunteered to give up their own bodies for dissection. {Much laughing.^ The House did not deny the importance of the motion. On the contrary, they appeared to be fully impressed with it ; but Mr Peel justly said, that '' it was hard to contend against those feelings among the people, which the Hon. Gentleman called prejudices; and impossible not to respect those feelings of regard which the people retained for their relatives, even beyond the grave.* Whatever regulations were adopted, he thought it would be found extremely difficult to effect the desired object." In Paris, it appears, it is easy enough to get subjects. In Dublin it is easier than in England. In Naples and other countries of the south, where they tumble the dead into pits, and seem to think no more of them than of so many bits of plaster, it might be easier still. Life runs more merrily in the veins of the people of those countries, France and even Ireland included, than in the bodies of our beef-eating and fire-side brethren ; and this * We have not entered upon this point, thougli an important one ; because we conceive that the feelings of kindred would alter with those of society at large. As it is, tiiey can give way to other feelings esteemed honourable, such as the desire to ascertain what was the cause of a person's death. THE COMPANION. 227 makes them less thoughtful of what happens after death. The famous appeal of the condemned man in ' Measure for Measure,' is in true nort!)ern taste, and would have become Hamlet still better than a northern Italian— ** Aye, but to die, and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod," &c. Dr Johnson was found sitting and repeating these lines a little before his death. On the other hand, nothing seems more curious, on this very account, than the dislike which people's imaginations entertain of having their bodies " disturbed," as they call it, in the grave, and taken out to be disposed of in another manner; that is to say, delivered from this very obstruction and rotting, and mingled more speedily with the elements. It is still more wonderful to consider how easily they contemplate being buried at all, especially when the public are horrified now and then with stories of men prematurely put in the earth, and of bodies that are found to have turned in their graves. On reading those stories, and considering the probability of some of them, one might reasonably be astonished to think, how it is, that the very imaginations which induce men to shudder at the idea of being disturbed in their graves (feeling themselves alive, as it were, so far), do not make society rise up against the present system of interment, and demand the ancient custom of urn-burial, — of being reduced at once to ashes, and gathered into that pure and graceful depository. But here lies the secret; for the old custom is not the prevailing one; and custom lords it, even over the most tyrannical of our fears. *' To lie in cold obstruction and to rot," presents a terrible idea, both on account of its unnaturalness to our living sensations and its continuity ; — nay, to be disturbed at all, is to the dreamer of the coffin very shocking; — and yet the same man will be more shocked at the notion of being burnt; and little, if at all, moved with those circumstances attending upon corruption, which imply a disturbing of the most loathsome description. The reason is, that his fathers were not burnt. They were put into coffins; they were subject to be stolen by resurrection-men, and eaten by worms; 228 THE COMPANION. and they disliked extremely the apprehension of being interred, as well as the very appalling things mentioned by Shakspeare; but as they underwent all this, their sons must undergo it. We do not state these prejudices, to laugh at them. There is something in the reverence for existing things, which we also deeply respect, and which we would only trench upon by degrees, and with due regard to what the natural changes of the world assist in bringing about. Besides, we partkke of them, in common with everybody who has a real sympathy with mankind. We confess, that if any one could give us our choice tomorrow of being burnt after death, instead of buried, our imaginations would run through the whole process of the fire, and feel inclined to give up their classical predilections. It would appear a sort of new martyrdom at the stake; dead, it is true; void of sensation, says reason; but then we know nothing of death; we have no experience of it; and can only think of death itself with our living ideas; all which is told us by reason also. We might even follow our particles in their flight, and wonder what those burning atoms experience. Nevertheless, so abhorrent is human nature from confinement and want of motion, and so appalling to a breathing creature, above every other idea, is that of being pressed down, or having the mouth covered, that ''if we were a king" (as the little boys say), and could do as proper little-boy kings ought, who sit with crowns on their heads and sceptres in their hands from breakfast till dinner, we certainly conceive, that on the seventh day from our coronation, and after ordering a world of improvements for the benefit of our living subjects, we should insist upon making fuel of them when they were dead. We should of course occupy an urn ourselves, in due course of time; and upon our urn should be written, — '* Here lies the man who would suffer nobody to be idle, or without leisure ; who hindered the old from marrying the young, and allowed the unhappily married not to be a torment to one another; who rescued the living from intolerance, and the dead from corruption ; and saw no more end to the hopes of man, than to the number of the stars." After this rhapsody (which by the way, comprises almost the whole substance of our creed) the reader may ask, what would THE COMPANION. 229 become of our zeal in behalf of science, and of such interests of our loving and living subjects as required a knowledge of anatomy. The question, we allow, has a startling look ; but in so generous and loving a community as we should rule over, the difficulty would surely come to nothing. We would proclaim the merits of a new species of sacrifice after death ; one, that delayed indeed the body's mixture with the elements, but only delayed it, and was a gallant thing for the imagination to encounter in behalf of the welfare of society. We would have children taught it; parents should be shown how useful it might turn out to their own children ; poets and men of letters should help to render it desirable ; and if loving anatomical subjects still failed us for a season, we would proclaim rewards for it, not of money, but of honour. A man's urn should be distinguished by some mark for it; or he should be allowed, while living, some privileges, not mercenary, nor yet unuseful to others : or a train of children, when his body was ultimately consigned to the urn, should follow it to his tomb with garlands and a song of thanks, — (which would give him a flowery idea of death) ; — in short, that principle in man should be appealed to, which, however mercenary a community may be in other respects, has never yet, when aided by education, been found wanting to the call of circumstances, even in all the living shapes of martyrdom ; from the self-sacrifice of the patriot in his dungeon, or the pale and worn scholar at the stake, down to that of the poorest soldier, who thinks it worth dying in a Forlorn Hope for a glance of his captain's eye. It will be said, tliat no such principle could be brought to bear on the present object, considering the manners and customs now existing. We doubt it ; — not indeed, in its full effect, or in the forms we have been amusing ourselves with supposing; though we think that in these, as in all ottier cases, influential persons are never aware how much they could eifect by laying aside a little of that mistrust, and ill-opinion of men, which they themselves may have contributed to warrant, and appealing handsomely to what is handsome in the human spirit. We heard the other day of a school, in which the master threw open his orchard to the boys, or at least took away all defence of it, and all punishment for its robbery, appealing only to their honour and future manhood : — and not an 230 THE COMPANION. apple of it was afterwards touched. Now if it could be managed, in this want of bodies for the surgeon, that some worldly advan- tage could be held out to the children of the poor, rather than to themselves, the two principles of interest and disinterestedness, or at least of a proper self-interest, and a most honourably anxiety for others, would be so united, as to take away all self-disrespect in the minds of the poor persons who added themselves to the list required, as well as all sting of anything ridiculous, which might otherwise be excited in those of their neighbours. We suspect, as it is, that more persons would be found, ready to sell a mortal part of them for a little lively consideration, than states- men, sitting in their easy chairs, might suppose. " Money in hand !" What have not statesmen themselves parted with for it, willing as we are to acquit most of them of that sordid- ness? But when dreadful necessity, and some of the best feelings of the heart, come in aid of it also, what sale of himself might not be expected of a pauper ? The great obstacle to resources of this kind would lie, as all other obstacles to good measures lie, in the unjust portion of the inequalities among men ; — in the spectacle of excessive wealth, contrasted with that of squalid destitution. '^ Why should poor people," it would be said, '* be under the necessity of giving up their bodies any more than the rich?" — Why indeed? — The necessity might exist; the measure might so far avail; but statesmen would pause before they sanctioned this new source of comparison with the superabundant. The same reflections would influence everything that was to be done for the object, exclusively out of the poor classes. The poor sick in hospitals, — poor soldiers, — poor suicides, — how would this sting of comparison be done away, looking to the wealthy ricli, to the general officer, and to the gambler who shot himself with his silver- mounted pistol? More criminals indeed, besides the murderer, might be threatened with anatomizing; and this, it might be thought, would be sure of doing good one way or other ; of adding to the number of bodies, or diminishing that of crimes. But our penal code is severe enough already; people would think this addition to it a new barbarism ; the only eventual good we could contemplate from such a custom, supposing it could take place, would be in its diminishing the horror of dissection with the rarity THE COMPANION. 231 of it ; and even this would be at the hazard of its doing the very reverse, in adding to its infamy. Nevertheless, the case, we think, is not without hope. Dissec- tion, as appointed by law, is hitherto a thing infamous, and confined to criminals; men in general are supposed to have a horror of it ; they have certainly a horror of death, by one of the first laws of their nature ; and in England as well as other countries there prevails a great objection to the chance of being disturbed in the grave. And yet, notwithstanding all this, it is no less certain that tliere are hundreds, and most probably thousands of men, who do not care twopence for the thought of what shall become of their dead bodies. We have heard more than one person say so, and we believe them. Now here perhaps is a want of imagination ; but there may be great active goodness ; and we do not see, why such persons should not be encouraged to bequeath themselves to the good of the community. Again, there may be no want of imagina- tion on the side of sympathy with the living, and yet none of that sort of imagination, which forms the weak side of the poetical tem- perament. And above all, whether the example was furnished by a want of imagination on the one side, or an abundance of it on the other, we know not ; but a voluntary thing of the sort did actually take place the other day, in the person of a professional gentleman, a member, we believe, of the Society of Friends, who made a regu- lar disposal of himself in his will, and for the express purposes of science. Really, after all, if the legislature do anything in the business, we think they had better speak upon this hint. Give such bequests the sanction of esteem, and the character of reason- ableness ; and then all the other inducements, which might bring people into the measure, would be encouraged to have their full ])lay. We know of nothing better to say, on our first view of the subject ; and something upon it we could not help saying, on account of its great importance. As to criminals, — if the law turns its attention to that quarter, and wishes to add to the list of available ones, we beg leave to propose the following : — All old bachelors, of a reasonable income, above forty. All methodist-preachers, who talk of " this vile body" (the bodies to be had cheap, being, by their own account, worth so httle.) 232 THE COMPANION. All young men who have married old women (the plea that they have sold their bodies already, being, by the consent of the old ladies, frivolous after death). Item, all old men who have got young wives (the plea that their bodies are worth nothing being to be held vexatious, notwithstand- ing what the widows may say in confirmation of it). Item, all those who have helped to make the national debt what it is, leaving their children to pay for it ; because this is the only mode of proving they did it for their good. Furthermore, all persons wdio have contributed nothing to the common good by some sort of personal service. (Here will be a fine crop of specimens, barring the gout). THE DRAWING-ROOM AND THE DUCHESS OF ST. ALBANS. ** Yesterday," saith the Court Newsman, speaking of Wednes- day last, " being St George's Day, and also appointed for the anniversary and celebration of his Majesty's nativity, every demon- stration of respect was observed throughout the metropolis." There may be reasons we are not acquainted with, for congratulating his Majesty on being born the day on which he was not born. In France they keep the name-day, as it is called, but that custom originated in children's being named after the saint, on whose festival they came into the world. Now his Majesty was not christened after the illustrious bacon-contractor, who, according to Gibbon, came afterwards to be called St George, and to be the watch-word of the English chivalry. The name however did ori- ginate among his Majesty's ancestors from that sacred and equivo- cal personage ; and we notice the thing rather for the novelty of it, than for any purpose of objection. Whatever tends to amalgamate the customs of all Europe may be regarded with pleasure, provided it be nothing but an evidence of sociality. The more we copy harmlessly from one another, the more inclined are all parties to an interchange of real advantages. There is no nation in Europe, how- ever highly it may think of itself, that may not learn something on points of importance by a liberal study of its neighbours. By the way, it is curious, that this name of George, which has become so royal, sliould signify an agriculturer. The King is his Most Illustrious and Gracious Majesty, Agriculturer the Fourth. Mr Southey might write hexameters on his reign, and call them the Georgics. They would be read, as somebody said of the rest of his poetry, " when Virgil's were forgotten ;" and, as Mr Person added — '' not till then." It is strange, that Mr Southey writes no laureat odes. Can nothing that the King does, inspire him ? The silence would look not a little Jacobinical, if the Laureat did not pay so much attention to Church and State in every other particular. THE COMPANION. 233 He does not wish to look bought perhaps ? But then why be so ? Or if he cannot bring himself to think he is bought, what could induce him to suppose that the government would crown his poetry, more than that of any other person ? Does he think it was for Wat Tyler, or the Botany Bay Fx:logues ? or not rather for the poetical fictions against his old brother Reformers, in the prose of the Quarterly Review ? — But this is a common-place subject, and gives rise to common -places. The Court Newsman informs us, that " the illustrious company wlio assembled on this occasion to pay their respects to their Sove- reign, comprised the beauty, the rank, the talent, the genius, the wealth, and the enterprise of the British Empire." Halt a little there, sweet Signior. A great deal of the '* rank," no doubt, and a good deal of the " wealth ;" but not all the talent, thou gifted Newsman ; nor the genius, thou discriminating Sub- Laureat; (not a man of genius was in thy list, that the public know of, except Sir Thomas Lawrence). And as to the beauty ! Bear witness, opera-house, and exhibition, and concert-room, and all the carriages of all the squares, that we deny not the charming faces which abound in high life, and which doubtless contributed their full cluster of human rose-buds to this garden of waving feathers, and diamonds like the dew. But had the gallant old Duke of Gor- don been at thy side, he would never have suffered thee, thou traitor to the Jenkinses of thine own acquaintance, to blaspheme the loveliness and the lustre to be found in dairy-maid and in mil- liner ; in bakers' daughters, and carpenters' ; in the houses of Hol- born, and the Strand, and Oxford street, and the remote parts of Stepney, even beyond Bethnal ; and then again in all the county- towns, and all the counties; and in Ireland, with its darlings that have a breath in their speaking ; and Scotland, with its barefoot beauties, standing in the brooks of Burns and Allan Ramsay ! Dost thou forget, ungrateful recorder of petticoats, dazzled with silver lama, and drunk with slips, how many fair faces have stooped over the making of those very petticoats, and lost their bloom in contributing to that of others? — faces, some of them with as fine eyes and as much refinement in them, ay , and perhaps as much gentility of origin, as hundreds that held themselves among the highest ? Take care, inconsiderate historian, how thou repeatest the like offence of omission, the deadliest in matters of beauty; or like the petticoats of thy Duchesses, thou wilt be elegantly trimmed thy- self, — gros de Londres that thou art, and deficient in ** garniture to correspond." It must be a curious thing, — one of these Court Drawing-rooms, with its heap of external splendour, and its multitude of humours, bad and good. How much sparkling of eyes, for the first time, amidst the young ! What apparent indifterence, and real triumph, in the beautiful ! What regret or good-humoured maternity among the old ! What happy self-estimation on all sides! What 234 THE COMPANION. envy or generous admiration of others ! And yet perhaps little of all this, in comparison with a sense of bustle and hurry, and a wonder how soon it is all over, and how little was thought of ! The author of 'The Roue' has given us a lively notion on this head, in a passage of his first volume ; which, in default of having ever been at Court ourselves (here the Newsman looks disdainful) shall be laid before our readers. '* Trevor took advantage of this — seized the pen and the cards, and wrote * Miss Fleming, presented by Lady Pomeroy.' * Miss Agnes Fleming, presented by Lady Pomeroy.* Duplicates of these were as quickly made and thrown upon the table ; each young lady took the one designed for her. Trevor, in spite of a slight resistance, drew one of Lady Pomeroy's arms within his, while the other held her train, and they took their places at the back of the crowd. " A number of young men who were loitering that they might lose no part of the scene of confusion, for such is every part of the palace on a drawing-room day, excepting the presence-chamber and those immedi- ately adjoining, called out after Trevor, but he heeded them not. ** They were now fairly in the crowd ; new comers had closed them in, and were pushing from behind, which the struggles of those before to take care of their dresses, and to steer clear of the swords and of the v/igs of dignitaries of the church and the law, which were here and there seen like cauliflowers in the crowd, made a mob at Buckingham House very similar to a mob anywhere else. '* These struggles were still more vehement at the approach to any of the doorways, to the narrow spaces of which the people who had occupied a whole room, were obliged to contract themselves to gain a passage to another. ** Here Trevor's arm was of great use, and Lady Pomeroy ceased to regret that she had been obliged to him, when she felt the conveniences of passage which his strength and attentions obtained for her and her protegees at these perilous passages ; for very perilous they were to flounces, feathers, and festoons. ** Many ladies were near fainting in these doorways, and excited the compassion of Agnes, in spite of the difficulties of her own progress ; though she could scarcely forbear laughing, when she saw the plump face of a short roundabout lady actually buried ' eyes, nose, and mouth,' as children say of the moon, in the full-bottomed wig of a short dumpling D.D., who had been thrust back upon her by some sudden re-action of the crowd. *' At length, however, they came to a door where their further progress was stopped by the crossed halberds of the gentlemen-pensioners who lined the apartment into which the door led. ** Here was the beginning of the appearance of a court — here things were conducted with some of that order, which should certainly charac- terise the admission of the subject to the presence of the sovereign ; and here our party had time to breathe, and to feel some return of that trepidation with which so m^my young hearts beat on their first presentation. " Lady Pomeroy gave a hasty look at her nieces as they entered this last room, when the halberds were for a moment withdrawn to admit those nearest the door, and Trevor found more favour in her eyes when she saw that their dresses were much less discomposed than those of many of the others, through the exertions he had made in piloting them through the crowd — * Take off your gloves — let go your train, ma'am,' was heard THE COMPANION. 23.5 uttered to those immediately before them. Amcha obeyed like an auto- maton ; but the heart of Agnes leaped to her throat with a mingled sensati )n of fear and loyalty, as she caught a finst glimpse of that court, in the midst of which she saw a monarch whom she had been trained to love, and whose presence and kindness she had never forgotten at the juvenile ball at Brighton. " Their trains dropped — they moved forward, while the attentive pages arranged the half-acres of satin which swept gracefully behind them. "Amelia moved with her accustomed ease. Lady Pomeroy's heart glowed with pride as she saw her bend and rise gracefully as she passed the King; and it was lucky that, in this admiration of her sister, she did not perceive the agitation which Agnes had great ditticulty to conceal. " Agnes had no eye for the moment for any but the monarch, sur- rounded as he was by all the heroes and statesmen of the age. They were all unregarded ; her whole soul seemed swallowed up with a feeling of loyalty and affection that almost overpowered her. This feeling was plainly depicted in her rising colour and panting bosom ; and she felt then that sensation which in the other sex makes the patriot and tlie hero. " Agnes did not recover her self-command till she got out of the pre- sence-chamber ; but when she first arrived at the top of the stair-case, and looked domi over the balustrade into the hall, she was delighted at the splendid coup (Peril that presented itself. " It was here that the splendour of the English court was to be appre- ciated ; a splendour not arising solely from dress and decoration, but from the really fine persons of most of those who compose it. ** Foreign courts may outstrip the English in tinsel, and diamonds, and brilliancy, but there is no court in Europe that can exhibit such a number of fine young men and handsome women as ours. *' From tiie gallery Agnes took a survey of the whole scene below, which the blaze of diamonds, glitter of stars, nodding of plumes, and mixture of military with civil costumes sparkling with gold and silver, rendered almost a realisation of some enchantment." The greatest pleasure on these occasions, next to that of being presented for the first time, must be the sight of somo extraordinary lion or lioness. In the present instance, the Duchess of St Albans appears to have been the spectacle in request. The Court Newsman, after his general preface, and mentioning the costly tiaras of the Royal Family (who appeared, by the way, in dresses of British manufacture), hastens to speak of the Duchess the very first; and to tell us, that " in addition to a diamond tiara, she had a stomacher of diamonds." We do not introduce the mention of this lady invidiously. We think she had as much right to be at Court as anybody there ; and wish, with all our hearts, for her sake as well as the spectators, that she was as young and handsome as she was twenty years back, and had married three Dukes in succession. A French philosopher under the old regime is said to have written a very serious treatise, the object of which was to consider thg best mode of making " Dukes useful." Now one of the modes, we conceive, might be the encouraging them to cross the breed with young and handsome plebeians. Her Grace, it is said, is not without hopes to that effect, though she is young no 236 THE COMPANION. longer. Fa bene. Greater marvels have been known before this : nor is it every Duchess that has so young a heart at her time of life, to say nothing of so young a husband. It was the famous Lord Peterborough who first set the example of ennobling a wife from the stage. He married Anastasia Robin- son, a singer, who survived him several years,, and appears to have adorned her station. The next union of the sort was that of Charles, third Duke of Bolton, with Miss Fenwick, another singer, who had made a great sensation, as the phrase is, in the character of Polly, in the Beggars' Opera; which she was the first to perform. A pretty story is told of her, that being once threatened with desertion by the Duke, she fell on her knees, and began singing the well-known lines, " Oh ponder well, — be not severe f' an appeal, which he found irresistible. This marriage took place in the middle of the last century. A few years previous, Lady Henrietta Herbert, widow of the brother of the Marquis of Powis, and daughter of James, Earl Waldegrave, had married a celebrated singer of the name of Beard. It is curious that he also made a great sensation in the Beggars' Opera, in the character of Macheath. There is something in that production which has always excited an instinctive sympathy in the bosoms of people of rank ; and there is a view of the matter that does them credit. Mr Beard, at all events, did honour to the lady's choice ; for he appears, if ever there was one, to have been a born gentle- man. He was not only a great favourite of the pubhc, an actor as well as singer, and as a singer ^' unrivalled," says his biographer, both in the serious and comic, but we are told that all this praise, ^^ great as it was, fell short of what his private merits acquired. He had one of the sincerest hearts joined to the most polished manners. He was a most delightful companion, whether as host or guest. His time, his pen, and his purse, were devoted to the alleviation of every distress that fell within the compass of his power; and through life he fulfilled the relative duties of son, brother, guardian, friend, and husband, with the most exemplary truth and tenderness."* * Chalmers's General Biogr. Diet. Vol. IV. All these virtues and accomplish- ments did not hinder the writer of the article ' Waldef:;rave,' in the last edition of CoUins's Peerage, from leaving out all mention of Mr i3eard's marriage. The lady is mentioned as having married the Honourable Edward Herbert (only brother of the Marquis of Powis), and died May 31, 1753. Not a word of the noble-hearted singer and actor, *' one of God Almiglity's gentlemen." By another passage, we find that her Ladyship was grand-daughter of llenrietta, " natural daughter of James II, by Mrs Arabella Churchill, sister to John, Duke of Marlborough." No shame there, though the thing is protested against in all churches and chapels throughout England, and the Waldegraves appear to have been a very grave family; — but the vice of marrying an honest man, who was a singer ! This is a blot on the scutcheon, that must not be spoken of. We have nothing, for our parts, to say against a lady for being descended from a natural daughter ; but great families have, according to modern writers ; though not, it seems, on these par- ticular occasions. *' Robes and furr'd gowns hide all." — However, the peerage are gaining in liberality ; and wealth may further, what has been denied to mere accomplishments. THE COMPANION. 237 We are not aware of another instance till the marriaore of the Earl of Derby with i\Iiss Farren in the year 1797. The prudence and lady-like manners of this; actress conciliated, we believe, all hearts. With the progress of liberal opinion in general, they cer- tainly prepared the way for other matches of the kind. In 1807, the Earl of Craven married Miss Brunton, who is handsomely designated in the Peera2;e above-mentioned, as of " Covent Gardea Theatre ;" and sometime after, we know not in what year, Miss Bolton was married to Lord Thurlow. The objections to intermarrying with performers, among the gentry at large, appear not only to have been done away by these examples in high life, but to have merged into an absolute fashion, or propensity, the other way. Nor is it to be doubted, that if the elevated party is on a footing with those among whom she is raised by gentility of manners, the husband is probably a gainer on the score of accomplishments. At all events, the lady has more to shew for the match, than ladies have in general. She is a good actress or singer, if she is nothing else; or she has attracted some- how or other the public admiration. Miss Searle, a dancer, who married a brother of Sir Gilbert Heathcote, has been mentioned in this work, as a girl who had a look of remarkable elegance. Miss O'Neil was reckoned an actress of a high order; and the grace and refinement in the performance of Miss Tree, the singer, will not soon be forgotten. There was also a little girl at the Haymarket, Miss Blanchard, daughter, we believe, of Mr Bianchard of Covent Garden, whom in our younger days we should infallibly have added to the list of our theatrical goddesses, and who married speedily, and disappeared. She had a look of good-heartedness and domestic promise, beyond anything we remember on the boards. In the union that has suggested this retrospect, there is supposed to be nothing of the causes that gave rise to the former ones. The tables are even turned in one respect ; for the lady brings wealth ; and wealth too, large enough to repair the splendours of a ducal house. Furthermore, she is many years older than her bridegroom; is no longer handsome, though she has been so ; and has not only left no impression of any particular grace or refinement on the minds of those who remember her, but presents them with an idea of something the reverse. Nor is this likely to have been diminished by the power and wilfulness arising from wealth. Nevertheless, we can easily imagine that, whatever causes may have combined to effect this marriage, the Duke may have been well inplined to it on other accounts, and the Duchess be a woman well calculated to please and interest him. We say nothing of tiie stories of her generosity or her want of generosity. A very wealthy person is under a great disadvantage in that matter, on account of the numerous applicants who must of necessity be refused ; while those, on the other hand, who have been assisted, are seldom loud in proclaiming their obligations. Persons who come into the pos- session of wealth, after having been stinted wlien young, err 238 THE COMPANION. generally on the side of profuseness rather than the reverse ; and if Miss Mellon has been taught to be careful, the probability is that she is nevertheless a generous woman, or she would hardly have been so pleasant to those whom she has interested. She has no right indeed to all this wealth ; no single person has ; but that is not her fault ; and she is not among those who have done nothing for the good or amusement of the world. That she has talents, her acting used to shew; that she is capable of filling up the hours, and exciting the high gratitude, of another man, old, it is true, but we believe not unacute, and certainly not wanting in the means of pro- curing diversion, is clear from her marriage with Mr Coutts ; and that she can equally well fill up the hours, and obtain the gratitude and affection of a young man, not perhaps very brilliant himself, but the more desirous on that account of all the ideas he can get from others, we can most easily believe, and in default of knowing anything to the contrary, do so. Besides, though no longer hand- some in one sense, and as large in person as genial temperaments are too apt to get in middle life, there is something still good-look- ing and agreeable in the face that belonged to Miss Mellon : — its archness is not all gone, nor its disposition to enjoyment ; certainly none of its festivity ; and if these evidences are true, the Duke of St Albans in --a t^te-^-tete over his champagne, may think of a hundred marriages he might have made, " unexception- able,** as people say, " in every respect ;" and congratulate himself that he is not ready to cut his throat with ennui, after one of them. The stories that we read of Diana de Poitiers, and other marvellous women whose fascination survived to a late period of life, had, we may be assured, little to do with their beauty. Beautiful they might have been; but the charm was in the power of entertainment. In one respect, there is at least a singular fitness in this union. The Dukedom of St Albans came by an actress (Nell Gwynn), and it is repaired by an actress. The stage has become grateful at a late day to his Majesty King Charles the Second, author of the race of St Albans ; though what he meant by the hopeful motto which he gave to this new house C The Omen of a Better Age'J the heralds must have been at a loss to conceive. The arms are his own royal arms, with a goat on one side, and a greyhound on the other, and the above prophetic rapture, — Auspicium Melioris jEvL Was he philosophizing ? or was he drunk 1 The contemplations of kings, with regard to future times, must be very curious on these occasions. Future times, it must be owned, are very obliging; and take the dukedoms and the indecorums in the best possible way, with a mixture of public respect and private objection very salutary. We are not for being severe on the matter; far from it; especially where there happens to have been anything like a long and real attachment; but we love consistency and plain dealing. If good is to be taught us by these things, let us learn it, and better the age. If not, how, in the name of example and Holy Mother Church, can kings go on making peera.ges out of their illegal vivacities, and THE COMPANION. 239 expect that provision is not to be made for the sallies of their be- loved subjects? The worst of these marriages unequal in point of age, is the time to come ; — the time when the woman must be old, in the venera- ble sense of the term, while the man is still in the vigour of life. Then is the good sense of the lady put to the test indeed ; and the circumstances have been very peculiar from the first that would entirely justify such an experiment on either side. We may suppose the present to have been one, for the sake of argument: but generally speaking, no matches would be more foolish for the comfort of either party, and society ought unquestionably to set its face against them without exception. We speak of inequalities of age solely, and not of rank. People might, under a better system, make any experiment in reason, and provided no person were injured; but to force the old and the young to remain together, because the former perhaps is a dotard, and the latter not yet come to years of discretion, is a folly which, if it did not exist already, and were proposed as an innovation, would cause those who think themselves very good legislators at present, to be looked upon as a parcel of madmen. MAY-DAY AND SHAKSPEARE S BIRTH-DAY. Tomorrow is May-day. " May-day, is it?" quoth a reader : " ah, so it is." And then he thinks of something his grandmother used to tell him about dairy-maids, and dances, and poles hung with garlands ; all which are displaced by the idea of the chimney-sweeper. *' May-day ! Then we shall see the chimney-sweepers!" This is all that a Londoner, or perhaps a countryman for fifty miles round London, thinks of the season now. Two hundred years ago, a poet wrote a song to May, as blithe and beautiful as the season used to be. You see the colour in her cheek. Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger, Comes dancin<:r from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from lier green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire ! Woods and jrroves arc of thy dressinjr • Hill, and dale, doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute tliee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long. This song (profanation apart) might be now altered for the season, as follows : — . Now Sal, the daughter of the scavenger, Comes dancing from tiie east, and leads with her 240 THE COMPANION. The tinsell'd sweeps, who with their brushes go Rattling a jig, and hopping to and fro. Hail, dingy Sal, that dost inspire Anything but warm desire ! Sims and Jones are of thy dressing ; All the Smiths may boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee, to our great disgrace, And pity thee, and wish thee a wash'd face. Poor soul ! It is not her fault ; and we resent, somehow, the say- ing anything in which the sex is made to appear at a disadvantage, even in her shape. Luckily, on these occasions, she is apt to be not herself, but some '' great lubberly boy." We never see chimney-sw^eepers, especially on May -day, but we long to consign them over to a good washerwoman, and then turn them loose in the fields to take a month's airing, before we promote them to be printer's devils. Will nobody take up the cause heartily, and put an end to them ? In spite of these melancholy appearances of the modern May- day, we exhort such of our readers as have a relish for poetry and the country, and live conveniently for the purpose, to call to mind the sprightlier customs of the ancient one, and do their healths, heads, and hearts good, by getting up either tomorrow morning (or old May-day, if it be finer, next Monday week) and take a rush into the green lanes. We warrant the birds and trees in beautiful condition ; and do aver, that the thrushes are of the very same order, and the hawthorns of the same identical fashion, as they were in the time of Shakspeare. If he thought them so beautiful, why should not we ? Shakspeare himself, as well as the Morning-Star, was May's harbinger. His birth-day fell on the old 23d of April, on which day Mr EUiston kept it " well, but not wisely," for as old May- day is now on the 12th of May, so Shakspeare's birth-day is on the 5th of that month. On this hint why do not a dozen celebra- tions of the day start up? And how is it that the theatres do not light up in honour of the Prince of the Drama? The word Shakspeare would look beautiful over their doors ; and we would be bound, do good to their boxes. Do they owe more to the King than to him ? or do they pay his Majesty the ill compliment of thinking he would be jealous ? — Shakspeare is far above competi- tion, as a dramatist ; so that there would be no danger of their being called upon to extend the practice. LONDON Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Nevvsvenders in town and country. — Price 4rf. 7>HlNTliD KY C. H. REYNELL, BROAD STIIEET, GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. XVIII. WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1828. ♦' Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend."— Sir William Temple. MAY-DAY AT HOLLY LODGE. Walking up Highgate Hill on the evening of the first of May, we found a string of carriages lining that beautiful road, and a throng of people collected at the lodge-door of her Grace the Duchess of St Albans. The hedges, instead of white thorn, blossomed with footmen in livery; little boys were in the elms and bushes, trying to get a sight over the way into her Grace's paradise ; and a sound of music, and the sight of blue favours at button-holes, told us, that something extraordinary was doing there, on this genial anniversary. Surely, thought we, the Duchess is not snatching a grace beyond the reach of her title, and setting a good holiday example to the people in high life ? If so, and the Companion of last week came in her way, we should be doubly sorry that anything we have said should chance to offend her. What we say at any time in this paper, even when apparently designed to offencf, is never really so, but has a view to the many ; and we have it not in us intentionally to offend a woman, much less a generous one, and one whose face we recollect with pleasure. But a sympathy with us on the sub- ject of May-day is a tender point ; and if it turn out, that she has been keeping it, we shall hardly be content till we call her as young as she is rich. Remorse will touch our excessive consciences, VOL. I. 18 242 THE COMPANION. though we do not deserve it. These things may not absolutely make people young again ; but they produce a pleasing confusion in our notions of their time of life ; and at any rate they are the cause of a great deal of young merriment in others ; and tend to keep the heart and the power of pleasing, young to the last. It was even so: the music and the little boys were right: May- day was being kept in all its glory at Holly Lodge, with a proper May-pole, and garlands, and dances. No : not all its glory, for the " great folks," it seems, did not dance ; they '< felt ashamed/' we suppose, as the children say : — every thing cannot be brought about at once. But then, did none but the poor or the peasantry dance? That would have been better than no dancing; but then it would not have been so pleasant to think of the mistress of the mansion looking upon it as a duchess. No : it was still better, we think, than this, though with a less natural look ; for the dancers came from the theatres: — in other words, the association of ideas was not shirked : the Duchess was still Harriett Mellon ; and this we used to think was the best thing she could be, till we found that Harriett Mellon could shew herself better for being a Duchess. If these are the modes in which her Grace means to vindicate herself as an exception to the ordinary rules of matrimony, we say in God's name let her go on, and be the cause of all the mirth, and youth, and love of nature she can think of. This indeed will be making a fine exception out of a monied common-place. But next time we exhort her to make the '' gentlefolks" dance. It will be a great lift to the fashionable world ; and may help them to find out, that not only chalked floors and stifling rooms, but May- day, and the morning air, and a good honest piece of turf with health and vigour upon it, have their merits. The press and the steam-engine are bringing about great changes in the world ; and the greater the sweetness in the blood of all parties, and the humaner their common knowledge, the more happily for all will those changes take place. It is not patronage that will do any- thing. The Duchess is wise in not affecting to patronize, and to distribute holiday beef and pudding. The poor do not want alms now-a-days. They are too poor, and too ivell informed. They THE COMPANION. 243 want employment and proper pay ; and after employment, a rea- sonable leisure. All this they will get by the inevitable progress of things, and by means of those very improvements which they con- template at present with a mixture of pain and admiration. But meanwhile care forces them to think ; the press enables them to do so with greater tranquillity ; and the more they see the rich inclined to be just to them in a serious way, and partaking their pleasures in a lively one, the more the whole common interests of humanity will move forwards, to everyone's honour, and no one's disadvantage. All the village dances in France, and all the holiday condescen- sions of the great to the poor, did not prevent the revolution; because in the meantime all the real injustice was going on, — the frightful game laws, the odious exactions of labour without pay, privileged classes sunk in luxury, and cities without bread. But the abolition of those frightful game laws would have assisted to prevent the revolution ; the cessation of those odious exactions of unrequited labour would have assisted to prevent it ; privileged classes, not condescending in the particular, but diffusing the means of knowledge and comfort in general, and making common cause with the poorest in a taste for nature, would have converted it into a happy reformation; and the world would never have had a proof of the stupidity to which the highest are made subject, in the famous speech of a princess, who when told that people wanted bread, asked why they did not eat cakes. In short, we would have the rich and the poor exhibit as many tastes in common as possible, without being forced to shew one another either that the immediate possession of wealth is contem- plated with impatience, or that good caii only be done to poverty in the shape of alms-giving. The best way to further this mutual benefit is for both sides to learn as much, to teach as much, and to enjoy openly as much pleasure common to all, as they can dis- cover ; and therefore again we say, long life to the merry meetings at Holly Lodge, and may the sound of the pipe and tabor be heard on May-day again throughoutEngland, among duchesses as healthy as peasants, and peasant-girls as much alive to the poetry of May- dnv as duchesses. 244 THE COMPANION. CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. Readers of newspapers are constantly being shocked with the unnatural conduct of parents towards their children. Some are detected in locking them up, and half-starving them : others tax them beyond their strength, and scourge them dreadfully for not bearing it : others take horrible dislikes to their children, and vex and torture them in every way they can think of, short of subject- ing themselves to the gallows. In most cases the tyranny is of long duration before it is exposed. A whole neighbourhood are saddened by the cries of the poor victim, till they are obliged to rise up in self-defence, and bring the offender to justice. By this we may judge how many miseries are taking place, of which people have no suspicion; how many wretches have crimes of this sort, to account for the evil in their looks ; and how many others, more criminal because more lying, go about in decent repute, while some oppressed and feeble relative, awfully patient, is awaiting in solitude the horror of the returning knock at the door. It is sometimes alleged by offenders of this description, that the children have real faults, and are really provoking; that their conduct is very *' aggravating," as the phrase is; and that *' nothing can mend them but blows," — which never do. But whence come the faults of children ? And how were they suffered to grow to such a height? Really, — setting aside these monsters of unpater- nity, — parents are too apt to demand a great deal in their children, which they themselves do not possess. The child, on the mere will of the parents, and without any of their experience, is expected to have good sense, good temper, and heaven knows how many other good qualities ; while the parents perhaps, notwithstanding all the lessons they have received from time and trouble, have little or nothing of any of them. Above all, they forget that, in originating the bodies of their children, they originate their minds and temperaments; that a child is but a continuation of his father and mother, or their fathers and mothers, and kindred ; that it is further modified, and made what it is, by education and bringing up ; and that on all these accounts the parents have no excuse for THE COMPANION. 245 abusing and tormenting it, unless with equal wisdom and a glorious impartiality they should abuse and torment themselves in like manner, — scourge their own flesh, and condemn themselves to a crust and a black hole. If a father were to give his own sore legs a good flogging for inheriting ill humours from his ancestors, he might with some shew of reason proceed to punish the continuation of them in those of his child, if a cruel mother got into a handsome tub of cold water, of a winter morning, and edified the neighbours with the just and retributive shrieks which she thence poured forth for a couple of hours, crying out to her deceased " mammy" that she would be a good elderly woman in future, and not a scold and a reprobate, then she might, like a proper madwoman (for she is but an improper one now) put her child into the tub after her, and make it shriek out " mammy" in its turn. But let us do justice to all one's fellow-creatures, not forgetting these very " aggravating" parents. To regard even them as some- thing iafernal, and forget that they as well as their children have become what they are from circumstances over which they had no controul, is to fall into their own error, and forget our common humanity. We believe that the very worst of these domestic tyrants (and it is an awful lesson for the best of them) would have been shocked in early life, if they could have been shewn, in a magic glass, what sort of beings they would become. Suppose one of them a young man, blooming with health, and not illnatured, but subject to fits of sulkiness or passion, and not very wise; and suppose that in this glass he sees an old ill-looking fellow, scowling, violent, outrageous, tormenting with a bloody scourge his own child, who is meagre, squalid, and half starved : — " Good God!" he would cry, " can that be myself? Can that be my arm, and my face? And that my own poor little child? There are devils then, and I am doomed to be one of them." And the tears would pour into his eyes. — No; not so, poor wretch : thou art no devil; there is no such thing as devilism, or pure malice for its own sake ; the very cruellest actions are committed to relieve the cravings of their own want of excitement, more than to hurt another. But though no devil, you are very ignorant, and are not aware of this. The energies of the universe, being on a great 246 THE COMPANION. scale, are liable, in their progress from worse to better, to great roughness in the working, and appalling sounds of discord. The wiser you become, the more you diminish this jarring, and tend to produce that amelioration. Learn this, and be neither appalled nor appalling ; or if your reflections do not travel so far, and you are in no danger of continuing your evil course by the subtle desperations of superstition, be content to know, that nobody ill- treats another, who is satisfied with his own conduct. If the case were otherwise, it would be worse ; for you would not have the excuse, even of a necessity for reheving your own sensations. But it never is so, sophisticate about it as you may. The very pains you take to reconcile yourself to yourself, may show you how much need you have of doing so. It is nothing else which makes the silliest little child sulky ; and the same folly makes the grown man a tyrant. When you begin to ill-treat your child > you begin to punish in him your own faults ; and you most hkely do nothing but beat them in upon him with every stroke of the scourge : for why should he be wiser than you ? Why should he be able to throw off the ill-humours, of which your greater energies cannot get rid ? These thoughts we address to those who are worthy of them ; and who, not being tyrants, may yet become such, for want of reflec- tion. Vulgar offenders can be mended only with the whole pro- gress of society, and the advancement of education. There is one thing we must not omit to say ; which is, that the best parents are apt to expect too much of their children, and to forget how much error they may have committed in the course of bringing them up. Nobody is in fault, in a criminal sense. Children have their ex- cuses ; and parents have their excuses ; but the wiser any of us become, the less we exact from others, and the more we do to deserve their regard. The great art of being a good parent con- sists in setting a good example, and in maintaining that union of dispassionate firmness with habitual good-humour, which a child never thinks of treating with disrespect. We have here been speaking principally of the behaviour of parents to little children. When violent disputes take place be- tween parents and children grown up, — young men and women, — there are generally great faults op both sides ; though, for an THE COMPANION. 247 obvious reason, the parent, who has had tlie training and formation of the other, is Hkely to be most in the wrong. But unhappily, very excellent people may sometimes find themselves hampered in a calamity of this nature ; and out of that sort of weakness, which is so confounded with strength, turn their very sense of being in the right to the same hostile and implacable purpose, as if it were the reverse. We can only say, that from all we have seen in the world, and indeed from the whole ex^Terience of mankind, they who are conscious of being right, are the first to make a movement towards reconciliation, let the cause of quarrel be what it may; and that there is no surer method, in the eyes of any who know what human nature is, both to sustain the real dignity of the right side, and to amend the wrong one. To kind-hearted fathers in general, who have the misfortune to get into a dilemma of this sort, we would recommend the pathetic story of a French general, who was observed after the death of his son in battle, never to hold up his head. He said to a friend, " My boy was used to think me severe ; and he had too much reason to do so. He did not know how I loved him at the bottom of my heart ; and it is now too late." MARRIAGES ROYAL, AND OF DOUBTFUL PROPRIETY. The following remarks on the little prince George, with a memo- randum respecting his father, are from the Times. — A Sunday paper has headed it — A Tale of Mystery. — " Tlie arrival of a certain person in England created pain when it first took place : it was anxiety for his health, no doubt, that excited the feeling — the season was wet, and he was exposed to raw cold. His mother had other reasons for wishing him to stay abroad : in those, perhaps, the peojjle of England do not partake ; but the supposed cause of his visit woiild, if it were more than a mere supposi- tion, create real pain and disgust. It is said, among other tilings, to be the negotiation of a marriage between two children. Nature revolts at the proposition ; and let us — let the people of lilngland — still adhere to nature. In barbarous and brutal times it was not uncommon to unite infants of high birth (if any birth be high, all bcinjr born alike) by what may be called pre-natural, if not preternatural, marriaije ; but the age of barbarism, we should suppose, is extinct, and the sacred ritual of our church is totally incompatible with any ap})lication to an union such as that which is rumoured or insinuated. Our last Princess chose 248 THE COMPANION. for herself. The union was not long, and it led to no results ; but it was not unhappy to the parties, we believe, whilst it lasted, and to the people it imparted unmingled satisfaction. In proportion to that satisfaction would now be the public loathing, if any expedient of an infantine union or betrothment were avowed. We trust, therefore, this matter will sink into oblivion for some eight or ten good years to come ; and then — ay, but who knows what may happen then ? We may here mention another cir- cumstance of minor importance, but yet curious. A certain venerable and learned peer — whose prolonged, and we sincerely hope happy life, seems to justify the slowness with which he once decided causes — was seen pacing down St James's street on Saturday last j and who should be observed following him step for etep— pari passu, as certain orators say — but Neale, the Neale who was a witness in the affair of Sellis, when the Duke of Cumberland was all but hewn in pieces : together they entered the palace where his Royal Highness now resides, and there they con- tinued for some time. We only mention the facts : they are curious. We have not been able to learn what was the subject of the confabu- lation." The consideration of the importance of a little child to a great people has always in it sometliing humiliating ; and on no occa- sion perhaps have the subjects of a monarchy greater reason to cast a glance of doubt and shame at the people of a republic. One cannot help fancying the legislators of the United States turning to look at one another, and joining in a smile of dignified scorn, at the necessity we are under of regarding these matters. We feel as if they must look upon us as so many little boys. Nature does indeed, as the Tiines says, revolt at the proposition of these infantine unions or betrothments. It may have turned out well enough occasionally to bring two children together, and let an affection grow up between them, uninfluenced or uninterested ; but these things are best done in the Arcadian vallies of St Pierre. The recklessness of will royal can never manage them properly : and if it could, in an instance like the present, other and very serious objections remain. The little parties alluded to are cousins. Now it is a fact well ascertained in these latter days, and notorious to everybody at all conversant with nature, that " breeding in and in," as we believe they term it, inevitably spoils any race of animals ; and unfortunately human beings cannot escape this de- signation, nor princes among them. The latter indeed, by the unlucky chances of their station, are too often rendered especially animal and corporeal ; and in exhibiting little mind, have all the disadvantages of their nature brought forward in pampered promi- THE COMPANION. 249 nence. It was probably from a sense of this law in physics, as well as our experience of the domestic dangers attending it, that incest, or the union of more immediate kindred of the same blood, was looked upon in so evil a light from the earliest periods of history. In countries even, where it was permitted, it seems (curiously enough) to have been only a licence assumed by royalty or the priesthood. It did no good in those cases (we allude particularly to the Magi in Persia, and the family of the Ptolemies in Egypt) ; and it never obtained among the people. If the Gipsies are ac- cused of it, it should be recollected, first, that there is no proof; there is only a surmise ; secondly, that that extraordinary people lead a life, of all others, calculated to keep them in health and vigour, and counteract the chances of deterioration ; and thirdly, that they have considerable intercourse with strangers. The Greeks permitted marriages with half-sisters on one side ; which is remarkable, considering that no people seem to have been more earnest in proclaiming the evils of a mixture of blood. The most terrible part of their drama is occupied in rendering them fright- ful ; though by making the parties unconscious in one instance, and loading the offspring with miseries undeserved, they subjected themselves to the satire of the poet ; who says, that they wrote these tragedies, in order ** That other men might tremble, and take warning. How such a fatal progeny they're born in." With brothers and sisters-in-law, the case is different. It would be ludicrous to talk of incest-in-law. In one respect, supposing the horror of real incest to be kept up, the marriage of persons in that mode of relationship might be considered as tending to dimi- nish the chances of deterioration; because their offspring would be no longer mere cousins (whose marriage in this country is per- mitted) but brothers and sisters also, and thereby hindered from marrying. The connexion however, in the present state of society, is justly discountenanced; because it is likely to give rise to family troubles. Jacob himself could not live well with the two sisters he married. Not that we believe it impossible for two females to live in happy union with the same man. The novelists of China 5250 THE COMPANION. inform us it can be done in that country:* and to say nothing of what is repeated of other countries in the East, there is the story of Count Gleichen and his double marriage, which is said to have been allowed by the Pope : stories, similar in spirit though not in letter, have been told of several princes ; and the celebrated Whig Chan- cellor Cowper, whom Steele panegyrizes as one of the best of men, is said to have lived many years in a like connexion ; for which Swift gave him the nick-name of Will Bigamy. It implies however extreme amiableness in all the parties ; would be very dangerous, on some accounts, even to them, — unless they Avere as wise and temperate, as amiable ; and is upon the whole to be dis- countenanced, like the family marriages before-mentioned. But doubts and hazards of all sorts will be perpetually taking place, if not on this point, yet on others connected with it, till something better is done to render the intercourse of the sexes the blessing it ought to be.f We have little respect for the existing laws on that * See the curious work lately published entitled lu-Kiao-Li, or the Tivo Fair "Cousins; and a tale in another version from the Chinese, whose title we forget. An accommodation of this kind seems to be a favourite winding up of a Chinese story, and is certainly a very useful one to the author. t They say they manage these things better in Germany. We believe (startling as it may sound to the opinion entertained of themselves on that matter by our beloved and somewhat sulky countrymen) that most nations manage them better than England ; or our sulkiness would be diminished. There are great faults in the system of Italy ; and greater, because more deception, in that of Fiance. Altogether, it is a subject of the very deepest importance, and well worth inquiring into, especially now that people seem agreed that the interests of humanity may be discussed on all points, without a despicable ill-construction on any. The following is an extract from an interesting work just published, which may give us an insight into the opinions of our German friends. There seems a " preferment" in them, provided the goodness is what it seems, and no health is injured, bodily or mental. But these things require a volume. — " The Bavarian women are celebrated for their innate kindness and goodness of heart; and there is a saying with respect to them, which has grown in some parts of ihe country almost proverbial — ' Sie werden nichts abschlagen,' — ' they will refuse nothing.' Whether such an obserration may be borne out in fact in its widest application T presume not to say; but their friendly natures are sufficiently evident. A young opera-singer of Munich, who travelled with me, having worn himself out by excess of joking and laughter during the day, became sleepy in the evening, and, not occupying a corner of the coach, found his head rather incon- venient ; a Bavarian lady, who sat next to him, protesting that she could never sleep in a coach, surrendered her ploce to him, and in a few minutes his head was recumbent on her shoulder, his arm round her waist, and he slept profoundly. When the coach stopped to change horses, 1 walked with my musical friend to view the ruins of a little Gothic churcii in the moonlight; and, on asking him if he was acquainted with the lady on whose shoulder he had slept so well, he replied, ' I have never seen her before — but we do these things for one another in Bavaria.' " — /t iiiaiimer among Music and. jMusical Pitifessors in (Jermuni). THE COMPANION. 251 subject. We think they prohibit a great deal too much, and allow more than they ought; prohibit, where every just and universal feeling says there ought to be no prohibition, as in the case of married parties, wholly unfit for one another, who, though in decency bound to separate, cannot in " reputation" do so, or legally seek for other companions ; and shamefully allow, — as in the instance of old men and women, permitted to marry young ones. There is a grossness in the very restrictions, and an evidence of a mercenary and over-commercial state of society, in the indulgences ordained by English law on this subject, which are productive of daily and notorious miseries to an enormous extent, and call loudly for the interference of the legislative philosopher. But to return to the question before us. The marriage of cou- sins is permitted in England. In the catholic countries it is reckoned a species of incest, and must have a dispensation from the Pope. Voltaire mentions an " advocate Vogler," who is for having cousins burnt, that venture to love one another. We are not for making any new laws on the subject. The fewer prohibitory laws on any subject, the better; provided every one is encouraged to speak openly, and knowledge and moral opinion go together. But we think, knowing what is now known respecting the injurious tendency of these connexions, that marriages between cousins ought to be discouraged rather than otherwise ; and certainly be- tween the children of married cousins. \Ve have heard it said (we know not on what authority) that as breeding in and in, between other animals, infallibly makes the breed degenerate, and ultimately puts an end to it, so at a certain distance of time, and that not very remote, intermarriages between kindred produce insanity. Now it is remarkable, not only that the royal houses of Europe are full of weak intellects, especially those that entertain the most imperial notions in this matter, but that the dynasty which has bred the most " in and in," and made a practice of obtaining licences from the Pope, has exhibited the most awful examples of perverse- ness and madness. We mean that of Braganza, the worthy kin- dred of Don Miguel. They are always marrying their uncles and aunts. Cousins are a drug. The practice (for we have not enough books at hand to refer to) seems to have begun with King AI[)hon:5o 252 THE COMPANION. the Fifth, who married his niece. The mother of the late king married her uncle Don Pedro, and died in a state of religious me- lancholy, which afflicted her many years. Her majesty's sister, Mary Frances, married her nephew. Don John, the late king, was, we believe, a melancholy man ; at all events weak, and of a desponding aspect. Maria de Gloria, who ruled the other day in consequence of the abdication of her father Pedro, now Emperor of Brazil, was affianced to her uncle Don Miguel ; and Don Miguel, proposed husband of his niece, grandson of the son of a niece and an uncle, and great grandson of a woman afflicted with melancholy madness, we all know, and here see all his excuses. This is an excessive dynasty. But the other royal houses of Europe (who are almost all cousins and aunts by this time) have had enough of intermarrying; and the more this evil can be hindered from coming closer among us, the better. It is true, if statesmen speculated upon having a series of foolish princes, it might be thought they could not do better than by encouraging the breed after this fashion ; but to say nothing of the extinction of those sort of speculations, or the unsuitableness of them to the age we live in, a foohsh prince has often a trick of being a perverse and stubborn one, and giving more trouble than his betters. A very little knowledge of history will warn us off that ground. There is Don Miguel himself, now this moment, flourishing his sword, and playing all the vagaries of the King in Tom Thumb, to shew us the danger of it. The Duke of Cumberland's wife is a princess of the House of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, — a cousin-house, as it is. The union of the little prince and princess would be another marriage of cousins ; and their children would very likely be no healthier than the late Princess Charlotte, also a daughter of cousins, and a person (as it turned out, and as the importance of the object must excuse us for mentioning) unfit for child-bearing. LETTER OF MADAME PASTA. Madame Pasta has sent the following letter to the newspapers, in which she presents her acknowledgments to Mademoiselle Sontag for consenting to sing on her benefit-night. Our favourite singer THE COMPANION. 253 (no offence to the fair German, whom we have not seen, but whom we now wish to see more than ever) has a Christian or rather Jewish name (Judith), which will be thoup^ht by many highly suitable to the more heroical part of her performances. We think she ought to have given herself one in addition, expressive of the softer and more humane. Catalani had an excellent name for one who ran away witli hearts, and does not seem to have cared for them ; — Angelica. By the way, what a perfection of a name had Corelli, for the player of a celestial bow ; — Arcangelo Corelli I It makes him look like a seraph in a picture, *' Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim.'* But to the letter. The Italics in it are not marked by ourselves; but we leave them, for a reason which will appear presently. **SiR — It was originally my intention to give, on the evening of my benefit, a new Opera of Caraffa, entitled La Gahrklla di Vergij ; but having encountered dilliculties which occasioned delay, want of time ren- ders the representation of that Opera impossible for the present. I found I should have had obstacles equally insurmountable to contend against in attempting to get up any other new Opera ; and I felt besides umcilUng' that the public should be deprived of the benefit of iMademoiselle Sontag's talents, by any new production, brought out on my account alone. Hav- ing then to choose in the actual repertoire of the King's Theatre, it appeared to me possible to prepare a representation which might not be unworthy of public approbation. To eflfect this, howe^'er, it was neces- sary to have recourse to Mademoiselle Sontag, in whom I have met the most complaisant readiness to accede to my wishes. That lady has been induced to overcome scruples which her e.vtreme modesty alone could have suggested, and has kindly consented to undertake, on the occasion of my benefit only, the part of Desdemona, a character in which she is not, by the terms of her engagement, bound to appear at this theatre. The oblig" i)iir acquiescence of iMademoiselle Sontag has enabled me to fix on Otello for the night of my benefit (which will take place on the 1.5th of May), and has also determined me to personate the Moor. Tiie proceeding of IMademoiselle Sontag in my behalf, has been of so accommodatin Do but the Spleen obey, and worship at thy shrine." ) Lady Winchelsea is mentioned by Gay as one of the congratulators of Pope, when his Homer was finished : "And Winchelsea, still meditating song." [to be concluded.] :\- LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clahke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4d. rUINTED BY C. H. ni.YNKLI,, BROAD STUEET, f.OLUEN SyUAUE. THE COMPANION. No. XXI. WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1828. *' Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. A FATHER AVENGED. [Diego Lainez, a noble old Spaniard, has received a blow from Lozano, another noble, which is avenged by Diego's son, Rodrigo de Bivar, afterwards called the Cid.] Scene. — A Room m Diego's House. Enter Diego and Arias. Diego. I tell you, Sir, it is impossible. Conceal it? What ! Conceal ? What with a face That never yet could look the easiest lie, Nor play the wax-lipped servant at the door. Denying who's within! Conceal it? So! And smite ray conscience, as the dog smote me ! Arias» But, Sir, you live, upon the whole, retired : Why not live quite so for a time ; and so Let the thing die away, even in your looks. The Count is sad, believe me ; and the King Is most desirous of it. Dieg. Sir, I'll tell you. There is one person living in this city, Who holds me busily in his respect. And loves to hold; and were I, as I shall, To sit alone all day, and wake alone VOL. I. 21 290 THE COMPANION. All night, and almost hold ray very breath As tainted with dishonour, till redress Free my old halting blood from this new clog, It could not be concealed from him : and that Would pull the blood up in my cheeks as much As if the whole world knew it. Arias. Who is he? Dieg. Diego. Who'll conceal it from Diego? Who from that self-respecting (once) old man, And from his haunted head ? I cannot stir, I cannot turn me, but each thing I see, Even inanimate, a chair, or wall. Changing its old indifferent or glad aspect To something dreary, looks of what has been. The saintly images, as I go past, Appear to follow me with sliding eyes. Contempt, with a fierce hand, has scored a line 'Twixt me and joy, and dares my weak old age To pass; and so I stand, inwardly shrunk. Doubting, confused, with shades that seem to press Upon my dull-eyed brain, as if in me The old house of Lain had fallen in At top, and presently with a mad break up Would dash its ribs together to the earth. Arias. Believe me, reverend Sir, you think of this Too much, although a Spaniard, since the king Speaks as he does ; and you remember how The count himself asked pardon of the king, Dieg. He should have asked it. Sir, of me ; and shall. Yes; there's new life sometimes, although a short, In this despair ; I feel it ; my dim eyes Can flash yet ere they close; this reckless hand Perhaps may turn its small remaining strength To one good sum, and spend it like a man. Sir, to say nothing of myself, I beg For your own sake you'll leave me : I do indeed : I shall perhaps say something which I would not. THE COMPANION. , '291 You are a distant kinsman of the house Of which I once was head. Did I not feel The opposite of what you seem to think, And know that vengeance is the only thing Can make me what I was, I should rebuke You for not rousing up your distant blood To sweep away the blot : but yes — I know You feel that I am right, and justly leave me To vindicate myself. Do leave me so. Arias. I'll hurt you. Sir, no longer. I obeyed The king, I now obey a kinglier spirit. [^EaHt Arias. Dieg. There was a bastard of Lain Calvo's house, Mudarra, a half Moor, who when he heard His father was ill-used among the Spaniards, Left his own country, mother, friends and all, To come and fight for him; and turning Christian, He did such work, and dealt such gashy deaths Upon the heads of his blest father's enemies. That ever since his great old sword has been Among us like a relic ; and no eye Turns to that closet where it lies alone, Stretched in its giant sheath, but thinks it sees Almost the sepulchre of a living thing. It shall come forth. [//i? goes to the Closet, and takes out a gigantic Sword. Alas ! alas ! I try In vain to wield it ; even despair will tighten not This wrist hinge-broken, and this hand, which shakes Like to a guilty one that is enforced To hold some awful image. O age, age. Remembering all good things, yet having none. Fondest of lasting things when at thy last, With not even strength enough to dig the grave Where thou art forced to hide thee ; thy poor eyes Forsaken even of tears ; thy wandering hands Turned to habitual tremblers ; thy grey locks Tost in thy teeth with;jcontumelious winds ; 292 THE COMPANION. And all thy crazy being ready to fall To shatters with a blow — O too, too well ' Is the imaginary charm of reverence Hung round about thee, since the first vile hand That dares to break it, does ; and there thou art, The ruin of a man, with piping scorn Through both thine echoing ears aching the brain. I do forget — no, not myself — but those Who may demand a better right to draw Upon their future strength. Rodrigo, — not first — And yet — but stay, old man. (He calls out.) Bermudo Lain ! [//(? sits down. Enter Bermudo. Come here, Bermudo. Are your brothers waiting, As I desired them ? Ber. Yes, Sir, and most anxious To know — Dieg. Attend to me. What should be done, Think you, were any one to insult your father? Ber. You, Sir? Dieg. Ay, me, Sir ; I am but a man, And an old man ; or do you fancy, that Your father cannot be so treated, boy ? Ber. I should think any man so old and reverend Would be held sacred : but were he to be Really insulted, being unable too To reckon with the coward, he should ask Right of the king. Dieg. What ! And be coward too ? Avoid me : — not a word : I shall not strike thee. Thou strik'st thyself, and dost not feel the blow. Every way are we struck. Avoid me, boy ; Hunt butterflies again : go, strike a top. That sleeps on a sound beating. Begone, Sir. [Ea'it Bermudo. I must not sit and think. Now {He calls again), Hernan Diaz ! This is my youngest. He is like his mother, More than even Rodrigo ; and she,bl est saint, THE COMPANION. 293 Would have blushed through and through her gentleness To see me make this doubting muster. Hernan ! Enter Hkrnan. Hernan, no words. I am not sick, nor dying, Nor even in gentle mood. Yet hither : let me Look in thy face. Thou art thy mother, Hernan, Turned into man, — I hope. What should st thou do, Thy father having been insulted, man ? Her. Insulted, dearest father? Dieg. Ay, insulted. What ! are my children turned to hollow things That thus they echo my mere words ? Her. Dear father, I would have flown to comfort you at first Had you but let me, and I'll stay with you Now, if you please, and ever. Dieg. Like a shadow. Her. Ay, but not coloured so. Not even my mother — Dieg. Name you not her. This day, for the first time, I wished her spirit might not be looking at me ; Now I must wish she cannot see her children. Her. 0,Sir! What words are these ? Dieg. Words! All are words ! What is there else in old Diego's house ? Go, get thee gone, child ; for thou art a child. The mention of thy mother lets me call thee That, and no more. Send Rodrigo in, — I say. Send Rodrigo. He at least can play the man. Rod, (Entering). Pardon this haste, Sir, but I thought you called. Dieg. I like the haste, Sir, and the voice. How now ? What is this girlish loitering ? (Exit Hernan.) Now the last. Most hoped, and yet most feared, yet still most hoped. [Aside. Rod. O my dear father, what's this mystery, That must be shewn thus nicely to your sons, And you the sufferer ? Dieg. No embrace, boy. No: 'Tis a familiarity, of which Both parties should be sure that each is worthy. 294 THE COMPANION. Rod. Father ! Good God ! And how am I unworthy ? How long — nay^ tell me, Sir, and I will end This hideous dream at once. Dieg. That would not end it. Rod. What, Sir? I never spoke you false, and would you Be wilfully unjust? You cannot. Sir. Nor ought not; — no — even a father ought not; And most a father ought not. Dieg. (Aside) Oh that this Yet, boy, see, see the while ; you dare to rail Against your father by anticipation. Rod. No, Sir, I dare do nothing that's unjust : Nor dare to think you could. Dieg. Dare not even think? Rod. "No, Sir. How dare I think of anything, That would, one instant, make me hesitate To vindicate your name ? Dieg. To vindicate ? Rodrigo, I have heard you dare to speak Against a noble vengeance. Rod. Against vengeance. Against the common fury, which starts up From weak impatience and self-love, to shew How great a thing has fretted it, and scourge Into bad blood those who most likely want Mere teaching, like itself. Dieg. Have done — have done. Over-proud boy ; for now I see 'tis so. Is there no difference of injuries? None punishable for good ? No noble vengeance ? Rod. What could make vengeance noble, would convert it ||t To something not itself, — there is Dieg. {hastily interrupting him.) Suppose me, Here as I stand, an insolent traducer, ll Worldly and envious, wreaking the uneasiness (If you will have it so) of my own vile THE COMPANION. 295 Inferior nature on each thing about me. Short of such worklly power as I could love ; Love ! no not love, but worship as myself, Because it raised me, met my understanding', And did not of itself imply desert. Rod. I should despise, and pity you. Dieg. But suppose, A woman or a boy came in my way, Or, say, a man that had survived his strength, An aged man, and that I raised my arm .... Hod. {Hastily) You'd be struck first. Dieg. {With the same quickness.) 'Twould not be the first time. Hod. What? Dieg. Eldest born, I tell thee, this old body, Whose armour used to laugh in rattling peals Against a hundred scymitars, has been Bowed with a blow ! Ay, blow ! Rod. O ancient honour ! O father ! O most reverend old man, Whose vigour passed thee into these young bones. Who was the monster ? Dieg. Will it be revenge To punish him ? Rod. Oh no ; most glorious justice, Most right, most noble, he shall bow his head To thee or to this arm. Dieg. My son ! my son ! O let me have thee. [They warmly embrace. 'Twas a thirsty grasp, And quenched my heart. O, my dear glorious boy, Eldest and best, true fire of my fresh love, Triumphant promiser, in whom the spirit Of our great house goes forth with young magnificence, Clear as he came to me, and as he went ; Thy brothers, boy, reflect thy gentler beams, But not thy grand ones, that shall smite the wicked Like the noon-arrow. Yet — thou art but young. 296 THE COMPANION Rod. Who was it, father, That shewed such loathsome ignorance? Dieg. ^»e I hate to name, but strong in every strength, Limbs, manhood, skill, and courage. Rod, No, not courage ; There he's as weak as punish'd infancy, Dieg. His courage equals not his rage ; but still 'Tis great and counted so. He's no light champion, Like that Arabian youth ; but thou shalt fight him Nevertheless, Rodrigo, my own boy. Thou shalt; for first it must be so ; and next There seems a greatness in thee, even beyond What my old customary eyes can see. I called thee last, partly because I hoped Most of thee, partly too because thou art Mine heir, my eldest born, when thy young mother Looked in my face and thought no envious eye Could reach it. Rod. Bless her memory ; and may it Bless me ; for I am going to strike a blow. Angels may look at. Wlio, my father, who ? Tell me where this strange beast, coward yet lion-like. May be fetched forth. Dieg. I will go say a prayer, And send to him. Look upon that sword. Rod. Mudarra's ! It is for me? Dieg. It is, if thy young strength Can wield it. Rod. Come into my hand, thou sword Of right and might, and up with my glad heart Into the air I IHe wields it easily aloft. Dieg. More than Mudarra's there ; A Michael! Glare, thou high, prophetic sword. In my young angel's hand, and fall (oh name, That shakes me still!) upon Lozano's head. [Edit D1T.G0. THE COMPANION. 297 Rod. Lozano! My Ximena's! Oh, there's more Sorrow to come in this. And she to bear The shame of a bad father ! This indeed Is work for thee, Rodrigo, and probes deep Thy courage to the heart. But I am right ; I must reman so, even to deserve her: Some of us must be sufferers : it is fit I, wlio am young and^tout, should bear the burden For my wronged father ; she who is so virtuous Can bear to suffer hers : and he, alas ! Who was compelled to lift it on her shoulders. Shall win it off by inches to its own, And worship her sweet pain, until it look Forgiveness in his face. Away, away, Fair image ; and come thou, thought of my mother ! Leaning and whispering from the sky, to keep My father in my mind. — [He addresses his sword.] Tliou noble sword, Grander to me than any famous one Baptized in chivalrous blood, than Durlindana, Orlando's sword, or old Excalibar, That gave a light like twenty torches o'er The battle, or Joyeuse of Charlemagne, 'Twas kindness made thee terrible ; the arm Of strong indignant love swung thee around To winnow villanous chaff, and dash the teeth Of envy and oppression. Fling thou not From my young wrist ; but let thy spirit rather Supply the strength, that, still, fights for a father. lEa-it. Various scenes take place in this inteiral between Lozano and his friends , XiMENA and hers, ^r. Then follows a scene, with a road over a hill, to which enter Dieoo and his Son. Dieg. That hill, with its long task, reminded me Of my small sum of breath ; — but thou ? Rod. Could shout, father, Orders to a whole array at its foot. 298 THE COMPANION. Dieg, Bless thee. I thought I saw, a little on, Lozano. Was it so ? Rod. It was. I saw him. Dieg. He will be there before us ; and thy spirit Must fret at these old clogs. Rod. Oh no ; 'tis calm, Seeing you so. There, father, breathe a while ; The Count shall be well-bred for once, and wait Our leisure. Dieg. My great boy! I shall quite know you, I think, when I'm in heaven, and see how angels Go down to battle. I am calm, because I must be. Put your hand forth : so ; now look At that. [He compares his own with it. There's trembling, boy, and age, and anger. And there — Rod. [Kneeling down and kissing it.] The hand that shall allay them all. Dieg. Come then. Ente)' an Officer and Guards. Officer. Castile! Rod, Castile and right ! Your errand. Sir. Off. Tis only with the noble Count, your father, "Whom the king wills, on pain of his displeasure, To keep at home till he hear further. There I the ?ght to have found him ; and am sorry. Sirs, To stop ye in your walk. Rod. We thank you. Sir. Dieg. (Angrily). Sir, I Rod. {Aside). Dear father ! recollect you have left All settlement to me. — I can go on. Dieg. That's true. Come to me. Rod. No ; we are observed. I'm in your heart, go where I will. Dieg. 'Tis true. Again most true. I am a child again. And learn of thee. THE COMPANION. 299 Rod. Ay, ay. Besides, dear lather, (significantly) This gentleman will let you go with him A little further to the palace gate ; And there, if you sit down on the old Stone Of Justice, — why, I can return to you. Dieg. Return ! God grant it. You are strong, you tell me, And confident? Rod. As truth and right. Dieg. And wield The sword with ease ? Rod. It seems to have made itself Lighter to ride my hand. [Turning to the Officer. Be good enough, Sir, To let my father in your company Proceed a little further, and so rest himself Upon the stone of justice. Off. It is pleasant, Sir, To do you service. Rod. {Grasping his father's hand). For a little while. [^Ej;it RoDBiGo, Of. (Offering his arm to Diego). May I supply to reverend Count Lainez Awhile the office of his noble son ? Deig. Nobody can, Sir — Pardon me : have you A father living ? Off. Sir, I have. Dieg. Your arm. [Exeunt. Scene. — 77/6? Square of the old Meorish Palace, the f^esper-bell going: Enter Lozano and Peranzules. Loz. Nobody here — This is a stately place, Fit for some great encounter. Per. It was here Mudarra fought with all that crowd at once. Loz. Mudarra ! So it was. We paint our ancestors 300 THE COMPANION. Too stout, I fear, if he escaped so well. He was gigantic. Per. Yes. Loz. I wonder that The king exchanges not his present house For this, as he intended. Per. There was something Said of his coming here to-day to see it ; But it grows late. Loz. Those Moors were singular architects, Flowery and grand at once ; arch, pile, and ornament. Like mountain-building Nature. Is it not so ? Per. 'Tis true. — Will you then fight. Count, if the son Or father dare it ? Loz. Fight ! ^Tis not called fighting, When you put back a bough that scratches you, Or ruffles in your face. 'Tis idle. Enter Rodrigo. Loz. Well, Sir, You are alone ? What message from your father, The reverend old Count? Per. Reverend! Old! You have bethought yourself, it seems (aside.) I saw her; Great God ! I saw her, as I came along ; And yet his presence makes me long to cut him Down like a monster. Loz. Youth, bethink yourself. And state your errand briefly. Rod. Count Lozano — You have insulted a grey-headed man — A man near eighty years of age, my father. You struck him : yes, you suffered your strong hand To fall on an old warrior, now grown helpless. Loz. Well, young Sir. Rod. Well ! You should forget to use That word in any way. I'll tell ye. Count ; THE COMPANION. 301 My father has been intercepted by A message from the King. I come instead, To offer you the choice between a common And an uncommon thing ; the uncommon one An honour to you, if you understand it ; The common one, a mere necessity. Loz. I wait while you repeat your lesson. Rod. Have you The spirit to undo a thing ill done ? Loz. What, you turn catechist! Your meaning, Sir. Rod. Can you acknowledge to two noblemen Whom you have done a wrong to, and dishonoured, That you have done so ? Loz. Two I What mystery now ? Rod. You ov/n to one : — the other is yourself. Loz. Insolent minion ! Rod. 'Twas impossible, I thought, that you should comprehend me. Well, Sir ; The alternative may still be understood. Loz. Pray let us hear it. Rod. He to whom you gave A blow, is old and helpless; I am his son. Loz. What, would you trick me into another blow! Rod. Trick you ! The thought begins to make me doubt Whether you have any the least sort of courage. Loz. Away, boy : have you not forgotten yet The smell of the red paint upon the handle Of your toy sword ? Per. Let me, brave youth, advise you. Rod. Advise your friend, Sir, if you think him one ; I say his valour's equal to his knowledge. [Pebanzules advances to calm Lozano. Loz. Well, well ; I should but turn the flat of my sword Into a ferula, and teach the boy. Rod. You teach me ! 'Tis you that are the boy ; you know not yet -302 THE COMPANION. Man's alphabet, one single jot of sentiment, Nor how much magic strength it can put into The weakest learner. Boy ! By heaven, I tell you, Your spirit is a child ; and, were your body As small, I'd take you here upon my knee. And dandle you in pity. Loz. Idle boy ! I've spoilt your house enough. Rod, Then, since you're teachable Neither by calmness, nor most just rebuke. Nor seem to think there's any way of teaching But one, I'll meet your understanding. Now ; — My father sends you this. \^He runs at hifn, and gives him a blow. Loz. Back, Peranzules. This must be chastised. Rod, Ay ; and for your own sake, let me advise you. Spare not the edge. (Aside.) O that I yet could wound him All but to death ; — or else that I myself Might — and yet then — Ximena ! Father ! Aye, Mudarra and my father! [They fight with great fierceness and skill. Loz. 'Tis better play than I expected. Rod. Aye, It makes you breathe a little, and look grave. Enter Ximena tvith Fatima hastily. Xim. Rodrigo Diaz ! Father ! For God's sake ! Loz. Cousin, convey away that foolish girl. [PERANzuLEs/orc^^ them out. Rod. That terrible sweet sight again ! Loz. You're pale. Sir. Rod. Sir, for the sake of your own child, be noble. Loz. You seek a proper second in a girl. Entreat your life. Enter Diego with Officers and Guards. Dieg. (Crying aloud. J Me! me! I'll die instead. Rod. Who talks of dying, father ? Sit you down Upon the stone of justice ! Sit you down : THE COMPANION. 303 I am not breathed yet. [They continue to fight Jiercehj. So you seek my life At last, now stoop to that old reverend man, Or I shall make you. Loz. Scorn upon you both ! — Have I not bowed him down too low for any But his own child to stoop to ? Fall, and see. — By heavens, I'm fiercely wounded. Rod. To the heart ! [He thrusts him jcith a death-blow to his father'' s feet. Pardon him. Sir, for he's a dying man. Dieg. He asks it not. Rod. Then pity him the more. For more his folly wants it. Dieg. Fly, my son ; Fly, and I will. [Ro\)-R\G fiies amidst a sound of clashing stcords. Dieg. (Holding his hands over Loz a no.) I do pardon thee, Thou low-laid man, at my great son's request. Loz. Heap of dishonour! Hide — I die in the faith. [He turns round, dashing his fist against the earth, and dies. Enter XiMEiJ A tcildly. Xim. ril die I There's some one dead ! — I should have told it — And now I'll tell it all — my heart — I — Father ! [She unexpectedly sees her father's body, and sinks bach in their arms : — the curtain falls rapidly. JOHNSON AND DRYDEN. We quoted a couplet, the other day, from Dr Johnson, with a remark that may have been thought irreverent. We have great reverence for some things in Johnson, but his verses are not among them ; and we have the less scruple in expressing our opinion on that point, because he had no hesitation in treating .304 THE COMPANION. better verses than his own with contempt. The passage in the preceding article is at the commencement of one of his imitations of Juvenal, and is remarkable for its tautology. Let observation, with eMemive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru, Remark each anwious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life ; Then say how hope and fear, &c. Hear how Dryden dashes into this at once : — Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue. He beats even the closeness of the Latin ; and never dreams of such a useless first line as that in Johnson. TO CORRESPONDENTS. Our middle-aged young friend Zachary Tickleton has a turn for humour, though his verses are inadmissible in our publication. We received a letter some weeks ago from C. W. E., which alluded to a mistake in a daily paper respecting Madame Pasta. The letter was unfortunately mislaid, and the time is gone by for noticing the mistake : but we mention the circumstance, lest our correspondent should think we had overlooked him. Some correspondents enquire for certain works of Mr Shelley, and ask how they are to be procured. We are not aware of any mode, except that of giving special orders for the purpose to a bookseller. Lionel was very welcome ; and we should find room with pleasure for the last of his sonnets on Mr Keats, did we not think ourselves bound to be very fastidious with verses, — our own perhaps excepted. Our companion S. G. will forgive us on the same account. The subject of Gilbertus would not be interesting to our readers. In drawing upon a manuscript this week to supply a portion of our Companion, we have been perplexed by the nature of it to know where to begin with the extract and how much of it to give. The consequence has been, that it has run to much greater length than we looked for, and thrust out one or two other articles. Among them is an answer to a criticism in a Sunday paper, which will appear next week. LONDON Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4d. VRINTILD BY C. II. KLYiNFLL, BKOAD STIlEIiT, GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. XXII. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1828. ** Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William TiiMPLE. SEQUEL OF ** A FATHER AVENGED." [The reader must indulge us with permission to make another long ex- tract from oiu" port-folio. We have been ill, and occupied with other matters. Next week we hope to behave hke proper Companions, and not inflict so many verses on his patience ; such too, as are a great deal more worthy of his patience than his regard. The passage, by the way, quoted from Johnson last week, and contrasted with one from Dryden, was not intended for that particular number of our work. It was waiting, ready composed, for any space that wanted it ; and the printer naturally inserted it where he did ; othenvise we should not let it stand after so many verses of our ovm.'\ Scene — ^ Room i?i the late Count's Palace. Enter Fatim.\ from a door opposite the stage, listening-, and looking- cautiottslp about her. Fat. She comes. Enter Ximexa. Xim. You missed me, I fear, Fatima. Fat. Dearest and best, I did. How pale you look, And how you speak ! Xim. I'll tell you bye and bye ; Not now, — not now. [Fatima helps her to sit down. Fat. Well, I have seen a man. Was present at — [She kisses her cousiti's hand. Xim. Rodrigo's taken ? VOL. I. 22 306 THE COMPANION. Fat. No; Escaped. Xim. Escaped ! Thank God ! and yet I should not Thank God. Fat* Oh yes, you should : you should do everything Your nature prompts you to. Xim. My father — my father ! You make me recollect, cousin, that he Was now and then a little ungentle with you. Fat. I never felt it half so much^ as those Ungentle words. But I'll forget them. J Xim. Do, I Pray do. I think, grief made Rodrigo cruel ; And then it bows me so, it makes me mean ; You know I utter desperate words at times, And they revenge themselves. — I will have justice ; Ay, you may look as wild as I do, cousin; But I have asked it of the King already. My father's — he, I mean, who said he loved me, — Would have reproached me, and called me a bad child. Had I not done it. — Fatima, — last night, I dreamt My father slowly passed by my bedside ; An angel led him, one with silvery wings And a grave happy face. I thought they trod On clouds, though close to me ; and as they went. The angel said, " *Tis painful to leave children :" At which, methought, my father looked at me — Oh, with so dreadful an indifferent face ! Not meant for such, — but just as if he passed A stranger at a door, and answered, " Yes, But I had none ! " — And it is true ; No child ; no, no ; Rodrigo cut off father And child at once, or she would not stay thus ; The slaughterer did not stay. I will have justice. Justice, most proper justice. Fat. O take patience. You took it but just now. THE COMPANION. 307 Xim. I was too wretched, Even to be impatient. But to hear He has escaped, and I have scarcely stirred In my great task meantime ! Fat. He has not quite Escaped; not quite ; he has escaped awhile ; But they may reach him yet. Xim. Who may ? Fat. The officers Of justice. Xim. God forbid ! I shall denounce him Again, but not when present : no, not face To face ; nor even in my neighbourhood. They will not find him : no, no ; he is wise As the serpent : — I thought him harmless as the dove. l_S/ie weeps gently. Fat. But those who harbour him may give him up : They may be told to do it : — a price may be Set on his head. Xim. A price upon his head ! Oh, I have gazed at it, until I thought It made the air about it still and sacred. Oh, blessed heaven ! had but my father known How I did love him ! — Yes, yes, I alone, I must denounce him ; aye, and find him too, I think I must do that. How can I do it ? Were he but here— Fat. (Hastily). What would you do ? Xim. I'd take him And throw this heap of tears and wretchedness At the king's feet, and say, this is the man ; And I am sure I should have done all then, For then my heart would break. [RoDRiGo bursts from the room door, and prostrates himself at her feet. ^od. Behold him taken. O that I could have flung down at your feet My heart like shattered glass. And yet not so. ii 3Q8 THE COMPANION. Ximena ; for 'twould pain your eyes to see || Even me punished. Xim. O that voice ! that face ! What a most dreadful thing has happened, since I saw it last ; and not to be recalled, — No more than infancy. How couldst thou come, Killer ! within these walls, and yet not fear That they would crush thee ? Dost thou know who lies r the room above us ? jloa. One in blest forgetfulness. Xim. How couldst thou think of him, and come? Rod, ^ ^^^°"S^^ Scarcely of anything but thee ; and came For nothing but to do as I do now, [ And so begone again, as I will straightly, Unless you bid me die. Xim. You thought not of me Before, before. Rod. I did, Heaven is my witness ! How could I not? And when my father, after I had engaged to be his champion, spoke The name of him to whose renowned sword I was to oppose myself, the fear of thee Alone smote on me. Ere I went, I prayed For thee, and called on thee through blinding tears : And when I saw thee in that dismal place, I could have wept blood at thy father's feet To turn his heart, but he — Xim. Ay, boast of that ; Boast that you begged him, as they say you did. In my behalf, and that he cared not for me. Rod. I said not so. He was too proud to think His life in any danger from my hand. rU fly yet, if I can, and live :— and let me Say, while those tears loosen thy gentle heart. That if Lozano's daughter, as she will, Plead to the king against me, 1 do not think THE COMPANION. 309 In any case, that he would take my life. Banished I may be, ever ; and with those Who knew some happy hopes which I was building Here in Castile, and do not hate me as A human being, 'twill be held enough. Xim. Surely. — I'll leave thee now. — Thou hast a wound. Rod. I have, but 'tis not dangerous. Xim. If it pain thee. My cousin here — Rod. I would it pained me more. Tis very bearable. Xim. 'Twill be night-fall soon, When thou canst go without the hazard of Making me risk the safety of a guest. Rod. 'Twill be a dark thick night ; and, as I hoped, Rainy and stormy. I shall thus go shrouded. Xim. Cousin, I'd say one word with you, before You take your leave. Fat. Now? Xim. When you please. Fat. Well, now; I have no speech. [Ximena prepares to take her leave silently. Rod. {to Fatima) I'll wait till you're at leisure.—^ Ximena '. Xim. Yes, I own here in the sight Of Heaven, which pardons us our weaknesses. That I must wish the task I have successless. And I could wish more, but I must not — no — 'Tis past. And if Rodrigo recollects, He has been known to say, that in hard trials Such as these are, they show the kindest hearts Who keep abstaining looks, — who do not fret The ear of sad necessity, nor show They love their grief before another's quiet. Rod, 'Tis well reminded. I'll not even thank you For those kind words. If ever you should have Your peace again, as I believe you will. 310 THE COMPANION. Being good and wise, I shall be told of it, And pass the day-time lightly.— I believe 'Twere right I should go first. Xim. It must be spoken ; It must ; but wake not, thou dead angry one, To hear it; nor do thou, Rodrigo, utter One word in answer, but be dumb to the last, And help me against thyself, when I declare I love thee to the last ; I do, as full And quick as my tears run— Oh Lord, how much ! From this day forth, my life is as a life Borne in a world from which the sun has gone, A desolate and ever-raining twilight. Drenching the downard heads of dreary hours, That creep to their own funeral, — Away, For I shall pain him ; and I do,— being always Of an inferior nature. Pardon me, I cannot bear that smile ; only not that ; There's hope in it :— nay, pardon me again : I owe your quietness thanks — now — now — he's gone. [Exeunt. Scene— J Room in Diego's Hoicse. Enter Diego. Dieg. It is the time he mentioned in his letter For snatching this farewell. The night is fierce And dark, as if the spirit of Lozano Were maddening to remain, and still disturb us. But now its worst is best. Oh, my great son, Whose rarity sends thee out of house and home To walk the inclement world, like to the spirit Of Nature whom thou lovest, every sound Of the wide-washing rain and headlong wind Makes me think piteously of thy lorn state And filial martyrdom, till I resent Those weak unhonouring thoughts, and see thee as The blessed and the lofty thing thou art. The crowd o' the elements is a pomp to thee, Honouring at once and hiding, — with the wind THE COMPANION. Ml Thy trumpet, and the balmy rains thy blessing. Shed out of heaven's own cup; and so thou gocst Attended in thy magaanimity By angels, who look at thee and each other. — He comes not. — Stay — a clappinj^ of a door — Twas what I heard before. Some one has left it To the impatient handling of the wind. A hundred voices are about the air. Which the ear hears but knows not, answering Like ministers to the lordly call o' the blast. They fall. No — I hear nothing — nothing, but The beat of my heart's blood up in my temples Ticking, and hurrying like a crazy clock. — The rain is over ; and the freshened stars. Like glad eyes after tears, look busily And brightly forth. They look as if they saw him. I am so anxious and so tired, I cannot But walk on still out of mere restlessness ; My feet and mind ache when I sit. That cry ! 'Tis my good hound Ardiente. Oh, perhaps He knows that some one comes. Pray God he may ; Or strong desire, hurrying in all my limbs, Will, with the press of sudden impossibility, Snap my old wits. Hark ! hark ! Tis regular counting. And quick — a horse — it clutches the wet earth — Now quicker still — what passing ! No, — a stojD — A fiery stop — Ah ha ! Look there ! My boy ! [RoDiiiGO rushes into his arms^ Safe and alone? Rod. Quite so, dear father. Dieg. Ay, Call me so twenty times, and make me proud. Oh gracious God ! What a great thing it is To be tender and proud together. [He embraces him again. Rod, You will now — Eat, father, and be merry, and sleep, and live An apfc out ? 312 THE COMPANION. Dieg. Ay, so that thou flourishest too. — His head was at my feet. — Oh my blest son, l|l What greater name, as fond, and yet more worthy. As young and yet more reverend, can I find To give my large love utterance ? Something must || Be done, for it will not be said : — prevent me not From satisfying my soul ; — I'll kneel. [He offers to kneel down. Rod. No, no, Sir : My dearest father ! Dieg. I will, and kiss That hand, that took these grey hairs from the dust. Rod, You must not — Dieg. And set them in white honour up again. And made my old eyes happy till they wept. I Let me do this. ! Rod. I cannot. Sir : nor if | I have done anything, and may demand j A pleasure in repayment, as I do, | Will you so hurt the unalterable religion j Of nature, and the first time in your life i Make your son blush. ! Dieg. I am bound not to do it. j But yet I will stand from thee for a while, ! To take thy nature's height, and reverence it ; ' And could I have received thee as I ought , In stately wise, with banquet and with song Of victory, and lovely ladies' looks. And all that makes a stately heart like thine Seem what it is, I would have planted thee Where thou shalt sit thee yet, at top o' the board O'er canopied ; for he that bowed the head Which thou didst bow, shall be the head of the house Of old Lain Calvo. Rod. Sir, these stately words Cannot but make my spirit rise within me To look at least as though it had deserved Such glory face to face ; but oh, dear father, THE COMPANION. 313 Let my reward \)c to have kept our house From falhng in thy great respect, and worthy Of thy true chieftainship. Dieg. Be it as thou wilt. But glory, my Rodrigo, still will follow thee, And in a worldly shape ; sure as the ring That waits aloof upon a saintly head. You smile and yet look sad. Bod. I was thinking, father, How I should yearn amidst a heap of glories For one small taste of home. Dieg. *Tis there, my son, Thou'lt have it most. How I indulge myself At thy expense ! Attend. You have heard the news? Rod. No: what? Dieg. The Moors, perhaps emboldened by Rumours of our dissensions here at court, Have again risen. There are five bauds of them ». Each headed by a king ; and 'twas but now Fresh news arrived, that they have passed beyond Burgos itself, and plundered all about. Rod. I see Dieg. Yes — yes, but stay. A special messenger Came to me from your cousin, Alvar Fancz, A noble boy, who knows his kinsman's wishes At all such times, — to tell, me that the enemy. Such is their confidence, and hitherto Too just a one, will take the shortest road To the capital by a dangerous defile ; Patience, dear boy — you shall be with them yet — Trust me : 'tis that I meant to speak of. Now I have ordered, on the instant, all my vassals To get them ready for the king's assistance, — A work that shews with double grace in me Just now. They are assembling in tlie plain Here to the left. Others as they march on Will join them. They expect mc to send out 314 THE COMPANION. A leader to them, when the trumpet's tongue Asks for him twice; and think 'twill be Bermudo ; |{|{ But— Rod, It is I? Dieg. Ay, boy; who else ? Who else ? You'll join them with your vizor down, known only By our white plume ; not because any man of them Would give you up, but that your nobleness Would save them from all question with the king. *" Rod. Oh father, if you talk of paying me, Thus you pay all at once. Dieg. Martin Antolinez Will bear my snowy banner through the darkness ; i And others of your youthful friends await you ; How will you turn upon them ? Salvadores, And Gustios, and Munoz, and Alvarez, And Galin Garcia, — ay, your favourite set, All, all, that murmur now you are away. And meant to grow their plumes with you in war. The rest you know. Rod. I come up with the Moors In the defile, and pierce them in that pound. Dieg. You do ; and at the least prevent their coming Further, till other forces shall arrive. And hark! [-^ trumpet at a distance. Rod. It is the call. Dieg. The first. Your horse Is ready saddled for you in the stable, Your favourite Baya. You will find with him The helmet and the rest, Rod. I have a horse. Dieg. What — not take Baya ? Where did yc get the horse? Rod. A lady gave it me. Dieg. A lady ? Not A favourite too, I hope ? Or what must I Have made you suffer ? Rod. Not a favourite, As you mean; father. THE COMPANION. Si6 Dieg, So ; and yet I wonder That those who take deHght — [Trumpet again. Away, away ; I must not trust myself to hold you fust. Rod, I'll have your blessing round me. fHe takes his father's arms, and brings them round his own body.) There ! My horse Will carry me like lightening, as it brought. Dieg. I shall look out and see your feather go, Like my plum'd angel. I shall hear the shout too, And then I'll sleep like an old soldier. You Fight for a thousand fathers now. Rod. Ay, and husbands, Lovers, and sons, and carry a victory with me From every one. Dieg. Bravo, boy ! And the result Is easily guessed ; you know my meaning, every way. Rod. I hope so, and I think so. There, no more — Look not on this as on a parting, father ; I only turn to speak to you 'twixt whiles I'the battle. There — I shall look round at the window. [Exit. Dieg. Armies of angels wheel about with you, Like shooting walls of fire ! Now — now he's mounted. [He opens and looks out of the icindow : something- darts //y, and a little after a great shout. The curtain falls. [^Several scenes take place in this interval, among others the battle with the Moors. In the following and final scene, the King of Castile is seated on his throne icith Ids N'obles about him, awaiting the issue of a proclamation arid challenge made against Rodrigo, in behalf of Donna Ximena, who is present when an Officer enters hastily. ] Officer. An armed crowd, my liege, are entering The city ; and the people gathering on with them Cry for Rodrigo de Bivar. King. Keep still And in your places. Go you forth, and see. Sir, [Trumpets and other music growing nearer. Enter another Officer. Id Off. My lord, the strangest cavalcade is comiug, — The vassals of the old Count Lainez, headed 316 THE COMPANION. By the five Moorish Kings, — although the latter Are said to be taken prisoners. They say too Rodrigo took them, but he's not in the troop, — And that he has been slain. King. Look to the lady. [Xi M E N A faints. A noise of trumpets growing nearer. Enter Third Officer. 3d Off. My lord, the strangest and the happiest news ! Rodrigo de Bivar, at the head o' the vassals Of the old Count his father, has surprised The Moors in the defile, and sends their kings Prisoners unto your greatness. King. What of the conqueror ? 3d Officer. He, Sir, in his great modesty And deference to your late reproof of him, Has turned out of the path to his father's house, ^ Where he awaits your pleasure. * King. Go to him instantly. And fetch both father and son. This is the noblest Day of my Hfe, though I am conquered too. A March. — Enter Alvar Fanez with the Jive Moorish Kings ; all but the King and a few others uncover. Alv. Fan. (Kneeling and presenting a letter and a standard) — . My cousin, Sir, Rodrigo de Bivar, Having, he says, by fortune and his friends Been blessed with quick prevention of the war, Lays the green standard at your royal feet ; And begs your princely hospitahty In favour of these great and gallant enemies. This letter will speak farther. King. {Uncovering with the rest, and descending from his throne) — ^ His wishes, and their own reverse of fortune, Make it our business to receive them worthily. These letters too enable us to shew Our sense of the young lustre lately obscured By some sad tears here. His own liberty, Although unasked for, is restored to him. And, as 1 think, to the delight of all. THE COMPANION. 317 You, royal Abdouliahman, our great brother, Who shewed that sparing virtue to our fields In middle of all-wilful victory, Be held, together with our other brethren. Visitors at our court, which you will leave At your own pleasure, after staying awhile To heighten ours. Abd. We are thrice conquered, Sir ; By your new general, his great soul, and yours. EfUer a Herald with a trumpet. Her. My liege, the venerable Count Lainez And his victorious son, attend your bidding. King. You and the other heralds usher them ; And let the music bid all hearts rise up With its most numerous and majestic voice. A full and noble March. — Enter eight Heralds u'ith Trumpets, two and tiro, and then Rodrigo supporting his Father. T7tc King introduces Diego fo the Moors, and then seats him in a Chair. King. Rodrigo, you have made us pant for words With this great tide of glory. Let it suffice That all which by a father of his country Ought to be done for you, shall shew my thanks. Rod. Sir, you do all for me in that one word. King. Not so. After we have performed the ceremony So lately and unhappily broken off. Your knighting, there's a crowning conquest still. With which perhaps I may assist to make Your aspect happy as glorious. — You would speak of it Yourself, and win it otherwise ? Rod. I have, Sir, I do confess, two favours still to ask ; - And I should blush to ask them openly, Had not a secret, as I understand. Escaped with sweet sad breath to most here present. King. Ask on : — it has. Rod. Then first. Sir, to explain That secret further. {Turning to Almanzor) — 318 THE COMPANION. My great-hearted friend, Take up that veil from off thy nobleness. Yes, Sir ; it is Almanzor, once my combatant. Who thought himself my rival in the affections Of one whom he mistook for her fair cousin. Your nephew, Sir, {to Abd.) ; and oh, my friend of friends, [Almanzor and Rodrioo rush into each others arms. You did not get my letter? You came here And passed it on the road ? Aim. It must be so. But it has shewn for me that I have gratitude ; Shewn thee ! [Embraces him again. Rod. And shewn another. — Sir, {to the King) they love Each other nobly, as you now have seen ; And my first favour is, that you would make Their union part of your festivity. King. Theirs, and one more, I hope. Rod. Pardon me. Sir, I Dieg. Pardon me, my son. [Goes towards Ximena. Sweetest young lady, Whom, with my son, I have unknowingly, Almost until this hour, tried with such pain, I could, as a fond father, ask you much ; I can, as a fond father, ask you nothing. Yet there's a difference, fair one ; a great difference, Though not for me to tell you. You will think of it. But I may say, that had not this new taste Of sorrow come to me through all these sweets, — Why, I had died for joy ere long ; and then My boy might have been happy. Xim. Not for that, sir : Not with such help. I do not speak in anger. I wish not you nor him otherwise than As you now are, except in one fond habit That mars his well-earned happiness. I can look Even on you, sir, not bitterly ; and am firm, Not out of hate, but duty ; you may see it. [ She weeps. THE COMPANION. 319 King. Not to enlarge on the distinction, lady, Which the Count speaks of, though I might well urge it As witness to this matter, first and last ; Yet as the King, — I mean, as princely father Of all my Spanish family, I may advise you To weigh the involuntary death of one In balance with these thousands of glad lives Saved by our young and conquering cousin, — one Whom you yourself — Rod. May I intreat you, Sir ? I had one other favour. I would ask it. Xim. My lord, to shew you all my heart at once, — Its duties, its necessities, the shadow Which the ever-present pall has cast upon it, — To shew my sense. Sir, of your condescension, Which I am forced thus publicly and painfully To seem to undervalue ; — and I may add To shew how justly (I feel pale to say it, Not blushing, even at all these eyes) I loved, — I will abide, my lord — I will abide By the decision of Rodrigo's self. Rod. O the futility of toils and dangers, Of burning, and of cold, and torn-up wounds, And all the aches that gnaw into all patience. Compared with one such agony o* the heart! Pardon me, Sir. — And do thou pardon me, Ximena, for a thought, which like a whirlwind, Took my right sense away, even of thee. She means not, Sir, — instinctively, she means not To exile me from all hope, and make me mock The last most awful spirit of self-sacritice. The very exacter of these trials, — Justice. She means it not : or if she thinks she does, I tell her, she does not ; — the very favour Which I was going to ask of you she construed With the blest instinct of her heart too well. Sir, 1 do ask tliat favour ; — 'tis to let 320 THE COMPANION. Lady Ximena be secure and quiet From all solicitation ; — she will let Me in return, fancy at least I see A far-set hope, like to a star in heaven, Which I may try to journey to, — not frowned at Even by a single face that looks upon me Out of the placid world of the departed. King. Be it so. Shall I not request her then Even to remain during this honouring ceremony? Rod. I did intend to hope. Sir, that she would, — As my first hope, and for a toilsome while, My last ; — a sign, that at the least she recognizes The spirit in me still, which she held honourable. [Ximena sloivlj/ takes her seat again. Enter the proper Assistants imth a Golden Bason, and Spur, and a Felvet Stool. Abdoulrahman. Oh my most noble Cid, let me now grasp This hand again, which took me indeed a prisoner. Would it were I that had the knighting of thee ! King. What is that title, brother, which you give him? Ahd. I called him Cid ; for my heart could not help Speaking a native word : it signifies Master and Lord. King. It shall henceforward be His most distinguishing title, both in honour Of him who first conferred it, and of qualities That make him understood so and admired By friend and foe. — Plant thy foot here, Rodrigo. \^A Herald throws a Mantle over Ms Shoulders, and the King- puts the Spur on Ms Foot. Tlien rising, the King dips his Finger in the Bason, and crosses Rodrigo's Forehead and his oicn. King, Be thou a faithful and right loyal knight For God and for Saint Jago and for Spain. — Cousins, my noble peers ; you other nobles. Officers, heralds, and all ye that hear, This is Rodrigo de Biv^r, the Cid. [^The Heralds, standing four on each side of the Company, blow their Trumpets loudly toimrds the Audience, and the Curtain falls. I 1 TO CORRESPONDENTS. It is all right between S, G. and his Companion. LONDON : Published by Hunt and' Clarke, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvendersin town and country. — Price Ad. 'HINTED EY C. H. REYNFLL, BROAD STREET, GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. XXIII. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1828. " Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. MR HUSKISSON AND THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. The facts respecting the late piece of dramatic surprise occasioned by Mr Huskisson's letter, are thus excellently stated by the Atlas, and followed by some remarks as excellent on the general spirit of the affair. "After the vote on the East Retford question, IMr Huskisson, before he went to bed, \vrote a " private and confidential " letter to the Premier, containing these words — " I lose no time in aflbrding you an opportunity of placing my office in other hands, as the only means in my power of preventin«T the injury which may ensue from the appearance of disunion in his Majesty's Councils." IMr Huskisson next morning found, to his astonishment, that the letter containing this sentence was considered as a resignation, and had already been laid ])efore the King. In no other light would the Duke of Wellington view it, in spite of JMr Huskisson's repeated explanations, that he only meant to disembarrass his Grace in any steps he might feel himself called upon to take. The Duke persisted : •* It was no mistake — could be no mistake, — and should be no mistake ;" and Mr Huskisson was oblif^ed to go. The master sometimes irill take the servant's muttered warning, whether he will or not ; and as soon as his successor can be found, the unlucky varlet is oljligcd to doff the livery of his office, pack up his budget, and depart. This may take place wlien an excellent servant, esteeming his merits too highly, incautiously gives himself airs. Perhaps it is difficult to find so efficient a butler, or so handy a valet — but insubordination is not to be endured, if the master is of a decisive temperament : if indeed he is tired of his domestic — if the family dislike him, or if " voices in the air " have whispered that William is in the way — he will seize the first fair excuse to get rid of him. Mr Huskisson has undoubtedly made a great blundcn-; he confessedly wished to remain, and took the most obvious means to get turned out. It is remarkable, that in spite of his acknowledged ability, the sense of blunder VOL. I. '23 322 THE COMPANION. \9 SO Strong that little sympathy is felt for him. Had the Duke of Wel- lington heen provided with a successor as eflicient as the late Colonial Secretary, we have no doubt that his harshness would have met with a milder censure, AVhen, after the lapse of some days, he can find no substitute for Mr Huskisson but his Quartermaster-General, people are apt to suspect that he has sacrificed the praise of discretion to that of ** decision," and that the whole has been a matter of hasty pique, un- worthy of a statesman, and dangerous to a great nation. The probability however is, that the Duke expected to get on more smoothly without than with his colleague, whilst Mr Huskisson, anxious to stay, and yet apprehensive that his East Retford vote would operate against him, per- haps imagined he should play a better game if he took the lead into his own hand — a fatal miscalculation." Nothing can be better, we think, than this account of the affair • but we pause a little on two other remarks, with which the writer concludes. " On the whole," (he says) " the affair is a childish one ; and it is unfit that the interests of a nation should thus be exposed to suffer by hasty notes written with a severe headache at two o'clock in the morning, which give offence to an angry and perhaps a bilious gentleman over his breakfast next day. Unless there were secret motives of party ope- rating on either side, it was unbecoming in the Premier to turn out an able Minister, merely because he wrote a blundering letter." Now the head-ache and the biliousness are well put. Montaigne says, he likes to rattle the word Pleasure in the ears of the philoso- phers, who affect not to seek the thing after their various modes, as well as other people. For a still better reason, we like to see the leaders of Government reminded of their common nature, and of the trivial causes to which their quarrels are owing ninety-nine times in a hundred. But we agree with those who think, that Mr Huskisson's letter contained a passage, which left the Duke no alternative but to shew a strong sense of it, glad as he may have been at the opportunity of being angry, and however extreme, beyond official usage, in resolving that there should be no mistake, Mr Huskisson says in that letter, " I owe it to you as the head of the Administration, and to Mr Peel as the leader of the House of Commons, to lose no time in affording you an opportunity of placing my office in other hands, as the only means in my power of preventing the injury to the King's service which may ensue from the appearance of disunion," &c. Now the Premier, by Mr Hus- kisson's own shewing, was either bound to agree with him in thinking this step " the only means" of preventing the injury, or he THE COMPANION. 3^3 was to make a friendly return to a hostile attack, and concede the first place in the matter to the inferior minister. This was clearly what Mr Huskisson desired. It was an attempt on the part of Ulysses to frighten Ajax ; and Ajax not only stood upon his stubbornness, and was not to be frightened, but he turned the trick of Ulysses against himself. The letter, it was urged, was marked " private and confidential." True : this was part of the trick : that is to say, Ajax was to have a knock on the face, and to keep it all to himself, till he had propitiated his enemy. He did not chuse to do this, nor was it to be expected of him; and accordingly he followed up the private and confidential thump with a settler. On the other hand, the mention of Ulysses reminds us of a person more worthy of that name, and of the greater quarrel, in which Ajax, as of old, was for the time defeated. It is all very well for the followers of this and that statesman to attribute to him nothing but generous motives, and to wonder that anybody can be so ungenteel as to think him human. But without denying that statesmen, like other people, are capable of generosity, and infiuenced by as many thousands of little feelings, good as well as bad, it is quite clear to us that the Duke of Wellington has never forgotten or forgiven the intellectual ascendancy of Mr Canning, nor ceased to feel uneasy in the company of his friends. Even in his late speech in his behalf, which is made so much of, and which we venture to say was as poor a thing every way as might have been expected from one who is no speaker nor capable of appre- ciating speakers, we recognized a sneer at Mr Canning for not following the profession for which he was so '* well fitted ;" and which, the Duke might have added, " it would have been so pleasant to me, if he had followed." So much for Mr Canning; and as for Mr Huskisson, he, of all men, was the last to think himself an exception to the dislike of Mr Canning's friends; for besides being a very clever man, and a good speaker, he had set the Duke right on a question, openly disputed between them, and upon which the future Premier had committed a great blunder ; and the Duke has evidently not talents enough, of the intellectual order, to afford to endure this correction, or the company of any one capable of bestowing it. His Grace has a character for sin- 324 THE COMPANION. cerity, which is almost all in all with us, provided there is good intention ; and we were inclined to like him for it, and to hope that the grandeur of his position, as a man who had had the good fortune of settling the late wars^ might supply him with a sort of moral superiority to his deficiencies, and enable him, in con- formance with the spirit of the age, to discover the still higher glory of doing what Bonaparte himself had not done, and had repented for it. But from the way in which he has proceeded to fill up Mr Huskisson's place, joined with other evidences which now take a new and unfavourable aspect, we fear that he is what his enemies have represented him, a mere soldier, fond of mere power, unable to learn better, and thinking to rule us like a barrack-master. If so, we suspect that a greater " moral lesson " is preparing for him than he can imagine, and that he and his " Drawcansirs" will be rendered supremely ridiculous, both in and out of Parliament. Out of Parhament we are sure they will ; and in Parliament we fancy certain civilians mustering up all the spirit of the toga against the sword, speeches and absurdities pulled to bits, and the debates next day powdered with parentheses of " Hear, hear!" and ** A laugh," and " Loud laughter," and " Great indignation on the military benches." If however we are mistaken, and the " great moral lesson" which he talked of in Bonaparte's case was not a mere phrase caught from the Emperor Alexander, or some other person at council, none will be more glad of it than ourselves, or louder in hailing the phe- nomenon. We confess we are great hopers ; and do think, that extraordinary circumstances may bring about others more extraor- dinary. The world are not to suppose that the speck of time, which they call the experience of ages, contains all that ever has been done, or ever will be : and if public opinion was ever a thing powerful (which it has never been denied), we have good reason to know, that never had it so many means of being powerful, and lift- ing up a multitude of voices, as at present. Thousands of presses are at work over the enlightened part of the globe, pouring forth knowledge, as from so many iron fountains ; and whatever attempt may be made to the contrary, we no more believe that Wellington's soldiers, any more than Napoleon's, could be able to keep their feet THE COMPANION. 325 against the stream, than so many little boys against " the school- master." We thought to have made a grander simile ; but this will do for the occasion. A prosing Archbishop, who talks of Moses where Christian charity is concerned, is now laughed at, even in the House of Lords ; and state militant will be treated no better than church militant, if it comes to be absurd.* PASTA IX DESDEMOXA. A CRITIC in a Sunday paper has found fault with our opinion of Pasta's behaviour under the dagger in this character. His argu- ment is as follows. '* Wilkes's admirer protested that he did not squint " more than a gen- tleman ought to squint." The Companion, in the same mood of amiable enthusiasm, writes thus of Pasta. * We have been told, that when Pasta (in Otello) sees the dagger upheld to kill her, site fnirb/ seizes her petticoats, and shrieks, and runs for it. This is one of those great strokes of nature, by which she drives at once into the heart of the multitude ; and nothing, as athingtragic, can surpass it.' We too are vehement admirers of Pasta, but we must honestly confess that this action has not pleased us. Pasta's figure is not exactly the build for running ; and when we have seen her scuttling over the stage, our minds have — we know not from what association — ranged to the bustle between the plioca or seal and Hector in Scott's Anti- quary, and an unlucky sense of the comic has mixed with the horrible. Other people, it is true, may not think of that same phoca or seal who performs in the Anfupinry, but they must surely see a particular awkward- ness in Pasta's quick movements. The Companion tells us however that it is a great stroke of nature thus fairly to seize the petticoats and run for it — " to gird up the loins," as Dominie Sampson expresses it, and " fly incon- tinently." This nature is a word of immense convenience in criticism, because it is of such vague import. But as we are not savages nature varies considerably with persons and circumstances. It is natural to fly from death, but we know that persons who are conscious that death '\)i in- evitable do not attempt to fly from it ; ^\^tness the conduct of individuals on the scaffold, who bend their heads to the block, or offer their necks to * The Arcliblsliop of Tuam brings up *' the law and the prophets" to shew that the Catholics ought not to be emancipated, and says also that he has a few words to add " upon purgatory — (a laugh)" — "I could go on," said his Grace, " for hours, on the doctrine of purgatory (a /awo'/O" The best proof of purgatory is, that the Catholics are in it at present. As to the law and the prophets, does his Grace remember what was said about them by the benevolent autiior of Christi- anity "> " Love thy neighbours as thyself: in this are fuKilled the law and the pro- phets." This is the spirit of Christianity; and we are told in the same book, that " the letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life." But we are loth to (juote texts, con- sidering how many can be quoted on all sides, and all to undo one another. We all feel what true Christianity means, and that its essence consists in the very reverse of intolergince and want of progression. 326 THE COMPANION. the rope. Johnson, who was murdered by Lord Ferrers, did not endea- vour to run away — not because he was unaware of his danger, or indif- ferent to escape, but beeause he perceived that the attempt would be useless, and in this case a feeling of dignity, which cleaves to us to the last, forbids a useless act of fear. We ai'e sure that our memories would supply us with instances of many who have suffered death by assassination without flying from the stroke ; and we are confident that, escape being hopeless, pride suggests such conduct. What is the case of Pasta's Des^ (kmona ? She is shut up in the same room with a man who has the habit of command over her, who is armed with a dagger, and resolved to take her hfe. She runs about wildly to escape the danger; many women, most women perhaps woiild do so, and it would therefore be said to be natural to them ; and some of the best, of the highest natures, would not do so, and the patient surrender would also be natural to them. The only ques- tion then is, which of the two descriptions is the more proper subject for tragedy. ***** Shakspeare certainly did not intend Desdemona fairly to seize her petticoats and run for it ; for he has, as if to preclude such pranks, taken her petticoats off", and put her to bed. In this predica- ment, Deademona feels that she must not run about before a gentleman (not to mention the audience), let her be as much disposed to be fugacious as she may. It would be a great stroke of nature, if she were to kick the bed-clothes off" when suffocating, but she does not even do that. Decorum prevails, and she dies with punctilious decency. Nevertheless, had Miss O'Neil knocked the counterpane and sheets about, and broken some articles of crockery, it might have been applauded by her admirers, and we could not have denied her right to struggle. * * * It is not every horror that is dramatic — there are vulgar horrors aa well as poetic horrors ; and that in question is, we think, of the former class. In the stage directions of an old play, we remember to have seen it ordered, after an explosion, that heads, legs, and arms, should be scattered about the stage " as Hoodie as may he :" this might have been horrible, but it was not tragic. It was a vulgar machinery. Pasta's flight in Otello is, to our minds, of the same *' as-bloodie-as-may-be " order." ** We express this diff*erence of opinion with every respect for a remark- ably exact taste. No judgment is however so straight and strong as to defy the warp of partiality — except, of course, our own." We thank our brother -critic for the courtesy of this conclusion, especially after the " austere regard " of his commencement. But we are compelled to say, that we still think him wrong, and that his argument is wrong throughout. First, as to the ocular demon- stration of his exordium : — there would have been something in it, had we said that Pasta was no fatter than a heroine ought to be. On the contrary, we think she is, and have often said so ; though we differ with the writer, as to the mode in which such things ought to be said of women, especially of those who delight us and deserve our respect. We are more than usually called on to be considerate with regard to a woman like Pasta, because an actress of her sort must go through a great deal of emotion, and thus render herself THE COMPANION, 327 peculiarly liable to the temptation of counter-excitement, and of a little excess in the mode of renewing her strength ; and when we reflect how the time of such persons is taken up, and in how many ways of late hours, and studies, and flatteries, they are diverted from recruiting their health in a better manner, we must not be too hard upon them if the nature of their temperament is such as to make them a little too fat and festive in appearance, where others, who indulge more, may be liable to no such betrayals. For this reason we have omitted as much of our critic's ungraciousness on that head as possible. We have also left out an allusion to a per- son said to be now living, who is charged with having hidden himself in an hour of peril, and to have been at the same time one of the last persons who ought to have set so unmanly an example. The humiliation which this unhappy individual must undergo, is surely enough for him ; and need not be brought in to shew that the exhibition of fear is unbecoming on the part of a woman. It is justly expected of a man that he should be brave, even should his individual nature be timid ; but the question of fear and courage has, in truth, nothing to do with the subject. Inevitable death has nothing to do with it. Dignity has nothing to do with it. Desdemona is a young, fond, and innocent woman, suddenly threatened with death by the man she loves. Her natural impulse is to try and avoid the death, both in the horror that must be common to all such women, especially on such an occasion, and in the hope of avoiding it for the sake of both parties. We supposed, in our article on the subject, that Pasta, in her general performance of Desdemona, as well as in the particular passage here caricatured, adopted that mode of evincing her feelings, which is natural to womankind ; but we drew at the same time a dis- tinction, which the critic has overlooked, between her performance of the character as a mere, impassioned, unsophisticate woman, and what might be looked upon as a good, or perhaps still better personation of it by Mademoiselle Sontag as the lady. This dis- tinction, if we mistake not (for we have not the article by us to refer to) followed upon the passage which our critic has quoted ; and an attention to it, we conceive, would have overturned at once all necessity for his argument : — but unfortunately he is wrong also 328 THE COMPANION. respecting the Desdemona of Shakspeare. He appears to have had an inkling of this, when he says that Shakspeare seems to have put her to bed, purely to hinder her from attempting to run awav. *' Decorum/' he says, " prevails ; and she dies with punctilious decency." But what says Shakspeare ? — Des. Oh, banish me, my lord, but kill me not. 0th. Down, strumpet, Des. Kill me tomorrow ; let me live tonight. 0th. Nay, if you strife — Des. But half an hour. 0th. Being done, there is no pause. Des. But while I say one prayer. 0th. It is too late. (He smothers her). And see the whole scene. What a writer is Shakspeare ! Reading onward, we came upon the following, and our eyes gushed with tears. Emelia. Oh, who has done this deed ? Des. Nobody ; I myself ; farewell : Commend me to my kind lord : oh ! farewell. (Dies). This is delicacy, if you please; this is " dignity." Desdemona dreaded death, as a young and a tender woman ; and she felt the greater horror of it, because it was to be inflicted by the man she loved ; but having received it, she is still the tender woman ; and dignity, which is the sense of worth, then speaks in its most gene- rous language, and attempts to screen and to console the hand that harmed it. We are not fond of giving ourselves airs of patronage, and indeed have no right to do so. We have also, in the days of our criticism, that is to say, of our youth and our want of thought, been great sin- ners in the article of severity. But assuming that our critic is young also in proportion as he is severe, and conceding that he may know a great many things better than we do, we would fain give him the benefit of our experience on what we do know ; and accordingly we hope he will make haste to discover how much greater the delight is, as well as more honourable the difficulty, in finding out beauties than faults, and helping to create what he desires, as the sun does the flowers that it looks upon. In addition to evidences of talent, which we suppose have been long recognized, he gave one the other day (if we mistake not) of a capability of generous THE COMPANION. 329 feeling, far beyond the pale of talents in ordinary ; and he who could do that, should afford to be differed with many times as well as once, and not mistake his dislike of objection for imaginary grounds of objection in others. POETRY OF BRITISH iLADIES. Continued from p. 288. We now come to a specimen of the verses of poor Miss Vanhom- righ, who was in love with Swift. They are not very good ; but they serve to shew the truth of her passion, which was that of an inexperienced and clever girl of eighteen for a wit of forty-four. Swift had conversation enough to make a dozen sprightly young gentlemen ; and besides his wit and his admiration of her, she loved him for what she thought his love of truth. In her favour also he appears to have laid aside his brusquerie and fits of ill temper, till he found the matter too serious for his convenience. ** Still listening to his tuneful tongue. The truths which angels might have sung Divine imprest their gentle sway, And sweetly stole my soul away. My guide, instructor, lover, friend. Dear names, in one idea ]>lend ; Oh ! still conjoin'd your incense rise. And waft sweet odours to the skies." Swift, who was already engaged elsewhere, and with a woman too whom he loved, should have told her so. She discovered it, and died in a fit of indignation and despair. But we have dis- cussed this matter in another place. The volume, a little farther, contains some verses of the other lady On Jealousy^ — probably occasioned by the rival who was jealous of her. Poor Stella! She died also, after a longer, a closer, and more awful experience of Swift's extraordinary conduct; which to this day remains a mys- tery. We believe it has been conjectured that he might have doubted whether Stella (Miss Johnson, daughter of the steward of his early friend Sir William Temple) might not have been a daughter of his own. Perhaps he might have fancied her a sister, 330 THE COMPANION. if he had any notion '(as some have had) that he himself was indebted to Sir William for his birth. But this will not exonerate him, for his conduct to Miss Vanhomrigh, nor lessen indeed the suspicions otherwise cast on him : for why, after all, did he marry Miss Johnson without living with her, and keep the secret from Miss Vanhomrigh if he meant nothing further? But we are getting out of our subject. The worst of it was, that both these ladies were eminently fitted for the enjoyments of an equal and genuine affection, — being young, pleasurable, liberal, clever, and sincere. One cannot help fancying, that there must have been two men, living somewhere, who ought to have had them for companions ; and that such persons will meet in another sphere. Swift was not properly fit for either, had he been as young and fit in every other respect. He has recorded some witticisms of Stella, which shew that she was not uninfected with his coarseness. Some of the rest are altogether excellent. We are sorry we cannot refer to them ; but we remember one, or the spirit of it. Steel medicines are reckoned good for melancholy. She was asked one day, in a game at forfeits, why melancholy was like an oyster. " Because," said she, " it is removed by taking steel inwardly." Mr Dyce appears to be mistaken in attributing the lines at p. 149 to Rachel, Lady Russell, wife of the famous Lord William Russell. The Lady Russell, who here writes verses to the memory of her husband, records him as having been named John. She was most probably Elizabeth, one of the learned daughters of Sir Anthony Cook, and widow of John, Lord Russell, who was called up to the House of Lords in the lifetime of his father Francis, Earl of Bed- ford, who died in 1585. The singular applicability of the last line to the mourning widowhood of Lady William Russell, seems to have misled Mr Dyce to overlook the name of the real husband. The concluding couplet is remarkable for shewing the effect to which real feeling turns the baldest common-places. Not that the words just alluded to are a common-place. They are a quintessence of pathos. ** Right noble twice, by virtue and by birth, Of Heaven lov'd, and honour'd on the earth, THE COMPANION. 331 » His country's hope, his kindred's chief deliglit. My husband dear, more than this world his hght. Death hath me reft. — But I from death will talce His memory, to whom this tomb I make. •John was his name (ah was ! wretch, must I say) Lord Russell once, noio my tear-thirsty clay." Gay Mrs Cenllivre follows Lady Russell, like a spri^^htly cham- bermaid after a gentlewoman. She is all for " the soldiers ;" and talks of the pleasure of surrendering, like a hungry citadel. The specimen consists of her prologue to the Bold Stroke for a ff^ife. It is very good of its kind ; gallant, and to the purpose ; with that sort of air about it, as if it had been spoken by Madame Vestris, or the fair authoress herself, in regimentals. But partial extracts would be awkward ; and we have not room for more. The idea of a female in officer's clothes always reminds us of one of the most beloved of our book-heroines, — poor little Marianna in Goethe's novel of Wilhelm Meister ; and this puts us out of taste with all other fair captains. What a picture of her is that at the beginning of the novel! How satisfactory to the senses! And how deserving she proves herself of the heart! But circumstances hampered even her with deception ; and these, though deception was sorely against her will, and she loved truly enough to break through it, were the death of her ; which was a pity. What a pause is that, at the conclusion of Book the First! And how we pity her afterwards ; and are mad with that impatient weakling her lover ! But we are talking of what the reader may know nothing about. If so, we exhort him to procure the book immediately, and sit down and study it; for it is not a novel of the common sort, or to be read without a commentary of thought and experience. There is an • excellent translation of it, in three volumes, published by Whitakers. Mrs De La Riviere Manly, who wrote the Atalantis, and alter- nately " loved" and lampooned Sir Richard Steele, (which was not so generous of her, as her surrendering herself to the law to save her printer), has two copies of verses, in which we may observe the usual tendency of female writers to break through conventional common-places with some touches of nature. The least of them have an instinct of this sort, which does them honour, and sets them above the same class of writers in the other sex. The mix- ture however sometimes has a ludicrous effect. Mrs Manly, pane- 332 THE COMPANION. gyrizing a certain " J. M e, Esq. of Worcester College," begins with this fervid and conversational apostrophe : — " Oxford, — for all thy fops and smarts. Let this prodigious youth atone ; While others frisk and dress at hearts. He makes thy better part his own." The concluding stanza is better, and indeed contains a noble image. Others, she says, advance in their knowledge by slow degrees, \ ** But his vast mind completely form'd, I Was thoroughly finish'd when begun ; So all at once the world was warm'd On the great birth-day of the sun.'* Mrs Manly is supposed to have been the Sappho of the Tatler. Besides the works which Mr Dyce mentions, she wrote political papers in the Examiner: and was undoubtedly a woman of ta- lents. Swift often speaks of his co-adjutrix in terms of intimacy and respect, remarkable for one who affected a clerical punctilio on certain points. But this is one of the under-signs of those times, — if we may use such a phrase. Swift and others did not scruple to pay their court to Mrs Howard (afterwards Countess of Suffolk), whom there is every reason to believe they regarded as the mistress of George the First. His own connexion with Stella must have had a very equivocal appearance to the world ; yet no- thing seems to have been said of it. Two single ladies living in the same house with Pope have called forth more scandal from one of his editors in our own time, than they appear to have done in his. Indeed we are not aware of their having received a single instance of disrespect. And one of the models of dress and good -breeding held up in the Tatler is said to have been the celebrated Mrs Old- field, at that time living with Maynwaring, to whom a volume of the work is dedicated. There is a strange look of inconsistency in this, for Steele in his writings was a great advocate of chastity and the decorums. But in the relations of the sexes some improvement remains to be discovered, that shall remove the perplexities people feel between their admiration of real good qualities and the disad- vantages to which women are so often subjected by the crimes of seducers and the unjust privileges of men altogether. It is a point, upon which virtue will never be consistent, nor society comfortable, till candid discussion take place upon it, and something just and generous be determined. THE COMPANMON. 333 A " saint" in those days certainly did not miss approbation of her good qualities any more than a " sinner," and it could be more openly expressed. Congreve (who by the way lived openly with the Duchess of Marlborougli, daughter of the great Duke, and heir to his title) is said to have been in love with Lady Elizabeth Has- tings, a real angel upon earth, if all that is said of her was true (saving and except that she blessed nobody with her love, as an angel ought to have done) ; and Prior is supposed to have enter- tained a passion for Miss Singer, afterwards the celebrated Mrs Rowe, to whom he addressed a copy of verses. Miss Singer pre- ferred a less witty, but probably a more refined and amiable poet, who is now known only from his union with the authoress of the Letters from the Dead, and the Devout Exercises of the Heart. There are one or two specimens of her poetry in the book before us, in which we have been disappointed. But she was a woman of real talents, and had a poetical soul ; as may be seen in her very fervid prose, which is more like the writing of a St Catherine or Teresa, than one of our northern devotees. She writes as Mary Magdalen might be supposed to have done, without her remorse. A Mrs Brereton, daughter of a "Welsh gentleman, was author, it seems, of a well-known epigram on Beau Nash's picture " at full length" between the busts of Newton and Pope. It forms the con- clusion of a poem of six stanzas, the whole of which are here very properly given, but from which it has been separated in ordinary, and with some difference in the reading. The stanza is as follows : ** The picture, plac'd the busts between. Adds to the thought much strength ; PF'mlom and fHt are little seen, But Follfs at full length." The poetry of JMary Chandler, " daughter of a dissenting minis- ter at Bath," was commended, Mrs Dyce informs us, by Pope. The only copy of her verses here given is the following little poem on Temperance, the whole of which we extract, partly because in addition to a good word said in favour of that most useful, cheer- ful, and much neglected virtue, it contains a deeper moral than the writer suspected; and partly because in the midst of it there is a very beautiful image. A morning beam has never been more hap- pily personified. 334 THE COMPANION. " Fatal effects of luxury and ease ! We drink our poison, and we eat disease ; Indulge our senses at our reason's cost. Till sense is pain, and reason hurt, or lost. Not so, O Temperance bland ! when rul'd by thee, The brute's obedient, and the man is free. Soft are his slumbers, balmy is his rest. His veins not boiling from the midnight feast. Touched by Aurora's rosy hand, he wakes Peaceful and calm, and with the world partakes The joyful dawnings of returning day. For which their grateful thanks the whole creation pay, — All but the human brute : 'tis he alone. Whose works of darkness fly the rising sun. 'Tis to thy rules, O Temperance ! that we owe All pleasures, which from health and strength can flow ; Vigour of body, purity of mind. Unclouded reason, sentiments refin'd, Unmixt, untainted joys, without remorse, Th' intemperate sinner's never failing curse." Our fair philosopher may have added, that intemperance, or any neglect of health, will often give remorse to delicate consciences that do not otherwise deserve it : nay, even deserved remorse (so to speak) may be done away with, according to Plato, by due attention to health and exercise. Nor will the humanity of true virtue quar- rel with him for saying it; since under no system of opinion has the frailty and ill education of mankind been denied some last resource under the most grievous of its errors, — change and better conduct being always supposed. And that is the wisest mode of correcting guilt and its consequences, which leaves us in the fittest way for being cheerful and useful. Mary Leapor, " daughter of the gardener of Judge Blencow," and said to have been '' some time cook-maid in a gentleman's family," was a born gentlewoman, and writes very pretty verses. Mr Dyce has given us an eclogue of hers, entitled the Month of August, in which Sylvanus, a courtier, attempts in vain to lure away Phillis, a country maid, from her cottage and her rustic love. It contains some pleasing natural images, which we are tempted to quote ; but in thinking of filling out our Companions' pockets with plums and country delicacies, a base and unusual fear comes over us of being thought unmannerly. Mrs Lsetitia Pilkington, well known for her departures from the ordinary modes of her sex, which were not in the style of Mrs Oldfield, tells us. that ** Lying is an occupation. Used by all who mean to rise," &c. Poor soul ! We fear she practised a good deal of it to very little purpose. She had a foolish husband, and was beset by very un- toward circumstances, to which she evidently fell a worse prey than she would have us think. But the weakest of women are so un- THE COMPANION. 535 equally treated by the existins^ modes of society, that we hate to think anything; unhandsome of them. Not so of my Lady Mary Wortlcy Montagu; who was at once so clever, so bold, so well off, and so full of sense of every sort but the sense of delicacy, that she provokes us out of our philosophy. A want of sentiment was the ultimate ruin of her ; for ruin it was, and a frightful one, for a woman of her beauty and talents to become the painted Jezebel and the mockery of all the young men who visited Florence. Walpole has given a revolting picture of her in this her melancholy state of old gaiety; and we must believe him, in spite of our dislike of his cynical way of drawing it. Her admirable letters are well known, and her introduction of inocula- tion into this country; so clever was she, and so fitted to be more than an ornament to society, in everything but this one deficiency. Among other instances of her capital good sense, she had a view with regard to the improvement of marriages, which bespoke real philosophical reflection, and would at any rate have managed matters better than they are at present. Her opinion was (and the practice is said to have been tried in one part of the world, and found successful) that marriages should be limited to the term of seven years, and renewed or not at will, as the parties found them- selves disposed. They who think that everybody would be for parting, forget what they are so well aware of in all other circum- stances, to wit, the power of habit; not to mention all the other and more cordial reasons, which certainly would not continue to influence people the less, when they were more generously en- couraged. We do not say that Lady Mary's plan would be the best. We only say it is better than the present one. But nothing is more observable or more edifying, whenever this subject is broached, than the extraordinary compliments which the advocates of the present system pay their own cause, in thinking that they should all be in such haste to get rid of their obligations. Not having any such feelings in our own case, we the less scruple to speak out. We must conclude our present attentions to Mr Dyce's book (which seduces us into so much gossip) with the whole of the ballad entitled The Lover, addressed by Lady Mary to MrCongreve. One is curious to know what Congreve said to it. The first four stanzas are a little too much like a town-lady and intriguante; but pleasant and well-written. The two last come unexpectedly to the reader of the book, in turning over the leaf, and are a great im- provement upon the sentiment. But a lady, who " so long has lived chaste," hardly ought to know so much about '' champagne and a chicken." THE LOVER. A BALLAD. TO MB CONOREVE. "At length, by so much importunity press'd, Take, Congreve, at once the inside of my breast. 336 THE COMPANION. This stupid indifference so often you blame. Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame : I am not as cold as a virgin in lead. Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head ; I know but too well how time flies along. That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young. ** But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy Long years of repentance for moments of joy. Oh ! was there a man (but where shall I find Good sense and good-nature so equally join'd?^ Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine ; Not meanly would boast, nor lewdly design ; Not over severe, nor yet stupidly vain. For I would have the pow'r, though not give the pain : ** No pedant, yet learned ; no rake-helly gay. Or laughing, because he has nothing to say ; To all my whole sex obliging and free. Yet never be fond of any but me ; In public preserve the decorum that's just. And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust ; Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow. But not fulsomely pert, nor foppishly low. ** But when the long hours of public are past. And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last, May every fond pleasure that moment endear ; Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear ! Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd. He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud j Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live. And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive. "And that my delight may be solidly fix'd. Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix'd. In whose tender bosom my soul may confide. Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide. From such a dear lover as here I describe, ' No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe ; But till this astonishing creature I know. As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so. '* I never will share with the wanton coquet. Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit. The toasters and songsters may try all their art. But never shall enter the pass of my heart. I loath the lewd rake, the drest fopling despise ; Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies ; And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told. We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold." (to be continued.) LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clarke, Yoik street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4d. l>IUNTl,n-BY C. 11. RI YNFI.I,, BROAD S.TREi.T, GOI.UFN SQl'ARE. THE COMPANION. No. XXIV. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 1828. ** Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Siu Wilmam Temple. REDl S BACCHUS IN TUSCANY. Redi, a celebrated naturalist and wit-poet of Italy, was physician tx) the Grand Dukes of Tuscany in the times of Charles and James the Second. He was a great experimentalist, and overthrew the doctrine of equivocal generation: but our business at present is with his poem of Bacco in Toscana, which he wrote on the Tuscan wines, and which is one of the most popular pieces of wit in Italy. Some years ago, Mr Mathias, the celebrated Italian scholar, pub- lished an edition of this in London. We no sooner saw it, than we longed to decanter it into English; but circumstances prevented us, till we happened to pay a visit to the poet's own country, when we proceeded to indulge ourselves accordingly, and dispatched the version home. It is said however that Italian wines will not keep in their exportation ; and our transfusion certainly did not hold good. The bottle fell broken from the wine-press. To drop our metaphor, the translation of the Bacco in Toscana did not succeed. It would perhaps have been unreasonable to expect that it should, considering the nature of the subject, the English having no cognizance of Italian wines, and not caring for what they never tasted. Furthermore, whether the poem was calculated to succeed VOL. I. 24 338 THE COMPANION. or not, our own version may not have been the one to make it do so. But we confess we are willing to discover some further reason for a non-success so entire, as to enable us to venture the present summary of the poem with the reader, in default of being well enough to do better. And this reason, we think, may be two-fold; first, a newness and inaptitude to his work on the part of the publisher, who had been used to greater tasks ; and second, the extraordinary fact of its being published with upwards of fifty mistakes of the press, and many of those of the most extraordinary and confounding description. We blame nobody for these acci- dents. The private circumstances under which the publication took place, partook of the extraordinary nature of the rest ; the publisher, as well as the author, was occupied with many cares ; the author was in another country; and the appearance of the work, after being delayed a year, could be hardly said to have been one after all. Of the extent to which the mistakes were carried, the reader may judge by the following specimens. *' Plebeian homej'* at p. 6 of the book, ought to be *' plebeian Rome." An old stony giggiano (a reverend mystery at p. 15) should be "And old stony Giggiano" (a place so called.) A line ('' And much agrees with — ") where an unseasonable hiccup cuts it short (for the worst of it is, that in a poem of this kind, people suppose such mistakes a part of the joke) ought to be " And much agrees with me." Mr Lamb, in the notes, at p. 59, is made to say that Bacchus's true Indian conquest *' warms the West," instead of " was from the West." At p. 96, it is observed, that " the French began to speak with admiration of Milton, partly because Voltaire wanted them to like epics of all sorts, for the sake of puzzling opinion, and introducing the steanade." This is the Henriade ! And at p. 139, where there is an endeavour to shew that a novelist is not likely to be a great poet, from a want of a turn for concentration, Boccaccio in his style is said to be " over close and succinct," instead of " never close and succinct." We do not wish to lay any more stress on these matters than our present purpose requires, and can join very heartily in laughing at them. We wish we had THE COMPANION. 339 never given printers in our time more cause to complain of us, than they have given us reason to find fault with them. But when our poor version, besides not being calculated to be popular in itself, finds its intention of being agreeable turned into these involuntary distortions, — has scores of blotches inflicted on the likeness it intends to represent, — an eye or so jammed in, — and a shrewd cut given to its hamstring when preparing to dance, — it may reasonably say to our friends in private (for such we always feel inclined to consider the readers of this paper) — " I am not exactly what I have been taken for ; and if you will allow me, I will shew you as much." To proceed then with our summary. The poet feigns, that Bacchus, in taking his divine circuits about the globe, comes and seats himself with Ariadne on the lawn before the Grand-Ducal mansion in the neighbourhood of Florence. The object of the God is to see how the Tuscan wines go on, and to give his opinion of them. They are served up to him: he drinks and criticises, and at length (like a proper Bacchus of the time of Charles II) gets drunk, and fancies himself going in a boat. "•After all (says the Preface) what is the * Bacco in Toscana ?' It is an ori- ginal, an effusion of animal spirits, a piece of Bacchanalian music. This is all; but this will not be regarded as nothing, by those who know the value of ori- ginality, and who are thankful for any addition to our pleasures. Common critics may chuse to confess, that they see as little in it as they undoubt- edly do see. Good-natured intelligence is always willing to find some- thing to be pleased with ; and the poet, truly so called, discovers the merit that exists in anything really good, because he has an universal sympathy. I wish that, by any process not interfering with the spirit of my original, I could make up to the English reader for the absence of that particular interest in a poem of this kind, which arises from its being national. But this is impossible ; and if he has neither a great under- standing, nor a good nature that supplies the want of it ; if he is deficient in animal spirits, or does not value a supply of them ; and above all, if he has no ear for a dancing measure, and no laughing welcome for a sudden turn or two at the end of a passage — our author's triumph over his cups will fall on his ear like ' a jest unprofitable.' I confess I have both enough melancholy and merriment in me to be at no time proof against a passage like the followiiifT : — 340 THE COMPANION. ' Cups of Chocolate, Aye, or Tea, Are not medicines Made for me. I would sooner take to poison Than a single cup set eyes on Of that bitter and guilty stuff ye Talk of by the name of Coffee. Let the Arabs and the Turks Count it 'mongst their cruel works : Foe of mankind, black and turbid. Let the throats of slaves absorb it. Down in Tartarus, Down in Erebus, 'Twas the detestable Fifty in- vented it ; The Furies then took it. To grind and to cook it. And to Proserpine all three pre- sented it. If the IVIussulman in Asia Doats on a beverage so miseemly, I differ with the man extremeJy." The anathema against Beer is celebrated ; and if spoken of small beer, the epithet squalid must be allowed to be admirable. As for ale and cyder, an Italian of those days, visiting England, might reasonably have objected to them from the habit of drinking his dinner-wines ; but we can only say at present, that bottled porter is in much request among his descendants. If Redi gave his opinion from anything but report, the beer and cyder he speaks of were probably as bad as importation could make them. " Non fia gia che il Cioccolatte V adoprassi, ovvero il T^ : IMedicine cosi fatte Non saran giammai per me. Berverei prima il veleno, Che un bicchier che fosse pieno De I'amaro e reo Caffe. Cola tra gli Arabi, E tra i Giannizzeri, Liquor si ostico. Si nero e torbido, Gli schiavi ingoUino : Gill nel Tartaro, Gill nel Erebo L'empie Belidi Tinventarono ; E Tesifone, e V altre Furie A Proserpina il ministrarono : E se in Asia il Musulmanno Se lo cionca a precipizio, Mostra aver poco giudizio." " Chi la squallida Cervogia A le labbra sue congiugne. Presto muore, o rado giugne A V eta vecchia e barbogia, Beva il Sidro d' Inghilterra Chi vuol gir presto sotterra : Chi vuol gir presto a la morte, Le bevande usi del Norte. Fanno i pazzi beveroni '* There 's a squalid thing call'd Beer : — The man whose lips that thing comes near Swiftly dies ; or falling foolish. Grows, at forty, old and owlish. She that in the ground would hide her. Let her take to English Cyder : THE COMPANION. 341 lie who'd have his death come quicker. Any other northern liquor. Those Norwejrians and those Laps Have extraordinary taps : Those Laps especially have strange fancies : To see them drink, I verily think Would make me lose my senses. But a truce to such vile subjects. With their impious, shocking ob- jects. Let me purify my mouth In an holy cup o' the south ; In a golden pitcher let me Head and ears for comfort get me. And drink of the wine Of the vine Benign, That sparkles wanii in Sanso vine." Bacchus, the season being hot, must have ice to his wine; and orders his Satyrs in fine rock-splitting style, to go and hew some for hira out of the grotto of Boboli. W^e join the original to these extracts, partly in the hope of shewing that we have done justice to it, and partly as a temptation to study for the lovers of Italian. Quci Norv'egi, e quei Lapponi. Quel Lapponi son pur tangheri. Son pur sozzi nel lor here : Solamente nel vedere. Mi fariano uscir de' gangheri. JNIa si restin col mal die SI profane dicerie, E il mio labbro profanato Si pm-ifichi, s'iramerga. Si sommerga Dentro un pecchero indorato Colmo in giro di quel vino Del vitigno Si benigno, Che fiammeggia il Sansavino.'* " Torniam noi trattanto a here : Ma con qual nuovo ristoro Coronar potr6 '1 bicchiere Per un brindisi canoro ? Col topazio pigiato in Lamporec- chio. " Ch' bfamosocastcl per quel Masetto, A inghirlandar le tazze or m' ap- parecchio : Purchb gelato sia, c puretto, Gelato, quale a la stagion del gielo II pill freddo Aquilon fischia pel cielo. IMeanwhile let 's renew our drinking ; But with what fresh wine, and glorious, Shall our beaded brims be wink- ing, For an echoing toast victorious ? You know Lamporecchio, the cas- tle renown'd For the gardener so dumb, whose works did abound ; There 's a topaz they make there ; pray let it go round. 342 THE COMPANION. Cantinette, e cantimplore Stieno in pronto a tutte P ore Con forbite bombolette Chiuse e strette tra le brine De le nevi cristalline. Son le nevi il quinto elemento, Che coinpongono il vero bevere. Ben h folle chi spera ricevere Senza nevi nel bere un content© : Venga pur da Vallombrosa Neve a josa : Venga pur da ogni bicocca Neve in cliiocca. E voi, Satiri, lasciate Tante frottole, tanti riboboli, E del ghiaccio mi portate De la grotta nel monte di Boboli. Con alti picclii De' mazzapicchi Dirompetelo, Sgretolatelo, Infragnetelo, Stritolatelo, Finch^ tutto si possa risolvere In minuta freddissima polvere, Che mi renda il ber piu fresco Per rinfresco del palato. Or ch'io son mortoassetato." Serve, serve me a dozen. But let it be frozen ; Let it be frozen, and finished with ice. And see that the ice be as vir- ginly nice. As the coldest that whistles from wintery skies. Coolers and cellarets, crystal with snows. Should always hold bottles in ready repose. Snow is good liquor's fifth ele- ment; No compound without it can give content ; For weak is the brain, and I hereby scout it. That thinks in hot weather to drink without it. Bring me heaps from the Shady Valley: Bring me heaps Of all that sleeps On every village hill and alley. Hold there, you satyrs. Your chuffs and your chatters. And bring me ice duly, and bring it me doubly. Out of the grotto of Monte di Boboh. With axes and pickaxes. Hammers and rammers, Thump it and hit it me. Crack it and crash it me. Hew it and split it me. Pound it and smash it me. Till the whole mass (for I'm dead dry, I think) Turns to a cold, fit to freshen my drink.'' THE COMPANION. 343 The Dacco in Toscana is much admired tor its compound words after the Greek fashion; which an ItaHan, to the surprise of the Enghsh, can only well venture upon in the mock-heroic. Redi has indeed caricatured them, but witli great spirit. Bacchus will have his wine arcifrcddlssimo (supcrultrafrostified); his boys •* — become savage for Greedy-great thirstiness" — (sete grandavidq) ; and he calls the Satyrs " Capribarb'wornipede famiglia — The goatibeardihomyfooted family.'* In the translation of the following passage, we have endeavoured to grow into a music and fervour, more obvious in some other parts of the poem, but highly characteristical of it altogether. ** La rugiada di rubino, Che in Valdarno i colli onora, Tanto odora, Che per lei sue pregio perde La brunetta ISIamraoletta, Quando spunta dal suo verde. S* io ne bevo, IMi sollevo Sovra i gioghi di Permesso, E nel canto s\ m' accendo, Che pretendo, e mi do vanto Gareggiar con Febo istesso. Dammi dunque dal boccal d' oro Quel rubino ch' tj '1 mio tesoro : Tutto pien d' alto furore Cantert) versi d' amore, Che saran viepiu soavi, E pill grati di quel che e II buon vin di Gersole. Quindi al suon d' una ghironda, O d' un' aurea cennamella, Arianna, idolo mio, Lodero tua chioma bionda, Lodero tua bocca bella. " The ruby dew that stills Upon Valdarno's hills. Touches the sense with odour so divine. That not the violet. With lips with morning wet. Utters such sweetness from her little shrine. When I drink of it, I rise Over the hill that makes poets wise. And in my voice and in my song. Grow so sweet and growso strong, I challenge Phoebus with his Delphic eyes. Give me then, from a golden measure. The ruby that is my treasure, my treasure ; And like to the lark that goes maddening above, I'll sing songs of love ! Songs will I sing more moving and fine. Than the bubbUng and quaffing of Gersole wine. 344 THE COMPANION. Gi^ s' avanza in me 1' ardore, Gia mi bolle dentro '1 seno Un veleno, Ch' h velen d' almo liquore. Gik Gradivo egidarmato Col Fanciullo faretrato Infernifoca il mio core : Gi^ nel bagno d' un bicchiere, Arianna, idolo amato. Mi vo' far tuo cavaliere, Cavalier sempre bagnato." The following, we think, is " Su, trinchiam rincappellato Con granella, e soleggiato : Tracanniamo a guerra rotta Vin rullato, e a la Sciotta ; E tra noi gozzovigliando, Gavazzando, Gareggiamo a chi piii imbotta Imbottiam senza paura, Senza regola, o misura : Quando il vino h gentilissimo, Digeriscesi prestissimo, E per lui mai non molesta La spranglietta ne la testa : E far fede ne potria L' anatomico Bellini, Se de V uve, e se de' vini Far volesse notomia.'* Then the rote shall go round. And the cymbals kiss. And I'll praise Ariadne, My beauty, my bliss f I'll sing of her tresses,^ I'll sing of her kisses ; Now, now it increases. The fervour increases. The fervour, the boiling, and ve- nomous bliss. The grim god of war and the arrowy boy Double-gallant me with desperate joy; Love, love, and a fight ! I must make me a knight ; I must make me thy knight of the bath, fair friend, A knight of the bathing that knows no end." genuine : — " Oh boys, this Tuscan land divine Hath such a natural talent for wine. We'll fall, we'll fall On the barrels and all ; We'll fall on the must, we'll fall ; on the presses. We'll make the boards groan with our grievous caresses ; No measure, I say ; no order, but riot ; No waiting, nor cheating; we'll drink like a Sciot : Drink, drink, and drink when you've done ; Pledge it, and frisk it, every one ; Chirp it and challenge it, swal- low it down ; He that's afraid, is a thief and a clown. THE COMPANION. 345 Good wine's a gentleman ; He speedeth digestion all he can : No headache hath he, no head- ache, I say, For those who talked with him yesterday. If Signor Bellini, besides his apes. Would anatomize vines, and ana- tomize grapes. He'd see that the heart that makes good wine. Is made to do good, and very benign." The famous Chianti wine, so much praised by travellers (health to the noble company we used to drink it in, on the other side of the Ponte Carraia!) is thus eulogized by the Tuscan wit: — *' Gusta un po', gusta quest' altro " True son of the earth is Chianti Vin robusto, che si vanta wine, D' esser nato in mezzo al Chianti, Bom on the ground of a gypsy E tra sassi Lo produsse Per le gcnti piu bevone Vite bassa, e non broncone. Bramerei veder trafitto Du una serpe in mezzo al petto Quell' avaro villanzone, Che per render la sua vite Di piu grappoli feconda, Lii ne' monti del buon Chianti, Veramente villanzone, MaritoUa ad un broncone. Del buon Chianti il vin decrepito Maestoso Imperioso Mi passeggia dentro il core, E ne scaccia senza strcpito Ogni affanno e ogni dolore. Ma sc giara io prendo in mano Di briUantc Carmignano, Cosi grato in sen mi piovc, vme ; Bom on the ground for sturdy souls. And not the lank race of one of your poles : I should like to see a snake Get up in August out of a brake. And fasten ^vith all his teeth and caustic Upon that sordid villain of a rustic. Who, to load my Chianti's haunches With a parcel of feeble bunches. Went and tied her to one of these poles, — Sapless sticks without any souls ! '* Like a king. In his conquering, ('hianti wine with his red flag goes Down to my heart, and down to my toes : 346 THE COMPANION. Ch* ambrosia e nettar non invidio a Giove.'' He makes no noise, he beats no drums ; Yet pain and trouble fly as he comes. And yet a good bottle of Carmig- nan. He of the two is your merrier man ; He brings from heav'n such a rain of joy, I envy not Jove his cups, old boy." The god proceeds to anathematize water and water-drinkers; among whom, by the way, was the poet himself; at least he drank very little wine, and was a great diluter of it. The joke on himself at the end is very agreeable. ** Chi 1' acqua beve Mai non riceve Grazie da me. Sia pur 1' acqua, o bianca, o fresca, O ne' tonfani sia bruna ; Nel suo amor me non invesca Questa sciocca ed importuna, Questa sciocca, che sovente Fatta altiera e capricciosa, Riottosa ed insolente Con furor perfido e ladro Terra e ciel mette a soqquadro. Ella rompe i ponti e gli argini, E con sue nembose aspergini Su i fioriti e verdi margini Porta oltraggio ai fior' piii vergini ; E r ondose scaturigini A le moli stabilissime, Che sarian perpetuissime, Di rovina sono origini. Lodi pur 1' acque del Nilo II Soldan de' Mammalucchi, IShV Ispano mai si stucchi D' innalzar quelle del Tago, Ch' io per me non ne son vugo. He who drinks water, I wish to observe Gets nothing from me ; He may eat it and starve. Whether its well, or whether its fountain. Or whether it comes foaming white from the mountain, I cannot admire it. Nor ever desire it : 'Tis a fool, and a madman, and impudent wretch. Who now will live in a nasty ditch. And then grown proud, and full of his whims. Comes playing the devil and curs- ing his brims. And swells, and tumbles, and bothers his margins. And ruins the flowers, although they be virgins. Moles and piers, were it not for him. Would last for ever. If they're built clever ; THE COMPANION. 347 E 86 a sorte alcun do' miei Fosse mai cotiinto ardito, Che bevessene un sol dito, Di mia man lo strozzerei. Vadan pur, vadano a svellere La cicoria e raperonzoli Certi magri mediconzoli, Che con 1' acqua ogni mal pensan di espellere. lo di lor non mi fido, N^ con esai mi afFanno, Anzi di lor mi rido, Che contanta lor acqua io so ch' egli anno Un cervel cosi duro e cosi tondo, Che quadrar nol potr\a i\h meno in pratica Del Viviani il gran saper profondo Con tutta quanta la sua matematica. Da mia masnada Lungi sen vada Ogni bigoncia Che d' acqua acconcia Colma si sta : L' acqua cedrata Di limoncello Sia sbandeggiata Dal nostro ostello. De' gelsomini Non faccio bevande, IVIa tesso ghirlande Su questi mici crini. De V Aloscia, e del Candiero Non ne bramo, e non ne chero. I Sorbetti, ancorche ambrati, E mille altre acque odorose Son bevande da svogliati, E da femmine leziose. Vino vino a ciascun bever bisogna, Se fuggir vuolc ogni danno : E non par mica vergogna But no — its all one with him — sink or swim. Let the people yclept Mameluke Praise the Nile without any rebuke ; Let the Spaniards praise the Tagus ; I cannot like either, even for negus. If any follower of mine Dared so far to forget his wine, And to drink an atom of water, Here's the hand should devote him to slaughter. Let your meagre doctorlings Gather herbs and such like things; Fellows, that with streams and stills Think to cure all sorts of ills. IVe no faith in their washery. Nor think it worth a glance of my eye : Yes, I laugh at them for that matter. To think how they, with their heaps of water. Petrify their sculls profound. And make 'em all so thick and so round. That Viviani, with all his mathe- matics. Would fail to square the circle of their attics. " Away with all water. Wherever I come ; I forbid it ye, gentlemen, All and some ; Lemonade water. Jessamine water. Our tavern knows none of 'tm. Water's a hum. 348 THE COMPANION. Tra i bicchier' impazzir sei volte P anno. 10 per me son nel casoj *' E sol per gentilezza Avallo questo, e poi quest' altro vaso: E si facendo, del nevoso cielo Non temo il gielo, N^ mai nel piii gran ghiado m' imbacucco Nel zamberlucco. Come ognor vi s' imbacucca Da la linda sua parrucca Per infino a tutti i piedi 11 segaligno e freddoloso Redi.** Jessamine makes a pretty crown : But as a drink, 'twill never go down. All your hydromels and flips Come not near these prudent lips. All your sippings and sherbets. And a thousand such pretty sweets. Let your mincing ladies take 'em. And fops whose little fingers ache ^em. Wine ! Wine ! is your only drink; ' Grief never dares to look at the brink : Six times a year to be mad with wine, I hold it no shame, but a very good sign. I, for my part, take my can. Solely to act like a gentleman ; And acting so, I care not, I, For all the hail and the snow in the sky ; I never go poking. And cowering and cloaking. And wrapping myself from head to f6ot. As some people do, with their wigs to boot : For example, like dry and shiver- ing Redi, Who looks like a peruk'd old lady." The head of the Deity now begins to turn. He thinks there is an earthquake, and calls out for a boat. This reminds him of sum- mer-sailing, and he addresses some very musical verses to Ariadne. " Oh beU' andare Per barca in mare Verso la sera Di Primavera ! Oh what a thing 'Tis for you and for me. On an evening in spring. To sail in the sea ! THE COMPANION. 349 VenticeUi e fresche aurette Dispiegando ali d' argento, Su V azzurro pavimento Tesson danze amorosette, E al mormorio de' tremuli cristalli Sfidano ognora i na\'iganti ai balli." The little fresh airs Spread their silver wings. And o'er the blue pavement Dance love-makings. To the tune of the waters, and tremulous glee. They strike up a dance to people at sea." Then ensues a passage which is much admired in Italy, but to which, we fear, it is impossible for us to do justice in Englisli. Translators however ought not to fear ; nor should we distrust at any rate a handsome bustle through our version, if we could be secure in these northern latitudes of falling upon none but readers with good spirits. Cucurrucii is the burden of a popular song, in which the singer imitates the voice and actions of a cock. Bacchus is now fairly drunk, and divides his slippery speech between his mistress and the fancied boatmen. '* Su voghiamo, Navighiamo, Navighiamo infino a Brindisi : Arianna, Brindis, Brindisi : Passavoga, arranca, arranca, Che la ciurma non si stanca, Anzi lieta si rinfranca Quando arranca inverso Brindisi : Arianna, Brindis, Brindisi : E se a te Brindisi io fo, Perche a me faccia il buon pro, Ariannuccia, vaguccia, beiluccia, Cantami un poco, e ricantami tu Su la mandL)la la cuccurucu. La cuccurucu. La cuccurucu, Su la mand(Ma la cuccurucu. Passav5 Passavo Passavoga, arranca, arranca, Che la ciurma non si stanca. " Row, brothers, row. We'll sail and we'll go. We'll sail and we'll go, till we settle in Port — Ariadne, in Por — in Port. Pull away, pull away. Without drag or delay : No gallants grow tired, but think it a sport. To feather their oars till they settle in Port — Ariadne, in Por^ — in Port, ril give ye a toast. And then, you know, you, Arianeeny, my beauty, my queeny, Shall sing me a little, and play to me too Onthemand(;)la,thecoocooroocoo, The coocooroocoo. The coocooroocoo. On the mandola, the coocooroocoo, 350 THE COMPANION. Anzi lieta si rinfranca, Quando arranca Quando arranca inverso Brindisi : Arianna, Brindis, Brindisi: E se a te, E se a te Brindisi io fo, Perclib a me, Perch^ a me, Perchfe a me faccia il buon pro, II buon pro, Ariannuccia leggiadribelluccia, Cantami un po', Cantami un po', Cantami un poco, e ricantami tu Su la vi6, Su la viola la cuccurucu. La cuccuruch, Su la viola la cuccurucu." A long pu — A strong pu — A long puU, and strong pull, and pull altogether 1 Gallants and boaters who know how to feather. Never get tired, but think it a sp ort, To feather their oars, till they settle in Port — Ariadne, in Por — in Port ; PU give thee a toas — I'll give thee a toast — and then, you know, you Shall give me one too. Arianeeny,my quainty,my queeny. Sing me, you ro — Sing me, you ro — Sing me, you rogue, and play to me, do. On the vio — On the viola, the coocooroocoo. The coocooroocoo. The coocooroocoo. On the vi51a, the coocooroocoo.'* From this intoxication the God recovers in a manner a little too human, and returning to his cups, finally makes his election among the wines, and pronounces Montepulciano to be king of them all. For our parts, when in Italy, we should have voted for the wine of the place we lived in,— Maiano, — as by far the best of any we ever drank, Italian or otherwise ; but that was of a select vintage belonging to the lord of the ground. We should have preferred Aleatico and Chianti wine to Montepulciano ; but the scruple which we had of the latter was probably none of the best. We need not add, that the Tuscan poet ought to know best. " Fill, fill," cries the Deity — " Ognun colmilo, ognun votilo : *' Fill, fill, let us all have our will : INIa di che si colmera ? But with vhat, with what, boys, Bella Arianna, con bianca mano shall we fill ? THE COMPANION. 351 Versa la manna di INIontepulciano: Colmane il tonfano, e porgilo a me. Qiiesto liquorc, clie sdrucciola al core, O come r ugola e baciami e raor- demi ! O come in lagrime gli occhj dis- ciogliemi ! Me ne strasecolo, me ne strabilio, E fatto estatico vo' in visibilio, Onde ognun, che di Lieo Riverente il nome adora, Ascolti questo altissimo decreto, Che Bassareo pronunzia, e gli dia fe. Montcpulciano d' ogni vino t^ il re. A cosi lieti accenti, D'edere e dicorimbi ilcrine adorne, Alternavano i vanti Le festose Baccanti: Ma i Satiri die avean bevuto a isonne. Si sdrajaron su 1' erbetta Tutti cotti come monne.'* Sweet Ariadne — no, not that one, — ah no ; Fill me the manna of Montcpul- ciano '■ Fill me a magnum, and reach it me. — Gods ! How it slides to my heart by the sweetest of roads ! Oh, how it kisses me, tickles me, bites me ! Oh how my eyes loosen sweetly in tears ! I'm ravished ! I'm rapt ! Heav'n finds me admissible ! Lost in an extacy ! blinded ! in- \isible ! Hearken, all earth ! We, Bacchus, in the might of om- great mirth, To all who reverence us, and are right thinkers ; — Hear, all ye drinkers ! Give ear, and give faith, to our edict divine — Montcpulciano^ s the King of all Wine. • At these glad sounds. The N}Tiiphs, in giddy rounds, Shaking their ivy diadems and grapes. Echoed the triumph in a thou- sand shapes. The Satyrs would have joined them ; but alas ! They could'nt ; for they lay about the grass. As drunk as apes." 352 THE COMPANION. SPECIMENS OF THE NOTES. Sensation of Plants. — Redi was inclined to attribute a greater degree of animation to the vegetable world, than is generally assigned it. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to witness the sensibility of such plants as the Mimosa, and not associate with them the idea of sensation. Per- haps trees and flowers may receive a sort of dim pleasure from the air and sunshine, proportionate to the rest of their share of animal life. The stems of the \ane look as vital as can well be conceived. I speak of them when they are fresh and red. A vineyard in the winter time, full of their old, crusty-looking, dry, tortuous long bodies, resembles a collection of earthy serpents. Who would suppose, that out of all that apparent drought and unfeelingness, were to come worlds of bunches of fruit, bursting with wine and joy ? Strange Metamorphoses of English Words by Foreigners. — The original word for " cask" is BeUicone, which is neither more nor less than the English word Welcome! " Bellicone,'* says Redi, "is a new word in Tuscany, and comes from the German, who call it Wilkomh or Wilkumb. It is a glass in which they drink to the arrival of their friends. The Spaniards have got it, and call it Velkomen.^^ — These transmutations remind me of the arrival of my Lord Maryborough, then Mr Wellesley Pole, in France ; which was announced to the wondering natives as the coming of ** Milord Vesteveneypoel " But see a translation of the Tra- vels of Redi's master, Cosmo the Third, in England, which has been lately published. The word Vittheal (for Whitehall), which I find in Redi's works, is nothing to what the reader will find there. Kensington is called by some such impossibility as Lnhmthorp* * Upon recollection, I think this is in Bassompiere. LONDON Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden : and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price Ad. VUINTLD UY C. H, RliYNELL, BROAD STREET, GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. XXV. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 1828. '' Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND. WITH AN ORIGINAL CIRCUMSTANCE OR TWO RESPECTING DR JOHNSON. Dear Sir, As Other calls upon my pilgrimage in this world have inter- rupted those weekly voyages of discovery into green lanes and rustic houses of entertainment, which you and I had so agreeably commenced, I thought I could not do better than make you par- taker of my new journey, as far as pen and paper could do it. You are therefore to look upon yourself as having resolved to take a walk of twenty or thirty miles into Surrey, without knowing any- thing of the matter. You will have set out with us a fortnight ago, and will be kind enough to take your busts for chambermaids, and your music (which is not so easy) for the voices of stage- coachmen. Illness, you know, does not hinder me from walking; neither does anxiety. On the contrary, the more I walk, the better and stouter I become ; and I believe if everybody were to regard the restlessness which anxiety creates, as a signal from nature to gei up and contend with it in that manner, they would find the benefit VOL. 1. 2.J 354 THE COMPANION. of it. This is more particularly the case, if they are lovers of nature, as well as pupils of her, and have an eye for the beauties in which her visible world abounds ; and as I may claim the merit of loving her heartily, and even of tracing my sufferings (when I have them) to her cause, the latter are never so great but what she repays me with some sense of sweetness, and leaves me a certain property in the delight of others, when 1 have little of my own. " Oh that I had the wings of a dove !" said the royal poet ; " then would I fly away and be at rest." I believe there are few persons, who having felt sorrow, and anticipating a journey not exactly tov/ards it, have not partaken of this sense of the desira- bility of remoteness. A great deal of what we love in poetry is founded upon it ; nor do any feel it with more passion, than those whose sense of duty to their fellow-creatures will not allow them to regard retirement as anything but a refreshment between their tasks, and as a wealth of which all ought to partake. But David sighed for remoteness, and not for solitudcc At least, if he did, the cares of the moment must have greatly over- balanced the habits of the poet. Neither doves nor poets can very well do without a companion. Be that as it may, the writer of this epistle, who is a still greater lover of companionship than poetry (and he cannot express his liking more strongly) had not the mis- fortune, on the present occasion, of being compelled to do without it ; and as to remoteness, though his pilgrimage was to extend little beyond twenty miles, he had not the less sense of it on that account. Remoteness is not how far you go in point of ground, but how far you feel yourself from your common -places. Literal distance is indeed necessary in some degree ; but the quantity of it depends on imagination, and the nature of circumstances. The poet who can take to his wings like a dove, and plunge into the wood nearest him, is farther off, millions of miles, in the retreat of his thoughts, than the literalist, who must get to Johnny Groat's, in order to convince himself that he is not in Edinburgh. Almost any companion would do, if we could not make our choice, provided it loved us and was sincere. A horse is good company, if you have no other ; a dog still better. I have often thouorht, that I could take a child bv the hand, and walk with it THE COMPANION. 355 day aflcr clay towards the north or the east, a straight road, fechng as if it would lead into another world. " And think 'twould lead to some hright isle of rest." But I should have to go back, to fetch some grown friends. There were three of us on the present occasion, grown and young. We began by taking the Dulwich stage from a house in Fleet street, where a drunken man came into the tap, and was very pious. He recited hymns; asked the landlady to shake hands with him ; was for making a sofa of the counter, which she pre- vented by thrusting Iiis leg off with some indignation; and being hindered in this piece of jolHty, he sank on his knees to pray. He was too good-natured for a Methodist; so had taken to stiff glasses of brandy and water, ** To help him to support uneasy steps Over the burning marie." He said he had been "twice through the gates of hell;" and by his drinking, poor fellow, he seemed to be setting out on his third adventure. We called him Sin-bad. By the way, when you were a boy, did you not think that the name of Sindbad was allegorical, and meant a man who had sinned very badly ? Does not every little boy think so? One does not indeed, at that time of life, know very well what to make of the porter H'mdbad, who rhymes to him ; and I remember I was not pleased when I came to find out that Hind and Sind were component words, and meant Eastern and Western. The stage took us to the Greyhound at Dulwich, where though we liad come from another village almost as far off from London on the northern side, we felt as if we had newly got into the country, and eat a hearty supper accordingly. This was a thing not usual with us ; but then everybody eats " in the country ;" — there is " the air ;" and besides, we had eaten little dinner, and were merrier, and " remote." On looking out of our chamber window in the morn- ing, we remarked that the situation cf the inn was beautiful, even towards the road, the place is so rich with trees; and returning to the room we had supped in, we found with pleasure that we had a window there, presenting us with a peep into rich meadows, where the haymakers were at work in their white shirts. A sunny room, 356 THE COMPANION. quiet, our remote five miles, and a pleasant subject (the Poetry of British Ladies) enabled the editorial part of us to go comfortably to our morning's task ; after which we left the inn to proceed on our journey. We had not seen Dulwich for many years, and were surprised to find it still so full of trees. It continues, at least in the quarter through which we passed, to deserve the recommenda- tion given it by Armstrong, of — - " Dulwich, yet unspoil'd by art." He would have added, had he lived now, that art had come, even to make it better. It was with real pain, that two lovers of the fine arts were obliged to coast the walls of the college, without seeing the Gallery; but we have vowed a pilgrimage very shortly to those re- moter places, there to be found ; to wit, the landscapes of Claude, and the faces of Leonardo da Vinci; and we shall make report of it, to save our character. We know not whether it was the sultriness of the day, with occasional heavy clouds, but we thought the air of Dulwich too warm, and pronounced it a place of sleepy luxuriance. So it appeared to us that morning; beautiful however, and '* remote;'* and the thought of old Allan, Shakspeare's playmate,, made it still more so We remember in our boyhood, seeing Sir Francis Bourgeois (the bequeather of the Dulwich pictures) in company with Mr West, in the latter's gallery in Newman street. He was in buckskins and boots, the dandy dress of that time ; and appeared to us a lively, good-natured man, with a pleasing countenance ; probably because he said something pleasant of us. He confirmed it with an oath ; which startled us, but did not alter our opinion. Ever afterwards we had an inclination to like his pictures, which we believe were not very good ; and unfortunately, with whatever gravity he might paint, his oath and his buckskins would never allow us to consider him a serious person ; so that it somewhat surprised us to hear, that M. Desenfans had bequeathed him his gallery out of pure egard, and still more, that Sir Francis, when he died, had ordered his own remains to be gathered to those of his benefactor and Madame Desenfans, and all three buried in the society of the pic- tures they loved. For the first time, we began to think that his pic- tures must have contained more than was found in them, and that I THE COMPANION. 357 we had done wrong (as it is very customary to do) to the gaiety of his manners. If there was vanity in the bequest, as some have thought, it was at least a vanity accompanied with touching cir- stances and an appearance of a very social taste; and as most peoi)le have their vanities, it might be as well for them to think what sort of accompaniments exalt or degrade theirs, or render them purely dull and selfish. As to the Gallery's being ** out of the way," especially for students, I am of a different opinion, and for two reasons; first, that no gallery, whether in or out of the way, can ever produce great artists; — nature, and perhaps the very want of a gallery, always settling that matter, before galleries are thought of; — and second, because in going to see the pictures in a beautiful country village, people get out of their town common- places, and are better prepared for the perception of other beauties, and of the nature that makes them all. Besides, there is probably something to pay on a jaunt of this kind, and yet of a different sort from payments at a door. There is no illiberal demand at Dulwich for a liberal pleasure; but then " the inn" is inviting; people eat and drink, and get social ; and the warmth which dinner and a glass diffuses, helps them to rejoice doubly in the warmth of the sunshine and the pictures, and in the fame of the great and generous. Leaving Dulwich for Norwood (where we rejoiced to hear that some of our old friends the Gipsies were still extant) we found the air very refreshing as we ascended towards the church of the latter village. It is one of the dandy modern churches (for they deserve no better name) standing on an open hill, as if to be admired. It is pleasant to see churches instead of Methodist chapels, because any moderate religion has more of real Christianity in it, than contumelious opinions of God and the next world ; but there is a want of taste, of every sort, in these new churches. They are not picturesque, like the old ones; they are not humble; they are not what they are so often miscalled, classical. A barn is a more classical building, than a church with a fantastic steeple to it. In fact, a barn is of the genuine classical shape, and only wants a stone covering, and pillars about it, to become a Temple of Theseus. The classical shape is the shape of simple utility and beauty. Sometimes we see it in the body of the modern church ; but then 358 THE COMPANION. a steeple must be put on it ; the artist must have something of his own; and having in fact nothing of his own, he first puts a bit of a steeple, which he thinks will not be enough, then another bitj and then another ; adds another fantastic ornament here and there to his building, by way of rim or *' border, like;" and so, having put his pepper-box over his pillars, and his pillars over his pepper-box, he pretends he has done a grand thing, while he knows very well that he has only been perplexed and a bricklayer. For a village, the old picturesque church is the proper thing, with its tower and its trees, as at Hendon and Finchley ; or its spire, as at Beckenham. Classical beauty is one thing ; Gothic or Saxon beauty is another ; quite as genuine in its way, and in this instance more suitable. It has been well observed, that what is called classical architecture, though of older date than the Gothic, really does not look so old, — does not so well convey the sentiment of antiquity ; that is to say, the ideal associations of this world, however ancient, are far surpassed in the reach of ages by those of religion, and the patriarchs, and another world; not to mention, that we have been used to identify them with the visible old age of our parents and kindred ; and that Greek and Roman architecture, in its smoothness and polish, has an unfading look of youth. It might be thought, that the erection of new churches on the classical principle (taking it for granted that they remind us more of Greek and Roman temples, than of their own absurdity) would be favourable to the growth of liberality ; that at least, liberality would not be opposed by it, whereas the preservation of the old style might tend to keep up old notions. We do not think so, except inasmuch as the old notions would not be unfavourable to the new. New opinions ought to be made to grow as kindly as possible out of old ones, and should preserve all that they contain of the affectionate and truly venerable. We could fancy the most liberal doctrines preached five hundred years hence in churches precisely like those of our ancestors, and their old dust ready to blossom into delight at the arrival of true Christianity. But these new, fine, heartless-looking, showy churches, neither one thing nor the other, have, to our eyes, an appearance of nothing but worldliness and a job. We descended into Streatham by the lane leading to the White tiil; companion. 359 Lion; the which noble beast, regardant, looked at us up the narrow passage, as if intending to dispute rather than invite our approach to the castle of his hospitable proprietor. On going nearer, we found that the grimness of his aspect was purely in our imagina- tions, the said lordly animal having in fact a countenance singularly humane, and very like a gentleman we knew once of the name of Collins. Not the Collins that your friends are acquainted with, but another. It not being within our plan to accept CoUins's invitation, we turned to the left, and proceeded down the village, thinking of Dr Johnson. Seeing however an aged landlord at the door, we stepped back to ask him if he remembered the Doctor. He knew nothing of him, nor even of Mr Thrale; having come late, he said, to those parts. Resuming our way, we saw, at the end of the village, a decent-looking old man, with a sharp eye, and a. hale countenance, who with an easy self-satisfied air, as if he had worked enough in his time, and was no longer under the necessity of over- troubling himself, sat indolently cracking stones in the road. We asked him if he knew Dr Johnson; and he said, with a jerk up of his eye, *' Oh yes; — I knew him well enough." Seating myself on one side of his trench of stones, I proceeded to have that matter out with Master Whatman (for such was the name of ray informant.) His information did not amount to much, but it contained one or two points which I do not remember to have met with, and every addition to our knowledge of such a man is valuable. Nobody will think it more so than yourself, who will certainly yearn over this part of my letter, and make much of it. The following is the sum total of what was related. Johnson, he said, wore a silk-waistcoat embroidered with silver, and all over snufF. The snuff he carried loose in his waistcoat pocket, and would take a handful! of it out with one hand, and help himself to it with the other. He would sometimes have his dinner brought out to him in the park, and set on the ground; and while he was waiting for it, would lie idly, and cut the grass with a knife. His manners were very goodnatured, and sometimes so childish, that people would have taken him for " an ideot ,like." His voice was "low." — "Do you mean low in a gruff sense?" — "No; it was rather feminine." — " Then perhaps, in one sense of the word, it 360 THE COMPANION. was high." — "Yes, it was." — "And gentle?" — " Yes, very gentle." (This, of course, was to people in general, and to the villagers. When he dogmatized, it became what Lord Pembroke called a " bow-wow." The late Mr Fuseli told us the same thing of Johnson's voice; we mean, that it was " high," in contradistinction to a bass voice.) To proceed with our village historian. Our informant recurred several times to the childish manners of Johnson, saying, that he often appeared " quite simple," — " just like a child," — " almost foolish, like." When he walked, he always seemed in a hurry. His walk was " between a run and a shuffle." (Master Whatman was here painting a good portrait. I have often suspected, that the best likeness of Johnson was a whole length engraving of him, walking in Scotland, with that joke of his under- neath about the stick that he lost in the isle of Mull. Boswell told him the stick would be returned. " No, Sir," replied he ; " consider the value of such a piece of timber here." The manner of his walk in the picture is precisely that described by the villager.) Whatman concluded, by giving his opinion of Mrs Thrale, which he did in exactly the following words : — '^ She gathered a good deal of knowledge from him, but does not seem to have turned it to much account." Wherever you now go about the country, you recognize the effects of that " Two-penny Trash," which the illiberal affect to hold in such contempt, and are really so afraid of. They have reason ; for people now canvass their pretensions in good set terms, who would have said nothing but Ananl to a question, thirty years back. Not that Mr Whatman discussed politics with us. Let no magnanimous Quarterly Reviewer try to get him turned out of a place on that score. We are speaking of the peasantry at large, and then, not merely of politics, but of questions of all sorts interesting to humanity; which the very clowns now discuss by the road- side, to an extent at which their former leaders would not dare to discuss them. This is one reason, among others, why knowledge must go on victoriously. A real zeal for the truth can discuss anything : — slavery can only go the length of its chain. In quitting Streatham, we met a lady on horseback accompanied by three curs and a footman ; which a milk-man facetiously termed a footman and " three outriders." Entering Mitcham by the green THE COMPANION. 361 where they play at cricket, we noticed a pretty, moderate-sized house, with the largest geraniums growing on each side the door that we ever beheld in that situation. Mitcham reminded me of its neighbour Merton, and of the days of my childhood ; but we would not go out of our way to see it. There was the little river Wandle however, turning a mill, and flowing between flowery meadows. The mill was that of a copper manufactory, at which the people work night as well as day, one half taking tlie duties alternately. The reason given for this is, that by night, the river, not being interrupted by other demands upon it, works to better advantage. The epithet of '' flowery," applied to the district, is no poetical license. In the fields about Mitcham they cultivate herbs for the apothecaries ; so that, in the height of the season, you walk as in the Elysian fields, — " In yellow meads of asphodel, And amaranthine bowers." Apothecaries' Hall, we understand, is entirely supplied with this poetical part of medicine from some acres of ground belonging to ]\Iajor Moor. A beautiful bed of poppies, as we entered Morden, glowed in the setting sun, like the dreams of Titian. It looked like a bed for Proserpina, — a glow of melancholy beauty, containing a joy perhaps beyond joy. Poppies, with their dark ruby cups, and crowned heads, — the more than wine colour of their sleepy silk, and the funereal look of their anthers, seem to have a meaning about them, beyond other flowers. They look as if they held a mystery at their hearts, like sleeping kings of Lethe. The church of Mitcham has been rebuilt, if we recollect rightly, but in the proper old style. Morden has a good old church, which tempted us to look into the church-yard ; but a rich man who lives near it, and who did not chuse his house to be approached on that side, had locked up the gate ; so that there was no path through it except on Sundays. Can this be a lawful exercise of power ? If people have a right to call any path their own, I should think it must be that which leads to the graves of their fathers and mothers; and next to them, such a path is the right of the traveller. The traveller may be in some measure regarded as a representative of wandering humanity, and claims relationship with all whom he finds attached to a place in idea. He and the dead, are all alike in 5G2 THE COMPANION. a place, and yet apart from it. Setting aside this remoter senti- ment, it is surely an inconsiderate thing in any man to shut up a church-yard from the villagers ; and should these pages meet the eye of the person in question, he is recommended to think better of it. Possibly I may not know the whole of the case ; and on that account, though not that only, I mention no names ; for the inha- bitant with whom I talked on the subject, and who regarded it in the same light, added, with a candour becoming his objections, that " the gentleman was a very good-natured gentleman too, and kind to the poor." How his act of power squares with his kindness, I do not know. Very good-natured people are sometimes very fond of having their own way ; but this is a mode of indulging it, which a truly generous person, I should think, will on reflection, be glad to give up. Such a man, I am sure, can afford to concede a point, where others, who do not deserve the character, will try hard to retain every little proof of their importance. On the steps of the George Inn at Morden, — the rustic inn of a hamlet, — stood a personage much grimmer than the White Lion of Streatham ; looking, in fact, with his fiery eyes, his beak, and his old mouth and chin, very like the cock, or " grim leoun," of Chaucer. He was tall and thin, with a flapped hat over his eyes, and appeared as sulky and dissatisfied, as if he had quarrelled with the whole world, the exciseman in particular. We asked him, if he could let us have some tea. He said, '' Yes, he believed so;" and pointed with an indifferent, or rather hostile air, to a room at the side, which we entered. A buxom good-natured girl, with a squint that was bewitching after the moral deformity of our friend's visage, served us up tea; and "^ tea. Sir," as Johnson might have said, " inspires placidity." The room was adorned with some engravings after Smirke, the subjects out of Shakspeare, which Jj never look so well, I think, as when thus encountered on a journey ^ Shakspeare is in the highway of life, with exquisite side touches of the remoteness of the poet ; and nobody links all kindly together as he does. We afterwards found, in conversing with the villager above men- tioned, that our host of the George had got rich, and was preparing to quit for a new house he had built, in which he meant to turn gentleman farmer. Habit made him dislike to go ; pride and his THE COMPANION. 303 wife (who vowed she would go whether he did or not) rendered him unable to stay ; and so, between his grudging the new comer and the old rib, he was in as pretty a state of irritability as any suc- cessful non-succeeder need be. People had been galling him all day, we suppose, with shewing how many pots of ale would be drank under the new tenant ; and our arrival crowned the measure of his receipts and wretchedness by intimating, that " gentlefolks" intended to come to tea. — Adieu till next week. To the Worshipful and Right Social Master E. II. and our otlier well-beloved Companions, one and all, — these with all speed. Print, print j print for your life. THE LATE FIRES. It is astonishing how little imagination there is in the world, in mat- ters not aflfecting men's immediate wants and importance. People seem to require a million thumps on the head, before they can learn to guard against a head-ache. This would be little; but the greater the calamity, the less they seem to provide against it. All the fires in this great metropolis, and the frightful catastrophes which are often the result, do not shew the inhabitants that they ought to take measures to guard against them, and that these mea- sures arc among the easiest things in the world. Every man, who has a family, and whose house is too high to allow of jumping out of the windows, ought to consider himself boujid to have a fire-escape. What signifies all the care he has taken to be a good husband or father, and all the provision he has made for the well-being of his children in after life, if in one frightful moment, in the dead of night, with hor- ror glaring in their faces, and tender and despairing words swal- lowed up in burning and suffocation, — amidst cracking beams and rafters, sinking floors, and a whole yielding gulf of agony, they are all to cease to be ! — to perish like so many vermin in a wall. Fire- escapes, even if they are not made so already (as we believe they are) can evidently be constructed in a most easy, cheap, and commodious manner. A basket and a double rope are suflficient. Or two or three would be better. It is the sudden sense of the height at which people sleep, and the despair of escape which consequently seizes them, for want of some such provision, that disables them from thinking 364 THE COMPANION. of any other resources. Houses, it is true, have very often trap- doors to the roof; but these are not kept in readiness for use ; a ladder is wanting ; or the door is hard to be got up ; the passage to it is most likely difficult, and involved in the fire ; and after all, the roof may not be a safe one to walk over ; children cannot act for themselves ; terror affects the older people ; and therefore, on all these accounts, nothing is more desirable than that the means of escape should be at hand, should be facile, and able to be used in concert v;ith the multitude below. People out of doors are ever ready and anxious to assist. Thos.e brave fellows, the firemen, would complete the task, if time allowed, and circumstances had hitherto prevented it ; and handle the basket, and the little riders in it, with confidence, like so many chickens. A time perhaps will come, when every window in a high bed-chamber will have an escape to it, as a matter of course; but it is a terrible pity mean- while, that for want of a little imagination out of the common pale of their Mondays and Wednesdays, a whole metropolis, piquing themselves on' their love of their families, should subject them- selves and the dearest objects of their affection to these infernal accidents. POETRY OF BRITISH iADIES. (Continued from p. 336'.^ Mils Sheridan's verses are not so good as her novels. Miss Jones has a compliment to Pope, which Pope himself may have admired for its own sake. ** Alas ! I'd live unknown, unenvy'd too ; 'Tis more than Pope with all his wit can do." " Miss Jones," says a note in Boswell quoted by Mr Dyce, " lived at Oxford, and was often of our parties. She was a very ingenious poetess, and published a volume of poems ; and on the whole, was a most sensible, agreeable, and enviable woman. She was sister to the Rev. River Jones, Chanter of Christ-church Cathedral, at Oxford, and Johnson used to call her the Chantress. I have heard him often address her in this passage from II Pen- seroso, " Thee, chantress, oft the woods among, I woo, 5fC." This puts in a pleasant light both Johnson and the poetess. How is it that these women, who are at once clever and amiable, should so often die unmarried ? A clever woman, who is unamiable, we can easily conceive to remain single. Amiableness without cleverness beats her to nothing (to use a very Irish metaphor). If we were a Shakspeare, we would rather marry a good-natured girl, who had nothing but the instinctive wisdom of her disposition to go upon (and there is a good deal in that) than the cleverest woman I THE COMPANION. 365 upon earth, who would plague us with the folly of her bad temper. But head and heart at once, how is it that these are resisted ? Want of fortune on the lady's part, and want of sense on the men's, are, we fear, the chief and the sordid reasons. It is curious to see the numbers of young; men, who can pass bv the most amiable of the other sex, and wait for what they call good matches. Indeed, it is thought a matter of common prudence, and admired as such ; whereas, even considered in that liglit, it is prudence only as far as a bad state of society is concerned, and is at once a consequence and a cause of it: and one thing is always meanly kept in the background on these occasions ; namely, that the men, however wanting meanwhile in a proper and tender imagination, are alive enough to the call of their senses, which they indulge at the ex- pense of another part of the sex ; ruining, in fact, one set of women, that they may not be able, now or ever, to do justice to another. But the cause of our poetess is carrying us away from the subject. There are some fine chants by a Mr Jones, one especially which is sung in St Paul's on some anniversary, and used to affect Haydn. Was this " Chanter" the Jones of Oxford? The composition we allude to is to be found in the ' Harmonicon.' We forget whether it is exactly a chaunt or a hymn ; but remember being forcibly struck even in imagination with the effect which must result in a great cathedral from the alternate softness and loudness of the strains, one of them being sung gently by the choir, and then the response being shouted out by an army of young voices. Frances Brooke, author of Rosina, of Lady Julia Mandeville, &c. was a better poetess in her prose than her verse. Her Ode to Health, here given by Mr Dyce, is not much. We should have preferred a song out of Rosina. But we will venture to affirm, she must have written a capital love-letter. These clergymen's daugh- ters somehow (her father was a Rev. Mr Moore) contrive to have a double zest in those matters. Mrs Brooke was for some time, if we are not mistaken, one of the managers of the Italian Opera. Her novel of Lady Julia Mandeinlle, may be had of IMr Limbird for eight-pence, or some such modicum. One is almost ashamed to give so little for knowledge : yet the time will come, we trust, and that before long, when it will be still cheaper. If newspapers (which are so many thick volumes printed miraculously on a sheet) can be tossed off so cheaply, by thousands, through the means of the new might of the steam-engine, why may not books be printed in like manner, a hundred at a blow ? In the well-known Prayer for Indifference, by ^Irs Greville, is a stanza, which has the point of epigram with all the softness of a gentle truth. " Nor peace, nor ease, the heart can know. That, like the needle true, Turns at the touch of joy or woe, Bui turning, trembles too." 366 THE COMPANIOl^. The pause in this last line is very exquisite. We are sorry we have not our books near us ; or we could surely find out something respecting Mrs Greville, to make up for the Editor's want of infor- mation on that point. Is there nothing in Miss Hays's biography ? In Nichols's collections ? Or Collins's Peerage, by Egerton ? We think we have a recollection, that Mrs Greville was allied by mar- riage to the noble family of that name. Two poems by Lady Henrietta O'Neil, are taken out of her friend Mrs Charlotte Smith's novel of Desmond, — a work, by the way, from which Sir Walter Scott has borrowed the foundation of his character of Waverley, and the name besides. In a novel by the same lady, we forget which, is the first sketch of the sea-side incident in the Antiquary, where the hero saves the life of Miss Wardour. Lady Henrietta's verses do her credit, but seem to imply a good deal of suffering. One " To the Poppy," begins with the following melodious piece of melancholy : — *' Not for the promise of the laboured field. Not for the good the yellow harvests yield, I bend at Ceres' shrine ; For dull to humid eyes appear The golden glories of the year : Alas ! a melancholy worship's mine : ** 1 hail the Goddess for her scarlet flower," &c. In* other words, the fair and flourishing lady of quality took opium ; which, we believe, was the case with her poorer friend. We believe the world would be astonished, if they knew the names of all the people of genius, and of all the rich people as well as poor, who had recourse to the same consolatory drug; — thousands upon thousands take it, of whom the world have no suspicion ; and yet many of those persons, able to endure perhaps on that very account what requires all the patience of those who abstain from it, will quarrel with you for trying to alter the condition of society. [to be continued.] THE FENCING-MASTERS CHOICE. As we have a great aversion to the repetition of old jokes, and in our ignorance of what is going forward in the festive parts of the town, can never be certain that any story we take for a new one is not well known, we always feel inclined to preface a relation of this kind with something that should serve for an apology in case of necessity, or give it a new grace in default of newness of a better sort. And this reflection always reminds us of that pleasant Milanese, whom nature made a wag and a jolly fellow, and Francis THE COMPANION. 367 the First made a bishop; to wit, Master Matthew Bandello, the best Italian novelist, after Boccaccio, and one who could tell a grave story as well a merry one. Monsi^nore Matteo, before he proceeds to relate how " a jealous enamoured himself" of a young widow, or how a pleasant " bef was put upon a priest who became *' furious of it," and '' remained stordited," — makes a point of informiui:; the reader, where he first heard the story, who told it, and in whose company, and how much better it was told than he, with his Lombardisms, can have any pretence to repeat it ; on all which accounts he wishes to God, that people could have heard it fresh from the lips of that very amiable and magnificent Signor, the before-mentioned Signor Antonio, whom he recollects as if it was but yesterday, because he was standing at the time with a right joyous and genteel company by the balustrade of the gardens of the very illustrious and most adorned Signor, his singularly noble friend the Signor Gherardesco dei Gherardi, Conte di Cuviano, where there happened to be present the ladies equally eminent for their high birth and most excellent endowments, to wit, the right courteous, virtuous, and most beautiful Ladies the Lady Vittoria, Princess of Colombano, and the Lady Hippolita D'Este, widow of the most valorous and magnificent Signor, the ever-memorable Alfonso, Prince of Ferrara; which ladies, being very afiectionate towards all argute sayings and witty deeds, did nigh burst them- selves for laughter, in the which the very illustrious Signor Gherar- desco aforesaid did heartily join, to the great contentment of that princely company, and all who overheard those urbane conceits and most graceful phrases, which he (the Bishop) utterly despairs of rendering anything the like to the reader. But he will do his best; and as the story is exceedingly curious (to wit, a little free) he had addressed it to the right virtuous and most adorned with all feminine dowries, the Lady Lucretia di San-Donnato, in return for one of a like nature which she was graciously pleased to relate to him one day ; to wit, on the eve of the day of Corpus Domini, sit- ting in the windows of the Palazzo Rospoli, at that time inhabited by the very magnificent, most adorned, and most worthily given Signor, the Signor Prince Cesare Ottoboni, nephew of the most Holy Father. By this process, the reader feels bound to like the story, if only out of a proper sense of the company he is in, and the respect that is due to all those fair and magnificent names; and then follows the novella, or new tale, perhaps not at all new, and no longer than the one we are about to relate. We should like to call to ourselves an aid of this sort, and be able at the head of every one of our stories to state how it was told us by this person or that; how that, sitting one day in the gardens of Kensington, at a time when the dust of the streets rendered an escape into those green and quiet places agreeable, we had the pleasure of hearing it from tlic lips of that very 368 THE COMPANION. adorned and witty Mister, the Reverend Mister Samuel Smith, or the extremely magnificent and choice in his neckcloths, the ad- mired Mr Tomlinson ; or how dining with the very magnificent and grave Esquire, the Squire Jinks, of Jinks Hall, it was related to us by the facetious and extremely skilled in languages, the bachelor of arts, the hopeful Dick Watts, cousin of the high born and most beautiful lady, the Lady Barbara Jinks, consort of the said esquire, who being at that moment in the act of sw^allowing a cherry, was nigh to have thrown all the lovers of wit and elegance in those parts into mourning, in consequence of the ex- treme difficulty she found in swallowing the fruit and the facetiosity at once. The story is this: that in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the celebrated fencing-master. Monsieur de la Rue, being at that time fencing-master to the gentlemen of the university of Cambridge, and grievously tor- mented in his vocation by the said gentlemen, who made no end of mimicking his grimaces, groaning out of measure at his thrusts, not repenting at his remonstrances, and shewing themselves other- wise insensible of the dignity and pains-taking of his profession, did one day, towards the end of the month of June, the weather being hot, the said Monsieur de la Rue in his jacket and night-cap, and divers of the said gentlemen standing idly about, laughing and making a vain sport, instead of pinking him as they ought to have done, — he, the said Monsieur de la Rue, did, I say, then and there sit down on the floor in the room in which he was fencing, and placing, one on each side of him, the two foils which he then happened to be holding in his hands, and being provoked out of the ordinary measure of his patience by the eternal gibes, and ungrateful levities of those his tormentors, the said gentlemen," was moved to utter the following speech, or representation expos- tulatory; which he did with great passion and vehemence, his eyes wide open, his hands and face trembling, and emphasis rising at every sentence: — Jentlemens, — If Got Ahnaighty — vere to come down from hevven, — and vere to say to me, *' Monsieur de la Rue, — vill you be fencing-master at Osford or Cambreege, — or vill you be eta irn ally dam?" — I should answer and say, — " Sake, — if it is all the same to you, — I vill be etairnally dam." LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clauke, York street, Covent garden ; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4d. PRINTED BY C. U. REYNELL, BROAD STREET. GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION No. XXVI. WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 1828. " Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sir William Temple. THE PANTOFLES. (from the ITALIAN OF GOZZI.) BY A CORRESPONDENT. In Bagdad lived an old merchant, of the name of Abon Casern, who was famous for his riches, but still more for his avarice. His coffers were small to look at (if you could get a sight of them), and very dirty ; but they were crammed with jewels. His clothes were as scanty as need be; but then, even in his clothes, there was multum in parvo ; to wit, much dirt in little space. All the em- broidery he wore was of that kind which is of necessity attendant upon a ragged state of drapery. It meandered over his bony form in all the beauty of ill-sewn patches. His turban was of the finest kind of linen for lasting; a kind of canvass, and so mixed with VOL. I. *2^i 370 THE COMPANION. elementary substances, that its original colour, if it still existed, was invisible. But of all his habiliments, his slippers were most deserving the study of the curious. They were the extreme cases both of his body and his dirt. The soles consisted chiefly of huge nails, and the upper leathers of almost everything. The ship of the Argonauts was not a greater miscellany. During the ten years of their performance in the character of shoes, the most skilful cobblers had exercised their science and ingenuity in keeping them together. The accumulation of materials had been so great, and their weight was so heavy in proportion, that they were promoted to honours of proverbialism ; and Abon Casem's slippers became a favourite comparison, when a superfluity of weight was the sub- ject of discourse. It happened one day, as this precious merchant was walking in the market, that he had a great quantity of fine glass bottles offered him for sale : and as the proposed bargain was greatly on his side, and he made it still more so, he bought them. The vendor in- formed him, furthermore, that a perfumer having lately become bankrupt, had no resource left but to sell, at a very low price, a large quantity of rose-water ; and Casem, greatly rejoicing at this news, and hastening to the poor man's shop, bought up all the rose-water at half its value. He then carried it home, and com- fortably put it in his bottles. Delighted with these good bargains, and buoyant in his spirits, our hero, instead of making a feast, according to the custom of his fellows, thought it more advisable to go to the bath, where he had not been for some time. While employed in the intricate business of undressing, one of his friends, or one whom he believed such, (for your misers seldom have any) observed, that his pantofles had made him quite the THE COMPANION. 371 bye-word of the city, and that it was hi^li time to buy a new pair. " To say the truth," said Casern, *' I have long thought of doing so, but they are not yet so worn, as to be unable to serve me a little longer;" — and having undressed himself, he went into the stove. During the luxury he was there enjoying, the Cadi of Bagdad came in, and having undressed himself, he went into the stove likewise. Casem soon after came out ; and having dressed him- self, looked about for his pantofles, but nowhere could he find them. In the place of his own, he found a pair suflficiently dif- ferent to be not only new, but splendid ; and feeling convinced that they were a gift from his friend, (not the less so, perhaps, because he wished it) he triumphantly thrust his toes in them, and issued forth into the air, radiant with joy and a skin nearly clean. On the other hand, when the Cadi had performed the necessary purifications, and was dressed, his slaves looked for his lordship*s slippers in vain. Nowhere could they be found. Instead of the embroidered pantofles of the Judge, they detected, in a corner, only the phenomena left by Casem, which were too well known to leave a doubt how their master's had disappeared. The slaves made out immediately for Casem, and brought him back to the indignant magistrate, who, deaf to his attempts at defence, sent him to prison. Now in the East, the claws of justice open just as wide, and no wider, as the purse of the culprit ; and it may be supposed that Abon Casem, who was known to be as rich as he was miserly, did not get his freedom at the same rate as his rose- water. The miserable Casern returned home, tearing his beard, for beard is not a dear stuff; and being mightily enraged with the pantou- fles, he sif-zed upon them, and threw tlicm cut of his window 372 THE COMPANION. into the Tigris. It happened a few days after, that some fisher- men drew their nets under the window, and the weight being greater than usual, they were exulting in their success, when out came the pantofles. Furious against Casern (for who did not know Casern's pantofles ?) they threw them in at the window, at the same time reviling him for the accident. Unhappy Casem ! The panto- fles flew into his room, fell among his bottles^ v/hich w^ere ranged with great care along the shelf, and overthrowing them, covered the room with glass and rose-water. Imagine, if you can, the miser's agony ! With a loud voice, and tearing his beard, accord- ing to custom, he roared out, " Accursed pantofles, will you never cease persecuting the wretched Casem?" So saying, he took a spade, and went into his garden to bury them. It so happened, that one of his neighbours was looking olit of window at the time ; and seeing Casem poking about the earth in his garden, he ran to the Cadi, and told him that his old friend had discovered a treasure. Nothing more was requisite to excite the cupidity of the Judge. He allowed the miser to aver, as joudly as he pleased, that he was burying his slippers, and had found no treasure, but at the same time demanded the treasure he had found. Casem talked to no purpose. Wearied out at last with his own asseverations, he paid the money, and departed, cursing the very souls of the pantofles. Determined to get rid of these unhappy moveables, our hero walked to some distance from the city, and threw them into a reservoir, hoping he had now fairly seen the last of them ; but the devil, not yet tired of tormenting him, guided the pantofles pre- cisely to the mouth of the conduit. From this point they were carried along into the city, and sticking at the mouth of the THE COMPANION. 373 aqueduct, they stopped it up, and prevented the water from flowing into the basin. The overseers of the city fountains seeing that the water had stopped, immediately set about repairing the damage ; and at length dragged into the face of day the old re- probate slippers, which they immediately took to the Cadi, com- plaining loudly of the damage they had caused. The unfortunate proprietor was now condemned to pay a fine still heavier than before : but fur was he from having the luck of seeing his chattels detained. The Cadi, having delivered the sen- tence, said, like a conscientious magistrate, that he had no power of retaining other peoples' property, upon which the slippers, with much solemnity, were faithfully returned to their distracted master. He carried them home with him ; and meditating, as he went, and as well as he was able to meditate, how he should destroy them ; at length he determined upon committing them to the flames. He accordingly tried to do so, but they were too wet; so he put them on a terrace to dry. But the devil, as aforesaid, had reserved a still more cruel accident than any before: for a dog, whose master lived hard by, seeing these strange wild fowl of a pair of shoes, jumped from one terrace to the other, till he came to the miser's, and began to play with one of them ; in his sport he dropped it over the balustrade, and it fell heavy with hobnails and the accu- mulated guilt of years, on the tender head of an infant, and killed him on the spot. The parents went straight to the Cadi and com- plained that they had found their child dead, and Casem's pantofle lying by it, upon which the Judge condemned him to pay a very heavy fine. Casern returned home, and taking the pantoflcs, went back to the Cadi, crying out with an enthusiasm that convulsed everybody, 374 THE COMPANION. '^ Behold ! behold ! See here the fatal cause of all the sufferings of Casern ; these accursed pantofles^ which have at length brought ruin upon his head. My lord Cadi, be so merciful, I pray you, as to give an edict that may free me from all imputation of accident which these slippers henceforth may occasion, as they certainly will to anybody who ventures into their accursed leather.'^ The Cadi could not refuse this request; and the miser learned to his cost the ill effects of not buying a new pair of shoes. SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETESSES. (Continued from page '6^^.) Mrs Robinson^ formerly mistress of the present King, appears to have been a complete victim of circumstances. She was married at fifteen ; her husband turned out extravagant and profligate ; she continued faithful, and the birth of a child made her doubly wish to love him ; but he tired her out, being in fact of a cast of mind unworthy to associate with hers. Meantime she went on the stage; the wits and fine gentlemen came about her; royalty itself, aided by the attractions of youth and a fine person, paid her its homage; and her beauty, her vanity, her accomplishments, and even her heart, all conspired to make her give way. Here now was a case for which society ought to have made provision; but there was none. Mrs Robinson, with a genial temperament and a poetical fancy, had to choose between the rigid self-denial exacted of women by the other sex, and all those natural pleasures of her youth to which the most rigid of those THE COMPANION. 375 exactors are the first to tempt thoni. She chose, and " fell." Let those, who with cfiuiil beauty, fancy, and temptation, have practised the denial, be the first to cast a stone at her; or rather let persons of the wry reverse description do it; for the others will certainly not. We are not for blaming the King on her account. He was young, and beset with temptations likewise; and princes are not expected to practise self-denial, though princesses are. That is the harshest word we would say on the occasion. We do not conceive that the King is abstractedly opposed to the growth of any liberal opinion ; and that is saying much. But for everybody's sake, princes and princesses included, some reformation on these points is ardently to be desired, and will ere long, we think, be demanded by the voice of the community. Mrs Robinson's verses are not much ; but there is a sonnet in the present volume, which besides having a merit of its own, re- sembling the best sonnets of the second-rate Italian cultivators of that species of poem, acquires a deeper interest from the evident allusion it bears to her own history. ** SONNET. '* High on a rock, coeval with the skie?, A temple stands, rear'd by immortal powers To Chastity divine ! Ambrosial flowers Twining round icicles, in columns rise, MingUng with pendent gems of orient dyes ! Piercing the air, a golden crescent towers Veil'd by transparent clouds ; while smiling horns Shake from their varying wings celestial joys I The steps of spotless marble scatter'd o'er With deathless roses arm'd with many a thorn, Lead to the altar. On the frozen floor, Studded with tear-drops petrified by scorn, Pale vestals kneel the (ioddess to adore. While Love, his arrows broke, retires forlorn." 376 THE COMPANION. On the subject of the Delia Cruscan school, of which Mrs Robinson was a suffering sister, Mr Dyce observes very well, that " a whip would have been a sufficiently formidable weapon to have scared them from the fields of song, but Mr GifFord pursued them with a drawn sword, cut them to pieces, and exulted over the slaughter." Unfortunately, he cut not only butterflies, but suffering women to pieces. It was this man, if man he is to be called, who not daring to lift up a finger at anything great or powerful, thought to get a reputation for wit and virtue by way- laying their discarded mistresses, and striking a blow at poor Mrs Robinson's rheumatism and crutches ! He got his reputation among people as slavish and half-witted as himself; but it lingers now only among book-makers and other " artificers" in literature, and will very speedily be unheard of. He was a clever man in his way; but his way was one of those which lead to nothing but a man's own advancement; and when he disappears, the path is merged in the common high-way, and its dirt and himself alike forgotten. The lady that follows in this interesting and very various proces- sion, is Mrs Chapone, formerly Miss Mulso, who came out of the coterie of Richardson, and was a very moral person, but not the less sensitive under the rose. She is well known, as Mr Dyce says, for her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind. We believe they are very good of the sort ; but the most interesting thing we remem- ber about them, was their perusal, or rather non-perusal, by two young and very innocent lovers, who, busily occupied (to all appear- ance) over their pages, and with their cheeks close to one another, took about half an hour in turning over every leaf. Mrs Chapone's verses are not so good as her book. THE COMPANION. 377 Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, \vho was " made," accord- ing to Gibbon, '' for something better than a Duchess," follows with her celebrated ode on the Passage of Mount St Gothard, which awakened the enthusiasm of Coleridge. There are fine lines in it, and a vital liberality of sentiment. The writer seems to breathe out her fervent words, like a young IMusc, her lips glowing with health and the morning dew. ** Yet let not these rude paths be coldly traced. Let not these wilds with listless steps be trod ; Here fragrance scor/is not to perfume the waste y Here charity uplifts the mind to God." At stanza twenty, it is said finely, ** The torrent pours, and breathes its glittering spray." Stanza twenty-four was the one that excited the admiration of Coleridge. " And hail the chapel ! hail the platform wild ! Where Tell directed the avenging dart, With well-strung arm that first preserv'd his child, Then wing'd the arrow to the tyrant's heart." " Oh lady !" cried the poet, on hearing this animated apostroplie, " Oh lady! nurs'd in pomp and pleasure. Where gat ye that heroic measure ?" This is the burden of an ode by Coleridge, which we regret we have not within our reach. — The Duchess of Devonshire got into the vortex of fashion, with a head more able to charm others than to direct itself; and became a victim, we believe, to difticulties such as Madame D'Arblay delights to paint. But the author of the Passage of Mount St Gothard must have been a glorious being by nature. It was she of whom it is said, that a man at an election 37^ THE COMPANION. once exclaimed, astonished at her beauty, " Well,— if 1 were God himself, I'd make her Queen of Heaven." Exit the Duchess ; and enter, in this curious alternation of grave and gay, the staid solemnity of Miss Carter, a stoic philosopher, who died at the age of eighty-nine. Here is her Ode to Wisdom, | somewhat bitter against *' The coxcomb's sneer, the stupid lie Of ignorance and spite :" and some Lines to a Ge,ntleman on his intending to cut down a Grove^ ■which are pleasanter. A Hamadryad, who is made to remonstrate on the occasion, says " Reflect, before the fatal axe JMy threatened doom has wrought ; Nor sacrifice to sensual taste The nobler growth of thought ^ This hne, by which thoughts are made to grow in the mind like a solemn grove of trees, is very striking. And the next stanza is good : ** Not all the glowing fruits that blush On India's sunny coast. Can recompense thee for the worth Of one idea lost." Miss Carter translated Epictetus; and was much, and we be- lieve deservedly, admired in her day for the soundness of her acquirements. We were startled at reading somewhere the other day that, in her youth, she had not only the wisdom of Pallas, but the look of a Hebe. Healthy no doubt she was, and jbossessed of a fine constitution. She was probably also handsome; but Hebe and a hook nose are in our minds impossible associations. Charlotte Smith has been mentioned before. Some of her novels will last, and her sonnets with them, each perhaps aided THE COMPANION. 379 by the other. There is nothing great in her; but she is natural and touching, and has hit, in the music of her sorrows, upon some of those chords which have been awakened equally, though not so well, in all human bosoms. ** SONNET. jrrittcn at the Close of Spring-. " The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove. Each simple flower, which she had nurs'd in dew, Aneraonies, that spangled every grove. The primrose wan, and harebell m.ildly blue. No more shall violets linger in the dell. Or purple orchis variegate the plain. Till Spring again shall call forth every bell, jdnd dri'ss with humid hands her wreaths aifaln. Ah, poor humanity ! so frail, so fair. Are the fond visions of thy early day. Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care. Bid all thy fairy colours^ fade away ! Another May new buds and flowers shall bring; Ah ! why has happiness — no second Spring P'' " SONNET. To the Moon. ** Queen of the silver bow ! by thy pale beam. Alone and pensive, I delight to stray. And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream, ( )r mark the floating clouds that cross thy way. And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast ; And oft I think, fair planet of the night. That in thy orb the ^vretched may have rest : The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go, Releas'd by death, to thy benignant sphere. And the sad children of despair and woe Forget in thee, their cup of sorrow here. Oh ! that I soon may reach thy world serene. Poor wearied pilgrim in this toiling scene !" 380 THE COMPANION. " SONNET. ** Sighing I see yon little troop at play. By sorrow yet untouch'd, unhurt by care. While free and sportive they enjoy to-day, " Content and careless of to-morrow's fare.'* O happy age ! when Hope's unclouded ray Lights their green path y and prompts their simple mirth. Ere yet they feel the thorns that lurking lay To wound the wretched pilgrims of the earth. Making them rue the hour that gave them birth. And threw them on a world so full of pain. Where prosperous folly treads on patient worth. And to deaf pride misfortune pleads in vain ! Ah 1 for their future fate how many fears Oppress my heart, and fill mine eyes with tears!'' " SONNET. The Glow-worm. " When, on some balmy-breathing night of Spring, The happy child, to whom the world is new. Pursues the evening moth of mealy wing. Or from the heath-bell beats the sparkling dew ; He sees, before his inexperienc'd eyes. The brilliant Glow-worm, like a meteor, shine On the turf-bank j — amaz'd and pleas'd he cries, * Star of the dewy grass, I make thee mine ! ' Then, ere he sleep, collects the moisten'd flower. And bids soft leaves his glittering prize enfold. And dreams that fairy lamps illume his bower ; Yet with the morning shudders to behold His lucid treasure, rayless as the dust; So turn the World's bright joys to cold and blank disgust." Mrs Smith's love of botany, as Mr Dyce observes, " has led her, in several of her pieces, to paint a variety of flowers with a minute- ness and delicacy rarely equalled." This is very true. No young lady, fond of books and flowers, would be without Charlolte Smith's THE COMPANION. 381 poems, if once acquainted wiih them. The following couplet, from the piece entitled Saint Monica, shews her tendency to this agree- able miniature painting. ** From the mapped lichen, to the plumed weed ; From thready mosses, to the veined flow'r." Mrs Smith suffered bitterly from the failure of her husband's mercantile speculations, and the consequent troubles they both in- curred from the law ; -which, according to her representations, were aggravated in a most scandalous manner by guardians and execu- tors. Lawyers cut a remarkable figure in her novels ; and her complaints upon these her domestic grievances, overflow, in a sin- gular, though not unpardonable or unmoving manner, in her pre- faces. To one of the later editions of her poems, published when she was alive, is prefixed a portrait of her, under which, with a pretty feminine pathos, which a generous reader would be loth to call vanity, she has quoted the following lines from Shakspeare : *' Oh, Time has chang'd me since you saw me last ; And heavy hours, with Time's deforming hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face." Miss Seward is affected and superfluous ; but now and then she writes a good line (** And sultry silence brooded o'er the hills " — ) and paints a natural picture. The strange, unheard-of luxury, which she describes, of rising to her books before day on a winter's morning, is, we confess, not unknown to us, nor unenjoyed. In fact, we thought to have been new on that subject, and to have let our readers into the startling secret; but the lady has been before us. 382 THE COMPANION. " SONNET. December Morning, 1782. " I Jove to rise ere gleams the tardy light, Winter's pale dawn ; — and as warm fires illume And cheerfid. tapers shine around the room. Thro' misty windows bend my musing sight. Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white. With shutters clos'd, peer faintly thro' the gloom. That slow recedes ; while yon gray spires assume. Rising from their dark pile, an added height By indistinctness given. — Then to decree Tile grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold To Friendship, or the Muse, or seek with glee Wisdom's rich page : — O hours ! more worth than gold. By whose blest use we lengthen life, and free From drear decays of age, outlive the old !" Miss Seward ought to have married, and had a person superior to herself for her husband. She would have lost her affectation; doubled her good things ; and we doubt not, have made an enter- taining companion for all hours, grave or gay. The daughter of the Editor of " Beaumont and Fletcher " was not a mean person, though lost among the egotisms of her native town, and the praises of injudicious friends. Meanwhile, it is something too much to hear her talk of translating an Ode of Horace, " while her hair is dressing!" The Psyche of Mrs Tighe has a languid beauty in it, probably resembling that of her own person. This lady, who was the daugh- ter of the Rev. William Blachford, died in her 37th year; we believe, of consumption. The face prefixed to her poem is very handsome. The greater part of her poem is little worth, except as a strain of elegance ; but in the more voluptuous scenes, here quoted (and not improperly so, by the editor), the fair author is THE COMPANION. 383 more at home; and now and then, from the languor, she warms into the imagination of Spenser. Cupid, as he lies sleeping, has a little suffusing light, stealing from between his eyelids. ** The friendly curtain of indulgent sleep Disclos'd not yet his eyes' resistless sway, But from their silky veil there seem'd to peep Some brilliant glances with a soften'd ray, Which o'er his features exquisitely play. And all his polish'd limbs suffuse with light. Thus thro' some narrow space the azure day Sudden its cheerful rays diffusing bright. Wide darts its lucid beams, to gild theJ)row of night." This is the prettiest '' peep o' day boy," which has yet appeared in Ireland. Mrs Tighe's, however refined, is the passion of the senses; nor do we quarrel with it. But we mean, the senses are predominant. In the stanzas that follow, by Mrs Brunton, authoress of Self- Control and other didactic novels, the passion is that of the heart. This includes the senses; whereas the other, unfortunately, too often leaves out the heart. Mrs Brunton's stanzas, the last of which is very beautiful, do her more honour, and imply a superior order of person to her novels, if we recollect them rightly. Is not Decwion one of them? Such writings are mere begcrinfrs of the question. Indeed the best thing to say of them is, that they have candour enough to be almost avowedly so. The lines are of better material; things of deep sympathy, and not of angered assumption " When thou at eventide art roaming Along the clm-o'erahaded walk. Where, past, the eddying stream is foaming Beneath its tiny cataract, — Wliere I with thee was wont to talk, — Think thou upon the days gone by, And heave n sigh ! 384 THE COMPANION. *' When sails the moon above the mountains, And cloudless skies are purely blue, And sparkle in the light the fountains, And darker frowns the lonely yew, — Then be thou melancholy too. When musing on the hours I prov'd With thee, belov'd ! '' When wakes the dawn upon thy dwelling. And lingering shadows disappear. And soft the woodland songs are swelling A choral anthem on thine ear, — Think — for that hour to thought is dear ! And then her flight remembrance wuigs To by-past things. ** To me, thro' every season, dearest. In every scene — by day, by night. Thou present to my mind appearest A quenchless star — for ever bright ! My solitary, sole delight ! Alone — in grove — ^by shore — at sea, I think of thee 1" (to be concluded next week.) LONDON Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden ; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4rf. PRINTED BY C. 11. RF.YNELL, BROAD STREET. GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. XXVII. \VEDx\ESDAY, JULY 9, 1828. *' Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sm William T£:mple. SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETESSES. (Concluded from p. 384.; In our last number, we omitted a panegyric on Marriage, which we had intended to notice. It was written by Mrs Cowley, the dra- matist, authoress of the Belle's Stratagem. Mr Dyce reports of her, that ** she had very little pleasure in theatrical representations." It is to be hoped that she was too happy at home. The origin of her taste for dramatic writing is thus related by the .biographers. ** While sitting at one of the theatres with her husband, she told him that she thought she could write quite as good a comedy as the one that was then performing, and on his laughing at her, the next morning sketched the first act of the * Runaway,' which met with so much success, that she was encouraged to proceed, and next produced * The Belle's Stratagem,' which established her fame completely, and was soon ranked among the best stock pieces."* Mrs Cowley's poem, above-mentioned, is as follows : — " O Marriage ! pow'rful charm, gift all divine, Sent from the skies, o'er life's drear waste to shine ; What splendours from thy brijrht tiara spring, What graces round thy chasten'd footsteps cling ! * Gorton's General Biographical Dictionary. VOL. I. 27 386 THE COMPANION. Vengeance will surely crush the ideot land. That drags the sceptre from thy hallow'd hand ; That dares to trample on thy holy rites. And nuptial perfidy, unaw'd, invites." Let us pause here. The " ideot land" was *' France during the Revolution." But vengeance did not crush it. On the contrary, France was notoriously bettered by the Revolution ; and is at this minute one of the freest and happiest countries in the world. On the other hand, ^' nuptial 'perfidy' was never in such flourishing condition as under the old system. The difference in that respect was that, under the old system, marriage was at once iiidissoluble and despised; whereas, under the new, it was made dissoluble, be- cause philosophy had taught the union of the sexes to be more respected. " The weeping world to thee its solace owes. From thee derives its truest, best repose ; Not the cold compact subtle interest twines. Not that which pale Submission trembling signs. Is Marriage ! No ! 'tis when its polish'd chain Binds those who in each other's bosom reign ; 'Tis when two minds form one ecstatic whole. One sweetly blended wish, one sense, one soul.'* Very pretty : and this, we dare say, was Mrs Cowley's marriage when she wrote. Perhaps it lasted during her life. Her husband was a Captain in the East India service : his visits may have been " few and far between ;" and as Mrs Cowley was amiable and sen- sible, she may have justly preferred the raptures of those renewals of their intercourse, with hope, and honour, and sweet thoughts in the interval, to those grosser and dull demands of habit, neither necessary nor flattering, which are the weakest and most ridi- culous of all debaucheries, and waste away life in a bluster of insipidity. But if such marriages as Mrs Cowley here describes are the only ones, what are we to call the rest? And how does she differ in her notion of marriage, or the spirit of it, from those who were ideots and to be punished ? France never meant to say, that two persons who were suited to each other, might not remain so all their life. It was old France that laughed at such a notion. New France said, love one another as long as you please, but if you find that the mistakes of youth, or any other cause, have brought to- THE COMPANION. 387 gethcr two unsuitable persons, and that you are really and lastingly so, what good can it be to you or to society to continue miserable yourselves, and propagating dulncss, error, and bye-words on marriage and human misery to all eternity? France said this, and twenty other things which tlie common sense of mankind had long been feeling; and the consequence was, that she rose again from the ashes of old customs, double the thing she was, in " mind, body, and estate." According to Mrs Cowley, not above one pair in a thousand are married, and even that is a romantic calculation. May the rest then consider themselves as unmarried, and act accordingly? If not, what does her denouncement, or her panegyric, amount to? ** This was the gift the exil'd seraph curst. When from hell's blazing continent he burst ; Eden's full charms he saw, without a groan. The' Nature there had fixed her gorgeous throne ; Its rich ananas, and its aloes high. Whose forms pyramidal approached the sky. Its towering palms with luscious clusters crown'd, Its shrubs, whose perfumes fill'd the regions round ; Its streams pellucid, and its bowers of shade, Its flowers, that knew to bloom, but not to fade ; Its orb, that gave the new created day. Night's lunar bow, that soothed with tender ray. Its fields of wavy gold, its slopes of green, By the fell fiend without a pang were seen — 'Twas then fierce rancour seized the demon's breast. When in the married pair he felt mankind were blest 1" Good: — but suppose he had seen, not merely this first married pair in all the beauty of their youth, newness, and innocence, with no wish to be unfaithful, and nobody to be unfaithful with if they had it, but all the married pairs that were to issue from that union ? What would he have said then? What did he say, according to Machiavel? Or, if this authority be suspected, what did Milton say on these two very points? There is a beautiful passage, the famous one beginning, " Hail, wedded love," which is often quoted from Paradise Lost, and adduced as shewing the author's opinion of marriage. It is an opinion however, like Mrs Cowley's, that supposes an if; nor can a proper conclusion be got at respecting the sentiments of the writer, without comparing it with his Treatise on Divorce, his own conduct, and a subsequent passage in the same 388 THE COMPANION. poem ; which passage, as it is very remarkable, and always kept in the back-ground when the other is quoted, we shall here repeat. It is further remarkable, that the panegyric on Wedded Love is an imitation from Tasso, who was never married ; while the subsequent account of wedlock is entirely Milton's, and evidently made up of all that he had felt and observed. ** O ! what are these. Death's ministers, not men ? who thus deal death Inhumanly to men, and multiply Ten thousandfold the sin of him who slew His brother : for of whom such massacre Make they, but of their brethren ; men of men ? These are the product Of those ill-mated marriages thou sawest ; Where good with bad were matched, who of themselves Abhor to join ; and by imprudence mix'd Produce prodigious births of body or of mind." Paradise Lost, Book Eleventh. Mrs Hunter, " wife of the celebrated John Hunter, and sister of the present Sir Everard Home, published a volume of Poems, some of which are written with much elegance and feeling. Several of her songs had previously been set to music : one or two are em- balmed in the eternal melodies of Haydn." — Among the latter, is a song extracted by Mr Dyce, beginning " The season comes when first we met." It is the first composition of Haydn that convinced us he could write with genuine passion, and stopped the mouth of divers blasphemies we used to utter on that point. It is to be found in an elegant selection of airs, trios, &c., in two volumes, well worthy the attention, and not beyond the skill, of the amateur, published by Mr SainsbuYy, and entitled the Vocal Anthology. Mrs Hunter was author of the well-known Death Song of a Cherokee Indian, " The sun sets in night, and the stars shun the day." A simple and cordial energy, made up of feehng and good sense, is the characteristic of the better part of her writings. " Hester Lynch Piozzi, more distinguished," says Mr Dyce, " as the friend and hostess of Johnson, than as an authoress, was the daughter of John Salusbury, Esq. of Bodvel in Caernarvonshire : her first husband was Mr Thrale, an eminent brewer; her second, THE COMPANION. 389 Signer Piozzi, a musif- master. The superiority of Tlie Three Warnings to her other poetical pieces, lias excited suspicion tliat Johnson assisted her in its composition." There is no foundation for tljese suspicions. The style is a great deal too natural and lively for Johnson. If we suspected anything", it would be that Mrs Thrale had found the original in the French, the lax metre and versification resembling those of the second order of French tales in verse. Mrs Thrale was one who would naturally give rise to suspicion, for she was a lax talker, careless of truth. As to the objections against her for marrying Piozzi, we never could enter into them. '' An eminent brewer" is a very good thing; but how it is to be considered per se, as superior to a music-master, we cannot conceive. On the contrary, the music- master, in himself, must be considered as having the advantage, for he at least has an accomplishment, whereas the other mav know nothing but how to brew. The greatest composers have been music-masters : Haydn was one, Mozart was one, Sacchini, Gluck, Winter, Paesiello, — perhaps indeed every name famous in the art. Mr Thrale, it is true, besides being a brewer, was an agreeable host and a scholar, able to converse with Dr Johnson, and to spend his money handsomely ; though all this (to judge from appearances) did not hinder him from killing himself with eating and drinking; but nothing, we believe, is known against Piozzi^ except the wish of his enemies to find fault with him, which was probably owing to envy. A man whom we conversed with the other day at Streatham, had nothing to say in his disfavour, though he seemed to partake of the common opinion against the marriage. Piozzi, according to him, appears to have spent his money as hand- somely as Thrale, and he seemed to consider him a respectable man. The last we heard of 'Sirs Thrale was a little before her death, when she sat for her portrait to an eminent artist, and ap- peared to be as lively as ever. She must have been then near eighty. The artist happened to have iu his room an excellent copy which he had made of Johnson's portrait by Sir Joshua. She recognized it, and cried out, ** Ah, my dear Doctor Johnson!" Here was at least no grudge on the score of old quarrels. Mrs lladcliffe's verses arc unworthy of her romances, in the 390 THE COMPANION. latter she was what Mr Mathias called her, *' a mighty magician*/' — or not to lose the fine sound of his whole phrase, — " the mighty magician of Udolpho." In her verses, she is a tinselled nymph in 3 a pantomime, calling up common-places with a feeble wand. ;] Anna Laetitia Barbauld is perhaps the chief poetess in the book. 1 At any rate, she is one of the three best. The others are Anne I, Countess of Winchelsea, already noticed ; and Lady Anne Barnard, J of whom more presently. It is curious, by the way, to observe how I the name of Anne predominates in this list of females. There are seventy-eight writers in all, besides anonymous ones, and two or three whose Christian names are not known ; and out of these seventy-eight, eighteen have the name of Anne. The name that prevails next, is Mary; and then Elizabeth. The popularity of Anne is perhaps of Protestant origin, and began with Anne Boleyn. It served at once to proclaim the new opinions, to eschew the reigning Catholic appellation of Mary, and at the same time to appear modestly scriptural. But the sweet gentleness of the name of Mary was not to be pat down, even by the help of the poor bigot of Smithfield. Mr Dyce informs us that Mr Fox used to speak with admiration of Mrs Barbauld's talents, and had got her songs by heart. This ■was an applause worth having. We must extract the whole of her Summer Evening's Meditation, if it is only for the sake of some noble lines in it, and to present to the reader's imagination the picture of a fine-minded female wrapt up in thought and devotion. She is like the goddess in Milton's Pensieroso. A SUMMER evening's MEDITATION. *' 'Tis past ! the sultry tyrant of the south Has spent his short-liv'd rage : more grateful hours Move silent on : the skies no more repel The dazzled sight ; but, with mild maiden beams Of temper'd light, invite the cherish'd eye To wander o'er their sphere ; where hung aloft Dian's bright crescent, like a silver bow New strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns. Impatient for the night, and seems to push Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines. Even in the eye of day ; with sweetest beam Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood Of soften'd radiance from her dewy locks. The shadows spread apace ; while meekcn'd Eve, THE COMPANION. 391 Her check yet warm with hlushcs, slow retiree Thro' the Hesperian gardens of the west, And shuts the gates of day. 'Tis now the hour Wlien Contemplation, from her sunless haunts, Tlie cool damp grotto, or the lonely dci)th Of unpierc'd woods, where wrapt in solid shade She mus'd away the gaudy hours of noon. And, fed on thoughts unrij)en'd hy the sun, Moves forward ; and with radiant finger points To yon blue concave swell'd by breath divine, Wliere, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether One boundless blaze ; ten thousand trembling fires. And dancing lustres, where th' unsteady eye. Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfin'd O'er all this field of glories : spacious field. And worthy of the master : he whose hand. With hieroglyphics elder than the Nile, Inscrib'd the mystic tablet ; hung on high To public gaze ; and said. Adore, O man. The finger of thy God ! From what pure wells Of milky light, what soft o'erflowing urn. Are all these lamps so fill'd ? these friendly lamps For ever streaming o'er the azure deep To point oui- path, and hght us to our home. How soft they slide along their lucid spheres ! And, silent as the foot of time, fulfil Their destin'd courses : Nature's self is hush'd. And, but a scatter'd leaf, which rustles thro' The thick-wove fohage, not a sound is heard To break the midnight air ; tho' the rais'd ear Intensely listening, drinks in every breath. How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise ! But are they silent all ? or is there not A tongue in every star that talks with man. And wooes him to be wise ? nor wooes in vain : This dead of midnight is the noon of thought. And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars. At this still hour the self-collected soul Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there Of high descent, and more than mortal rank ; An embryo God ; a spark of fire divine. Which must burn on for ages, when the sun (Fair transitory creature of a day) Has clos'd his golden eye, and, ^vrapt in shades. Forgets his wonted journey thro' the east. ** Ye citadels of light, and seats of Gods ! Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul. Revolving periods past, may oft look back. With recollected tenderness, on all The various busy scenes she left below. Its deep-laid projects and its strange events. As on some fond and doting tale that sooth'd Her infant hours— O be it lawfid now 392 THE COMPANION, To tread the hallow'd circle of your courts. And with mute wonder and delighted awe Approach your burning confines ! — Seiz'd in thought. On fancy's wild and roving wing I sail From the green borders of the peopled earth, And the pale moon, her duteous fair attendant; From solitary Mars; from the vast orb Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk Dances in ether like the lightest leaf; To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system. Where cheerless Saturn, midst his watery moons. Girt with a lucid zone, in gloomy pomp. Sits hke an exil'd monarch : fearless thence I launch into the trackless deeps of space. Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear^ Of elder beam ; which ask no leave to shine Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light From the proud regent of our scanty day; Sons of the morning, first-born of creation. And only less than Him who marks their track. And guides their fiery wheels. Here must I stop. Or is there aught beyond ? Wliat hand unseen Impels me onward thro' the glowing orbs Of habitable nature, far remote. To the dread confines of eternal night. To solitudes of vast unpeopled space. The deserts of creation wide and wild. Where embryo systems and unkindled suns Sleep in the womb of chaos ? fancy droops. And thought astonish'd stops her bold career. But, O thou mighty Mind ! whose powerful word Said, Thus let all things be, and thus they were. Where shall I seek thy presence ? how unblam'd Invoke thy dread perfection ?— — — Have the broad eyelids of the morn beheld thee ? Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion Support thy throne ? O look with pity down Or erring, guilty man ! not in thy names Of terror clad ; not with those thunders arm'd That conscious Sinai felt, when fear appall'd The scatter'd tribes ! Thou liast a gentler voice. That whispers comfort to the swelling heart, Abash'd, yet longing to behold her Maker. " BuJ now, my soul, unus'd to stretch her powers In flight so daring, drops her weary wing. And seeks again the known accustom'd spot, Drest up with sun, and shade, and lawns, and streams , A mansion fair and spacious for its guest. And full replete with wonders. Let me here. Content and grateful, wait the appointed time. And ripen for the skies ; the hour will come When all these splendours bursting on my sight Shall stand unveil'd, and to my ravish'd sense Unlock the glories of the world unknown." THE COMPANION. 393 So be it. — It is dilHcult to fiinsli the perusal of a poem like this, without an aspiration in harmony with it. All that can be hoped for, consistent with the joy and the dignity of such contemplations, ought to be so; and with minds that have all their faculties, will be so: but the present state of existence need not, for all that, be *' a fond and dotinrr tale." It is from this world that we see the other; — our planet, (to reason from analopry) helps to furnish other planets with similar hopes ; and why should we not think that we liave a piece of heaven in our keeping, to bring into its proper state, granting that there are other and better heavens to go to, as from a less garden into a greater? — The reader will excuse the introduc- tion of these speculations into places that may not always seem fitted for them. There are thoughts which it is useful to keep alive, whenever opportunity occurs ; and it is high time for the imagina- tive part of philosophy to speak out, and vindicate that tendency to natural piety, which is not inconsistent with the utmost liberality of speculation, and a refusal to beg questions of any sort. Mrs Barbauld, like other persons of genuine fancy, had great good sense. Mr Hazlitt has mentioned somewhere her Essay on the Inconsistency of our Expectations. If ever she committed a mistake, she was one, we conceive, who would retrieve it, or bear the consequences, in the best manner. We believe that it is gene- rally understood she did make one, when she married Mr Bar- bauld, — a "little Presbyterian parson," as Johnson indignantly called him. Not that he was not a good man, but very much her inferior ; a dwarf altogether, to one of her liberal dimensions. *' Such tricks hath strong imagination," even when united with the strongest under.^tanding. The latter indeed sometimes only favours the trick, by using its levelling faculty with regard to the many, in vindication of the favoured object ; and by a promise of being suf- ficient to itself, in case of the worst. But youth generally settles these matters, before the understanding is ripened ; and knowledge and repentance arc forced by society to grow on the same bough. To judge by her writings (and by what better things can we judge, if they have the right look of sincerity?) Mrs Barbauld ought to have had a Raleigh or Sidney for her lover. She had both intel- 394 THE COMPANION. lect and passion enough to match a spirit heroical. The song beginning " Come here, fond youth, whoe'er thou be," has all the devoted energy of the old poets. O Lady Anne Barnard, thou that didst write the ballad of Auld Robin Gray, which must have suffused more eyes with tears of the first water than any other ballad that ever was written, we hail, and pay thee homage, knowing thee now for the first time by thy real name ! But why wast thou a woman of quality, when thou oughtst to have been (as thou wast at heart) nothing but the truest lady of thy time ? and what close Scotch example was it, that joining with the sophistications of thy rank, didst make thee so anxious to keep thy secret from the world, and ashamed to be spoken of as an authoress ? Shall habit and education be so strong with those who ought to form instead of being formed by them, as to render such understandings as thine insensible to the humiliation of the fancied dignity of concealment, and the poor pride of being ashamed to give pleasure? But alas! such vanities are practised by still greater wits than thine ; and the more, for the world's sake as well as their own, the pity. The following is the interesting account given by Lady Anne of the birth and fortunes of her ballad : for interesting it is, and we felt delighted to meet with it; though our delight was damped by the considerations just mentioned. We used to feel as if we could walk barefoot to Scotland to see the author of the finest ballad in the world. We now began to doubt; not because we feared the fate of the person who endeavoured to " entrap the truth" from her (though the reception he met with, we think, was hard, considering that an author, at once popular and anonymous, is not likely to have escaped with too nice a conscience in matters of veracity) but because we lose our inalination to see uncommon people who con- descend to wear common masks. We preface her Ladyship's account with Mr Dyce's introduction. " Lady Anne Barnard, (born , died 1825) sister of the late Earl of Balcarras, and wife of Sir Andrew Barnard, wrote the charming song of Auld Robin Gray. A quarto tract, edited by " the Arioato of the THE COMPANION. 395 North," and circulated amonp[ tlie mombers of tlie Bannatyne Club, contains the original ballad, i\s corrected by Lady Anne, and two con- tinuations by the same authoress ; while the Introduction consists almost entirely of a very interesting letter from her to the Editor, dated July 1823, part of which I take the liberty of inserting here : — ** * Robin Gray,' so called from its being the name of the old herd at Balcarras, was bom soon after the close of the year 1771. My sister Margaret had married, and accompanied her husband to London ; I was melancholy, and endeavoured to amuse myself by attempting a few poeti- cal trifles. There was an ancient Scotch melody, of which I was passion- ately fond; , who hved before your day, used to sing it to us at Balcarras. She did not object to its ha\'ing improper words, though I did. I longed to sing old Sophy's air to different words, and give to its plaintive tones some Uttle history of virtuous distress in humble life, such as might suit it. AMiile attempting to effect this in ray closet, I called to my httle sister, now Lady Hardwicke, who was the only person near me, * I have been writing a ballad, my dear ; I am oppressing my heroine with many misfortunes. I have already sent her Jamie to sea — and broken her father's arm — and made her mother fall sick — and given her Auld Robin Gray jfor her lover ; but I wish to load her with a fifth sorrow within the four lines, poor thing! Help me to one.' — * Steal the cow, sister Anne,' said the little Elizabeth. The cow was immediately lifted by me, and the song completed. At our fireside, and amongst our neigh- bours, * Auld Robin Gray' was always called for. 1 was pleased in secret with the approbation it met with ; but such was mt/ dread of being sus- pected of writing anyth'mg, percei\'ing the shyness it created in those who could ^vrite nothing, that I carefully kept my o\vn secret." * » ♦ " Meantime, little as this matter seems to have been worthy of a dis- pute, it afterwards became a party question between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. * Robin Gray' was either a very ancient ballad, composed perhaps by David Rizzio, and a great curiosity, or a very very modern matter, and no curiosity at all. I was persecuted to avow whe- ther I had written it or not, — where I had got it. Old Sophy kept my counsel, and I kept my own, in spite of the gratification of seeing a reward of twenty guineas offered in the newspapers to the person who should ascertain the point past a doubt, and the still more flattering circumstance of a visit from Mr Jemingham, secretary to the Antiquarian Society, who endeavoured to entrap the tnith from me in a manner I took amiss. Had he asked me the question obligingly, I should have told him the fact dis- tinctly and confidentially. The annoyance, however, of this important ambassador from the Antiquaries, was amply repaid to me by the no])lc exhibition of the ' Ballat of Auld Robin Gray's Courtship,' as performed by dancing-dogs under my wndow. It proved its popularity from the highest to the lowest, and gave me pleasure while I hugged myself in my obscurity." *' The two versions of the second i)art were written many years after the first ; in them, Auld Robin (iray falls sick, — confesses that he himself stole the cow, in order to force Jenny to marry him, — leaves to Jamie all his possessions, — dies, — and the young couple, of course, are united. Neither of the Continuations is given here, because, though both are ])eau- tiful, they arc very inferior to the original tale, and greatly injure its effect." 896 THE COMPANION. AULD ROBIN GRAY. ** When the sheep are in the fauld, when the cows come hame. When a' the weary world to quiet rest are gane, The woes of my heart fa' in showers frae my ee, Unken'd hy my gudeman, who soundly sleeps by me. " Young Jamie loo'd me Aveel, and sought me for his bride ; But saving ae crown-piece, he'd naething else beside. To make the crown a pound,* my Jamie gaed to sea; And the crown and the pound, O they were baith for me ! *' Before he had been gane a twelvemonth and a day, My father brak his arm, our cow was stown away ; My mother she fell sick — my Jamie was at sea — And Auld Robin Gray, oh 1 he came a-courting me. '' My father cou'dna work — my m.other cou'dna spin ; I toil'd day and night, but their bread I cou'dna win ; Auld Rob maintain'd them baith, and, wi' tears in his ee. Said, ' Jenny, oh ! for their sakes, will you marry me ?' ** My heart it said na, and I look'd for Jamie back ; But hard blew the winds, and his ship was a wrack : His ship it was a wrack ! Why didna Jamie dee ? Or, wherefore am I spar'd to cry out. Woe is me ! *' My father argued sair — my mother didna speak. But she look'd in my face till my heart was like to break ; They gied him my hand, but my heart was in the sea ; And so Auld Robin Gray, he was gudeman to me. " I hadna been his wife, a week but only four. When mournfu' as I sat on the stane at my door, I saw my Jamie's ghaist — I cou'dna think it he. Till he said, *' I'm come hame, my love, to marry thee !" " O sair, sair did we greet, and mickle say of a' ; Ae kiss we took, nae mair — I bad him gang awa. I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to dee ; For O, I am but young to cry out. Woe is me ! " I gang like a ghaist, and I carer.a much to spin ; I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin. But I will do my best a gude wife aye to be. For Auld Robin Gray, oh ! he is sae kind to me." Such is the most pathetic ballad that ever was written ; and such are the marriages, which it is accounted a sin, not to suffer, * ' and of one or two others connected with the mathematics, that they are the only ones capable of attaining to greatness and celebrity in their respective departments, with a destitution of taste or know- ledge in every other. Every other great talent partakes more or less of a sympathy with greatness in other shapes. Tlie fine arts have their harmonies in common : wit implies a stock of ideas : the legislator — (we do not mean the ordinary conductors of govern- ment, for they, as one of them said, require much less wisdom than the world supposes ; and it may be added, impose upon the world somewhat in the same manner as military leaders, by dint of the size and potency of their operations) — the legislator makes a pro- found study of all the wants of mankind; and poetry and philosophy shew the height at which they live, by " looking abroad into uni- versality." Far be it from us to undervalue the wseof any science, especially in the hands of those who are capable of so looking abroad, and seeing where it can advance the good of the community. The commonest genuine soldier has a merit in his way, which we are far from disesteeming. Without a portion of his fortitude, no man has the power to be useful. But we are speaking of intellects capable of leading society onwards, and not of instruments how- ever respectable : and unfortunately (generally speaking) the greatest soldiers are fit only to be instruments, not leaders. Oncp i THE COiMPANION. 411 and away it happens luckily that they suit the times they live in. Washington is an instance : and yet if ever great man looked like " a tool in the hands of Providence," it was he. He appears to have been always the same man, from first to last, employed or unemployed, known or unknown; — the same steady, dry-looking, determined person, cut and carved like a piece of ebony for the genius of the times to rule with. Before the work was begun, there he was, a sort of born patriarchal staff, governing herds and slaves ; and when the work was over, he was found in his old place, with the same carved countenance, and the same stiff inflexibility, governing them still. And his slaves were found with him. This is what a soldier ought to be. Not indeed if the world were to advance by their means, and theirs only; but that is impossible. Washington was only the sword with which Franklin and the spirit of revolution worked out their purposes ; and a sword should be nothing but a sword. The moment soldiers come to direct the intellect of their age, they make a sorry business of it. Napoleon himself did. Frederick did. Even Caesar failed. As to Alfred the Great, he was not so much a general fighting with generals, as a universal genius warring with barbarism and adversity; and it took a load of sorrow to make even him the demigod he was. ** Stand upon the ancient ways," says Bacon, '' and see what steps may be taken for progression." Look, for the same purpose, (it may be said) upon the rest of the animal creation, and consider the qualities in wliich they have no share with you. Of the others, you may well doubt the greatness, considered as movers, and not instruments, towards progression. It is among the remainder you must seek for the advancement of your species. An insect can be a provider of the necessaries of life, and he can exercise power, and organize violence. He can be a builder ; he can be a soldier; he can be a king. But to all appearance, he is the same as he was ever, and his works perish with him. If insects have such and such an establishment among them, we con- ceive they will have it always, unless men can alter it for them. If they have no such establishment, they are of themselves incapa- 412 THE COMPANION. ble of admitting it. It is men only that add and improve. Men only can bequeath their souls for the benefit of posterity, in the shape of arts and books. Men only can philosophize, and reform, and cast ofFold customs, and take steps for laying the whole globe nearer to the sun of wisdom and happiness : and in proportion as you find them capable of so hoping and so working, you recognize their superiority to the brutes that perish. ADAMS FORESIGHT OF THE EVILS OF THE MAR- RIED SYSTEM, AS NOW PREVAILING. In our last number, there was a quotation from Milton upon this subject, which though apposite to it in one respect, was not the passage we intended to give. Not having our books with us, and being at a distance from them, we were obliged to trouble a friend to make the extract for us ; and he, in his anxiety to hit upon the right one, missed it. If his zeal had been less, he w^ould have found it as easily as the heart in his bosom. We have since met with a reference to the very passage in one of Mr Hazlitt's Essays, and shall take the opportunity of strength- ening our quotation with his own introduction of it. ** How few," says he, " out of the infinite number of those that marry and are given in marriage, wed with those they would prefer to all the world; nay, how far the greater proportion are joined together by mere motives of convenience, accident, recommendation of friends, or indeed not unfrequently by the very fear of the event, by repugnance and a sort of fatal fascination : yet the tie is for life, not to be shaken off but with disgrace or death : a man no longer lives to himself, but is a body (as well as mind) chained to another, in spite of himself — * Like life and death in disproportion met.* " So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes Adam exclaim in the vehemence of his despair — THE COMPANION. 413 ' For either He never shall find out fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him or mistake ; Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain'd By a far worse ; or if she love, withheld By parents ; or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate and shame ; Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life, and household peace confound.' " Table Talk, vol. i, p. 224. SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETESSES. Yet once more, O ye fair ones, and once more Ye ladies brown, with bright eyes ever dear, We come to pluck your fancies, sweet and good. And with pleas'd fingers rude Borrow your leaves for our Companions here. Not having room enough in our last number for a charming domestic ballad attributed to Mr Wordsworth's sister, we were compelled to omit it. Having a little too much in our present, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to lay it before the reader. *' ADDRESS TO A CHILD DURING A BOISTEROUS WINTER EVENING. ** What way does the wind come ? what way does he go ? He rides over the water and over the snow, Thro' wood and thro' vale ; and o'er rocky height Which the goat cannot climb takes his sounding flight. He tosses about in every bare tree. As, if you look up, you plainly may see ; But how he will come, and whither he goes. There's never a scholar in England knows. 414 THE COMPANION. '* He will suddenly stop in a cunning nook. And rings a sharp larum ; — but if you should look. There's nothing to see but a cushion of snow Round as a pillow, and whiter than milk. And softer than if it were covered with silk. " Sometimes he'll hide in the cave of a rock. Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock ; Yet seek him, — and what shall you find in the place ? Nothing but silence and empty space. Save in a corner, a heap of dry leaves. That he's left for a bed for beggars or thieves ! " As soon as 'tis daylight, tomorrow with me You shall go to the orchard, and then you will see That he has been there, and made a great rout, And cracked the branches, and strewn them about ; Heaven grant that he spare but that one upright twig That look'd up at the sky so proud and big All last summer, as well you know. Studded with apples, a beautiful show ! " Hark ! over the roof he makes a pause. And growls as if he would fix his claws Right in the slates, and with a huge rattle Drive them down, like men in battle : — But let him range round ; he does us no harm, We build up the fire, we're snug and wann ; Untouch'd by his breath, see the candle shines bright. And burns with a clear and steady light ; Books have we to read, — hush ! that half-stifl.ed knell, Methinks 'tis the sound of the eight-o'clock bell. *' Come, now we'll to bed ! and when we are there. He may work his own will, and what shall we care ? He may knock at the door, — we'll not let him in. May drive at the Avindows, — we'll laugh at liis din ; Let him seek his own home wherever it be ; Here's a cozie warm house for Edward and me." THE COMPANION. 415 We add the poem we alluded to, on tlie Sea, by Mrs Hemans. "the TllEASUUES OF THE DEEP. " What hid'st thou in thy treasure-caves and cells. Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main ? •^Pale glistening pearls, and rainbow-coloured shells, Bright things which gleam unreck'd of, and in vain. — Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea ! We ask not such from thee. " Yet more, the dejiths have more ! — What wealth untold. Far down, and shining thro' their stillness, Ues ! Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold. Won from ten thousand royal argosies. — Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main. Earth claims not these again ! ** Yet more, the depths have more ! thy waves have roll'd Above the cities of a world gone by ! Sand hath fill'd up the palaces of old. Sea-weed o'ergrown the halls of revelry, — Dash o'er them. Ocean ! in thy scornful play, Man yields them to decay ! ** Yet more ! the billows and the depths have more ! High hearts and brave are gather'd to thy breast ! They hear not now the booming waters roar, The battle-thunders will not break their rest. — Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave — Give back the true and brave ! " Give back the lost and lovely ! — those for whom The place was kept at board and hearth so long ! The prayer went up thro' midnight's breathless gloom. And the vain yearning woke midst festal song ! Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'ertlirown, — But all is not thine own ! ** To thee the love of woman hath gone down. Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head, O'er youth's bright locks and beauty's flowery crown ; — Y'et must thou hear a voice — Restore the dead ! Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee, — Restore the dead, thou sea ! " 416 THE COMPANION. In taking leave of this interesting work, we ought perhaps to apologize to the publisher for the very free use we have made of its pages, but as a bookseller, we hope we shall have not injured him ; and as a liberal man, we reckon upon his forgiveness, for the sake of the fair writers that have beguiled us. The work in truth has been of greater use, as well as pleasure to us, than we expected it to be ; for with buoyant hearts, we have great cares, and are sub- ject to severe attacks of illness; and these sometimes encompass us so strongly, and all at once, that having other writing to do as well as the present, we fear we make but a sorry business of some of our pages. Our health is really better than it was ten years ago ; but our tasks have increased ; and it is difficult for the greatest resolution to hold on an even course under all sorts of fluctuosities. Hold on we shall, and we trust successfully ; but this explanation must account meanwhile for any immediate failure of promise which we are unfortunate enough to make. LONDON : Published by Hunt and Clarke, York street, Covent garden; and sold by all Booksellers aud Newsvenders in town and country. — Price 4d. ruiNTKD RY C. 11. REYNELL, BROAD STREET. GOLDEN SQUARE. THE COMPANION. No. XXIX. WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1828. *' Sometliiiig alone yet not alone, to be wisiied, and only to be found, in a friend." — Sin William Temple. A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. (Concluded from page 363 J We left Morden after tea, and proceeded on our road for Epsom. The landscape continued flat, but luxuriant. You are sure, I be- lieve, of trees in Surrey, except on the downs; and they are sur- rounded with wood, and often have beautiful clumps of it. The sun began to set a little after we had got beyond the Post-house ; and was the largest I remember to have seen. It looked through hedges of elms and wild roses ; the mowers were going home ; and by degrees the landscape was bathed in a balmy twilight. Patient and placid thought succeeded. It was an hour^ and a scene, in which one would suppose that the weariest-laden pilgrim must feel his burden easier. About a mile from EwcU a post-chaise overtook and past us, the driver of which was seated, and had taken up an eleemosinary girl to sit with him. Postillions run along a road, conscious of a pretty power in that way, and able to select some fair one, to whom they gallantly make a present of a ride. Not having a fare of one sort, they make it up to themselves by taking another. You may be pretty sure on these occasions, that there is nobody " hid in their vacant interlunar" chaise. So taking pity on my companions (for after I am once tired, I seem as if I coidd go on, tired for ever), I VOL. I. 29 41S THK COMPANION. started, and ran after the charioteer. Some good-natured peasants (by the bye they all appear such in this county) aided the shouts I sent after him. He stopped; and the gallantry on both sides was rewarded by the addition of two females to his vehicle. We were soon through Ewell, a pretty neat-looking place, with a proper old church, and a handsome house opposite, new, but in the old style. The church has trees by it, and there was a moon over them. — At Ewell was born the facetious Bishop Corbet, who when a bald man was brought before him to be confirmed, said to his assistant, *' Some dust, Lushington :" — (to keep his hand from slipping.) The night air struck cold on passing Ewell; and for the first time there was an appearance of a bleak and barren country to the left. This was Epsom Downs. They are the same as the Ban- stead and Leatherhead downs, the name varying with the neigh- bourhood. You remember Banstead mutton? " To Hounslow-heath I point, and Banstead down ; " Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own." Pope seems to have lifted up his delicate nose at Twickenham, and scented his dinner a dozen miles off. At Epsom we supped and slept; and finding the inn comfortable, and having some work to do, we stopped there a day or two. Do you not like those solid, wainscoted rooms in old houses, with seats in the windows, and no pretension but to comfort ? They please me exceedingly. Their merits are complete, if they are wide and low, and situate in a spot at once woody and dry. Wood is not to be expected in a high street ; but the house (the King's Head) was of this description ; and Epsom itself is in a nest of trees. Next morning, on looking out of window, we found ourselves in a proper country town, remarkably neat, the houses not old enough to be ruinous, nor yet to have been exchanged for new ones of a London character. Opposite us was the watch-house with the market clock, and a pond which is said to contain gold and silver fish. How those delicate little creatures came to inhabit a pond in the middle of a town, I cannot say. One fancies they must have been put in by the fantastic hand of some fine lady in the days of Charles the Second ; for this part of the country is eminent in the annals of gaiety, Charles used to come to the races here ; the THE COMPANION. 419 palace of Nonsuch which he gave to Lady Castlemain is a few miles ofF; and here he visited the g-entry in the neif^hbourhood. At Ashted Park, close by, and still in possession of inheritors of the name of Howard by marriage, he visited Sir Robert Howard, the brother-in-law of Dryden, who probably used to come there also. They preserved there till not long ago the table at which he dined. This Ashted is a lovely spot, — both park and village. The vil- lage, or rather hamlet, is on the road to Leatherhead ; so indeed is the park; but the mansion is out of sight; and near the mansion, and in the very thick of the park and the trees, with tiie deer run- ningabout it, is the village church, small, old, and picturesque, — a little stone tower ; and the churchyard, of proportionate dimensions, is beside it. When I first saw it, looking with its pointed windows through the trees, the surprise was beautiful. The inside disappoints you, not because it is so small, but because the accommodations, and the look of them, are so homely. The wood of the pews resembles that of an old kitchen dresser in colour ; the lord of the manor's being not a whit better than tlie rest. This is in good taste, considering the rest; and Col. Howard, who has the reputation of being a liberal man, probably keeps the church just as he found it, without thinking about the matter. Aj; any rate, he does not exalt himself, in a Christian assembly, at the expense of his neigh- bours. But loving old churches as I do, and looking forward to a time, when a Christianity still more worthy of the name shall be preached in them, I could not help wishing that the inside were more worthy of the out. A coating of shining walnut, a painting at one end, and a small organ with its dark wood and its golden- looking pipes at the other, would make, at no great expense to a wealthy man, a jewel of an interior, worthy of the lovely spot in which the church is situate. One cannot help desiring something of this kind the more, on account of what has been done for other village churches in the neighbourhood, which we shall presently notice. Epsom church, we believe, is among them ; the outside unquestionably (we have not seen the interior) ; and a spire has been added, which makes a pretty addition to the scenery. The only ornaments of Ashted church, besides two or three monuments of the Howards, are the family 'scutcheon, and that of his Sacred 420 THE COMPANION, Majesty Charles the Second; which I suppose was put up at the time of his restoration or his visit, and has remained ever since, the lion still looking- lively and threatening. One imagines the court coming to church, and the whole place filled with perukes and courtiers, with love-locks and rustling silks. Sir Robert is in a state of exaltation. Dryden stands near him, observant. Charles com- poses his face to the sermon, upon which Buckingham and Sedley are cracking almost unbearable jokes behind their gloves; and the poor village maidens, gaping alternately at his Majesty's sacred visage and the profane beauty of the Duchess of Cleveland, and then losing their eyes among " a power" of cavaliers, ^' the hand- somest men as ever was," are in a way to bring the hearts, thumping in their boddices, to a fine market. 1 wonder how many descen- dants there are of Earls and Marquises living this minute at Epsom! How much noble blood ignobly occupied with dairies and ploughs, and looking gules in the cheeks of bumpkins. Ashted Park has some fine walnut trees (Surrey is the great gar- den of walnuts) and one of the noblest limes I ever saw. The park is well kept, has a pretty lodge and game-keeper's house with roses at the doors; and a farm-cottage, where the "gentlefolks" miay play at rustics. A lady of quality, in a boddice, gives one some how a pretty notion ; especially if she has a heart high enough really to sympathize with humility. The late Earl of Exeter lived unknown for some time in a village, under the name of Jones (was not that a good name to select?) and married a country-girl, whom he took to Burleigh House, and then for the first time told her she was the mistress of it and a Countess ! This is a romance of real life, which has been deservedly envied. If I, instead of being a shattered student, an old intellectual soldier, " not worth a lady's eye," and forced to compose his frame to abide the biddings of his resolution, were a young fellow in the bloom of life, and equally clever and pennyless, I cannot imagine a fortune of which I should be prouder^ and which would give me a right to take a manlier aspect in the eyes of love, than to owe everything I had in the world, down to my very shoe-strings, to a woman who should have played over the same story with me, the sexes being reversed; who should say, *' you took me for a cottager, and I am a Countess ; and this is the only deception you will ever have to forgive me.'' What a pleasure to strive after daily excellence, in order to show one's gratitude to such a woman ; to fight for her; to suffer for her ; to wear her name, like a priceless jewel ; to hold her hand in long sickness, and look in her face when it had lost its beauty; to say, questioning, " You know how I love you ?" and for her to answer with such a face of truth, that nothing but exceeding health could hinder one from being faint with adoring her. Alas ! why are not all hearts that are capable of love, rich in the knowledge how to shew it ; which would supersede the necessity of other riches? Or indeed, are not all hearts which are truly so capable, gifted with the riches by the capacity? THE COMPANION. 421 Forgive mc this dream under tlie walnut-trees of Ashtcd Park ; and let us return to the colder loves of the a'^e of Charles the Second. I thought to give you a good j)icture of Epsom, by turning to Shad- well's comedy of ' Epsom Wells ;' but it contains nothing of any sort except a sketch of a wittol or two, though Sedley is said to have helped him in it, and though (probably on that account) it was very successful. Pepys, however, will supply us with a scene or two: — " 2Gth, Lord's-day. — Up and to the Wells, where a irrcat store of citizens, which was the greatest part of the company, tliough there were sonic others of better quality. Thence I walked to Mr Alinnes's house, and thence to Durdan's, and walked within the court-yard, «S:c. to the bowling- green, where I have seen so much mirth in my time ; but now no family in it (my Lord Barkeley, whose it is, being with his family at London_). Then rode through Epsom, the whole town over, seeing the various com- panies that were there walking ; which is very pleasant, seeing how they are there without knowing what to do, but only in the morning to drink waters. But Lord! to see how many I met there of citizens, that I could not have thought to have seen there ; that they had ever had it in their heads or purses to go down there. We went through Nonesuch Park to the house, and there viewed as much as we could of the outside, and looked through the great gates, and found a noble court ; and altogether believe it to have been a very noble house, and a delicate jiarke about it, where just now there was a doe killed for the King, to carry up to court." — Vol. i. p. 241. If the sign of the King's Head at Epsom is still where it used to be, it appears from another passage, that we had merry ghosts next door to us. " 14th. — To Epsom, by eight o'clock, to the Well, where much company. And to the town, to the King's Head; and hear that my Lord Bucklmr>t and Nelly are lodged at the next house, and Sir Charles Sedley with them; and keep a merry house. Poor girl ! I pity her ; but more the loss of her at the king's house. Here Tom Wilson came to me, ami sat anil talked an hour ; and I perceive he hath been much acquainteil with Dr Fuller (Tom), and Dr Pierson, and several of the great cavalier persons during the late troubles ; and I was glad to hear him talk of them, which he did very ingeimously, and very much of Dr Fuller's art of mcmor}, which he diil tell me several instances of. By and by he parted, and I talked with two women that farm the well at 12/. per annum, of the lord of the manor, INIr Evelyn, with his lady, and also my Lord George Barkeley's lady, and their fine daughter, that the king of France liked so well, and did dance so rich in jewels before the king, at the ball I was at at our comt last winter, and also their son, a knight of the bath, were at church this morning. I walked upon the Downs, where a flock of sheep was ; the most pleasant and innocent sight that ever I saw in my life. We found a shepheard, and his little boy reading, free from any houses or sight of jieople, the Bible to him ; and trc took notice of liis woollen knit stockhigSy of two colours mixed." — Vol. ii. p. 92. This place was still in high condition at the beginning of the next century, as appears from Toland's account of it, (juoted in the * History of Epsom, by an Inhabitant.' After a " flowery," 422 THE COMPANION. as the writer justly calls it, but perhaps not undeserved account of the pleasures of the place, outside as well as in, he says — " The two rival bowling-greens are not to be forgotten, on which ail the company, after diverting themselves in tlie morning, according to their fancies, make a gallant appearance every evening, especially on the Satur- day and Monday. Here are also raffling tables, with music playing most of the day ; and the nights are generally crowned with dancing. All new comers aVe awakened out of their sleep the first morning, by the same music, which goes to welcome them to Epsom. " You woutd think yourself in some enchanted camp, to see the pea- sants ride to every house, with the choicest fruits, herbs, and flow ers ; w ith all sorts of tame and wild fowl, the rarest fish and venison ; and with every kind of butchers' meat, among which the Banstead Down mutton is the most relishing dainty. " Thus to see the fresh and artless damsels of the plain, either accom- panied by their amorous swains or aged parents, striking their bargains with the nice court and city ladies, who, like queens in a tragedy, display all their finery on benches before their doors (where they hourly censure and are censured) ; and to observe how the handsomest of each degree equally admire, envy, and cozen one another, is to me one of the chief amusements of the place. " The ladies who are too lazy or stately, but especially those who sit up late at cards, have their provisions brought to their bedside, where they conclude the bargain with the higler; and then (perhaps after a dish of chocolate) take another nap until what they have thus purchased is pre- pared for dinner. " Within a mile and a half of Epsom, is the place, and only the place, where the splendid mansion of Nonesuch lately stood. A great part of it, however, stood in my own time, and I have spoken with those who saw it entire. " But not to quit our Downs for any court, the great number of gentle- men and ladies that take the air every morning and evening on horseback, and that range either singly, or in separate companies, over every hill and dale, is a most entertaining object. " But whether you gently wander over my favourite meadows, planted on all sides quite to Woodcote Seat (in whose long grove I oftenest con- verse with myself); or walk further on to Ashtead house and park ; or ride still farther to Box-hill, that enchanting temple of nature ; or whether you lose yourself in the aged yew groves of Mickleham, or try your patience in anghng for trout about Leatherhead ; whether you go to some cricket match, and other sports of contending villagers, or choose to breathe your horse at a race, and to follow a pack of hounds at the proper season : whether, I say, \ou delight in any one or every one of these, Epsom is the place you must like before all others." Congreve has a letter addressed "to Mrs Hunt at Epsom;"— Arabella Hunt, the lady to whom he addressed an ode on her singing, and whom he appears to have been in love with. Epsom has still its races ; but the AVells (not far from Ashted Park) though retaining their property, and giving a name to a medicine, have long been out of fashion. Individuals however, I believe, still resort to them. Their site is occupied by a farm- house, in which lodgings are to be had. Close to Ashted Park is THE COMPANION. 4'23 that of Woodcote, formerly the residence of the notorious Lord Baltimore, the last man of quality in England who had a lastc for abduction. Of late our aspirants after fi^airc and fortune seem to have been ambitious of restoring- the {practice from Ireland. It is their mode of conducting; the business of life. Abduction, they think, " must be attended to." From Woodcote Green, a pretty sequestered spot between this park and the town, rooks are said to have been first taken to the Temple Gardens by Sir William Northey, Secretary to Queen Anne. How hei^jchtened is the pleasure ^iven you by the contem- plation of a beautiful spot, when you think it has been the means of conferring a good elsewhere! I would rather live near a rookery, which had sent out a dozen colonies, than have the soUtary idea of them complete. In solitude you crave after human good; and here a piece of it, however cheap in the e;yes of the scornful, has been conferred ; for Sir Wdliam's colony flourish, it seems, in the smoke of London. Rooks always appeared to me the clergymen among birds; — grave, black-robed, sententious; — with an eye to a snug sylvan abode, and plenty of tithes. Their clerkly character is now mixed up in my imagination with something of the lawyer. They and the lawyers' '^ studious bowers," as Spenser calls the Temple, appear to suit one another. Did you ever notice, by the way, what a soft and pleasant sound there is in the voices of the youn^ rooks, — a sort of kindly chuckle, like that of an infant being fed ( At Woodcote Green is Durdans, the seat mentioned in Pepys as belon2:in2: to Lord Berkeley, now the residence of Sir Gilbert Heathcote,and said to have been built (with several other mansions) of the materials of Nonsuch, when that palace was pulled down. It is one of those solid country houses, wider than tall, and of shining brick-work, that retain at once a look of age and newness ; promise well for domestic comfort; and suit a good substantial garden. In coming upon it suddenly, and looking at it through the great iron gates and across a round plat of grass and flowers, it seems a personification of the solid country squire himself, not without elegance, sitting under his trees. When I looked at it, and thought of the times of Charles II, I could not help fancying that it must have belonged to the *' Dame Durdan" of the old glee, who had such a loving household. There is a beautiful walk from Woodcote Green to Ashted, through the park, and then (crossing the road) through fields and woody lanes to Leatherhead ; but in going, we went by the road. As we were leaving Epsom, a girl was calling the bees to swarm, with a brass pan. Larks accompanied us all the way. The fields were full of clover; there was an air on our faces, the days being at once fine and gently clouded; and in passing through a lovely country, we were conscious of going to a lovelier. At Leatherhead begin the first local evidences of hill and valley, with which the country is now enriched. The modern way of 444 . THE COMPANION. spelling the name of this town renders it a misnomer and a dis- honour, and has been justly resented by the antiquarian taste of Mr Dallaway the vicar, who makes it a point, they say, to restore the old spelling, Lethered. I believe he supposes it to come ana- gramatically from the Saxon name Ethelred ; a thing not at all improbable, transformation of that sort having been common in old times. (See the annotations on Chaucer and Redi.) An Ethelred perhaps had' a seat at this place. Epsom, formerly written Ebsham and Ebbesham (Fuller so writes it) is said to have been named from Ebba, a Saxon princess, who had a pa- lace there. Ebba, I suppose, is the same as Emma, cum gratia Mathews. Leatherhead, like all the towns that let lodgings during the races, is kept very neat and nice ; and though not quite so woody as Epsom, is in a beautiful country, and has to boast of the river Mole. It has also a more venerable church. Mr Dallaway, like a proper antiquary, has refreshed the interior without spoiling it. Over the main pew is preserved, together with his helmet, an in- scription in old English letters to the memory of *' frendly Robert Gardner," chief Serjeant of '^ the Seller' in the year 1571. This was in the time of Elizabeth. A jovial successor of his is also recorded, — to wit, *' Richard Dalton, Esq. Serjeant of the Wine Cellar to King Charles II." But it is on the memory of the other sex that Leatherhead church ought to pride itself. Here are buried three sister Beauclercs, daughters of Lord Henry Beauclerc ; who appear to have been three quiet, benevolent old maids, who followed one another quietly to the grave, and had lived doubtless the ad- miration rather than the envy of the village damsels. Here also lies Miss Cholmondeley, another old maid but merry withal, and the delight of all that knew her, who by one of those frightful accidents that suddenly knock people's souls oat, and seem more frightful when they cut short the career of the gooduatured, was killed on the spot at the entrance of this village by the overturning of the Princess Charlotte's coach, whom she was accompanying on a visit to Norbury Park. A most affectionate epitaph, honourable to all parties, and recording her special attachment to her married sister, is inscribed to her memory by her brother-in-law, — Sir William Bellingham, I think. But above all, " Here lies all that is mortal" (to use the words of the tombstone) " of Mrs Elizabeth Rolfe," of Dover in Kent, who departed this life in the 67th year of her age, and was " interred by her own desire at the side of her beloved Cousin, Benefactress, and Friend, Lady Catharine Thomp- son, with whom she buried all worldly happiness. This temporary separation," continues the epitaph, " no engagements, no pursuits, could render less bitter to the disconsolate MrsRolfe, who from the hour she lost her other self knew no pleasures but in the hopes she cherished (on which point her eyes were ever fixed) of joining her Friend in the region of unfading FeUcity. Blessed with the Power THE COMPANMON. 426 and Will to succour the distressed, she exercised both; and in these exercises only tbund a Ray of Happiness. Let the Ilidiculers of Female Friendship read this honest Inscription, which disdains to Flatter." — A record in another part informs us, that Mrs Rolfc o^ave the parish the interest of 400/. annually in memory of the above, so long as the parish ])reserves the marble that announces the gift, and the stone that covers her grave. — Talking with the parish -clerk, who was otherwise a right and seemly parish-clerk, elderly and withered, with a proper brown wig, he ati'ected, like a man of this world, to speak in disparagement of the phrase " her other self," which someliody had taught him to consider romantic and an exaggeration. This was being a little too much of " the earth, earthy." The famous parish-clerk of St Andrews, one of the great professors of humanity in the times of the Deckars and Shakspeares, would have talked in a different strain. There is some more of the epitaph, recommencing in a style somewhat "to seek," and after the meditative Burleigh fashion in the Critic ; but this does not hinder the rest from being true, or Mrs Rolfe and my lady Thompson from being two genuine human beings, and among the salt of the earth. There is more friendship and virtue in the world, than the world has yet got wisdom enough to know and be proud of; and few things would please me better, than to travel all over England, and fetch out the records of it. I must not omit to mention, that Elinor Rummyn, illustrious in the tap-room pages of " Skelton, Laureate," kept a house in this village; and that Mr Dallaway has emblazoned the fact, for the benefit of antiquarian travellers, in the shape of her portrait with an inscription upon it. The house is the Running Horse, near the bridge. The luxuriance of the country now increases at every step towards Dorking, which is five miles from Leatherhead. You walk through a valley with hills on one side, and wood all about : and on your left hand is the Mole, running through fields and ilowery hedges. These hills arc the turfy downs of Norbury Park, the gate of which you soon arrive at. It is modern, but in good retro- spective taste,- and stands out into the road with one of those round over-hanging turrets, which seem held forth by the old hand of architecture. A little beyond, you arrive at the lovely village of Mickleham, small, sylvan, and embowered, with a little fat church (for the epithet comes involuntarily at the sight of it), as short and plump as the fattest of its vicars may have been, with a dispropor- tioned bit of a spire on the top, as if he had put on an extinguisher instead of a hat. The inside has been renewed in the proper taste, as if Mr Dallaway had had a hand in it ; and there is an organ ; which is more than Leatherhead can boast. The organist is the son of the parish-clerk ; and when I asked his sister, a modest agree- able-looking girl, who shewed us the church, whether he could not favour us with a voluntary, she told me he was making hay I t 426 THE COMPANION. What do you say to that ? I think this is a piece of Germanism for you. Her father was a day-labourer like the son, and had become ^ organist before him out of a natural love of music. I had fetched ■ the girl from her tea. A decent-looking young man was in the room with her ; the door was open, exhibiting the homely comforts inside ; a cat slept before it on the cover of the garden well ; and there were plenty of herbs and flowers, presenting altogether the appearance of a cottage nest. I will be bound that their musi- cal refinements are a great help to their enjoyment of all this ; and that a general lift in their tastes, instead of serving to dissatisfy the poor, would have a reverse effect by increasing the sum of their resources. It would indeed not help to blind them to whatever they might have reason to ask or to complain of. Why should it ? But it would refine them there also, and enable them to obtain it more happily, through the means of the diffusion of knowledge on all sides. The mansion of Norbury Park, formerly the seat of Mr Locke, who appears to have had a deserved reputation for taste in the tine arts, (his daughter married an Angerstein) is situate on a noble elevation upon the right of the village of Mickleham. Between the grounds and the road, are glorious slopes and meadows, super- abundant in wood, and pierced by the river Mole. In coming back we turned up a path into them, to look at a farm that was to be let. It belongs to a gentleman, celebrated in the neighbourhood, and we believe elsewhere, for his powers of *' conversation ;" but this we did not know at the time. He was absent, and had left his farm in the hands of his steward to be let for a certain time. The house was a cottage, and furnished as becomes a cottage ; but one room we thought would make a delicious study. Probably it is one ; for there were books and an easy chair in it. The window looked upon a close bit of lawn, shut in with trees ; and round the walls hung a set of prints from Raphael. This looked as if the possessor had something to say for himself. We were now in the bosom of the scenery for which this part of the country is celebrated. Between Mickleham and Dorking, on the left, is the famous Box Hill, so called from the trees that grow on it. Part if it presents great bald pieces of chalk; but on the side of Mickleham it has one truly noble aspect, a " verdurous wall," which looks the higher for its being precipitous, and from its having somebody's house at the foot of it, — a white little mansion in a world of green. Otherwise the size of this hill disappointed us. The river Mole runs at the foot of it. This river, so called from taking part of its course underground, does not plunge into the earth at once, as most people suppose. So at least Dr Aikin informs us, for I did not look into the matter myself. He says, it loses itself in the ground at various points about the neighbourhood, and rises again on the road to Leatherhead. I protest against its being called *' sullen," in spite of what the poets have been pleased THE COMPANION. 427 to call it for hiding itself. It is a good and gentle stream, flowing through luxuriant banks, and clear enough where the soil is gra- velly. It hides, just as the nymph might hide; and Drayton gives it a good character, if I remember. Unfortunately I have him not by me. The town of Dorking disappointed us, especially one of us, who was a good deal there when a child, and who found new London- looking houses started up in the place of old friends. The people also appeared not so pleasant as their countrymen in general, nor so healthy. There are more King's and Dukes Heads in this neighbourhood ; signs, which doubtless came in with the Restora- tion. The Leg of Mutton is the favourite hieroglyphic about the Downs. Dorking is famous for a breed of fowls with six toes. I do not know whether they have any faculty at counting their grain. "VVe did not see Leith Hill, which is the great station for a prospect hereabouts, and upon which Dennis the critic made a lumbering attempt to be lively. You may see it in the two volumes of letters belonging- to N. He "blunders round about a meaning;" and endeavours to act the part of an inspired Cicerone, with oratorical " flashes in the pan." One or two of his attempts to convey a par- ticular impression are very ludicrous. Just as you think you are going to catch an idea, they slide oft' into hopeless generality. Such at least is my impression, from what I remember. I regret that I could not meet at Epsom or Leatherhead, v/ith a Dorking Guide, which has been lately published, and which, I believe, is a work of merit. In the town itself 1 had not time to think of it : otherwise I might have had some better information to give you regarding spots in the neighbourhood, and persons who have added to their interest. One of these however I know. Turning oft" to the left for Brockham, we had to go through Betchworth Park, formerly the seat of Abraham Tucker, one of the most amiable and truth-loving of philosophers. I\Ir Hazlitt made an abridgment of his principal work; but original and abridgment are both out of point. Either of them would surely sell at this moment, when the public begin to be tired of the eternal jangling and insincerity of criticism, and would fain hear what an honest observer has to say. It woul J only require to be well advertised; not puffed ; for puffing, thank God, besides being a very unfit announcer of truth, has well nigh cracked his cheeks. Betchworth Castle is now in the possession of Mr Barclay the brewer, a descendant, if I mistake not, of the famous Barclay of Urie, the apologist of the Quakers. If this gentleman is the same as the one mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson, he is by nature as well as descent worthy of occupying the abode of a wise man. Or if he is not, why shouldn't he be worthy after his fashion ? You remember the urbane old bookworm, who conversing with a young gentleman, more remarkable for gentility than beauty, and under- 428 THE COMPAiNlON. standing for the first time that he had sisters, said, in a transport of the gratuitous, " Doubtless very charming young ladies, Sir." I will not take it for granted, that all the Barclays are philosophers; but something of a superiority to the vulgar, either in talents or the love of them, may be more reasonably expected in this kind of hereditary rank than the common one. With Mr Tucker and his chesnut groves Iwill conclude, having in fact nothing to say of Brockham except that it was the boundary of our walk. Yes ; I have one thing, and a pleasant one ; which is, that I met there by chance with the younger brother of a family whom I had known in my childhood, and who are eminent to this day for a certain mixture of religion and joviality, equally uncom- mon and good-hearted. May old and young continue not to know which shall live the longest. I do not mean religion or joviality ! but both in their shape. Believe me, dear Sir, very truly yours. — Mine is not so novel or luxurious a journey as the one you treated us with the other day; which I mention, because one journey always makes me long for another ; and I hope not many years v/ill pass over your head, before you give us a second Ramble, in which I may see Italy once again, and hear with more accomplished ears the sound of her music. THE COMPANION S FAREWELL TO HIS READERS. The Companion here closes his public appearance in that character. I would have continued the work with pleasure, had circumstances allowed me ; but though it has succeeded perhaps beyond what might have been expected during the present ostentatious and busy imposition of gross goods on the pu})lic, I could neither pay it attention enough, nor afford to wait time enough, to get it up to a sale that should indemnify all parties concerned, without more help than the speculation was thought to warrant. I there- fore take leave of my readers j shaking them by the hand all round, after the fashion in which they have encouraged me; and hoping to meet them again under circumstances more favourable. It has happened, that the composition of this work, like that of the Indicator, has taken place at one of the most painful periods of my life; which I mention for several reasons ; first, because I like to be explicit among friends ; second, because it will serve to excuse the hurry and negligence of a great deal of the style ; and third, because I think it useful as well as pleasant to be able to tell the reader, that the pleasures I have described myself as feeling on many occa- sions have nevertheless been as genuine as my cares, and that the love of nature, and the pursuit of truth and good, are never without their conso- lations. At no time do I pretend to be exempt from error. So far from it, and so little claim for reputation do I^ seek, apart from that love of truth which it is within the power of every heart, not absolutely foolish, to learn the value of, that I could as soon compare notes with regard to my faults as my good qualities, in order to see what we might all do for the better, if in these midway times between past opinions and future, men's minds THE COMPANMON. 429 were not so uneasy, and doubtful, and Invsct with Ihlsc i)rctcnsions on all sides, as to dislike a premature look of" reliance even on tlieniselves, and be inclined to attribute sinij)licity to osteutaliun. They rccjuirc (paradoxical as it may seem, and so nuich harm have certain desperadoes ol' cizotism done them) to be encouraijed to think better of their own natures, befortance that the world Jshuultl conic to just 430 THE COMPANION. conclusions on the great points upon which they are at issue. " Mankind/' (to return to our excellent unknown author) " can never err in their spe- culative views without endangering their real welfare. It follows, as a necessary consequence, that the sole end of enquiry ought to be, not the support of any particular doctrines, but the attainment of trutli, whatever may be the result to established systems." And again, to conclude with u large extract, which we recommend to the earnest attention of our readers : *' The greater the number of inquirers, the greater the probability of a successful result. Some will come to the inquiry under circumstances peculiarly favourable to success, some with faculties capable of penetrating where less acute ones fail, and some disengaged from passions and prejudices with which others are encumbered. While one directs his scrutiny to a particular view of the suliject, another will re- gard it in a different aspect, a third will see it from a position inaccessible to his predecessors ; and, by the comparison and collision of opinions, truth will be sepa- rated from error and emerge from obscurity. If attainable by human faculties, it must by such a piocess be ultimately evolved. "The way, then, to obtain this result is to permit all to be said on a subject that can be said. All error is the consequence of narrow and partial views, and can be removed only by having a question presented in all its possible bearings, or, in other words, by unlimited discussion. Where there is perfect freedom of examination, there is the greatest proba[)ility which it is possible to have that the truth will be ultimately attained. To impose the least restraint is to diminish this probability. It is to declare that we will not take into consideration all the possible arguments which can be presented, but that we ivill form our opinions on partial views. It is, therefore, to increase the prohabiiity of error. Nor need we, under the utmost freedom of discussion, be in any fear of an inundation of crude and preposterous speculations. All such will meet with a proper and effectual check, in the neglect or ridicule of the public : none will have much influence but those which possess the plausibility bestowed by a considerable admixture of truth, and which it is of impor- tance should appear, that, amidst the contention of controversy, what is true may be separated from what is false. *' The objection, that the plan of unlimited discussion, loonld introdnce a niulti- plicitij of erroneous speculations^ is in reality directed against the very means of attaining the end. Though error is an absolute evil, it is frequerirf.ly necessary to go through it to arrive at truth ; as a man, to ascertain the nearest road from one place to another, may be obliged to make frequent deviations from the direct line. In the physical sciences, through how many errors has the path to truth frequently lain ! What would have been the present state of knowledge, if no step had been hazarded without a perfect assurance of being right ? Even the ideal theo)y of Berkeley and the scepticism of Hume have had their use in establishing human science on its just foundation. We are midway in the stream of ignorance and error; and it is a poor argument against an attempt to reach the shore, that every step will be a plunge into the very element from which we are anxious to escape. Mankind, it is obvious, are not endowed with faculties to possess themselves at once of correct opinions on all subjects. On many questions they must expend painful and persevering efforts; they must often be mistaken, and often be set right, before they completely succeed. To stop them at any point in their career, to erect a bar- rier, and say, thus far your in(]uiries have proceeded, but here they must terminate, can scarcely fail to^.r ihem in the midst of some error. It is prejudging all future efforts and all future opportunities of discovery, without a knowledge of their nature and extent. It is proclaiming, that whatever events may hereafter lake place, what- ever new principles may be eiolved, whatever established fallacies may be exploded, how much soever the methods of investigating truth may be enlarged and enhanced in efficacy, and how gigantic soever may be the progress of the human mind in other departments of knotvledge ; yet no application of any of these improvements and dis- coveries shall be made to certain particular suhjecis, which shall be as fixed spots, immoveable stations, amidst all the vicissitudes and advancement of science." — Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions, S