^. "• <^o V •1*^' ci. V* •: >°-^<^.. .. <> '»•** .-.0^ -o, -.-rr* -^^ ^•\'?.'«-^'^ '*v*^^'V''^ \"'?»"V^ \j^^*y ■^^, '.^^Z >*'"**. %^ > " • ♦ %> "^^ ' • • « ^ .'\'-^ ^^ - O m h ' ^yj ■*U.o^ ^0. «o' ^^ \. *'^ •' *o' V '':^'- ,«*'^ ^o,. *^' .* ♦:c(vVa'' %. .4^ ^^m^'r ^^ 4^ ^\ ♦" .J %^^ ^^m^ ^-^<$ ^<^. ^<^ ^\ ,^^\c:^. ^^^ co^ -i^^^ '^-o u-^^\c:^% ^. ^>- .^°"<^^. •.^^.° t.-^'^-- '-^ *!?•*/ v-^\*^ %*^-'*/ V*^\/ "w" .'^»"» "V/"^ .^J .J-^^vr. aV^ .♦^ ">,. -.'QiS^.*' 4:^ % . «y^^^>^* ..^*' ">^ 'J^ '\ ■^oV" •i-d* ^'\.o''' ■'^^^•'^^°.*^* '*^o.**:^t»\,o'^ -*^'t: >°-^^.. .% -^^ .^^ •^^ A* ♦V »* -*^""^^. '.aig^.' *'^''^^ V \5 ♦TxT** yv <^ ''o,?* .0^ ^ ♦TXT* A <^ •'o. ^. //\ ^ ' The Jjtry begged that some of the hiir/it pig might be handed itito the box" p. 130. ill ustr^v-t ions ^ NEW YORK: D. ftPPLETOJM AND CojVIPyVNY, 1886. i,\ ^^'^ ^v "U^ LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. Clin «TO. MARGARET SCOFIELO CLffli OCTOBER 4, 1946 'T'E I "^HARV Of CO'W£^ PAGE The Two Races of Men i Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist i6 Dream-Children ; A Reverie 31 All Fools' I)ay 44 The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers ....... 52 St. Valentine's Day 73 A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis . 80 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 99 A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 122 My First Play 145 Poor Relations 155 Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading . . . .173 Captain Jackson 188 Imperfect Sympathies 201 Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of Birmingham . . 219 The jury begged that some of the burnt pig might be handed into the box ........... Frontispiece Vignette Title-page Heading to "Two Races of Men" ....... i Sour parochial or state-gatherer ........ 3 See how light he makes of it . . . . . . . '4 Ralph Bigcd, Esq 5 Your bastard borrower ......... 9 What moved thee, wayward, spiteful K. ? . . . . . .12 Be shy of showing it . . . . . . . . . .14 Heading to "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist" ..... 16 Tail-piece ............ 30 Their great-grandmother Field . . . . . . . > 31 Carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece ..... 32 At midnight gliding up and down the great staircase .... 35 Roaming about that large mansion ....... 36 Picking up the red berries ......... 37 Would mount the most mettlesome horse . . . . . -39 He used to carry me upon his back ....... 39 Though he had not been dead an hour ...... 40 The children gradually grew fainter to my view ..... 42 We are nothing ; less than nothing, and dreams ..... 43 Illustrations. Heading to "All FooL' Day" . Tail-piece ....... Heading to "The Praise of Chimney-S weepers What a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation See the sable phenomenon emerge in safety . It is good to give him a penny ..... They will hang their heads over the ascending steam . The rake reeling home from his cups .... The artisan stops to taste ...... A treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant Fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper .... This young nobleman ....... Was quoited out of the presence with universal indignation His inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old ( "Must to the pan again to be browned "May the Brush supersede the Laurel !' Heading to "St, Valentine's Day" Heading to " A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in The all-.sweeping besom of societarian reformation Swaying a ferula for a sceptre Those old blind Tobits Were they tied up in sacks ? He was a natural curiosity . Perhaps I had no small change Their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones Heading to "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple" Tail-piece ....... Heading to "A Dissertation apon Roast Pig" Gone out into the woods one morning Bo-bo Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed He next stooped down to feel the pig He burnt his fingers . Armed with retributory cudgel the his nether Ursula Metropolis lip Ilhistrations. present Ho-ti trembled every joint ..... Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to tell the secret . Ho-ti's cottage was burned down more frequently than The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked In process of time, a sage arose . Made a discovery .... First began the rude form of a gridiron A young and tender suckling His voice as yet not broken Maturer swinebood .... His stomach half rejecteth the rank bacon He is all neighbours' fare . One would not, like Lear, "give everything I made him a present of the whole cake My better feelings returned How naughty I was to part with her pretty It might impart a gusto Per flageUatio7iem extremam . Tail-piece ...... Heading to "My First Play" Heading to "Poor Relations" He entered smiling and — embarrassed . The guests think "they have seen him before" . A special commendation of your window-curtains . Begs to be helped — after the gentlemen Obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes Bowing and scraping, cap in hand Would venture to stand up against him in argument "You do not get pudding every day". Heading to "Detached Thoughts on Books and Readini Drink to your sweethearts, girls . Althea's horn in a poor platter . Let us live while we can .... Dear, cracked spinet .... A superb view as far as the spire of Harrow Illustrations. Birmingham He was a juggler, &c. ...... A chaise-and-four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow Tail-piece ........ Heading to "Imperfect Sympathies" . Heading to "Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of I was always my father's favourite I had a little pair of pocket-compasses I used to eat my little packages of fruit in a corner It was time I enlarged my housekeeping T he loving disputes we had under those trees This a -little disconcerted me ... . Came running to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges PAGE 196 198 200 201 219 221 222 224 227 229 233 235 PREFATORY NOTE. The selection of the Essays of Charles Lamb here brought together has been governed mainly by their suitability for artistic Illustration. In some few instances, among the best of them, it were as difficult to fix those frolicsome fancies and sweetly wandering thoughts into pictures, as It is to photograph the galloping horse and preserve the sense of motion, or the broad laugh of mirth without its fixing into a grin. But there are others of the Essays so full of quaint character and visions of other times that they irresistibly tempt the pencil of the portrayer. To that temptation the writer has yielded. Doubtless there will be some who think it little Prefatory Note. short of sacrilege for the inky finger of the illus- trator to touch such works of perfect art as the Essays of Elia, and will recall that Lamb, in one of his moods, deprecated the book-illustration of Shakespeare, and perhaps infer that he would have chosen a like immunity for his own works. The inference is doubtful. There may be others who will trace a connection between the artist's name and that nationality which Lamb himself conceived entertained for him *' imperfect sympathies," and will charitably regard all shortcomings on that account. The artist can lay no claim to perfection of sympathy with that sweet inimitable Spirit, but ventures to deem that no uncommon frailty, and to remain — The Illustrator. 1^$^^ Tv\^o T\^^^ f (/^en The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men luJio borrow^ and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other The Two Races of Men. of these primary distinctions. The Infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. '' He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious, contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other. Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages — Alclbiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele — our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four ! What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest, taking no more thought than lilies ! What contempt for money, accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross ! What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and ttmm ! or rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites Into one clear intelligible pronoun adjective ! — What near The Two Races of Men. approaches doth he make to the primitive community^ — to the extent of one half of the principle at least. He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up to be taxed " ; and the dis- tance is as vast between him and one of tLs, as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem ! His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air ! So far removed from your sour parochial or state- gatherers — those ink-horn var- lets, who carry their want of welcome in their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt, confining himself to no set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tonnentnni of a pleasant look to your purse, — which to that gentle warmth expands " Sour parochial or state' gatherer" TJie Tzuo Races of Men. her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind contended ! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth ! — the sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, strug- gles with des- tiny ; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheer- fully, O man ordained to lend — that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! — but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, yz.o^Aj. -^^2^.^ ^^ " See how light he tnakes of it.'' The Tzuo Races of AIe?t. as It were half- way. Come, a handsome sacri- fice ! See how light he makes of it ! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who departed this life on Wednesday evening, dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he be- lied not the stock to which he pretended. Early In life he found himself invested with ample revenues, 'Ralph Bigod, Esq: The Two Races of Men. which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race^ he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing ; for there is something revolt- ing in the idea of a king holding a private purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment ; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, ''borrowing and to borrow ! " In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated ; but having had the honour of accompanying my friend divers times in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we met who claimed a sort of respectful The Tzuo Races of Men. acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems these were his tributaries ; feeders of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in numbering them ; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be '' stocked with so fair a herd." With such sources, it was a wonder how he con- trived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him — as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious — into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; — or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no interest — The Two Races of but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar s offspring into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his iisc. When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey {cana fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most untheorising reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you that he expects nothing better ; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and ex- pectations you do in reality so much less shock In the refusal. When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; 1 he Tiuo Races of Men, his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he was ; how great at the midnight hour ; and when I compare with him the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle " Vour bastard borrozuer." ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of lenders, and Hi lie men. To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a lo The Two Races of Men. class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon ; I mean your borrowe7^s of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations 1 That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) — with the huge Switzer-like tom.es on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing), once held the tallest of my folios, Opera BonavenhcrcE, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas) showed but as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that " the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe ? The Two Races of Men. ii The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser — was w^hilom the commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. — Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is ! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates boj-rowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. — There loitered the Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, \vith '' eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate. One justice I must do my friend, that if he some- times, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-coUection of this 12 The Two Races of Men, nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten at -what odd places, and deposited with as little memory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. They stand in conjunction : natives, and naturalised. The " What moved thee, wayzuard, spiteful K. ?" latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am. — I charge no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of adv^ertising a sale of them to pay expenses. To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one 7 lie Tzuo Races of Men. hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, way- ward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle — knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of all ! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land — Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder ! hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirth- ful tales ? Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better- part-Englishwoman ! — that s/ie could fix upon no other H The Two Races of Men. treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, 'Be shy of showing it." Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle ! Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude ? Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate The Tzuo Races of Alen. collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over- floweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury ; enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his — (in matter oftentimes, and almost in qnaiitity not unfrequently, vying with the originals) in no very clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those abstruser cogita- tions of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C. Mr5 B^Ues Opinions o/2Whi5t '' A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth,* and the rigour of the game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half players, who have no objection to take a hand, if you want one to * This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remenaber the intolerable crash of the unswept cinders betwixt your foot and the marble. Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 17 make up a rubber ; who affirm that they have no pleasure In winning ; that they like to win one game and lose another ; that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no ; and will desire an adver- sary, who has slipped a wrong card, to take It up and play another.* These Insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such It may be said that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them. Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She loved a thorough- paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. She hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adver- sary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight — cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) ''like a dancer." She sate * As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day and lose him the next. Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. bolt upright, and neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All people have their blind side — their superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit. I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the middle of a game ; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards ; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty per- suaded to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of candour, declared that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble occupation, to which she \v^ound up her faculties, considered in that light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 19 the world to do, and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards — over a book. Pope was her favourite author : his ' Rape of the Lock' her favourite work. She once did me the favour to play over with me (with the cards) his cele- brated game of Ombre in that poem, and to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustra- tions were apposite and poignant ; and I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose they came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author. Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners — a thing which the constancy of whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper power above his brother- nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to c 2 20 Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. the Inexperienced, of playing alone ; above all, the overpowering attractions of a Saiis Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ; — all these, she would say, make quadrille a game of capti- vation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game : that was her word. It was a long meal ; not like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance- started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by Machlavel : per- petually changing postures and connections ; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching in a breath ; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great French and English nations. A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 21 her favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous, ^oflttshes — that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up : — that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretentions of the cards them- selves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things. Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have an uniformity of array to distinguish them : but what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were to be marshalled, never to take the field ? She even wished that whist were more simple than it is, and, in my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, which, in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps ? Why two colours, when 2 2 Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. the mark of the suit would have sufiiciently distin- guished them without it ? '' But the eye. my dear madam, is agreeably re- freshed with the variety. ]\Ian is not a creature of pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your Quaker spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. — You yourself have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess to me, whether, walking in your galler}' at Sandham, among those clear \'andykes, or among the Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to tJiat you have it in your power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assort- ment of the court-cards ? — the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables — the ' hoary majesty of spades ' — Pam in all his glor}' ! — '' All these might be dispensed with ; and with their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go on ver}' well, pictureless. But the dcanty of Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist, 23 cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere orambllnor. Imao^ine a dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in ! — Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, — or as profanely slighting their true application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the goddess) — exchange them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk and a slate ! " — The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favourite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself Indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated), brought with him from Florence : — this, and a trifle of ^v^ hundred pounds, came to me at her death. 24 Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. The former bequest (which I do not least value), I have kept with religious care ; though she herself, to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say, — disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce ''Go'" — or ''That's a go!' She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake) because she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring " tivo for his heels!'' There is something extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born. Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms — such as pique — repique — the capot — they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, with Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 25 glory. But cards are war, In disguise of a sport : when single adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, It Is too close a fight ; with spectators, It Is not much bettered. No looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money ; he cares not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play. — Three are still worse ; a mere naked war of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty Infrac- tions of them, as In tradrille. — But In square games (she meant zuhist), all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the incen- tives of profit with honour, common to every species — though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties In whist are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests beyond Its 26 Mrs, Battle s Opinions en Whist. sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, but because your partner sympathises in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidious- ness) your glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game. By such reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite pastime. No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any game, where chance entered into the com- position, for nothing. Chance, she would argue — and here again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion ; — chance is nothing, but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself ? or before spectators, where no stake was depending ? Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 27 — Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate number — and what possible prin- ciple of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times suc- cessively without a prize ? Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money. She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit, — his memory, or combination-faculty rather — against another's ; like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit- less. She could not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue (and I think in this case justly), were entirely 28 M7's. Battle s Opinions on Whist, misplaced and senseless. Those hard-head contests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants. To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the better in something or other : — that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game at cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, a mere drama ; for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we ai^e as mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting ; much ado ; great battling, and little bloodshed ; mighty means for -disproportioned ends : quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games of life, which men play without esteeming them to be such. With great deference to the old lady's judgment in these matters, I think I have experienced some M7^s. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 29 moments in my life, when playing at cards y^r nothing has even been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — vvhen you are subdued and humble, — you are glad to put up witlx an inferior spring of action. There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as sick whist. I grant it is not the highest style of man — I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas ! to whom I should apologise. At such times, those terms which my old friend objected to, come in as something admissible. — I love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me. That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) — I wished it might have lasted for ever, though we 30 IVh's. Battle s Opinions on Whist. gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play : I would be content to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over : and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. ' Their great-grandinother Field.'" Dre^vm -(© l)ildr^n ^ Rever/e. Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children ; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or D ream-Children ; a Reverie. grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my Httle ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who Hved in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was gene- rally believed in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents which they had " CaTZ'cd 071 i in wood upon the chiiii7iey-J>iecc." lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain It is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great Dream Children ; a Reverie. 33 hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts ; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraid- ing. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, how be- loved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) com- mitted to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and D 34 Drea77t Children ; a Reverie. stick them up In Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, " that would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman ; so good Indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — - here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain ; but It could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still up- right, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house ; and how she be- Dream Children ; a Reverie, 35 lleved that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said '* those innocents would do her no harm ; " and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I w^as never half so good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look coura- geous. Then I told how good she was to all her grand- children, having us to the great house in the holy-days, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars, that D 2 '"At midnight gliding- up arid down the great staircase." 36 Dream Children ; a Reverie, had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned " Roamifig about that large 7>ians!on.' into marble with them ; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, Dream Children , Reverie. 37 fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me — and how the nectarines and " Ficking lip the red berries." peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy- looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, which were good for 3 8 Dream Children ; a Reverie. nothing but to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth— -or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like common baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in some- what a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great grandmother Field loved all her grand- children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary Dream Children ; a Reverie. 39 ' Would inowit the most mettlesome horse." corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than them- selves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out — and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries — and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially ; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good "He 7(sed to carry me 7iJ>on his back." 40 Dream Children; a Reverie. bit older than me — many a mile when I could not walk for pain ; — and how in after life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was impatient and in pain, nor re- member sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame- footed ; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how Dream Children ; a Reverie. 41 much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb. — Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W — n ; and as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last 42 Dream Children ; a Reverie. but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed -^E^ ' The children gradually grew fainter to my view.'' upon me the effects of speech : '' We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing ; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name " and immediately awaking, I found my- Dream Children ; a Revt 43 self quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever. ' We are nothing-; less ihi and dreams." The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us all ! Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — 2ind you, Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know one another ? what need of ceremony among friends ? we have all a touch of ^/la^ same — you understand me — a speck of the motley. Beshrew the m^an who on such a day as this, the general festival, should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it. He that All Fools Day. 45 meets me In the forest to-day, shall meet with no wiseacre, I can tell him. Stulhis swn. Translate me that, and take the meaning of It to yourself for your pains. What ! man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at the least computation. Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we will drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day — and let us troll the catch of i\ miens — d2Lc ad me — due ad me — how goes it ? Here shall he see Gross fools as he. Now would I give a trifle to know, historically and authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would certainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the present breed, I think I could without much difficulty name you the party. Remove your cap a little further, If you please : It hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. I will give you, for my part, ■ 'The crazy old church clock, And the bewildered chimes 46 All Fools Day. Good master Empedocles,* you are welcome. It Is long since you went a salamander-gathering down ^tna. Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mercy your worship did not singe your mustachios. Ha! Cleombrotus !f and what salads in faith did you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean ? You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the Calenturists. Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plasterers at Babel, J bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell-rope you must have pulled, to call your top workmen to their nuncheon on -He who, to be deem'd A god, Icap'd fondly into Etna flames — ] [j • He who, to enjoy Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea — ] [I The builders next of Babel on the plain Of Senaar — 1 All Fools Day. 47 the low grounds of Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket ? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our monument on Fish- street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat. What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet ! Mister Adams ' odso, I honour your coat — pray do us the favour to read to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipslop — the twenty and second in your portmanteau there — on Female Incontinence — the same — it will come in most irrelevantly and im- pertinently seasonable to the time of day. Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray correct that error. Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehension stumbling across them. Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, it is 48 All Fools Day. you ? — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to command. — Master Silence, I will use few words with you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere. — You six will engross all the poor wit of the company to-day. — I know it, I know it. Ha ! honest R , my fine old Librarian of Lud- gate, time out of mind, art thou here again ? Bless my doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories : — -what dost thou flitting about the world at this rate ? — Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed- rid, have ceased to read long ago. — Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk a volume or two. — Good Granville S , thy last patron, is flown. King Pandion, he is dead, All thy friends are lapt in lead. — Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your seat here, between Armado and Quisada ; for in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in All Fools Day. 4-Q courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he might be happy with either^ situated between those two ancient spinsters — when I forget the inimitable formal love which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to the other, with that Malvolian smile — as if Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero ; and as if thousands of periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could have given his invidious preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied and meritorious-equal damsels. * * * * To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for I fear the second of April is not many hours' distant — in sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool — as naturally as if I were of kith and kin to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read E 50 All Fools Day. those Parables — not guessing at the involved wisdom — I had more yearnings towards that simple architect that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his more cautious neighbour : I grudged at the hard censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent ; and — prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my apprehension, some- what unfeminine wariness of their competitors — I felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for those five thoughtless virgins. — I have never made an acquaintance since, that lasted : or a friendship, that answered ; with any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety which a palpable hallucination warrants ; the security, which a word out of reason ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition. It is All Fools Uay. 51 observed, that " the fooHsher the fowl or fish, — wood- cocks, — dotterels — cods'-heads, &c., the finer the flesh thereof," and what are commonly the world's received fools but such whereof the world Is not worthy ? and what have been some of the kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys ? — Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool. ■/24(lft^-^ T ney 3 weepers I LIKE to meet a sweep ; understand me — not a grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive — but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek, such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the peep-peep of a young sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sunrise ? I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks —poor blots — innocent blacknesses — The Praise of Chimney -Sweepers. I reverence these young Africans of our own growth ' — these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption, and from their little pulpits (the , III -^iiiiill " IVJint a iiiystc7-io7is pleasure it luas to luitiiess their operation.' tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind. When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than 54 The Pi-aise of Chininey-Sweepers. ^\ jr-M! one's self enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces Averni — to pursue him in imagination, as he went soundingon through so many dark stifling )^ caverns, horrid shades ! — to shudder with the idea that '' now, surely -to revive at hearins: his "Sec tJie saUe phe7ioinenoii emerge in safety." he must be lost for ever feeble shout of discovered daylight — and then (O fulness of delight !) running out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem to remember having been told that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, certainly ; not much unlike the old stage direction in Macbeth, where the " Apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises." TJie Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. 55 Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in thy early rambles, It is good to give him a penny — it is better to give him twopence. If it be starv- ing weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occupation a pair of kibed heels (no un- usual accompaniment) be superadded, the demand on thy hu- manity will surely rise to a tester. There is a compo- sition, the groundwork of which I have un- derstood to be the sweet wood 'y^^^pt sassafras. This wood, boiled down to a kind of tea, and tempered with an Infusion of milk and sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I know not how thy palate may relish it ; for myself, with every deference to the ' // is good to gk'C Jiim a penJiy.^ 56 The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers . judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one, he avers, in London) for the vending of this "wholesome and pleasant beverage," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street — the only Salopian house — I have never yet adventured to dip my own par- ticular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients, a cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly whispering to me that my stomach must infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed In dietetical elegancies, sup it up with avidity. I know not by what particular conformations of the organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition Is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth In these unfledged practitioners, or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter wood In the lot of these raw victims, caused to The Praise of Chimney-Szueepers. 57 grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive — but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being " They -zuill hang their heads over the ascettdif/g steam." penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals — cats — when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something more in these sym- pathies than philosophy can inculcate. Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, that his is the only Salopian honse, yet be it known to thee, reader — if thou art one who keepest what are called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the 58 TJie Praise of Chimney-Siveepers . fact — he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savoury mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard- handed artisan, leaving his bed to resume the pre- mature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the honours of the pavement. It is the time when, in summer, between the expired and the not yet relumined kitchen- fires, the kennels of our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours. The __ rake, who wisheth to dissi- l__^ pate his o'ernight vapours in more grateful coffee, curses *^ The rake ireUtig Jionic from his cups.'" the ungenial fume as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses the fragrant breakfast. This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling The Praise of Chimney-Siveepers. 59 — the delight of the early gardener, who transports his smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammer- smith to Covent Garden's famed piazzas — the delight^ " The ai'tisan stoJ>s to taste.'' and oh ! I fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin (It will cost but three halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy worse-placed 6o The Praise of Chimney- Sweepers. hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the welkin — so may the descending soot never taint thy costly, well-ingredienced soups, nor the odious cry, quick- reaching from street to street, of the fired chimney, invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation thy peace and pocket ! I am by nature extremely susceptible of street affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I \A ireacherons slide Irought me iiJ>o?i my lack in an instant.'" The Praise of Chimney-SiOeepers. 6 1 endure the jccularlty of a young sweep with something" more than forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed pre- cipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame enough — yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if nothing had happened — when the roguish grin of one of these young wits en- countered me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that Hogarth but Hogarth has got him already (how could he miss him ?) in the ]slarch to Finchley, grinning at the pieman — there he stood, as he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last for ever — with such a maximurh of glee, and minimum of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine 62 TJie P liaise of C himney- Sweepers . sweep hath absolutely no malice In It — that I could have been content, If the honour of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery till midnight. I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips (the ladles must pardon me) is a casket presumably holding such jewels ; but, methlnks, they should take leave to '' air " them as frugally as possible. The fine lady or fine gentleman who show me their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess that from the mouth of a true sweep a display (even to osten- tation) of those white and shiny ossifications strikes me as an agreeable anomaly in manners, and an allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when A sable cloud Turns forth her silver Hning on the night. It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; a badge of better days, a hint of nobility ; and, doubt- less, under the obscuring darkness and double night of their forlorn disgulsement, oftentimes lurketh good The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. blood, and gentle conditions, derived from lost ancestry and a lapsed pedigree. The premature apprenticements of these tender victims give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine and almost infantile abductions ; the seeds of civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels mourning for their children, even in our days, countenance the fact ; the tales of fairy spiriting may shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be but a solitary Instance of good fortune out of many Irreparable and hopeless dejilialions. In one of the state beds at Arundel Castle, a few years since, under a ducal canopy (that seat of the Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for Its beds, In which the late duke was especially a connoisseur), encircled with curtains of dellcatest crimson, with starry coronets inwoven, folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius, was discovered by 64 The Praise of Chimney -Sweepers, "Fast asleep, a lost chiiiiney-szveeper." chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon- day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little creature, having somehow confounded his passage among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this mag- nificent chamber ; and, tired with his tedious ex- plorations, was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose which he there saw exhibited ; so, creeping TJie Pi'aisc of CJiimney-Szveepei^s. 65 between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the pillow, and slept like a young Howard. Such is the account given to the visitors at the Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to perceive a con- firmation of w^hat I had just hinted at in this story. A high instinct was at work in the case, or I am mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child of that description, with whatever weariness he might be visited, w^ould have ventured, under such a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down between them, wdien the rug or the carpet presented an obvious couch, still far above his pretentions — is this probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompting to the adventure ? Doubtless this young nobleman (for such my mind misgives ' This young nobleman." 66 The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers, me that he must be) was allured by some memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother, or his nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, into which he was now but creeping back as into his proper incunabula, and resting-place. — By no other theory than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as I may call it) can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon any other system, so indecorous, in this tender, but unseasonable, sleeper. My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed with a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted an annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a solemn supper held in Smith- field, upon the yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before to the master sweeps in and about the metro- polis, confining the invitation to their younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would get in The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. 67 " Was quoited out oj the presence with i al indignation.^^ among us, and be good-naturedly winked at ; but our main body were infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself into our party, but by tokens was providentially discovered in time to be no chimney- sweeper, (all is not soot which looks so,) was quoited out of the presence with universal indignation, as not having on the wedding garment ; but in general the greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a convenient spot among the pens, at the north F 2 68 The Praise of Chimncy-Siveepci's. side of the fair, not so far distant as to be imper\-ious to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity, but remote enough not to be obvious to the interruption of every ga-pi^^g spectator in it. The guests assembled ^' His itiaug7iral ceremony ivas to clasp the greasy waist cf old dairie Ursula" about seven. In those little temporary parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as sub- stantial, and at ever}' board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the The Praise of Chiimiey-Sweepers. young rogues dilated at the savour. James White, as head waiter, had charge of the first table, and myself, with our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should get at the first table, for Rochester, in his maddest days, could not have done the humours of the scene with more spirit than my friend. After some general expression of thanks for the honour the company had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing '' the gentleman," and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host would set up a shout that tore the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night with their brightness. O, it was a pleasure to see the sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with his more unctuous sayings — how he would fit the tit-bits to the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the seniors — how he would intercept a morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, declaring it ** must to the pan again to be browned, 70 TJie Praise of Chimney -Sweepers. " ' M7ist to the pan again to be bro^Mtied. " for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating " — how he would recommend this slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, which were their best patrimony, — how genteelly he would deal about the small ale, as If It were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were not good, he should lose their custom ; with a special recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. The Praise of CJiimney-Siueepers. Then we had our toasts — "the King," — "the Cloth," — which, whether they understood or not, was equally diverting and flattering ; and for a crowning sentiment, which never failed, " ^lay the Brush supersede the Laurel I '" All these, and fifty other fancies, which were rather felt than compre- hended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a "Gentlemen, give me leave to propose so and so,'' which was a prodigious comfort to those young orphans, every now and then stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was the savouriest part, you may believe, of the enter- tainment. Golden lads and lasses must. As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — James White is extinct, and with him these suppers have long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun of the world when he died — of my world 72 The Pi^aise of Chimney-Sweepers. at least. His old clients look for him among the pens ; and, missing him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield departed for ever. 'May the Briish siiposcde the Lmcrel V nesDbsy Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch- flamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-between ; who and what manner of person art thou ? Art thou but a 7iame^ typifying the restless principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious personage ! Like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar ; not 74 ^^- Valentine s Day. Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; nor the consigner of undipt infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee. In other words, this is the day on which those charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every street and turning. The weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to what extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, no emblem is so common as the heai-t, — that little three- cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — the S^. Valentine s Day. 75 bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera- hat. What authority we have in history or mythology for placing the headquarters and metropolis of god Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other,, is not very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any other. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other system which might have prevailed for anything which our pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, " ]\Iadam, my liver and fortune are entirely at your disposal ; " or putting a delicate question, " Amanda, have you a viidi'iff to bestow ? "^ But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance. Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. It 'Ogives a very echo to the throne where hope is seated." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. It is so seldom that just the person we want 76 St. Valentine s Day. to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations the Avelcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven him- self was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance of Duncan^ so the knock of the postman on this day is light, airy, confident, and befitting one that bringeth good tidings. It is less mechanical than on other days ; you will say, " That is not the post, I am sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful eternal commonplaces, which "having been will always be ; " which no school-boy nor school-man can write away ; having your irreversible throne in the fancy and affections — what are your transports, when the happy maiden, opening with careful finger, careful not to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight of some well-designed allegory, some type, some youthful fancy, not without verses — Lovers all, A madrigal, or some such devise, not over-abundant in sense — young Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — some- S^. Valentines Day, ^j thing between wind and water, a chorus where the sheep might almost join the shepherd, as they did, or as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. All \^alentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to call you so) E. B . E. B. lived opposite a young maiden whom he had often seen, unseen, from his parlour window in C e Street. She was all joyousness and innocence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving a \'alentine, and just of a temper to bear the disappointment of missing one with good hum.our. E. B. is an artist of no common powers ; in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to none ; his name is known at the bottom of many a well-executed vignette in the way of his profession, but no further ; for E. B. is modest, and the world meets nobody half way. E. B. meditated how he could repay this young maiden for many a favour which she had done him unknown ; for when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and never knows us again, nor w^e it, we should feel it as an obligation: and E. B. did. This good artist set "fi) St. Valentine s Day. liimself at work to please the damsel. It was just before Valentine's day three years since. He wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. We need not say it was on the finest gilt paper -with borders — full, not of common hearts and heart- less allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love from •Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There w^as Pyramus and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as beseemed — a work, in short, of magic. Iris dipt the woof. This on Valentine's eve he commended to the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice (O ignoble trust !) of the common post ; but the humble medium did its duty, and from his watchful stand the next morning he saw the •cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the precious ■charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl •unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as one after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She danced about, not with light love, or foolish expectations, for she had no lover ; or, if she had, S^. Valentine s Day. 79 none she knew that could have created those bright images which deHghted her. It was more Hke some fairy present ; a God-send, as our famlHarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received where the bene- factor was unknown. It would do her no harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is good to love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed kindness. Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish to all faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise old legends, but are content to rank themselves humble diocesans of old Bishop Valentine and his true church. B zg^rs I n t h ej^et ro pol i s The all-sweeping besom of societarlan reformation — your only modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its abuses — is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole mendicant fraternity, with all their baggage, are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is *'with sighing sent." I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this impertinent crusado, or belhtm ad exter- Beggars in the Metropolis. 8i minationem, proclaimed against a species. Much good might be sucked from these Beggars. They were the oldest and the honourablest form of pauperism. Their appeals were to our common nature ; less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to be a suppliant to the particular humours or caprice of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment. There was a dignity springing from the very depth of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much nearer to the being a man, than to go in livery. The all-sweeping lesoin of societarian reformation^ A Complaint of the Decay of The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, do we feel anything towards him but contempt ? Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would have " Swaying a ferula /o?- a sjej>ti affected our minds with the same heroic pity, the same compassionate admiration, with which we re- gard his Belisarius begging for an obolus ? Would the moral have been more graceful, more pathetic ? Beggars m the Metropolis. Z^ The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of pretty Bessy — whose story doggrel rhymes and ale- house signs cannot so degrade or attenuate but that some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine through the disguisements — this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flov/ering green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing daughter by his side, illu- mining his rags and his beggary — would the child and parent have cut a better figure doing the honours of a counter, or expiating their fallen condition upon the three- foot eminence of some sempstering shop-board ? In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just antipode to your King. The poets and romancical writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them), when they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse of fortune, never stop till they have brought down their hero in good earnest to rags and the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates the height he falls from. There is no medium which can be presented to the imagination without offence. G 2 84 A Complamt of the Decay of There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest him of his garments, till he answer ''mere nature"; and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, supplicating lazar arms with bell and clap-dish. The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with a converse policy, when they would express scorn of greatness without the pity, they show us an Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up foul linen. How would it sound in song, that a great monarch had declined his affections upon the daughter of a baker ! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated when we read the ''true ballad," where King Cophetua woos the beggar maid ? Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly contemns a Beggar. Poverty is a com- parative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its "neighbour grice." Its poor rents and comings-in are soon summed up and told. Its pretences to property Beggars in the Metropolis. are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches poor man In the street with impolitic mention of his condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not In the scale of comparison. He Is not under the measure of property. He confessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy neighbour seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar. Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, A Complaint of the Decay of his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put on court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations of agricultural or commercial pro- sperity touch him not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not expected to become bail or surety for any one. No m.an troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the universe. The mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than I could the Cries of London. No corner of a street is complete without them. They are as indispensable as the Ballad Singer ; and in their picturesque attire as ornamental as the signs of old London. They were Beggars in the Metropolis. 87 the standing morals, emblems, mementoes, dial- mottoes, the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry — Look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. ' Tlwse o!d b:ini Tobits." Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's-inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity and (if possible) A Complaint of the Decay of of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, — whither are the}' fled ? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the w^hole- some air and sun-warmth ? immersed between four walls, In what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty of double darkness, w^here the chink of the dropt halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves? and w^ho w^ill farm their dogs ? — Have the overseers of St. L — caused them to be shot ? or were they tied up in sacks and dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B — the mild rector of ? Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, — most classical, and, at the same time, most English of the Latinists ! — who has treated of this human and ' Vr'cre they tied up in sacks' Beggars in the Metropolis. 89 quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphiitin in Caneni, or, Dogs Epitaph. Reader, peruse it ; and say, if customary sights, which could call up such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or good to the moral sense of the passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, Dum vixi, tutela vigil cokimenque senecta^, Dux c^eco fidus : nee, me ducente, solebat, Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, Quels corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei Taedia perpessus, reditum sub noete parabat. Hi mores, haee vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte seneeta Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite ea^eum 90 A Complaint of the Decay of Orbavit dominum ; prisci sed gratia facti Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos, Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextr^ ; Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque, Quod memoret, fidumque Canem dominumque Be- nignum. Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, His guide and guard ; nor, while my service lasted,. Had he occasion for that staff, with which He now goes picking out his path in fear Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant,, Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd : To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; Not all -asleep in sleep, but heart and ear Prick'd up at his least motion ; to receive At his kind hand my customary crumbs, And common portion in his feast of scraps ; Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent With our long day and tedious beggary. These were my manners, this my way of life Till age and slow disease me overtook. And sever'd from my sightless master's side. But lest the grace of so good deeds should die Beggars in the Metropolis. 91 Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, In long and lasting union to attest, The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him ; for the accident which brought him low took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundlins^ so lone. He seemed earth- 92 A Complaint of the Decay of 'He ivas a 7intic7-al born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand frag- ment ; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous Beggars in the Metropolis, 93 appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body-portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled In the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he Is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction. Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called for legal Interference to remove ? or not rather a salutary and a touching object to the passers-by in a great city ? Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights — endless sights — is a great city ; or for what else Is 94 ^ Complaint of the Decay of it desirable ?) was there not room for one Lusus (not Naturce, Indeed, but) Accidentium 1 What if in forty- and-two years' going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds — whom had he injured ? — whom had he imposed upon ? The con- tributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion — he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of Commons' Committee — was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, at least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with — a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond ? — Beggars in the Metropolis. 95 There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou hast lost thy breed." — Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calum- nies. One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five-hunded-pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the wayside in the Borough. The good old beggar recognised his daily benefactor by the voice only ; and when he died, left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a 96 A Complaint of the Decay of story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind ? — or not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble gratitude upon the other ? I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the sun — • Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against him ? Perhaps I had no small change. Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words imposition, imposture^-^7W, and ask no questions. Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have un- awares, (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels. Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor " Perhaps I had 7io small cJiange." Beggai's in the Meii^opolis. 97 creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the ''seven small children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth to save a halfpenny. It is good to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth. " Their counterfeit looks, and inuntping tones.'" give^ and under a personate father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. H 98 The Complaint of the Decay of Beggars. ['' Pray God, your honour, relieve me," said a poor beadswoman to my friend L one day : "I have seen better days." *' So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking up at the welkin, which was just then threatening a storm — and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as a tester. It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or the parish beadle. — - But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical light on some occasions.] The Old Beneber^ of t[)e Inner Temple. I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountains, its river, I had almost said — for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places ? — these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot : There when they came, whereas those bricky towers. The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide, Till they decayed through pride. H 2 lOO The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time — the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green re- cesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden ; that goodly pile Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more fantastically-shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown-Office-row (place of my kindly engendrure), right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man would give some- thing to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how many times ! to the astoundment of the young urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. loi guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic ! What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revela- tions of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its move- ment, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep ! Ah ! yet doth beauty Hke a dial hand Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have 102 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd " carved it out quaintly in the sun ; " and, turning philosopher by the very occupa- tion, provided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes : — What wondrous life is this I lead ! Ripe apples drop about my head. The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine. The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 103 The nectarine, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach. Stumbhng on melons, as I pass, Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less Withdraws into its happiness. The mind, that ocean, where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find ; Yet it 'creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas ; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root. Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide ; There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. How well the skilful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs, this dial new Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run : And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers ? * The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up cr * From a copy of verses entitled " The Garden." 104 ^^^^^ ^^^ Benchers of the Inner Temple. bricked over. Yet, where one Is left, as In that Httle green nook behind the South-Sea House, what a freshness It gives to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from their Innocent- wanton lips in the square of Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why not, then, gratify children, by letting them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are awakening images to them at least. Why must everything smack of man, and mannish ? Is the world all grown up ? Is childhood dead ? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments ? The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wlgged living figures, that still flutter and chatter about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? or Is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one-half so refreshing and Innocent as the cool little playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered ? The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 105 They have lately Gothiclsed the entrance to the Inner Temple-hall, and the library-front; to assimilate them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood over the former ? a stately arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of the Paper- buildings ? — my first hint of allegory ! They must account to me for these things, which I miss so greatly. The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps which made its pavement awful ! It is become common and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you when you passed them. We walk on even terms with their successors. The roguish eye of J- 11, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated io6 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. Thomas Coventry ? — whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square as the Hon's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the browbeater of equals and superiors, w^ho made a solitude of children wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or In rebuke ; his Invitatory notes being, Indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, — diving for It under the mighty flaps of his old- fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced the terrace. By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing but that and their The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 107 benchership in common. In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a staunch tory. ]Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry had a rough spinous humour — at the political confederates of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over, with a few instructions, to his man Level, who was a quick little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a minute — Indolent and pro- crastinatlno- to the last deo^ree. Yet men would o^Ive him credit for vast application, in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. loS The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. He never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords then — or some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was anything which he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her execution ; — and L., who had a wary foresight of his probable hallucinations, before he set out schooled him, with great anxiety, not in any possible manner to allude to her story that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not been seated In the parlour, where the com- pany was expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles — - an ordinary motion with him — observed, '' it was a gloomy day," and added, " Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this sort are perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit person to be con- sulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the law, The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 109 but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He never laughed. He had the same good fortune among the female world, — was a known toast with the ladies^ and one or two are said to have died for love of him — I suppose, because he never trifled or talked gallantly with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly common attentions. He had a fine face and person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown them off with advantage to the women. His eye lacked lustre. — Xot so thought Susan P ; who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pave- ment of B d Row, with tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because her friend had died that day — he, whom she had pursued with a hope- less passion for the last forty years^a passion which years could not extinguish or abate ; nor the long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, puttings-off of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. INIild Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven ! no The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family 'Of that name. He passed his youth in contracted circumstances, which gave him early those parsi- monious habits which in after life never forsook him : -SO that with one windfall or another, about the time I knew him, he was master of four or five hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look or walk worth a moldore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump in Serjeant's - inn. Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at Xorth Cray, where he seldom spent above a •day or two at a time in the summer ; but preferred, -during the hot months, standing at his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he said, "the maids drawing water all day long." I suspect he had his within-door reasons for the pre- ference. Hie cnrriLs et arma fnej-e. He might think his treasures more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit upon a The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 1 character which cannot exist without certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the pence he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an im- measurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000/. at once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His house- keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentleman. He would know who came In and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to freeze. Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew what he was w^orth In the world ; and having but a competency for his rank, which his Indolent habits were little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel took care of everything. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his ''flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in anything without expecting and fearing 112 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. his admonishing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have forgotton for a moment that he was a servant. I knew this Lovel. He was a man of incorrigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and '* would strike." In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequalities, or calculated the numbers of his opponents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn upon him, and pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female — an occasion upon which no odds against him could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He would stand next day bareheaded to the same person modestly to excuse his interference — for L. never forgot rank where something better was not con- cerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he Avas said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 3 poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay and plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely ; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made punch better than any man of his degree in England ; had the merriest quips and conceits ; and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of his faculties palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness — " a remnant most forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his eye would light up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — '' was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole per- formance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln, to go to service, and how his mother cried at parting with I 114 ^^^^ O^d Benchers of the Inner Te^nple. him, and how he returned, after some few years' absence, in a smart new livery, to see her, and she blest herself at the change, and could hardly be brought to believe that it was "her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till I have wished the sad second-childhood might have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the common mother of us all in no long time after received him gently into hers. With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks upon the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm- in-arm in those days — " as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but generally with both hands folded behind them for state, or with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was a bene- volent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that in his face which you could not term unhappiness ; it rather implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but without his sourness) that of our great philanthropist. I know The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 5 that he did good acts, but I could never make out what he was. Contemporary with these, but subor- dinate, was Daines Barrington — another oddity — he walked burly and square — in Imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. When the account of his year's treasurership came to be audited, the following singular charge was unanimously disallowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings for stuff to poison the sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was old Barton — a jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers dine — answering to the combination rooms at College — much to the easement of his less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more of him. — Then Read, and Twopeny — Read, good-humoured and personable — Twopeny, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous In jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was I 2 1 1 6 TJie Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later date) and his singular gait, which was performed by three steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk ; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover. It was neither graceful in Itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any better than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely when anything had offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson, he was called — was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage of the cook applying to him, with The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 ; much formality of apology, for instructions how to write down edge bone of beef in the bill of commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in the world did. He decided the orthography to be — as I have given it — fortifying his authority with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some do spell it yet, perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resem- blance between its shape and that of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten ^Nlingay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied it with a grappling-hook, which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the substitute before I was old enough to reason whether it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat like the horns in the forehead of ^lichael Angelo's Moses. Baron INIaseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of the reign of George the Second, closes my 1 1 8 The Old Benchers of the hmer Temple. imperfect recollections of the old benchers of the Inner Temple. Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the like of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? Ye inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you ? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me — to my childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? In those days I saw Gods, as '' old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dream of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of childhood there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — from everyday forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be light when the grown world flounders about In the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 9 imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth. P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect memor}', and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor ! This gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, and losing his lady in childbed, within the first year of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he never thoroughly re- covered. In what a new light does this place his rejection (O call it by a gentler name !) of mild Susan P , unravelling into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy and retiring character ! Henceforth let no one receive the narratives of Ella for true records ! They are, In truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not verities — or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. He Is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and would have done better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman before he sent these Incondite reminiscences to press. I20 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, But the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old and new masters — would but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the licence which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the Gentleman s — his furthest monthly excursions in this nature having been long confined to the holy ground of honest Urban s obituary. May it be long before his own name shall help to swell those columns of unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make allowances for them, remembering that " ye yourselves are old." So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish ! so may future Hookers and Seldens illus- trate your church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks ! so may the fresh- coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, The Old Benchei's of the Inne^^ Temple. 1 2 1 airs her playful charge In ^^our stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing courtesy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration with which the child Ella gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnized the parade before ye ! Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obHging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out A Dissertation ttpon Roast Pig. 12 - into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the confla- gration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more im- portance, a fine litter of new- farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we *' Gone out into the woods one morning.'" 124 A Dissertation npon Roast Pig read of. Bo-bo was In the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour as- sailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from ? — not from the burnt cot- tage — he had smelt that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A pre- "Bo-bo was in the ittJiiost cojisterriation.'' A Dissertation upoji Roast Pig. 12- monitory moistening at ' A premonitory vioistening at the saji, time over/lowed his nether lip." and for the first time in indeed, for be- fore him no man had known it) he tasted — crackling! Again he felt and fum- bled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, his life (in the world's life, He next stooped dowii to feel the pig." he licked his finorers from 126 A Dissertation npon Roast Pig. 'He burnt his fingers." a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow under- standing, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-born plea- sure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking raft- ers, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, be- gan to rain blows upon the young _,_=_-^^-_^_^ ^^- rOgUe's shoulders, '^ Armed with re-ributory cudgel." A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 127 as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling- pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something^ like the followino^ dialoQ^ue ensued. " You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what — what have you got there, I say ? " " O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats." The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and 128 A Dissertation ttpon Roast Pig. fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O Lord ! " — with such- like barbarous ejacula- tions, cramming all the while as if he would choke. Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his sons, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In con- ■clusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and " Ho-ti trejuhled ez'ery joint." A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 129 never left off till they had despatched all that re- mained of the litter. Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improving upon the good meat which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was ob- served that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more fre- quently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time for- ward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of K r strictly otjoi/ied not to tell the secret." 130 A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, " Ho-ii's cottage was hiirned dozu/i more frequently than ever. the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. into the box. He handled it, and they all handled It ; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given — to the sur- prise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, re- porters, and all present — without leaving the box, or any manner of con- sultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there ' The judge, ivho -Mas a shrewd ydlcnv, iL'inked." 132 A Dissertation upon Roast Pig was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of ar- chitecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a dis- covery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (bnrnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the -Made a discovery." ^ude form of a gridirou. Roasting ' hi process of time, a sage arose." A Dissertation tip on Roast Pig. ^?>Z by the string or spit came in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way among mankind Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an ex- periment as set- ting houses on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of any culi- nary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in roast pig. Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus cdibilis, I will maintain it to be the most delicate— /r/;/^^/'^ obsoniorum. I speak not of your grown porkers — things between pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and the rude for)n of a gridiron.' 134 A Dissertation itpon Roast Pig. 'A yozmg attd tender siickltng." tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet of the sty, with no original speck of the amor im- immditicB, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest, his voice as yet not broken, but something be- tween a childish treble and a grumble — the mild forerunner or prceliLciiiim of a grunt. He imist be 7'oasted. I am not ig- norant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well- watched, not over- roasted ci'ackling, as it is well called ; the very teeth are invited to their share of the plea- sure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive oleao^inous — O call it "///j voice as yet not broken." A Dissertation tipon Roast Pig. not fat ! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quint- essence of the child- pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna, or rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running " Matnrer swinehood.'^ into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result or common substance. Behold him while he is "doinpf" ; it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth -round the string ! Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age ! he hath wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars. See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow A Dissei^tation tip on Roast Pig. up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation ; from these sins he is happily snatched away Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with timely care — His memory is odoriferous. No clown curseth, while his stomach half reject- eth, the rank bacon — no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages ; he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure, and for such a tomb might be content to die. He is the best of sa- " His stomach half rejccteth the rank iaco7i." nnr^ PinPPnnlp 1^; OTPat She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 137 if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced person might do well to pause — too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the critical- ness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours' fare. I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 138 A Dissertation upon Roast Pig impart a share of the good things of this Hfe which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. " Presents," I often say, '* endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn- door chickens (those ''tame villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as "He is all 7teighbojirs'' fai-e^ it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, ''give everything." I make my stand upon pig. A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 139 Methlnks It Is an Ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours to extra-domlcillate, or send out of the house slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate. — It argues an insen- sibility. I remember a touch of conscience In this kind at. school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet- meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum- cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence ' One would ttoi, like Lear, give everything; 140 A Dissertation 7tpoii Roast Pig. '/ Jiiade him a ^rese?it of the -vhole cake." to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school - boy like, I made him a present of — the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; but, before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew ; and then I "My teiier feelings returned:' thoUght of the pleaSUre my A Dissertation np07i Roast Pig. 141 aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, and not another — would eat her nice cake — and what should I say to her the next time I saw her — how naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms- giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt ' Hoxv naughty I zvas to part zuith. Jier pretty present.'' 142 A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process * It might impart a gusto.'" might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. A Dissertation 7Lpon Roast Pig, 143 Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto. I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping {per Jiagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death ? " I forget the de- cision. His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a ''"'I'^elm;'"'" dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, 144 A Disse7Hatio7i 2tpon Roast Pig. I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are — but consider, he is a weakling — a flower. y^Tir^lPl^, At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old doorway, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to old Drury — Garrlck's Drury — all of it that is left. I never pass it with- out shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it L 146 My First Play. to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation ! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it. We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Featherstone-buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy ; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was also known to and visited by Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he My First Play. 147 arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. From either of these connections it may be Inferred that my godfather could command an order for the then Drury Lane theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, a pretty liberal Issue of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say was the sole remuneration which he had received for many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues of that theatre — and he was content It should be so. The honour of Sheridan's familiarity — or supposed familiarity — was better to my godfather than money. F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandilo- quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the com- monest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost constantly In his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips ! ), which my better knowledge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded vice versa — but In those young years they Impressed me with more awe than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his L 2 148 My First Play. own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elabo- rated, or Anglicised, into something like ve7^se verse. By an imposing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow. He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans ! slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me more than Arabian paradises ! ) and, moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call my own — situate near the road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity ?) with larger paces over my allotment of three quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an English free- holder that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. My First Play. 149 The estate has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore it. In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the un- comfortable manager who aboHshed them ! — with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at the door — not that which is left — but between that and an inner door in shelter — O when shall I be such an expectant again ! — with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, " Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill of the play ; " — chase pro chuse. But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed — the breathless anticipations I en- dured ! I had seen something like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shaks- peare — the tent scene with Diomede — and a sight of that plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling of that evening. The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of quality, projected 150 My First Play. over the pit ; and the pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistening substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling — a homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-candy — yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! The or- chestra lights at length rose, those fair '' Auroras ! " Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again — and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The curtain drew up — I was not past six years old, and the play was Artaxerxes ! I had dabbled a little in the Universal History —the ancient part of it — and here was the court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not its import — but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feelinof was absorbed in vision. Gororeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the J/y First Play. 151 time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awestruck, and believed those signihcations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. Xo such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams. Harlequin's invasion followed ; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carry- ing his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the [Manor, of which, with the exception of some scener}', very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead — but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Harlequins — transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a 152 My First Play. ghastly vest of white patchwork, Hke the apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead. My third play followed in quick succession. It was The Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge ; for I remember the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe, I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that gape and grin in stone around the inside of the old Round Church (my church) of the Templars. I saw these plays in the season 178 1-2, when I was six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven other years (for at school all play- going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a My First Play. 153 theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all — Was nourished, I could not tell how — I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there materially ; but the emblem, the reference, was gone ! The green curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to present a "royal ghost," — but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow- men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights — the orchestra lights — came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell — which 154 My First Play. had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them ; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries — of six short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an in- different comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have in- terfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene ; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delight- ful of recreations. A POOR RELATION — IS the most irrelevant thing in nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an odious approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a perpetually recurring mortification, — a drain on your purse, — a more intolerable dun upon your pride,— a drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, — a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — a rent in your garment, — a death's head at your banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in your 156 Poor Relations. ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph to your enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr.- ." A rap, between fami- liarity and respect ; that demands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and — draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner -time — when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have com- pany — but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor s " He e7ttereth S77ji:i7ig and^oiibarrassed" i -i i two children are ac- commodated at a side-table. He never cometh Poor Relations. 157 upon open days, when your wife says, with some complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in to-day." He remembereth birth-days — and pro- fesseth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small — yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think " they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most part take him to be a— tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With -half the familiarity, he might pass for a casual dependent ; with more boldness, he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; yet taketh on him more state than befits 158 Poor Relations, a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that your " The gicests tki?ik ' ihey have seen him be/ore. guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist table ; refuseth on the score of poverty, and — resents being left out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote — of the family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as Poor Relations. 159 ''he is blest In seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth — favourable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of congratula- ,..,|;i;wM:.|;.!f'l^ ^^,,i|;ji , "A spcci.il co:ii)iie/idation 0/ your %oindo-jj-c7a tains." tlon, he will Inquire the price of your furniture ; and insults you with a special commendation of your window-curtains. He Is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape ; but, after all, there was i6o Poor Relations. something more comfortable about the old tea-kettle — which you must remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; and did not know, till lately, that such- and-such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is —a female Poor Relation. You may do something with the other ; you may pass him off tolerably well ; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. *' He is an old humourist," you may say, " and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a Character at your table, and truly he is one." But in the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses Poor Relations. i6i below herself from caprice. The truth must out without shuffling. '' She is plainly related to the L 's ; or what does she at their house?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be repressed sometimes — aliquaitdo sttfflami- nandus erat — but there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped — after the gentle- men. Mr. re- quests the honour of taking wine with " Bc^s to he helped— a/lcr the gentlcmenr her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former — because he does. She calls 1 62 Poor Relations, the servant Sir ; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises her. The children's governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for a harp- sichord. Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of affinity constitiiting a claim to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman, who persists in calling him '' her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant surface, under which it had been her seeming business and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was of my own standing at Christ's — a fine classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride ; but its quality was inoffen- Poor Relations, 163 sive ; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to ward off derogation from itself. It was the principle of self-respect carried as far as it could go, without infringing on that respect which he would have every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have you j(- to think alike with T him on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice, when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, M 2 r to obserz'atioji in the bine clothes.^ 164 Poor Relations, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life^ meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction^ wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place^ with a profound aversion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb under which Latimer must have walked erect, and in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommend- able vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which insult not, and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon him to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man, when the waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a second and worse malignity. The father of \V had hitherto exercised the humble profession of house-painter, at N , near Oxford. A supposed interest with Poor Relations. i6^ some of the heads of colleges had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of being employed upon some public works which were talked of. From that moment I read in the coun- tenance of the young man the determination which at length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with our univer- sities, the distance between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called — the trading part of the latter especially — is carried to an excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The tempera- ment of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that wore the semblance of a gown — insensible to the winks and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W must change the air of Oxford, or be suffo- cated. He chose the former ; and let the sturdy 1 66 Poo7' Relations. moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with W , ' Boiuiftg and scrap'uig, cap in hand.'" the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High Street to the back of College, where W kept his rooms. * * * ^ Poor Relations. 167 He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him — finding him in a better mood — upon a representation of the i\rtist Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his saint. W looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, " knew his mounted sign, and fled." A letter on his father's table the next morning announced that he had accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I received on this matter are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At 1 68 Poor Relations, my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity, his words few or none ; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclination to have done so, for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to think him a pro- digiously rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coined, and I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about Poor Relations. 169 in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a stately being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual gene- ral respect which we all in com- mon . manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some argument touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these ' Would venture to stand u} against him in argument." I/O Poor Relations. young Grotluses. My father had been a leading Mountaineer ; and would still maintain the general superiority in skill and hardihood of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boys (so were they called), of which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon which the old gentle- man was ever brous^ht out — and bad blood bred : even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of the old ]\Iinster ; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain- born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their less important differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the thought that came over me : " Perhaps he will never come here again." He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand which I have already mentioned as the indispensable Poor Relations. 171 concomitant of his visits. He had refused with a resistance amounting to rigour, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of season, uttered the following memorable application : "Do take another slice. Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time, but he took occasion, in the course of the evening, when some argu- ment had inter- vened between them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I write it — '* Woman, you are superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive long after the digesting of this affront ; but he sur\'ived long enough to assure me that peace was * You do not get pudding every day.' ' 172 Poor Relations, actually restored ! and If I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted In the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable Independence ; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found In his escrltoir after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor Relation. o.u^^(i:t^5 Det^clied Thoughts on Books ^.ndPxe^ing To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. — Lord Foppingtonjn 'TJie Relapsed An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of loslno: some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no Inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away 1 74 Detached Thozights on Books and Reading, my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not Avalking, I am reading ; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of books which are no books — biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Direc- tories, Pocket Books [the Literary excepted], Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large : the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all these volumes which " no gentleman's library should be without : " the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's }^Ioral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books clothing perched upon shelves, like Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading, 175 false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occu- pants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what '^ seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios, would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with 176 Detached Thoughts, on Books and Reading. russia backs ever) is onr costume. A Shakspeare or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The posses- sion of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn- out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidious- ness, of an old " Circulating Library " Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight!— of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill-spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as In some Lethean cup, in spelling out their enchantlnor contents ! Who would have them a Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. 177 whit less soiled ? What better condition could we desire to see them in ? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes — Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be " eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare — where the Individual Is almost the species, and when that perishes, We know not where is that Promethean torch That can its light relumine, — such a book, for Instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess — no casket Is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller — of whom we have reprints, yet the books them- N 178 Detached TJiottghts on Books and Reading. selves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books — it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare. [You cannot make a pet book of an author whom every- body reads.] I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and, without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakspeare gallery engravings^ which did. I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled. — On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the Detached TJioughts on Books and Reading. 1 79 older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure ? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular ? — The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear — the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By , if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commen- tator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble tombs. N 2 1 8c Detached Tho2Lo;hts on Books and Reading. Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of Shakspeare ? It may be that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are. Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley. Much depends upon zvhen and whei^e you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale— Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. 1 8 1 These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one — and it degenerates into an audience. Books of quick interest, that hurry on for inci- dents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extremie irksomeness. A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for one of the clerks — who is the best scholar — to commence upon the Times or the Chronicle and recite its entire contents aloud, pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he communi- cates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. So the entire journal transpires at length by piecemeal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and without this expedient, no one in the company 1 82 Detached Thoitghts on Books and Reading. would probably ever travel through the contents of a whole paper. Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappoint- ment. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incessantly, " The Chronicle is in hand. Sir." [As in these little diurnals I generally skip the Foreign News, the Debates and the Politics, I find the Morning Herald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany rather than a newspaper.] Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your supper — what can be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of some former guest — two or three numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tete-a-tete pictures — "The Royal Lover and Lady G ; " "The jNIeltlng Platonic and the old Beau," — and such-like Detached Thoicghts on Books and Reading. 183 antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange it — at that time, and in that place — for a better book ? Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him — but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide. I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected — by a familiar damsel — reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera) reading — Pamela, There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure ; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been — any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages ; and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and — went away. 184 Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading, Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Uni- tarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street ivas not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points. [I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecting affectation — at the indignation of a crowd that was jostling In with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden Theatre, to have a sight of Master Betty — then at once in his dawn and his meridian Detached TJioiioJits on Books and Readimr. iSs — in Hamlet, I had been invited, quite unex- pectedly, to join a party, whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's S/iakspeaj'c, which, the time not admitting of my carrying it horrie. of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening — the 7-21 s/i, as they term it — I deliberately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp-light. The clamour became universal. " The affectation of the fellow.'' cried one. '' Look at that gentle- man reading, papa," squeaked a young lady, who, in her admiration of the novelty, almost forgot her fears. I read on. " He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand,'' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read on — and. till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved as Saint Anthony at his holy offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, 1 86 Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits as undisturbed at the sight as if he were the sole tenant of the desert. — The individual rabble (I recognised more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a sHght piece of mine a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance.] There is a class of street readers, whom I can never contemplate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they " snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to Detached Thoiights on Books and ReadiJig. 187 purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circumstance In his Hfe did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took In those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralised upon this subject In two very touching but homely stanzas : I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall, And read, as he'd devour it all ; Which, when the stall-man did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, " You, Sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look.' The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh He wish'd he never had been taught to read, [need. Then of the old churl's books he should have had no Of sufferings the poor have many, Which never can the rich annoy. I soon perceived another boy, Who look'd as if he had not any Food, for that day at least — enjoy The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny. Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. ' Dri}ik to your siveethearts, girls.'''' Among the deaths in our obituary for this month I observe with concern " At his cottage on the Bath Road, Captain Jackson." The name and attribution are common enough ; but a feehng Hke reproach persuades me that this could have been no other in fact than my dear old friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago rented a tenement, which Captain Jackson. 189 he was pleased to dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile from Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento as that which now lies before us ! He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, wi:h a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port and notions of gentle- women upon that slender professional allowance. Comely girls they were too. And was I in danger of for- getting this man ? — his cheer- ful suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when first you iiiiyitii^HKiff/M >ui[iii tiBSBn\ . 11 llin Hfe H JJUBBk ^ set your foot in t/ie cottage — v\ m\ ALJ^^m, wmj/i \ the anxious mmister- ings about you, where little or nothing (God knows) v/as to be min- istered. — Althea's horn in a poor platter — the power of self-enchantment, by which, in his magnificent " Althea's horn in a poor J>laiie>:' 190 Captain yackson. wishes to entertain you, he multipHed his means to bounties. You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag — cold savings from the fore- gone meal — remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door contented. But in the copious will — the revelling imagination of your host — the " mind, the mind, Master Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you — hecatombs — no end appeared to the profusion. It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish It — the stamina were left — the elemental bone still flourished, divested of its accidents. " Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-handed creature exclaim; *' while we have, let us not want," "here Is plenty left;" *' want for nothing " — with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old concomitants of smoking boards and feast-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his v/ife's plate, or the daughters', he would convey Captain yackson. 191 the remanent rind Into his own, with a merry quirk of ''the nearer the bone," &c., and declaring that he universally preferred the outside. For we had our table distinctions, you are to know, and some " 'Let Its live ivhile ive can.'' of us in a manner sate above the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were vere hospitibns sacra. But of one thing or another there was always enough, and leavings ; only he would sometimes 192 Captain Jack son. finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings. Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind of ale I remember — "British beverage," he would say! *' Push about, my boys ; " " Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was foaming in the centre, with beams of generous Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table corners. You got flustered, without knowing whence ; tipsy upon words ; and reeled under the potency of his unperforming Bacchanalian en- couragements. We had our songs — *'Why, Soldiers, why," — and the '' British Grenadiers " — in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency was a nightly theme — the masters he had given them — the "no-expense" Captain yackson. 193 which he spared to accompUsh them in a science '' so necessary to young women." But then — they could not sing "without the instrument." Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, secrets of Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur, your makeshift efforts of magnificence ? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the "Dear, cracked spin/iet.' 194 Captain yackson. bunch be extant ; thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs ; dear, cracked splnnet of dearer Louisa ! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble ! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face of the well- deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that slender image of a voice. We were not without our literary talk either. It did not extend far, but as far as it went it was good. It was bottomed well ; had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage was a room, which tra- dition authenticated to have been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned the greater part of his Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly quoted, though none of the present inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever to have met with the poem in question. But that was no m.atter. Glover had written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the account of the family Captain yackson. 195 importance. It diffused a learned air through the apartment, the httle side casement of which (the poet's study window), opening upon a superb view as far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains ".-/ superb ziciu as far as the spire of Harrow." and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard whereof our host could call his own, yet gave 2 196 Captain yackson. occasion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I call it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer evening. It was all his, he took it all in, and communicated rich portions of it to his guests. It was a part of his largess, his hospitality ; it was going over his grounds ; he was lord for the time of showing them, and you the implicit lookers-up to his magnificence. He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes — you had no time to detect his fal- lacies. He would say, " Hand me the silver sugar-tongs ; " and before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of " the urn " for a tea- kettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it ; he neither did one nor the other, but 'He ivas a juggle}-, crc." Captain Jackson. 197 by simply assuming that everything was handsome about him, you were positively at a demur what you did, or did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live on everything. He had a stock of wealth in his mind ; not that which is properly termed Content, for in truth he was not to be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the force, of a magnificent self-delusion. Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober native of North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, was not proof against the continual collision of his credulity. Her daughters were rational and discreet young women ; in the main, perhaps, not insensible to their true circum- stances. I have seen them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such was the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am persuaded not for any half hour together did they ever look their own pros- pects fairly in the face. There was no resisting the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagi- nation conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them up In the eye of the Captain Jackson. world too, and seem at last to have realized themselves ; for they both have married since, I am told, more than respectably. It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the manner in which the pleasant creature described the circumstances of his own wedding-day. ^' A chaise-aiid-four, in which he made his cntTy inty G'asgo^v." I faintly remember something of a chaise-and-four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow on that Captain yackson. 199 morning to fetch the bride home, or carry her thither, I forget which. It so completely made out the stanza of the old ballad — When we came down through Glasgow town, We were a comely sight to see ; My love was clad in black velvet, And I myself in cramasie. I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his own actual splendour at all corresponded with the world's notions on that subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever humble vehicle they chanced to be transported in less prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's state. It seemed an ''equipage etern " from which no power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power thereafter to dislodge him. There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them before strangers, may not be always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, 20Q Captain Jackson. even when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson. M ^.'■^/I ^li^iM HHii Hi 1 rn p etJ^iecioy m pTsM'i e s I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathiseth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. That the author of the Religio Medici mounted upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and conjectural essences ; in whose cate- gories of Being the possible took the upper hand of the actual ; should have overlooked the imper- 202 Imperfect Sympathies. tinent individualities of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he should have condescended to distinguish that species at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities, — Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or vvhen once it becomes indifferent it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more purely-English word that expresses sym.pathy, will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, Imperfect Sympathies. who upon another account cannot be my mate or felloiv. ~ I cannot like all people alike.* I have been trying all my life to like Scotch- men, and am obliged to desist from the experiment * I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. — ^^ We by proof find there should be 'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, That though he can show no just reason ^^'hy For any former wrong or injury. Can neither find a blemish in his fame, Nor aught in face or feature justly blame. Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchic of Angels," and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken to the first sight of the king. The cause which to that act compell'd him Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 204 Imperfect Sympathies. in despair. They cannot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There is something more plain and in- genuous in their mode of proceeding. We know one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under which mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no full front to them — a feature or side- face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game per- adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but Impei^fect Sympathies. 205 mutable and shifting : waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their development. They are no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mis- taken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. He brings his 2o6 Imperfect Sympathies. total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your presence to share it with you, before he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His understanding is always at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. — He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi- consciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Between the affirmative and the negative there is no border-land with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argument. He always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His Imperfect Sympathies. 207 morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the square with him. He stopc a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. " A healthy book ! " — said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle, — " Did I catch rightly what you said ? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how the epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extin- guisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful figure after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr. * * * '^ After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty (a foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when he very gravely assured me, that "he had con- 2o8 Imperfect Sympathies. siderable respect for my character and talents " (so he was pleased to say), '' but had not given himself much thought about the degree of my personal pretensions." The misconception staggered me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. — Persons of this nation are particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all truth becomes equally valuable whether the pro- position that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject of disputation. I was present not long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly expression (In my South British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son— when four of them started up at once to inform me, that ''that was impossible, because he was dead." An imprac- ticable wish, it seems, was more than they could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their Imperfect Sympathies. 209 character, namely their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberality that necessarily confines the passage to the margin.* The tedious- ness of these people is certainly provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one another! — In my early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to ingratiate myself vath his countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found that a true Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot even more than he would your contempt of him. The latter he imputes to your *' imperfect acquaintance with many of the words which he uses ; " and the same objection makes it a presumption in you to * There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture, peculiar to that country, would be hardly toler- able. — Hints toivards an Essay on Conversation. 2IO Imperfect Sympathies. suppose that you can admire him. — Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first Introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his Continuation of It. What If the historian had continued Humphrey Clinker ? I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for the Jews. They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is In Its nonage. They date beyond the pyramids. But I should not care to be In habits of familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling obout me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh af Lincoln. Centuries of Injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, must and ought to affect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or Imperfect Sympathies, that a few words, such as candour, liberality, the light of the nineteenth century, can close up the •breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is ■nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful •on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all dis- tinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and con- geeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. If they are converted, why do they not come over to us altogether ? Why keep up a form of separa- tion, when the life of it is fled? If they can sit with us at table, why do they keck at our cookery ? I do not understand these half convertites. Jews ■christianizing — Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more con- founding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative. B would have been more in keeping if he had p 2 212 Imperfect Sympathies. abided by the faith of his forefathers. There Is a ■fine scorn In his face, which nature meant to be of • Christians. — The Hebrew spirit Is strong in him,. in spite of his proselytlsm. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How It breaks out, when he sings,. *'The Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea ! " The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. There Is no mistaking him. B has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it Is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with under- standing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. His nation, in general,, have not over-sensible countenances. How should they ? — but you seldom see a silly expression among them. — Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard of an Idiot being born among them. — Some admire the Jewish female- physiognomy. I admire it — but with trembling. Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes. Imperfect Sympathies. 2 r 3 In the Negro countenance you will often meet ^vith strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings •of tenderness towards some of these faces — or rather masks— that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these "images of God cut in ebony." But I should not like to asso- ciate with them, to share my meals and my good- nights with them — because they are black. I love Quaker ways, and Quaker w^orship. I venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) '' to live with them." I am all over sophisticated — with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim- whams, which their simpler taste can do without. 2 14 Imperfect Sympathies. I should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads which (according. to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel ; my gusto too excited To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. The indirect answers which Quakers are often, found to return to a question put to them may be explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption. that they are more given to evasion and equivoca- ting than other people. They naturally look to- their words more carefully, and are more cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand In. a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath In extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (It must be confessed) to Introduce Into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth — the one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth Imperfect Sympathies. 2 1 5 bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so hi the common affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected, and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn cove- nant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the cir- cumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation being received upon the most sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping In a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows that his syllables are weighed — and how far a con- 2 1 6 Imperfect Synipaihies. sciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, might be illustrated, and the practice justified by a more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable pre- sence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self-watchfulness — it it did not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of re- ligious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave w^ay to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking examinations. " You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. '' Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of this people is sometim.es ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. — I was travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up Imperfect Sympathiis. 217 in the straightest nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble imita- tion, tendering mine — for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her demand. Sa they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable person- ages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach 2 1 8 Impei^/ect Sympathies. drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, begin- ning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my great surprise not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbour, '' Hast thee heard how Indigos go at the India House ? " and the question operated as soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. l\erT)iniscencej of of Rirmin^Oi^vrru ' I AM the only son of a considerable brazier ini Birmingham,* who, dying in 1803, ^^^^ ^^ successor to the business, with no other encumbrance than a. sort of rent-charge, which I am enjoined to pay * From the Neiv Monthly Magazine, 1826. r2 20 Reviiniscenc3s of yitke yitdkins, Esq. •out of it, of ninety-three pounds sterling per ■annum, to his widow, my mother ; and which the improving state of the concern, I bless God, has hitherto enabled me to discharge with punctuality. (I say I am enjoined to pay the said sum, but not ;strictly obligated : that is to say, as the will is worded, I believe the law would relieve me from •the payment of it ; but the wishes of a dying parent should in some sort have the effect of law.) So that, though the annual profits of my business, on an average of the last three or four years, would appear to an indifferent observer, who should inspect my shop-books, to amount to the sum of one thousand, three hundred and three pounds, odd shillings, the real proceeds in that time have fallen short of that sum to the amount of the aforesaid payment of ninety-three pounds sterling annually. I was always my father's favourite. He took a delight, to the very last, in recounting the little sagacious tricks and innocent artifices of my child- liood. One manifestation thereof I never heard Reminiscences of Jvke Jtidkins, Esq. 2 2 r him repeat without tears of joy trlckhng down his cheeks. It seems that when I quitted the paternal roof (Aug. 27, 1788), being then six years and not quite a month old, to proceed to the Free School at Warwick, where my father was a sort of trus- tee, my mother — as mothers' are usually pro- vident on these occasions ■ — had stuffed the pockets of the coach, which was to convey me and six more children of my own growth that were going ^^ 1 . 1 1 • 1 " I tvas always itfv father's /uvou7-ite," to be entered along with me at the same seminary, with a prodigious quantity of gingerbread, which I remember my father said was more than was needed : and so indeed it was ; for if I had had to eat it all myself, it would have got stale and mouldy before it had been half spent. The consideration whereof set me upon my contrivances how I 2 22 Reminiscences of Jitke Judkins, Esq. myself as much of the gingerbread as would keep good for the next two or three days, and yet none of the rest in manner be wasted. I had a little pair of pocket-compasses, which I usually carried about me for the purpose of making draughts and measurements, at which I was always very ingenious, of the various engines and mechanical inventions in which such a town as Birmingham abounded. By means of these, and a small penknife which "/ had a litt'.c pair of poc'cet-cojupasses.''' my father had given me, I cut out the one half of the cake, calculating that the remainder would Reminiscences of Juke yndkins, Esq. 223 reasonably serve my turn ; and subdividing it into many little slices, which were curious to see for the neatness and niceness of their proportion, I sold it out in so many pennyworths to my young com- panions as served us all the way to Warwick, which is a distance of some twenty miles from^ this town ; and very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves with it, feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem I put double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my purse, and secured as much as I thought would keep good and moist for my next two or three days' eating. When I told this to my parents on their first visit to me at Warwick, my father (good man) patted me on the cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he could never make enough of me ; but my mother unaccountably burst into tears, and said " it was a very niggardly action," or some such expression, and that "she would rather it w^ould please God to take me " — meaning (God help me!) that I should die — "than that she should live to see me grow up a mean man : " which shows the difference of parent from parent, and Reminiscence's of ynke yttdkins, Esq. how some mothers are more harsh and intolerant to their children than some fathers, when we might expect quite the contrary. My father, however, loaded me with presents from that time, which made me the envy of my schoolfellows. As I felt this growing- disposition in them, I naturally sought to avert it by all the means in my power ; and from that time I used to eat my little pack- ages of fruit and other nice things in a corner, so privately that I was never found out. Once, I remember, I had a huee apple sent me, of that sort which they call cats -heads. I con- cealed this all day under my pillow ; and at night, but not before I had ascer- tained that my bedfellow was sound asleep — which I did by pinching him rather smartly two or three times, which he seemed to perceive no more than a dead person, though once or twice he made a '*/ 7ised to eat my little packages of fruit in a corner." Reminiscences of Juke yudkins, Esq. 225 motion as if he would turn, which — frightened me— I say, when I had made all sure, I fell to work upon my apple ; and, though it was as big as an ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get through it before it was time to get up. And a more delicious feast I never made : thinking all night what a good parent I had (I mean my father) to send me so many nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had no parent or friend in the world to send him anything nice; and thinking of his desolate condition, I munched and munched as silently as I could, that I might not set him a-longing if he overheard me. And yet, for all this considerateness and attention to other people's feelings, I was never much a favourite with my schoolfellows ; which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never defrauded any one of them of the value of a halfpenny, or told stories of them to their master, as some little lying boys would do, but was ready to do any of them all the services in my power, that were consistent with my own well-doing. I think nobody can be expected to go Q 2 26 Reminiscences of J tike Judkins^ Esq. further than that. But I am detaining my reader too long in recording my juvenile days. It Is time I should go forward to a season when it became natural that I should have some thoughts of marrying, and, as they say, settling in the world. Nevertheless, my reflections on what I may call the boyish period of my life may have their use to some readers. It is pleasant to trace the man in the boy ; to observ^e shoots of generosity in those young years ; and to watch the progress of liberal sentiments, and what I may call a genteel way of thinking, which is discernible in some children at a very early age, and usually lays the foundation of all that Is praiseworthy In the manly character afterwards. With the warmest Inclinations towards that way of life, and a serious conviction of its superior ad- vantages over a single one, it has been the strange infelicity of my lot never to have entered into the respectable estate of matrimony. Yet I was once very near it. I courted a young woman in my twenty-seventh year ; for so early I began to feel Reminiscences of Juke yudkins, Esq. 227 symptoms of the tender passion ! She was well to do In the world, as they call It ; but yet not such a fortune as, all things considered, perhaps I might have pretended to. It was not my own choice altogether, but my mother very strongly pressed me to It. She was always putting It to me, that I had " comlngs- in sufficient " — that I " need not stand upon a portion," though the young woman, to do her justice, had con- siderable expectations, which yet did not quite come up to my mark, as I told you before. My mother had this saying always In her mouth, that I had " money enough ; " that It was time I enlarged my housekeeping, and to show a spirit befitting my circumstances. In short, what with "It was time I enlarged my housekeeping.* 2 28 Reminiscences of fuke Jtcdkins, Esq. her Importunities, and my own desires in part co-operating, — for, as I said, I was not yet quite twenty-seven, — a time when the youthful feeHngs may be pardoned if they show a little impetuosity, —I resolved, I say, upon all these considerations, to set about the business of courting In right earnest. I was a young man then, and having a spice of romance in my character (as the reader has doubtless observed long ago), such as that sex is apt to be taken with, I had reason in no long time to think my addresses were anything but dis- agreeable. Certainly the happiest part of a young man's life is the time when he Is going a-courting. All the generous Impulses are then awake, and he feels a double existence in participating his hopes and wishes with another being. Return yet again for a brief moment, ye visionary views — transient enchantments ; ye moonlight rambles with Cleora In the Silent Walk at Vauxhall (N.B.— About a mile from Birmingham, and resembling the gardens of that name near London, only that the price of admission Is lower,) when the nightingale has sus- Reminiscences of Juke Jttdkins, Esq, 229 pended her notes In June to listen to our loving discourses, while the moon was overhead ! (for we generally used to take our tea at Cleora's mother's before we set out, not so much to save expenses as to avoid the publicity of a repast In the gardens —coming in much about the time of half-price, as they call it) — ye soft Intercommunions of soul, " The Lovittg disputes we had iitider those trees." when, exchanging mutual vows, we prattled of coming felicities. The loving disputes we have had 230 Reminiscences of J tike Jtidkins^ Esq. under those trees, when this house (planning our future settlement) was rejected, because, though cheap, it was dull ; and the other house was given up because, though agreeably situated, it was too high-rented ! — one was too much in the heart of the town, another was too far from business. These minutiae will seem impertinent to the aged and the prudent. I write them only to the young. Young lovers, and passionate as being young (such were Cleora and I then), alone can understand me. After some weeks wasted, as I may now call it, in this sort of amorous colloquy, we at length fixed upon the house in the High Street, No. 203, just vacated by the death of Mr. Hutton of this town, for our future residence. I had all the time lived in lodgings (only renting a shop for business), to be near my mother, — near, I say; not in the same house, for that would have been to introduce confusion into our housekeeping, which it was desirable to keep separate. Oh, the loving wrangles, the en- dearing differences, I had with Cleora, before we could quite make up our minds to the house that Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq. 231 was to receive us ! — I pretending, for argument's sake, the rent was too high, and she insisting that the taxes were moderate in proportion ; and love at last reconciling us in the same choice. I think at that time, moderately speaking, she might have had anything out of me for asking. I do not, nor shall ever, regret that my character at that time was marked with a tinge of prodigality. Age comes fast enough upon us, and, in its good time, will prune away all that is inconvenient in these excesses. Perhaps it is right that it should do so. Matters, as I said, were ripening to a con- clusion between us, only the house was yet not absolutely taken, — some necessary arrangements which the ardour of my youthful impetuosity could hardly brook at that time (love and youth will be precipitate), — some preliminary arrangements, I say, with the landlord, respecting fixtures, — very neces- sary things to be considered in a young man about to settle in the world, though not very accordant with the impatient state of my then passions, — some obstacles about the valuation of the fixtures, had 232 Reminiscences of J tike Jtidkins, Esq. hitherto precluded (and I shall always think provi- dentially) my final closes with his offer, when one of those accidents which, unimportant in themselves, often arise to give a turn to the most serious in- tentions of our life, intervened, and put an end at once to my projects of wiving and of housekeeping. I was never much given to theatrical entertain- ments ; that is, at no time of my life was I ever what they call a regular play-goer ; but on some occasion of a benefit-night, which was expected to be very productive, and indeed turned out so, Cleora expressing a desire to be present, I could do no less than offer, as I did very willingly, to squire her and her mother to the pit. At that time it was not customary in our town for trades- folk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit as they now do, in the boxes. At the time appointed, I waited upon the ladies, who had brought with them a young man, a distant relation, whom it seems they had invited to be of the party. This a little disconcerted me, as I had about me barely silver enough to pay for our three selves at Reminiscences of Jtcke Judkins, Esq. 233 the door, and did not at first know that their relation had proposed paying for himself. However, ** This a little disconcerted me." to do the young man justice, he not only paid for himself, but for the old lady besides, leaving me only to pay for two, as it were. In our passage to the theatre the notice of Cleora was attracted to some orange wenches that stood about the doors vending their commodities. She was leaning on my arm, and I could feel her every now and then giving me a nudge, as it is called, which I after- R 234 Rejnintscences of Jttke Judkins, Esq. wards discovered were hints that I should buy some oranges. It seems it is a custom at Birmingham, and perhaps in other places, when a gentleman treats ladies to the play, especially when a full night is expected, and that the house will be incon- veniently warm, to provide them with this kind of fruit, oranges being esteemed for their cooling property. But how could I guess at that, never having treated ladies to a play before, and being, as I said, quite a novice at entertainments of this kind ? At last she spoke plain out, and begged that I would buy some of " those oranges," pointing to a particular barrow. But when I came to ex- amine the fruit, I did not think the quality of it was answerable to the price. In this way I handled several baskets of them, but something in them all displeased me. Some had thin rinds, and some were plainly over-ripe, which is as great a fault as not being ripe enough ; and I could not (what they call) make a bargain. While I stood haggling with the women, secretly determining to put off my purchase till I should get within the theatre, where Remiftiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq. 235 I expected we should have better choice, the young man, the cousin (who, it seems, had left us without my missing him), came running to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges, inside and out, as they say. It seems, not liking the look of the barrow-fruit any more than myself, he had slipped away to an eminent fruiterer's, about three doors distant, which I never had the sense to think of, and had laid out a matter of two shillings in some of the best St. Michael's I think I ever tasted. What a little hinge, as I said before, the most important affairs in life may turn upon ! The mere inadvertence to the fact that there was an eminent fruiterer's within three doors of us, though we had just passed it without the thought once occurring to me, which he had taken advantage of, lost me the Came running to 7is ivith his pockets stuffed otit vjiik oranges." 236 Reminiscences of yuke yudkins, Esq. affection of my Cleora. From that time she visibly cooled towards me, and her partiality was as visibly transferred to this cousin. I was long unable to account for this change in her behaviour, when one day, accidentally discoursing of oranges to my mother, alone, she let drop a sort of reproach to me, as if I had offended Cleora by my nearness, as she called it, that evening. Even now, when Cleora has been wedded some years to that same officious relation, as I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded that such a trifle could have been the motive to her inconstancy ; for could she suppose that I would sacrifice my dearest hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I s going to treat her to the play, and her mother (an expense of more than four times that amoun if the young man had not interfered to pay for c.i_ latter, as I mentioned ? But the caprices of th " sex are past finding out, and I begin to think my mother was in the right ; for doubtless women know women better than we can pretend to know them. LONDON : WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 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