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 63 
 
 STRAY MOMENTS 
 
 THACKERAY 
 
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 lis |«mrrr, Miu, anir €\mtttxs. i uome; 
 
 Willi 
 «^ Ilacte; 
 
 WILLIAM H. RIDEING. 
 
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APPLETONS' NEW HANDY-VOLUME SERIES. .<Ci 
 
 STEAT MOMENTS 
 
 / WITH 
 
 THACKEEAT 
 
 BEING SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS, PREFACED 
 WITH A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM H. jaiDEING. 
 
 NEW YOEK: 
 B. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 1, 3, AiiD 5 BOND STREET. 
 1880. 
 
 7^ 
 
. .'l'"'' 
 
 '■^'s^ 
 
 COPTEIGHT BY 
 
 D. APPLETON AifD COMPANY. 
 
 1880. 
 
 /a.-s^oy 
 
OONTENTS, 
 
 A Few Biographical Notes 
 
 . Y 
 
 Humor : 
 
 
 The Amenities of a Literary Career 
 
 27 
 
 The Urgency of Love . 
 
 . 30 
 
 The Back Kitchen .... 
 
 31 
 
 London Studios .... 
 
 . 35 
 
 On Woman's Love .... 
 
 38 
 
 Artist Life in Rome 
 
 . 38 
 
 A Familiar Mystery 
 
 42 
 
 The Baden of Old . 
 
 . 44 
 
 The Wildness of Youth 
 
 47 
 
 On Reverses in Life . 
 
 . 50 
 
 On contemplating Persons in Love . 
 
 53. 
 
 The World not Heartless 
 
 . 54 
 
 On the Prosaic in Life 
 
 55 
 
 The Creatures of Circumstances 
 
 . 56 
 
 A Note ..... 
 
 56 
 
 On the Development of Character 
 
 . 56 
 
 Founder's Day at CIiarter-House . 
 
 57 
 
 The Old Inns of Court . 
 
 . 59 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Against Bachelorhood 
 
 On the Formation of Character 
 
 The Sameness of Life 
 
 On Youth and Age 
 
 A Note .... 
 
 Satire : 
 
 On Beautiful Women . 
 
 The Old Beau 
 
 The Blindness of Maternity 
 
 How to hold a Wife's Love 
 
 The Inevitable Skeleton 
 
 On looking out for Number One . 
 
 On Hypocrisy in Women 
 
 The Pursuit of Croesus 
 
 On Friendship among Young Women . 
 
 On the Adoration of Princes 
 
 The Secrecy of Human Nature . 
 
 The Pagan Martyrs 
 
 The Good Old Country Gentleman 
 
 On Respected Old Age 
 
 On being crossed in Love 
 
 Ancient and Modern Culture and Manners 
 
 Character : 
 
 George I . . . . 
 
 George II . 
 
 George III . 
 
 George IV . 
 
 The Duke of Marlborough 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Richard Steele 
 
 Addison 
 
 Swift 
 
 Hogarth 
 
 Prior 
 
 Gay 
 
 Congreve 
 
 Pope 
 
 Smollett and Fielding 
 
 Sterne and Goldsmith 
 
 PAGE 
 
 129 
 
 140 
 156 
 167 
 169 
 170 
 172 
 176 
 180 
 185 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 Vert little need be said of Thackeray's life 
 or his works. They have an obviousness uncom- 
 mon in literature. Both are clear, direct, and in- 
 telligible. There are no doubts about the conduct 
 of one, nor about the meaning of the other, and a 
 commentator or biographer is unembarrassed by 
 the hesitation and uncertainty that usually occur in 
 elucidating the intentions and deciding the posi- 
 tion of most literary men. His early life had 
 none of the extraordinary and picturesque vicissi- 
 tudes of Dickens's, and his manhood none of the 
 eventfulness of Scott's, nor the mystic atmos- 
 phere of Hawthorne's. 
 
 With William Makepeace Thackeray came 
 into the world a man who lived tlie life suited to 
 him, little opposed by adverse circumstances, and 
 who described what he saw without flattery, with- 
 
8 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 out bitterness, but with immense candor. It has 
 been said of him that he was a cynic, and unfair 
 in striking the balance between good and evil in 
 the world. He was veracious, and it is this qual- 
 ity — the absence of artifice in his methods and of 
 duplicity in his conclusions — that makes his genius 
 seem to us as open as the sky, and especially en- 
 dears him to an age which is strenuously realistic. 
 Such evil as he saw he pitied without bestowing 
 maudlin sentimentality upon it, and the sin was 
 monstrous indeed which did not allow him to 
 divide his resentment against it with some chari- 
 table qualification. 
 
 He was not an aristocrat. The most distin- 
 guished of his progenitors, who came from York- 
 shire, seems to have been his great-grandfather. 
 Dr. Thomas Thackeray, once head-master at Har- 
 row, a scholar of abundant attainments, a gentle- 
 man of unalterable integrity, and a divine of much 
 lovableness. His own father was a prosperous 
 officer in the East India Company and secre- 
 tary to the Board of Revenue at Calcutta, where 
 Thackeray was born in 1811. A few years later 
 his father died — exactly how many years we can 
 not say, as three different biographers give three 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 9 
 
 different dates — and when he was about seven 
 years old, the boy was sent to relatives in England 
 for education, his mother, who was very young, 
 remaining in India. 
 
 Charter-house, the noble foundation which had 
 fostered Addison, Steele, and some of the most 
 famous men in English history, was selected for 
 him, and his life here has been reflected again and 
 again in his books. A school-mate describes him 
 as " a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy." But 
 he was neither too gentle nor too timid to stand 
 up in a fight and have his nose broken ; nor was 
 he by industry or apparent ability above the aver- 
 age of his fellows. In 1822 he was a tenth-form 
 boy, and when seventeen years old he was on the 
 first form, and had become a monitor of the school. 
 In the election of orators for " founder's day " and 
 poets for the Charter-house odes he was over- 
 looked. No doubt he already had a sense of the 
 puerile magniloquence of school-boy orations, odes, 
 and valedictions ; the spirit of burlesque was strong 
 within him, and he was more congenially em- 
 ployed in mocking and satirizing those lofty effu- 
 sions than in emulating them. 
 
 His one predilection was for art. He wrote 
 
10 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 parodies in verse, and some of them were good ; 
 but it was his facile pencil that gave him preemi- 
 nence among the other boys, and this was busily- 
 exercised for his own and their amusement with 
 extraordinary fancy and humor. The margins of 
 books and scraps of paper of all kinds were cov- 
 ered with sketches, most of them caricatures, and 
 it was a familiar thing at Charter-house *o see the 
 artist surrounded by an admiring crowd of his 
 school-fellows while he developed with grotesque 
 extravagance and never-failing effect the outlines 
 of some juvenile hero or notability of history. 
 He was never serious : he treated history, poetry, 
 and mythology with audacious levity. His in- 
 spiration was burlesque, but it was the decent and 
 honest burlesque of a playful boy. The graphic 
 power of pictorial description that, later in life, he 
 was so fond of recognizing in Cruikshank, is 
 scarcely less conspicuous in those immature pro- 
 ductions of his own. The variety and number of 
 them, their simplicity and effectiveness, are all 
 remarkable. 
 
 The head-master of the school was severe, and, 
 as Thackeray was very sensitive, it is supposed 
 his school days were not very happy ones, despite 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. H 
 
 his artistic exuberance. In his earlier books he 
 always wrote of Charter-house as Slaughter-house 
 and Smithfield, but, as he became famous, his 
 memories of it were softened, and he spoke of it 
 as Gray Friars, making it the scene of the most 
 touching passage within our knowledge of liter- 
 ature, the death of Colonel Newcome. 
 
 His school days were relieved by vacations 
 spent at Ottery St. Mary, where his mother had 
 come to live with her second husband, and his 
 life here, the persons he met, and the scenes around 
 him, are reproduced in his account of the early 
 adventures of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, in whose 
 history Ottery St. Mary is changed to Clavering 
 St. Mary, while Exeter is renamed Chatteris. 
 Like Arthur, he v/rote story verses for the " poet's 
 corner" of the village newspaper, and it is pos- 
 sible that, with the license of the novelist, he has 
 shifted on to the shoulders of Pendennis an esca- 
 pade of his own when he describes Miss Fotherin- 
 gay and her immortal father. He seems to have 
 been indolent and fond of luxury, unagitated by 
 any repressed ambitions, and placidly self-assured 
 in a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, available 
 on his majority. It was his pleasure to become 
 
12 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 an artist, not a necessity either from the urgency 
 of his ambition or his pecuniary circumstances, 
 and he applied himself accordingly. 
 
 Leaving school, he went up to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, before he was eighteen years old, and 
 became the class-mate of Tennyson, whose friend 
 and admirer he continued to be through life, but 
 he did not stay to graduate : in pursuit of art- 
 knowledge and pleasure he sought the Continent, 
 and passed most of his time between Paris and 
 Weimar. At Paris he lived among Bohemians, 
 and smoked pipes and supped with them ; he 
 copied pictures in the Louvre, and made desperate 
 efforts to be industrious. At Weimar he and 
 some other English students were petted by the 
 little Saxon Court. Thackeray attended balls in 
 court dress, wearing the sword of Schiller, which 
 he had recently acquired by purchase ; he made 
 pictures for the children ; he loaned English 
 books to the Grand Duchess, and chatted about 
 English literature with her, and he had private 
 audiences with Goethe. Twenty-five years after- 
 ward the novelist wrote : " I think I have never 
 seen a society more simple, charitable, courteous, 
 gentlemanlike, than that of the dear little Saxon 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 13 
 
 city where the good Schiller and the great Goethe 
 lived and lie buried." These were pleasant, cloud- 
 less days. The butterfly hovered among the 
 studios of Rome, Antwerp, Brussels, Paris, and 
 London. This young Englishman, with the large, 
 mild, candid face and the well-set form of com- 
 manding height, could choose his own society ; 
 he was welcome in aristocratic drawing-rooms, 
 and he was encomrade in the attics of the Latin 
 quarter and the chambers of bachelor London. 
 Through his portraiture of Clive Newcome and 
 Philip Firmin he himself may be seen, his habits, 
 and his inclinations. In 1832 he came into his 
 fortune, and the world that had treated him ami- 
 ably so far promised to be fair enough for him. 
 He was in a position to follow his taste for art as 
 he chose — and it was a taste rather than a passion, 
 but in less than two years prosperity had vanished 
 from him, and all his fortune had been dissipated, 
 some, it is said, in cards, but the larger part in 
 two unsuccessful newspaper ventures, which had 
 been shared by his step -father. 
 
 The jovial and enviable young Englishman, 
 without care and with ample means, was no more. 
 All at once Thackeray was brought face to face 
 
14 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 with the world in an aspect with which his Bohe- 
 mian acquaintances were familiar, but which he 
 had escaped through more fortunate circumstances. 
 Bread and butter became an object in life, the 
 means to obtain it a problem not to be solved by- 
 looking into bakers' windows. He had made so 
 little progress in his art studies that he could 
 draw but little better than when he diverted his 
 school-fellows at Charter-house with caricatures of 
 the " Castle of Otranto " and whimsical illustra- 
 tions of history. Had he not offered to make 
 pictures for the serials of Charles Dickens, and 
 been rejected ? The art that he loved most would 
 not cherish her votary, and somewhere about 
 1834, Thackeray, with none of the confidence 
 that possesses many beginners in literature, and 
 which is coldly and briefly dispelled in thousands, 
 took up a pen, and with that wand set out to 
 charm the world and reverse the fates that had 
 been so unkind to him. 
 
 If too much confidence leads the novice to 
 defeat and chagrin, too little confidence is one of 
 the greatest embarrassments that afflict the estab- 
 lished literary man, and, if the latter is dependent 
 on his work for his bread, tranquillity is only as- 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 15 
 
 sured to him when he can invariably produce a 
 certain number of words a day, up to a given 
 standard, and sure of effect. When he has to 
 wait for moods, and is uncertain of what he is 
 doing ; when he is tremulously anticipating the 
 unfavorable criticism of his publisher or the pub- 
 lic ; when he is for ever contemplating the con- 
 sequences of failure, that he will be unnerved for 
 renewed effort, that this and the other bill can 
 not be paid, it is naturally impossible for him to 
 concentrate his mind on the task before him, and, 
 therefore, impossible for him to do himself full 
 justice in his work. 
 
 From a business point of view the model lit- 
 erary man is Mr. Anthony Trollope, who, by his 
 own confession, can meet unfalteringly every pos- 
 sible exigency of a periodical ; add a dean to a 
 novel in which there may already be a bishop and 
 a canon ; conjure up a couple of archbishops in 
 consideration of an increase in the amount of a 
 promised check ; reach a thrilling denouement at 
 the end of any given number of words ; curtail, 
 compress, or extend, as occasion may require, and, 
 whether on sea or on shore, on the wing or in the 
 comfortable quiet of his own library, write so 
 
16 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 many columns a day up to, if not above, a cer- 
 tain standard. Any writer whose qualifications 
 are similar may be happy and prosperous in the 
 unhappiest and least lucrative of all the profes- 
 sion : in securing a living they are certain, when 
 genius without industry, method, and adaptability 
 is starving to death. 
 
 Thackeray was the opposite of Mr. Trollope, 
 having neither confidence in himself, great indus- 
 try, nor definite prevision as to his publisher's 
 wants. He was always proposing something im- 
 practicable, or doing something that was not quite 
 what the editor desired. In the beginning of his 
 literary life he experienced most of the vicissi- 
 tudes that usually crush the unknown and over- 
 burdened peddler of manuscripts. He was re- 
 jected, he was "cut down." That style of his, 
 with its colloquial "asides" and familiar apos- 
 trophies, with its after-dinner garrulity, struck 
 many as being an undesirable innovation, and did 
 not become the ordinarily frigid and classic pages 
 of "Fraser's." 
 
 He wrote the "Great Hoggarty Diamond," 
 one of the most humorous and faithful studies of 
 English life in existence, and he was called upon 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 17 
 
 to shorten it, having done which, he went away 
 from the publisher's with several guineas fewer 
 than he had expected. " The Fashionable Fax 
 and Polite Annygoats of Charles James Yellow- 
 plush, Esq.," with their extraordinary cacography, 
 were more successful ; but Thackeray only worked 
 under compulsion : he procrastinated until he 
 could delay no more, and was constantly pursued 
 by the specter of an unfulfilled engagement or a 
 resolve uncast in an expected deed. Neverthe- 
 less, he was prolific, as necessarily he had to be, 
 having taken a young wife to himself. He wrote 
 burlesques, ballads, the story of " Catharine," 
 " Barry Lyndon," the " Paris " and " Irish Sketch 
 Book," and many miscellaneous articles. He was 
 often very short of money, and had to write when 
 the brain was unwilling and the heart weary. 
 The excellence of his burlesque, the incisiveness 
 of his satire, and the sweetness of his humor were 
 being recognized, however, and readers were be- 
 coming impatient to find out the real personality 
 concealed in Michael Angelo Titmarsh. 
 
 His prospects were improving when he began 
 " A Shabby Genteel Story " ; but there suddenly 
 came upon him a harder blow than any he had 
 2 
 
18 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 yet received. "A Shabby Genteel Story" was 
 abruptly ended, and, when it was reprinted in 
 some miscellanies, this touching prefix explained 
 the conclusion : " It was my intention to complete 
 the little story of which only the first part is 
 here written. . . . The tale was interrupted at a 
 sad period of the writer's own life. The colors 
 are long since dry, the artist's hand is changed. 
 It is best to leave the sketch as it was when first 
 designed seventeen years ago. The memory of 
 the past is renewed as he looks at it." His wife 
 became insane, and he was left the father of three 
 little girls— a husband without a wife. 
 
 The effect of this great sorrow on his charac- 
 ter, and its concurrence with a decisive change in 
 his literary position, seem to form a natural divi- 
 sion between his earlier and later life. So far we 
 have seen him ; the son of a gentleman, at school 
 and at college, out of which period came the sug- 
 gestion and materials of Arthur Pendennis's 
 youthful adventures, Dr. Birch's young friends, 
 and many pictures of the historic foundation at 
 Smithfield ; then as the fortunate young gentle- 
 man of leisure, with a taste for art, in whose 
 career we can trace the development of Philip 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 19 
 
 Firnoin and Clive Newcome, his acquaintance 
 with Gandish's, the creation of John James Rid- 
 ley, and his genial intimacy with studio life in 
 Paris, Rome, and London ; and, finally, our glance 
 at his history has revealed him as the struggling 
 literary man, always doing something good, earn- 
 ing a respectable income, but failing to attain 
 preeminence or to charm a larger public than that 
 within the subscribing constituency of a few mag- 
 azines — a period of difficulty and mortification to 
 the writer, but one that has yielded us many a 
 pleasant glimpse of life : Warrington in his cham- 
 bers, Captain Shandon in " the Fleet," Bacon and 
 Bungay, the publishers in "the Row," the mid- 
 night carousings at the " Haunt " and the " Back 
 Kitchen," and the famous first scenes in the 
 " Newcomes." 
 
 It is thus, synthetically, that Thackeray's life 
 may best be viewed. The individuality of an 
 author is not often completely concealed in his 
 delineations, no matter how vivid his powers of 
 imagination may be, nor how vigorous his con- 
 ceptions. The features of the rogues who have 
 swindled him in actual life reappear, modified or 
 intensified, in his pictures of the blacklegs who 
 
20 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 cheat his heroes — though the circumstances and 
 scenes, the complexion, stature, and manner, may 
 be different, the ear-marks of the original are 
 sure to crop out ; and the good people who have 
 helped him on his way give shape to those who 
 are beneficent among his characters. Perhaps 
 Othello was a Blackfriars haberdasher, and Ham- 
 let a boozy student from Oxford. That the great 
 playwriter intended to incarnate in this one char- 
 acter all the attributes of the fiercest jealousy, 
 and that in casting about for a proper medium he 
 chose the Moor, with his profound capacity for 
 hate, and his strong sense of personal proprietor- 
 ship in woman, as the most appropriate of all, is 
 not an hypothesis inconsistent with the haber- 
 dasher. What we mean to say is, that nearly all 
 that comes out of every writer has to some ex- 
 tent its genesis in his own life and surroundings ; 
 that even with Othello or Hamlet the first thought 
 of the creator may have been formed, the inspira- 
 tion awakened, by some trivial but real circum- 
 stance, which his genius has transmuted, built 
 upon, and glorified. 
 
 Thackeray, especially, has drawn upon the so- 
 ciety with which he was personally acquainted 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 21 
 
 for his material. The broad, good-natured face 
 beams all over his pages ; his voice — ah, what a 
 voice to have listened to ! — is audible, now in 
 mild reproach, and then with a deep-hearted ap- 
 peal to the better nature. In " Esmond," which, 
 measured by established canons of literature, must 
 be considered his most " artistic " work, he disap- 
 pears in the scholarly Colonel, but in " Vanity 
 Fair," "Pendennis," "Philip," and "The Virgin- 
 ians,^' the gentle moralist is never absent from the 
 company of actors. He sees through and through 
 a man and his motives with extraordinary pene- 
 tration, and he tells what he sees, and bases a hom- 
 ily upon it. To say that he is not an imaginative 
 writer would, of course, be absurd ; all his action 
 is invented, and it fits his characters with such 
 verisimilitude that there seems to be no fiction at 
 all. Think of the scene between Esmond and 
 the Duke of Hamilton ; again, of the scene be- 
 tween young Castle wood, Esmond, and the Che- 
 valier St. George ; again, of the scene in which 
 Becky Sharp-Crawley admires her husband when 
 he is giving Lord Steyne the chastisement which 
 ruins her for life. If he had been simply a clever 
 painter of "pen-pictures," he would be shelved 
 
22 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 now, and the spiders would have spun a net over 
 the dead volumes ; but at the same time his ob- 
 servation was exercised oftener than his imagina- 
 tion : it is his perspicacity that strikes one most. 
 The publication of " Vanity Fair," in monthly 
 parts, began in February, 1847, and this marks 
 the inauguration of the second period of Thack- 
 eray's life. Dickens had already established him- 
 self, and had won applause and fame, while Thack- 
 eray had been plodding along as little more than 
 a successful feuilletonist. But " Vanity Fair " 
 decided his position ; it at once placed him among 
 the first of novelists, and led him on to fortune. 
 Two years later "Pendennis" appeared, and in 
 1851 the author delivered a remunerative course 
 of lectures on "The English Humorists," which 
 he repeated in America. The incidents of this 
 part of his life need not be mentioned here. All 
 who met him liked him ; he was generous, grate- 
 ful, and chivalrous. " Pendennis " was followed 
 in 1852 by " Henry Esmond " ; and "The New- 
 comes " appeared in 1855. A year later the author 
 again visited the United States, delivering the 
 lectures on " The Four Georges," which were as 
 successful as the previous course ; and in 1857 he 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 23 
 
 offered himself for the representation of Oxford 
 in Parliament. He bore himself with extreme 
 courtesy to his opponents ; his speeches were 
 charmingly simple and to the point ; but he was 
 defeated by a small majority. In 1857, also, 
 the publication of "The Virginians" was be- 
 gun, and in 1859 the " Cornhill Magazine " 
 first appeared under his editorship, with a cir- 
 culation of more than one hundred thousand 
 copies. 
 
 Thackeray was now a rich man, but he was a 
 worn and weary one. Despite the brilliance of 
 his success, he was always afraid that what was 
 forthcoming from him would fail, and there is 
 little doubt that this hesitation and despair pre- 
 vented him from writing to the full of his ability. 
 " He seems," as Mr. Trollope says, " to have been 
 dreaming over some high flight, and then to have 
 told himself, with a half -broken heart, that it was 
 beyond his power to soar up into those bright re- 
 gions." He was hypersensitive to criticism and 
 full of apprehension. " My last book is not sell- 
 ing well," he said of "Esmond." "Well," he 
 added, " I suppose Harry is a prig " ; and, had 
 some one told him that " Vanity Fair " was nar- 
 
24 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 row and bitter, he would have lain awake all 
 night asking himself if that might not be true. 
 
 No words can tell how much this generous 
 soul suffered in his editorial capacity. There is a 
 class of people who look upon an editor's office as 
 a bureau of general relief — young widows with 
 sixteen or more children, who send in manuscripts 
 with a frank avowal that they are conscious of 
 possessing no literary ability whatever, but that 
 they feel sure this or that one will be accepted, as 
 otherwise they and their little ones must starve ; 
 there are farmer boys who write diagonally across 
 brown wrapping-paper, and beg for favor as a 
 means of acquiring an education ; there are thou- 
 sands who have failed at everything else, but are 
 sure they can write — some are pretentious and im- 
 pudent, others modest and appealing, and with the 
 latter it is particularly hard to deal. A great many 
 arc vituperative, and look upon the editor as a des- 
 pot installed to crush all rising genius. More than 
 once, when Thackeray paid out of his own purse 
 for articles which he knew he could not use, the 
 writers reproached him for suppressing matter 
 which surpassed his own. The work became un- 
 endurable to him, and he gave it up. 
 
A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 25 
 
 He wrote for the "Cornhill," "Philip," and 
 " Lovel the Widower." " Denis Duval " was in- 
 complete when he died. On Wednesday, Decem- 
 ber 23, 1863, an old malady suddenly attacked 
 him with great violence, and during the following 
 night, while in bed and alone, he silently passed 
 away. There is a bust of him in Westminster 
 Abbey, but he is buried in Kensal Green Ceme- 
 tery. Not long ago we made a pilgrimage to 
 that quiet little graveyard in northwestern Lon- 
 don. It was one of those soft, warm, English 
 days when the wind can be heard whispering and 
 shaking the leaves, but can scarcely be felt. A 
 high brick wall incloses the ground, and within 
 the shade of a neighboring tree we found one of 
 the simplest tombstones in the place, inscribed 
 with two dates and the name of William Make- 
 peace Thackeray. It was a pleasure to find no 
 more — no sonorous epitaph, no elaboration of 
 granite or marble. The name and the memories 
 it called forth were enough, and we fancy that to 
 all who appreciate the simplicity of his life this 
 memorial will seem most appropriate. Little can 
 be added to the present stock of knowledge which 
 we possess of this great man. These brief notes 
 
26 A FEW BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 
 
 seem superfluous : his beautiful life is in his works, 
 and we shall have to live long and look far before 
 we discover one fairly competent to measure it. 
 
 William H. Rideing. 
 
 New York, February, 1880. 
 
STKAY MOMENTS 
 
 WITH 
 
 TH A C KE RAY. 
 
 HUMOR. 
 
 THE AMENITIES OF A LITERARY CAREER. 
 
 The drawbacks and penalties attendant upon 
 the literary profession are taken into full account, 
 as we well know, by literary men and their friends. 
 Our poverty, hardships, and disappointments are 
 set forth with great emphasis, and often with too 
 great truth by those who speak of us ; but there 
 are advantages belonging to our trade which are 
 passed over, I think, by some of those who exer- 
 cise it and describe it, and for which, in striking 
 the balance of our accounts, we are not always 
 duly thankful. We have no patron, so to speak 
 — we sit in antechambers no more, waiting the 
 present of a few guineas from my lord, in return 
 for a fulsome dedication. We sell our wares to 
 the book purveyor, between whom and us there 
 
28 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 is no greater obligation than between him and his 
 paper-maker or printer. In the great towns in 
 our country immense stores of books are pro- 
 vided for us, with librarians to class them, kind 
 attendants to wait upon us, and comfortable ap- 
 pliances for study. We require scarce any capi- 
 tal wherewith to exercise our trade. What other 
 so-called learned profession is equally fortunate ? 
 A doctor, for example, after carefully and expen- 
 sively educating himself, must invest in house and 
 furniture, horses, carriage, and men-servants, be- 
 fore the public patient will think of calling him 
 in. I am told that such gentlemen have to coax 
 and wheedle dowagers, to humor hypochondriacs, 
 to practice a score of little subsidiary arts in or- 
 der to make that of healing profitable. How 
 many, many hundreds of pounds has a barrister 
 to sink upon his stock in trade before his returns 
 are available? There are the costly charges of 
 university education — the costly chambers in the 
 inn of court — the clerk and his maintenance — the 
 inevitable travels on circuit — certain expenses all 
 to be defrayed before the possible client makes 
 his appearance, and the chance of fame or compe- 
 tency arrives. The prizes are great, to be sure, 
 in the law, but what a prodigious sum the lottery- 
 ticket costs ! If a man of letters can not win, 
 neither does he risk so much. Let us speak of 
 our trade as we find it, and not be too eager in 
 calling out for public compassion. 
 
THE AMENITIES OF A LITERARY CAREER. 29 
 
 The artists, for the most part, do not cry out 
 their woes as loudly as some gentlemen of the lit- 
 erary fraternity, and yet I think the life of many 
 of them is harder, their chances even more preca- 
 rious, and the conditions of their profession less 
 independent and agreeable than ours. I have 
 
 watched Smee, Esq., R. A., flattering and 
 
 fawning, and at the same time boasting and swag- 
 gering, poor fellow ! in order to secure a sitter. 
 I have listened to a Manchester magnate talking 
 about fine arts before one of J. J.'s pictures, assum- 
 ing the airs of a painter, and laying down the most 
 absurd laws respecting the art. I have seen poor 
 Tomkins bowing a rich amateur through a private 
 view, and noted the eager smiles on Tomkins's 
 face at the amateur's slightest joke, the sickly twin- 
 kle of hope in his eyes as Amateur stopped before 
 his own picture. I have been ushered by Chip- 
 stone's black servant through hall after hall, peo- 
 pled with plaster gods and heroes, into Chipstone's 
 own magnificent studio, where he sat longing 
 vainly for an order, and justly dreading his land- 
 lord's call for the rent. And, seeing how severely 
 these gentlemen were taxed in their profession, I 
 have been grateful for my own more fortunate 
 one, which necessitates cringing to no patron ; 
 which calls for no keeping up of appearances ; 
 and which requires no stock in trade save the 
 workman's industry, his best ability, and a dozen 
 sheets of paper. — The JSFeiocomes. 
 
30 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 THE TJRGEI^CT OF LOVE. 
 
 Who does not know how ruthlessly women 
 will tyrannize when they are let to domineer ? and 
 who does not know how useless advice is ? I could 
 give good counsel to my descendants, but I know 
 they'll follow their own way, for all their grand- 
 father's sermon. A man gets his own experience 
 about women, and will take nobody's hearsay ; 
 nor, indeed, is the young fellow worth a fig that 
 would. 'Tis I that am in love with my mistress, 
 not my old grandmother that counsels me ; 'tis I 
 that have fixed the value of the thing I would 
 have, and know the price I would pay for it. It 
 may be worthless to you, but 'tis all my life to 
 me. Had Esmond possessed the Great Mogul's 
 crown and all his diamonds, or all the Duke of 
 Marlborough's money, or all the ingots sunk at 
 Vigo, he would have given them all for this 
 woman. A fool he was, if you will ; but so is a 
 sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality 
 for a little crystal as big as a pigeon's egg, and 
 called a diamond ; so is a wealthy nobleman a fool, 
 that will face danger or death, and spend half his 
 life, and all his tranquillity, caballing for a blue 
 ribbon ; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath 
 been known to pay ten thousand crowns for a 
 tulip. There's some particular prize we all of us 
 value, and that every man of spirit will venture 
 his life for. With this, it may be to achieve a 
 
THE BACK KITCHEN. 31 
 
 great reputation for learning ; with that, to be a 
 man of fashion, and the admiration of the town ; 
 with another, to consummate a great work of art or 
 poetry, and go to immortality that way ; and with 
 another, for a certain time of his life, the sole 
 object and aim is a woman. — Henry Esmond. 
 
 THE BACK KITCHEN. 
 
 We tap at a door in an old, old street in Soho : 
 an old maid with a kind, comical face opens the 
 door, and nods friendly, and says, " How do, sir ? 
 ain't seen you this ever so long. How do, Mr. 
 Noocom ? " " Who's here ? " " Most everybody's 
 here." We pass by a little snug bar, in which a 
 trim elderly lady is seated by a -great fire, on which 
 boils an enormous kettle ; while two gentlemen 
 are attacking a cold saddle of mutton and West 
 India pickles ; hard by Mrs. Nokes, the landlady's 
 elbow — with mutual bows — we recognize Hickson, 
 the sculptor, and Morgan, intrepid Irish chieftain, 
 chief of the reporters of the "Morning Press" 
 newspaper. We pass through a passage into a 
 back room, and are received with a roar of wel- 
 come from a crowd of men, almost invisible in 
 the smoke. 
 
 " I am right glad to see thee, boy ! " cries a 
 cheery voice (that will never troll a chorus more). 
 " We spake anon of thy misfortune, gentle youth ! 
 and that thy warriors of Assaye have charged the 
 
32 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 Academy in vain. Mayhap thou frightenedst the 
 courtly school with barbarous visages of grisly 
 war. Pendennife, thou dost wear a thirsty look ! 
 Resplendent swell ! untwine thy choker white, 
 and I will either stand a glass of grog, or thou 
 shalt pay the like for me, my lad, and tell us of 
 the fashionable world." Thus spake the brave old 
 Tom Sarjent — also one of the " Press," one of the 
 old boys, a good old scholar with a good old library 
 of books, who had taken his seat any time these 
 forty years by the chimney fire in this old Haunt: 
 where painters, sculptors, men of letters, actors, 
 used to congregate, passing pleasant hours in rough 
 kindly communion, and many a day seeing the 
 sunrise lighting the rosy street ere they parted, 
 and Betsy put the useless lamp out, and closed the 
 hospitable gates of the Haunt. 
 
 The time is not very long since ; though to- 
 day is so changed. As we think of it, the kind, 
 familiar faces rise up, and we hear the pleasant 
 voices and singing. There are they met, the 
 honest, hearty companions. In the days when the 
 Haunt was a haunt, stage-coaches were not yet 
 quite over. Casinos were not invented ; clubs 
 were rather rare luxuries ; there were sanded 
 floors, triangular sawdust-boxes, pipes, and tavern 
 parlors. Young Smith and Brown, from the Tem- 
 ple, did not go from chambers to dine at the Poly- 
 anthus, or the Megatherium, off potage a la Bisque, 
 turbot au gratin, cotelettes a la Whatdyoucallem, 
 
THE BACK KITCHEN. 33 
 
 and a pint of St. Emilion ; but ordered their beef- 
 steak and pint of port from the "plump head- 
 waiter at the Cock " ; did not disdain the pit of 
 the theatre ; and for supper a homely refection 
 at the tavern. How delightful are the suppers in 
 Charles Lamb to read of even now ! The cards — 
 the punch — the candles to be snuffed — the social 
 oysters — the modest cheer ? Who ever snuffs a 
 candle now ? What man has a domestic supper 
 whose dinner-hour is eight o'clock ? Those little 
 meetings, in the memory of many of us yet, are 
 gone quite away into the past. Five-and-twenty 
 years ago is a hundred years off — so much has our 
 social life changed in those five lusters. James 
 Boswell himself, were he to revisit London, would 
 scarce venture to enter a tavern. He would find 
 scarce a respectable companion to enter its doors 
 with him. It is an institution as extinct as a hack- 
 ney-coach. Many a grown man who peruses this 
 historic page has never seen such a vehicle, and 
 only heard of rum-punch as a drink which his an- 
 cestors used to tipple. 
 
 Cheery old Tom Sarjent is surrounded at the 
 Haunt by a dozen of kind boon companions. They 
 toil all day at their avocations of art, or letters, 
 or laws, and here meet for a harmless night's rec- 
 reation and converse. They talk of literature, 
 or politics, or pictures, or plays ; socially banter 
 one another over their cheap cups ; sing brave old 
 songs sometimes when they are especially jolly ; 
 3 
 
34 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 kindly ballads in praise of love ; and wine-famous 
 maritime ditties in honor of old England. I fancy 
 I hear Jack Brent's noble voice rolling out the sad 
 generous refrain of " The Deserter," " Then for 
 that reason and for a season we will be merry be- 
 fore we go," or Michael Percy's clear tenor caroling 
 the Irish chorus of " What's that to any one, 
 whether or no ? " or Mark Wilder shouting his 
 bottle song of "Garryowen na gloria." These 
 songs were regarded with affection by the brave 
 old frequenters of the Haunt. A gentleman's 
 property in a song was considered sacred. It was 
 respectfully asked for ; it was heard with more 
 pleasure for being old. Honest Tom Sarjent ! 
 how the times have changed since we saw thee ! 
 I believe the present chief of the reporters of the 
 
 newspaper (which responsible office Tom 
 
 filled) goes to Parliament in his brougham, and 
 dines with the ministers of the crov/n. 
 
 Around Tom are seated grave Royal Acade- 
 micians, rising gay Associates ; writers of other 
 journals besides the "Pall Mall Gazette" ; a bar- 
 rister, maybe, whose name will be famous some 
 day ; a hewer of marble perhaps ; a surgeon 
 whose patients have not come yet ; and one or 
 two men about town, who like this queer assem- 
 bly better than haunts much more splendid. Cap- 
 tain Shandon has been here, and his jokes are 
 preserved in the tradition of the place. Owlet, 
 the philosopher, came once, and tried, as his wont 
 
LONDON STUDIOS. 35 
 
 is, to lecture ; but his metaphysics were beaten 
 down by a storm of banter. Slatter, who gave 
 
 himself such airs because he wrote in the 
 
 Keview, tried to air himself at the Haunt, but 
 was choked by the smoke, and silenced by the 
 unanimous poohpoohing of the assembly. Dick 
 Walker, who rebelled secretly at Sarjent's author- 
 ity, once thought to give himself consequence by 
 bringing a young lord from the Blue Posts, but he 
 was so unmercifully " chaffed " by Tom, that even 
 the young lord laughed at him. His lordship had 
 been heard to say he had been taken to a monsus 
 queeah place, queeah set of folks, in a tap some- 
 where, though he went away quite delighted with 
 Tom's affability ; but he never came again. He 
 could not find the place probably. You might 
 pass the Haunt in the daytime, and not know it 
 in the least. "I believe," said Charley Ormond 
 (A. R. A. he was then), "I believe in the day 
 there's no place at all ; and when Betsy turns the 
 gas off at the door-lamp, as we go away, the whole 
 thing vanishes — the door, the house, the bar, the 
 Haunt, Betsy, the beer-boy, Mrs. Nokes, and all." 
 It has vanished — it is to be found no more — nei- 
 ther by night nor by day — unless the ghosts of 
 good fellows still haunt it. — The Neic comes. 
 
 LONDON STUDIOS. 
 
 British art either finds her peculiar nourish- 
 ment in melancholy, and loves to fix her abode 
 
36 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 in desert places, or it may be her purse is but 
 slenderly furnished, and she is forced to put up 
 with accommodations rejected by more prosperous 
 callings. Some of the most dismal quarters of 
 the town are colonized by her disciples and pro- 
 fessors. In walking through streets which may 
 have been gay and polite when ladies' chairmen 
 jostled each other on the pavement, and link-boys 
 with their torches lighted the beaux over the 
 mud, who has not remarked the artist's invasion 
 of those regions once devoted to fashion and gay- 
 ety? Center windows of drawing-rooms are en- 
 larged so as to reach up into bedrooms — bedrooms 
 where Lady Betty has had her hair powdered, 
 and where the painter's north-light now takes 
 possession of the place which her toilet-table oc- 
 cupied a hundred years ago. There are degrees 
 in decadence ; after the Fashion chooses to emi- 
 grate, and retreats from Soho or Bloomsbury, let 
 us say, to Cavendish Square, physicians come and 
 occupy the vacant houses, which still have a re- 
 spectable look, the windows being cleaned, and 
 the knockers and plates kept bright, and the doc- 
 tor's carriage rolling round the square, almost as 
 fine as the countess's, which has whisked away 
 her ladyship to other regions. A boarding-house 
 mayhap succeeds the physician, who has followed 
 after his sick folks into the new country ; and 
 then Dick Tin to comes with his dingy brass plate, 
 and breaks in his north window, and sets up his 
 
LONDON STUDIOS. 37 
 
 sitters' throne. I love his honest mustache and 
 jaunty velvet. jacket ; his queer figure, his queer 
 vanities, and his kind heart. Why should he not 
 suffer his ruddy ringlets to fall over his shirt col- 
 lar? Why should he deny himself his velvet? 
 It is but a kind of fustian that cost him eighteen- 
 pence a yard. He is naturally what he is, and 
 breaks out into costume as spontaneously as a 
 bird sings, or a bulb bears a tulip. And as Dick, 
 under yon terrific appearance of waving cloak, 
 bris-tling beard, and shadowy sombrero, is a good, 
 kindly, simple creature, got up at a very cheap 
 rate, so his life is consistent with his dress ; he 
 gives his genius a darkling swagger, and a roman- 
 tic envelope, which, being removed, you find, not 
 a bravo, but a kind, chirping soul ; not a moody 
 poet, avoiding mankind for the better company of 
 his own great thoughts, but a jolly little chap 
 who has an aptitude for joainting brocade gowns, 
 a bit of armor (with figures inside them), or trees 
 and cattle, or gondolas and buildings, or what 
 not ; an instinct for the picturesque, which ex- 
 hibits itself in his works and outwardly on his 
 person ; beyond this, a gentle creature, loving his 
 friends, his cups, feasts, merrymakings, and all 
 good things. The kindest folks alive I have 
 found among those scowling whiskeradoes. They 
 open oysters with their yataghans, toast muffins 
 on their rapiers, and fill their Venice glasses with 
 half-and-half. If they have money in their lean 
 
38 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 purses, be sure they have a friend to share it. 
 What innocent gayety, what jovial suppers on 
 threadbare cloths, and wonderful songs after ; 
 what pathos, merriment, humor does not a man 
 enjoy who frequents their company ! — The Neic- 
 comes. 
 
 ON woman's love. 
 
 The old French satirist avers that in a love 
 affair there is usually one person who loves, and 
 the other, qui se laisse aimer ; it is only in later 
 days, perhaps, when the treasures of love are 
 spent, and the kind hand cold which ministered 
 them, that we remember how tender it was, how 
 soft to soothe, how eager to shield, how ready to 
 support and caress. The ears may no longer 
 hear, which would have received our w^ords of 
 thanks so delightedly. Let us hope those fruits 
 of love, though tardy, are yet not all too late ; 
 and, though we bring our tribute of reverence 
 and gratitude it may be to a gravestone, there is 
 an acceptance even there for the stricken heart's 
 oblation of fond remorse, contrite memories, and 
 pious tears. — The Nev^comes. 
 
 AKTIST LIFE IN EOME. 
 
 When Clive Newcome . comes to be old, no 
 doubt he will remember his Roman days as 
 among the happiest which fate ever awarded him. 
 The simplicity of the student's life there, the 
 
ARTIST LIFE IN ROME. 89 
 
 greatness and friendly splendor of tlie scenes sur- 
 rounding him, the delightful nature of the occu- 
 pation in which he is engaged, the pleasant compa- 
 ny of comrades, inspired by a like pleasure over a 
 similar calling, the labor, the meditation, the holi- 
 day, and the kindly feast afterward, should make 
 the art-students the happiest of youth, did they 
 but know their good fortune. Their work is for 
 the most part delightfully easy. It does not ex- 
 ercise the brain too much, but gently occupies it, 
 and with a subject most agreeable to the scholar. 
 The mere poetic flame, or jet of invention, needs 
 to be lighted up but very seldom, namely, when 
 the young painter is devising his subject, or set- 
 tling the composition thereof. The posing of fig- 
 ures and drapery ; the dexterous copying of the 
 line ; the artful processes of cross-hatching, of 
 stumping, of laying on lights, and what not ; the 
 arrangement of color, and the pleasing operation 
 of glazing and the like, are labors for the most 
 part merely manual. These, with the smoking of 
 a proper number of pipes, carry the student 
 through his day's work. If you pass his door, you 
 will very probably hear him singing at his easel. 
 I should like to know what young lawyer, mathe- 
 matician, or divinity scliolar, can sing over his 
 volumes, and at the same time advance with his 
 labor? In every city where art is practiced, 
 there are old gentlemen who never touched a 
 pencil in their lives, but find the occupation and 
 
40 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 company of artists so agreeable that they are 
 never out of the studios ; follow one generation 
 of painters after another ; sit by with perfect con- 
 tentment while Jack is drawing his pifferaro, or 
 Tom designing his cartoon, and years afterward, 
 when Jack is established in Newman Street, and 
 Tom a Royal Academician, shall still be found in 
 their rooms, occupied now by fresh painters and 
 pictures, telling the youngsters, their successors, 
 what glorious fellows Jack and Tom were. A 
 poet must retire to privy places and meditate his 
 rhymes in secret ; a painter can practice his trade 
 in the company of friends. Your splendid chef 
 cVecole, a Kubens or a Horace Vernet, may sit 
 with a secretary reading to him ; a troop of 
 admiring scholars watching the master's hand ; 
 or a company of court ladies and gentlemen (to 
 whom he addresses a few kind words now and 
 again) looking on admiringly ; while the humblest 
 painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend 
 watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by 
 with her work in her lap, and with fond smiles or 
 talk or silence cheering his labor. 
 
 Among all ranks and degrees of painters as- 
 sembled at Rome, Mr. Clive found companions 
 and friends. The cleverest man was not the best 
 artist very often : the ablest artist not the best 
 critic nor the best companion. Many a man 
 could give no account of the faculty within him, 
 but achieved success because he could not help it ; 
 
ARTIST LIFE IN ROME. 41 
 
 and did, in an hour and without effort, that which 
 another could not effect with half a life's labor. 
 There were young sculptors who had never read 
 a line of Homer, who took on themselves never- 
 theless to interpret and continue the heroic Greek 
 art. There were young painters with the strong- 
 est natural taste for low humor, comic singing, 
 and Cider-Cellar jollifications, who would imitate 
 nothing under Michael Angelo, and whose can- 
 vases teemed with tremendous allegories of fates, 
 furies, genii of death and battle. There were long- 
 haired lads who fancied the sublime lay in the 
 Peruginesque manner, and depicted saintly per- 
 sonages with crisp draperies, crude colors, and 
 haloes of gold-leaf. Our friend marked all these 
 practitioners of art with their various oddities 
 and tastes, and was welcomed in the ateliers of 
 all of them, from the grave dons and seniors, the 
 senators of the French and English Academy, 
 down to the jovial students who railed at the 
 elders over their cheap cups at the Lepre. What 
 a gallant, starving, generous, kindly life many of 
 them led ! What fun in their grotesque airs, 
 what friendship and gentleness in their poverty ! 
 How splendidly Carlo talked of the marquis his 
 cousin, and the duke his intimate friend ! How 
 great Federigo was on the subject of his wrongs, 
 from the Academy at home, a pack of tradesmen, 
 who could not understand high art, and who had 
 never seen a good picture ! With what haughti- 
 
42 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 ness Augusto swaggered about at Sir Jolin's 
 soirees, thougli he was known to have borrowed 
 Fernando's coat, and Luigi's dress-boots ! If one 
 or the other was ill, how nobly and generously 
 his companions flocked to comfort him, took turns 
 to nurse the sick man through nights of fever, 
 contributed out of their slender means to help 
 him through his difficulty. Max, who loves fine 
 dresses and the carnival so, gave up a costume 
 and a carriage so as to help Paul. Paul, when he 
 sold his picture (through the agency of Pietro, 
 with whom he had quarreled, and who recom- 
 mended him to a patron), gave a third of the 
 money back to Max, and took another third por- 
 tion to Lazaro, with his poor wife and children, 
 who had not got a single order all that winter — 
 and so the story went on. I have heard Clive 
 tell of two noble young Americans who came to 
 Europe to study their art ; of whom the one fell 
 sick while the other supported his penniless com- 
 rade, and out of sixpence a day absolutely kept 
 but a penny for himself, giving the rest to his 
 sick companion. — The N'eiccomes. 
 
 A FAMILIAR MYSTERY. 
 
 I suppose there is no man in this Vanity Fair 
 of ours so little observant as not to think some- 
 times about the worldly affairs of his acquaint- 
 ances, or so extremely charitable as not to wonder 
 how his neighbor Jones, or his neighbor Smith 
 
A FAMILIAR MYSTERY. 43 
 
 can make both ends meet at the end of the year. 
 With the utmost regard for the family, for in- 
 stance (for I dine with them twice or thrice in 
 the season), I can not but own that the appearance 
 of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouche 
 with grenadier-footman, will surprise and mystify 
 me to my dying day : for though I know the 
 equipage is only jobbed, and all the Jenkins peo- 
 ple are on board-wages, yet those three men and 
 the carriage must represent an expense of six hun- 
 dred a. year at the very least ; and then there are 
 the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the 
 prize governess and masters for the girls, the trip 
 abroad, or to Eastbourne or Worthing in the au- 
 tumn, the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's 
 (who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate 
 dinners which J. gives, as I know very well, hav- 
 ing been invited to one of them to fill a vacant 
 place, when I saw at once that these repasts are 
 very superior to the common run of entertain- 
 ments for which the humbler sort of J.'s acquain- 
 tances get cards) — who, I say with the most good- 
 natured feelings in the world, can help wondering 
 how the Jenkinses make out matters ? What is 
 Jenkins ? We all know — Commissioner of Tape 
 and Sealing Wax Ofiice, with £1,200 a year for 
 a salary. Had his wife a private fortune ? Pooh ! 
 — Miss Flint — one of eleven children of a small 
 squire in Buckinghamshire. All she ever gets 
 from her family is a turkey at Christmas, in ex- 
 
44 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 change for which she has to board two or three 
 of her sisters in the off season ; and lodge and 
 feed her brothers when they come to town. How 
 does Jenkins balance his income ? I say, as every 
 friend of his must say, How is it that he has not 
 been outlawed long since ; and that he ever came 
 back (as he did to the surprise of everybody) last 
 year from Boulogne ? *' J." is here introduced to 
 personify the world in general — the Mrs. Grundy 
 of each respected reader's private circle — every 
 one of whom can point to some families of his ac- 
 quaintance who live nobody knows how. Many 
 a glass of wine have we all of us drunk, I have 
 very little doubt, hob-and-nobbing with the hos- 
 pitable giver, and wondering how the deuce he 
 paid for it. — Vanity Fair. 
 
 THE BADEN OP OLD. 
 
 Besides roulette and trente et quarante, a 
 number of amusing games are played at Baden 
 which are not performed, so to speak, sur table. 
 These little diversions and jeux de societe can go 
 on anywhere ; in an alley in the park ; in a picnic 
 to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge ; 
 at a tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel ; in a 
 ball at the Redoute ; in the play-rooms, behind 
 the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only 
 cast upon rakes and rouleaux, and red and black ; 
 or on the broad walk in front of the Conversation 
 Rooms, where thousands of people are drinking 
 
THE BADEN OF OLD. 45 
 
 and chattering, lounging and smoking, while the 
 Austrian brass band, in the little music pavilion, 
 plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes. 
 Here the widow plays her black suit, and sets her 
 bright eye on the rich bachelor, elderly or young 
 as may be. Here the artful practitioner, who has 
 dealt in a thousand such games, engages the young 
 simpleton with more money than wit ; and, know- 
 ing his weakness and her skill, we may safely take 
 the odds, and back rouge et couleur to win. Here 
 mamma, not having money, perhaps, but metal 
 more attractive, stakes her virgin daughter against 
 Count Fettacker's forests and meadows ; or Lord 
 Lackland plays his coronet, of which the jewels 
 have long since been in pawn, against Miss Bags's 
 three per cents. And so two or three funny little 
 games were going on at Baden among our imme- 
 diate acquaintance ; besides that vulgar sport 
 round the green-table, at which the mob, with 
 whom we have little to do, was elbowing each 
 other. A hint of these domestic prolusions has 
 been given to the reader in the foregoing extract 
 from Miss Ethel Newcome's letter ; likewise some 
 passions have been in play, of which a modest 
 young English maiden could not be aware. Do 
 not, however, let us be too prematurely proud of 
 our virtue. That tariff of British virtue is won- 
 derfully organized. Heaven help the society 
 which made its laws ! Gnats are shut out of its 
 ports, or not admitted without scrutiny and re- 
 
46 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 pugnance, while herds of camels are let in. The 
 law professes to exclude some goods (or bads, shall 
 we call them?) — well, some articles of baggage, 
 which are yet smuggled openly under the eyes 
 of winking officers, and worn every day without 
 shame. Shame ! AYhat is shame ? Virtue is 
 very often shameful according to the English so- 
 cial constitution, and shame honorable. Truth, 
 if yours happens to differ from your neighbor's, 
 provokes your friend's coldness, your mother's 
 tears, the world's persecution. Love is not to be 
 dealt in, save under restrictions which kill its sweet, 
 healthy, free commerce. Sin in man is so light 
 that scarce the fine of a penny is imposed ; while 
 for woman it is so heavy that no repentance can 
 wash it out. Ah ! yes ; all stories are old. You 
 proud matrons in your Mayfair markets, have 
 you never seen a virgin sold, or sold one ? Have 
 you never heard of a poor wayfarer fallen among 
 robbers, and not a Pharisee to help him? of a 
 poor woman fallen more sadly yet, abject in re- 
 pentance and tears, and a crowd to stone her ? I 
 pace this broad Baden walk as the sunset is gild- 
 ing the hills round about, as the orchestra blows 
 its merry tunes, as the happy children laugh and 
 sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the gambling 
 palace are lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure- 
 hunters stroll, and smoke, and flirt, and hum ; and 
 wonder, sometimes, is it the sinners who are the 
 most sinful ? Is it poor Prodigal yonder among 
 
THE WILDNESS OF YOUTH. 47 
 
 the bad company, calling black and red, and toss- 
 ing the Champagne ; or brother Straightlace that 
 grudges his repentance? Is it downcast Hagar 
 that slinks away with poor little Ishmael in her 
 hand ; or bitter old virtuous Sarah, who scowls at 
 her from my demure Lord Abraham's arm? — 
 The Newcomes. 
 
 THE WILDNESS OF YOUTH. 
 
 When we read in the fairy stories that the 
 King and Queen, who lived once upon a time, 
 built a castle of steel, defended by moats and 
 sentinels innumerable, in which they place their 
 darling only child, the Prince or Princess, whose 
 birth has blest them after so many years of mar- 
 riage, and whose christening feast has been inter- 
 rupted by the cantankerous humor of that noto- 
 rious old fairy who always persists in coming, 
 although she has not received any invitation to 
 the baptismal ceremony ; when Prince Prettyman 
 is locked up in the steel tower, provided only with 
 the most wholesome food, the most edifying edu- 
 cational works, and the most venerable old tutor 
 to instruct and to bore him, we knew, as a matter 
 of course, that the steel bolts and brazen bars will 
 one day be of no avail, the old tutor will go off 
 in a doze, and the moats and drawbridges will 
 either be passed by his Royal Highness's implaca- 
 ble enemies, or crossed by the young scapegrace 
 himself, who is determined to outwit his guar- 
 
48 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 dians and see the wicked world. The old King 
 and Queen always come in and find the chambers 
 empty, the saucy heir-apparent flown, the porters 
 and sentinels drunk, the ancient tutor asleep ; 
 they tear their venerable wigs in anguish, they 
 kick the major-domo down stairs, they turn the 
 duenna out of doors, the toothless old dragon. 
 There is no resisting fate. The Princess will slip 
 out of window by the rope-ladder ; the Prince 
 be off to pursue his pleasures, and sow his wild 
 oats at the appointed season. How many of our 
 English princes have been coddled at home by 
 their fond papas and mammas, walled up in in- 
 accessible castles, with a tutor and a library, 
 guarded by cordons of sentinels, sermoners, old 
 aunts, old women from the world without, and 
 have nevertheless escaped from all the guardians, 
 and astonished the world by their extravagance 
 and their frolics. What a wild rogue was that 
 Prince Harry, son of the austere sovereign who 
 robbed Richard the Second of his crown — the 
 youth who took purses on Gadshill, frequented 
 Eastcheap taverns with Colonel Falstaff and 
 worse company, and boxed Chief Justice Gas- 
 coigne's ears. What must have been the vener- 
 able Queen Charlotte's state of mind when she 
 heard of the courses of her beautiful young 
 Prince ; of his punting at gambling-tables ; of 
 his dealings with horse jockeys ; of his awful do- 
 ings with Perdita ? Besides instances taken from 
 
THE WILDNESS OF YOUTH. 49 
 
 our Royal Family, could we not draw examples 
 from our respected nobility? There was that 
 young Lord Warwick, Mr. Addison's step-son. 
 We know that his mother was severe, and his 
 step-father a most eloquent moralist, yet the 
 young gentleman's career was shocking, posi- 
 tively shocking. He boxed the watch ; he fud- 
 dled himself at taverns ; he was no better than a 
 Mohock. The chronicles of that day contain ac- 
 counts of many a mad prank which he played, as 
 we have legends of a still earlier date of the law- 
 less freaks of the wild Prince and Poins. Our 
 people have never looked very unkindly on these 
 frolics. A young nobleman full of life and spirits, 
 generous of his money, jovial in his humor, ready 
 with his sword, frank, handsome, prodigal, cou- 
 rageous, always finds favor. Young Scapegrace 
 rides a steeple-chase or beats a bargeman, and the 
 crowd applaud him. Sages and seniors shake 
 their heads, and look at him not unkindly ; even 
 stern old female moralists are disarmed at the 
 sight of youth, and gallantry, and beauty. I 
 know very well that Charles Surface is a sad 
 dog, and Tom Jones no better than he should 
 be ; but, in spite of such critics as Dr. Johnson 
 and Colonel Newcome, most of us have a sneak- 
 ing regard for honest Tom, and hope Sophia will 
 be happy, and Tom will end well at last. — The 
 Newcomes. 
 4 
 
50 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 ON EEVEKSES IN LIFE. 
 
 If the gracious reader has had losses in life, 
 losses not so bad as to cause absolute want, or 
 inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of starva- 
 tion, let him confess that the evils of this pov- 
 erty are by no means so great as his timorous 
 fancy depicted. Say your money has been in- 
 vested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless 
 speculations — the news of the smash comes ; you 
 pay your outlying bills with the balance at the 
 banker's ; you assemble your family and make 
 them a fine speech ; the wife of your bosom goes 
 round and embraces the sons and daughters seria- 
 tim ; nestling in your own waistcoat finally, in 
 possession of which, she says (with tender tears 
 and fond quotations from Holy Writ, God bless 
 her !), and of the darlings round about, lies all 
 her worldly treasure ; the weeping servants are 
 dismissed, their wages paid in full, and with a 
 present of prayer-and hymn-books from their mis- 
 tress ; your elegant house in Haiiey Street is to 
 let, and you subside into lodgings in Pentonville, 
 or Kensington, or Brompton. How unlike the 
 mansion where you paid taxes and distributed 
 elegant hospitality for so many years ! 
 
 You subside into lodgings, I say, and you find 
 yourself very tolerably comfortable. I am not 
 sure that in her heart your wife is not happier 
 than ill what she calls her happy days. She will 
 
ON REVERSES IN LIFE. 51 
 
 be somebody hereafter : she was nobody in Har- 
 ley Street : that is, everybody else in her visiting- 
 book, take the names all round, was as good as 
 she. They had the very same entrees, plated 
 ware, men to wait, etc., at all the houses Avhere 
 you visited in the street. Your candlesticks 
 might be handsomer (and indeed they had a very 
 fine effect upon the dinner-table), but then Mr. 
 Jones's silver (or electro-plated) dishes were much 
 finer. You had more carriages at your door on 
 the evening of your delightful soirees than Mrs. 
 Brown (there is no phrase more elegant, and to 
 my taste, than that in which people are described 
 as " seeing a great deal of carriage company ") ; 
 but yet Mrs. Brown, from the circumstance of 
 her being a baronet's niece, took precedence of 
 your dear wife at most tables. Hence the latter 
 charming woman's scorn at the British baronetcy, 
 and her many jokes at the order. In a word, and 
 in the height of your social prosperity, there was 
 always a lurking dissatisfaction, and a something 
 bitter, in the midst of the fountain of delights at 
 which you were permitted to drink. 
 
 There is no good (unless your taste is that way) 
 in living in a society where you are merely the 
 equal of everybody else. Many people give them- 
 selves extreme pains to frequent company where 
 all around them are their superiors, and where, do 
 what you will, you must be subject to continual 
 mortification — (as, for instance, when Marchioness 
 
52 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 X forgets you, and jou can't help thinking 
 
 that she cuts you on purpose ; when Duchess 
 
 Z passes by in her diamonds, etc.). The true 
 
 pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors. Be 
 the cock of your village ; the queen of your co- 
 terie ; and, besides very great persons, the people 
 whom Fate has specially endowed with this kind- 
 ly consolation, are those who have seen what are 
 called better days — those who have had losses. I 
 am like Caesar, and of a noble mind : if I can not 
 be first in Piccadilly, let me try Hatton Garden, 
 and see whether I can not lead the ton there. If 
 I can not take the lead at White's or the Travel- 
 er's, let me be president of the Jolly Sandboys at 
 the Bag of Nails, and blackball everybody who 
 does not pay me honor. If my darling Bessy 
 can not go out of a drawing-room until a baron- 
 et's niece (ha ! ha ! a baronet's niece, forsooth !) 
 has walked before her, let us frequent company 
 where we shall be the first ; and how can we be 
 the first unless we select our inferiors for our asso- 
 ciates? This kind of pleasure is to be had by 
 almost everybody, and at scarce any cost. With 
 a shilling's worth of tea and muffins you can get 
 as much adulation and respect as many people 
 can not purchase with a thousand pounds' worth 
 of plate and profusion, hired footmen, turning 
 their houses topsy-turvy, and suppers from Gun- 
 ter's. Adulation ! — why, the people who come to 
 you give as good parties as you do. Respect ! — 
 
ON CONTEMPLATING PERSONS IN LOVE. 53 
 
 the very menials, who wait behind your supper- 
 table, waited at a duke's yesterday, and actually 
 patronize you ! Oh, you silly spendthrift ! you 
 can buy flattery for twopence, and you spend ever 
 so much money in entertaining your equals and 
 betters, and nobody admires you! — The Mewcomes. 
 
 ON CONTEMPLATING PERSONS IN LOVE. 
 
 For a while, at least, I think almost every man 
 or woman is interesting when in love. If you 
 know, of two or three such affairs going on in any 
 soiree to which you may be invited — is not the 
 party straightway amusing ? Yonder goes Augus- 
 tus Tomkins, working his way through the rooms 
 to that far corner where demure Miss Hopkins is 
 seated, to whom the stupid, grinning Bumpkins 
 thinks he is making himself agreeable. Yonder 
 sits Miss Fanny distraite^ and yet trying to smile 
 as the captain is talking his folly, the parson his 
 glib compliments. And see, her face lights up all 
 of a sudden : her eyes beam with delight at the 
 captain's stories, and at that delightful young 
 clergyman likewise. It is because Augustus has 
 appeared ; their eyes only meet for one semi- 
 second, but that is enough for Miss Fanny. Go 
 on, captain, with your twaddle ! Proceed, my 
 reverend friend, with your smirking common- 
 places ! In the last two minutes the world has 
 changed for Miss Fanny. That moment has come 
 for which she has been fidgeting and longing and 
 
54 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 scheming all day ! Hoav different an interest, I 
 say, has a meeting of people for a philosopher 
 who knows of a few such little secrets, to that 
 which your vulgar looker-on feels, who comes but 
 to eat the ices, and stare at the ladies' dresses and 
 beauty ! There are two frames of mind under 
 which London society is bearable to a man — to be 
 an actor in one of those sentimental performances 
 above hinted at : or to be a spectator and watch 
 it. But as for the mere dessus de cartes — would 
 not an armchair and the dullest of books be bet- 
 ter than that dull game ? — The Nevjcomes. 
 
 THE WORLD NOT HEARTLESS. 
 
 Some folks say the world is heartless : he who 
 says so either prates commonplaces (the most 
 likely and charitable suggestion), or is heartless 
 himself, or is most singular and unfortunate in 
 having made no friends. Many such a reasonable 
 mortal can not have : our nature, I think, not 
 sufficing for that sort of polygamy. How many 
 persons would you have to deplore your death ; 
 or whose death would you wish to deplore? 
 Could our hearts let in such a harem of dear 
 friendships, the mere changes and recurrences of 
 grief and mourning would be intolerable, and tax 
 our lives beyond their value. In a word, we 
 carry our own burden in the world ; push and 
 struggle along on our own affairs ; are pinched 
 by our own shoes — though heaven forbid we 
 
ON THE PROSAIC IN LIFE. 55 
 
 should not stop and forget ourselves sometimes, 
 when a friend cries out in his distress, or we can 
 help a poor stricken wanderer in his way. — The 
 
 N'ewcomes. 
 
 ON THE PEOSAIC IN LIFE. 
 
 Worthy mammas of families — if you do not 
 like to have your daughters told that bad hus- 
 bands will make bad wives ; that marriages begun 
 in indifference make home unhappy ; that men 
 whom girls are brought to swear to love and 
 honor are sometimes false, selfish, and cruel, and 
 that women forget the oaths which they have 
 been made to swear — if you will not hear of this, 
 ladies, close the book, and send for some other. 
 Banish the newspaper out of your houses, and 
 shut your eyes to the truth, the awful truth of 
 life and sin. Is the world made of Jennies and 
 Jessamies ; and passion the play of school-boys 
 and school-girls, scribbling valentines and inter- 
 changing lollipops ? Is life all over when Jenny 
 and Jessamy are married ; and are there no sub- 
 sequent trials, griefs, wars, bitter heart-pangs, 
 dreadful temptations, defeats, remorses, sufferings 
 to bear, and dangers to overcome ? As you and 
 I, friend, kneel with our children round about us, 
 prostrate before the Father of us all, and asking 
 mercy for miserable sinners, are the young ones 
 to suppose the words are mere form, and don't 
 apply to us ? to some outcasts in the free seats 
 probably, or those naughty boys playing in the 
 
56 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 churchyard ? Are they not to know that we err, 
 too, and pray with all our hearts to be rescued 
 from temptation ? If such a knowledge is wrong 
 for them, send them to church apart. Go you 
 and worship in private : or, if not too proud, 
 kneel humbly in the midst of them, owning your 
 wrong, and praying Heaven to be merciful to you, 
 a sinner. — The Newcomes. 
 
 THE CEEATURES OF CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 Do we know ourselves, or what good or evil 
 circumstances may bring from us? Did Cain 
 know, as he and his younger brother played round 
 his mother's knee, that the little hand which 
 caressed Abel should one day grow larger, and 
 seize a brand to slay him ? Thrice fortunate he, 
 to whom circumstance is made easy : whom fate 
 visits with gentle trial, and kindly Heaven keej^s 
 out of temptation. — The Neiocomes. 
 
 A NOTE. 
 
 What is sheer hate seems to the individual 
 entertaining the sentiment so like indignant vir- 
 tue, that he often indulges in the propensity to the 
 full, nay, lauds himself for the exercise of it. — 
 
 The N'eiocomes. 
 
 ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTEE. 
 
 Fortune, good or ill, as I take it, does not 
 change men and women. It but develops their 
 
FOUNDER'S DAY AT CHARTER-HOUSE. 57 
 
 characters. As there are a thousand thoughts 
 lying within a man that he does not know till he 
 takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secret 
 even to hira (or her) who has it in his own breast. 
 Who hath not found himself surprised into re- 
 venge, or action, or passion for good or evil ; 
 whereof the seeds lay within him, latent and un- 
 suspected until the occasion called them forth ? — 
 Henry Esmond. 
 
 founder's day at charter-house. 
 
 Tte custom of the school is, that on the 12th 
 of December, the Founder's Day, the head gown- 
 boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise Funda- 
 toris N'ostri, and upon other subjects ; and a 
 goodly company of old Cistercians is generally 
 brought together to attend this oration : after 
 which we go to chapel and hear a sermon ; after 
 which we adjourn to a great dinner, where old 
 condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and speech- 
 es are made. Before marching from the oration- 
 hall to chapel, the stewards of the day's dinner, 
 according to old-fashioned rite, have wands put 
 into their hands, walk to church at the head -of 
 the procession, and sit there in places of honor. 
 The boys are already in their seats, with smug, 
 fresh faces, and shining white collars ; the old 
 black-gowned pensioners are on their benches ; 
 the chapel is lighted, and Founder's Tomb, with 
 its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, dar- 
 
58 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 kles and slimes witli the most wonderful shadows 
 and lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in 
 his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examina- 
 tion Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, be- 
 come boys again as we look at that familiar old 
 tomb, and think how the seats are altered since 
 we were here, and how the doctor — not the pres- 
 ent doctor, the doctor of our time — used to sit 
 yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us 
 shuddering boys, on whom it lighted ; and how 
 the boy next us loould kick our shins dui'ing ser- 
 vice time, and how the monitor would cane us 
 afterward because our shins were kicked. Yon- 
 der sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about 
 home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some 
 threescore old gentlemen, pensioners of the hos- 
 pital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. 
 You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight — 
 the old reverend black-gowns. Is Codd Ajax 
 alive, you wonder ? — the Cistercian lads called 
 these old gentlemen Codds, I know not where- 
 fore — but is old Codd Ajax alive, I wonder ? or 
 Codd Soldier ? or kind old Codd Gentleman, or 
 has the grave closed over them? A plenty of 
 candles lights up this chapel, and this scene of 
 age and youth, and early memories, and pompous 
 death. How solemn the well-remembered pray- 
 ers are, here uttered again in the place where in 
 childhood we used to hear them ! How beautiful 
 and decorous the rite ; how noble the ancient 
 
THE OLD INNS OF COURT. 59 
 
 words of the supplications which the priest utters, 
 and to which generations of fresh children and 
 troops of by-gone seniors have cried Amen ! un- 
 der those arches ! The service for Founder's 
 Day is a special one ; one of the psalms selected 
 being the thirty-seventh, and we hear — 
 
 " 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the 
 Lord ; and he delighteth in his way. 
 
 "24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast 
 down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. 
 
 *' 25. I have been young, and now am old ; yet have 
 I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging 
 bread." 
 
 As we came to this verse, I chanced to look 
 up from my book toward the swarm of black- 
 coated pensioners ; and among them — among 
 them — sat Thomas ]!^ewcome. — The JVeiccomes. 
 
 THE OLD INNS OF COURT. 
 
 Colleges, schools, and inns of court, still have 
 some respect for antiquity, and maintain a great 
 number of the customs and institutions of our 
 ancestors, with which those persons who do not 
 particularly regard their forefathers, or perhaps 
 are not very well acquainted with them, have 
 long since done away. A well-ordained work- 
 house or prison is much better pro\'ided with the 
 appliances of health, comfort, and cleanliness, 
 than a respectable Foundation school, a venerable 
 College, or a learned Inn. In the latter place of 
 
60 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 residence men are contented to sleep in dingy- 
 closets, and to pay for the sitting-room and the 
 cupboard, which is their dormitory, the price of a 
 good villa and garden in the suburbs, or of a 
 roomy house in the neglected squares of the town. 
 The poorest mechanic in Spitalfields has a cistern 
 and an unbounded supply of water at his com- 
 mand ; but the gentlemen of the inns of court 
 and the gentlemen of the universities have their 
 supply of this cosmetic fetched in jugs by laun- 
 dresses and bed -makers, and live in abodes which 
 were erected long before the custom of cleanli- 
 ness and decency obtained among us. There are 
 individuals still alive who sneer at the people and 
 speak of them with epithets of scorn. Gentle- 
 men, there can be but little doubt that your an- 
 cestors were the Great Unwashed : and in the 
 Temple especially it is pretty certain that only 
 under the greatest difficulties and restrictions 
 the virtue which has been pronounced to be next 
 to godliness could have been practiced at all. 
 
 Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had 
 lived for more than thirty years in the chambers 
 under those occupied by Warrington and Penden- 
 nis, and who used to be awakened by the roaring 
 of the shower-baths which those gentlemen had 
 erected in their apartments, part of the contents 
 of which occasionally trickled through the roof 
 into Mr. Grump's room, declared that the practice 
 was an absurd, new-fangled, dandified folly, and 
 
THE OLD INNS OF COURT. 61 
 
 daily cursed the laundress who slopped the stair- 
 case by which he had to pass. Grump, now much 
 more than half a century old, had, indeed, never 
 used the luxury in question. He had done with- 
 out water very well, and so had our fathers be- 
 fore him. Of all those knights and baronets, 
 lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose es- 
 cutcheons are painted upon the walls of the fa- 
 mous hall of the Upper Temple, was there no 
 philanthropist good-natured enough to devise a 
 set of Hummums for the benefit of the lawyers, 
 his fellows and successors? The Temple his- 
 torian makes no mention of such a scheme. 
 There is Pump Court and Fountain Court, with 
 their hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of 
 a bencher disporting in the fountain, and can't 
 but think how many a counsel learned in the law 
 of old days might have benefited by the pump. 
 
 Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have 
 the Lamb and Flag and the Winged Horse for 
 their ensigns have attractions for persons who in- 
 habit them, and a share of rough comforts and 
 freedom, which men always remember with plea- 
 sure. I don't know whether the student of law 
 permits himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or 
 indulges in poetical reminiscences as he passes by 
 historical chambers, and says : " Yonder Eldon 
 lived — upon this site Coke mused upon Lyttleton 
 — here Chitty toiled — here Barnwell and Alderson 
 joined in their famous labors — here Byles com- 
 
62 STRAY MOMENTS WITU THACKERAY. 
 
 posed his great work upon bills, and Smith com- 
 piled his immortal leading cases — here Gustavus 
 still toils, with Solomon to aid him " ; but the 
 man of letters can't but love the place which has 
 been inhabited by so many of his brethren, or 
 peopled by their creations as real to us at this day 
 as the authors whose children they were — and Sir 
 Roger de Coverley, walking in the Temple Gar- 
 den and discoursing with Mr. Spectator about 
 the beauties in hoops and patches who are saun- 
 tering over the grass, is just as lively a figure to 
 me as old Samuel Johnson rolling through the 
 fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on 
 their way to Dr. Goldsmith's chambers in Brick 
 Court ; or Harry Fielding, with inked ruffles and 
 a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles at 
 midnight for the " Covent Garden Journal," while 
 the printer's boy is asleep in the passage. — Pen- 
 den7iis. 
 
 AGAINST BACHELORHOOD. 
 
 A committee of marriageable ladies, or of any 
 Christian persons interested in the propagation of 
 the domestic virtues, should employ a Cruikshank 
 or a Leech, or some other kindly expositor of the 
 follies of the day, to make a series of designs rep- 
 resenting the horrors of a bachelor's life in cham- 
 bers, and leading the beholder to think of better 
 things, and a more wholesome condition. What 
 can be more uncomfortable than the bachelor's 
 lonely breakfast ? with the black kettle in the 
 
AGAINST BACHELORHOOD. G3 
 
 dreary fire in midsuinmer ; or, worse still, with 
 the fire gone out at Christmas half an hour af- 
 ter the laundress has quitted the sitting-room ? 
 Into this solitude the owner enters shivering, and 
 has to commence his day by hunting for coals and 
 wood ; and, before he begins the work of a stu- 
 dent, has to discharge the duties of a housemaid, 
 vice Mrs. Flanagan, who is absent without leave. 
 Or, again, what can form a finer subject for the 
 classical designer than the bachelor's shirt — that 
 garment which he wants to assume just at dinner- 
 time, and which he finds without any buttons to 
 fasten it ? Then there is the bachelor's return to 
 chambers, after a merry Christmas holiday, spent 
 in a cosy country house, full of pretty faces, and 
 kind welcomes and regrets. He leaves his port- 
 manteau at the barber's in the court ; he lights 
 his dismal old candle at the sputtering little lamp 
 on the stair ; he enters the blank familiar room, 
 where the only tokens to greet him that show any 
 interest in his personal welfare are the Christmas 
 bills which are lying in wait for him amiably 
 spread out on his reading-table. Add to these 
 scenes an appalling picture of bachelor's illness, 
 and the rents in the Temple will begin to fall from 
 the day of the publication of the dismal diorama. 
 To be well in chambers is melancholy, and lonely 
 and selfish enough ; but to be ill in chambers ; to 
 pass nights of pain and watchfulness ; to long for 
 the morning and the laundress ; to serve yourself 
 
64 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 your own medicine by your own watch ; to have 
 no other companion for long hours but your own 
 sickening fancies and fevered thoughts ; no kind 
 hand to give you drink if you are thirsty, or to 
 smooth the hot pillow that crumples under you ; 
 this, indeed, is a fate so dismal and tragic that we 
 shall not enlarge upon its horrors, and shall only 
 heartily pity those bachelors in the Temple who 
 brave it every day. — Pendennis. 
 
 ON THE FOEMATIOlNr OF CHARACTER. 
 
 We alter very little. When we talk of this 
 man or that woman being no longer the same per- 
 son whom we remember in youth, and remark (of 
 course to deplore) changes in our friends, we 
 don't, perhaps, calculate that circumstance only 
 brings out the latent defect or quality, and does 
 not create it. The selfish languor and indiffer- 
 ence of to-day's possession is the consequence of 
 the selfish ardor of yesterday's pursuit ; the scorn 
 and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is 
 but the lassitude of the sick appetite palled with 
 pleasure ; the insolence of the successful parvenu 
 is only the necessary continuance of the career of 
 the needy struggler ; our mental changes are, like 
 our gray hairs or our wrinkles, but the fulfillment 
 of the plan of mortal growth and decay : that 
 which is snow-white now was glossy black once ; 
 that which is sluggish obesity to-day was boister- 
 ous rosy health a few years back ; that calm weari- 
 
ON THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 65 
 
 neas, benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was 
 ambition, fierce and violent, but a few years since, 
 and has only settled into submissive repose after 
 many a battle and defeat. Lucky he who can 
 bear his failure so generously, and give up his 
 broken sword to Fate the Conqueror with a man- 
 ly and humble heart ! Are you not awe-stricken, 
 you, friendly reader, who, taking the page up for 
 a moment's light reading, lay it down, perchance, 
 for a graver reflection — to think how you, who 
 have consummated your success or your disaster, 
 may be holding marked station, or a hopeless and 
 nameless place in the crowd, who have passed 
 through how many struggles of defeat, success, 
 crime, remorse, to yourself only known ! who may 
 have loved and grown old, wept and laughed 
 again how often ! to think hoAv you are the same 
 you whom in childhood you remember before the 
 voyage of life began? It had been prosperous, 
 and you are riding into port, the people huzzaing 
 and the guns saluting, and the lucky captain bow- 
 ing from the ship's side, and there is a care under 
 the star on his breast which nobody knows of ; or 
 you are wrecked, and lashed hopeless to a solitary 
 spar out at sea ; the sinking man and the success- 
 ful one are thinking each about home, very likely, 
 and remembering the time when they were chil- 
 dren, alone on the hopeless spar, drowning out of 
 sight, alone in the midst of the crowd applauding 
 you. — Pendennis. 
 5 
 
66 STRAY MOMENTS AVITH THACKERAY. 
 
 THE SAMENESS OF LIFE. 
 
 If authors sneer, it is the critic's business to 
 sneer at them for sneering. He must pretend to 
 be their superior, or who would care about his 
 opinion? And his livelihood is to find fault. 
 Besides, he is right sometimes ; and the stories he 
 reads, and the characters drawn in them, are old, 
 sure enough. What stories are new ? All types 
 of all characters march through all fables ; trem- 
 blers and boasters ; victims and bullies ; dupes 
 and knaves ; long-eared Neddies, giving them- 
 selves leonine airs ; Tartuffes wearing virtuous 
 clothing ; lovers and their trials, their blindness, 
 their folly and constancy. With the very first 
 page of the human story do not love and lies, too, 
 begin ? So the tales were told ages before J^sop, 
 and asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew, 
 and sly foxes flattered in Etruscan, and wolves in 
 sheep's clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanskrit, 
 no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when 
 he first began shining ; and the birds in the tree 
 overhead, while I am writing, sing very much the 
 same note they have sung ever since they were 
 finches. ISTay, since last he besought good-na- 
 tured friends to listen once a month to his talking, 
 a friend of the writer has seen the 'New World, 
 and found the (featherless) birds there exceeding- 
 ly like their brethren of Europe. There may be 
 nothing new under and including the sun ; but it 
 
ON YOUTH AND AGE. 67 
 
 looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to 
 toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, 
 until the night comes and quiet. And then will 
 wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it ; and 
 so da capo. — The JSTewcomes, 
 
 ON YOUTH AND AGE. 
 
 Every man, however brief or inglorious may 
 have been his academical career, must remember 
 with kindness and tenderness the old university 
 comrades and days. The young man's life is just 
 beginning : the boy's leading strings are cut, and 
 he has all the novel delights and dignities of free- 
 dom. He has no idea of cares yet, or of bad 
 health, or of roguery, or poverty, or to-morrow's 
 disappointment. The play has not been acted so 
 often as to make him tired. Though the after- 
 drink, as we mechanically go on repeating it, is 
 stale and bitter, how pure and brilliant was that 
 first sparkling draught of pleasure ! How the 
 boy rushes at the cup, and with what a wild ea- 
 gerness he drains it ! But old epicures who are 
 cut off from the delights of the table, and are re- 
 stricted to a poached Qg^ and a glass of water^ 
 like to see people with good appetites ; and, as 
 the next best thing to being amused at a panto- 
 mime one's self is to see one's children enjoy it, 
 I hope there may be no degree of age or experi- 
 ence to which mortal may attain, when he shall 
 become such a glum philosopher as not to be 
 
68 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 pleased by the sight of happy youth. Coming 
 back a few weeks since from a brief visit to the 
 old University of Oxbridge, where my friend Mr. 
 Arthur Pendennis passed some period of his life, 
 I made the journey in the railroad by the side of 
 a young fellow at present a student of Saint Boni- 
 face. He had got an exeat somehow, and was 
 bent on a day's lark in London ; he never stopped 
 rattling and talking from the commencement of 
 the journey until its close (which was a great deal 
 too soon for me, for I never was tired of listen- 
 ing to the honest young fellow's jokes and cheery 
 laughter) ; and when we arrived at the terminus 
 nothing would satisfy him but a Hansom cab, so 
 that he might get into town the quicker, and 
 plunge into the pleasures awaiting him there. 
 Away the young lad went whirling, with joy 
 lighting up his honest face ; and as for the read- 
 er's humble servant, having but a small carpet- 
 bag, I got up on the outside of the omnibus, and 
 sat there very contentedly between a Jew ped- 
 dler smoking bad cigars and a gentleman's ser- 
 vant taking care of a poodle-dog, until we got 
 our fated complement of passengers and boxes, 
 when the coachman drove leisurely away. We 
 weren't in a hurry to get to town. Neither one 
 of us was particularly eager about rushing into 
 that near smoking Babylon, or thought of dining 
 at the Club that night, or dancing at the Casino. 
 Yet a few years more, and my young friend of 
 
A NOTE. 69 
 
 the railroad will be not a whit more eager. — Pen- 
 den7iis. 
 
 A NOTE. 
 
 If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou 
 wilt never be a wise man. — Lovel the Widower. 
 
SA TIRE, 
 
 ON BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. 
 
 It is quite edifying to hear women speculate 
 upon the worthlessness and the duration of beau- 
 ty. But though virtue is a much finer thing, and 
 those hapless creatures who suffer under the mis- 
 fortune of good looks ought to be continually put 
 in mind of the fate which awaits them ; and 
 though, very likely, the heroic female character 
 which ladies admire is a more glorious and beau- 
 tiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, 
 tender little domestic goddess, whom men are in- 
 clined to worship — yet the latter and inferior sort 
 of women must have this consolation — that the 
 men do admire them, after all ; and that, in spite 
 of all our kind friends' warnings and protest, we 
 go on in our desperate error and folly, and shall 
 to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my own 
 part, though I have been repeatedly told, by per- 
 sons for whom I have the greatest respect, that 
 Miss Brown is an insignificant chit, and Mrs. 
 White has nothing but her petit minois chiffonnhy 
 
THE OLD BEAU. 71 
 
 and Mrs. Black has not a word to say for herself : 
 yet I know I have had the most delightful con- 
 versations with Mrs. Black (of course, my dear 
 madam, they are inviolable) ; I see all the men in 
 a cluster around Mrs. White's chair, all the young 
 fellows battling to dance with Miss Brown, and 
 so I am tempted to think that to be despised by 
 her sex is a very great compliment to a woman. — 
 Vanity Fair. 
 
 THE OLD BEAU. 
 
 If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of 
 an old beauty, at her paint, perfumes, ringlets ; 
 at those innumerable, and to us unknown, strata- 
 gems with which she is said to remedy the ravages 
 of time and reconstruct the charms whereof years 
 have bereft her ; the ladies, it is to be presumed, 
 are not on their side altogether ignorant that men 
 are vain as well as they, and that the toilets of old 
 bucks are to the full as elaborate as their own. 
 How is it that old Blushington keeps that con- 
 stant little rose-tint on his cheeks ; and where 
 does old Blondel get the preparation which makes 
 his silver hair pass for golden ? Have you ever 
 seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks 
 nobody is looking? Taken out of his stirrups, 
 his shiny boots can hardly totter up the steps of 
 Hotspur House. He is a dashing young noble- 
 man still as you see the back of him in Rotten 
 Row ; when you behold him on foot, what an old, 
 old fellow ! Did you ever form to yourself any 
 
72 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 idea of Dick Lacy (Dick has been Dick these sixty 
 years) in a natural state, and without his stays ? 
 All these men are objects whom the observer of 
 human life and manners may contemplate with as 
 much profit as the most elderly Belgravian Venus, 
 or inveterate Mayfair Jezebel. An old reprobate 
 daddy long-legs, who has never said his prayers 
 (except perhaps in public) these fifty years : an 
 old buck who still clings to as many of the habits 
 of youth as his feeble grasp of health can hold 
 by : who has given up the bottle, but sits with 
 young fellows over it, and tells naughty stories 
 upon toast and water : who has given up beauty, 
 but still talks about it as wickedly as the young- 
 est roue in company — such an old fellow, I say, 
 if any parson in Pimlico or St. James's were to 
 order the beadles to bring him into the middle 
 aisle, and there set him in an arm-chair, and make 
 a text of him, and preach about him to the con- 
 gregation, could be turned to a wholesome use for 
 once in his life, and might be surprised to find 
 that some good thoughts came out of him. — JPen- 
 dermis. 
 
 THE BLINDNESS OF MATERNITY. 
 
 All mothers are pleased by the compliments 
 
 paid to their sons. If you had told Sycorax that 
 
 her son, Caliban, was as handsome as Apollo, she 
 
 would have been pleased, witch as she was. — 
 
 Vanity Fair. 
 
HOW TO HOLD A WIFE'S LOVE. 73 
 
 ON VAIN MEN. 
 
 We have talked of a man being as vain as a 
 girl. Heaven help us ! The girls have only to 
 turn the tables, and say of one of their own sex, 
 " She is as vain as a man," and they will have 
 perfect reason. The bearded creatures are quite 
 as eager for praise, quite as finikin over their 
 toilets, quite as proud of their personal advan- 
 tages, quite as conscious of their powers of fas- 
 cination, as any coquette in the world. — Yanity 
 Fain 
 
 HOW TO HOLD A WIFE\s LOVE. 
 
 If I may speak, after profound and extensive 
 study and observation, there are few better ways 
 of securing the faithfulness and admiration of the 
 beautiful partners of our existence than a little 
 judicious ill treatment, a brisk dose of occasional 
 violence as an alterative, and for general and 
 wholesome diet a cooling but pretty constant neg- 
 lect. At sparing intervals administer small quan- 
 tities of love and kindness ; but not every day, 
 or too often, as this medicine, much taken, loses 
 its effect. 
 
 Those dear creatures who are the most indif- 
 ferent to their husbands are those who are cloyed 
 by too much surfeiting of the sugar-plums and 
 lollipops of love. I have known a young being, 
 with every wish gratified, yawn in her adoring 
 husband's face, and prefer the conversation and 
 
74 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 petits soins of the merest booby and idiot ; whilst, 
 on the other hand, I have seen Chloe — at whom 
 Strephon has flung his bootjack in the morning, 
 or whom he has cursed before the servants at din- 
 ner — come creeping and fondling to his knee at 
 tea-time, v/hen he is comfortable after his little 
 nap and his good wine ; and pat his head and 
 play him his favorite tunes ; and when old John 
 the butler, or old Mary the maid, comes in with 
 the bed candles, look round proudly, as much as 
 to say, Now, John, look how good my dearest 
 Henry is ! Make your game, gentlemen, then ! 
 There is the coaxing, fondling, adoring line, when 
 you are henpecked, and Louisa is indifferent, and 
 bored out of her existence. There is the manly, 
 selfish, effectual system, where she answers to the 
 whistle, and comes in at "Down charge"; and 
 knows her master ; and frisks and fawns about 
 him ; and nuzzles at his knees ; and "licks the 
 hand that's raised " — that's raised to do her good, 
 as (I quote from memory) Mr. Pope finely ob- 
 serves. What used the late lamented O'Connell 
 to say, over whom a grateful country has raised 
 such a magnificent testimonial? "Hereditary 
 bondsmen," he used to remark, "know ye not 
 who would be free, themselves must strike the 
 blow?" Of course you must, in political as in 
 domestic circles. So up with your cudgels, my 
 enslaved injured boys ! 
 
 Women will be pleased with these remarks, 
 
THE INEVITABLE SKELETON. 75 
 
 because they have such a taste for humor and 
 understand irony ; and I should not be surprised 
 if young Grubstreet, who corresponds with three 
 penny papers and describes the persons and con- 
 versation of gentlemen whom he meets at his 
 " clubs," will say, " I told you so ! He advocates 
 the thrashing of women ! He has no nobility of 
 soul ! He has no heart ! " Nor have I, my emi- 
 nent Grubstreet ! any more than you have ears. 
 Dear ladies ! I assure you I am only joking in the 
 above remarks ; I do not advocate the thrashing 
 of your sex at all ; and, as you can't understand 
 the commonest bit of fun, beg leave flatly to tell 
 you, that I consider your sex a hundi-ed times 
 more loving and faithful than ours. — The Yir- 
 ginians. 
 
 THE INEVITABLE SKELETON. 
 
 The writer of these veracious pages was once 
 walking through a splendid English palace, stand- 
 ing amid parks and gardens, than which none 
 more magnificent has been seen since the days of 
 Aladdin, in company with a melancholy friend, 
 who viewed all things darkly through his gloomy 
 eyes. The housekeeper, pattering on before us 
 from chamber to chamber, was expatiating upon 
 the magnificence of this picture ; the beauty of 
 that statue ; the marvelous richness of these hang- 
 nigs and carpets ; the admirable likeness of the 
 late Marquis by Sir Thomas ; of his father, the 
 fifth earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on ; when, in the 
 
76 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 very richest room of the whole castle, Hicks — 
 such was my melancholy companion's name — 
 stopped the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a 
 hollow voice, " And now, madam, will you show 
 us the closet where the skeleton is f " The scared 
 functionary paused in the midst of her harangue ; 
 that article was not inserted in the catalogue 
 which she daily utters to visitors for their half- 
 crown. Hicks's question brought a darkness 
 down upon the hall where we were standing. 
 We did not see the room ; and yet I have no 
 doubt there is such a one ; and ever after, when 
 I have thought of the splendid castle, towering in 
 the midst of shady trees, under which the dappled 
 deer are browsing ; of the terraces, gleaming with 
 statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flow- 
 ers ; of the bridges and shining fountains and 
 rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their 
 festive gleams, when the halls are filled with 
 happy feasters, and over the darkling woods 
 comes the sound of music — always, I say, when 
 I think of Castle Bluebeard — it is to think of that 
 dark little closet, which I know is there, and 
 which the lordly owner opens shuddering — after 
 midnight — when he is sleepless and must go un- 
 lock it, when the palace is hushed, when beauties 
 are sleeping around him unconscious, and revelers 
 are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper, all the other 
 keys hast thou ; but that key thou hast not ! 
 Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, 
 
ON LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE. 77 
 
 as well as the noble Marquis of Carabas? At 
 night, when all the house is asleep but you, don't 
 you get up and peep into yours ? When you, in 
 your turn, are slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown 
 from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her 
 ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into 
 her dark depository. Did she tell you of that 
 little affair with Smith long before she knew you ? 
 Pshaw ! who knows any one save himself alone ? 
 Who, in showing his house to the closest and 
 dearest, doesn't keep back the key of a closet or 
 two ? I think of a lovely reader laying down the 
 page and looking over at her unconscious hus- 
 band, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, 
 a closet he hath ; and you, who pry into every- 
 thing, shall never have the key of it. I think of 
 some honest Othello pausing over this very sen- 
 tence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing 
 at Desdemona opposite him, innocently adminis- 
 tering sandwiches to their little boy — I am trying 
 to turn off the sentence with a joke, you see — I 
 feel it is growing too dreadful, too serious. — The 
 N'ewcomes. 
 
 ON LOOKING OUT FOE NUMBER ONE. 
 
 To push on in the crowd, every male or female 
 struggler must use his or her shoulders. If a bet- 
 ter place than yours presents itself just beyond 
 our neighbor, elbow him and take it. Look how 
 a steadily j)urposed man or woman at court, at a 
 
78 STRAY MOMENTS WITH TPIACKERAY. 
 
 ball, or exhibition, wherever there is a competi- 
 tion and a squeeze, gets the best place ; the near- 
 est the sovereign, if bent on kissing the royal 
 hand ; the closest to the grand stand, if minded 
 to go to Ascot ; the best view and hearing of the 
 Rev. Mr. Thiimpington, when all the town is rush- 
 ing to hear that exciting divine ; the largest quan- 
 tity of ice, champagne, and seltzer, cold pdte^ or 
 other his or her favorite flesh-pot, if gluttonously 
 minded, at a supper whence hundreds of people 
 come emj)ty away. A woman of the world would 
 marry her daughter and have done with her ; get 
 a carriage, and be at home and asleep in bed ; 
 while a timid mamma has still her girl in the 
 nursery, or is beseeching the servants in the cloak- 
 room to look for her shawls, with which some one 
 else has whisked away an hour ago. What a man 
 has to do in society is to assert himself. Is there 
 a good place at table ? Take it. At the Treasury 
 or the Home Office ? Ask for it. Do you want 
 to go to a party to which you are not invited? 
 Ask to be asked. Ask A., ask B., ask Mrs. C, 
 ask everybody you know ; you will be thought a 
 bore, but you will have your way. What matters 
 if you are considered obtrusive, provided that you 
 obtrude ? By pushing steadily, nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine people in a thousand will yield to you. 
 Only command persons, and you may be pretty 
 sure that a good number will obey. How well 
 your shilling will have been laid out, O gentle 
 
ON HYPOCRISY IN WOMEN. 79 
 
 reader, who purchase this, and, taking the maxim 
 to heart, follow it through life ! You may be sure 
 of success. If your neighbor's foot obstructs you, 
 stamp on it ; and do you suppose he won't take it 
 away? — The Newcomes. 
 
 ON HYPOCRISY IN WOMEN. 
 
 I protest the great ills of life are nothing — the 
 loss of your fortune is a mere flea-bite ; the loss 
 of your wife — how many men have supported it, 
 and married comfortably afterward ! It is not 
 what you lose, but what you have daily to bear 
 that is hard. I can fancy nothing more cruel, 
 after a long easy life of bachelorhood, than to 
 have to sit day after day with a dull handsome 
 woman opposite ; to have to answer her speeches 
 about the weather, housekeeping, and what not ; 
 to smile appropriately when she is disposed to be 
 lively (that laughing at the jokes is the hardest 
 part), and to model your conversation so as to 
 suit her intelligence, knowing that a word used 
 out of its downright signification will not be un- 
 derstood by your fair breakfast-maker. Women 
 go through this simpering and smiling life, and 
 bear it quite easily. Theirs is a life of hypocrisy. 
 What good woman does not laugh at her hus- 
 band's or father's jokes and stories time after 
 time, and would not laugh at breakfast, lunch, 
 and dinner, if he told them? Flattery is their 
 nature — to coax, flatter, and sweetly befool some 
 
80 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 one is every woman's business. She is none if she 
 declines this office. But men are not provided 
 with such powers of humbug or endurance ; they 
 perish and pine away miserably when bored, or 
 they slink off to the club or public-house for 
 comfort. — The JSFewcomes. 
 
 THE PUKSUIT OF CRCESUS. 
 
 Oh, me ! what a confession it is, in the very 
 outset of life and blushing brightness of youth's 
 morning, to own that the aim with which a young 
 girl sets out, and the object of her existence, is 
 to marry a rich man ; that she was endowed with 
 beauty so that she might buy wealth, and a title 
 with it ; that, as sure as she has a soul to be saved, 
 her business here on earth is to try and get a rich 
 husband. That is the career for which many a 
 woman is bred and trained. A young man be- 
 gins the world with some aspirations at least ; he 
 will try to be good and follow the truth ; he will 
 strive to win honors for himself, and never do a 
 base action ; he will pass nights over his books, 
 and forego ease and pleasure so that he may 
 achieve a name. Many a poor wretch who is 
 worn out now and old, and bankinipt of fame and 
 money, too, has commenced life, at any rate, with 
 noble views and generous schemes, from which 
 weakness, idleness, passion, or overpowering hos- 
 tile fortune have turned him away. But a girl of 
 the world, ho7i Dieu ! the doctrine with which she 
 
ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG YOUNG WOMEN. 81 
 
 begins is that she is to have a wealthy husband ; 
 the article of faith in her catechism is : "I believe 
 in elder sons, and a house in town, and a house in 
 the country !" They are mercenary as they step 
 fresh and blooming into the world out of the 
 nursery. They have been schooled there to keep 
 their bright eyes to look only on the prince and 
 the duke, Croesus and Dives. By long cramping 
 and careful process their little natural hearts have 
 been squeezed up, like the feet of their fashiona- 
 ble little sisters in China. As you see a pauper's 
 child with an awful premature knowledge of the 
 pawn-shop able to haggle at market with her 
 wretched half -pence, and battle bargains at huck- 
 sters' stalls, you shall find a young beauty, who 
 was a child in the school-room a year since, as 
 wise and knowing as the old practitioners on that 
 exchange ; as economical of her smiles, as dexter- 
 ous in keeping back or producing her beautiful 
 wares ; as skillful in setting one bidder against 
 another ; as keen as the smartest merchant in 
 Vanity Fair. — The Newcomes. 
 
 ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG YOUNG WOMEN. 
 
 My fair young readers, who have seen a half 
 dozen of seasons, can you call to mind the time 
 when you had such a friendship for Emma Tom- 
 kins that you were always at the Tomkinses', and 
 notes were constantly passing between your house 
 and hers ? When her brother, Paget Tomkins, 
 6 
 
82 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 returned to India, did -not your intimacy with 
 Emma fall off ? If your younger sister is not in 
 the room, I know you will own as much to me. 
 I think you are always deceiving yourselves and 
 other people. I think the motive you put forward 
 is very often not the real one ; though you will 
 confess, neither to yourself, nor to any human be- 
 ing, what the real motive is. I think that what 
 you desire you pursue, and are as selfish in your 
 way as your bearded fellow creatures are. And 
 as for the truth being in you, of all the women in 
 a great acquaintance, I protest there are but — 
 never mind. A perfectly honest woman, a woman 
 who never flatters, who never manages, who never 
 cajoles, who never conceals, who never uses her 
 eyes, who never speculates on the effect which she 
 produces, who never is conscious of unspoken ad- 
 miration, what a monster, I say, would such a 
 female be ! Miss Hopkins, you have been a co- 
 quette since you were a year old ; you worked on 
 your papa's friends in the nurse's arms by the fas- 
 cination of your lace frock and pretty new sash 
 and shoes ; when you could just toddle, you prac- 
 ticed your arts upon other children in the square, 
 poor little lambkins sporting among the daisies ; 
 and nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones, 
 proceeding from the lambs to reluctant dragoons, 
 you tried your arts upon Captain Paget Tomkins, 
 who behaved so ill, and went to India without — 
 without making those proposals which, of course. 
 
ON THE ADORATION OF PRINCES. 83 
 
 you never expected. Your intimacy was with 
 Emma. It has cooled. Your sets are different. 
 The Tomkinses are not quite, etc., etc. You be- 
 lieve Captain Tomkins married a Miss O'Grady, 
 etc., etc. Ah, my pretty, my sprightly Miss 
 Hopkins, be gentle in your judgment of your 
 neighbors ! — The N'ewcomes. 
 
 ON THE ADOKATION OF PEINCES. 
 
 It is a wonder what human nature will sup- 
 port, and that, considering the amount of flattery 
 some people are crammed with from their cradles, 
 they do not grow worse and more selfish than 
 they are. Princekin or lordkin from his earliest 
 days has nurses, dependents, governesses, little 
 friends, school-fellows, school-masters, fellow col- 
 legians, college tutors, stewards and valets, led- 
 captains of his suite, and women innumerable 
 flattering him and doing him honor. The trades- 
 man's manner, which to you and me is decently 
 respectful, becomes straightway frantically servile 
 before Princekin. Honest folks at railway sta- 
 tions whisper to their families, *' That's the Mar- 
 quis of Farintosh," and look hard at him as he 
 passes. Landlords cry, " This way, my lord ; this 
 room for your lordship." They say at public 
 schools Princekin is taught the beauties of equal- 
 ity, and thrashed into some kind of subordina- 
 tion. Pshaw ! Toad-eaters in pinafores surround 
 Princekin. Do not respectable people send their 
 
84 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 children so as to be at the same school with him ? 
 don't they follow him to college, and eat his toads 
 through life ? 
 
 And as for women — oh, my dear friends and 
 brethren in this vale of tears — did you ever see 
 anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing as 
 the way in which women court Princekin when 
 he is marriageable, and pursue him with their 
 daughters? Who was the British nobleman in 
 old, old days who brought his three daughters to 
 the king of Mercia, that his Majesty might choose 
 one after inspection? Mercia was but a petty 
 province, and its king in fact a Princekin. Ever 
 since those extremely ancient and venerable times 
 the custom exists not only in Mercia, but in all 
 the rest of the provinces inhabited by the Angles, 
 and before Princekins the daughters of our nobles 
 are trotted out. — The Neiccomes. 
 
 THE SECEECY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 How lonely we are in the world ! how selfish 
 and secret, everybody ! You and your wife have 
 pressed the same pillow for forty years and fancy 
 yourself united. Pshaw ! does she cry out when 
 you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she 
 has the toothache ? Your artless daughter, seem- 
 ingly all innocence and devoted to her mamma 
 and her piano-lessons, is thinking of neither, but 
 of the young Lieutenant with whom she danced 
 at the last ball ; the honest, frank boy just re- 
 
THE PAGAN MARTYRS. 85 
 
 turned from scliool is secretly speculating upon 
 the money you will give him, and the debts he 
 owes the tart man. The old grandmother croon- 
 ing in the corner and bound to another world 
 within a few months, has some business or cares 
 which are quite private and her own — very likely 
 she is thinking of fifty years back, and that night 
 Avhen she made such an impression, and danced a 
 cotillon with the Captain before your father pro- 
 posed for her : or, what a silly little overrated 
 creature your wife is, and how absurdly you are 
 infatuated about her — and, as for your wife — oh, 
 philosophic reader, answer and say ! do you tell 
 her all ? Ah, sii* — a distinct universe walks about 
 under your hat and under mine — all things in na- 
 ture are different to each — the woman we look at 
 has not the same features, the dish we eat from 
 has not the same taste to the one and the other — 
 you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, with 
 some fellow islands a little more or less near to 
 us. — Pen dennis. 
 
 THE PAGAN MYRTYES. 
 
 I wish Warrington would write the history of 
 the Last of the Pagans. Did you never have a 
 sympathy for them as the monks came rushing 
 into their temples, kicking down their poor altars, 
 smashing the fair, calm faces of their gods, and 
 sending their vestals a-flying ? They are always 
 preaching here about the persecution of the Chris- 
 
86 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 tians. Are not the churches full of martyrs with 
 choppers in their meek hands, virgins on grid- 
 irons, riddled St. Sebastians, and the like ? But 
 have they never persecuted in their turn ? Oh, me ! 
 You and I know better, who were bred up near 
 to the pens of Smithfield, where Protestants and 
 Catholics have taken their turn to be roasted. — 
 Pendennis. 
 
 THE GOOD OLD COUNTEY GENTLEMAN. 
 
 To be a good old country gentleman is to hold 
 a position nearest the gods, and at the summit of 
 earthly felicity. To have a large unencumbered 
 rent-roll, and the rents regularly paid by adoring 
 farmers, who bless their stars at having such a 
 landlord as his honor ; to have no tenant holding 
 back with his money, excepting just one, perhaps, 
 who does so in order to give occasion to Good 
 Old Country Gentleman to show his sublime 
 charity and universal benevolence of soul ; to 
 hunt three days a week, love the sport of all 
 things, and have perfect good health and appetite 
 in consequence ; to have not only good appetite, 
 but a good dinner ; to sit down at church in the 
 midst of a chorus of blessings from the villagers, 
 the first man in the parish, the benefactor of the 
 parish, with a consciousness of consummate de- 
 sert, saying, " Have mercy upon us, miserable sin- 
 ners," to be sure, but only for form's sake, because 
 the words are written in the book, and to give 
 
THE GOOD OLD COUNTRY GENTLEMAN. 87 
 
 other folks an example — a G. O. C. G., a miserable 
 sinner ! So healthy, so wealthy, so jolly, so much 
 respected by the vicar, so much honored by the 
 tenants, so much beloved and admired by his 
 family, among whom his story of grouse in the 
 gun-room causes laughter from generation to gen- 
 eration — this perfect being a miserable sinner ! 
 Alio /IS done! Give any man good health and 
 temper, five thousand a year, the adoration of his 
 parish, and the love and worship of his family, 
 and I'll defy you to make him so heartily dissatis- 
 fied with his spiritual condition as to set himself 
 down a miserable anything. If you were a royal 
 highness, and went to church in the most perfect 
 health and comfort, the parson waiting to begin 
 the service until your R. H. came in, would you 
 believe yourself to be a miserable, etc. ? You 
 might when racked with gout, in solitude, the 
 fear of death before your eyes, the doctor having 
 cut off your bottle of claret, and ordered arrow- 
 root and a little sherry, you might then be humili- 
 ated, and acknowledge your own shortcomings, 
 and the vanity of things in general ; but in high 
 health, sunshine, spirits, that word miserable is 
 only a form. You can't think in your heart that 
 you are to be pitied much for the present. If 
 you are to be miserable, what is Colin Ploughman 
 with the ague, seven children, two pounds a year 
 rent to pay for his cottage, and eight shillings a 
 week ? No : a healthy, rich, jolly, country gentle- 
 
88 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 man if miserable has a very supportable misery ; 
 if a sinner, has very few people to tell him so. — 
 The Virginians, 
 
 ON RESPECTED OLD AGE. 
 
 As you sit, surrounded by respect and affec- 
 tion ; happy, honored, and flattered in your old 
 age ; your foibles gently indulged ; your least 
 words kindly cherished ; your garrulous old stones 
 received for the hundredth time with dutiful for- 
 bearance and never-failing hypocritical smiles ; 
 the women of your house constant in their flatter- 
 ies : the young nien hushed and attentive when 
 you begin to speak ; the servants awe-stricken ; 
 the tenants cap in hand, and ready to act in the 
 place of your worship's horses when your honor 
 takes a drive — it has often struck you, O thought- 
 ful Dives ! that this respect, and these glories, 
 are for the main part transferred, with your fee 
 simple, to your successor — that the servants will 
 bow, and the tenants shout, for your son as for 
 you : that the butler will fetch him the wine 
 (improved by a little keeping) that is now in your 
 cellar ; and that, when your night is come, and 
 the light of your life is gone down, as soon as the 
 morning rises after you and without you, the sun 
 of prosperity and flattery shines on your heir. 
 Men come and bask in the halo of consols and 
 acres that beams round about him : the reverence 
 is transferred with the estate ; of which with all 
 
ON BEING CROSSED IN LOVE. 89 
 
 its advantages, pleasures, respect, and good- will, 
 he in turn becomes the life tenant. How long do 
 you wish or expect that your people will regret 
 you? How much time does a man devote to 
 grief before he begins to enjoy ? A great man 
 must keep his heir at his feast like a living me- 
 mento mori. If he holds very much by life, the 
 presence of the other must be a constant sting and 
 warning. " Make ready to go," says the successor 
 to your honor ; " I am waiting ; and I could hold 
 it as well as you." — Pendennis. 
 
 ON BEING CROSSED IN LOVE. 
 
 Young ladies may have been crossed in love, 
 and have had their sufferings, their frantic mo- 
 ments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, 
 and so forth ; but it is only in very sentimental 
 novels that people occupy themselves perpetually 
 with that passion ; and I believe what are called 
 broken hearts are very rare articles indeed. Tom 
 is jilted — is for a while in a dreadful state — bores 
 all his male acquaintance with his groans and 
 his frenzy — rallies from the complaint — eats his 
 dinner very kindly — takes an interest in the next 
 turf event, and is found at Newmarket, as usual, 
 bawling out the odds which he will give or take. 
 Miss has her paroxysm and recovery — Madame 
 Crinoline's new importations from Paris interest 
 the young creature — she deigns to consider 
 whether pink or blue will become her most — she 
 
90 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 conspires with the maid to make the spring moni- 
 ing dresses answer for the autumn — she resumes 
 her books, piano, and music (giving up certain 
 songs perhaps that she used to sing) — she.waltzes 
 with the Captain — gets a color — waltzes longer, 
 better, and ten times quicker than Lucy, who is 
 dancing with the Major — replies in an animated 
 manner to the Captain's delightful remarks — takes 
 a little supper — and looks quite kindly at him 
 before she pulls uj) the carriage windows. — Pen- 
 dennis. 
 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN CULTURE AND MANNERS. 
 
 People were still very busy in Harry Warring- 
 ton's time (not that our young gentleman took 
 much heed of the controversy) in determining 
 the relative literary merits of the ancients and 
 the moderns ; and the learned, and the world 
 with them, indeed, pretty generally pronounced 
 in favor of the former. The moderns of that 
 day are the ancients of ours, and we speculate 
 upon them in the present year of grace, as our 
 grandchildren, a hundred years hence, will give 
 their judgment about us. As for your book learn- 
 ing, O respectable ancestors (though to be sure 
 you have the mighty Gibbon with you), I think 
 you will own that you are beaten, and could 
 point to a couple of professors at Cambridge and 
 Glasgow who know more Greek than was to be 
 had in your time in all the universities of Europe, 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN CULTURE, ETC. 91 
 
 including that of Athens, if such a one existed. 
 As for science, you were scarce more advanced 
 than those heathen to whom in literature you 
 owned yourselves inferior. And in public and 
 private morality ? Which is the better, this ac- 
 tual year 1858 or its predecessor a century back? 
 Gentlemen of Mr. Disraeli's House of Commons ! 
 has every one of you his price, as in Vf alpole's or 
 Newcastle's time — or (and that is the delicate 
 question) have you almost all of you had it? 
 Ladies, I do not say that you are a society of 
 Yestals — but the chronicle of a hundred years 
 since contains such an amount of scandal that you 
 may be thankful you did not live in such danger- 
 ous times. No : on my conscience, I believe that 
 men and women are both better ; not only that 
 the Susannahs are more numerous, but that the 
 Elders are not nearly so wicked. Did you ever 
 hear of such books as '' Clarissa," " Tom Jones," 
 *' Roderick Random," paintings by a contemporary 
 artist, of the men and women, the life and society, 
 of their day ? Suppose we were to describe the 
 doings of such a person as Mr. Lovelace, or my 
 Lady Bellaston, or that wonderful " Lady of 
 Quality " who lent her memoirs to the author of 
 "Peregrine Pickle." How the pure and out- 
 raged Nineteenth Century would blush, scream, 
 run out of the room, call away the young ladies, 
 and order Mr. Mudie never to send one of that 
 odious author's books again ! You are fifty-eight 
 
92 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 years old, madam, and it may be that you are too 
 squeamish, that you cry out before you are hurt, 
 and when nobody had any intention of offending 
 your ladyship. Also, it may be that the novelist's 
 art is injured by the restraints put upon him, as 
 many an honest, harmless statue of St. Peter's 
 and the Vatican is spoiled by the tin draperies 
 in which ecclesiastical old women have swaddled 
 the fair limbs of the marble. But in your prudery 
 there is reason. So there is in the State censor- 
 ship of the Press. The page may contain matter 
 dangerous to bonos mores. Out with your scis- 
 sors, censor, and clip off the prurient paragraph ! 
 We have nothing for it but to submit. Society, 
 the despot, has given his imperial decree. We 
 may think the statue had been seen to greater 
 advantage without the tin drapery ; we may plead 
 that the moral were better might we recite the 
 whole fable. Away with him — not a word ! I 
 never saw the pianofortes in the United States 
 with the frilled muslin trousers on their legs ; 
 but, depend on it, the muslin covered some of the 
 notes as well as the mahogany, muffled the music, 
 and stopped the player. — The Virginians. 
 
C HABA C TEB. 
 
 GEORGE I. 
 
 When the crown did come to George Louis 
 he was in no hurry about putting it on. He wait- 
 ed at home for a while, took an affecting farewell 
 of his dear Hanover and Herrenhausen, and set 
 out in the most leisurely manner to ascend " the 
 throne of his ancestors," as he called it in his first 
 speech to Parliament. He brought with him a 
 compact body of Germans, whose society he loved, 
 and whom he kept around the royal person. He 
 had his faithful German chamberlains ; his Ger- 
 man secretaries ; his negroes, captives of his bow 
 and spear in Turkish wars ; his two ugly, elderly 
 German favorites, Mesdames of Kielmansegge and 
 Schulenberg, whom he created respectively Count- 
 ess of Darlington and Duchess of Kendal. The 
 duchess was tall and lean of stature, and hence 
 was irreverently nicknamed the Maypole. The 
 countess was a large-sized noblewoman, and this 
 elevated personage was denominated the Elephant. 
 
91 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 Both of these ladies loved Hanover, and its de- 
 lights ; clung round the linden-trees of the great 
 Herrenhausen avenue, and at first would not quit 
 the place. Schulenberg, in fact, could not come 
 on account of her debts ; but, finding the Maypole 
 would not come, the Elephant packed up her trunk 
 and slipped out of Hanover, unv>^ieldy as she was. 
 On this the Maypole straightway put herself in 
 motion, and followed her beloved George Louis. 
 One seems to be speaking of Captain Macheath, 
 and Polly and Lucy. The king we had selected ; 
 the courtiers who came in his train ; the English 
 nobles who came to welcome him, and on many 
 of whom the shrewd old cynic turned his back — 
 I protest it is a wonderful satirical picture. I 
 am a citizen waiting at Greenwich pier, say, and 
 crying hurra for King George, and yet I can scarce- 
 ly keep my countenance, and help laughing at the 
 enormous absurdity of this advent ! 
 
 Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury prostrating himself to 
 the head of his Church, with Kielmansegge and 
 Schulenberg with their ruddled cheeks grinning 
 behind the defender of the faith. Here is my 
 Lord Duke of Marlborough kneeling too, the 
 greatest warrior of all times ; he who betrayed 
 King William — ^betrayed King James II. — be- 
 trayed Queen Anne — betrayed England to the 
 French, the Elector to the Pretender, the Pre- 
 tender to the Elector ; and here are my Lords Ox- 
 
GEORGE I. 95 
 
 ford and Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just 
 tripped up the heels of the former ; and, if a 
 month's more time had been allowed him, would 
 have had King James at Westminster. The great 
 Whig gentlemen made their bows and conges with 
 proper decorum and ceremony ; but yonder keen 
 old schemer knows the value of their loyalty. 
 *' Loyalty," he must think, " as applied to me — it is 
 absurd ! There are fifty nearer heirs to the throne 
 than I am. I am but an accident, and you fine 
 Whig gentlemen take me for your own sake, not 
 for mine. You Tories hate me ; you archbishop, 
 smirking on your knees, and prating about heaven, 
 you know I don't care a fig for your Thu'ty-nine 
 Articles, and can't understand a word of your 
 stupid sermons. You, my Lords Bolingbroke and 
 Oxford — you know you were conspiring against 
 me a month ago ; and you, my Lord Duke of 
 Marlborough — you would sell me, or any man 
 else, if you found your advantage in it. Come, 
 my good Melusina ; come, my honest Sophia, let 
 us go into my private room and have some oysters 
 and Rhine wine, and some pipes afterward. Let 
 us make the best of our situation ; let us take 
 what we can get, and leave these bawling, brawl- 
 ing, lying English to shout and fight and cheat in 
 their own way ! " 
 
 Delightful as London city was. King George 
 I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could : 
 
96 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 and, wlien there, passed all his time with his Ger- 
 mans. It was with them as with BlUcher, one 
 hundred years afterward, when the bold old Hit- 
 ter looked down from St. Paul's, and sighed out, 
 " Was f tir Plunder ! " The German women plun- 
 dered ; the German secretaries plundered ; the 
 German cooks and intendants plundered ; even 
 Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had 
 a share of the booty. Take what you can get, 
 was the old monarch's maxim. He was not a lofty 
 monarch, certainly ; he was not a patron of the 
 fine arts ; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not 
 revengeful, he was not extravagant. Though a 
 despot in Hanover, he was a moderate ruler in 
 England. His aim was to leave it to itself as 
 much as possible, and to live out of it as much as 
 he could. His heart was in Hanover. When tak- 
 en ill on his last journey, as he was passing 
 through Holland, he thrust his livid head out of 
 the coach window, and gasped out, " Osnaburg, 
 Osnaburg ! " He was more than fifty years of 
 age when he came among us ; we took him be- 
 cause we wanted him, because he served our turn ; 
 we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and 
 sneered at him. He took our loyalty for what 
 it was worth, laid hands on what money he could; 
 kept us assuredly from Popery and wooden shoes. 
 I, for one, would have been on his side in those 
 days. Cynical and selfish as he was, he was bet- 
 ter than a king out of St. Germains with the French 
 
GEORGE 1. 97 
 
 king's orders in his pocket and a swarm of Jesuits 
 in his train. 
 
 The days are over in England of that strange 
 religion of king-worship, when priests flattered 
 princes in the temple of God ; when servility was 
 held to be ennobling duty ; when beauty and 
 youth tried eagerly for royal favor ; and women's 
 shame was held to be no dishonor. Mended 
 morals and mended manners in courts and people 
 are among the priceless consequences of the free- 
 dom which George I. came to rescue and secure. 
 He kept his compact with his English subjects ; 
 and, if he escaped no more than other men and 
 monarchs from the vices of his age, at least we 
 may thank him for preserving and transmitting 
 the liberties of ours. In our free air, royal and 
 humble homes have alike been purified, and 
 Truth, the birthright of the high and low among 
 us, which quite fearlessly judges our greatest 
 personages, can only speak of them now in words 
 of respect and regard. There are stains in the 
 portrait of our first George, and traits in it which 
 none of us need admire ; but among the nobler 
 features are justice, courage, moderation — and 
 these we may recognize ere we turn the picture to 
 the wall. — Lectures on the Four Georges. 
 
 GEOKGE n. 
 
 On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, 
 two horsemen might have been perceived gallop- 
 
 7 
 
98 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 ing along the road from Chelsea to Richmond. 
 The foremost, cased in the jack-boots of the pe- 
 riod, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very- 
 corpulent cavalier ; but, by the manner in which 
 he urged his horse, you might see that he was a 
 bold as well as skillful rider. Indeed, no man 
 loved sport better ; and in the hunting fields of 
 Norfolk no squire rode more boldly after the fox, 
 or cheered Ringwood and Sweettips more lustily, 
 than he who now thundered over the Richmond 
 road. 
 
 He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and 
 asked to see the owner of the mansion. The 
 mistress of the house and her ladies, to whom 
 our friend was admitted, said he could not be 
 introduced to the master, however pressing the 
 business might be. The master was asleep after 
 his dinner ; he always slept after his dinner, and 
 woe be to the person who interrupted him ! Never- 
 theless, our stout friend of the jack-boots put 
 the affrighted ladies aside, opened the forbidden 
 door of the bedroom, wherein upon the bed lay a 
 little gentleman ; and here the eager messenger 
 knelt down in his jack-boots. 
 
 He on the bed started up, and with many oaths 
 and a strong German accent asked who was there, 
 and who dared to disturb him ? 
 
 " I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messen- 
 ger. The awakened sleeper hated Sir Robert 
 Walpole. "I have the honor to announce to 
 
GEORGE II. 99 
 
 your Majesty that your royal father, King George 
 I., died at Osnaburg on Saturday last, the 10th 
 inst." 
 
 " Dat is one big lie ! " roared out his Sacred 
 Majesty King George II. ; but Sir Robert Wal- 
 pole stated the fact, and from that day until three- 
 and-thirty years after, George, the second of the 
 name, ruled over England. 
 
 Our George II., at least, was not a worse king 
 than his neighbors. He claimed and took the 
 royal exemption from doing right which sover- 
 eigns assumed. A dull little man of low tastes 
 he appears to us in England ; yet Hervey tells us 
 that this choleric prince was a great sentimental- 
 ist, and that his letters — of which he wrote pro- 
 digious quantities — were quite dangerous in their 
 powers of fascination. He kept his sentimentali- 
 ties for his Germans and his queen. With us 
 English, he never chose to be familiar. He has 
 been accused of avarice, yet he did not give much 
 money, and did not leave much behind him. He 
 did not love the fine arts, but he did not pretend 
 to love them. He was no more a hypocrite about 
 religion than his father. He judged men by a 
 low standard ; yet, with such men as were near 
 him, was he wrong in judging as he did ? He 
 readily detected lying and flattery, and liars and 
 flatterers were perforce his companions. Had he 
 been more of a dupe, he might have been more 
 
100 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 amiable. A dismal experience made him cynical. 
 No boon was it to him to be clear-sighted, and 
 see only selfishness and flattery round about him. 
 What could Walpole tell him about his Lords and 
 Commons, but that they were all venal ? Did not 
 his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the same story ? 
 Dealing with men and women in his rude, skepti- 
 cal way, he came to doubt about honor, male and 
 female, about patriotism, about religion. *' He is 
 wild, but he fights like a man," George I., the 
 taciturn, said of his son and successor. Courage 
 George II. certainly had. The Electoral Prince, 
 at the head of his father's contingent, had ap- 
 proved himself a good and brave soldier under 
 Eugene and Marlborough. 
 
 I fancy it was a merrier England (that of 
 George II.) than the island which we inhabit. 
 People high and low amused themselves very 
 much more. I have calculated the manner in 
 which statesmen and persons of condition passed 
 their time — and, what with drinking and dining 
 and supping and cards, wonder how they got 
 through their business at all. They played all 
 sorts of games, which, with the exception of 
 cricket and tennis, have quite gone out of our 
 manners now. In the old prints of St. James's 
 Park you still see the marks along the walk to 
 note the balls when the court played at Mall. 
 Fancy Birdcage Walk now so laid out, and Lord 
 
GEORGE II. 101 
 
 John and Lord Palmerston knocking balls up and 
 down the avenue ! Most of those jolly sports 
 belong to the past, and the good old games of 
 England are only to be found in old novels, in 
 old ballads, or the columns of dingy old news- 
 papers, which say how a main of cocks is to be 
 fought at "Winchester between the Winchester 
 men and the Hampton men ; or how the Corn- 
 wall men and the Devon men are going to hold a 
 great wrestling match at Totnes, and so on. 
 
 A hundred and twenty years ago there were 
 not only country towns in England, but people 
 who inhabited them. We were very much more 
 gregarious ; we were amused by very simple plea- 
 sures. Every town had its fair, every village its 
 wake. The old poets have sung a hundred jolly 
 ditties about great cudgel-playings, famous grin- 
 ning through horse-collars, great may-pole meet- 
 ings, and morris-dances. The girls used to run 
 races clad in very light attire ; and the kind gen- 
 try and good parsons thought no shame in look- 
 ing on. Dancing bears went about the country 
 with pipe and tabor. Certain well-known tunes 
 were sung all over the land for hundreds of years, 
 and high and low rejoiced in that simple music. 
 Gentlemen who wished to entertain their female 
 friends constantly sent for a band. When Beau 
 Fielding, a mighty fine gentleman, was courting 
 the lady whom he married, he treated her and her 
 companions at his lodgings to a supper from the 
 
102 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 tavern, and after supper tliey sent out for a fid- 
 dler, three of them. Fancy the three in a great 
 wainscoted room in Covent Garden or Soho, light- 
 ed by two or three candles in silver sconces, some 
 grapes, and a bottle of Florence wine on the ta- 
 ble, and the honest fiddler playing old tunes in 
 quaint old minor keys, as the Beau takes out one 
 lady after the other, and solemnly dances with 
 her. The very great folks — young noblemen 
 with their governors and the like — went abroad 
 and made the grand tour ; the home satirist 
 jeered at the Frenchified and Italian ways which 
 they brought back ; but the greater number of 
 people never left the country. The jolly squire 
 often had never been twenty miles from home. 
 Those who did go went to the baths, to Harrow- 
 gate, or Scarborough, or Bath, or Epsom. . . . 
 When we try to recall social England, we must 
 fancy it playing at cards for many hours every 
 day. The custom is well-nigh gone out among 
 us now, but fifty years ago was general, fifty 
 years before that almost universal, in the country. 
 " Gaming has become so much the fashion," writes 
 Seymour, the author of the "Court Gamester," 
 " that he who in company should be ignorant of 
 the games in vogue would be reckoned low bred, 
 and hardly fit for conversation." There were 
 cards everywhere. It was considered ill bred to 
 read in company. "Books were not fit articles 
 for drawing-rooms," old ladies used to say. Peo- 
 
GEORGE II. 103 
 
 pie were jealous, as it were, and angry with them. 
 You will find in Hervey that George II. was al- 
 ways furious at the sight of books ; and his 
 Queen, who loved reading, had to practice it in 
 secret in her closet. But cards were the resource 
 of all the world. Every night, for hours, kings 
 and queens of England sat down and handled 
 their majesties of spades and diamonds. 
 
 The King's fondness for Hanover occasioned 
 all sorts of rough jokes among his English sub- 
 jects, to whom sauer-Jcraut and sausages have 
 ever been ridiculous objects. When our present 
 Prince Consort came among us, the people bawled 
 out songs in the streets indicative of the absurdi- 
 ty of Germany in general. The sausage-shops 
 produced enormous sausages which we might sup- 
 pose were the daily food and delight of German 
 princes. I remember the caricatures at the mar- 
 riage of Prince Leopold with the Princess Char- 
 lotte. The bridegroom was drawn in rags. 
 George III.'s wife was called by the people a beg- 
 garly German duchess ; the British idea being 
 that all princes were beggarly except British 
 princes. King George paid us back. He thought 
 there were no manners out of Germany. Sarah 
 Marlborough once coming to visit the Princess, 
 while her Royal Highness was whipping one of 
 the roaring royal children, " Ah ! " says George, 
 who was standing by, " you have no good man- 
 
104 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 ners in England, because you are not properly 
 brought up when you are young." He insisted 
 that no English cooks could roast, no English 
 coachman could drive : he actually questioned 
 the superiority of our nobility, our horses, and 
 our roast beef I 
 
 While he was away from his beloved Hanover, 
 everything remained there exactly as in the 
 Prince's presence. There were eight hundred 
 horses in the stables ; there was all the apparatus 
 of chamberlains, court-marshals, and equerries ; 
 and court assemblies were held every Saturday, 
 where all the nobility of Hanover assembled at 
 what I can't but think a fine and touching cere- 
 mony. A large arm-chair was placed in the as- 
 sembly room, and on it the King's portrait. The 
 nobility advanced, and made a bow to the arm- 
 chair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar 
 the king had set up ; and spoke under their voices 
 before the august picture, just as they would 
 have done had the King Churfiirst been present 
 himself. 
 
 On the 25th day of October, 1760, he being 
 then in the seventy-seventh year of his age, and 
 the thirty-fourth of his reign, his page went to 
 take him his royal chocolate, and behold ! the 
 most religious and gracious King was lying dead 
 on the floor. They went and fetched Walmoden ; 
 but Walmoden could not wake him. The Sacred 
 
GEORGE TI. 105 
 
 Majesty was but a lifeless corj^se. The King was 
 dead ; God save the King ! But, of course, poets 
 and clergymen decorously bewailed the late one. 
 Here are some artless verses, in which an English 
 divine deplored the famous departed hero, and 
 over which you may cry or you may laugh, ex- 
 actly as your humor suits : 
 
 " "While at his feet expiring Faction lay, 
 No contest left but who should best obey ; 
 Saw in his offspring all himself renewed ; 
 The same fair path of glory still pursued ; 
 Saw to young George Augusta's care impart 
 Whate'er could raise and humanize the heart ; 
 Blend all his grandsire's virtues with his own, 
 And form their mingled radiance for the throne — 
 No further blessing could on earth be given — 
 The next degree of happiness was — heaven ! " 
 
 If he had been good, if he had been just, if 
 he had been pure in life, and wise in council, could 
 the poet have said much more ? It was a parson 
 who came and went over this grave, with Wal- 
 moden sitting on it, and claimed heaven for the 
 poor old man slumbering below. Here was one 
 who had neither dignity, learning, morals, nor 
 wit — who tainted a great society by a bad exam- 
 ple ; who in youth, manhood, old age, was gross, 
 low, and sensual : and Mr. Porteus, afterward my 
 Lord Bishop Porteus, says the earth was not 
 good enough for him, and that his only place was 
 heaven ! Bravo, Mr. Porteus ! The divine who 
 
lOG STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 wept these tears over George II. 's memory wore 
 George III.'s lawn. I don't know whether people 
 still admire his poetry or his sermons. — Lectures 
 on the Four Georges. 
 
 GEORGE III. 
 
 I pass over the story of his juvenile loves of 
 Hannah Lightfoot, the Quaker, to whom they say 
 he was actually married (though I don't know 
 who has ever seen the register of lovely black- 
 haired Sarah Lennox, about whose beauty Wal- 
 pole has written in raptures, and who used to lie 
 in wait for the young prince and make hay at him 
 on the lawn of Holland House. He sighed and 
 he longed, but he rode away from her. Her pic- 
 ture still hangs in Holland House, a magnificent 
 masterpiece by Reynolds, a canvas worthy of 
 Titian. She looks from the castle window, hold- 
 ing a bird in her hand, at black-eyed young 
 Charles Fox, her nephew. The royal bird flew 
 away from lovely Sarah. She had to figure as 
 bridemaid at her little Mecklenburg rival's wed- 
 ding, and died in our own time a quiet old lady, 
 who had become the mother of the heroic Napiers. 
 
 They say the little princess who had written 
 the fine letter about the horrors of war — a beauti- 
 ful letter without a single blot, for which she was 
 to be rewarded, like the heroine of the old spelling- 
 book story — was at play one day with some of 
 her young companions in the gardens of Strelitz, 
 
GEORGE III. 107 
 
 and that the young ladies' conversation was, 
 strange to say, about husbands. " Who will take 
 such a poor little princess as me ? " Charlotte said 
 to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very 
 moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida 
 said, "Princess ! there is the sweetheart." As 
 she said, so it actually turned out. The postman 
 brought letters from the splendid young King of 
 all England, who said, " Princess ! because you 
 have written such a beautiful letter, which does 
 credit to your head and heart, come and be Queen 
 of Great Britain, France and Ireland, and the 
 true wife of your most obedient servant, George ! " 
 So she jumped for joy, and went up stairs and 
 packed all her little trunks, and set off straight- 
 way for her kingdom in a beautiful yacht, with a 
 harpsichord on board for her to play upon, and 
 around her a beautiful fleet all covered with flags 
 and streamers, and the distinguished Madame 
 Auerbach complimented her with an ode, a trans- 
 lation of which may be read in the " Gentleman's 
 Magazine " to the present day : 
 
 " Her gallant navy through the main 
 Now cleaves its liquid way, 
 There to their queen a cliosen train 
 Of nymphs due reverence pay. 
 
 " Europa, when conveyed by Jove 
 To Crete's distinguished shore, 
 Greater attention scarce could prove, 
 Or be respected more." 
 
108 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 They met and they were married, and for 
 years they led the happiest, simplest lives, sure, 
 ever led by married couple. It is said the King 
 winced when he first saw his homely little bride ; 
 but, however that may be, he was a true and faith- 
 ful husband to her, as she was a faithful and lov- 
 ing wife. They had the simplest pleasures — the 
 very mildest and simplest ; little country dances, 
 to which a dozen couple were invited, and where 
 the honest King would stand up and dance for 
 three hours at a time to one tune ; after which 
 delicious excitement they would _go to bed with- 
 out any supper (the court people grumbling sadly 
 at that absence of supper), and get up quite early 
 the next morning, and perhaps the next night 
 have another dance ; or the Queen would play on 
 the spinet — she played pretty well, Haydn said — 
 or the King would read to her a paper out of 
 " The Spectator," or perhaps one of Ogden's ser- 
 mons. O Arcadia ! what a life it must have 
 been ! There used to be Sunday drawing-rooms 
 at court ; but the young King stopped these, as 
 he stopped all that godless gambling whereof we 
 have made mention. Not that George was averse 
 to any innocent pleasures, or pleasures which he 
 thought innocent. He was a patron of the arts, 
 after his fashion; kind and gracious to the artists 
 whom he favored, and respectful to their calling. 
 He wanted once to establish an Order of Minerva 
 for literary and scientific characters ; the knights 
 
GEORGE III. 109 
 
 were to take rank after the Knights of the Bath, 
 and to sport a straw-colored ribbon and a star of 
 sixteen points. But there was such a row among 
 the literati as to the persons who should be ap- 
 pointed, that the plan was given up, and Minerva 
 and her star never came down among us. He ob- 
 jected to painting St. Paul's as Popish practice ; 
 accordingly, the most clumsy heathen sculptures 
 decorate that edifice at present. It is fortunate 
 that the paintings, too, were spared, for painting 
 and drawing were wofully unsound at the close of 
 the last century ; and it is far better for our eyes 
 to contemplate whitewash (when we turn them 
 away from the clergyman) than to look at Opie's 
 pitchy canvases or Fuseli's livid monsters. And 
 yet there is one day in the year when old George 
 loved with all his heart to attend it — when I think 
 St. PauPs presents the noblest sight in the whole 
 world ; when five thousand charity children, with 
 cheeks like nosegays, and sweet, fresh voices, 
 sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill 
 with praise and happiness. I have seen a 
 hundred grand sights in the world — corona- 
 tions, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace open- 
 ings. Pope's chapels with their processions of 
 long-tailed cardinals, and quavering choirs of 
 fat soprani ; but think in all Christendom there 
 is no such sight as Charity Children's day. Non 
 Angli^ sed angeli. As one looks at that beauti- 
 ful multitude of innocents — as the first note 
 
110 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 strikes — indeed one may almost fancy that clierubs 
 are singing. 
 
 Of church music the King was always very 
 fond, showing skill in it both as a critic and a per- 
 former. Many stories, mirthful and affecting, are 
 told of his behavior at the concerts which he or- 
 dered. When he was blind and ill he chose the 
 music for the Ancient Concerts once, and the mu- 
 sic and words which he selected were from " Sam- 
 son Agonistes," and all had reference to his blind- 
 ness, his captivity, and his affliction. He would 
 beat time with his music-roll as they sang the an- 
 them in the Chapel Royal. If the page below 
 was talkative or inattentive, down would come 
 the music-roll on young scapegrace's powdered 
 head. The theatre was always his delight. His 
 bishops and clergy used to attend it, thinking it 
 no shame to appear where that good man was seen. 
 He is said not to have cared for Shakespeare or 
 tragedy much ; farces and pantomimes were his 
 joy ; and especially when clown swallowed a car- 
 rot or a string of sausages, he would laugh so out- 
 rageously that the lovely Princess by his side 
 would have to say, " My gracious monarch, do 
 compose yourself." But he continued to laugh, 
 and at the very smallest farces, as long as his poor 
 wits were left him. 
 
 There is something to me exceedingly touch- 
 ing in that simple early life of the King's. As 
 long as his mother lived — a dozen years after his 
 
GEORGE III. Ill 
 
 marriage witli the little spinet-player — ^he was a 
 great, shy, awkward boy, under the tutelage of 
 that hard parent. She must have been a clever, 
 domineering, cruel woman. She kept her house- 
 hold lonely and in gloom, mistrusting almost all 
 people who came about her children. Seeing the 
 young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy 
 once, she sharply asked him the cause of his 
 silence. "I am thinking," said the poor child. 
 " Thinking, sir ! and of what ? " "I am think- 
 ing if ever I have a son I will not make him so 
 unhappy as you make me." The other sons were 
 all wild, except George. Dutifully every evening 
 George and Charlotte paid their visit to the 
 King's mother at Carlton House. She had a 
 throat complaint, of which she died ; but to the 
 last persisted in driving about the streets to show 
 she was alive. The night before her death the 
 resolute woman talked with her son and daugh- 
 ter-in-law as usual, went to bed, and was found 
 dead there in the morning. "George, be a 
 King ! " were the words which she was for ever 
 croaking in the ears of her son ; and a King the 
 simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted man tried 
 to be. 
 
 He did his best ; he worked according to his 
 lights ; what virtue he knew, he tried to prac- 
 tice ; what knowledge he could muster, he strove 
 to acquire. He was for ever drawing maps, for 
 example, and learned geography with no small 
 
112 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 care and industry. He knew all about tlie family 
 histories and genealogies of his gentry, and pretty 
 histories he must have known. He knew the 
 whole " Army List " ; and all the facings, and 
 the exact number of the buttons, and all the tags 
 and laces, and the cut of all the cocked hats, pig- 
 tails, and gaiters in his army. He knew the per- 
 sonnel of the universities ; what doctors were 
 inclined to Socinianism, and who were sound 
 Churchmen ; he knew the etiquettes of his own 
 and his grandfather's courts to a nicety, and the 
 smallest particulars regarding the routine of min- 
 isters, secretaries, embassies, audiences, the hum- 
 blest page in the anteroom or the meanest helper 
 in the stables or kitchen. These parts of the 
 royal business he was capable of learning, and he 
 learned. But, as one thinks of an office, almost 
 divine, performed by any mortal man — of any 
 single being pretending to control the thoughts, 
 to direct the faith, to order the implicit obedience 
 of brother millions, to compel them into war at 
 his offense or quarrel ; to command, " In this 
 way you shall trade, in this way you shall think ; 
 these neighbors shall be your allies whom you 
 shall help, these others your enemies whom you 
 shall slay at my orders ; in this way you shall 
 worship God " — who can wonder that, when such 
 a man as George took such an office on himself, 
 punishment and humiliation should fall upon peo- 
 ple and chief ? 
 
GEORGE III. 113 
 
 Yet there is something grand about his cour- 
 age. The battle of the King with his aristocracy- 
 remains yet to be told by the historian who shall 
 view the reign of George more justly than the 
 trumpery panegyrists who wrote immediately 
 after his decease. It was he, with the people to 
 back him, who made the war with America ; it 
 was he and the people who refused justice to the 
 Roman Catholics ; and on both questions he beat 
 the patricians. He bribed ; he bullied ; he dark- 
 ly dissembled on occasion ; he exercised a slip- 
 pery perseverance and a vindictive resolution, 
 which one almost admires as one thinks his char- 
 acter over. His courage was never to be beat. 
 It trampled North under foot ; it bent the stiff 
 neck of the younger Pitt ; even his illness never 
 conquered that indomitable spirit. As soon as 
 his brain was clear it resumed the scheme, only 
 laid aside when his reason left him. As soon as 
 his hands were put out of the straight waistcoat, 
 they took up the pen and the plan which had en- 
 gaged him up to the moment of his malady. I 
 believe it is by persons believing themselves in 
 the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny of this 
 world has been perpetrated. Arguing on that 
 convenient premise, the Dey of Algiers would 
 cut off twenty heads of a morning ; Father Dom- 
 inic would burn a score of Jews in presence of 
 the Most Catholic King, and the Archbishops of 
 Toledo and Salamanca sing amen. Protestants 
 8 
 
114 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 were roasted, Jesuits hung and quartered at Smith- 
 field, and witches burned at Salem, and all by- 
 worthy people who believed they had the best 
 authority for their actions. 
 
 King George's household was a model of an 
 English gentleman's household. It was early ; 
 it was kindly ; it was charitable ; it was orderly ; 
 it must have been stupid to a degree which I 
 shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the 
 princes ran away from the lap of that dreary do- 
 mestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated 
 intervals. Day after day was the same. At the 
 same hour at night the King kissed his daughters' 
 jolly cheeks, the princesses kissed their mother's 
 hand, and Madame Thielke brought the royal 
 nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and wo- 
 men in waiting had their little dinner and cackled 
 over their tea. The King had his backgammon 
 or his evening concert ; the equerries yawned 
 themselves to death in the anteroom ; or the 
 King and his family walked on Windsor slopes, 
 the King holding his darling little Princess Ame- 
 lia by the hand ; and the people crowded round 
 quite good-naturedly ; and the Eton boys thrust 
 their chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows ; 
 and, the concert over, the King never failed to 
 take his enormous cocked hat off, and salute his 
 band, and say, " Thank you, gentlemen." 
 
 A quieter household, a more prosaic life than 
 
GEORGE III. 115 
 
 this of Kew or Windsor, can not be imagined. 
 Rain or shine, the King rode every day for hours; 
 poked his red face into hundreds of cottages round 
 about, and showed that shovel-hat and Windsor 
 uniform to farmers, to pig-boys, to old women 
 making apple-dumplings — to all sorts of people, 
 gentle and simple, about whom countless stories 
 are told. Nothing can be more undignified than 
 these stories. When Haroun Alraschid visits a 
 subject incog., the latter is sure to be very much 
 the better for the caliph's magnificence. Old 
 George showed no such royal splendor. He used 
 to give a guinea sometimes ; sometimes feel in his 
 pockets and find he had no money ; often ask a 
 man a hundred questions : about the number of 
 his family, about his oats and beans, about the 
 rent he paid for his house, and ride on. On one 
 occasion he played the part of King Alfred, and 
 turned a piece of meat with a string at a cot- 
 tager's house. When the old woman came home, 
 she found a paper with an inclosure of money, 
 and a note written by the royal pencil : " Five 
 guineas to buy a jack." It was not splendid, but 
 it was kind and worthy of Farmer George. One 
 day when the King and Queen were walking to- 
 gether, they met a little boy — they were always 
 fond of children, the good folks — and patted the 
 little white head. " Whose little boy are you ? " 
 asks the Windsor uniform. ** I am the King's 
 beef-eater's little boy," replied the child. On 
 
116 STRAY jrOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 which the King said, " Then kneel down and kiss 
 the Queen's hand." But the innocent offspring 
 of the beef-eater declined this treat. " No," said 
 he, " I won't kneel ; for if I do I shall spoil my 
 new breeches." The thrifty King ought to have 
 hugged him and knighted him on the spot. 
 George's admirers wrote pages and pages of such 
 stories about him. One morning, before anybody 
 else was up, the King walked about Gloucester 
 town ; pushed over Molly the housemaid with her 
 pail, who was scrubbing the doorsteps ; ran up 
 stairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms; 
 and then trotted down to the bridge, where by 
 this time a dozen louts were assembled. " What ! 
 is this Gloucester new bridge ? " asked our gracious 
 monarch ; and the people answered him, " Yes," 
 your Majesty." *' Why, then, my boys," said he, 
 " let us have a huzza ! " After giving them which 
 intellectual gratification he went home to break- 
 fast. 
 
 From November, 1810, George III. ceased to 
 reign. All the world knows the story of his mal- 
 ady ; all history presents no sadder figure than 
 that of the old man, blind and deprived of rea- 
 son, wandering through the rooms of bis palace, 
 addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fan- 
 cied troops, holding ghostly courts. I have seen 
 his picture as it was taken at this time, hang- 
 ing in the apartment of his daughter, the Land- 
 
GEORGE III. 117 
 
 gravino of Hessc-Hombourg — amid books and 
 Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminis- 
 cences of her English home. The poor old father 
 is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard 
 falling over his breast — the star of his famous 
 Order still idly shining on it. He was not only 
 sightless, he became utterly deaf. All light, all 
 reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasure 
 of this world of God, were taken from him. Some 
 slight lucid moments he had ; in one of which, 
 the Queen, desiring to see him, entered the room, 
 and found him singing a hymn, and accompany- 
 ing himself at the harpsichord. When he had 
 finished, he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, 
 and then for his family, and then for the nation, , 
 concluding with a prayer for himself, that it 
 might please God to avert his heavy calamity 
 from him, but, if not, to give him resignation to 
 submit. He then burst into tears, and his reason 
 again fled. 
 
 What preacher need moralize on this story ? 
 What words save the simplest are requisite to 
 tell it ? It is too terrible for tears. The thought 
 of such a misery smites me down in submission 
 before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch 
 Supreme over empires and republics, the inscruta- 
 ble Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory, 
 " O brothers ! " I said to those who heard me first 
 in America — " O brothers ! speaking the same 
 dear mother-tongue — O comrades ! enemies no 
 
118 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 more, let us take a mournful hand together as we 
 stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to bat- 
 tle ! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to 
 kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poor- 
 est : dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. 
 Driven off his throne ; buffeted by rude hands ; 
 with his children in revolt ; the darling of his old 
 age killed before him untimely ; our Lear hangs 
 over her breathless lips and cries, " Cordelia, Cor- 
 delia, stay a little ! " 
 
 " Vex not his ghost. Oh ! let him pass — he hates them 
 That would upon the rack of this rough world 
 Stretch him out longer! " 
 
 Hush ! strife and quan-el over the solemn 
 grave ! " Sound trumpets, a mournful march. 
 Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, 
 his grief, his awful tragedy." — Lectures on the 
 Four Georges. 
 
 GEOEGE IV. 
 
 To make a portrait of hijn at first seemed a 
 matter of small difficulty. There is his coat, his 
 star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it. 
 With a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this 
 very desk perform a recognizable likeness of him. 
 And yet, after reading of him in scores of volumes, 
 hunting him through old magazines and news- 
 papers, having him here at a ball, there at a pub- 
 lic dinner, there at races, and so forth, you find 
 you have nothing — nothing but a coat and a wig 
 
GEORGE IV. 119 
 
 and a mask smiling below it — nothing but a great 
 simulacrum. His sire and grandsires were men. 
 One knows what they were like ; what they would 
 do in given circumstances ; that on occasions 
 they fought and demeaned themselves like tough 
 good soldiers. They had friends whom they liked 
 according to their natures ; enemies whom they 
 hated fiercely ; passions and actions and individ- 
 ualities of their own. The sailor King who came 
 after George was a man ; the Duke of York was 
 a man, big, burly, loud, jolly, cursing, courageous. 
 But this George, what was he ? I look through 
 all his life and recognize but a bow and a grin. 
 I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stock- 
 ings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur 
 collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handker- 
 chief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best 
 nutty-brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth 
 and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more 
 under-waistcoats, and then nothing. I linow of 
 no sentiment that he ever distinctly uttered. 
 Documents are published under his name, but 
 people wrote them — private letters, but people 
 spelt them. He put a great George P. or George 
 R. at the bottom of the page and fancied he had 
 written the paper : some bookseller's clerk, some 
 poor author, some man did the work ; saw to the 
 spelling, cleaned up the slovenly sentences, and 
 gave the lax maudlin slipslop a sort of consistency. 
 He must have had an individuality : the dancing- 
 
120 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 master whom he emulated — nay, surpassed — the 
 wig-maker who curled his toupee for him, the 
 tailor who cut his coats, had that. But about 
 George, one can get at nothing actual. That out- 
 side, I am certain, is pad and tailor's work ; there 
 may be something behind, but what ! We can 
 not get at the character ; no doubt never shall. 
 Will men of the future have nothing better to do 
 than to unswathe and interpret that royal old 
 mummy ? I own I once used to think it would be 
 good sport to pursue him, fasten on him, and pull 
 him down ; but now I am ashamed to mount and 
 lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and 
 then to hunt the poor game. 
 
 The boy is father of the man. Our Prince 
 signalized his entrance into the world by a feat 
 worthy of his future life. He invented a new 
 shoebuckle. It was an inch long and five inches 
 broad. "It covered almost the whole instep, 
 reaching down to the ground on either side of the 
 foot." A sweet invention ! lovely and useful as 
 the Prince on whose foot it sparkled. At his 
 first appearance at a court ball, we read that *' his 
 coat was pink silk, with white cuffs ; his waist- 
 coat white silk, embroidered with various colored 
 foil, adorned with a profusion of French paste. 
 And his hat was ornamented with two rows of 
 steel beads, five thousand in number, with a but- 
 ton and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a 
 
GEORGE IV. 121 
 
 new military style." What a Florizel ! Do these 
 details seem trivial? They are the grave inci- 
 dents of his life. His biographers say that when 
 he commenced housekeeping in that splendid new 
 palace of his, the Prince of "Wales had some 
 windy projects of encouraging literature, science, 
 and the arts ; of having assemblies of literary 
 characters ; and societies for the encom-agement 
 of geography, astronomy, and botany. Astron- 
 omy, geography, and botany ! Fiddlesticks ! 
 French ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse jock- 
 eys, buffoons, procurers, tailors, boxers, fencing- 
 masters, china, jewel and gimcrack merchants — 
 these were his real companions. At first he made 
 a pretense of having Burke and Fox and Sheridan 
 for his friends. But how could such men be se- 
 rious before such an empty scapegrace as this 
 lad ? Fox might talk dice with him, and Sheri- 
 dan wine ; but what else had these men of genius 
 in common with their tawdry young host of 
 Carlton House ! That fribble the leader of such 
 men as Fox and Burke ! That man's opinions 
 about the Constitution, the India Bill, justice to 
 the Catholics — -about any question graver than 
 the button for a waistcoat or the sauce for a 
 partridge — worth anything ! The friendship be- 
 tween the Prince and the Whig chiefs was im- 
 possible. They were hypocrites in pretending to 
 respect him, and, if he broke the holloAV compact 
 between them, who shall blame him ? His natu- 
 
122 STEAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 ral companions were dandies and parasites. He 
 could talk to a tailor or a cook ; but, as the equal 
 of great statesmen, to set up a creature, lazy, 
 weak, indolent, besotted, of monstrous vanity, 
 and levity incurable — it is absurd. They thought 
 to use him, and did for a while ; but they must 
 have known how timid he was — how entirely 
 heartless and treacherous, and have expected his 
 desertion. His next set of friends were mere 
 table companions, of whom he grew tired too. 
 Then we hear of him with a very few select 
 toadies, mere boys from school in the Guards, 
 whose sprightliness tickled the fancy of the worn- 
 out voluptuary. What matters what friends he 
 had ? He dropped all his friends ; he never could 
 have real friends. An heir to the throne has 
 flatterers, adventurers who hang about him, am- 
 bitious men who use him ; but friendship is de- 
 nied him. 
 
 The Prince's table, no doubt, was a very 
 tempting one. The wits came and did their 
 utmost to amuse him. It is wonderful how the 
 spirits rise, the wit brightens, the wine has an 
 aroma, when a great man is at the head of the 
 table. Scott, the loyal cavalier, the King's true 
 liegeman, the very best raconteur of his time, 
 poured out with an endless generosity his store of 
 old-world learning, kindness, and humor. Grattan 
 contributed to it his wondrous eloquence, fancy. 
 
GEORGE IV. 123 
 
 feeling. Tom Moore perched upon it for a while, 
 and piped his most exquisite little love-tunes on 
 it, flying away in a twitter of indignation after- 
 ward, and attacking the Prince with bill and 
 claw. In such society, no wonder the sitting 
 was long, and the butler tired of drawing corks. 
 Remember what the usages of the time were ; 
 and that William Pitt, coming to the House of 
 Commons after having drunk a bottle of port 
 wine at his own house, would go into Bellamy's 
 with Dundas, and help finish a couple more. 
 
 He is dead but thirty years, and one asks how 
 a great society could have tolerated him ? "Would 
 we bear him now ? In this quarter of a century, 
 what a silent revolution has been working ! How 
 it has separated us from old times and manners ! 
 How it has changed men themselves ! I can see 
 old gentlemen now among us, of perfect good 
 breeding, of quiet lives, with venerable gray 
 heads, fondling their grandchildren ; and look at 
 them, and wonder at what they were once. That 
 gentleman of the grand old school, when he was 
 in the 10th Hussars, and dined at the Prince's 
 table, would fall under it night after night. 
 Night after night that gentleman sat at Brookes's 
 or Raggett's over the dice. If, in the petulance of 
 play or drink, that gentleman spoke a sharp word 
 to his neighbor, he and the other would infallibly 
 go out and try to shoot each other the next morn- 
 
124 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 ing. That gentleman would drive his friend 
 Richmond the black boxer down to Moulsey, and 
 hold his coat, and shout and swear, and hurra 
 with delight, whilst the black man was beating 
 Dutch Sam the Jew. That gentleman would 
 take a manly pleasure in pulling his own coat off, 
 and thrashing a bargeman in a street row. That 
 gentleman has been in a watch-house. That 
 gentleman so exquisitely polite with ladies in a 
 drawing-room, so loftily courteous, if he talked 
 now as he used among men in his youth, would 
 swear so as to make your hair stand on end. I 
 met lately a very old German gentleman, who 
 had served in our army at the beginning of the 
 century. Since then he has lived on his own 
 estate, but rarely meeting with an Englishman, 
 whose language — the language of fifty years ago, 
 that is — he possesses perfectly. When this highly 
 bred old man began to speak English to me, 
 almost every other word he uttered was an oath, 
 such as they used (they swore dreadfully in Flan- 
 ders) with the Duke of York before Valenciennes, 
 or at Carlton House over the supper and cards. 
 
 Which was the most splendid spectacle ever 
 witnessed — the opening feast of Prince George 
 in London, or the resignation of Washington? 
 Which is the noble character for after-ages to 
 admire — yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, 
 or yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a 
 
THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. 125 
 
 life of spotless honor, a purity unreproached, a 
 courage indomitable, and a consummate victory ? 
 Which of these is the true gentleman ? What is 
 it to be a gentleman ? Is it to have lofty aims, 
 to lead a pure life, to keep your honor virgin ; to 
 have the esteem of your fellow-citizens, and the 
 love of your fireside ; to bear good fortune 
 meekly ; to suffer evil with constancy ; and 
 through evil or good to maintain truth always ? 
 Show me the happy man whose life exhibits these 
 qualities, and him we will salute as a gentleman 
 whatever his rank may be ; show me the prince 
 who possesses them, and he may be sure of our 
 love and loyalty. — Lectures on the Four Georges, 
 
 THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. 
 
 And now, having seen a great military march 
 through a friendly country, the pomps and festiv- 
 ities of more than one German court, the severe 
 struggle of a hotly contested battle, and the tri- 
 umph of victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another part 
 of military duty— our troops entering the enemy's 
 territory, and putting all around them to fire and 
 sword ; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking 
 women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunk- 
 en soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of 
 tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately 
 Muse of History, that delights in describing the 
 valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, 
 leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and de- 
 
126 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 grading, that yet form by far tlie greater part 
 of the drama of war? You, gentlemen of Eng- 
 land, who live at home at ease, and compliment 
 yourselves in the songs of triumph with which 
 our chieftains are bepraised — you, pretty maidens, 
 that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife 
 and drum call you, and huzza for the British 
 grenadiers — do you take account that those items 
 go to make up the amount of triumph you ad- 
 mire, and form part of the duties of the heroes 
 you fondle? Our chief, whom England and all 
 Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshiped 
 almost, had this of the godlike in him, that he 
 was impassible before victory, before danger, be- 
 fore defeat ; before the greatest obstacle, or the 
 most trivial ceremony ; before a hundred thou- 
 sand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaugh- 
 tered at the door of his burning hovel ; before a 
 carouse of drunken German lords, or a monarch's 
 court, or a cottage table, where his plans were 
 laid, or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and 
 death, and strewing corpses round about him — he 
 was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He 
 performed a treason or a court bow ; he told a 
 falsehood as black as Styx as easily as he paid a 
 compliment or spoke about the weather ; he took 
 a mistress, and left her ; he betrayed his bene- 
 factor, and supported him, or would have mur- 
 dered him, with the same calmness always, and 
 having no more remorse than Clotho, when she 
 
THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH 127 
 
 weaves tlie thread, or Lachesis, when she cuts it. 
 In the hour of battle, I have heard the Prince of 
 Savoy's officers say, the Prince became possessed 
 with a sort of warlike fury ; his eyes lighted up ; 
 he rushed hither and thither, raging ; he shrieked 
 curses and encouragement, yelling and harking 
 his bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at 
 the first of the hunt. Our Duke was as calm at 
 the mouth of the cannon as at the door of a 
 drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been 
 the great m,an he was had he had a heart either 
 for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or 
 remorse. He achieved the highest deed of dar- 
 ing, or deepest calculation of thought, as he per- 
 formed the very meanest action of which a man 
 is capable ; told a lie, or cheated a fond woman, 
 or robbed a poor beggar of a half -penny with a 
 like awful serenity and equal capacity of the high- 
 est and lowest acts of our nature. 
 
 His qualities were pretty well known in the 
 army, where there were parties of all politics, and 
 of plenty of shrewdness and wit ; but there ex- 
 isted such a perfect confidence in him, as the first 
 captain of the world, and such a faith and admira- 
 tion in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the 
 very men whom he notoriously cheated of their 
 pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured (for he 
 used all men, great and small, that came near 
 him, as his instruments alike, and took something 
 of theirs, either some quality or some property — 
 
128 STRAY MOMENTS WITH TnACKERAY. 
 
 the blood of a soldier, it might be, or a jeweled 
 hat, or a hundred thousand crowns from a king, 
 or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three far- 
 things ; or — when he was young — a kiss from a 
 woman, and the gold chain off her neck, taking 
 all he could from woman or man, and having, as 
 I said, this of the godlike in him, that he could 
 see a hero perish or a sparrow fall with the same 
 amount of sympathy for either. Not that he had 
 no tears ; he could always order up this reserve 
 at the proper moment to battle ; he could draw 
 upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was 
 for using this cheap coin ; he would cringe to a 
 shoeblack, as he would flatter a minister or a 
 monarch ; be haughty, be -humble, threaten, re- 
 pent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you, when- 
 ever he saw occasion) ; but yet, those of the army 
 who knew him best and had suffered most from 
 him, admired him most of all ; and as he rode 
 along the lines to battle, or galloped up in the 
 nick of time to a battalion reeling from before 
 the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and 
 officers got new courage as they saw the splendid 
 calm of his face, and felt that his will made them 
 irresistible. 
 
 After the great victory of Blenheim the en- 
 thusiasm of the army for the Duke, even of his 
 bitterest personal enemies in it, amounted to a 
 sort of rage — nay, the very officers who cursed 
 him in their hearts were among the most frantic 
 
RICHARD STEELE. 129 
 
 to cheer him. Who could refuse his meed of ad- 
 miration to such a victory and such a victor ? Not 
 he who writes. A man may profess to be ever so 
 much a philosopher, but he who fought on that 
 day must feel a thrill of pride as he recalls it. — 
 Henry Esmond. 
 
 EICIIAED STEELE. 
 
 \Harry Esmond is a page at Castlewood^ when 
 the house is seized by a company of troopers on 
 suspicion that the inmates are concerned in a 
 plot for the restoration of James II. Steele is 
 one of the soldiers, and is called in to interpret 
 some documents written in a foreign language, 
 which neither the chptain of the troopers nor 
 a lawyer can translate. Esmond has already 
 translated them, hut is mistrusted.^ 
 
 " Let's have in Dick the Scholar," cried Cap- 
 tain Westbury, laughing ; and he called to a 
 trooper out of the window, " Ho, Dick, come in 
 here and construe." 
 
 A thick-set soldier with a square good-humored 
 face came in at the summons, saluting his officer. 
 
 "Tell us what is this, Dick," says the law- 
 yer. 
 
 "My name is Steele, sir," says the soldier. 
 " I may be Dick for my friends, but I don't name 
 gentlemen of your cloth among them." 
 
 " Well then, Steele." 
 
 "Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you 
 9 
 
130 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 address a gentleman of his Majesty's Horse 
 Guards, be pleased not to be so familiar." 
 
 " I didn't know, sir," said tlie lawyer. 
 
 "How should you? I take it you are not 
 accustomed to meet with gentlemen," says the 
 trooper. 
 
 " Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper," 
 says Westbury. 
 
 " 'Tis Latin," says Dick, glancing up and again 
 saluting his officer, " and from a sermon of Mr. 
 Cudworth's," and he translated the words pretty 
 much as Henry Esmond had rendered them. 
 
 Dick the Scholar afterward took Harry Es- 
 mond under his special protection, and would 
 examine him in his humanizes, and talk to him 
 both of French and Latin, in which tongues the 
 lad found, and his new friend was willing enough 
 to acknowledge, that he was even more proficient 
 than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned 
 them from a Jesuit, in the praise of whom and 
 whose goodness Harry was never tired of speak- 
 ing, Dick, rather to the boy's surprise, who began 
 to have an early shrewdness, like many children 
 bred up alone, showed a great deal of theological 
 science and knowledge of the points at issue be- 
 tween the two churches ; so that he and Harry 
 would have hours of controversy together, in 
 which the boy was certainly worsted by the argu- 
 ments of this singular trooper. " I am no com- 
 mon soldier," Dick would say, and indeed it wa8 
 
RICHARD STEELE. 131 
 
 easy to see by his learning, breeding, and many 
 accomplishments that he was not — " I am of one 
 of the most ancient families in the empire ; I 
 have had my education at a famous school, and a 
 famous university ; I learned my first rudiments 
 of Latin near to Smithfield, in London, where the 
 martyrs were roasted." 
 
 "You hanged as many of ours," interposed 
 Harry ; " and for the matter of persecution, Fa- 
 ther Holt \^IIarry^s precejytor^ told me that a young 
 gentleman of Edinburgh, eighteen years of age, 
 student at the college there, was hanged for 
 heresy only last year, though he recanted, and 
 solemnly asked pardon for his errors." 
 
 " Faith ! there has been too much persecution 
 on both sides ; but 'twas you taught us." 
 
 " Nay, 'twas the Pagans began it," cried the lad, 
 and began to instance a number of saints of the 
 Church, from the protomartyr downward — " this 
 one's fire went out under him ; that one's oil 
 cooled in the caldron ; at a third holy head the 
 executioner chopped three times, and it would not 
 come off. Show us martyrs in your Church for 
 whom such miracles have been done." 
 
 " Nay," says the trooper gravely, " the miracles 
 of the first three centuries belong to my Church 
 as well as yours. Master Papist," and then added, 
 with something of a smile upon his countenance 
 and a queer look at Harry — " And yet, my little 
 catechiser, I have sometimes thought about those 
 
132 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 mii-acles that there was not much good in them, 
 since the victim's head always finished by coming 
 off at the third or fourth chop, and the caldron, if 
 it did not boil one day, boiled the next. How- 
 beit, in our times, the Church has lost that ques- 
 tionable advantage of respites. There was never 
 a shower to put out Ridley's fire, nor an angel to 
 turn the edge of Campion's axe. The rack tore 
 the limbs of Southwell the Jesuit and Sympson 
 the Protestant alike. For faith everywhere mul- 
 titudes die willingly enough. I have read in Mon- 
 sieur Rycault's History of the Turks, of thousands 
 of Mahomet's followers rushing upon death in bat- 
 tle as upon certain Paradise ; and in the Great 
 Mogul's dominions people fling themselves by 
 hundreds under the cars of the idols annually ; 
 and the widow^s burn themselves on their hus- 
 bands' bodies, as 'tis well known. 'Tis not the 
 dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry 
 — men of every nation have done that — 'tis the 
 living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my 
 cost," he added, with a sigh. "And, ah!" he 
 added, " my poor lad, I am not strong enough to 
 convince thee by my life — though to die for my 
 religion would give me the greatest of joys — but 
 I had a dear friend in Magdalen College in Oxford. 
 I wish Joe Addison were here to convince thee, 
 as he quickly could, for I think he's a match for 
 the whole College of Jesuits ; and what's more, 
 in his life too. — I had a thought of wearing the 
 
RICHARD STEELE. 133 
 
 black coat (but was ashamed of my life, you see, 
 and took to this sorry red one). — I have often 
 thought of Joe Addison. In that very sermon of 
 Dr. Cudworth's, which your priest was quoting 
 from, and which suffered martyrdom in the bra- 
 zier," Dick added, with a smile, " Dr. Cudworth 
 says, * A good conscience is the best looking-glass 
 of heaven ' — and there's a serenity in my friend's 
 face which always reflects it ; I wish you could 
 see him, Harry." 
 
 " Did he do you a great deal of good ? " asked 
 the lad, simply. 
 
 " He might have done," said the other — " at 
 least he taught me to see and approve better 
 things. *Tis my own fault, deteriora sequV 
 
 " You seem very good," the boy said. 
 
 " I'm not what I seem, alas ! " answered the 
 trooper ; and, indeed, as it turned out, poor Dick 
 told the truth, for that very night, at supper in 
 the hall, where the gentlemen of the troop took 
 their repasts, and passed most part of their days 
 dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and 
 cursing over the Castlewood ale, Harry Esmond 
 found Dick the Scholar in a woful state of drunk- 
 enness. He hiccoughed out a sermon ; and his 
 laughing companions bade him sing a hymn, on 
 which Dick, swearing he would run the scoun- 
 drel through the body who insulted his religion, 
 made for his sword, which was hanging on the 
 wall, and fell down flat on the floor under it. 
 
134 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 saying to Harry, who ran forward to helji him, 
 "Ah, little Papist, I wish Joseph Addison was 
 here." 
 
 During the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, 
 honest Dick the Scholar was the constant com- 
 panion of the lonely little orphan lad, Harry Es- 
 mond ; and they read together, and they played 
 bowls together, and when the other troopers or 
 their officers, who were free-spoken over their 
 cups (as was the way of that day, when neither 
 men nor women were over nice), talked unbecom- 
 ingly of their amours and gallantries before the 
 child, Dick, who very likely was setting the whole 
 company laughing, would stop their jokes with a 
 maxima dehetur pwer2s reverentia, and once of- 
 fered to lug out against another trooper called 
 Hulking Tom, who wanted to ask Harry Esmond 
 a ribald question. 
 
 Also Dick, seeing that the child had, as he 
 said, a sensibility above his years, and a great 
 and praiseworthy discretion, confided to Harry 
 his love for a vintner's daughter, near to the Toll- 
 yard, Westminster, whom Dick addressed as Sac- 
 charissa in many verses of his composition, and 
 without whom, he said, it would be impossible 
 that he could continue to live. He vowed this 
 a thousand times in a day, though Harry smiled 
 to see the love-lorn swain had his health and 
 appetite as well as the most heart-whole trooper 
 
RICHARD STEELE. 135 
 
 in the regiment ; and he swore Harry to secrecy 
 too, which vow the lad religiously kept, until he 
 found that officers and privates were all taken 
 into Dick's confidence, and had the benefit of his 
 verses. And it must be owned, likewise, that, 
 while Dick was sighing after Saccharissa in Lon- 
 don, he had consolations in the country ; for there 
 came a wench out of Castlewood village, who had 
 washed his linen, and who cried sadly when she 
 heard he was gone, and without paying her bill, 
 too, which Harry Esmond took upon himself to 
 discharge by giving the girl a silver pocket-piece, 
 which Scholar Dick had presented to him, when, 
 with many embraces and prayers for his pros- 
 perity, Dick parted from him, the garrison of Cas- 
 tlewood being ordered away. Dick the Scholar 
 said he would never forget his young friend, nor, 
 indeed, did he ; and Harry was sorry when the 
 kind soldiers vacated Castlewood, looking for- 
 ward with no small anxiety (for care and solitude 
 had made him thoughtful beyond his years) to his 
 fate when the new lord and lady of the house 
 came to live there. 
 
 [/SteelCy like many a better man, united him- 
 self to a shreic, and loith her attended a ball one 
 evening, at which Mr. St. John, the Secretary of 
 State, was present. She was ignorant, and, being 
 spohen of as Steele^s mistress, took immediate 
 wnbrage.l 
 
136 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 " Mistress ! upon my word, sir ! " cries the 
 lady. "If you mean me, sir, I would have you 
 know that I am the Captain's wife." 
 
 " Sure, we all know it," answers Mr. St. John, 
 keeping his countenance very gravely ; and Steele 
 broke in, saying, " 'Twas not about Mrs. Steele 
 I wrote that paper — though I am sure she is 
 worthy of any compliment I can pay her — but of 
 the Lady Elizabeth Hastings." 
 
 " I hear Mr. Addison is equally famous as a 
 wit and a poet," says Mr. St. John. " Is it true 
 that his hand is to be found in your * Tatler,' 
 Mr. Steele ? " 
 
 " Whether 'tis the sublime or the humorous, 
 no man can come near him," cries Steele. 
 
 " A fig, Dick, for your Mr. Addison ! " cries 
 out his lady ; " a gentleman who gives himself 
 such airs and holds his head so high now. I 
 hope your ladyship thinks as I do : I can't bear 
 those very fair men with white eyelashes — a 
 black man for me." (All the black men at table 
 applauded and made Mrs. Steele a bow for this 
 compliment.) "As for this Mr. Addison," she went 
 on, " he comes to dine with the Captain sometimes, 
 never says a word to me, and then they walk 
 upstairs, both tipsy, to a dish of tea. I remem- 
 ber your Mr. Addison when he had but one coat 
 to his back, and that with a patch at the elbow." 
 
 " Indeed — a patch at the elbow ! You interest 
 me," says Mr. St. John. " Tis charming to hear 
 
RICHARD STEELE. 137 
 
 of one man of letters from the charming wife of 
 another." 
 
 " La ! I could tell you ever so much about 
 'em," continues the voluble lady. "What do 
 you think the Captain has got now ? — a little 
 hunchback fellow — a little hop-o'-my-thumb crea- 
 ture that he calls a poet — a little Popish brat ! " 
 
 " Hush, there are two in the room," whispers 
 her companion. 
 
 " Well, I call him Popish because his name is 
 Pope," says the lady. *^'Tis only my joking 
 way. And this little dwarf of a fellow has writ- 
 ten a pastoral poem — all about shepherds and 
 shepherdesses, you know." 
 
 " A shepherd should have a little crook," says 
 my mistress, laughing, from her end of the table ; 
 on which Mrs. Steele said " she did not know, but 
 the Captain brought home this queer little crea- 
 ture when she was in bed with her first boy, and it 
 was a mercy he had come no sooner ; and Dick 
 raved about his geoiics, and was always raving 
 about some nonsense or other." 
 
 " Which of the * Tatlers ' do you prefer, Mrs. 
 Steele ? " asked Mr. St. John. 
 
 "I never read but one, and think it all a 
 pack of rubbish, sir," says the lady. " Such stuff 
 about Bickerstaffe, and Distaff, and Quarterstaff, 
 as it all is. There's the Captain going on still 
 with the Burgundy ; I know he'll be tipsy before 
 he stops — Captain Steele ! " 
 
138 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 "I drink to your eyes, my dear," says the 
 Captain, who seemed to think his wife charming, 
 and to receive as genuine all the satiric compli- 
 ments which Mr. St. John paid her. — Henry Es- 
 mond. 
 
 Dick set about almost all the undertakings 
 of his life with inadequate means, and as he 
 took and furnished a house with the most gener- 
 ous intentions toward his friends, the most tender 
 gallantry toward his wife, and with this only 
 drawback, that he had not the wherewithal to 
 pay the rent when quarter-day came — so, in his 
 life he proposed to himself the most magnificent 
 schemes of virtue, forbearance, public and private 
 good, and the advancement of his own and the 
 national religion ; but when he had to pay for 
 these articles — so difficult to purchase and so 
 costly to maintain — poor Dick's money was not 
 forthcoming ; and when Virtue called with her 
 little bill, Dick made a shuffling excuse that he 
 could not see her that morning, having a headache 
 from being tipsy overnight ; or when stern Duty 
 rapped at the door with his account, Dick was 
 absent and not ready to pay. He was shirking at 
 the tavern ; or had some particular business (of 
 somebody's else) at the ordinary ; or he was in 
 hiding, or, worse than in hiding, in the lock-up 
 house. What a situation for a man ! — for a phi- 
 lanthropist — for a lover of right and truth — for 
 
RICHARD STEELE. 139 
 
 a magnificent designer and schemer ! Not to 
 dare to look in the face the religion which he 
 adored and which he had offended ; to have to 
 shirk down back lanes and alleys, so as to avoid 
 the friend whom he loved and who had trusted 
 him — to have the house which he had intended 
 for his wife, whom he loved passionately, and for 
 her ladyship's company Avhich he wished to enter- 
 tain splendidly, in the possession of a bailiff's 
 man, with a crowd of little creditors — grocers, 
 butchers, and small-coal men, lingering round the 
 door with their bills, and jeering at him. Alas ! 
 for poor Dick Steele ! For nobody else, of course. 
 There is no man or woman in our time who makes 
 fine projects and gives them up from idleness or 
 want of means. When Duty calls upon W5, we 
 no doubt are always at home, and ready to pay 
 that grim tax-gatherer. "When we are stricken 
 with remorse and promise reform, we keep our 
 promise, and are never angry, or idle, or extrava- 
 gant any more. There are no chambers in our 
 hearts destined for family friends and affections, 
 and ^now occupied by some Sin's emissary and 
 bailiff in possession. There are no little sins, 
 shabby peccadilloes, importunate remembrances, 
 or disappointed holders of our promises to reform, 
 hovering at our steps, or knocking at our door ! 
 Of course not. We are living in the nineteenth 
 century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got 
 up again, and got into jail and out again, and 
 
140 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 Binned and repented ; and loved and suffered ; 
 and lived and died scores of years ago. Peace 
 be with him ! Let us think gently of one who 
 was so gentle ; let us speak kindly of one whose 
 own breast exuberated with human kindness. — 
 Lectures on the Miglish Humorists. 
 
 ADDISON. 
 
 {^Steele and Henry Esmond^ having been din- 
 ing at the Guards* table hi St. Jameses, meet the 
 author of the " Campaign.'*^'] 
 
 Quitting the Guard-table one sunny afternoon, 
 when by chance Dick had a sober fit upon him, he 
 and his friend were making their way down Ger- 
 main Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his com- 
 panion's arm, and ran after a gentleman who was 
 poring over a folio volume at the bookshop near 
 to St. James's Church. He was a fair, tall man, 
 in a snuff-colored suit, with a plain sword, very 
 sober and almost shabby in appearance — at least 
 when compared with Captain Steele, who loved 
 to adorn his jolly round person with the finest of 
 clothes, and shone in scarlet and gold lace. The 
 Captain rushed up, then, to the student of the 
 bookstall, took him in his arms, hugged him, and 
 would have kissed him — for Dick was always 
 hugging and bussing his friends — but the other 
 stepped back with a flush on his pale face, seem- 
 ing to decline this public manifestation of Steele's 
 regard. 
 
ADDISON. 141 
 
 " My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thy- 
 self this age?" cries the Captain, still holding 
 both his friend's hands. " I have been languish- 
 ing for thee this fortnight." 
 
 "A fortnight is not an age, Dick," says the 
 other, very good-humoredly. (He had light-blue 
 eyes, extraordinary bright, and a face perfectly 
 regular and handsome, like a tinted statue.) 
 " And I have been hiding myself — where do you 
 think?" 
 
 " What ! not across the water, my dear Joe ? " 
 says Steele, with a look of great alarm : " thou 
 knowest I have always — " 
 
 " No," says his friend, interrupting him with a 
 smile ; "we are not come to such straits as that, 
 Dick. I have been hiding, sir, at a place where 
 people never think of finding you — at my own 
 lodgings, whither I am going to smoke a pipe 
 now, and drink a glass of sack ; will your honor 
 come?" 
 
 " Harry Esmond, come hither," cries out Dick. 
 " Thou hast heard me talk over and over again 
 of my dearest Joe, my guardian angel." 
 
 " Indeed," says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, " it 
 is not from you only that I have learned to ad- 
 mire Mr. Addison. We loved good poetry at 
 Cambridge, as well as at Oxford ; and I have 
 some of yours by heart, though I have put on 
 a red coat — * O qui canoro blandius Orpheo 
 vocale ducis carmen ' ; shall I go on, sir ? " says 
 
142 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 Mr. Esmond, who indeed had read and loved 
 the charming Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as 
 every scholar of that time knew and admired 
 them. 
 
 *' This is Captain Esmond, who was at Blen- 
 heim," says Steele. 
 
 " Lieutenant Esmond," says the other, with a 
 low bow ; " at Mr. Addison's service." 
 
 "I have heard of you," says Mr. Addison, 
 with a smile ; as, indeed, everybody about town 
 had heard that unlucky story about Esmond's 
 dowager aunt and the Duchess. 
 
 " We are going to the George, to take a bot- 
 tle before the play," says Steele ; ** wilt thou be 
 one, Joe ? " 
 
 Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard 
 by, where he was still rich enough to give a good 
 bottle of wine to his friends ; and invited the two 
 gentlemen to his apartment in the Haymarket, 
 whither we accordingly went. 
 
 " I shall get credit with my landlady," says 
 he, with a smile, "when she sees two such fine 
 gentlemen as you come up my stair." And he 
 politely made his visitors welcome to his apart- 
 ment, which was indeed but a shabby one, though 
 no grandee of the land could receive his guests 
 with a more perfect and courtly grace than this 
 gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting of a slice 
 of meat and a penny loaf, was awaiting the owner 
 of the lodgings. "My wine is better than my 
 
ADDISON. 143 
 
 meat," says Mr, Addison ; " my Lord Halifax 
 sent me the Burgundy." And he set a bottle 
 and glasses before his friends, and ate his simple 
 dinner in a very few minutes ; after which the 
 three fell to, and began to drink. "You see," 
 says Mr. Addison, pointing to his writing-table, 
 whereon was a map of the action at Hochstedt, 
 and several other gazettes and pamphlets relating 
 to the battle, "that I, too, am busy about your 
 affairs. Captain. I am engaged as a poetical ga- 
 zetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem on 
 the campaign." 
 
 So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him 
 what he knew about the famous battle, drew the 
 river on the table aliquo mero, and with the aid 
 of some bits of tobacco-pipe, showed the advance 
 of the left wing, where he had been engaged. 
 
 A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the 
 table beside our bottles and glasses, and Dick, 
 having plentifully refreshed himself from the lat- 
 ter, took up the pages of manuscript, written out 
 with scarce a blot or correction, in the author's 
 slim, neat handwriting, and began to read there- 
 from with great emphasis and volubility. At 
 pauses of the verse, the enthusiastic reader stopped 
 and fired off a great salvo of applause. 
 
 Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison's 
 friend. "You are like the German Burghers," 
 says he, " and the Princes on the Moselle ; when 
 our army came to a halt, they always sent a depu- 
 
144 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 tation to compliment the chief, and fired a salute 
 with all their artillery from their walls." 
 
 "And drank the great chief's health after- 
 ward, did not they ? " says Captain Steele, gayly 
 filling up a bumper ; he never was tardy at that 
 sort of acknowledgment of a friend's merit. 
 
 " And the Duke, since you will have me act his 
 Grace's part," says Mr. Addison, with a smile and 
 something of a blush, " pledged his friends in re- 
 turn. Most Serene Elector of Covent Garden, I 
 drink to your Highness's health," and he filled 
 himself a glass. Joseph required scarce more 
 pressing than Dick to that sort of amusement ; 
 but the wine never seemed at all to fluster Mr. 
 Addison's brains ; it only unloosed his tongue ; 
 whereas Captain Steele's head and speech were 
 quite overcome by a single bottle. 
 
 No matter what the verses were, and, to say 
 truth, Mr. Esmond found some of them more than 
 indifferent, Dick's enthusiasm for his chief never 
 faltered, and in every line from Addison's pen 
 Steele found a master-stroke. By the time Dick 
 had come to that part of the poem wherein the 
 bard describes, as blandly as though he were re- 
 cording a dance at the opera, or a harmless bout 
 of bucolic cudgeling at a village fair, that bloody 
 and ruthless part of our campaign, with the re- 
 membrance whereof every soldier who bore a part 
 in it must sicken with shame — when we were or- 
 dered to ravage and lay waste the Elector's coun- 
 
ADDISON. 145 
 
 try ; and with fire and murder, elaughter and 
 crime, a great part of his dominions were over- 
 run — when Dick came to the lines : 
 
 "In vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand 
 With sword and fire, and ravages the land, 
 In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn, 
 A thousand villages to ashes turn. 
 To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat, 
 And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat. 
 Their trembling lords the common shade partake, 
 And cries of infants sound in every brake. 
 The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands, 
 Loath to obey his leader's just commands. 
 The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed, 
 To see his just commands so well obeyed ; " 
 
 by this time wine and friendship had brought 
 poor Dick to a perfectly maudlin state, and he 
 hiccoughed out the last line with a tenderness 
 that set one of his auditors a laughing. 
 
 "I admire the license of you poets," says Es- 
 mond to Mr. Addison. (Dick, after reading of 
 the verses, was fain to go off, insisting on kissing 
 his two dear friends before his departure, and 
 reeling away with his periwig over his eyes.) "I 
 admire your art : the murder of the campaign is 
 done to military music, like a battle at the opera, 
 and the virgins shriek in harmony as our victori- 
 rious grenadiers march into their villages. Do 
 you know what a scene it was ? " (by this time, 
 perhaps, the wine had warmed Mr. Esmond's 
 10 
 
146 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 head too) — " what a triumph you are celebrating? 
 what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, 
 over which the commander's genius presided, as 
 calm as though he didn't belong to our sphere ? 
 You talk of the ' listening soldier fixed in sorrow,' 
 the * leader's grief swayed by generous pity ' : to 
 my belief the leader cared no more for bleating 
 flocks than he did for infants' cries, and many of 
 our ruffians butchered one or the other with equal 
 alacrity. I was ashamed of my trade when I saw 
 those horrors perpetrated, which came under ev- 
 ery man's eyes. You hew out of your polished 
 verses a stately image of smiling victory ; I tell 
 you 'tis an uncouth, distorted, savage idol ; hid- 
 eous, bloody, and barbarous. The rites performed 
 before it are shocking to think of. You great 
 poets should show it as it is — ugly and horrible, 
 not beautiful and serene. Oh, sir, had you made 
 the campaign, believe me, you never would have 
 sung it so ! " 
 
 During this little outbreak, Mr. Addison was 
 listening, smoking out of his long pipe, and smil- 
 ing very placidly. " What would you have ? " 
 says he. " In our polished days, and according 
 to the rules of art, 'tis impossible that the Muse 
 should depict tortures or begrime her hands with 
 the horrors of war. These are indicated rather 
 than described ; as in the Greek tragedies, that, 
 I dare say, you have read (and, sure, there can 
 be no more elegant specimens of composition), 
 
ADDISON. 147 
 
 Agamemnon is slain, or Medea's cliildi-en de- 
 stroyed, away from the scene ; the chorus occu- 
 pying the stage and singing of the action to pa- 
 thetic music. Something of this I attempt, my 
 dear sir, in my humble way : 'tis a panegyric I 
 mean to write, and not a satire. Were I to sing 
 as you would have me, the town would tear the 
 poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of 
 the common hangman. Do you not use tobacco ? 
 Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nico- 
 tian is the most soothing and salutary. We must 
 paint our great Duke," Mr. Addison went on, 
 " not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weak- 
 nesses like the rest of us, but as a hero. 'Tis in a 
 triumph, not a battle, that your humble servant is 
 riding his sleek Pegasus. We college poets trot, 
 you know, on very easy nags ; it hath been, time 
 out of mind, part of the poet's profession to cele- 
 brate the actions of heroes in verse, and to sing 
 the deeds which you men of war perform. I 
 must follow the rules of my art, and the compo- 
 sition of such a strain as this must be harmonious 
 and majestic, not familiar, or too near the vulgar 
 truth. Si par V a licet: if Virgil could invoke the 
 divine Augustus, a humbler poet from the banks 
 of the Isis may celebrate a victory and a con- 
 queror of our own nation, in whose triumphs 
 every Briton has a share, and whose glory and 
 genius contribute to every citizen's individual 
 honor. When hath there been, since our Henrys' 
 
148 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 and Edwards' days, such a great feat of arms as 
 that from which you yourself have brought away 
 marks of distinction ? If 'tis in my power to sing 
 that song worthily I will do so, and be thankful 
 to my Muse. If I fail as a poet, as a Briton, at 
 least, I will show my loyalty, and fling up my cap 
 and huzza for the conqueror : 
 
 " ' Rheni pacator et Istri 
 Omnis in hoc uno variis discordia cessit 
 Ordinibus ; laatatur eques, plauditque senator, 
 Yotaque patricio certant plebeia favori.' " 
 
 " There were as brave men on that field," says 
 Mr. Esmond (who never could be made to love 
 the Duke of Marlborough, nor to forget those 
 stories which he used to hear in his youth regard- 
 ing that great chief's selfishness and treachery) 
 — " there were men at Blenheim as good as the 
 leader, whom neither knights nor senators ap- 
 plauded, nor voices plebeian or patrician favored, 
 and who lie there forgotten, under the clods. 
 What poet is there to sing them ? " 
 
 " To sing the gallant souls of heroes sent to 
 Hades ! " says Mr. Addison, with a smile. " Would 
 you celebrate them all ? If I may venture to ques- 
 tion anything in such an admirable work, the cata- 
 logue of the ships in Homer hath always appeared 
 to me as somewhat wearisome ; what had the 
 poem been, supposing the writer had chronicled 
 the names of captains, lieutenants, rank and file ? 
 
ADDISON. 149 
 
 One of tlie greatest of a great man's qualities is 
 success ; 'tis the result of all the others ; 'tis a 
 latent power in him which compels the favors of 
 the gods, and subjugates fortune. Of all his 
 gifts I admire that one in the great Marlborough. 
 To be brave ? every man is brave. But in being 
 victorious, as he is, I fancy there is something 
 divine. In presence of the occasion, the great 
 soul of the leader shines out, and the god is con- 
 fessed. Death itself respects him, and passes by 
 him to lay others low. War and carnage flee be- 
 fore him to ravage other parts of the field, as 
 Hector from before the divine Achilles. You say 
 he hath no pity ; no more have the gods, who are 
 above it, and superhuman. The fainting battle 
 gathers strength at his aspect ; and, wherever he 
 rides, victory charges with him." 
 
 A couple of days after, when Mr. Esmond re- 
 visited his poetic friend, he found his thought, 
 struck out in the fervor of conversation, improved 
 and shaped into those famous lines which are in 
 truth the noblest in the poem of the " Campaign." 
 As the two gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. 
 Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe, 
 the little maid-servant that waited on his lodging 
 came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced 
 clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court 
 or a great man's levee. The courtier coughed a 
 little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked around 
 the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as 
 
150 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 was the owner in his worn snuff-colored suit and 
 plain tie-wig. 
 
 " How goes on the magnum opus, Mr. Addi- 
 son ? " says the Court gentleman on looking down 
 at the papers that were on the table. 
 
 " We were but now over it," says Addison (the 
 greatest courtier in the land could not have a 
 more splendid politeness, or greater dignity of 
 manner) ; " here is the plan," says he, " on the 
 table : hac ihat Simois, here ran the little river 
 Nebel — hie est Sigeia tellus, here are Tallard's 
 quarters, at the bowl of this pipe, at the attack 
 of which Captain Esmond was present. I have 
 the honor to introduce him to Mr. Boyle ; and Mr. 
 Esmond was but now depicting aliquo proelia 
 m^ixta mero, when you came in." In truth, the 
 two gentlemen had been so engaged when the 
 visitor arrived, and Addison, in his smiling way, 
 speaking of Mr. Webb, Colonel of Esmond's regi- 
 ment (who commanded a brigade in the action, 
 and greatly distinguished himself there), was la- 
 menting that he could find never a suitable rhyme 
 for Webb, otherwise the brigadier should have 
 had a place in the poet's verses. " And for you, 
 you are but a lieutenant," says Addison, " and the 
 Muse can't occupy herself with any gentleman 
 under the rank of a field-officer." 
 
 Mr. Boyle was all impatient to hear, saying 
 that my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Halifax 
 were equally anxious ; and Addison, blushing, 
 
ADDISON. 151 
 
 began reading of his verses, and, I suspect, knew 
 their weak parts as well as the most critical hearer. 
 When he came to the lines describing the angel 
 that 
 
 "Inspired repulsed battalions to engage 
 And taught the doubtful battle where to rage," 
 
 he read with great animation, looking at Esmond, 
 as much as to say, " You know where that simile 
 came from — from our talk, and our bottle of Bur- 
 gundy, the other day." 
 
 The poet's two hearers were caught with en- 
 thusiasm, and applauded the verses with all their 
 might. The gentleman of the Court sprang up 
 in great delight. "Not a word more, my dear 
 sir," says he. " Trust me with the papers ; I'll 
 defend them with my life. Let me read them 
 over to my Lord Treasurer, whom I am appointed 
 to see in half an hour. I venture to promise the 
 verses shall lose nothing by my reading, and then, 
 sir, we shall see whether Lord Halifax has a right 
 to complain that his friend's pension is no longer 
 paid." And, without more ado, the courtier in 
 lace seized the manuscript pages, placed them in 
 his breast with his ruffled hand over his heart, 
 executed a most gracious wave of the hat with 
 the disengaged hand, and smiled and bowed out 
 of the room, leaving an odor of pomander behind 
 him. 
 
 " Does not the chamber look quite dark," says 
 
152 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 Addison, surveying it, " after the glorious appear- 
 ance and disappearance of that gracious messen- 
 ger ? Why, he illuminated the whole room. Your 
 scarlet, Mr. Esmond, will bear any light ; but this 
 threadbare old coat of mine, how very worn it 
 looked under the glare of that splendor ! I won- 
 der whether they will do anything for me," he 
 continued. "When I came out of Oxford into 
 the world, my patrons promised me great things ; 
 and you see where their promises have landed me, 
 in a lodging up two pair of stairs, with a sixpenny 
 dinner from the cook's shop. Well, I suppose 
 this promise will go after the others, and fortune 
 will jilt me, as the jade has been doing any time 
 these seven years. * I puff the prostitute away,' " 
 says he, smiling, and blowing a cloud out of his 
 pipe. " There is no hardship in poverty, Esmond, 
 that is not bearable ; no hardship even in honest 
 dependence that an honest man may not put up 
 with. I came out of the lap of Alma Mater, 
 puffed up with her praises of me, and thinking to 
 make a figure in the world with the parts and 
 learning which had got me no small name in our 
 College. The world is the ocean, and Isis and 
 Charwell are but little drops, of which the sea 
 takes no account. My reputation ended a mile 
 beyond Maudlin Tower ; no one took note of me ; 
 and I learned this, at least, to bear up against evil 
 fortune with a cheerful heart. Friend Dick hath 
 made a figure in the world, and has passed me in 
 
ADDISON. 153 
 
 the race long ago. What matters a little name or 
 a little fortune ? There is no fortune that a phi- 
 losopher can not endure. I have been not un- 
 known as a scholar, and yet forced to live by turn- 
 ing bear-leader, and teaching a boy to spell. What 
 then ? The life was not pleasant, but possible — 
 the bear was bearable. Should this venture fail, 
 I will go back to Oxford ; and some day, when 
 you are a general, you shall iind me a curate in a 
 cassock and bands, and I shall welcome your hon- 
 or to my cottage in the country, and to a mug of 
 penny ale. 'Tis not poverty that's the hardest to 
 bear, or the least happy lot in life," says Mr. Ad- 
 dison, shaking the ash out of his pipe. " See, my 
 pipe is smoked out. Shall we have another bot- 
 tle ? I have still a couple in the cupboard, and of 
 the right sort. No more ? — let us go abroad and 
 take a turn on the Mall, or look in at the theatre 
 and see Dick's comedy. 'Tis not a masterpiece of 
 wit ; but Dick is a good fellow, though he does 
 not set the Thames on fire." 
 
 Within a month after this day, Mr. Addison's 
 ticket had come up a prodigious prize in the lot- 
 tery of life. All the town was in an uproar of 
 admiration of his poem, the " Campaign," which 
 Dick Steele was spouting at every coffee-house 
 in Whitehall and Covent Garden. The wits on 
 the other side of Temple Bar saluted him at once 
 as the greatest poet the world had seen for ages ; 
 the people huzzaed for Marlborough and for Ad- 
 
154 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 dison ; and, more than this, the party in power 
 provided for the meritorious poet, and Mr. Addi- 
 son got the appointment of Commissioner of Ex- 
 cise, which the famous Mr. Locke vacated, and 
 rose from this place to other dignities and honors ; 
 his prosperity from henceforth to the end of his life 
 being scarce ever interrupted. But I doubt wheth- 
 er he was not happier in his garret in the Hay- 
 market than ever he was in his splendid palace at 
 Kensington ; and I believe the fortune that came 
 to him in the shape of the countess his wife was no 
 better than a shrew and a vixen. — Henry Esmond. 
 
 Is the glory of heaven to be sung only by gen- 
 tlemen in black coats ? Must the truth be only 
 expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those 
 two vestments can nobody preach it ? Commend 
 me to this dear preacher without orders — this par- 
 son in the tie-wig. When this man looks from 
 the world, whose weaknesses he describes so be- 
 nevolently, up to the heaven which shines over us 
 all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up 
 with a more serene rapture ; a human intellect 
 thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Jo- 
 seph Addison's. Listen to him ; from your child- 
 hood you have known the verses ; but who can 
 hear their sacred music without love and awe ? 
 
 " Soon as the evening shades prevail, 
 The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 
 
ADDISON. 155 
 
 And nightly to the listening earth 
 Repeats the story of her birth ; 
 And all the stars that round her burn, 
 And all the planets in their turn, 
 Confirm the tidings as they roll, 
 And spread the truth from pole to pole. 
 What though, in solemn silence, all 
 Move round this dark terrestrial ball ; 
 What though no real voice nor sound 
 Among their radiant orbs be found ; 
 In reason's ear they all rejoice, 
 And utter forth a glorious voice. 
 For ever singing, as they shine, 
 The hand that made us is divine." 
 
 It seems to me those verses shine like the stars. 
 They shine out like a great deep calm. When he 
 turns to heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's 
 mind ; and his face lights up from it with a glory 
 of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs 
 through his whole being. In the fields, in the 
 town, looking at the birds in the trees, at the 
 children in the streets, in the morning or in the 
 moonlight, over his books in his own room, in a 
 happy party at a country merry-making or a town 
 assembly, good will and peace to God's creatures, 
 and love and awe of Him who made them, fill 
 his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If 
 Swift's life was the most wretched, I think Addi- 
 son's was one of the most enviable. A life pros- 
 perous and beautiful — a calm death — an immense 
 fame and affection afterward for his happy and 
 
156 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 spotless name. — Lectures 07i the £Jnglish Humor- 
 ists. 
 
 SWIFT. 
 
 Of the famous wits of that age, who have 
 rendered Queen Anne's reign ilhistrious, and 
 whose works will be in all Englishmen's hands in 
 ages yet to come, Mr. Esmond saw many, but at 
 public places chiefly, never having a great inti- 
 macy with any of them, except with honest Dick 
 Steele and Mr. Addison, who parted company 
 with Esmond, however, when that gentleman be- 
 came a declared Tory, and lived on close terms 
 with the leading persons of that party. Addison 
 kept himself to a few friends, and very rarely 
 opened himself except in their company. A man 
 more upright and conscientious than he it was 
 not possible to find in public life, or one whose 
 conversation was so various, easy, and delightful. 
 The pleasantest of the wits I knew were the Doc- 
 tors Garth and Arbuthnot, and Mr. Gay, the 
 author of " Trivia," the most charming, kind soul 
 that ever laughed at a joke or cracked a bottle. 
 Mr. Prior I saw, and he was the earthen pot 
 swimming with the pots of brass down the stream, 
 and always and justly frightened lest he should 
 break in the voyage. I met him both at London 
 and Paris, where he was performing piteous con- 
 gas to the Duke of Shrewsbury, nat having cou- 
 rage to support the dignity which his undeniable 
 genius and talent had won him, and writing coax- 
 
SWIFT. 157 
 
 ing letters to Secretary St. John, and thinking 
 about his plate and his place, and what on earth 
 should become of him should his party go out. 
 The famous Mr. Congreve I saw a dozen of times 
 at Button's, a splendid wreck of a man, magnifi- 
 cently attired, and, though gouty and almost blind, 
 bearing a brave face against fortune. 
 
 The great Mr. Pope (of whose prodigious ge- 
 nius I have no words to express my admiration) 
 was quite a puny lad at this time, appearing sel- 
 dom in public places. There were hundreds of 
 men, wits, and pretty fellows, frequenting the 
 theatres and coffee-houses of that day — whom 
 "nunc perscribere longum est." Indeed, I think 
 the most brilliant of that sort I ever saw was not 
 till fifteen years afterward, when I paid my last 
 visit in England, and met young Harry Fielding, 
 son of the Fielding that served in Spain, and 
 afterward in Flanders with us, and who for fun 
 and humor seemed to top them all. As for the 
 famous Dr. Swift, I can say of him, " Vidi tan- 
 tum." He was in London all these years up to 
 the death of the Queen ; and in a hundred public 
 places where I saw him, but no more ; he never 
 missed Court of a Sunday, where once or twice he 
 was pointed out to your grandfather. He would 
 have sought me out eagerly enough had I been a 
 great man with a title to my name, or a star on 
 my coat. At Court the Doctor had no eyes but 
 for the very greatest. Lord Treasurer and St. 
 
158 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 John used to call him Jonathan, and they paid 
 him -with this cheap coin for the service they took 
 of him. He wrote their lampoons, fought their 
 enemies, flogged and bullied in their service, and, 
 it must be owned, with a consummate skill and 
 fierceness. 'Tis said he hath lost his intellect 
 now, and forgotten his wrongs and his rage against 
 mankind. I have always thought of him and of 
 Marlborough as the two greatest men of that age. 
 I have read his books (who doth not know them ?) 
 here in our calm woods, and imagine a giant 
 to myself as I think of him, a lonely, fallen Pro- 
 metheus, groaning as the vulture tears him. Pro- 
 metheus I saw, but, when first I ever had any 
 words with him, the giant stepped out of a sedan- 
 chair in the Poultry, whither he had come with a 
 tipsy Irish servant parading before him, who an- 
 nounced him, bawling out his Reverence's name, 
 while his master below was as yet haggling with 
 the chairman. I disliked this Mr. Swift, and heard 
 many a story about him, of his conduct to men, 
 and his words to women. He could flatter the 
 great as much as he could bully the weak, and 
 Mr. Esmond, being younger and hotter in that 
 day than now, was determined, should he ever 
 meet this dragon, not to run away from his teeth 
 and his fire. 
 
 [Henry Esmond, having written a paper for 
 one of the Tory journals called the ^^ Post- Boy ^"^ 
 went one day to correct the proofs, when the 
 
SWIFT. 159 
 
 famous Dr. Sicift came in. The priyiter^s wife 
 had gone to the tavern for her husband, and, 
 meanwhile, Esmond engaged himself by drawing 
 a picture of a soldier for her dirty little boy, whom 
 she had left behind.^ 
 
 " I presume you are the editor of the * Post- 
 Boy,' sir ? " says the Doctor, in a grating voice 
 that had an Irish twang ; and he looked at the 
 Colonel from under his two bushy eyebrows with 
 a pair of very clear blue eyes. His complexion 
 was muddy, his figure rather fat, his chin double. 
 He wore a shabby cassock, and a shabby hat over 
 his black wig, and he pulled out a great gold 
 watch at which he looks very fierce. 
 
 " I am but a contributor. Dr. Swift," says Es- 
 mond, with the little boy still on his knee. He 
 was sitting with his back in the window, so that 
 the Doctor could not see him. 
 
 " Who told you I was Dr. Swift ! " says the 
 Doctor, eying the other very haughtily. 
 
 "Your Reverence's valet bawled out your 
 name," says the Colonel. "I should judge you 
 brought him from Ireland." 
 
 " And pray, sir, what right have you to judge 
 whether my servant came from Ireland or no? 
 I want to speak with your employer, Mr. Leach. 
 I'll thank ye go fetch him." 
 
 "Where's your papa, Tommy?" asks the 
 Colonel of the child, a smutty little wretch in a 
 frock. 
 
160 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 Instead of answering, the child begins to cry ; 
 the Doctor's appearance had no doubt frightened 
 the poor little imp. 
 
 "Send that squalling little brat about his 
 business, and do what I bid ye, sir," says the Doc- 
 tor. 
 
 " I must finish the picture first for Tommy," 
 says the Colonel, laughing. " Here, Tommy, will 
 you have your Pandour with whiskers or with- 
 out?" 
 
 " Whisters," says Tommy, quite intent on the 
 picture. 
 
 " Who the devil are ye, sir ? " cries the Doctor ; 
 " are ye a printer's man or are ye not ? " (he pro- 
 nounced it like naught). 
 
 "Your Reverence needn't raise the devil to 
 ask who I am," says Colonel Esmond. " Did you 
 ever hear of Dr. Faustus, little Tommy ? of Friar 
 Bacon, who invented gunpowder, and set the 
 Thames on fire ? " 
 
 Mr. Swift turned quite red, almost purple. " I 
 did not intend any offense, sir," says he. 
 
 " I dare say, sir, you offended without mean- 
 ing," says the other, dryly. 
 
 " Who are ye, sir ? Do you know who I am, 
 sir? You are one of the pack of Grub Street 
 scribblers that my friend Mr. Secretary hath laid 
 by the heels. How dare ye, sir, speak to me in 
 this tone ? " cries the Doctor, in a great fume. 
 
 " I beg your honor's humble pardon if I have 
 
SWIFT. 161 
 
 offended your honor," says Esmond, in a tone of 
 great humility. " Rather than be sent to the 
 Compter, or be put in the pillory, there's nothing 
 I wouldn't do. But Mrs. Leach, the printer's 
 lady, told me to mind Tommy while she went for 
 her husband to the tavern, and I daren't leave the 
 child lest he should fall into the fire ; but if your 
 Reverence will hold him — " 
 
 " I take the little beast ! " says the Doctor, 
 starting back. " I am engaged to your betters, 
 fellow. Tell Mr. Leach that when he makes an 
 appointment with Dr. Swift he had best keep it, 
 do you hear ? And keep a respectful tongue in 
 your head, sir, when you address a person like 
 me." 
 
 " I'm but a poor broken-down soldier," says the 
 Colonel, " and I've seen better days, though I am 
 forced now to turn my hand to writing. We can't 
 help our fate, sir." 
 
 " You're the person that Mr. Leach hath spo- 
 ken to me of, I presume. Have the goodness to 
 speak civilly when you are spoken to ; and tell 
 Leach to call at my lodgings in Bury Street, and 
 bring the papers with him to-night at ten o'clock. 
 And the next time you see me, you'll know me, 
 and be civil, Mr. Kemp." 
 
 \^A feio days later Colonel Esmond attended 
 a grand dinner given hy General Webb, at lohich 
 Sioift is present.'] 
 
 Mr. Esmond went up to the Doctor with a bow 
 11 
 
162 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 and a smile ; " I gave Dr. Swift's message," says 
 he, " to the printer ; I hope he brought your pam- 
 phlet to your lodgings in time." Indeed, poor 
 Leach had come to his house very soon after the 
 Doctor left it, being brought away rather tipsy 
 from the tavern by his thrifty wife ; and he talked 
 of Cousin Swift in a maudlin way, though, of 
 course, Mr. Esmond did not allude to this relation- 
 ship. The Doctor scowled, blushed, and was much 
 confused, and said scarce a word during the whole 
 of dinner. A very little stone will sometimes 
 knock down these Goliaths of wit, and this one 
 Avas often discomfited when met by a man of 
 any spirit ; he took his place sulkily, put water in 
 his wine that the others drank plentifully, and 
 scarce said a word. — Henry Esmond. 
 
 You know, of course, that Swift has had many 
 biographers ; his life has been told by the kindest 
 and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admires 
 but can not bring himself to love him, and by 
 stout old Johnson, who, forced to admit him into 
 the company of poets, receives the famous Irish- 
 man, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of 
 surly recognition, scans him from head to foot, 
 and passes over to the other side of the street. 
 Dr. Wilde, of Dublin, who has written a most in- 
 teresting volume on the closing years of Swift's 
 life, calls Johnson "the most malignant of his 
 biographers " ; it is not easy for an English critic to 
 
SWIFT. 103 
 
 please Irislimen — perhaps to try and please them. 
 And yet Johnson truly admh'es Swift ; Johnson 
 does not quarrel with Swift's change of politics, 
 or doubt the sincerity of his religion. About the 
 famous Stella and Vanessa controversy the Doctor 
 does not bear very hardly on Swift ; but he could 
 not give the Dean that honest hand of his ; the 
 stout old man puts it into his breast, and moves 
 off from him. 
 
 Would we have liked to live with him ? That 
 is a question which, in dealing with these people's 
 works and thinking of their lives and peculiarities, 
 every reader of biography must put to himself. 
 Would you have liked to be a friend of the great 
 Dean ? I should like to have been Shakespeare's 
 shoeblack — just to have lived in his house — just 
 to have worshiped him — to have run on his er- 
 rands, and seen that sweet, serene face. I should 
 like as a young man to have lived on Fielding's 
 staircase in the Temple, and after helping him up 
 to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his latch- 
 key, to have shaken hands with him in the morn- 
 ing, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his 
 breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would 
 not give something to pass a night at the club 
 with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Bos well, 
 Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's 
 companionship and conversation has passed to us 
 by fond tradition — but Swift ? If you had been 
 his inferior in parts (and that, with a great respect 
 
164 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), 
 his equal in mere social station, he would have 
 bullied, scorned, and insulted you ; if, undeterred 
 by his great reputation, you had met him like a 
 man, he would have quailed before you, and not 
 had the pluck to reply, and gone home, and years 
 after written a foul epigram about you — watched 
 for you in a sewer, and come out to assail you 
 with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon. If 
 you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flat- 
 tered his vanity, or could help his ambition, he 
 would have been the most delightful company in 
 the world. He would have been so manly, so sar- 
 castic, so bright, odd, and original, that you might 
 think he had no object in view but the indulgence 
 of his humor, and that he was the most reckless, 
 simple creature in the world. How he would have 
 torn your enemies to pieces for you ! and made 
 fun of the opposition ! His servility was so bois- 
 terous that it looked like independence ; he would 
 have done your errands, but with the air of pa- 
 tronizing you, and, after fighting your battles 
 masked in the street or the press, would have kept 
 on his hat before your wife and daughters in the 
 drawing-room, content to take that sort of pay for 
 his tremendous services as a bravo. 
 
 His bitterness, his scorn, his rage, his subse- 
 quent misanthropy, are ascribed by some pane- 
 gyrists to a deliberate conviction of mankind's un- 
 
SWIFT. 165 
 
 worthiness, and a desire to amend them by casti- 
 gating. His youth was bitter, as that of a great 
 genius bound down by ignoble ties, and powerless 
 in a mean dependence ; his age was bitter, like 
 that of a great genius that had fought the battle 
 and nearly won it, and lost it, and thought of it 
 afterward writhing in a lonely exile. A man may 
 attribute to the gods, if he likes, what is caused 
 by his own fury, or disappointment, or self-will. 
 What public man — what statesman projecting a 
 coup — what king determined on an invasion of 
 his neighbor — what satirist meditating an on- 
 slaught on society or an individual, can not give 
 a pretext for his move ? There was a French 
 General the other day who proposed to march 
 into this country, and put it to sack and pillage, in 
 revenge for humanity, outraged by our conduct 
 at Copenhagen — there is always some excuse for 
 men of the aggressive turn. They are of this na- 
 ture, war-like, predatory, eager for fight, plunder, 
 dominion. As fierce a beak and talon as ever 
 struck — as strong a wing as ever beat, belonged 
 to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested 
 the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings, and 
 chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe 
 and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the 
 bars. 
 
 In a note in his biography, Scott says that his 
 friend Dr. Tuke, of Dublin, has a lock of Stella's 
 
166 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 Lair, inclosed in a paper by Swift, on which are 
 written in the Dean's hand, the words : " Only a 
 woman's hair,'''' An instance, says Scott, of the 
 Dean's desire to veil his feelings under the mask 
 of cynical indifference. 
 
 See the various notions of critics ! Do those 
 words indicate indifference or an attempt to hide 
 feeling ? Did you ever hear or read four words 
 more pathetic ? Only a woman's hair, only love, 
 only fidelity, only purity, innocence, beauty ; only 
 the tenderest heart in the world stricken and 
 wounded, and passed away now out of reach of 
 pangs of hope deferred, love insulted, and pitiless 
 desertion — only that lock of hair left, and mem- 
 ory and remorse, for the guilty, lonely wretch, 
 shuddering over the grave of his victim. 
 
 And yet to have had so much love, he must 
 have given some. Treasures of wit, and wisdom, 
 and tenderness, too, must that man have locked 
 up in the caverns of his gloomy heart, and shown 
 fitfully to one or two whom he took in there. 
 But it was not good to visit that place. People 
 did not remain there long, and suffered for having 
 been there. He shrank away from all affections 
 sooner or later. Stella and Vanessa both died 
 near him, and away from him. He had not heart 
 enough to see them die. He broke from his fast- 
 est friend, Sheridan ; he slunk away from his 
 fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on one's 
 ear after seven-score years. He was always 
 
HOGARTH. 167 
 
 alone — alone and gnashing in the darkness, except 
 when Stella's sweet smile came and shone upon 
 him. When that went, silence and utter night 
 closed over him. An immense genius ; an awful 
 downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to 
 me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an 
 empire falling. We have other great names to 
 mention — none I think, however, so great or so 
 gloomy. — Lectures on the English Humorists, 
 
 HOGARTH. 
 
 Posterity has not quite confirmed honest Ho- 
 garth's opinion about his talents for the sublime. 
 Although Swift could not see the difference be- 
 tween tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, posterity has 
 not shared the Dean's contempt for Handel ; the 
 world has discovered a difference between tweedle- 
 dee and tweedle-dum, and given a hearty applause 
 and admiration to Hogarth, too, but not exactly 
 as a painter of Scriptural subjects or as a rival of 
 Correggio. It does not take away one's liking 
 for the man, or from the moral of his story, or the 
 humor of it, from one's admiration for the prodi- 
 gious merit of his performances, to remember that 
 he persisted to the last in believing that the world 
 was in a conspiracy against him with respect to 
 his talents as a historical painter, and that a set 
 of miscreants, as he called them, were employed 
 to run his genius down. They say it was Liston's 
 firm belief that he was a great and neglected tra- 
 
168 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 gic actor ; they say that every one of us believes 
 in his heart, or would like to have others believe, 
 that he is something which he is not. One of the 
 most notorious of the " miscreants," Hogarth says, 
 was Wilkes, who assailed him in the " North Brit- 
 on "; the other was ChurchiD, who put the "North 
 Briton " attack into heroic verse, and published 
 his "Epistle to Hogarth." Hogarth replied by 
 that caricature of Wilkes, in which the patriot 
 still figures before us, with his Satanic grin and 
 squint, and by a caricature of Churchill, in which 
 he is represented as a bear with a staff, on which 
 lie the first, lie the second, lie the tenth, is en- 
 graved in unmistakable letters. There is very 
 little mistake about honest Hogarth's satire : if 
 he has to paint a man with his throat cut, he draws 
 him with his head almost off ; and he tried to do 
 the same for his enemies in this little controversy. 
 " Having an old plate by me," says he, " with some 
 parts ready, such as the background, and a dog, I 
 began to consider how I could turn so much work 
 laid aside to some account, and so patched up a 
 print of Master Churchill, in the character of a 
 bear ; the pleasure and pecuniary advantage which 
 I derived from these two engravings, together 
 with occasionally riding on horseback, restored 
 me to as much health as I can expect at my time 
 of life." 
 
 And so he concludes his queer little book of 
 Anecdotes : " I have gone through the circum- 
 
PRIOR. 169 
 
 stances of a life which till lately passed pretty much 
 to my own satisfaction, and I hope in no respect 
 injurious to any other man. This I may safely 
 assert, that I have done my best to make those 
 about me tolerably happy, and my greatest enemy 
 can not say I ever did an intentional injury. What 
 may follow, God knows." — Lectures on the Eng- 
 lish Humorists. 
 
 PEIOE. 
 
 Matthew Prior was one of those famous and 
 lucky wits of the auspicious reign of Queen Anne, 
 whose name it behooves us not to pass over. Mat 
 was a world philosopher of no small genius, good 
 nature, and acumen. He loved, he drank, he sang. 
 He describes himself in one of his lyrics, " in a 
 little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night : on his 
 left hand his Horace, and a friend on his right," 
 going out of town from the Hague to pass that 
 evening and the ensuing Sunday boozing at a Spiel- 
 haus with his companions ; perhaps bobbing for 
 perch in a Dutch canal, and noting down, in a strain 
 and with a grace not unworthy of his epicurean 
 master, the charm of his idleness, his retreat, and 
 his Batavian Chloe. A vintner's son in White- 
 hall, and a distinguished pupil of Busby of the 
 Rod, Prior attracted some notice by wi'iting verses 
 at St. John's College, Cambridge, and, coming 
 up to town, aided Montague in an attack on the 
 noble old English lion, John Dryden, in ridicule 
 
170 STrvAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 of whose work, " The Hind and the Panther," he 
 brought out that remarkable and famous burlesque, 
 " The Town and Country Mouse." Are not you 
 all acquainted with it ? Have you not all got it 
 by heart ? What ! have you never heard of it ? 
 See what fame is made of ! The wonderful part 
 of the satire was that, as a natural consequence 
 of "The Town and Country Mouse," Matthew 
 Prior was made Secretary of Embassy at the 
 Hague ! I believe it is dancing, rather than sing- 
 ing, which distinguishes the young English diplo- 
 matists of the present day ; and have seen them 
 in various parts perform that part of their duty 
 very finely. In Prior's time it appears a different 
 accomplishment led to preferment. Could you 
 write a copy of Alcaics ? that was the question. 
 Could you turn out a neat epigram or two? 
 Could you compose "The Town and Country 
 Mouse ? " It is manifest that, by the possession 
 of this faculty, the most difficult treaties, the laws 
 of foreign nations, and the interests of our own 
 are easily understood. . . . News came that the 
 Queen was dead. . . . Poor Mat was recalled from 
 his embassy, suffered disgrace along with his pa- 
 trons, lived under a sort of cloud ever after, and 
 disappeared in Essex. — Lectures on the JEhglish 
 Humorists. 
 
 GAY. 
 
 In the portraits of the literary worthies of the 
 early part of the last century, Gay's face is the 
 
GAY. 171 
 
 pleasantest, perhaps, of all. It appears adorned 
 with neither periwig nor night-cap (the full dress 
 and negligee of learning, without which the paint- 
 ers of those days scarcely ever portrayed wits), 
 and he laughs at you over his shoulder with an 
 honest, boyish glee — an artless, sweet humor. He 
 was so kind, so gentle, so jocular, so delightfully 
 brisk at times, so dismally woe-begone at others, 
 such a natural, good creature that the Giants 
 loved him. The great Swift was gentle and spor- 
 tive with him as the enormous Brobdingnag maids 
 of honor were with little Gulliver. He could frisk 
 and fondle round Pope, and sport, and bark, and 
 caper without offending the most thin-skinned of 
 poets and men ; and, when he was jilted in that 
 little court affair of which we have spoken, his 
 warm-hearted patrons, the Duke and Duchess of 
 Queensberry (the "Kitty, beautiful and young," 
 of Prior), pleaded his cause with indignation, and 
 quitted the court in a huff, carrying off with them 
 into their retirement their kind, gentle protege. 
 With these kind, lordly folks, a real duke and 
 duchess, as delightful as those who harbored Don 
 Quixote, and loved the dear old Sancho, Gay lived, 
 and was lapped in cotton, and had his plate of 
 chicken, and his saucer of cream, and frisked, and 
 barked, and wheezed, and grew fat, and so ended. 
 He became very melancholy and lazy, sadly ple- 
 thoric, and only occasionally diverting, in his latter 
 days. But everybody loved him, and the remem- 
 
172 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 brance of his pretty little tricks ; and the raging 
 old Dean of St. Patrick's, chafing in his banish- 
 ment, was afraid to open the letter which Pope 
 wrote him, announcing the sad news of the death 
 of Gay. — Lectures on the English Humorists. 
 
 CONGEEVE. 
 
 Words, like men, pass current for awhile with 
 the public, and, being known everywhere abroad, 
 at length take their places in society ; so even the 
 most secluded and refined ladies here present will 
 have heard the phrase from their sons or brothers 
 at school, and will permit me to call William Con- 
 greve, Esquire, the most eminent literary '* swell " 
 of his age. In my copy of "Johnson's Lives" 
 Congreve's wig is the tallest, and put on with the 
 jauntiest air, of all the laureled worthies. "I 
 am the great Mr. Congreve," he seems to say, 
 looking out from his voluminous curls. People 
 called him the great Mr. Congreve. From the 
 beginning of his career until the end everybody 
 admired him. Having got his education in Ire- 
 land, at the same school and college with Swift ; 
 he came to live in the Middle Temple, London, 
 where he luckily bestowed no attention to the 
 law, but splendidly frequented the coffee-houses 
 and theatres, and appeared in the side-box, the 
 tavern, the Piazza, and the Mall, brilliant, beauti- 
 ful, and victorious from the first. Everybody 
 acknowledged the young chieftain. The great 
 
CONGREVE. 173 
 
 Mr. Dryden declared that lie was equal to Shakes- 
 peare, and bequeathed to him his own undisputed 
 poetical crown; and writes of him, " Mr. Congreve 
 has done me the favor to review the ' ^neis,' and 
 compare my version with the original. I shall 
 never be ashamed to own that this excellent young- 
 man has showed me many faults which I have 
 endeavored to correct." The "excellent young 
 man" was but twenty three or four when the 
 great Dryden thus spoke of him. 
 
 Nor was he less victorious elsewhere. He was 
 admired in the drawing-rooms as well as the cof- 
 fee-houses ; as much beloved in the side-box as on 
 the stage. He loved, and conquered, and jilted the 
 beautiful Bracegirdle, the heroine of all his plays, 
 the favorite of all the town of her day ; and the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, Marlborough's daugh- 
 ter, had such an admiration of him, that when he 
 died she had an ivory figure made to imitate him, 
 and a large wax doll with gouty feet to be dressed 
 just as the great Congreve's gouty feet were 
 dressed in his great life-time. He saved some 
 money by his pipe office, and his custom-house of- 
 fice, and his hackney-coach office, and nobly left 
 it, not to Bracegirdle, who wanted it, but to the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, who did not. 
 
 There is life and death going on in everything : 
 truth and lies are always at battle. Pleasure is 
 
174 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 always warring against self-restraint. Doubt is 
 always crying Pshaw ! and sneering. A man in 
 life, a humorist in writing about life, sways over 
 to one principle or the other, and laughs with the 
 reverence for right and the love of truth in his 
 heart, or laughs at these from the other side. 
 Didn't I tell you that dancing was a serious busi- 
 ness to Harlequin ? I have read two or three of 
 Congreve's plays over before speaking of him ; 
 and my feelings were rather like those, which I 
 dare say most of us here have had, at Pompeii, 
 looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an 
 orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper 
 table, the breast of a dancing-girl pressed against 
 the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect 
 stillness round about, as the Cicerone twangs his 
 moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the 
 ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song 
 choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, 
 and wonder at the life which once reveled in its 
 mad veins. We take the skull up, and muse over 
 the frolic and daring, the wit, scorn, passion, hope, 
 desire, with which that empty bowl once fer- 
 mented. We think of the glances that allured, 
 the tears that melted, of the bright eyes that 
 shone in those vacant sockets ; and of lips whis- 
 pering love, and cheeks dimpling with smiles, 
 that once covered yon ghastly yellow framework. 
 They used to call those teeth pearl once. See ! 
 there's the cup she drank from, the gold chain she 
 
CONGREVE. 175 
 
 wore on her neck, the vase which held the rouge 
 for her cheeks, her looking-glass, and the harp she 
 used to dance to. Instead of a feast we find a 
 gravestone, and in place of a mistress, a few 
 bones ! 
 
 Reading in these plays now is like shutting 
 your ears and looking at people dancing. What 
 does it mean ? the measures, the grimaces, the 
 bowing, shuffiing, and retreating, the cavalier soul 
 advancing upon those ladies — those ladies and 
 men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, 
 after which everybody bows and the quaint rite 
 is celebrated. Without the music we can not un- 
 derstand that comic dance of the last century — 
 its strange gravity and gayety, its decorum or its 
 indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike 
 life ; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life, 
 too. I'm afraid it's heathen mystery, symboliz- 
 ing a pagan doctrine ; protesting, as the Pom- 
 peians very likely were, assembled at their theatre 
 and laughing at their games — as Sallust and his 
 friends, and their mistresses protested — crowned 
 with flowers, with cups in their hands, against the 
 new, hard, ascetic pleasure-hating doctrine, whose 
 gaunt disciples, lately passed over the Asian 
 shores of the Mediterranean, were for breaking 
 the fair images of Yenus and flinging the altars 
 of Bacchus down. — Lectures on the English Su- 
 morists. 
 
176 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 POPE. 
 
 If the author of the " Dunciad " be not a hu- 
 morist, if the poet of the " Rape of the Lock " be 
 not a wit, who deserves to be called so ? Besides 
 that brilliant genius and immense fame, for both 
 of which we should respect him, men of letters 
 should admire him as being one of the greatest lit- 
 erary artists that England has seen. He polished, 
 he refined, he thought ; he took thoughts from 
 other works to adorn and complete his own ; 
 borrowing an idea or a cadence from another 
 poet as he would a figure or a simile from a flower, 
 or a river, stream, or any object which struck 
 him in his walk, or contemplation of Nature. 
 
 In Johnson's "Life of Pope" you will find 
 described with rather a malicious minuteness some 
 of the personal habits and infirmities of great little 
 Pope. His body was crooked ; " he was so short 
 that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to 
 place him on a level with other people at the ta- 
 ble. He was sewed up in a buckram suit every 
 morning, and required a nurse, like a child. His 
 contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with a 
 strange acrimony, and made his poor, deformed 
 person the butt for many a bolt of heavy wit. 
 The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking of him^ 
 says, "If you take the first letter of Mr. Alex- 
 ander Pope's Christian name, and the first and 
 
POPE. 177 
 
 last letters of his surname, you have A. P. E." 
 Pope catalogues, at the end of the "Dunciad," 
 with a rueful precision, other pretty names, 
 besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That 
 great critic pronounced Mr. Pope was a little ass, 
 a fool, a coward, a Papist, and therefore a hater 
 of Scripture, and so forth. It must be remem- 
 bered that the pillory was a flourishing and pop- 
 ular institution in those days. Authors stood in 
 it in the body sometimes : and dragged their en- 
 emies thither morally, hooted them with foul 
 abuse, and assailed them with garbage of the 
 gutter. Poor Pope's figure was an easy one for 
 those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid 
 hand could draw a hunchback, and write Pope 
 underneath. They did. A libel was published 
 against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind 
 of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill 
 nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a 
 pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, it is some 
 very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy 
 of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, 
 or tickles the boorish wag ; and many of Pope's 
 revilers laughed, not so much because they were 
 wicked, as because they knew no better. 
 
 The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which 
 led him to cultivate the society of persons of fine 
 manners, of wit or taste or beauty, caused him to 
 shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous 
 crew which formed the rank and file of literature 
 12 
 
178 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY 
 
 in his time ; and be was as unjust to these men 
 as they were to him. The delicate little creature 
 sickened at the habits and company which were 
 quite tolerable to robuster men ; and in the famous 
 feud between Pope and the Dunces, and with- 
 out attributing any peculiar wrong to either, one 
 can quite understand how the two parties should 
 so hate each other. As I fancy, it was a sort of 
 necessity that, when Pope's triumph passed, Mr. 
 Addison and his men should look rather contemp- 
 tuously down on it from their balcony ; so it was 
 natural for Dennis and Tibbald, and Webster and 
 Cibber, and the worn and hungry pressmen in the 
 crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And 
 Pope was more savage to Grub Street than Grub 
 Street was to Pope. The thong with which he 
 lashed them was dreadful ; he fired upon that 
 howling crew such shafts of flame and poison, he 
 slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the 
 " Dunciad " and the prose lampoons of Pope, one 
 feels disposed to side against the ruthless little ty- 
 rant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon 
 whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and 
 Swift to aid him, who established among us the 
 Grub Street tradition. He revels in base descrip- 
 tions of poor men's want ; he gloats over poor 
 Dennis's garret, and flannel night-cap, and red 
 stockings ; he gives instructions how to find Curll's 
 authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler's un- 
 der the blind arch in Petty France, the two trans- 
 
POPE. 179 
 
 lators in bed together, the poet in the cock-loft in 
 Budge Row, whose landlady keeps the ladder. 
 It was Pope, I fear, who contributed, more than 
 any man who ever lived, to depreciate the literary 
 calling. It was not an unj)rosperous one before 
 that time, as we have seen ; at least there were 
 great prizes in the profession which had made Ad- 
 dison a minister, and Prior an ambassador, and 
 Steele a commissioner, and Swift all but a bishop. 
 The profession of letters was ruined by that libel 
 of the " Dunciad." If authors were wretched and 
 poor before, if some of them lived in hay-lofts, of 
 which their landladies kept the ladders, at least 
 nobody came to disturb them in their straw ; if 
 three of them had but one coat between them, the 
 two remained invisible in the garret ; the third, at 
 any rate, appeared decently at the coffee-house, 
 and paid his twopence like a gentleman. It was 
 Pope that dragged into light all this poverty and 
 meanness, and held up those wretched shifts and 
 rags to public ridicule. It was Pope that has 
 made generations of the reading world (delighted 
 with the mischief, as who would not be that reads 
 it ?) believe that author and wretch, author and 
 rags, author and dirt, author and drink, gin, cow- 
 heel, tripe, poverty, duns, bailiffs, squalling chil- 
 dren, and clamorous landladies, were always asso- 
 ciated together. The condition of authorship be- 
 gan to fall from the days of the " Dunciad," and I 
 believe in my heart that much of that obloquy 
 
180 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 which has since pursued our calling was occa- 
 sioned by Pope's libels and wicked wit. 
 
 In speaking of a work of consummate art, one 
 does not try to show what it is, for that were vain ; 
 but what it is like, and what are the sensations 
 produced in the mind of him who views it. And, 
 in considering Pope's admirable career, I am forced 
 into similitudes drawn from other courage and 
 greatness, and into comparing him with those who 
 achieved triumphs in actual war. I think of the 
 works of young Pope as I do of the actions of 
 young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their com- 
 mon life you will find frailties and meannesses, as 
 great as the vices and follies of the meanest men. 
 But, in the presence of the great occasion, the 
 great soul flashes out, and conquers transcendent. 
 In thinking of the splendor of Pope's young vic- 
 tories, of his merit, unequaled as his renown, I 
 hail and salute the achieving genius, and do hom- 
 age to the pen of a Hero. — Lectures on the Eng- 
 lisJi Humorists. 
 
 SMOLLETT AND FIELDING. 
 
 We have before us, and painted by his own 
 hand, Tobias Smollett, the manly, kingly, honest, 
 irascible, worn out and battered, but still brave 
 and full of heart, after a long struggle against a 
 hard fortune. His brain had been busied with a 
 hundred different schemes ; he had been reviewer 
 
SMOLLETT AND FIELDING. 181 
 
 and historian, critic, medical writer, poet, pamphlet" 
 eer. He had fought endless literary battles ; and 
 braved and wielded for years the cudgels of con- 
 troversy. It was a hard and savage fight in those 
 days, and a niggard pay. He was oppressed by 
 illness, age, narrow fortune ; but his spirit was 
 still resolute, and his courage steady ; the battle 
 over, he could do justice to the enemy with whom 
 he had been so fiercely engaged, and give a not 
 unfriendly grasp to the hand that had mauled 
 him. He is like one of those Scotch cadets, of 
 whom history gives us so many examples, and 
 whom, with a national fidelity, the great Scotch 
 novelist has painted so charmingly. Of gentle 
 birth and narrow means, going out from his 
 Northern home to win his fortune in the world, 
 and to fight his way, armed with courage, hunger, 
 and keen wits. His crest is a shattered oak-tree, 
 with green leaves yet springing from it. On his 
 ancient coat of arms there is a lion and a horn ; 
 this shield of his was battered and dinted in a 
 hundred fights and brawls, through which the 
 stout Scotchman bore it courageously. You see, 
 somehow, that he is a gentleman, through all his 
 battling and struggling, his poverty, his hard- 
 fought successes, and his defeats. His novels are 
 recollections of his own adventures ; his characters 
 drawn, as I should think, from personages with 
 whom he became acquainted in his own career of 
 life. Strange companions he must have had ; 
 
182 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 queer acquaintances lie made in the Glasgow Col- 
 lege, in the country apothecary's shop, in the 
 gun-room of the man-of-war, where he served as 
 surgeon, and in the hard life on shore, where the 
 sturdy adventurer struggled for fortune. He did 
 not invent much, as I fancy, but had the keenest 
 perceptive faculty, and described what he saw 
 with wonderful relish and delightful broad humor. 
 
 Fielding, too, has described, though with a 
 greater hand, the characters and scenes which he 
 knew and saw. He had more than ordinary op- 
 portunities for becoming acquainted with life. 
 His family and education first, his fortunes and 
 misfortunes afterward, brought him into the so- 
 ciety of every rank and condition of man. He is 
 himself the hero of his books : he is wild Tom 
 Jones, he is wild Captain Booth, less wild, I am 
 glad to think, than his predecessor, at least heart- 
 ily conscious of demerit, and anxious to amend. 
 
 I can not offer or hope to make a hero of Har- 
 ry Fielding. Why hide his faults? Why con- 
 ceal his weaknesses in a cloud of periphrases? 
 Why not show him as he is, not robed in a marble 
 toga, and draped and polished in an heroic atti- 
 tude, but with inked ruffles, and claret stains on 
 his tarnished lace coat, and on his manly face the 
 marks of good fellowship, of illness, of kindness, 
 of care, of wine. Stained as you see him, and 
 worn by care and dissipation, that man retains 
 
SMOLLETT AND FIELDING. 183 
 
 some of the most precious and splendid human 
 qualities and endowments. He has an admirable 
 natural love of truth, the keenest instinctive an- 
 tipathy to hypocrisy, the happiest satirical gift of 
 laughing it to scorn. His wit is wonderfully wise 
 and detective ; it flashes upon a rogue and light- 
 ens up a rascal like a policeman's lantern. He is 
 one of the manliest and kindliest of human be- 
 ings : in the midst of all his imperfections, he 
 respects female innocence and infantine tender- 
 ness, as you would suppose such a great-hearted, 
 courageous soul would respect and care for them. 
 He could not be so brave, generous, truth-telling 
 as he is, were he not infinitely merciful, pitiful, 
 and tender. He will give any man his purse — he 
 can not help kindness and profusion. He may 
 have low tastes, but not a mean mind ; he ad- 
 mires with all his heart good and virtuous men, 
 stoops to no flattery, bears no rancor, disdains all 
 disloyal arts, does his public duty uprightly, is 
 fondly loved by his family, and dies at his work. 
 
 What a wonderful art ! what an admirable 
 gift of nature was it by which the author of 
 these tales was endowed, and which enabled him 
 to fix our interest, to awaken our sympathy, to 
 seize upon our credulity so that we believe in his 
 people — speculate gravely upon their faults or 
 their excellences, prefer this one or that, deplore 
 Jones's fondness for drink and play. Booth's fond- 
 
184 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 ness for play and drink, and the unfortunate posi- 
 tion of the wives of both gentlemen — love and 
 admire those ladies with all our hearts, and talk 
 about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted 
 with them this morning in their actual drawing- 
 rooms, or should meet them this afternoon in the 
 park ! What a genius ! Avhat a vigor ! what a 
 bright-eyed intelligence and observation ! what a 
 wholesome hatred of meanness and knavery ! what 
 a vast sympathy ! what a cheerfulness ! what a 
 manly relish of life ! what a love of humankind ! 
 what a poet is here I — watching, meditating, 
 brooding, creating ! What multitudes of truth 
 has that man left behind him ! what generations 
 he has taught to laugh wisely and fairly ! what 
 scholars he has formed and accustomed to the 
 exercise of thoughtful humor and the manly play 
 of wit ! What courage he had ! what a dauntless 
 and constant cheerfulness of intellect that burned, 
 bright and steady, through all the storms of his 
 life, and never deserted its last wreck ! It is 
 wonderful to think of the pains and misery which 
 the man suffered ; the pressure of want, illness, 
 remorse which he endured ; and that the writer 
 was neither malignant nor melancholy, his view 
 of truth never warped, and his generous human 
 kindness never surrendered. 
 
 Fielding reminds one of those brave men of 
 whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks 
 
STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 185 
 
 and disasters — of the officer on the African shore, 
 when disease has destroyed the crew, and he him- 
 self is seized by fever, who throws the lead with 
 a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, car- 
 ries the ship out of the river or off the dangerous 
 coast, and dies in the manly endeavor — of the 
 wounded captain, when the vessel founders, who 
 never loses his heart, who eyes the danger stead- 
 ily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inev- 
 itable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship 
 goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such 
 an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recog- 
 nize in the manly, the English Harry Fielding. — 
 Lectures on the English Humorists. 
 
 STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 
 
 There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has 
 something that were better away, a latent corrup- 
 tion — a hint, as of an impure presence. Some of 
 that dreary double entendre may be attributed to 
 freer times and manners than ours, but not all. 
 The foul Satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves con- 
 stantly : the last words the famous author wrote 
 were bad and wicked — the last lines the poor, 
 stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon. 
 I think of these past writers, and of one who lives 
 among us now, and am grateful for the innocent 
 laughter and the sweet and unsullied page which 
 the author of " David Copperfield " gives to my 
 children. 
 
186 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 " Jete sur cette boule, 
 Laid, chetif et souffrant ; 
 Etouffe dans la foule, 
 Faute d'etre assez grand ; 
 
 *' Une plainte touchante 
 De ma bouche sortit ; 
 Le bon Dieu me dit : 01 1 ante, 
 Chante, pauvre petit ! 
 
 " Chanter, ou je m'abuse. 
 Est ma tacbe ici bas. 
 Tons ceux qn'ain si j 'amuse, 
 Ne m'aimeront-ils pas? " * 
 
 " A castaway on this great earth, 
 A sickly child of humble birth 
 
 And homely feature. 
 Before me rushed the swift and strong ; 
 I thought to perish in the throng, 
 
 Poor puny creature. 
 
 " Then crying in my loneliness, 
 I prayed that Heaven in my distress 
 Some aid would bring, 
 And pitying my misery, 
 My guardian angel said to me, 
 Sing, poet, sing. 
 
 " Since then my grief is not so sharp, 
 I know my lot and tune my harp. 
 
 And chant my ditty ; 
 And kindly voices cheer the bard, 
 And gentle hearts his song reward 
 
 With love and pity." 
 
 In those charming lines of B^ranger, one may 
 fancy described the career, the sufferings, the 
 
 * Thackeray has himself rendered this little song into Eng- 
 lish as follows, and it is less a translation than an adaptation : 
 
STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 187 
 
 genius, the gentle nature of Goldsmith, and the 
 esteem in which we hold him. Who, of the mil- 
 lions whom he has amused, does not love him ? 
 To be the most beloved of English writers, what 
 a title that is for a man ! A wild youth, way- 
 ward but full of tenderness and affection, quits 
 the country village where his boyhood has been 
 passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond 
 longing to see the great world out-of-doors, and 
 achieve name and fortune — and, after years of dire 
 struggle and neglect and poverty, his heart turn- 
 ing back as fondly to his native place as it had 
 longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, 
 he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollec- 
 tions and feelings of home — he paints the friends 
 and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and 
 Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wan- 
 der he must, but he carries away a home relic 
 with him, and dies with it on his breast. His na- 
 ture is truant ; in repose it longs for change, as 
 on the journey it looks for friends and quiet. He 
 passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-mor- 
 row, or in writing yesterday's elegy ; and he 
 would fly away this hour but that a cage and 
 necessity keeps him. What is the charm of his 
 verse, of his style and humor ? His sweet regrets, 
 his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremu- 
 lous sympathy, the weakness which he owns? 
 Your love for him is holy pity. You come hot 
 and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet 
 
188 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the 
 kind vagrant harper ? Whom did he ever hurt ? 
 He carries no weapon — save the harp on which 
 he plays to you ; and with which he delights 
 great and humble, young and old, the captains in 
 the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the 
 women and children in the villages, at whose 
 porches he stops and sings his simple songs of 
 love and beauty. With that sweet story of the 
 " Yicar of Wakefield " he has found entry into 
 every castle and every hamlet in Europe. Not 
 one of us, however busy or hard, but once or 
 twice in our lives has passed an evening with 
 him, and undergone the charm of his delightful 
 music. 
 
 His name is the last in the list of those men of 
 humor who have formed the themes of the dis- 
 courses which you have heard so kindly. Long 
 before I had ever hoped for such an audience, or 
 dreamed of the possibility of the good fortune 
 which has brought me so many friends, I was at 
 issue with some of my literary brethren upon a 
 point — which they held from tradition, I think, 
 rather than experience — that our profession was 
 neglected in this country, and that men of letters 
 were ill received and held in slight esteem. It 
 would hardly be grateful of me now to alter my 
 old opinion that we do meet with good-will and 
 kindness, with generous, helping hands in the time 
 
STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 189 
 
 of our necessity, with cordial and friendly recog- 
 nition. What claim had any one of these of whom 
 I have been speaking, but genius ? What return 
 of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to 
 all? What punishment befell those who were 
 unfortunate among them, but that which follows 
 reckless habits and careless lives ? For these 
 faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal 
 that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor if 
 he wears the coat ; his children must go in rags 
 if he spends his money at the tavern ; he can not 
 come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if 
 he stops on the road and gambles away his last 
 shilling at Dublin. And he must pay the social 
 penalty of these follies too, and expect that the 
 world will shun the man of bad habits, that women 
 will avoid the man of loose life, that prudent folks 
 will close their doors as a precaution, and before 
 a demand should be made on their pockets by the 
 needy prodigal. With what difficulty had any 
 one of these men to contend, save that external 
 and mechanical one of want of means and lack of 
 capital, and of which thousands of young lawyers, 
 young doctors, young soldiers and sailors, of in- 
 ventors, manufacturers, and shopkeepers have to 
 complain? Hearts as brave and as resolute as 
 ever beat in the breast of any wit or poet sicken 
 and break daily in the vain endeavor and unavail- 
 ing struggle against life's difficulty. Do we not 
 see daily ruined inventors, gray-haired midship- 
 
190 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 men, balked heroes, blighted curates, barristers 
 pining a hungry life out in chambers, the attor- 
 neys never mounting to their garrets, while scores 
 of them are rapping at the door of the successful 
 quack below ? If those suffer, who is the author 
 that he should be exempt ? Let us bear our ills 
 with the same constancy with which others endure 
 them, accept our manly part in life, hold our own, 
 and ask no more. I can conceive of no kings or 
 laws causing or curing Goldsmith's improvidence, 
 or Fielding's fatal love of pleasure, or Dick Steele's 
 mania for running races with the constable. You 
 never can outrun that sure-footed officer — not by 
 any swiftness or by dodges devised by any genius, 
 however great, and he carries off the " Tatler " to 
 the sponging-house, or ta]3S the Citizen of the 
 "World on the shoulder as he would any other 
 mortal. 
 
 Does society look down on a man because he 
 is an author ? I suppose if people want a buffoon 
 they tolerate him only in so far as he is amusing ; 
 it can hardly be expected that they should respect 
 him as an equal. Is there to be a guard of honor 
 provided for the author of the last new novel or 
 poem ? How long is he to reign, and keep other 
 potentates out of possession ? He Retires, grum- 
 bles, and prints a lamentation that literature is 
 despised. If Captain A. is left out of Lady B.'s 
 parties, he does not state that the army is despised ; 
 if Lord C. no longer asks Counselor D. to dinner, 
 
STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. 191 
 
 Counselor D. does not announce that the bar is 
 insulted. He is not fair to society if he enters it 
 with this suspicion hankering about him ; if he is 
 doubtful about his reception, how hold up his 
 head honestly, and look frankly in the face that 
 world about which he is full of suspicion ? Is he 
 place-hunting, and thinking in his mind that he 
 ought to be made an Ambassador, like Prior, or a 
 Secretary of State, like Addison ? his pretense of 
 equality falls to the ground at once ; he is schem- 
 ing for a patron, not shaking the hand of a friend, 
 when he meets the world. Treat such a man as 
 he deserves ; laugh at his buffoonery, and give 
 him a dinner and a honjoicr ; laugh at his self- 
 sufficiency and absurd assumptions of superiority, 
 and his equally ludicrous airs of martyrdom ; 
 laugh at his flattery and his scheming, and buy it, 
 if it is worth the having. Let the wag have his 
 dinner, and the hireling his pay, if you want him, 
 and make a profound bow to the grand homme 
 incompriSy and the boisterous martyr, and show 
 him the door. The great world — the great aggre- 
 gate experience — has its good sense, as it has its 
 good humor. It detects a pretender, as it trusts 
 a loyal heart. It is kind in the main : how should 
 it be otherwise than kind when it is so wise and 
 clear-headed? To any literary man who says, 
 " It despises my profession," I say, with all my 
 might — no, no, no. It may pass over your indi- 
 vidual case — how many a brave fellow has failed 
 
192 STRAY MOMENTS WITH THACKERAY. 
 
 in the race, and perished unknown in the struggle ! 
 — but it treats you as you merit in the main. If 
 you serve it, it is not unthankful ; if you please, 
 it is pleased ; if you cringe to it, it detects you, 
 and scorns you if you are mean ; it returns your 
 cheerfulness with its good humor ; it deals not 
 ungenerously with your weaknesses ; it recognizes 
 most kindly your merits ; it gives you a fair place 
 and fair play. To any one of those men of whom 
 we have spoken, was it in the main ungrateful ? 
 A king might refuse Goldsmith a pension, as a 
 publisher might keep his masterpiece and the de- 
 light of all the world in his desk for two years ; 
 but it was a mistake, and not ill-will. I^oble and 
 illustrious names of Swift, and Pope, and Addi- 
 son ! dear and honored memories of Goldsmith 
 and Fielding ! kind friends, teachers, and benefac- 
 tors ! who shall say that our country, which con- 
 tributes to bring you such an unceasing tribute of 
 applause, admiration, love, sympathy, does not do 
 honor to the literary calling in the honor which it 
 bestows upon you! — Lectures on the Miglish 
 Humorists. 
 
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