Class 7^7r V f/- Book Cy^^4^ j7lt^'-<-<^f^ ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES. BY LEIGH HUNT. €jirn ^UrtS; COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. PHILADELPHIA : A. HART, LATE CAREY & HART, NO. 126 CHESTNUT STREET. 1851. \>'^ \S InBzchange Umv. ot North Oarolina JAN 3 1 1934 Printed by T. K. & P. G. Collini. p ^. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. The Indicator, a series of papers originally published in weekly numbers, having been long out of print, and repeated calls having been made for it among the booksellers, the author has here made a selection, comprising the greater portion of the articles, and omitting such only as he unwil- lingly put forth in the hurry of periodical publication, or as seemed otherwise unsuited for present publication, either by the nature of their disquisitions, or from containing com- mendatory criticisms now rendered superfluous by the re- putation of the works criticised. The author has little further to say, by way of adver- tisement to these pages, except that both the works were written with the same view of inculcating a love of nature and imagination, and of furnishing a sample of the enjoy- ment which they afford ; and he cannot give a better proof of that enjoyment, as far as he was capable of it, than by stating, that both were written during times of great trou- ble with him, and both helped him to see much of that fair play between his own anxieties and his natural cheerfulness, of which an indestructible belief in the good and the beau- tiful has rendered him perhaps not undeserving. London, Dec. 6, 1833. CONTENTS. PAKT I. PAGE Author's Introduction iii Chap. I. — Difficulty of finding a Name for a Work of this kind 1 II. — A Word on Translation from the Poets 4 III. — Autumnal Commencement of Fires — Mantel-Pieces — Apartments for study 5 IV. — Acontius's Apple 9 v.— Godiva 11 VI. — Pleasant Memories connected with various Parts of the Metropolis 15 VII.— Advice to the Melancholy 23 VIII. — Charles Brandon, and Mary Queen of France 26 IX. — On the Household Gods of the Ancients 29 X. — Social Genealogy 34 XL— Angling 38 XII. — Ludicrous Exaggerations 43 XIIL— Gilbert! Gilbert! ". 48 XIV. — Fatal Mistake of Nervous Disorders for Madness 50 XV.— Mist^ and Fogs 55 XVI.— The Shoemaker of Veyros 60 XVIL— Morets^ews of Ulysses 65 XVIIL— Far cWtries 70 XIX.— A Tald for a Chimney Corner 76 XX. — Thieveis, Ancient and Modern 85 — XXL— A few Thoughts on Sleep 116 XXIL— The Fair Revenge 122 XXIIL— Spirit of the Ancient Mythology 128 XXIV.— Getting up on Cold Mornings 134 XXV.— The Old Gentleman 138 XXVIL— Dolphins 143 XXVIIL— Ronald of the Perfect Hand 145 XXIX.— A Chapter on Hats 156 XXX. — Seamen on Shore 164 XXXI. — On the Realities of Imagination 171 XXXIL— Deaths of Little Children 182 XXXIII. — Poetical Anomalies of Shape 186 XXXIV.— Spring and Daisies 189 XXXV.— May-Day 197 XXXVL— Shakspeare's Birth-Day 207 XXXVIL— La Belle Dame sans Mercy 211 XXXVIIL— Of Sticks 214 XXXIX.— Of the Sight of Shops 222 XL. — A nearer View of some of the Shops 230 1* v CONTENTS. PART 11. PAGE Chap. XLI. — A Word or Two more on Sticks 1 XLII. — The Daughter of Hj'pocrates 4 XLIIL— The Italian Girl 10 XLIV.— A "Now" 17 XLV.— The Honorable Mr. Eobert Boyle 22 XLVI. — Superfine Breeding 24 XLVIL— Shaking Hands 27 XL VIII. — On Receiving a Sprig of Lam-el from Vaucluse 29 XLIX. — Coaches 32 L. — Remarks upon Andrea de Basso's Ode to a Dead Body 52 LI. — Thoughts and Guesses on Human Nature 58 LIL— The Hamadryad , 68 LIII. — The Nurture of Triptolemus 70 LIV. — On Commendatory Verses 77 LV. — A Word upon Indexes 88 LVL— An Old School-Book 90 LVIL— Of Dreams 93 LVIII. — A Human Animal, and the Other Extreme 104 LIX. — Return of Autumn 115 LX.— The Maid-Servant 117 LXL— The Old Lady 121 LXIL— Pulci 125 LXIIL— My Books 136 LXIV.— Bees, Butterflies, &c 152 i PART III.— THE COMPANION. Chap. I. — An Earth upon Heaven 169 XL— Bad Weather 174 III. — Fine Days in January and February 179 IV.— Walks Home by Night in Bad Weather— Watchmen... 182 V. — Secret of some Existing Fashions 189 VL— Rain Out of a Clear Sky 192 VII.— The IMouutain of the Two Lovers 193 VIII. — The True Story of Vertumnus and Pomona 190 IX. — On the Graces and Anxieties of Pig-Driving 209 X. — Pantomimes 21*2 XL— Cruelty to Children 217 XII. — Houses on Fire 221 XIII. — A Battle of Ants. — Desirableness of Drawing a Dis- tinction between Powers common to other Animals, and those Peculiar to Man 223 XIV.— A Walk from Dulwich to Brockham 284 THE INDICATOR. There is a bird in the interior of Africa, whose habits would rather seem lO belong to the interior of Fairy-land; but they have been well authenti- cated. It indicates to honey-hunters, where the nests of wild bees are to be found. It calls them with a cheerful cry, which they answer ; and on find- ing itself recognized, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to a little distance, where he observes all that passes ; and the hunters, when they have helped themselves, take care to leave him his portion of the food. — This IS the CucuLXTs Indicator of Linnseus, otherwise called the Moroe, Bee Cuckoo, or Honey Bird. There he arriving, round about doth flie. And takes survey with busie, curious eye : Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly. — Spencer. CHAPTER I. Difficulty of finding a Name for a Work of this Kind. Never did gossips, when assembled to determine the name of a new-born child, whose family was full of conflicting interests, experience a difficulty half so great as that which an author undergoes in settling the title for a periodical work. In the former case, there is generally some paramount uncle, or prodi- gious third cousin, who is understood to have the chief claims, and to the golden lustre of whose face the clouds of hesitation and jealousy gradually give way. But these children of the brain have no godfather at hand : and yet their single appella- tion is bound to comprise as many public interests as all the Christian names of a French or a German prince. It is to be modest : it is to be expressive : it is to be new : it is to be strik- ing : it is to have something in it equally intelligible to the man THE INDICATOR. [chap, i of plain understanding, and surprising for the man of imagina. tion : — in a word, it is to be impossible. How far we have succeeded in the attainment of this happy nonentity we leave others to judge. There is one good thing however which the hunt after a title is sure to realize ; — a great deal of despairing mirth. We were visiting a friend the other night, who can do anything for a book but give it a title ; and after many grave and ineffectual attempts to furnish one for the present, the company, after the fashion of Rabelais, and with a chair-shaking merriment which he himself might have joined in, fell to turning a hopeless thing into a jest. It was like that ex- quisite pictui'e of a set of laughers in Shakspeare : — One rubbed his elbow, thus ; and fleered, and swore, A better speech was never spoke before : Another, with his finger and his thumb, Cried " Via ! we will do 't, come what will come !" The third he capered, and cried, " All goes well !" The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell With that they all did tumble on the ground, With such a zealous laughter, so profound. That in this spleen ridiculous, appears. To check their laughter, passion's solemn tears. Love's Labor 's Lost. Some of the names had a meaning in their absurdity, such as the Adviser, or Helps for Composing ; — the Cheap Reflector, or Every Man His Own Looking-Glass ; — the Retailer, or Every Man His Own Other Man's Wit ; — Nonsense, to be continued. Others were laughable by the mere force of contrast, as the Crocodile, or Pleasing Companion ; — Chaos, or the Agreeable Miscellany ; — the Fugitive Guide ; — the Foot Soldier, or Flow- ers of Wit ; — Bigotry, or the Cheerful Instructor ; — the Polite Repository of Abuse ; — Blood, being a Collection of Light Es- says. Others were sheer ludicrousness and extravagance, as the Pleasing Ancestor ; the Silent Companion ; the Tart ; the Leg of Beef, by a Layman ; the Ingenious Hatband ; the Boots of Bliss ; the Occasional Dinner ; the Tooth-ache ; Recollections of a Very Unpleasant Nature ; Thoughts on Taking up a Pair of Snuffers ; Thoughts on a Barouche-box ; Thoughts on a Hill of Considerable Eminence ; Meditations on a Pleasing Idea ; Mate CHAP. I.] DIFFICULTY OF NAMING A WO:^K OF THIS KIND. 3 rials for Drinking ; the Knocker, No. I. ; — the Hippopotamus entered at Stationers' Hall ; the Piano-forte of Paulus iEmilius ; the Seven Sleepers at Cards ; the Arabian Nights on Horse- back : — with an infinite number of other mortal murders of common sense, which rose to " push us from our stools," and which none but the wise or good-natured would think of en- joying. THE INDICATOR. [chap. CHAPTER II. A Word on Translation from the Poets. Intelligent men of no scholarship, on reading Horace, Theo- critus, and other poets, through the medium of translation, have often wondered how those writers obtained their glory. And they well might. The translations are no more like the original than a walking-stick is like a flowering bough. It is the same with tTie versions of Euripides, of jEschylus, of Sophocles, of Petrarch, of Boileau, &c., &c., and in many respects of Homer. Perhaps we could not give the reader a more brief, yet complete specimen of the way in which bad translations are made, than by selecting a well-known passage from Shakspeare, and turn- ing it into the common-place kind of poetry that flourished so widely among us till of late years. Take the passage, for instance, where the lovers in the Merchant of Venice seat them- selves on a bank by moonlight : — How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! Here will we sit, and let the sound of music Creep in our ears : soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony. Now a foreign translator of the ordinary kind, would dilute and take all taste and freshness out of this draught of poetry, in a style somewhat like the following : — With what a charm, the moon, serene and bright. Lends on the bank its soft reflected light ! Sit we, I pray ; and let us sweetly hear The strains melodious with a raptured ear ; For soft retreats, and night's impressive hour, To \ irmony impart divinest power. CHAP, in.] AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRES. CHAPTER III. Autumnal Commencement of Fires — Mantel-Pieces — Apartments for Study. How pleasant it is to have fires again ! We have not time to regret summer, when the cold fogs begin to force us upon the necessity of a new kind of warmth ', — a warmth not so fine as sunshine, but, as matters go, more sociable. The English get together over their fires, as the Italians do in their summer- shade. We do not enjoy our sunshine as we ought ; our cli- mate seems to render us almost unaware that the weather is fine, when it really becomes so : but for the same reason we make as much of our winter, as the anti-social habits that have grown upon us from other causes will allow. And for a similar reason, the southern European is unprepared for a cold. day. The houses in many parts of Italy are summer-houses, unprepared for winter ; so that when a fit of cold weather comes, the dismayed inhabitant, walking and shivering about with a little brazier in his hands, presents an awkward image of insufficiency and per- plexity. A few of our fogs, shutting up the sight of everything out of doors, and making the trees and the eaves of the houses drip like rain, would admonish him to get warm in good earnest. If " the web of our life " is always to be " of a mingled yarn," a good warm hearth-rug is not the worst part of the manufacture. Here we are then again, with our fire before us, and our books on each side. What shall we do ? Shall we take out a Life of somebody, or a Theocritus, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Mon- taigne, or Marcus Aurelius, or Moliere, or Shakspeare, who includes them all ? Or shall we read an engraving from Pous- sin or Raphael ? Or shall we sit with tilted chairs, planting our wrists upon our knees, and toasting the up-turned palms of our hands, while we discourse of manners and of man's heart and hopes, with at least a sincerity, a good intention, and good-r ature, THE INDICATOR. [chap. iir. that shall warrant what we say with the sincere, the good-inten- tioned, and the good-natured ? Ah — take care. You see what that old-looking saucer is, with a handle to it ? It is a venerable piece of earthenware, which may have been worth to an Athenian, about two-pence ; but to an author, is worth a great deal more than ever he could — deny for it. And yet he would deny it too. It will fetch his imagination more than ever it fetched potter or penny-maker. Its little shallow circle overflows for him with the milk and honey of a thousand pleasant associations. This is one of the uses of having mantel-pieces. You may often see on no very rich mantel- piece a representative body of all the elements phy- sical and intellectual — a shell for the sea, a stuffed bird or some feathers for the aii', a curious piece of mineral for the earth, a glass of water with some flowers in it for the visible process of creation, — a cast from sculpture for the mind of man ; — and underneath all is the bright and ever-springing fire, running up through them heavenwards, like hope through materiality. We like to have a little curiosity of the mantel-piece kind within our reach and inspecti-on. For the same reason we like a small study, where we are almost in contact with our books. We like to feel them about us ; — to be in the arms of our mistress Philo- sophy, rather than see her at a distance. To have a huge apartment for a study is like lying in the great bed at Ware, or being snug on a mile-stone upon Hounslow Heath. It is space and physical activity, not repose and concentration. It is fit only for grandeur and ostentation, — for those who have secre- tai'ies, and are to be approached like gods in a temple. The Archbishop of Toledo, no doubt, wrote his homilies in a room ninety feet long. The Marquis Marialva must have been approached by Gil Bias through whole ranks of glittering au- thors, standing at due distance. But Ariosto, whose mind could fly out of its nest over all nature, wrote over the house he built, " parva, sed apta mihi" — small, but suited to me. However, it is to be observed that he could not aflbrd a larger. He was a Duodenarian in that respect, like ourselves. We do not know how our ideas of a study might expand with our walls. Mon- taigne, who was Montairae " of that ilk '.' and lord of a great cha- CHAP. III.] AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRES. 7 teau, had a study " sixteen paces in diawieter, with three noble and free prospects." He congratulates himself, at the same time, on its circular figure, evidently from a feeling allied to the one in favor ^{ smallness. " The figure of my study," says he, " is round; and has no more flat (bare) wall, than what is taken up by my table and my chairs ; so that the remaining parts of the circle present me with a view of all my books at once, set upon five degrees of shelves round about me." {Cotton's Montaigne, b. 3, ch. 3.) A great prospect we hold to be a very disputable advantage, upon the same reasoning as before ; but we like to have some green boughs about our windows, and to fancy ourselves as much as possible in the country, when we are not there. Milton expressed a wish with regard to his study, extremely suitable to our present purpose. He would have the lamp in it seen, thus letting others into a share of his enjoyments, by the imagination of them. And let my lamp at midnight hour Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft outwatch the Bear With thrice-great Hermes ; or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What world or what vast regions hold The immortal mind, that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook. There is a fine passionate burst of enthusiasm on the subject of a study, in Fletcher's play of the Elder Brother, Act i., Scene 2. Sordid and dunghill minds, composed of earth, In that gross element fix all their happiness : But purer spirits, purged and refined. Shake off that clog of human frailty. Give me Leave to enjoy myself That place, that does Contain my books, the best companions, is To me a glorious court, where hourly I Converse with the old sages and philosophers ; And sometimes for variety I confer With kings and empera ^3, and weigh their counsels ; THE INDICATOR. [chap. iri. Calling their vict#ries, if unjustly got, Unto a strict accomit ; and in my fancy, Deface their ill-placed statues. Can I then Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace Uncertain vanities .' No, be it your care To augment a heap of wealth : it shall be mine To increase in knowledge. Lights there, for my study. CHAP. IV.] ACONTIUS'S APPLE. CHAPTER IV. Acontius's Apple. AcoNTius was a youth of the island of Cea (now Zia), who, at the sacrifices in honor of Diana, fell in love with the beautiful virgin, Cydippe. Unfortunately she was so much above him in rank, that he had no hope of obtaining her hand in the usual way ; but the wit of a lover helped him to an expedient. There was a law in Cea, that any oath, pronounced in the temple of Diana, was irrevocably binding. Acontius got an apple, and writing some words upon it, pitched it into Cydippe's bosom. The words were these : MA THN APTEMIN AKONTm rAMOYMAI. By Dian, I will marry Acontius. Or, as a poet has written them : Juro tibi sanctae per mystica sacra Dianae, • Me tibi venturam comitem, sponsamquefuturam. I swear by holy Dian, I will be Thy bride betrothed, and bear thee company. Cydippe read, and married herself. It is said that she was repeatedly on the eve of being married to another person ; but her imagination, in the shape of the Goddess, as often threw her into a fever ; and the lover, whose ardor and ingenuity had made an impression upon her, was made happy. Aristsenetus, in his Epistles-, calls the apple KvSiivtov jiriXov, a Cretan apple, which is supposed to mean a quince ; or as others think, an orange, or a citron. But the apple was, is, and must be, a true, unsophisti- cated apple. Nothing else would have suited. " The apples, met bought." says Sir Philip Sydney of his heroine in the Arcadia, " fell down from the trees to do homage to the apples of her breast." The idea seems to have originated with Theocritus (Idyl. 27, V. 50, edit. Valckenaer), from whom it was copied 10 THE INDICATOR. [chap. iv. by the Italian writers. It makes a lovely figure in one of the most famous passages of Ariosto, where he describes the beauty of Alcina {Orlando Furioso, canto 7, st. 14) — Bianca neve e il bel coUo, e '1 petto latte ; II coUo 6 tondo, il petto colmo e largo : Due pome acerbe, e pur d'avorio fatte, Vengono e van come onda al primo margo, Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte. Her bosom is like milk, her neck like snow ; A rounded neck; a bosom, where you see Two crisp young ivory apples come and go. Like waves that on the shore beat tenderly, When a sweet air is ruffling to and fro. And after him, Tasso, in his fine ode on the Golden Age :— Allor tra fiori e linfe Traean dolci carole Gli Amoretti senz' archi e senza faci : Sedean pastori e ninfe Meschiando a le parole Vezzi e susurri, ed ai susurri i baci Strettamente tenaci. La verginella ignude , Scopria sv.e fresche rose Ch' or tien nel velo ascose, E le pome del seno, acerbe e crude ; E spesso o in fiume o in lago Scherzar si vide con 1' amata il vago. Then among streams and flowers, The little Winged Powers Went singing carols, without torch or bow ; The nymphs and shepherds sat Mingling with innocent chat Sports and low whispers, and with whispers low Kisses that would not go. The maiden, budding o'er. Kept not her bloom uneyed. Which now a veil must hide, Nor the crisp apples which her bosom bore : And oftentimes in river or in lake, The lover and his love their merry bath would take. K^ni soit qui mal y pense. CH4.P. v.] GODIVA. 11 CHAPTER V. Godiva. This is the lady who, under the title of Countess of Coventry, used to make such a figure in our childhood upon some old pocket-pieces of that city. We hope she is in request there still ; otherwise the inhabitants deserve to be sent from Coventry. That city was famous in saintly legends for the visit of the eleven thousand virgins — an " incredible number," quoth Selden. But the eleven thousand virgins have vanished with their credibility, and a noble-hearted woman of flesh and blood is Coventry's true immortality. The story of Godiva is not a fiction, as many suppose it. At least it is to be found in Matthew of Westminster, and is not of a nature to have been a mere invention. Her name, and that of her husband, Leofric, are mentioned in an old chapter recorded by another early historian. That the story is omitted by Hume and others, argues little against it ; for the latter are accustomed to confound the most interesting anecdotes of times and manners with something below the dignity of history (a very absurd mis- take) ; and Hume, of whose philosophy better things might have been expected, is notoriously less philosophical in his history than in any other of his works. A certain coldness of temperament, not unmixed with aristocratical pride, or at least with a great aversion from everything like vulgar credulity, rendered his scepticism so extreme that it became a sort of superstition in turn, and blinded him to the claims of every species of enthusi- asm, civil as well as religious. Milton, with his poetical eye- sight, saw better, when he meditated the history of his native country. We do not remember whether he relates the present story, but we remember well, that at .he beginning of his frag- ment on that subject, he says he shall relate doubtful stories as 2* THE INDICATOR [chap, v well as authentic ones, for the benefit of those, if no others, who will know how to make use of them, namely, the poets.* We have faith, however, in the story ourselves. It has innate evi- dence enough for us, to give full weight to that of the old annalist. Imagination can invent a good deal ; affection more ; but affec- tion can sometimes do things, such as the tenderest imagination is not in the habit of inventing ; and this piece of noble-hearted- ness we believe to have been one of them. Leofric, Earl of Leicester, was the lord of a large feudal territory in the middle of England, of which Coventry formed a part. He lived in the time of Edward the Confessor ; and was so eminently a feudal lord, that the hereditary greatness of his dominion appears to have been singular, even at that time, and to have lasted with an uninterrupted succession from Ethelbald to the Conquest — a period of more than three hundred years. He was a great and useful opponent of the famous Earl Godwin. Whether it was owing to Leofric or not, does not appear, but Coventry was subject to a very oppressive tollage, by which it would seem that the feudal despot enjoyed the greater part of the profit of all marketable commodities. The progress of knowledge has shown us hoVv abominable, and even how unhappy for all parties, is an injustice of this description ; yet it gives one an extraordinary idea of the mind in those times, to see it capable of piercing through the clouds of custom, of ignorance, and even of self-interest, and petitioning the petty tyrant to forego such a privilege. This mind was Godiva's. The other sex, always more slow to admit reason through the medium of feeling, were then occupied to the full in their warlike habits. It was reserved for a woman to anticipate ages of liberal opinion, and to surpass them in the daring virtue of setting a principle above a custom. Godiva entreated her lord to give up his fancied right ; but in vain. At last, wishing to put an end to her importunities, he told her, either in a spirit of bitter jesting, or with a playful raillery * When Dr. Johnson, among his other impatient accusations of our great republican, charged him with telling unwarrantable stories in his history, he must have overlooked this announcement; and yet, if we recollect, it is but m the second page of the fragment. So hasty, and blind, and liable to be put to "shame, is prejudice. CHAP v.] GODIVA. 13 that could not be bitter with so sweet an earnestness, that he would give up his tax, provided she rode through the city of Coventry, naked. She took him at his word. One may imagine the astonishment of a fierce, unlettered chieftain, not untinged with chivalry, at hearing a woman, and that too of the greatest delicacy and rank, maintaining seriously her intention of acting in a manner contrary to all that was supposed fitting for her sex, and at the same time forcing upon him a sense of the very beauty of her conduct by its principled excess. It is probable, that as he could not prevail upon her to give up her design, he had sworn some religious oath when he made his promise ; but be this as it may, he took every possible precaution to secure her modesty from hurt. The people of Coventry were ordered to keep within doors, to close up all their windows and outlets, and not to give a glance into the streets upon pain of death. The day came ; and Coventry, it may be imagined, was silent as death. The lady went out at the palace door, was set on horse- back, and at the same time divested of her wrapping garment, as if she had been going into a bath ; then taking the fillet from her head, she let down her long and lovely tresses, which poured around her body like a veil ; and so, with only her white legs remaining conspicuous, took her gentle way through the streets.* What scene can be more touching to the imagination — beau- ty, modesty, feminine softness, a daring sympathy ; an extrava- gance, producing by the nobleness of its object and the strange gentleness of its means, the grave and profound effect of the most reverend custom. We may suppose the scene taking place in the warm noon ; the doors all shut, the windows clos- ed ; the Earl and his court serious and wondering ; the other inhabitants, many of them gushing with grateful tears, and all reverently listening to hear the footsteps of the horse ; and lastly, the lady herself, with a downcast but not a shamefaced • " Nuda," says Matthew of Westminster, " equum ascendens, crines capitis et tricas dissolvens, corpus suum totum, preeter crura candidissima, inde velavit." See Selden's Notes to the Polyolbion of Drayton : Song 13. Tt is Seidell from whom we learn, that Leofric was Earl of Leicester, and the other particulars of him mentioned above. The Earl was buried at Coventry ; his Countess most probably in the same tomb. 14 THE INDICATOR. [chap. v. eye, looking towards the earth through her flowing locks, and riding through the dumb and deserted streets, like an angelic spirit. It was an honorable superstition in that part of the country, that a man who ventured to look at the fair saviour of his native town, was said to have been struck blind. But the vulgar use to which this superstition has been turned by some writers of late times, is not so honorable. The whole story is as unvulgar and as sweetly serious as can be conceived. Drayton has not made so much of this subject as might have been expected ; yet what he says is said well and earnestly : Coventry at length From her small mean regard, recovered state and strength ; By Leofric her lord, yet in base bondage held, The people from her marts by toUage were expelled : Whose duchess which desired this tribute to release, Their freedom often begged. The duke, to make her cease. Told her, that if she would his loss so far enforce. His will was, she should ride stark naked upon a horse By daylight through the street : which certainly he thought In her heroic breast so deeply would have wrought. That in her former suit she would have left to deal. But that most prince 1 1/ dame, as one devoured with zeal. Went on, and by that mean the city clearly freed. CHAP. VI.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. 15 CHAPTER VI. Pleasant Memories connected with various parts of the Metropolis. One of the best secrets of enjoyment is the art of cultivating pleasant associations. It is an art that of necessity increases with the stock of our knowledge ; and though in acquiring our knowledge we must encounter disagreeable associations also, yet if we secure a reasonable quantity of health by the way, these will be far less in number than the agreeable ones : for unless the circumstances which gave rise to the associations press upon us, it is only for want of health that the power of throwing off these burdensome images becomes suspended. And the beauty of this art is, that it does not insist upon pleasant materials to work on. Nor indeed does jiealth. Health will give us a vague sense of delight in the midst of objects that would teaze and oppress us during sickness. But healthy association peoples this vague sense with agreeable images. It will comfort us, even when a painful sympathy with the distresses of others becomes a pefrt of the very health of our minds. For instance, we can never go through St. Giles's, but the sense of the extravagant inequalities in human condition presses more forcibly upon us ; and yet some pleasant images are at hand, even there, to refresh it. They do not dis- place the others so as to injure the sense of public duty which they excite ; they only serve to keep our spirits fresh for their task, and hinder them from running into desperation or hope- lessness. In St. Giles's church lie Chapman, the earliest and best translator of Homer ; and Andrew Marvell, the wit and patriot, whose poverty Charles the Second could not bribe. We are sure to think of these two men, and of all the good and pleasure they have done to the world, as of the less happy objects about us. The steeple of the church itself, too, is a handsome one ; and there is a flock of pigeons in that neighbor 16 THE INDICATOR. [chap. vi. hood, which we have stood with great pleasure to see careering about it of a fine afternoon, when a western wind had swept back tlie smoke towards the city, and showed the white of the stone steeple piercing up into a blue sky. So much for St. Giles's, whose very name is a nuisance with some. It is dan- gerous to speak disrespectfully of old districts. Who would suppose that the Borough was the most classical ground in the metropolis ! And yet it is undoubtedly so. The Globe theatre was there, of which Shakspeare himself was the proprietor, and for which he wrote some of his plays. Globe-lane, in which it stood, is still extant, we believe, under that name. It is proba- ble that he lived near it : it is certain that he must have been much there. It is also certain that on the Borough side of the river, then and still called the Bank-side, in the same lodging, having the same wardrobe, and sorne say with other participa,- tions more remarkable, lived Beaumont and Fletcher. In the Borough, also, at St. Saviour's, lie Fletcher and Massinger in one grave ; in the same church, under a monument and effigy, lies Chaucer's contemporary, Gower ; and from an inn in the Borough, the existence of which is still boasted, and the site pointed out by a picture and inscription, Chaucer sets out his pilgrims and himself on their famous road to Canterbury. To return over the water, who would expect anything poetical from East Smithfield ? Yet there was born the most poetical even of the poets, Spenser. Pope was born within the sound of Bow-bell, in a street no less anti-poetical than Lombard-street. Gray was born in Cornhill ; and Milton in Bread-street, Cheap, side. The presence of the same great poet and patriot has given happy memories to many parts of the metropolis. He lived in St. Bride's Church-yard, Fleet-street ; in Aldersgate- street, in Jewin-street, in Barbican, in Bartholomew-close ; in Holborn, looking back to Lincoln's-inn-Fields ; in Holborn, near Red Lion square ; in Scotland-yard ; in a house looking to St. James's Park, now belonging to an eminent writer on legislation,* and lately occupied by a celebrated critic and metaphysician ;f and he died in the Artillery-walk, Bunhill- fields; and was buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate. * Mr. Br ntham. t Mr. Hazlitt. CHAP. VI.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. 17 Ben Jonson, who was born in " Hartshorne-lane, near Cha- ring-cross," was at one time " master" of a theatre in Barbican. He appears also to have visited a tavern called the Sun and Moon, in Aldersgate-street ; and is known to have frequented, with Beaumont and others, the famous one called the Mermaid, which was in Cornhill. Beaumont, writing to him from the country, in an epistle full of jovial wit, says, — The sun, which doth the greatest comfort bring To absent friends, because the self-same thing They know they see, however absent, is Here our best haymaker : forgive me this : It is our country style : — In this warm shine I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine. ***** 4c * ' Methinks the little wit I had, is lost. Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest Held up at tennis, which men do the best With the best gamesters. What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ! Hard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame. As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown Wit, able enough to justify the town For three days past, — wit, that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly Till that were cancelled, and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Right witty ; — though but downright fools, mere wise. The other celebrated resort of the great wits of that time, was the Devil tavern, in Fleet-street, close to Temple-bar. Ben Jonson lived also in Bartholomew-close, where Milton afterwards lived. It is in the passage from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital into St. Bartholomew's. Aubrey gives it as a common opinion, that at the time when Jonson's father-in-law made him help him in his business of bricklayer, he worked with his own hands upon the Lincoln's-inn garden wall, which looks towards Chan- eery-lane, and which seems old enough to have some of his illustrious brick and mortar remaining. 18 THE INDICATOR. [chap. vt. Under the cloisters in Christ's Hospital (which stands in the heart of the city unknown to most persons, like a house kept invisible for young and learned eyes),* lie buried a multitude of persons of all ranks; for it was once a monastery of Grey Friars. Among them is John of Bourbon, one of the prisoners taken at the battle of Agincourt. Here also lies Thomas Bur- dett, ancestor of the present Sir Francis, who was put to death in the reign of Edward the Fourth, for wishing the horns of a favorite white stag which the king had killed, in the body of the person who advised him to do it. And here too (a sufficing contrast) lies Isabella, wife of Edward the Second, — She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs. Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate. — Gray. Her " mate's" heart was buried with her, and placed upon her bosom ! a thing that looks like the fantastic incoherence of a dream. It is well we did not know of her presence when at school ; otherwise, after reading one of Shakspeare's tragedies, we should have run twice as fast round the cloisters at night- time as we used. Camden, the " nourrice of antiquitie," received part of his education in this school ; and here also, not to mention a variety of others, known in the literary world, were bred two of the best and most deep-spirited writers of the present day,f whose visits to the cloisters we well remember. In a palace on the site of Hatton-Garden, died John of Gaunt. Brook-house, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, the " friend of Sir Philip Sidney." In the same street, died, by a voluntary death of poison, that extraordinary person, Thomas Chatterton,— r The sleepless boy, who perished in his pride. — Wordsworth. He was buried in the grave-yard of the work-house in Shoe- lane ; — a circumstance at which one can hardly help feeling a movement of 'ndignation. Yet what could beadles and parish • It has since been unveiled, by an opening in Newgate-street t Coleridge and Lamb. CHAP. VI.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. 1j olllccrs know about such a being ? No more than Horace Wal- polo. In Gray's-inn lived, and in Gray's-inn garden meditated, Lord Bacon. In Southampton-row, Holborn, Cowper was fel- low-clerk to an attorney with the future Lord Chancellor Thur- low. At one of the Fleet-street corners of Chancery-lane, Cowley, we believe, was born. In Salisbury-court, Fleet-street, was the house of 1 homas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, the pre- cursor of Spenser, and one of the authors of the first regular English tragedy. On the demolition of this house, part of the ground was occupied by the celebrated theatre built after the Restoration, at which Betterton performed, and of which Sir William Davenant was manager. Lastly, here was the house and printing-office of Richardson. In Bolt-court, not far dis- tant, lived Dr. Johnson, who resided also some time in the Tem- ple. A list of his numerous other residences is to be found in Boswell.* Congreve died in Surrey-street, in the Strand, at his own house. At the corner of Beaufort-buildings, was Lilly's, the perfumer, at whose house the Taller was published. In Maiden-lane, Covent-garden, Voltaire lodged while in London, at the sign of the White Peruke. Tavistock-street was then, we believe, the Bond-street of the fashionable world ; as Bow- street was before. The change of Bow-street from fashion to the police, with the theatre still in attendance, reminds one of the spirit of the Beggar^s Opera. Button's Coffee-house, the resort of the wits of Queen Anne's time, was in Russell-street, near where the Hummums now stand ; and in the same street, at the south-west corner of Bow-street, was the tavern where Dryden held regal possessit)n of the arm-chair. The whole of Covent-garden is classic ground, from its association with the dramatic and other wits of the times of Dryden and Pope. But- ler lived, perhaps died, in Rose-street, and was buried in Co. vent-garden churchyard ; where Peter Pindar the other day fol- lowed him. In Leicester-square, on the site of Miss Linwood's exhibition and other houses, was the town-mansion of the Syd- * The t(>mple must have had many eminent inmates. Among them it is believed was Chaucer, who is also said, upon the strengith of an old record, to have been fined two shillings for beating; a Franciscan friar in Fleet- street. 20 THE INDICATOR. [chap, v ■ neys, Eai'ls of Leicester, t!ie family of Sir Philip and Algernon Sydney. In the same square lived Sir Joshua Reynolds and Hogarth. Dryden lived and died in Gerrard-street, in a house which looked backwards into the garden of Leicester-house. Newton lived in St. Martin's-street, on the south side of the square. Steele lived in Bury-strcet, St. James's : he furnishes an illustrious precedent for tlie loungers in St. James's-street, where a scandal-monger of those times delighted to detect Isaac Bickerstaff in the person of Captain Steele, idling before the coffee-houses, and jerking his leg and stick alternately against the pavement. We have mentioned the birth of Ben Jonson near Charing-cross. Spenser died at an inn, where he put up on his arrival from Ireland, in King-street, Westminster, — the same which runs at the back of Parliament-street to the Abbey. Sir Thomas More lived at Chelsea. Addison lived and died in Holland-house, Kensington, now the residence of the accomplish- ed nobleman who takes his title from it. In Brook-street, Gros- venor-square, lived Handel ; and in Bentinck-street, Manches- ter-square, Gibbon. We have omitted to mention that De Foe kept a hosier's shop in Cornhill ; and that on the site of the present Southampton-buildings, Chancery-lane, stood the man- sion of the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton, one of whom was the celebrated friend of Shakspeare. But what have we not omitted also ? No less an illustrious head than the Boar's, in Eastcheap, — the Boar's-head tavern, the scene of FalstafT's revels. We believe the place is still marked out by the sign.* But who knows not Eastcheap and the Boar's-head ? Have we not all been there, time out of mind ? And is it not a more real as well as notorious thing to us than the London tavern, or the Crown and Anchor, or the Ilunimiuns, or White's, or What's-his-name's, or any other of your contemporary or fleet- ing taps ? But a line or two, a single sentence in an aut.ior of former times, will often give a value to the commonest object. It not only gives us a sense of its duration, but we seem to be looking • It has lately disappeared, in the alterations occasioned by the new Lon- don Bridge. CHAP. VI.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. 21 at it in company with its old observer ; and we are reminded at tlie same time of all that was agreeable in him. We never saw, for instance, the gilt ball at the top of the College of Physicians,* without thinking of that pleasant mention of it in Garth's Dispen- sary, and of all the wit and generosity of that amiable man : — Not far from that most celebrated placef, Where angry Justice shows her awful face. Where little villains must submit to fate, That great ones may enjoy the world in state There stands a dome, majestic to the sight, • And sumptuous arches bear its oval height; A golden globe, placed high with artful skill, Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill. Gay, in describing the inconvenience of the late narrow part of the Strand, by St. Clement's, took away a portion of its unpleasantness to the next generation, by associating his memory with the objects in it. We did not miss without regret even the " combs" that hung " dangling in your face" at a shop which he describes, and which was standing till the late improvements took place. The rest of the picture is still alive. (Trivia, h. III.) Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand. Whose straitened bounds encroach upon the Strand ; Where the low pent-house bows the walker's head, And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread Where not a post protects the narrow space. And strung in twines, combs dangle in thy face ; Summon at once thy courage, rouse thy care ; Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware ! Forth issuing from steep lanes, the colliers' steeds Drag the black load ; another cart succeeds ; Team follows team, crowds heaped on crowds appear. And wait impatient till the road grow clear. There is a touch in the Winter Picture in the same poem, which everybody will recognize : — At White's the harnessed chairman idly stands. And swings around his waist his tingling hands. * In Warwick-lane, now a manufactory. f The Old Bailey. 22 THE IJSDICATOR. [chap, vi The bewildered passenger in the Seven Dials is compared tc Theseus in the Cretan labyrinth. And thus we come round to the point at which we began. Before we rest our wings, however, we must take another dart over the city as far as Stratford at Bow, where, with all due tenderness for boarding-school French, a joke of Chaucer's has existed as a piece of local humor for nearly four hundred and fifty years. Speaking of the Prioress, who makes such a deli- cate figure among his Canterbury Pilgrims, he tells us, in the list of her accomplishments, that — French she spake full faire and featously ; adding with great gravity — After the school of Stratforde atte Bowe ; For French of Pciris was to her unknowe CHAP. VII.] ADVICE TO THE MELANCHOLY. 23 CHAPTER VII. Advice to the Melancholy. If you are melancholy for the first time, you will find upon a little inquiry, that others have been melancholy many times, and yet are cheerful now. If you have been melancholy many times, recollect that you have got over all those times ; and try if you cannot find out means of getting over them better. Do not imagine that mind alone is concerned in your bad spirits. The body has a great deal to do with these matters. The mind may undoubtedly affect the body ; but the body also affects the mind. Thci;e is a re-action between them ; and by lessening it on either side, you diminish the pain on both. If you are melancholy, and know not why, be assured it must arise entirely from some physical weakness ; and do your best to strengthen yourself. The blood of the melancholy man is thick and slow; the blood of a lively man is clear and quick. En- deavor therefore to put your blood in motion. Exercise is the best M^ay to do it ; but you may also help yourself, in modera- tion, with wine, or other excitements. Only you must trke care so to proportion the use of any artificial stimulus, that it may not render the blood languid by over-exciting it at first ; and 'hat you may be able to keep up, by the natural stimulus only, tl''^ help you have given yourself by the artificial. Regard the bad weather as somebody has advised us to handle the nettle. In proportion as you are delicate with it, it will make you feel ; but Grasp it like a man of mettle, And the rogue obeys you well. ^:y Do not the less, however, on that account, take all reasonable precaution and arms against it, — your boots, &c., against wet feet, 3* 24 THE INDICATOR. [chap. vii. and your great-coat or umbrella against the rain. It is timidity and flight, which are to be deprecated, not proper armor for the battle. The first will lay you open to defeat, on the least attack. A proper use of the latter will only keep you strong for it. Plato had such a high opinion of exercise, that he said it was a cure even for a wounded conscience. Nor is this opinion a dangerous one. For there is no system, even of superstition, however severe or cruel in other matters, that does not allow a wounded conscience to be curable by some means. Nature will work out its rights and its kindness some way or other, through the worst sophistications; and this is one of the instances in which she seems to raise herself above all contingencies. The conscience may have been wounded by artificial or by real guilt ; but then she will tell it in those extremities, that even the real guilt may have been produced by circumstances. It is her kindness alone, which nothing can pull down from its predominance. See fair play between cares and pastimes. Diminish your artificial wants as much as possible, whether you are rich or poor ; for the rich man's, increasing by indulgence, are apt to out- weigh even the abundance of his means ; and the poor man's diminution of them renders his means the greater. On the other hand, increase all your natural and healthy enjoyments. Cultivate your afternoon fire-side, the society of your friends, the company of agreeable children, music, theatres, amusing books, an urbane and generous gallantry. He who thinks any innocent pastime foolish, has either to grow wiser or is past the ability to do so. In the one case, his notion of being childish is itself a childish notion. In the other, his importance is of so feeble and hollow a cast, that it dare not move for fear of tumbling to pieces. A friend of ours, who knows as well as any other man how to unite industry with enjoyment, has set an excellent example to those who can afford the leisure, by taking two Sabbaths every week instead of one, — not Methodistical Sabbaths, but days of rest which pay true homage to the Supreme Being by enjoying his creation. One of the best pieces of advice for an ailing spirit is to go to no sudden cxtromes — to adopt no great and extreme changes in CHAP. VII.] ADVICE rO THE MELANCHOLY. 25 diet or othez- habits. They may make a man look very great and philosophic to his own mind ; but they are not fit for a being to whom custom has been truly said to be a second nature. Dr. Cheyne may tell us that a di'owning man cannot too quickly get himself out of the water; but the analogy is not good. If the water has become a second habit, he might almost as well say that a fish could not get too quickly out of it. Upon this point, Bacon says that we should discontinue what we think hurtful by little and little. And he quotes with admi- ration the advice of Celsus : that "a man do vary and inter- change contraries, but rather with an inclination to the morti benign extreme." " Use fasting," he says, " and full eating, but rather full eating ; watching and sleep, but rather sleep ]m sitting and exercise, but rather exercise, and the like ; so shall nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries." We cannot do better than conclude with one or two other passages out of the same Essay, full of his usual calm wisdom. " If you fly physic in health altogether, it will be too strange foi your body when you need it." (He means that a general state of health should not make us over-confident and contemptuous of physic ; but that we should use it moderately if required, that it may not be too strange to us when required most.) " If you make it too familiar, it will have no extraordinary effect when sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain sea- sons, than frequent use of physic, except it be grown into a custom ; for those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less." " As for the passions and studies of the mind," says he, " avoid envy, anxious fears, anger fretting inwards, sujtle and knotty inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not com municated" (for as he says finely, somewhere else, they who keep their griefs to themselves, are " cannibals of their own hearts"). " Entertain hopes ; mirth rather than joy " (that is to say, cheerfulness rather than boisterous merriment) ; " variety of delights rather than surfeit of them ; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties ; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature." 26 THE INDICATOR. [chap, viu CHAPTER VIII. Charles Brandon and Mary Queen of France. Thk fortune of Charles Brandon was remarkable. He was an honest man, yet the favorite of a despot. He was brave, hand- some, accomplished, possessed even delicacy of sentiment ; yet he retained the despot's favor to the last. He even had the 0)erilous honor of being beloved by his master's sister, without having the least claim to it by birth : and yet, instead of its destroying them both, he was allowed to be her husband. Charles Brandon was the son of Sir William Brandon, whose skull was cleaved at Bosworth by Richard the Third, while bear- ing the standard of the Duke of Richmond. Richard dashed at the standard, and appears to have been thrown from his horse by Sir William, whose strength and courage, however, could not save him from the angry desperation of the king. But Time, whose wheeles with various motion runne, Repayes this service fully to his sonne. Who marries Richmond's daughter, born betweene Two royal parents, and endowed a queene. Sir John Beaumonfs Bosworth Field. The father's fate must have had its effect in securing the fortunes of the son. Young Brandon grew up with Henry the Seventh's children, and was the playmate of his future king and bride. The prince, as he increased in years, seems to have carried the idea of Bran.don with him like that of a second self; and the princess, whose affection was not hindered from becoming personal by anything sisterly, nor, on the other hand, allowed to waste itself in too equal a familiarity, may have felt a double impulse given to it by the improbability of her ever being suffered to become his wife. Royal females, in most countries, have certainly none of the advantages of their rank, whatever the males may have CHAP. VIII.] CHARLES BRANDON-MAR^ OF FRANCE 27 Maiy was destined to taste the usual bitterness of their lot ; but she was repaid. At the conclusion of the war with France, she was mai-ried to the old king Louis the Twelfth, who witnessed from a couch the exploits of her future husband at the tourna- ments. The doings of Charles Brandon that time were long remembered. The love between him and the young queen was suspected by the French Court ; and he had just seen her enter Paris in the midst of a gorgeous procession, like Aurora come to marry Tithonus. Brandon dealt his chivalry about him accord- ingly with such irresistible vigor, that the dauphin, in a fit of jealousy, secretly introduced into the contest a huge German, who was thought to be of a strength incomparable. But Brandon grappled with him, and with seeming disdain and detection, so pummelled him about the head with the hilt of his sword, that the blood burst through the vizor. Imagine the feelings of the queen, when he came and made her an offering of the German's shield ! Drayton, in his Heroical Epistle, we know not on what authority, tells us, that on one occasion during the combats, perhaps this particular one, she could not help crying out, " Hurt not my sweet Charles," or words to that effect. He then pleasantly represents her as doing away suspicion by falling to commcnda- tions of the dauphin, and affecting not to know who the conquer- ing knight was — an ignorance not very probable ; but the knights sometimes disguised themselves purposely. The old king did not long survive his festivities. He died in less than three months, on the first day of the year 1515; and Brandon, who had been created Duke of Suffolk the year before, reappeared at the French court, with letters of condolence, and more persuasive looks. The royal widow was young, beautiful, and rich ; and it was likely that her hand would bo sought by many princely lovers ; but she was now resolved to reward her- self for her sacrifice, and in less than two months she privately married her first love. The queen, says a homely but not mean poet (Warner, in his Albion's England), thought that to cast too many doubts Were oft to erre no lesse Than to be rash : and thus no doubt QS THE INDICATOR. [chap. viii. The gentle queen did guesse, That seeing this or that, at first, Or last, had likclyhood, A man so much a manly man Were dastardly withstood. Then kisses revelled on their lips. To either's equal good. Henry showed groat anger at first, real or protendea ; but he had not then been pampered into unbearable self-will by a long reign of tyranny. He forgave his sister and friend ; and they were publicly wedded at Greenwich on the 13th of May. It was during the festivities on this occasion (at least we believe so, for we have not the chivalrous Lord Herbert's Life of Henry the Eighth by us, which is most probably the authority for the story ; and being a good thing, it is omitted, as usual, by the his- torians) that Charles Brandon gave a proof of the fineness of his nature, equally just towards himself, and conciliating towards the jealous. He appeared, at a tournament, on a saddle-cloth, made half of frize and half of cloth-of-gold, and with a motto on each half. One of the mottos ran thus : Cloth of frize, be not too bold. Though thou art match'd with cloth of gold. The other : Cloth of gold, do not despise, Though thou art matched with cloth of frize. It is this beautiful piece of sentiment which puts a heart in'.o his history and makes it worthy remembering. CHAP. IX.] .riNCIENT HOUSEHOLD GODS. 29 CHAPTER IX. On the Household Gods of the Ancients. The Ancients had three kinds of Household Gods — the Daimon (Daemon) or Genius, the Penates, and the Lares. The first was supposed to be a spirit allotted to every man from his birth, some say with a companion ; and that one of them was a suggester of good thoughts and the other of evil. It seems, however, that the Genius was a personification of the conscience, or i-ather of the prevailing impulses of the mind, or the other self of a man ; and it was in this sense most likely that Socrates condescended to speak of his well-known Dtemon, Genius, or Familiar Spirit, who, as he was a good man, always advised him to a good end. The Genius was thought to paint ideas upon the mind in as lively a manner as if in a looking-glass ; upon which we chose which of them to adopt. Spenser, a deeply learned as well as imaginative poet, describes it in one of his most comprehensive though not most poetical stanzas, as That celestial Powre, to whom the care Of life, and generation of all That lives, pertaine in charge particulare ; Who wondrous things concerning our welfare, And straunge phantomes doth lett us ofte foresee, And ofte of secret ills bids us beware : That is our Selfe, whom though we do not see Yet each doth in himselfe it well perceive to bee. Therefore a God him sage antiquity Did wisely make. — Faerie Qucene, book ii., st. 47. Of the belief in an Evil Genius, a celebrated example is fur- Dished in Plutarch's account of Brutus's vision, of nhicli Shak- spearc has given so fine a version (Julius Ccesar, Act 4, Sc. 3), Beliefs of this kind seem traceable from one superstition to 30 THE INDICATOR. [chap. ix. another, and in some instances are immediately so. But fear, and ignorance, and even the humility of knowledge, are at hand to furnish them, where precedent is wanting. There is no doubt, however, that the Romans, who copied and in general vulgarized the Greek mythology, took their Genius from the Greek Daimon : and as the Greek word has survived and taken shape in the com- mon word Dsemon, which, by scornful reference to the Heathen religion, came at last to signify a Devil, so the Latin word Genius, not having been used by the translators of the Greek Testament, has survived with a better meaning, and is employed to express our most genial and intellectual faculties. Such and such a man is said to indulge his genius — he has a genius for this and that art — he has a noble genius, a fine genius, an original and peculiar genius. And as the Romans, from attributing a genius to every man at his birth, came to attribute one to places and to soilsj and other more comprehensive peculiarities, so we have adopted the same use of the term into our poetical phraseology. We speak also of the genius or idiomatic peculiarity of a language. One of the most curious and edifying uses of the word Genius took place in the English translation of the French Arabian Nights, which speaks of our old friends the Genie and the Genies. This is nothing more than the French word retained from the original translator, who applied the Roman word Genius to the Arabian Dive or Elf. One of the stories with which Pausanias has enlivened his des- cription of Greece, is relative to a Genius. He says that one of the companions of Ulysses having been killed by the people of Temesa, they were fated to sacrifice a beautiful virgin every year to his manes. They were about to immolate one as usual, when Euthymus, a conqueror in the Olympic Games, touched with pity at her fate and admiration of her beauty, fell in love with her, and resolved to try if he could not put an end to so terrible a custom. He accordingly got permission from the state to marry her, provided he could rescue her from her dreadful expectant. He armed himself, waited in the temple, and the genius appeared. It was said to have been of an appalling pre- sence. Its shape was every way formidable, its color if an intense black, and it was girdod about with a wolfskin. But CHAP. IX.] ANCIENT HOUSEHOLD GODS. 31 Euthymus fought and conquered it ; upon which it fled madly, not only beyond the walls, but the utmost bounds of Temcsa, and rushed into the sea. The Penates were gods of the house and family. Collec- tively speaking they also presided over cities, public roads, and at last over all places with which men were conversant. Their chief government however was supposed to be over the most inner and secret part of the house, and the subsistence and wel- fare of its inmates. They were chosen at will out of the num- ber of the gods, as the Roman in modern times chose his favor- ite saint. In fact they were only the higher gods themselves, descending into a kind of household familiarity. They were the personification of a particular Providence. The most striking mention of the Penates which we can call to mind is in one of Virgil's most poetical passages. It is where they appear to ./Eneas to warn him from Crete, and announce his destined em- pire in Italy. (LiK III., v. 147.) Nox erat, et terris animalia somnus habebat : Effigies sacrae divum, Phrygiique Penates, Quos mecum a Troja, mediisque ex ignibus iirbis Extuleram, visi ante oculos adstare jacentis In somnis, multo manifesti lumino, qua se Plena per iusertas fundebat luna fenestras. 'Twas night ; and sleep was on all living things. I lay, and saw before my very eyes Dread shapes of gods, and Phrygian deities. The great Penates; whom with reverent joy I bore from out the heart of burning Troy. Plainly I saw them, standing in the light Which the moon poured into the room that night. And again, after they had addressed him — Nee sopor illud erat : sed coram agnoscere vultus, Velatasque comas, przesentiaque ora videbar : Turn gelidus toto manabat corpore sudor. It was no dream : I saw them face to face, Their hooded hair; and felt them so before My being, that I burst at every pore. 4 32 THE INDICATOR. [chap. ix. The Lares, or Lars, were the lesser and most familiar House- hold Gods, and though their offices were afterwards extended a good deal, in the same way as those of the Penates, with whom they are often confounded, their principal sphere was the fire- place. This was in the middle of the room ; and the statues of the Lares generally stood about it in little niches. They are said to have been in the shape of monkeys ; more likely manni- kins, or rude little human images. Some were made of wa.\, some of stone, and others doubtless of any material for sculp- ture. They were represented with good-natured grinning coun- tenances, were clothed in skins, and had little dogs at their feet. Some writers make them the offspring of the goddess Mania, who presided over the spirits of the dead ; and suppose that originally they were the same as those spirits ; which is a very probable as well as agreeable superstition, the old nations of Italy having been accustomed to bury their dead in their houses. Upon this supposition the good or benevolent spirits were called Familiar Lares, and the evil or malignant ones Larvoe and Lemures. Thus Milton, in his awful Hymn on the Nativity : — ^ In consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan witli midnight plaint. In urns and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each Peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat. But Ovid tells a story of a gossiping nymph Lara, wlio having told Juno of her husband's amour with Juturna, was " sent to Hell " by him, and courted by Mercury on the road ; the con- sequence of which was the birth of the Lares. This seems to have a natural reference enough to the gossiping over fire- places. It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between these lesser household Gods and some of the offices of our old English elves and fairies. Dacier, in a note upon Horace (Lib. I., Od. 12), informs us, that in some parts of Languedoc, in his CHAP. IX.] ANCIENT HOUSEHOLD GODS. 33 time, the fire-place was still called the Lar ; and that the name was also given to houses. Herrick, a poet of the Anacreontic order in the time of Eliza- beth, who was visited, perhaps more than any other, except Spenser, with a sense of the pleasantest parts of the ancient mythology, has written some of his lively little odes upon the Lares. We have not them by us at this moment, but we remember one beginning, — It was, and still my care is To worship you, the Lares. We take the opportunity of the Lar's being mentioned in it, to indulge ourselves in a little poem of Martial's, very charming for its simplicity. It is an Epitaph on a child of the name of Erotion. Hie festinata reqniescit Erotion umbra, Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli, Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. Sic Lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua. THE EPITAPH OF EROTION. Underneath this greedy stone Lies little sweet Erotion ; Whom the fates, with hearts as cold. Nipt away at six years old. Thou, whoever thou may'st be, That hast this small field after me. Let the yearly rites be paid To her little slender shade ; So shall no disease or jar Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar; But this tomb here be alone, The only melancholy stone. 34 THE INDICATOR. [chap, x CHAPTER X. Social Genealogy. It is a curious and pleasant thing to consider that a link of per- sonal acquaintance can be traced up from the authors of our own times to those of Shakspeare, and to Shakspeare himself. Ovid, in recording his intimacy with Propertius and Horace, regrets that he had only seen Virgil (^Trist., Lib. IV., v. 51). But still he thinks the sight of him worth remembering. And Pope, when a child, prevailed on some friends to take him to a coffee- house which Dryden frequented, merely to look at him ; which he did, with great satisfaction. Now such of us as have shaken hands with a living poet, might be able to reckon up a series of connecting shakes, to the very hand that wrote of Hamlet, and of Falstaff, and of Desdemona. With some living poets it is certain. There is Thomas Moore, for instance, who knew Sheridan. Sheridan knew Johnson, who was the friend of- Savage, who knew Steele, who knew Pope. Pope was intimate with Congreve, and Congreve with Dryden. Dryden is said to have visited Milton. Milton is said to have known Davenant ; and to have been saved by him from the revenge of the restored court, in return for having saved Dave- nant from the revenge of the Commonwealth. But if the link between Dryden and Milton, and Milton and Davenant, is some- what apocryphal, or rather dependant on tradition (for Rich- ardson the painter tells us the story from Pope, who had it from Betterton the actor, one of Davenant's company), it may be car- ried at once from Dryden to Davenant, with whom he was unquestionably intimate. Davenant then knew Hobbes, who knew Bacon, who knew Ben Jonson, who was intimate with Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Donne, Drayton, Camden, Selden, Clarendon, Sydney, Raleigh, and perliaps all the great men of Elizabeth's and James's time, the greatest of them all CHAP. X.] SOCIAL GENEALOGY. 35 undoubtedly. Thus have we a link of " beamy hands " from our own times up to Shakspeare. In this friendly genealogy we have omitted the numerous side-branches or common friendships. It may be mentioned, however, in order not to omit Spenser, that Davenant resided some time in the family of Lord Brooke, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney. Spenser's intimacy with Sidney is mentioned by him- self in a letter, still extant, to Gabriel Harvey. We will now give the authorities for our intellectual pedigree. Sheridan is mentioiied in Boswell as being admitted to the cele- brated club of which Johnson, CToldsmith, and others were mem- bers. He had just written the School for Scandal, which made him the more welcome. Of Johnson's friendship with Savage (we cannot help beginning the sentence with his favorite leading preposition), the well-known life is an interesting record. It is said that in the commencement of their friendship, they some- times wandered together about London for want of a lodging — more likely for SaVage's want of it, and Johnson's fear of offend- ing him by offering a share of his own. But we do not remem- ber how this circumstance is related by Boswell. Savage's intimacy with Steele is recorded in a pleasant anec- dote which he told Johnson. Sir Richard once desired him, " with an air of the utmost importance," says his biographer, " to come very early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage came as he had promised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir Richard waiting for him and ready to go out. What was intended, and whither they were to go, Savage could not conjec- ture, and was not willing to inquire, but immediately seated him- self with Sir Richard. The coachman was ordered to drive, and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde-park Corner, where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private room. Sir Richard then informed him that he intended to publish a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he might write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated and Savage wrote, tid the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was surprised at the meanness of the entertainment, and after some hesi- tation, ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not without 4* 36 THE INDICATOR. [chap, x reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then finished their din- ner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in the afternoon. " Mr. Savage then imagined that his task was over, and expected that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning and return home ; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir Richard told him that he was without money, and that the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be paid for, and Savage was therefore obliged to go and offer their new production for sale for two guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his credi- tors, and composed the pan)phlet only to discharge his reckoning." Steele's acquaintance with Pope, who wrote some papers for his Guardian, appears in the letters and other works of the wits of that time. Johnson supposes that it was his friendly interference, which attempted to bring Pope and Addison together after a jealous sepai'ation. Pope's friendship with Congreve appears also in his letters. He also dedicated the Iliad to Congreve, over the heads of peers and patrons. The dramatist, whose conversa- tion most likely partook of the elegance and wit of his writings, and whose manners appear to have rendered him a universal favorite, had the honor, in his youth, of attracting the respect and regard of Dryden. He was publicly hailed by him as his suc- cessor, and affectionately bequeathed the care of his laurels. Dryden did not know who had been looking at him in the coffee- house. Already I am worn with cares and age, And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage; Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense, I live a rent-charge on his providence. But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn. Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains ; and defend, Against your judgment, your departed friend ! Let not th' insulting foe my fame pursue, But shade those laurels wlich descend to you. Congreve did so, with great tenderr ess. Dryden is reported to have asked Milton's permission to turn his Paradise Lost into a rhyming tragedy, which he called the State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man ; a work, such as might be CHAP. X.] SOCIAL GENEALOGY. 37 expected from such a mode of alteration. The venerable poet is said to have answered, " Ay, young man,, you may tag my verses, if you will." Be the connexion, however, of Dryden with Milton, or of Milton with Davenant, as it may, Dryden wrote the alteration of Shakspeare's Tempest, as it is now perpetrated, in conjunction with Davenant. They were great hands, but they should not have touched the pure grandeur of Shakspeare. The intimacy of Davenant with Hobbes is to be seen by their correspondence prefixed to Gondibert. Hobbes was at one time secretary to Lord Bacon, a singularly illustrious instance of servant and mas- ter. Bacon also had Ben Jonson for a retainer in a similar capa- city ; and Jonson's link with the preceding writers could be easily supplied through the medium ofGreville and Sidney, and indeed of many others of his contemporaries. Here, then, we arrive at Shakspeare, and feel the electric virtue of his hand. Their intimacy, dashed a little, perhaps, with jealousy on the part of Jonson, but maintained to the last by dint of the nobler part of him, and of Shakspeare's irresistible fineness of nature, is a thing as notorious as their fame. Fuller says : " Many were the wit- combates betwixt (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war : master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning : solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the Eng- lish man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." This is a happy simile, with the exception of what is insinuated about Jonson's greater solidity. But let Jonson show for himself the affection with which he regarded one, who did not irritate or trample down rivalry, but rose above it like the sun, and turned emulation to worship. Soul of the age ! Th' applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage ! My Shakspeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room ; Thou art a monument without a tomb ; And art alive still, while thy book doth live. And we have wits to read, and praise to give. ***** He was not of an age, but for all time. 38 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xi. CHAPTER XL Angling. The anglers are a race of men who puzzle us. We do not mean for their patience, which is laudable, nor for the infinite non-suc- cess of some of them, which is desirable. Neither do we agree with the good old joke attributed to Swift, that angling is always to be considered as " a stick and a string, with a fly at one end and a fool at the other." Nay, if he had books with him, and a plea- sant day, we can account for tlie joyousncss of that prince of punters, who, having been seen in the same spot one morning and evening, and asked whether he had had any success, said. No, but in the course of the day he had had " a glorious nibble." But the anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime ; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties ; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought. It is this that puzzles us. Old Isaac Walton, their patriarch, speaking of his inquisitorial abstractions on the banks of a river, says, Here we may Think and pray, Before death Stops our breath. Other joys Are but toys, And to be lamented. So saying, he " stops the breath" of a trout, by plucking him up into an element too thin to respire, with a hook and a tortured worm in his jaws — Other joys Are but toys CHAP. XI.] ANGLING. 39 If you ride, walk, or skate, or play at cricket, or at rackets, or enjoy a ball or a concert, it is " to be lamented." To put plea- sure into the faces of half a dozen agreeable women, is a toy unworthy of the manliness of a worm-sticker. But to put a hook into the gills of a carp — there you attain the end of a reasonable being ; there you show yourself truly a lord of the creation. To plant your feet occasionally in the mud, is also a pleasing step. So is cutting your ancles with weeds and stones — Other joys Are but toys. The book of Isaac Walton upon angling is a delightful perform- ance in some respects. It smells of the country air, and of the flowers in cottage windows. Its pictures of rural scenery, its simplicity, its snatches of old songs, are all good and refreshing ; and his prodigious relish of a dressed fish would not be grudged him, if he had killed it a little more decently. He really seems to have a respect for a piece of salmon; to approach it, like the grace, with his hat off. But what are we to think of a man, who, in the midst of his tortures of other animals, is always valuing himself on his harmlessness ; and who actually follows up one of his most complacent passages of this kind, with an injunction to impale a certain worm twice upon the hook, because it is lively, and might get off! All that can be said of such an extraordinary inconsistency is, that having been bred up in an opinion of the innocence of his amusement, and possessing a healthy power of exercising voluntary thoughts (as far as he had any), he must have dozed over the opposite side of the question, so as to become almost, perhaps quite, insensible to it. And angling does, indeed, seem the next thing to dreaming. It dispenses with locomotion, reconciles contradictions, and renders the very countenance null and void. A friend of ours, who is an admirer of Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler's face to a fish. It is hard, angular, and of no expression. It seems to have been "subdued to what it worked in;" to have become native to the watery element. One might have said to Walton, " Oh ! flesh, how art thou fishified !" He looks like a pike, dressed in broadcloth instead of butter. 10 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xi The face of his pupil and follower, or, as he fondly called him- self, son, Charles Cotton, a poet and a man of wit, is more good- natured and uneasy.* Cotton's pleasures had not been confined to fishing. His sympathies, indeed, had been a little superabun- dant, and left him, perhaps, not so great a power of thinking as he pleased. Accordingly, we find in his writings more symp- toms of scrupulousness upon the subject than in those of his father. Walton says, that an angler does no hurt but to fish ; and this he counts as nothing. Cotton argues, that the slaughter of them is not to be "repented;" and he says to his father (which looks as if the old gentleman sometimes thought upon the sub- ject too). There whilst behind some bush we wait The scaly people to betray, We'll prove it Just, with treacherous bait, To make the preying trout our prey. This argument, and another about fish's being made for " man's pleasure and diet," are all that anglers have to say for the inno- cence of their sport. But they are both as rank sophistications as can be ; sheer beggings of the question. To kill fish outright is a different matter. Death is common to all; and a trout, speedily killed by a man, may suffer no worse fate than from the jaws of a pike. It is the mode, the lingering cat-like cruelty of the angler's sport, that renders it unwortliy. If fish were made to be so treated, then men were also made to be racked and throttled by inquisitors. Indeed, among other advantages of ungling. Cotton reckons up a tame, fish-like acquiescence to whatever the powerful choose to inflict. We scratch not our pates, Nor repine at the rates Our superiors impose on our living : But do frankly submit, Knowing they have more wit In demanding, than we have in giving. * The reader may see botli the portrait in the late editions of Walton. CHAP. XI.] ANGLING. 41 Whilst quiet we sit We coi.clude all things fit, Acquieicing with hearty submission, &.c. And this was no pastoral fiction. The anglers of those times, whose skill became famous from the celebrity of their names, chiefly in divinity, were great fallers-in with passive obedience. They seemed to tliink (whatever they found it necessary to say now and then upon that point) that the great had as much right to prey upon men, as the small had upon fishes ; only the men, luckily, had not hooks put into their jaws, and the sides of their cheeks torn to pieces. The two most famous anglers in history are Antony and Cleopatra. These extremes of the angling character are very edifying. We should like to know what these grave divines would have said to the heavenly maxim of " Do as you would be done by." Let us imagine ourselves, for instance, a sort of human fish. Air is but a rarer fluid ; and at present, in this November wea- ther, a supernatural being who should look down upon us from a higher atmosphere, would have some reason to regard us as a kind of pedestrian carp. Now fancy a Genius fishing for us. Fancy him baiting a great hook with pickled salmon, and twitching up old Isaac Walton from the banks of the river Lee, with the hook through his ear. How he would go up, roaring and screaming, and thinking the devil had got him ! Other joys Are but toys. We repeat, that if fish were made to be so treated, then we were just as much made to be racked and suffocated ; and a foot- pad might have argued that old Isaac was made to have his pocket picked, and be tumbled into the river. There is no end of these idle and selfish beggings of the question, which at last argue quite as much against us as for us. And granting them, for the sake of argument, it is still obvious, on the very same ground, that men were also made to be taught better. We do not say, that all anglers are of a cruel nature ; many of them, doubtless, are amiable men in other matters. They 42 TPTE INDICATOR. have only never thought perhaps on that side of the question, or been accustomed from childhood to blink it. But once thinking, their amiableness and their practice become incom- patible ; and if they should wish, on that account, never to have thought upon the subject, they would only show, that they cared for their own exemption from suffering, and not for its diminution in general.* * Perhaps the best thing to be said finally about angling is, that not being able to determine whether fish feel it very sensibly or otherwise, we ought to give them the benefit rather than the disadvantage of the doubt, where we can help it ; and our feelings the benefit, where we cannot. CHAP. XII.] LUDICROUS F.XAGGERATIOX. 43 CHAPTER XII. Ludicrous Exaggeration. Men of wit sometimes like to pamper a joke into exaggeration ; into a certain corpulence of facetiousness. Their relish of the thing makes them wish it as large as possible ; and the enjoy- ment of it is doubled by its becoming more visible to the eyes of others. It is for this reason that jests in company are sometimes built up by one hand after another. — " threepiled hyperboles," — till the over-done Babel topples and tumbles down amidst a merry confusion of tongues. FalstafF was a great master of this art : he loved a joke as large as himself; witness his famous account of the men in buckram. Thus he tells the Lord Chief Justice, that he had lost his voice " with singing oi anthems ;" and he calls Bardolph's red nose " a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire light ;" and says it has saved him " a thousand marks in links and torches," walking with it "in the night, betwixt tavern and tavern." See how he goes heightening the account of his recruits at every step : — " You would think I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. — A mad fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gib- bets and pressed the dead bodies — No eye hath seen such scare- crows. — I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat. — Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed I had most of them out of prison. — There's but a shirt and a-half in all my company ; — and the half shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoul- ders like a herald's coat without sleeves." An old schoolfellow of ours (who, by the way, was more fond of quoting FalstafTthan any other of Shakspeare's characters) used to be called upon for a story, with a view to a joke of this sort ; it 44 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xn being an understood thing that he had a privilege of exaggeration, wit out committing his abstract love of truth. The reader knows the .Id blunder attributed to Goldsmith about a dish of green peas. (Somebody had been applauded in company for advising his cook to take some ill-dressed peas to Hammersmith, " because that was the way to Turn'em Green;" upon which Goldsmith is said to have gone and repeated the pun at another table in this fashion : " John should take those peas, I think, to Hammersmith." "Why so, Doctor?" "Because that is the way to make 'em green." Now our friend would give the blunder with this sort of additional dressing : " At sight of the dishes of vegetables. Goldsmith, who was at his own liouse, took off the covers, one after another, with great anxiety, till he found that peas were among them ; upon which he rubbed his hands with an air of infinite and pro- spective satisfaction. 'You are fond of peas. Sir V said one of the company. ' Yes, Sir,' said Goldsmith, ' particularly so : — I eat them all the year round; — I mean. Sir,, every day in the season. 1 do not think there is anybody so fond of peas as I am.' 'Is there any particular reason. Doctor,' asked a gentle- man present, ' wliy you like peas so much, beyond the usual one of their agreeable taste V — ' No, Sir, none whatsoever : — none, I assure you' (here Goldsmith showed a great wish to impress this fact on his guests) : ' I never heard any particular encomium or speech about them from any one else : but they carry their own eloquence with them : they are things. Sir, of infinite taste.' (Here a laugh, which put Goldsmith in additional spir- its.) 'But, bless me!' he exclaimed, looking narrowly into the peas : — ' I fear they are very ill-done : they are absolutely yel- low instead of green' (here he put a strong emphasis on green) ; ' and you know, peas should be emphatically green : — green- ness in a pea is a quality as essential as whiteness in a lily. The cook has quite spoilt them > — but I'll give the rogue a lec- ture, gentlemen, with your permission.' Goldsmith then rose and rang the bell violently for the cook, who came in ready booted and spurred. ' Ha!' exclaimed Goldsmith, 'those boots and spurs are your salvation, you knave. Do you know. Sir, what you have done ?' — ' No, Sir.' — ' Why, you have made the peas yellow. Sir. Go insf?.ntly, and take 'em to Hammer- CHAP, xir.] LUDICROUS EXAGGERATICN. 45 smith.' ' To Hammersmith, Sir ?' cried the man, all in aston- ishment, the guests being no less so : — ' please, Sir, why am I to take 'em to Hammersmith?' — 'Because, Sir,' (and here Gold- smith looked round with triumphant anticipation) ' that is the way to render those peas green.' " There is a very humorous piece of exaggeration in Butler's Remains, — a collection, by the bye, well "worthy of Hudibras, and indeed of more interest to the general reader. Butler is defrauded of his fame with readers of taste who happen to be no politicians, when Hudibras is printed without this appendage. The piece we allude to is a short description of Holland : A country that draws fifty foot of water, In which men live as in the hold of nature ; And when the sea does in upon them break, And drowns a province, does but spring a leak :4^ :t: :f: % :ii :}: That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes. And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes. A land that rides at anchor, and is moored. In which they do not live, but go aboard. We do not know, and perhaps it would be impossible to dis- cover, whether Butler wrote his minor pieces before those of the great patriot Andi'ew Marvell, who rivalled him in wit and excelled him in poetry. Marvell, though born later, seems to have been known earlier as an author. He was certainly known publicly before him. But in the political poems of Marvell there is a ludicrous character of Holland, which might be pronounced to be either the copy or the original of Butler's, if in those anti- Batavian times the Hollander had not been baited by all the wits ; and were it not probable that the unwieldy monotony of his character gave rise to much the same ludicrous imagery in many of their fancies. Marvell's wit has the advantage of But- ler's, not in learning or multiplicity of contrasts (for nobody ever beat him there), but in a greater variety of them, and in being able, from the more poetical turn of his mind, to bring graver and more imaginative things to wait upon his levity. He thus opens the battery upon our amphibious neighbor : 46 THE I.XDICATUR. [chap, xii Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land. As but the off-scouring of the British sand ; And so much earth as was contributed By English pilots, when they heaved the lead ; Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell, Of slii})wrecked cockle and the muscle-shell. Glad then, as miners who have found the ore. They, with mad labor,* fished the land to shore ; And dived as desperately for each piece Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreece ; Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, Less than what building swallows beair away ; Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl. Transfusing into them their dunghill soul. He goes on in a strain of exquisite hyperbole : — How did they rivet with gigantic piles Thorough the centre their new-catched miles ; And to the stake a struggling country bound. Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; Building their wat'ry Babel far more high To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky. Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed. And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played; As if on purpose it on land had come To show them what's their Mare Liberumf ; A dayly deluge over them does boil ; The earth and water play at level-coyl ; The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed. And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest: And oft tlie Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw AVhole shoals of Dutch served up forcabillau. Or, as tliey over the new level ranged. For pickled herrings, pickled Heeren changed. Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake. Would throw their land away at duck and drake ; Therefore necessity, that first made kings. Something like government among them brings; • Dryden afterwards, of fighting for gain, in his song of Come, dare — "The Gods from above the mad labor behold." + A Free Ocean. CHAP. XII.] LUDICROUS EXAGGERATION. 47 For as with Pigmys, who best kills the crane. Among the hungry he that treasures grain, Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns. So rules among the drowned he that drains. Not who first sees the rising sun, commands ; But who could first discern the rising lands ; Who best could know to pump an earth so leak. Him they their lord and country's father speak ; To make a bank was a great plot of state ; — , Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate. We can never read these and some other ludicrous verses of Marvell, even when by ourselves, without laughter. 48 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xui CHAPTER XIII. i Gilbert! Gilbert! The sole idea generally conveyed to us by historians of Thomas a Becket is that of a haughty priest, who tried to elevate the religious power above the civil. But in looking more narrowly into the accounts of him, it appears that for a considerable part of his life he was a merry layman, was a great falconer, feaster, and patron, as well as man of business ; and he wore all cha- racters with such unaffected pleasantness, that he was called the Delight of the Western World. On a sudden, to everybody's surprise, his friend the king (Henry II.), from chancellor made him archbishop ; and with equal suddenness, though retaining his affability, the new head of the English church put off all his worldly graces and plea- sures (save and except a rich gown over his sackcloth, and in the midst of a gay court, became the most mortified of ascetics. Instead of hunting and hawking, he paced a solitary cloister ; instead of his wine, he drank fennel-water ; and in lieu of soft clothing, he indulged his back in stripes. This phenomenon has divided the opinions of the moral critics- Some insist that Becket was religiously in earnest, and think the change natural to a man of the world, whose heart had been struck with reflection. Others see in his conduct nothing but ambition. We suspect that three parts of the truth are with the latter ; and that Becket, suddenly enabled to dispute a kind of sovereignty with his prince and friend, gave way to the new temptation, just as he had done to his falconry and fine living. But the complete alteration of his way of life, — the enthusiasm which enabled him to set up so different a greatness against his former one — shows that his character partook at least of as much sincerity as would enable him to delude himself in good taste. CHAP. XIII.] GILBERT GILBERT ! 49 In proportion as his very egotism was concerned, it was likely that such a man would exalt the gravity and importance of his new calling. He had flourished at an earthly court : he now wished to be as great a man in the eyes of another ; and worldly power, which was at once to be enjoyed and despised by virtue of his office, had a zest given to its possession, of which the incredulousness of mere insincerity could know nothing. Thomas a Becket may have inherited a romantic turn of mind from his mother, whose story is a singular one. His father, Gil- bert Becket, a flourishing citizen, had been in his youth a soldier in the crusades; and being taken prisoner, became »slave to an Emir, or Saracen prince. By degrees he obtained the confidence of his master, and was admitted to his company, where he met a personage who became more attached to him. This was the Emir's daughter. AVhether by her means or not does not appear, but after some time he contrived to escape. The lady with her loving heart followed him. She knew, they say, but two words of his language, — London and Gilbert ; and by repeating the form- er she obtained a passage in a vessel, arrived in England, and found her trusting way to the metropolis. She then took to her other talisman, and went from street to street pronouncing " Gilbert !" A crowd collected about her wherever she went, asking of course a thousand questions, and to all she had but one answer — Gilbert ! Gilbert ! — She found her faith in it sufficient. Chance, or her determination to go through every street, brought her at last to the one in which he who had won her heart in slavery, was living in good condition. The crowd drew the family to the window; his servant recognized her ; ard Gilbert Becket took to his arms and his bridal bed, his far-com3 princess, with her solitary fond M'ord. CO THE INDK ATOR. [chap. xiv. CHAPTER XIV. Fatal Mistake of Nervous Disorders for Madness. Some affecting catastrophes in the public papers induce us to say a few words on the mistaken notions which are so often, in our opinion, the cause of their appearance. It is much to be wished that some physician, truly so called, and philosophically compe- tent to the task, would write a work on this subject. We have plenty of books on symptoms and other alarming matters, very useful for increasing the harm already existing. We believe also there are some works of a different kind, if not written in direct counteraction ; but the learned authors are apt to be so grand and etymological in their title-pages, that they must frighten the general understanding with their very advertise- ments. There is this great difference between what is generally under^ stood by the word madness, and the nervous or melancholy dis- orders, the excess of which is so often confounded with it. Mad- ness is a consequence of malformation of the brain, and is by no means of necessity attended with melancholy or even ill- health. The patient, in the very mjdst of it, is often strong, healthy and even cheerful. On the other hand, nervous disor- ders, or even melancholy in its most aggravated state, is nothing but the excess of a state of stomach and blood, extremely com- mon. The mind no doubt will act upon that state and exas- perate it ; but there is great re-action between mind and body : and as it is a common thing for a man in an ordinary fever, or fit of the bile, to be melancholy, and even to do or feel inclined to do an extravagant thing, so it is as common for him to get well and be quite cheerful again. Thus it is among witless peo- ple that the true madness will be found. It is the more intelli- gent .that are subject to the other disorders ; and a proper use of their intelligence will show them what the disorders are. CHAP. XIV.] NERVOUS DISORDERS 51 But weak treatment may frighten the intelligert. A kind per- son, for instance, in a fit of melancholy, may confess that he feels an inclination to do some desperate or even cruel thing. This is often treated at once as madness, instead of an excess of the kind just mentioned ; and the person seeing he is thought out of his wits, begins to think himself so, and at last acts as if he were. This is a lamentable evil ; but it does not stop here. The children or other relatives of the person may become vic- tims to the mistake. They think there is madness, as the phrase is, " in the family ;" and so whenever they feel ill, or meet with *a misfortune, the thought will prey upon their minds ; and this may lead to catastrophes, with which they have really no more to do than' any other sick or unfortunate people. How many persons have committed an extravagance in a brain fever, or undergone hallucinations of mind in consequence of getting an ague, or taking opium, or fifty other causes ; and yet the mo- ment the least wandering of mind is observed in them, others become frightened ; their fright is manifested beyond all neces- sity ; and the patients and their family must suffer for it. They seem to think that no disorder can properly be held a true Chris- tian sickness, and fit for charitable interpretation, but where the patient has gone regularly to bed, and had curtains, and caudle- cups, and nurses about him, like a well-behaved respectable sick gentleman. But this state of things implies muscular weakness, or weakness of that sort which renders the bodily action feeble. Now, in nervous disorders, the muscular action may be as strong as ever; and people may reasonably be allowed a world of ill- ness, sitting in their chairs, or even walking or running. These mistaken pronouncers upon disease ought to be told, that when they are thus unwarrantably frightened, they are partaking of the very essence of what they misapprehend ; for it is fear, in all its various degrees and modifications, which is at the bottom of nervousness and melancholy ; not fear in its ordinary sense, as opposed to cowardice (for a man who would shudder at a bat or a vague idea, may be bold as a lion against an enemy), but imaginative fear ; fear either of something known or of the patient knows not what ; — a vague sense of terror, — an impulse, — an apprehension of ill, — dwelling upon some pain- 52 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xiv. ful and worrying thought. Now this suffering is invariably con- iiecled with a weak state of the body in some respects, particu- larly of the stomach. Hundreds will be found to have felt it, if patients inquire ; but the mind is sometimes afraid of acknow- ledging its apprehensions, even to itself; and thus fear broods over and hatches fear. These disorders, generally speaking, are greater or less in their effects according to the exercise of reason. But do not let the word be misunderstood : we should rather say, according to the extent of the knowledge. A very imaginative man will indeed be likely to suffer more than others ; but if his knowledge is af all in proportion, he will also get through his evil better than an uninformed man suffering great terrors. And the reason is, that he knows how much bodily unhealthiness has to do with it. The very words that frighten the unknowing- might teach- them better, if understood. Thus insanity itself properly means nothing but unhealthiness or unsoundness. Derangement explains itself, and may surely mean very harmless things. Melancholy is com- pounded of two words which signify black bile. Hypochondria is the name of one of the regions of the stomach, a very instrue- live etymology. And lunacy refers to effects, real or imaginary, of particular states of the moon ; which if anything after all, are nothing more than what every delicate constitution feels in its degree from particular states of the weather ; for weather, like the tides, is apt to be in such and such a condition, when the moon presents such and such a face. It has been said. Great wits to maduess nearly are cillied It is curious that he who wrote the saying (Dryden) was a very sound wit to the end of his life ; while his wife, who was of a weak understanding, became insane. An excellent writer (Wordsworth) has written an idle couplet about the insanity of poets : We poets enter on our path with gladness, But thereof cojaes in the end despondency and madness. CHAP. XTV.] NERVOUS DISORDERS. 53 If he did not mean madness in the ordinary sense, he should not have written this line ; if he did, he ought not to have fallen, in the teeth of his better knowledge, into so vulgar an error. There are very few instances of insane poets, or of insane great understandings of any sort. Bacon, Milton, Newton, Shaks- peare, Cervantes, &c., were all of minds as sound as they were great. So it has been with the infinite majority of literary men of all countries. If Tasso and a few others were exceptions, they were hut exceptions ; and the derangement in these eminent men has very doubtful characters about it, and is sometimes made a question. It may be pretty safely affirmed, at least, upon an examination of it, that had they not been the clever men they were, it would have been much worse and less equivocal. Collins, whose case was after all one of inanition rather than insanity, had been a free liver ; and seems to have been hurt by having a fortune left him. Cowper was weak-bodied, and beset by Methodists. Swift's body was full of bad humors. He him- self attributed his disordered system to the effects of a surfeit of fruit on his stomach ; and in his last illness he used to break out in enormous boils and blisters. This was a Violent effort of nature to help and purify the current of his blood, — the main object in all such cases. Dr. Johnson, who was subject to mists of melancholy, used to fancy he should go mad; but he never did. Exercise, conversation, cheerful society, amusements of all sorts, or a kind, patient, and gradual helping of the bodily health, till the mind be capable of amusement (for it should never fool- ishly be told "not to think" of melancholy things, without having something done for it to mend the bodily health), — these are the cures, the only cures, and in our opinion the almost infallible cures of nervous disorders, however excessive. Above all ihe patient should be told that there has often been an end to that torment of one haunting idea, which is indeed a great and venerable suffering. Many persons have got over it in a week, a few weeks, or a month, some in a few months, some not for years, but they have got over it at last. There is a remarkable instance of this in the life of our great king Alfred. He was seized, says his contemporary biographer, with such a strange 54 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xiv. illness while sitting at table, in the twenty-fifth year (we think) of his age, that he shrieked aloud ; and for twenty years after- wards this illness so preyed upon him, that the relief of one hour was embittered by what he dreaded would come the next. Ilis disorder is conjectured by some to have been an internal can- cer ; by others, with more probability, the black bile, or melan- choly. The physicians of those times knew nothing about it; and the people showed at once their ignorance, and their admi- ration of the king, by saying that the devil had caused it out of jealousy. It was probably produced by anxiety for the state of his country ; but the same thing which wounded him may have helped to keep him up; for he had plenty of business to attend to, and fought with his own hand in fifty-six pitched battles. Now exactly twenty years after, in the forty-fifth year of his age (if our former recollection is right) this disorder totally left him ; and his great heart was where it ought to be, in a heaven of health and calmness. CHAP. XV.] MISTS AND FOGS. 55 CHAPTER XV. Mists and Fogs. Fogs and mists, being nothing but vapors which the cold air will not suffer to evaporate, must sometimes present a gorgeous asj)ect next the sun. To the eye of an eagle, or whatever other eyes there may be to look down upon them, they may appear like masses of cloudy gold. In fact, they are but clouds un- risen. The city of London, at the time we are writing this article, is literally a city in the clouds. Its inhabitants walk thi'ougli the same airy heaps which at other times float over their heads in the sky, or minister with glorious faces to the setting sun. We do not say, that any one can " hold a fire in his hand" by thinking on a fine sunset ; or that sheer imagination of any sort can make it a very agreeable thing to feel as if one's body were wrapped round with cold wet paper ; much less to flounder through gutters, or run against posts. But the mind can often help itself with agreeable images against disagreeable ones; or pitch itself round to the best sides and aspects of them. The solid and fiery ball of the sun, stuck as it were, in the thick foggy atmosphere ; the moon just winning her way through it, into beams ; nay, the very candles and gas-lights in the shop- windows of a misty evening — all have, in our eyes, their agree- able varieties of contrast to the surrounding haze. We have even halted, of a dreary autumnal evening, at that open part of the Strand by St. Clement's, and seen the church, which is a poor structure of itself, take an aspect of ghastly grandeur from the dark atmosphere; looking like a tall white mass, mounting up interminably into the night overhead. The poets, who are the common friends that keep up the inter- course between nature and humanity, have in numberless pas- 6 66 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xv. sages done justice to these our melancholy visitors, and shown us what grand personages they are. To mention only a few of the most striking. When Thetis, in the Iliad (Lib. i., v. 359), rises out of the sea to console Achilles, she issues forth in a mist ; like the Genius in the Arabian Nights. The reader is to sup- pose that the mist, after ascending, comes gliding over the water, and condensing itself into a human shape, lands the white-footed goddess on the shore. When Achilles, after his long and vindictive absence from the Greek armies, re-appears in consequence of the dchth of his friend Patroclus, and stands before the appalled Trojan armies, who are thi'own into confusion at the very sight, Minerva, to ren- der his aspect the more astonishing and awful, puts about his head a halo of golden mist, streaming upwards with fire (Lib. xviii., v. 205). He shouts aloud under this preternatural dia- dem ; Minerva throws into his shout her own immortal voice with a strange unnatural cry ; at which the horses of the Trojan war- riors run round with their chariots, and twelve of their noblest captains perish in the crush. A mist was the usual clothing of the gods, when they descended to earth; especially of Apollo, whose brightness had double need of mitigation. Homer, to heighten the dignity of Ulysses, has finely given him the same covering, when he passes thi'ough the court of Antinous, and suddenly appears before the throne. This has been turned to happy account by Virgil, and to a new and noble one by Milton. Virgil makes ^-Eneas issue suddenly from a mist, at the moment when iiis friends think him lost, and the beautiful queen of Carthage is wishing his presence. Mil- ton — but we will give one or two of his minor uses of mists, by way of making a climax of the one alluded to. If Satan, for instance, goes lurking about Paradise, it is "like a black mist low creeping." If the angels on guard glide about it, upon their gentler errand, it is like fairer vapors : On the ground ^ Gliding metoorous, as evening mist Risen frum a river o'er the niarish glides. And gathers ground fast at the laborer's heel Homeward returning. — {Par. Lost, B. xii.,v. 698.) CHAP. XV.] MISTS AND FOGS. 57 Now behold one of his greatest imaginations. The fallen demi-gods are assembled in Pandaemonium, waiting the return of their "great adventurer" from his "search of worlds:" He through the midst unmarked, In show plebeian angel militant Of lowest order, passed ; and from the door Of that Plutonian hall, invisible. Ascended his high throne ; which, under state Of richest texture spread, at the upper end Was placed in regal lustre. Down awhile He sat, and round about him saw unseen. At last — as from a cloud, his fulgent head And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter ; clad With what permissive glory since his fall Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng Bent their aspect ; and whom they wished, beheld, Tlieir mighty chief returned. There is a piece of imagination in Apollonius Rhodius worthy of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad day-light, are suddenly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to Apollo ; and he descends from heaven, and lighting on a rock, holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them to an island. Spenser, in a most romantic chapter of the Faery Queene (Book ii.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of the Odyssey ; but, like all great poets, what he borrows only brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. It is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the course of his voyage through the perilous sea, wishes to stop and hear the Syrens ; but the palmer, his companion, dissuades him : When s^ldeinly a grosse fog overspred With his dull vapor all that desert has. And heaven's chearefuU face enveloped. That all things one, and one as nothing was. And this great universe seemed one confused c ass. Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist How to direct theyr way in darkness wide. 58 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xt But feared to wander in that wasteful! mist For tombling into mischiefe unespyde : Worse is the daunger hidden then descride. Suddeinly an innumerable flight Of harmfuU fowles about them fluttering cride, And with thcyr wicked wings them oft did smight. And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night. Even all the nation of unfortunate And fatall birds about them flocked were. Such as by nature men abhorre and hate. The ill-faced owle, deaths dreadful messengere . The hoarse night-raven, trump of dolefuU drere : The lether-winged batt, dayes enimy : The ruefull stritch, still waiting on the here : The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth dy : , The hellish harpies, prophets of sad destiny; All these, and all that else does horror breed. About them flew, and fild their sayles with fear ; Yet stayd they not, but forward did proceed, ' Whiles th' one did row, and th' other stifly steare. Ovid has turned a mist to his usual account. It is where Jupiter, to conceal his amour with lo, throws a cloud over the vale of Tempe. There is a picture of Jupiter and lo, by Cor- reggio, in which that great artist has finely availed himself of the circumstance ; the head of the father of gods and men coming placidly out of the cloud, upon the young lips of lo, like the very benignity of creation. The poet who is the most conversant with mists is Ossian, who was a native of the north of Scotland or Ireland. The following are as many specimens of his uses of mist as we have room for. The first is very grand ; the second as happy in its analogy ; the third is ghastly, but of «iore doubtful merit : Two Chiefs parted by their King. — They sunk from the king on either side, like two columns of morning mist, when the sun rises between them on his glittering rocks. Dark is their rolling on either side, each towards its reedy pool. A great Enemy — I love a foe like Cathmor : his soul is great ; his arm is strong ; his battles are full of fame. But the little soul is like a vapor CHAP. XV.] MISTS AND FOGS. S9 that hovers round the marshy lake. It never rises on the green hill, lest the winds meet it there. A terrible Omen. — A mist rose slowly from the lake. It came, in the figure of an a^ed man, along the silent plain. Its large limbs did not move in steps ; for a ghost supported it in mid air. It came towards Selma's hall, and dissolved in a shower of blood. We must mention another instance of the poetical use of a mist, if it is only to indulge ourselves in one of those masterly passages of Dante, in which he contrives to unite minuteness of detail with the most grand and sovereign effect. It is in a lofty comparison of the planet Mars looking through morning vapors ; the reader will see with what (Purgatorio, c. ii., v. 10). Dante and his guide Virgil have just left the infernal regions, and are lingering on a solitary sea-shore in purgatory ; which reminds us of that still and far-thoughted verse — I Lone sitting by 'the shores of old romance. But to our English-like Italian. Noi eravam lungh' esso '1 mare ancora, &c. That solitary shore we still kept on, Like men, who musing on their journey, stay At rest in body, yet in heart are gone ; When lo ! as at the early dawn of day. Red Mars looks deepening through the foggy heat, Down in the west, far o'er the watery way; So did mine eyes behold (so may they yet) A light, which came so swiftly o'er the sea, ■ That never wing with such a fervor beat. I did but turn to ask what it might be Of my sage leader, when its orb had got Mort large meanwhile, and came more gloriously And by degrees, I saw I knew not what Of white about it ; and beneath the white Another. My great master uttered not One word, till those first issuing candours bright Fanned into wings ; but soon as he had found Who was the mighty voyager now in sight. He cried aloud, " Do\n, down, upon the ground, It is God's Angel." 6* 60 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvt CHAPTER XVI. The Shoemaker of Veyros, a Portuguese Tradition. In the time of the old kings of Portugal, Don John, a natural son of the reigning prince, was governor of the town of Veyros, in the province of Alentejo. The town was situate (perhaps is there still) upon a mountain, at the foot of which runs a river ; and at a little distance there was a ford over it, under another eminence. The bed of the river thereabouts was so high as to form a shallow sandy place ; and in that clear spot of water, the maidens of Veyros, both of higii rank and humble, used to wash their clothes. It happened one day, that Don John, riding out with a com- pany, came to the spot at the time the young women were so employed : and being, says our author, " a young and lusty gallant," he fell to jesting with his followers upon the bare legs of the busy girls, who had tucked up their clothes, as usual, to their work. He passed along the river ; and all his company had not gone by, when a lass in a red petticoat, while tucking it up, showed her legs somewhat high ; and clapping her hand on her right calf, said loud enough to be heard by the riders? "Here's a white leg, girls, for the Master of Avis."* These words, spoken probably out of a little lively bravado; upon the strength of the governor's having gone by, were repeat- ed to him when he got home, together with the action that accom- panied them : upon which the young lord felt the eloquence of the speech so deeply, that he contrived to have the fair speaker brought to him in private ; and the consequence was, that our lively natural son, and his sprightly challenger, had another natural son. * An order of knighthood, of which Don fohn was Master. CHAP. XVI.] THE SHOEMAKER OF VEYROS. 61 Ines (for that was the girl's name) was the daughter of a shoe maker in Veyros ; a man of very good account, and wealthy Hearing how his daughter had been sent for to the young gov ernor's house, and that it was her own light behavior that sub- jected her to what he was assured she willingly consented to, he took it so to heart, that at her return home, she was driven by him from the house, with every species of contumely and spurn- ing. After this he never saw her more. And to prove to the world and to himself, that his severity was a matter of principle, and not a mere indulgence of his own passions, he never after- wards lay in a bed, nor ate at a table, nor changed his linen, nor cut his hair, nails, or beard ; which latter grew to such a length, reaching below his knees, that the people used to call him Barbadon, or Old Beardy. In the meantime, his grandson, called Don Alphonso, not only grew to be a man, but was created Duke of Braganza, his father Don John having been elected to the crown of Portugal ; which he wore after such noble fashion, to the great good of his country, as to be surnamed the Memorable. Now the town of Veyros stood in the middle of seven or eight others, all belong- ing to the young Duke, from whose palace at Villa Viciosa it was but four leagues distant. He therefore had good intelligence of the shoemaker his grandfather ; and being of a humane and truly generous spirit, the accounts he received of the old man's way of life made him extremely desirous of paying him a visit. He accordingly went with a retinue to Veyros ; and meeting Barbadon in the streets, he alighted from his horse, bareheaded, and in the presence of that stately company and the people, ask- ed the old man his blessing. The shoemaker, astonished at this sudden spectacle, and at the strange contrast which it furnished to his humble rank, stared in a bewildered manner upon the unknown personage, who thus kn^lt to him in the public way ; and said, " Sir, do you mock me V " No," answered the Duke ; " may God so help me, as I do not : but in earnest I crave I may kiss your hand and receive your blessing, for I am your grandson, and son to Ines your daughter, conceived by the king, my lord and father." No sooner had the shoemaker heard these words, than he clapped his hands before his eyes, and said, " God 62 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xvi. bless me from ever beholding the son of so wicked a daughter as mine was ! And yet, forasmuch as you are not guilty of her offence, hold ; take my hand and my blessing, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." So saying, he laid one of his old hands upon the young man's head, blessing him ; but neither the Duke nor his followers could persuade him to take the other away from his eyes ; neither would he talk with him a word more. In this spirit, shortly after, he died ; and just before his death he directed a tomb to be made for him, on which were sculptured the tools belonging to his trade, with this epitaph : — " This sepulchre Barbadon caused to be made (Being of Veyros, a shoemaker by his trade), For himself and llie rest of his race, Excepting his daughter Ines in any case." The author says, that he has *' heard it reported by the ancientest persons, that the fourth Duke of Braganza, Don James, son to Donna Isabel, sister to the King Don Emanuel, caused that tomb to be defaced, being the sepulchre of his fourth grand- father."* As for the daughter, the conclusion of whose story comes lagging in like a penitent, "she continued," says the writer, " after she was delivered of that son, a very chaste and virtuous woman ; and the king made her commandress of Santos, a most honorable place, and very plentiful ; to the which none but prin- cesses were admitted, living, as it were, abbesses and princesses of a monastery built without the walls of Lisbon, called Santos, founded by reason of some martyrs that were martyred there. And the religious women of that place have liberty to marry with the knights of their order, before they enter into that holy profession." The rest of our author's remarks are in too curious a spirit to be omitted. " In this monastery," he says, " the same Donna * It appears by this, that the Don John of the tradition is John the First, who was elected king of Portugal, a' d became famous for his great quali- ties; and that his son by the E.Ueged shoemaker's daughter was his succes- Bor, Alphonso the Fifth. CHAP. XVI.] THE SHOEMAKER OF VEYROS. 63 Ines died, leaving behind her a glorious reputation for her virtue and holiness. Observe, gentle reader, the constancy that this Portuguese, a shoemaker, continued in, loathing to behold the honorable estate of his grandchild, nor would any more acknow- ledge his daughter, having been a lewd woman, for purchasing advancement with dishonor. This considered, you will not won- der at the Count Julian, that plagued Spain, and executed the king Roderigo for forcing his daughter La Cava. The example of this shoemaker is especially worthy the noting, and deeply to be considered : for, besides, that it makes good our assertion, it teaches the higher not to disdain the lower, as long as they bo virtuous and lovers of honor. It may be that this old man, for his integrity,' rising from a virtuous zeal, merited that a daugh- ter coming by descent from his grandchild, should be made Queen of Castile, and the mother of great Isabel, grandmother to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Ferdinando." Alas ! a pretty posterity our shoemaker had, in Philip II. and his successors, — a i-ace more suitable to his severity against his child, than his blessing upon his grandchild. Old Barbadon was a fine fellow too, after his fashion. We do not know how he reconciled his unforgiving conduct with his Christianity ; but he had enough precedents on that point. What we admire in him is, his showing that he acted out of principle, and did not mistake passion for it. His crepidarian sculptures indeed are not so well ; but a little vanity may be allowed to mingle with and soften such edge-tools of self-denial, as he chose to handle. His treatment of his daughter was ignorant, and in wiser times would have been brutal ; especially when it is considered how much the con- .duct of children is modified by education and other circumstan- ces : but then a brutal man would not have accompanied it with such voluntary suffering of his own. Neither did Barbadon leave his daughter to take her chance in the wide world, think- ing of the evils she might be enduring, only to give a greater zest of fancied pity to the contentedness of his cruelty. He knew she was well taken care of; and if she was not to have the enjoy- ment of his society, he was determined that it should be a very uncomfortable one to himself. He knew that she lay on a princely bed, while he would have none at all. lie knew that 64 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvi she was served upon gold and silver, while he renounced his old chestnut table, — the table at which she used to sit. He knew while he sat looking at his old beard, and the wilful sordid. ness of his hands, that her locks and her fair limbs were ob- jects of worship to the gallant and the great. And so he set off his destitutions against her over-possession ; and took out the punishment he gave her, in revenge upon himself. This was the instinct of a man who loved a principle, but hated nobody :^-of a man who, in a wiser time, would have felt the wisdom of kind- ness. Thus his blessing upon his grandchild becomes consistent with his cruelty to his child : and his living stock was a fine one in spite of him. His daughter showed a sense of the wound she had given such a father, by relinquishing the sympathies she loved, because they had hurt him : and her son, woi'thy of such a grandfather and such a daughter, and refined into a graceful- ness of knowledge by education, thought it no mean thing or vulgar to kneel to the grey-headed artisan in tlie street, and beg the blessing of his honest hand. CHAP. XVII.] MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES. 65 CHAPTER XV, I. More News of Ulysses. Talking the other day with a friend* about Dante, ne observed, that whenever so great a poet told anything in addition or con- tinuation of an ancient story, he had a right to be regarded as classical authority. For instance, said he, when he tells us of that characteristic death of Ulysses in one of the books of his Inferno, we ought to receive the information as authentic, and be glad that we have more news of Ulysses than we looked for. We thought this a happy remark, and instantly turned with him to the passage in question. The last account of Ulysses in the ancient poets, is his sudden re-appearance before the suitors at Ithaca. There is something more told of him, it is true, before the Odyssey concludes ; but with the exception of his visit to his aged father, our memory scarcely wishes to retain it ; nor does it controvert the general impression left upon us, that the wandering hero is victorious over his domestic enemies ; and reposes at last, and for life, in the bosom of his family. The lesser poets, however, could not let him alone. Homer leaves the general impression upon one's mind, as to the close of his life; but there are plenty of obscurer fables about it still. We have specimens in modern times of this propensity never to have done with a good story ; which is natural enough, though not very wise ; nor are the best writers likely to meddle with it. Thus Cervantes was plagued with a spurious Quixote ; and our circulating libraries have the adventures of Tom Jones in his Married Slate. The ancient writers on the present subject, availing themselves of an obscure prophecy of Tiresias, who tells Ulysses on his visit to hell, that his old enemy the sea would be the death of him at last, bring over the sea Telegonus, his * The late Mr. Keats. 6G THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvii son by the goddess Circe, who gets into a scuffle with the Itha- cans, and kills his fatlier unknowingly. It is added that Tele- gonus afterwards returned to his mother's island, taking Pene- lope and her half-brother Telemachus with him ; and here a singular arrangement takes place, more after the fashion of a modern Catholic dynasty, than an ancient heathen one ; for while QSdipus was fated to undergo such dreadful misfortunes for marrying his mother without the knowledge of either party, Minerva herself comes down from heaven, on the present occa- sion, to order Telegonus, the son. of Ulysses, to marry his father's wife ; the other son at the same time making a suitable match with his father's mistress, Circe. Telemachus seems to have had the best of this extraordinary bargain, for Circe was a god- dess, consequently always young ; and yet to perplex these windings-up still more, Telemachus is represented by some as marrying Circe's daughter, and killing his immortal mother-in- law. Nor does the character of the chaste and enduring Pene- lope escape in the confusion. Instead of waiting her husband's return in that patient manner, she is reported to have been over- hospitable to all the suitors ; the consequence of which was a son called Pan, being no less a personage than the god Pan him- self, or Nature ; a fiction, as Bacon says, " applied very absurd- ly and indiscreetly." There are different stories respecting her lovers ; but it is reported that when Ulysses returned from Troy, he divorced her for incontinence ; and that she fled, and passed her latter days in Mantinea. Some even go so far as to say, that her father Icarius had attempted to destroy her when young, because the oracle had told him that she would be the most dis- solute of the family. This was probably invented by the comic writers out of a buffoon malignity ; for there are men, so fool- ishly incredulous with regard to principle, that the reputation of it, even in a fiction, makes them impatient. Now it is impossible to say, whether Dante would have left Ulysses quietly with Penelope after all his sufferings, had he known them as described in Homer. The old Florentine, though wilful enough when he wanted to dispose of a modern's fate, had great veneration for his predecessors. At all events, he was not acquainted with Homer's works. They did not make CHAP. XVII.] MORE NEWS OF. ULYSSES. 67 their way~ back into Italy till a little later. But there were Latin writers extant, who might have informed h: in of the other stories relative to Ulysses ; and he saw nothing in them to hindei him from giving the great wanderer a death of his own. He has accordingly, with great attention to nature, made liim impatient of staying at home, after a life of such adventure and excitement. But we will relate the story in his own order. He begins it with one of his most romantic pieces of wildness. The poet and his guide Virgil are making the best of their difficult path along a ridge of the craggy rock that overhangs the eighth gulf of hell ; when Dante, looking down, sees the abyss before him full of flickering lights, as numerous, he says, as the fire- flies which a peasant, reposing on a hill, sees filling the valley, of a hot evening. Every flame shot about separately ; and he knew that some terrible mystery or other acco^npanied it. As he leaned down from the rock, grasping one of the crags, in order to look closer, his guide, who perceived his earnestness, said, " Within those fires are spirits; everyone swathed in what is burning him." Dante told liim, that he had already guessed as much ; and pointing to one of them in particular, asked who was in that fire which was divided at top, as though it had ascended from the funeral pile of the hating Theban brothers. " Within that," answered Virgil, " are Diomed and Ulysses, who speed together now to their own misery, as they used to do to that of others." They were suffering the penalty of the various frauds they had perpetrated in concert ; such as the contrivance of the Trojan horse, and the theft of the Palladium. Dante entreats, that if those who ai"e within the sparkling horror can speak, it may be made to come near. Virgil says it shall ; but begs the Florentine not to question it himself, as the spirits, being Greek, might be shy of holding discourse with him. When the flame has come near enough to be spoken to, Virgil addresses the " two within one fire ;" and requests them, if he ever deserved anything of them as a poet, great or little, that they would not go away, till one of them had told him how he came in that extremity. At this, says Dante, the greater horn of the old fire began to lap hither and thither, murmuring ; like a flame struggling with the wind. The top then, yearning to and fro, like a tongue try. 68, THE INDICATOR. [chap. xvn. ing to speak, threw out a voice, and said : " When I departed from Circe, who withdrew me to her for more than a year in. the neighborhood of Gaieta, before iEneas had so named it, neither the sweet company of my son, nor pious affection of my old father, nor the long-owed love with which I ougiit to have gladdened Penelope, could conquer the ardor that was in me jO become wise in knowledge of the world, of man's vices, and his virtue. I put forth into the great open deep with only one bark, and the small remaining crew by whom I had not been left. I saw the two sliores on either side, as far as Spain and Morocco ; and the island of Sardinia, and the other isles which the sea there bathes round about. Slowly we went, my companions and I, for we were old ; till at last we came to that narrow outlet, where Hercules set up his pillars, that no man might go further. I left Seville on Jhe right hand ; on the other I liad left Ceuta. O brothers, said I, who through a hundred thousand perils are at length arrived at the west, deny not to the short waking day that yet remains to our senses, an insight into the unpeopled world, setting your backs upon the sun. Consider the stock from which ye sprang : ye were not made to live like the brute beasts, but to follow virtue and knowledge. I so sharpened my companions with this little speech on our way, that it would have been diffi- cult fo]* me to have withheld them, if I would. We 'left the morning right in our stern, and made wings of our.oars for the idle flight, always gaining upon the left. The night now be- held all the stars of the other pole ; while our own was so low, that it arose not out of the ocean floor. Five times the light had risen underneath the moon, and five times fallen, since we put forth upon the great deep ; when we descried a dim mountain in the distance, which appeared higher to me than any I had seen ever before. We rejoiced, and as soon mourned : for there sprung a whirlwind from the new land, and struck the foremost frame of our vessel. Three times, with all the waters, it whirled us round ; at the fourth it dashed the stern up in air, and the prow downwards ; till, as seemed fit to others, the ocean closed above our heads." Tre volte 11 fe girar con tutte 1' acque : A la quarta levar ^ i poppa in suso, CHAP. XVII.] MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES. 69 E la prora ire ir gi«, come altrui piacque, Infin ch '1 mai- fu sopra noi richiuso. Why poor Ulysses should find himself in hell after his imrner sion, and be condemned to a swathing of eternal fire, while St. Dominic, who deluged Christianity with fire and Wood, is called a Cherubic Light, the Papist, not the poet, must explain. He puts all the Pagans in hell, because, however good some of them may have been, they lived before Christ, and could not worship God properly — (dehliamente). But he laments their state, and represents them as suffering a mitigated punishment ; they only live in a state of perpetual desire without hope (sol di ianto offesi) ! A sufficing misery, it must be allowed ; but coiiipared with the horrors he fancies for heretics and others, undoubtedly a great relief. Dunte, throughout his extraordinary work, gives many evidences of great natural sensibility ; and his countenance, as handed down to us, as well as the shade-struck gravity of his poetry, shows the cuts and disquietudes of heart he must have endured. But unless the occasional hell of his own troubles, and his consciousness of the mutability of all things, helped him to discover the brevity of individual suffering as a particular, and the lastingness of nature's benevolence as a universal, and thus gave his poem an intention beyond what appears upon the sur- face, we must conclude, that a bigoted education, and the fierce party politics in which he was a leader and sufferer, obscured the greatness of his spirit. It is always to be recollected, how- ever, as Mr. Coleridge has observed somewhere in other words, that when men consign each other to eternal punishment and such-like horrors, their belief is rather a venting of present im- patience and dislike, than anything which they take it for. The fiercest Papist or Calvini-st only flatters himself (a strange flat- tery, too !) that he could behold a fellow-creature tumbling and shrieking about in eternal fire. He would begin shrieking him- self in a few minutes ; and think that he and all heaven ought to pass away, rather than that one such agony should continue. Tertullian himself, when he longed to behold the enemies of his faith burning and liquefying, only meant, without knowing it, that he was in an excessive rage at not convincing everybody that read him. THE INDICATOR. [chap, xviii CHAPTER XVIII. Far Countries. Imagination, though no moan thing, is not a proud one. If it looks down from its wings upon common-places, it only the more perceives the vastness of the region about it. The infinity into which its flight carries it, might indeed throw back upon it a too great sense of insignificance, did not Beauty or Moral Justice, with its equal eye, look through that blank aspect of power, and re-assure it ; showing it that there is a power as much above power itself, as the thought that reaches to all, is to the hand that can touch only thus far. But we do not wish to get into this tempting region of specula- tion just now. We only intend to show the particular instance in which imagination instinctively displays its natural humility ; we mean, the fondness which imaginative times and people have shown for what is personally remote from them ; for what is opposed to their own individual consciousness, even in range of space, in farness of situation. There is no surer mark of a vain people than their treating other nations with contempt, especially those of whom they know least. It is better to verify the proverb, and take everything unknown for magnificent, than, predetermine it to be worthless. The gain is greater. Tlie instinct is more judicious. When we 'mention the French as an instance, we do not mean to be invidious. Most nations have their good as well as bad features. In Vanity Fair tliere are many booths. The French, not long ago, praised one of their neighbors so highly, that the latter is suspected to have lost as muc4i modesty, as tlie former gained by it. But they did this as a set-off against their own despots and bigots. When they again became the greatest power in Europe, they had a relapse of their old- egotism The French, though an amiable and intelli- CHAF xvin.] FAR COUNTRIES. 71 gent people, are not an imaginative one. The greatest height they go is in a balloon. They get no farther than France, let them go where they will. They " run the great circle and are s'lU at home," like a squirrel in his rolling cage. Instead of going to Nature in their poetry, they would make her come to them, and dress herself at their last new toilet. In philosophy and metaphysics, they divest themselves of gross prejudices, and then think they are in as graceful a state of nakedness as Adam and Eve. At the time when the French had this lit upon them of prais- ing tiie English (which was nevertheless the horiester one of the two), they took to praising the Chinese for numberless unknown qualities. This seems a contradiction to the near-sightedness we speak of : but the reason they praised them was, that the Chinese had the merit of religious toleration : a great and extra- ordinary one certainly, and not the less so for having been, to all appearance, the work of one man. All the romance of China, such as it was, — anything in which they differed from the French,. — their dress, their porcelain towers, their Great Wall, — was nothing. It was the particular agreement with the philosophers. It happened, curiously enough, that they could not have selected for their panegyric a nation apparently more contempt- uous of others ;. or at least more self satisfied and unimagina- tive. The Chinese are cunning and ingenious ; and have a great talent at bowing out ambassadors who come to visit tliem. But it is somewhat inconsistent with what appears to be their general character, that they should pay. strangers even this equivocal compliment; for under a prodigious mask of polite- ness, they are not slow to evince their contempt of other nations, whenever any comparison is insinuated with the subjects of tlie Brother of the Sun and Moon. The knowledge they respect in us most is that of gun-making, and of the East-Indian passage. When our countrymen showed them a map of the earth, they inquired for China ; and on finding that it only made a little piece in a corner, could not contain their derision. They thought that it was the mao territory in the middle, the apple of the world's eye. 7* 72 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xviii. On the other hand, the most imaginative nations, in their highest times, have had a respect for remote countries. It is a mistake to suppose that the ancient term barbarian, applied to foreigners, suggested the meaning we ai'e apt to give it. It gathered some such insolence with it in the course of time ; but the more intellectual Greeks venerated the countries from which they brought the elements of their mythology and philosophy. The philosopher travelled into Egypt, like a son to see his father. The merchant heard in Phoenicia the far-brought sto- ries of other realms, which he told to his delighted countrymen. It is supposed, that the mortal part of Mentor in the Odysseywas drawn from one of these voyagers. When Anacharsis the Scy- thian was reproached with his native place by an unworthy Greek, he said, " My country may be a shame to me, but you are a shame to your country." Greece had a lofty notion of the Persians and the Great King, till Xerxes came over to teach it better, and betrayed the softness of their skulls. It was the same with the Arabians, at the time when they had the accomplishments of the world to themselves ; as we see by their delightful tales. Everything shines with them in the dis- tance, like a sunset. What an amiable people are their Per- sians ! What a wonderful place is the island of Serendib ! You would think nothing could be finer than the Caliph's city of Bagdat, till you hear of "Grand Cairo ;" and how has that epithet and that name towered in the imagination of all those, who have not had the misfortune to see the modern city ? Sind- bad was respected, like Ulysses, because he had seen so many adventures and nations. So was Aboulfaouris the Great Voy- ager, in the Persian Tales. His very name sounds like a wonder. With many a fempost had his beard been shaken. It was one of the workings of the great Alfred's mind, to know about far-distant countries. There is a translation by him of a book of geography ; and he even employed people to travel: a great stretcl: if intellectual munificence for those times. About the same period, Haroun al Ruschid (whom our CHAP. XVIII.] FAR COUNTRIES. 73 manhood is startled to find almost a less real person than we thought him, for his very reality) wrote a letter to the Emperor of the West, Charlemagne. Here is Arabian and Italian romance, shaking hands in person. The Crusades pierced into a new world of remoteness. We do not know whether those were much benefited, who took part in them ; but for the imaginative person remaining at home, the idea of going to Palestine must have been like travelling into a supernatural world. When the campaign itself had a good effect, it must have been of a very fine and highly-tempered description. Chaucer's Knight had been Sometime with the lord of Palatie Agen another hethen in Turkic : And evermore he had a sovereign price : And though that he was worthy, he was wise, And of his port as meek as is a mayde. How like a return from the moon must have been the re-ap- pearance of such travellers as Sir John Mandevile, Marco Polo, and William de Rubruquis, with their news of Prester John, the Great Mogul, and the Great Cham of Tartary ! The long-lost voyager must have been like a person consecrated in all the quarters of heaven. His staff and his beard must have looked like relics of his former self. The Venetians, who were some of the earliest European travellers, have been remarked, among their other amiable qualities, for their great respect for stran- gers. The peculiarity of their position, and the absence of so many things Avhich are common-places to other countries, such as streets, horses, and coaches, add, no doubt, to this feeling. But a foolish or vain people would only feel a contempt for what they did not possess. Milton, in one of those favorite pas- sages of his, in which he turns a nomenclature into such grand meaning and music, shows us whose old footing he had delight- ed to follow. How he enjoys the distance ; emphatically using the words far, farthest, and utmost f — Embassies from regions far remote, In varigbs habits, on the Appian road, Or on the Emilian ; some from farthest south, 74 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvin Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe, Nilotick Isle ; and more to west The realm of Bocchus to the Black-moor sea ; From the Asian kings, and Parthian among these ; From India and the golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle Taprobane. — Farad. Reg., b. iv. One of our main helps to our love of remoteness in general, is the associations we connect with it of peace and quietness. Whatever there may be at a distance, people feel as if they should escape from the worry of their local cares. " O that I had wings like a dove ! then would I fly away and be at rest." The word^flr is often used wilfully in poetry, to render distance still more distant. An old English song begins — In Irelande farre over the sea ■ There dwelt a bonny king. Thomson, a Scotchman, speaking of the western isles of his own country, has that delicious line, full of a dreary yet lulling pleasure ; — As when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles, Placed far amid the melancholy main. In childhood, the total ignorance of the world, especially when we are brought up in some confined spot, renders everything be- yond the bounds of our dwelling a distance and a romance. Mr. Lamb, in his Recollections of Christ's Hospital, says that he remembers when some half-dozen of his school-fellows set off, " without map, card, or compass, on a serious expedition to find out Philip Quarll's Island." We once encountered a set of boys as romantic. It was at no greater distance than at the foot of a hill near Hampstcad ; yet the spot was so perfectly Cisal- pine to them, that two of them came up to us with looks of basil- ing eagerness, and asked " whether, on the other side of that hill, there were not robbers;" to which, the minor adventurer of the two added, " and some say serpenfs." They had all got bows and arrows, and were evidently hovering about the place, betwixt daring and apprehension, as on the borders of some wild CHAP. XVIII.] FAR COUNTRIES. 75 region. We smiled to think which it was that husbanded their suburb wonders to more advantage, they or we : for while they peopled the place with robbers and serpents, we were peopling it with sylvans and fairies. " So was it when my life began ; So is it now I am a man ; So be it when I shall grow old ; Or let me die ! The cliild is father to the man ; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety." 76 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xrx. CHAPTER XIX. A Tale for a Chimney Corner. A MAr< vvho does not contributo his quota of grim story no\v-a- days, seems hardly to be free of the republic of letters. He is bound to wear a death's head, as part of his insignia. If he docs not frighten everybody, he is nobody. If he does not shock the ladies, what can bo expected of him ? We confess we think very cheaply of these stories in general. A story, merely horrible or even awful, which contains no senti- ment elevating to t!ie human heart and its hopes, is a more ap- peal to the least judicious, least healthy, and least masculine of our passions, — fear. They whose attention can be gravely ar- rested by it, are in a fit state to receive any absurdity with re- spect ; and this is the reason, why less talents are required to enforce it, than in any other species of composition. With this opinion of such tilings, we may be allowed to say, that we would undertake to write a dozen horrible stories in a day, all of which should make tlie common worsliippers of power, who were not in the very healthiest condition, turn palo. We would tell of Haunting Old Women, and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary Lean Hands, and Empusas on one Leg, and Ladies growing Longer and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through Key-holes, and Plaintive Heads, and Siirieking Statues, and Shocking Anomalies of Shape, and Things which when seen drove peep e mad ; and Indigestion knows what besides. But who would measure talents with a leg of veal, or a German sausage? Mere grimness is as easy as grinning ; but it requires some- thing to put a hardsome face on a story. Narratives become of suspicious merit in proportion as they lean to Newgate-like offences, particularly of blood and wounds. A child has a rea- sonable respect for a Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, because all CHAP. XIX.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 77 images whatsoever of pain and terror are new and fearful to his inexperienced age : but sufferings merely physical (unless sublimated like those of Philoctetes) are common-places to a grown man. Images, to become awful to him, must be removed from the grossness of the shambles. A death's-head was a respectable thing in the hands of- a poring monk, or of a nun compelled to avoid the idea of life and society, or of a hermit already buried in the desert. Holbein's Dance of Death, in which every grinning skeleton leads along a man of rank, from the pope to the gentleman, is a good Memento Mori ; but there the skeletons have an air of the ludicrous and satirical. If we were threatened with them in a grave way, as spectres, we should have a right to ask how they could walk about without muscles. Thus many of the tales written by such authors as the late Mr. Lewis, who wanted sentiment to give him the heart of truth, are quite puerile. When his spectral nuns go about bleeding, we think they ought in decency to have applied to some ghost of a surgeon. His little Grey Men, who sit munch- ing hearts, are of a piece with fellows that eat cats for a wager. Stories that give mental pain to no purpose, or to very little purpose compared with the unpleasant ideas they excite of human nature, are as gross mistakes, in their way, as these, and twenty times as pernicious : for the latter become ludicrous to grown people. They originate also in the same extremes, of callous- ness, or of morbid want of excitement, as the others. But more of these hereafter. Our business at present is with things ghastly and ghostly. A ghost story, to be a good one, should unite, as much as possi- ble, objects such as they are in life, with a preternatural spirit. And to be a perfect one, — at least to add to the other utility of excitement a moral utility, — they should imply some great sen- timent, — something that comes out of the next world to remind us of our duties in this ; or something that helps to carry on the idea of our humanity into after life, even when we least think we shall take it with us. When " the buried majesty of Den- mark " revisits earth to speak to his son Hamlet, he comes armed, as he used to be, in his complete steel. His visor is raised ; and 78 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xix. the same fine face is ihere ; only, in spite of his punishing errand and his own sufferings, with A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. When Donne the poet, in liis thoughtful eagerness to reconcile life and death, had a figure of himself painted in a shroud, and laid by his bedside in a coffin, he did a higher thing than the monks and hermits with their skulls. It was taking his humanity with him into the other world, not affecting to lower the sense of it by regarding it piecemeal or in the frame-work. Burns, in his Ta?n O'Shanter, shows the dead in their coffins after the same fashion. He does not lay bare to us their skeletons or refuse, things with which we can connect no sympathy or spiritual won- der. They still are flesh and body to retain the one ; yet so look and behave, inconsistent in their very consistency, as to excite the other. Coffins stood round like open presses, Which showed the dead in their last dresses : And by some devilish cantrip sleight, Each, in his cauld hand, held a light. Re-animation is perhaps the most ghastly of all ghastly things, uniting as it does an appearance of natural interdiction from the next world, with a supernatural experience of it. Our human consciousness is jarred out of its self-possession. The extremes of habit and newness, of common-place and astonishment, meet suddenly, without the kindly introduction of death and change; and the stranger appals us in proportion. When the account appeared the other day in the newspapers of the galvanized dead body, whose features as well as limbs underwent such contortions, that it seemed as if it were about to rise up, one almost expected to hear, for the first time, news of the other world. Perhaps the most appalling figure in Spenser is that of Maleger : [Fairy Queene, b. II., c. xi.) Upcn a tygre swift and fierce he rode, That as the winde ran underneath his lode, Whiles his long legs nigh raught unto the ground • CHAP. XIX.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 79 Full large he was of limbe, and shoulder'ffbrode, But of such subtile substance and unsound. That like a ghost he seemed, whose grave-clothes were unbound. Mr, Coleridge, in that voyage of his to the brink of all unut- terable things, the Ancient Mariner (which works out, however, a fine sentiment), does not set mere ghosts or hobgoblins to man the ship again, when its crew are dead ; but re-animates, for a while, the crew themselves. There is a striking fiction of this sort in Sale's notes upon the Koran. Solomon dies during the building of the temple, but his body remains leaning on a stafi and overlooking the workmen, as if it were alive ; till a worm gnawing through the prop, he falls down. — The contrast of the appearance of humanity with something mortal or supernatural, is always the more terrible in proportion as it is complete. In the pictures of the temptations of saints and hermits, where the holy person is surrounded, teazed, and enticed, with devils and fantastic shapes, the most shocking phantasm is that of the beau- tiful woman. To return also to the poem above-mentioned. The most appalling personage in Mr. Coleridge'' & Ancieyit Mari- ner is the Spectre-woman who is called Life-in-Death. He ren- ders the most hideous abstraction more terrible than it could otherwise have been, by embodying it in its own reverse. "Death" not only "lives" in it; but the "unutterable" be- comes uttered. To see such an unearthly passage end in such earthliness, seems to turn common-place itself into a sort of spectral doubt. The Mariner, after describing the horrible calm, and the rotting sea in which the ship was stuck, is speaking of a strange sail which he descried in the distance : The western wave was all a-flame, The day was well-nigh done ! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad bright sun ; When that strange shape drove suddenly Betwixt us and the sun. And straight the sun was flecked wit! bars (Hbaven's Mother send us grace !) As if through a dungeon-grate he peer d, With broad and burning face. 80 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xix. Alas ! (thought I, and my heiirt beat loud) How fast she nears and nears ! Are those her sails that glance in the sun Like restless gossamcres ? Are those her ribs, through which the sun' Did peer, as through a grate ? And is that Woman all her crew ? Is that a Death ? and are there two .' Is Death that Woman's mate ? ' Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold, Her skin was as white as leprosy. The Night-Mare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. But we must come to Mr. Coleridge's story with our subtlest imaginations upon us. Now let us put our knees a little nearer the fire, and tell a homelier one about Life in Death. The groundwork of it is in Sandys' Commentary upon Ovid, and quoted from Sabinus.* A gentleman of Bavaria, of a noble family, was so afflicted at the death of his wife, that unable to bear the company of any other person, he gave himself up to a solitary way of living. This was the more remarkable in him, as he had been a man of jovial habits, fond of his wine and visitors, and impatient of having his numerous indulgences contradicted. But in the same temper perhaps might be found the cause of his sorrow ; for though he would be impatient with his wife, as with others, yet his love for her was one of the gentlest wills he had ; and the sweet and unaffected face which she always turned upon his anger, might have been a thing more easy for him to trespass upon while living, than to forget, when dead and gone. His very anger towards her, compared with that towards others, was a relief to him. It was rather a wish to refresh himself in the balmy feeling of her patience, than to make her unhappy her- self, or to punish her, as some would have done, for that virtuous contrast to his own vice. * The Saxon Latin poet, we presume, professor of belles-lettres at Frank- fort. We know notliing of him except from a biographical dictionary. CHAP. XIX.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 81 But whether he bethought himself, after her death, that this was a very selfish mode of loving ; or whether, as some thought, he had wearied out her life with habits so contrary to her own ; or whether, as others reported, he had put it to a fatal risk by some lordly piece of self-will, in consequence of which she had caught a fever on the cold river during a night of festivity ; he surprised even those who thought that he loved her, by the ex- treme bitterness of his grief. The very mention of festivity, though he was patient for the first day or two, afterwards threw him into a passion of rage ; but by degrees even his rage followed his other old habits. He was gentle, but ever silent. He ate and drank but sufficient to keep him alive ; and he used to spend the greater part of the day in the spot where his wife was buried. He Was going there one evening, in a very melancholy man- ner, with his eyes turned towilrds the earth, and had just entered the rails of the burial-ground, when he was accosted by the mild voice of somebody coming to meet him. " It is a blessed even- ing. Sir," said the voice. The gentleman looked up. Nobody but himself was allowed to be in the place at that hour ; and yet he saw, with astonishment, a young chorister approaching liim. He was going to express some wonder, when, he said, the modest though assured look of the boy, and the extreme beauty of his countenance, which glowed in the setting sun before him, made an irresistible addition to the singular sweetness of his voice: and he asked him with an involuntary calmness, and a gesture of respect, not what he did there, but what he wished. " Only to wish you all good things," answered the stranger, who had now come up, "and to give you this letter." The gentle- man took the letter, and saw upon it, with a beating yet scarcely bewildered heart, the handwriting of his wife. He raised his eyes again to speak to the boy, but he was gone. He cast them far and near round the place, but there were no traces of a pas- senger. He then opened the letter ; and by the divine light of the setting sun, read these words : " To my dear husband, who sorrows for his wife : "Otto, my husband, the soul you regret so is returned. You 82 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xix will know the truth of this, and be prepared with calmness to see it, by the divineness of the messenger, who has passed you. You will find me sitting in the public walk, praying for you : praying, that you may never more give way to those gusts of passion, and those curses against others, which divided us. " This, with a warm hand, from the living Bertha." Otto (for such, it seems, was the gentleman's name) went in- stantly, calmly, quickly, yet with a sort of benumbed being, to the public walk. He felt, but with only a half-consciousness, as if he glided without a body. But all his spirit was awake, eager, intensely conscious. It seemed to him as if there had been but two things in the world — Life and Death ; and that Death was dead. All else appeared to have been a dream. He had awaked from a waking state, and found himself all eye, and spirit, and locomotion. He said to himself, 6nce, as he went ; " This is not a dream. I will ask my great ancestors to-morrow to my new bridal feast, for they are alive." Otto had been calm at first, but something of old and triumphant feelings seemed again to come over him. Was he again too proud and confident ? Did his earthly humors prevail again, when he thought them least upon him ? We shall see. The Bavarian arrived at the public walk. It was full of peo- ple with their wives and children, enjoying the beauty of the eveninfT. Something like common fear came over him, as he went in and out among them, looking at the benches on each side. It happened that there was only one person, a lady, sitting upon them. She had her veil down ; and his being underwent a fierce but short convulsion, as he went near her. Something had a little baffled the calmer inspiration of the angel that had accosted him : for fear prevailed at the instant, and Otto passed on. He returned before he had reached the end of the walk, and approached the lady again. She was still sitting in the same quiet posture, only he thought she looked at him. Again he passed her. On his second return, a grave and sweet courage came upon him, and in an under but firm tone of inquiry, he said, ' Bertha ?" — " I thought you had forgotten me," said that well- known and mellow voice, which he had seemed as far from ever CHAP. XIX.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 83 hearing again as earth is from heaven. He took her hand, which grasped his in turn ; and they walked home in silence together, the arm, which was wound within his, giving warmth for warmth. The neighbors seemed to have a miraculous want of wonder at the lady's re-appearance. Something was said about a mock funeral, and her having withdrawn from his company for awhile ; but visitors came as before, and his wife returned to her house- hold affairs. It was only remarked that she always looked pale and pensive. But she was more kind to all, even than before ; and her pensiveness seemed rather the result of some great inter- nal thought, than of unhappiness. For a year or two, the Bavarian retained the better temper which he acquired. His fortunes flourished beyond his earliest ambition ; 'the most amiable as well as noble persons of the dis- trict were frequent visitors ; and people.said, that to be at Otto's house, must be the next thing to being in heaven. But by degrees his self-will returned with his prosperity. He never vented im- patience on his wife ; but he again began to show, that the dis- quietude it gave her to see it vented on others, was a secondary tiling, in his mind, to the indulgence of it. Whether it was, that his grief for her loss had been rather remorse than affection, so he held himself secure if he treated her well ; or whether he was at all times rather proud of her, than fond ; or whatever was the cause which again set his antipatliies above his sympathies, cer- tain it was, that his old habits returned upon him ; not so often, indeed, but with greater violence and pride when they did. These were the only ti'^iies, at which his wife was observed to show any ordinary symptoms of uneasiness. At length, one day, some strong rebuff which he had received from an alienated neighbor threw him into such a transport of rage, that he gave way to the most bitter imprecations, crying with a loud voice — " This treatment to me too ! To me I To me, who if the world knew all" At these words his wife, who had in vain laid her hand upon his, and looked him with dreary earnestness in the face, suddenly glided from the room. He and two or three who were present, were struck with a dumb horror. They said, she did not walk out, nor vanish suddenly j but glided, as one who could dispense with the use of feet. After 8* 84 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xix a moment's pause, the others proposed to him to follow her. He made a movement of despair ; but they went. There was a short pas&age, which turned to the right into her favorite room. They knocked at the door twice or three times, and received no answer. At last one of them gently opened it ; and looking in, they saw her, as they thought, standing before a fire, which was the only light in the room. Yet she stood so far from it, as rather to be in the middle of the room ; only the face was towards the fire, and she seemed looking upon it. They addressed her, but received no answer. They stepped gently towards her, and still received none. The figure stood dumb and unmoved. At last, one of them went round in front, and instantly fell on the floor. The figure was without body. A hollow hood was left instead of a face. The clothes were standing upright by themselves. That room was blocked up for ever, for the clothes, if it might be so, to moulder away. It was called the Room of the Lady's Figure. The house, after the gentleman's death, was long unin- habited, and at length burnt by the peasants in an insurrection. As for himself, he died about nine months after, a gentle and child-like penitent. He had never stirred from the house since ; and nobody would venture to go near him, but a man who had the reputation of being a reprobate. It was from this man that the particulars of the story came first. He would distribute the gentleman's alms in great abundance to any strange poor who would accept them ; for most of the neighbors held them in horror. He tried all he could to get the parents among them to let some of their little children, or a single one of them, go to see his employer. They said he even asked it one day with tears in his eyes. But they shuddered to think of it ; and the matter was not mended, when this profane person, in a fit of impatience, said one day that he would have a child of his own on purpose. His employer, however, died in a day or two. They did not believe a word he told them of all the Bavarian's gentleness, looking upon the latter as a sort of Ogre, and upon his agent aa little better, though a good-natured looking earnest kind of per- son. It was said many years after, that this man had been a frieiid of the Bavarian's when young, and had been deserted by him. And the young believed it, whatever the old might do. CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 85 CHAPTER XX. Thieves, Ancient and Modern. Having met in the Harleian Miscellany with an account of a pet thief of ours, the famous Du Vail, who flourished in the time of Charles the Second, and wishing to introduce him worthily to the readers, it has brought to mind such a number of the light- fingered gentry, his predecessors, that we almost feel hustled by the thoughts of them. Our subject, we may truly fear, will run away with us. We feel beset, like poor Tasso in his dungeon ; and are not sure that our paper will not suddenly be conveyed away from under our pen. Already we miss some excellent remarks, which we should have made in this place. If the reader should meet with any of that kind hereafter, upon the like subject, in another man's writings, twenty to one they are stolen from us, and ought to have enriched this' our plundered exor- dium. He that steals an author's purse, may emphatically be said to steal trash ; but he that filches from him his good things Alas, we thought our subject would be running away with us. We must keep firm. We must put something heavier in our remarks, as the little thin Grecian philosopher used to put lead in his pockets, lest the wind should steal him. The more ruffianly crowd of thieves should go first, as pioneers ; but they can hardly be looked upon as progenitors of our gentle Du Vail ; and besides, with all their ferocity, some of them assume a grandeur, from standing in the remote shadows of antiquity. There was the famous son, for instance, of Vul- can and Medusa, whom Virgil calls the dire aspect of half-human Cacus — ScmihominisCacifacies dira. (^iieid, B.VIIL, V. 194.) He was the raw-hcad-and-bloody-bones of ancient fable. He lived in a cave by Mount Aventine, breathing out fiery smoke, and haunting king Evander's highway like the Apollyon of Pilgrim's Progress. 86 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xi. Scmperque recenti Caede tepcbat humus; foribusque adfixa auperbis Ora virum tristi pendebant pallida tabo. The place about was ever in a plash Of steaming blood ; and o'er the insulting door Hung pallid human heads, defaced with dreary gore. He stole some of the cows of Hercules, and dragged tlrem backwards into his cave to prevent discovery ; but the oxen happening to low, the cows answered them ; and the demigod, detecting tlie miscreant in his cave, strangled him after a hard encounter. -This is one of the earliest sharping tricks upon record. Autolycus, the son of Mercury (after whom Shakspeare christened his merry rogue in the Winter's Tale), was a thief suitable to the greater airiness of his origin. He is said to have' performed tricks which must awake the envy even of horse- dealers ; for in pretending to return a capital horse which he had stolen, he palmed upon the owners a sorry jade of an ass; which was gravely received by those fiats of antiquity. Another time he went still further • for having conveyed away a hand- some bride, he sent in exchange an old lady elaborately hideous ; yet the husband did not find out the trick till he had got off. Autolycus himself, however, was outwitted by Sisyphus, the son of ^olus. Autolycus was in the habit of stealing his neighbors' cattle, and altering the marks upon them. Among others he stole some from Sisyphus ; but notwithstanding his usual precautions, he was astonished to find the latter come and pick out his oxen, as if nothing had happened. He had marked them under the hoof. Autolycus, it seems, had the usual gene- rosity of genius ; and was so pleased with this evidence of supe- rior cunnting, that some say he gave him in marriage his daugh- ter Anticlea, who was afterwards the wife of Laertes, the father of Ulysses. According to others, however, he only favored him with his daughter's company for a time, a fashion not yet extinct in some primitive countries ; and it was a reproach made against Ulysses, that Laertes was only his pretended, and Sisyphus his real father. Sisyphus has the credit of being the greatest knave of antiquity. His famous pun'shment in hell, of being compelled CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 87 lo I'oU a stone up a hill to all eternity, and seeing it always go down again, is attributed by some to a characteristic trait, which he could not help playing off upon Pluto. It was supposed by the ancients, that a man's ghost wandered in a melancholy man- ner upon the banks of the Styx, as long as his corpse remained without burial. Sisyphus on his death-bed purposely charged his wife to leave him unburied; and then begged Pluto's permission to go back to earth, on his parole, merely to punish her for so scandalous a neglect. Like the lawyer, however, who contrived to let his hat fall inside the door of heaven, and got St. Peter's permission to step in for it, Sisyphus would not return : and so when Pluto had him again, he paid him for the trick with setting him upon this everlasting job. The exploits of Mercury himself, the god of cunning, may be easily imagined to surpass everything achieved by profaner hands. Homer, in the hymn to his honor, has given a delight- ful account of his prematurity in swindling. He had not been born many hours before he stole Vulcan's tools, Mars' sword, and Jupiter's sceptre. He beat Cupid in a wrestling bout on the same day ; and Venus caressing him for his conquest, he returned the embrace by filching away her girdle. He would also have stolen Jupiter's thunderbolts, but was afraid of burn- ing his fingers. On the evening of his birth-day, he drove off the cattle of Admetus, which Apollo was tending. The good- humored god of wit endeavored to frighten him into restoring them ; but could not help laughing when, in the midst of his threatenings, he found himself without his quiver. The history of thieves is to be found either in that of romance, or in the details of the history of cities. The latter have not come down to us from the ancient world, with some exceptions in the comic writers, immaterial to our present purpose, and in the loathsome rhetoric of Petronius. The finest thief in old his- tory is the pirate who made that famous answer to Alexander, in which he said that the conqueror was only the mightier thief of the two. The story of the thieving architect in Herodotus we will tell another time. We can call to mind no othei thieves in the Greek and Latin writers (always excepting politi- cal ones) exci'pt some paltry fellows who stole napkins at din- 83 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx ner; and the robbers in Apuleius, the precursors of those in Gil Bias. When we coine, however, to the times of the Arabians and of chivalry, they abound in all their glory, both great and small. Who among us does not know by heart the story of the nevei'-to-bc-forgottcn Forty Thieves, with their treasure in the green M'ood, their anxious observer, their magical opening of the door, their captain, their concealment in the jar, and the: scalding oil, that, as it were, extinguished them groaning, one by one ? Have we not all ridden backwards and forwards with them to the wood a hundred times ? — watched them, with fear and trembling, from the tree ? — sown up, blindfolded, the four quarters of the dead body ? — and said, " Open Sesame," to every door at school ? May we ride with them again and again ; or we shall lose our appetite for some of the best things in the world. We -pass over those interlopers in our English family, the Danes ; as well as Rolla the Norman, and other freebooters, who only wanted less need of robbery, to become respectable conquerors. In fact, they did so, as they got on. We have also no particular worthy to select from among that hos,t of petty chieftains, who availed themselves of their knightly cas- tles and privileges, to commit all sorts of unchivalrous outrages. These are the giants of modern romance ; and the Veglios, Malcngins, and Pinabellos, of Pulci, Spenser, and Ariosto. They survived in the petty states of Italy a long while ; gradu- ally took a less solitary, though hardly less ferocious shape, among the fierce political partisans recorded by Dante ; and at length became represented by the men of desperate fortunes, who made such a figure, between the gloomy and the gallant, in Mrs. Radclifle's Mysteries of Udo/pho. The breaking up of the late kingdom of Italy, with its dependencies, has again revived them in some degree ; but not, we believe, in any shape above common robbery. The regular modern thief seems to make his appearance for the first time in the imaginary charac- ter of Bruncllo, as described by Boiardo and Ariosto. He is a fellow that steals every valuable that comes in his way. The way in which he robs Sacripant, king of Circassia, of his horse, has been .ridiculed by Cervantes ; if indeed he did not rather CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. S'rf repeat it with great zest : for his use of the theft is really not such a caricature as in Boiardo and his great follower. While Sancho is sitting lumpishly asleep upon the back of his friend Dapple, Gines de Passamonte, the famous thief, comes and gently withdraws the donkey from under him, leaving the som- niculous squire propped upon a saddle with four sticks. His consternation on waking may be guessed. But in the Italian poets, the Circassian prince has only fallen into a deep medita- tion, when Brunello draws away his steed. Ariosto appears to have thought tliis extravagance a hazardous one, though he could not deny himself the pleasure of repeating it; for he has made Sacripant blush, when called upon to testify how the horse was stolen from him. (^Orlando Furio., Lib. XXVII., St. 84.) In the Italian Novels and the old French Tales, are a variety of extremely amusing stories of thieves, all most probably found- ed on fact. We will give a specimen as we go, by way of making this article the completer. A doctor of laws in Bologna had become rich enough, by scraping money together, to indulge himself in a grand silver cup, which he sent home one day to his wife from the goldsmith's. There were two sharping fel- lows prowling about that day for a particular object ; and getting scent of the cup, they laid their heads together, to contrive how they might indulge themselves in it instead. One of them accordingly goes to a fishmonger's, and buys a fine lamprey, which he takes to the doctor's wife, with her husband's compli- ments, and he would bring a company of his brother doctors with him to dinner, requesting in the meantime that she would send back the cup by the bearer, as he had forgotten to have his arms engraved upon it. The good lady, happy to obey all these pleasing impulses on the part of master doctor, takes in the fish, and sends out the cup, with equal satisfaction ; and sets about getting the dinner ready. The doctor comes home at his usual hour,, and finding his dinner so much better than ordinary, asks with an air of wonder, where was the necessity of going to that expense : upon which the wife, putting on an air of wonder in her turn, and proud of possessing the new cup, asks him where are all those brother doctors, whom he said he should bring with him. 90 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. "What does the fool mean ?" said the testy old gentleman. " Mean !" rejoined the wife — " what does this mean ?" pointing to the fish. The doctor looked down with his old eyes at the lam- prey. " God knows," said he, " what it means. I am sure I don't know what it means more than any other fish, except that I shall have to pay a pretty sum for every mouthful you eat of it.'» — "Why, it was your own doing, husband," said the wife;'* " and you will remember it, perhaps, when you recollect that the same man that brought me the fish, was to take away the cup to have your name engraved upon it." At this the doctor started back, with his eyes as wide open as the fish's, exclaiming, " And you gave it him, did you ?" — " To be sure I did," return- ed the good housewife. The old doctor here began a passionate speech, which he suddenly broke off" ; and after stamping up and down the room, and crying out that he was an undone advo- cate, ran quivering out into the street like one frantic, asking everybody if he had seen a man with a lamprey. The two rogues were walking all this time in the neighborhood ; and seeing the doctor set off, in his frantic fit, to the goldsmith's, and knowing that he who brought the lamprey had been well disguis- ed, they began to ask one another, in the jollity of their triumph, what need there was for losing a good lamprey, because they had gained a cup. The other therefore went to the doctor's house, and putting on a face of good liews, told the wife that the cup was found. " Master doctor," said he, " bade me come and tell you that it was but a joke of your old friend What's-his name." — " Castellani, I warrant me," said the wife, with a face broad with delight. "The same,'" returned he : — " master doctor says that Signer Castellani, and the other gentlemen he spoke of, are waiting for you at the Signor's house, where they propose to laugh away the choler they so merrily raised, with a good dinner and wine, and to that end they have sent me for the lamprey."' — " Take it in God's name," said the good woman ; " I am heartily glad to see it go out of the house, and shall follow it myself speed- . ily." So saying, she gave him the fine hot fish, with some sauce, between two dishes ; and the knave, who felt already round the corner with glee, slid it under his cloak, and made the best of his waj- to his companion, who lifted up his hands and eyes -HAP. xx.l THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 91 at sight of him, and asked twenty questions in a breath, and chuckled, and slapped his thigh, and snapped his fingers for joy, to think w hat a pair of fools two rogues had to do with. Little did the despairing doctor, on his return home, guess what they were saying of him as he passed the wall of the house in which they were feasting. " Heyday !" cried the wife, smiling all abroad, as she saw him entering, " what, art thou come to fetch me then, bone of my bone ? Well ; if this isn't the gallantest day I have seen many a year I It puts me in mind — it puts me in mind" Here the chirping old lady was about to remind the doctor of the days of his youth, holding out her arms and raising her quivering voice, when (we shudder to relate) she received a considerable cuff on the left cheek. " You make me mad," cried the doctor, " with your eternal idiotical nonsense. What do you mean by coming to fetch you, and the gallantest day of your life ? May the devil fetch you, and me, and that invisible fiend that stole the cup." — "What!" exclaimed the wife, sud- denly changing her tone from a vociferous complaint which she had unthinkingly set up, " did you send nobody then for the lamprey ?" Here the doctor cast his eyes upon the bereaved table ; and unable to bear the shame of this additional loss, however trivial, began tearing his hair and beard, and hopping about the room, giving his wife a new and scandalous epithet at every step, as if he was dancing to a catalogue of her imper- fections. The story shook all the shoulders in Bologna for a month after. As we find, by the length to which this article has already reached, that we should otherwise be obliged to compress our recollections of Spanish, French, and English thieves, into a compass that would squeeze them into the merest dry notices, we will postpone them at once to our next number ; and relate another story from the same Italian novelist that supplied our last.* Our author is Massuccio of Salerno, a novelist who dis- putes with Bandello the rank next in popularity to Boccaccio. * In the original edition of the Indicator this article was divided into three numbers. Perhaps it would have been better had the division been retained ; but perplexities occur in hastily correcting a work for a new edi- tion, which tie reader will have the goodness to excuse. 9 ' 92 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx , We have not the original by us, and must be obliged to an Eng- lish work for the groundwork of our story, as we have been to Paynter'b Palace of Pleasure for the one just related. But we take the liberty usual with the repeaters of these stories ; we retain the incidents, but tell them in our own way, and imagine what might happen in the intervals. Two Neapolitan sharpers, having robbed a Genoese merchant of his purse, made the best of their way to Sienna, where they arrive during the preaching of St. Bernardin. One of them attends a sermon with an air of conspicuous modesty and devo- tion, and afterwards waits upon the preacher, and addresses him thus : " Reverend father, you see before you a man, poor indeed, but honest. I do not mean to boast ; God knows, I have no rea- son. Who upon earth has reason, unless it be one who will be the last to boast, like yourself, holy father ?" Here the saintly orator shook his head. " I do not mean," resumed the stranger, " to speak even of the reverend and illustrious Bernardin, but as of a man among men. For my part, I am, as it were, a creep- ing thing among them ; and yet I am honest. If I have any virtue, it is that. I crawl right onward in my path, looking neither to the right nor to the left ; and yet I have my temptations, Reverend father, I have found this purse. I will not deny, that being often in want of the common necessaries of life, and having been obliged last night, in particular, to sit down faint at the city gates, for want of my ordinary crust and onion, w hich I had given to one (God help him) still worse off than myself, I did cast some looks — I did, I say, just open the purse, and cast a wistful eye at one of those shining pieces, that lay one over the other inside, with something like a wish that I could procure myself a meal with it, unknown to the lawful proprietor. But my conscience, thank Heaven, prevailed. I have to make two requests to you, reverend father. First, that you will absolve me for this my offence ; and second, that you will be pleased to mention in one of your discourses, that a poor sinner from Milan, on his road to hear them, has found a purse, and would willingly restore it to the right owner. I would fain give double the con- tents of it to find him out ; but then, what can I do ? All the wealth I have consists in my honesty. Be pleased, most ill us- CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 93 trious father, to mention this in your discourse, as modestly as becomes my nothingness ; and to add especially, that the purse was founi on the road from Milan, lying, miraculously as it were, upon a sunny bank, open to the view of all, under an olive-tree, not far from a little fountain, the .pleasant noise of which peradventure had invited the owner to sleep." The good father, at hearing this detail, smiled at the anxious sincerity of the poor pilgrim, and, giving him the required absolution, promis- ed to his utmost to bring forth the proprietor. In his next ser- mon, he accordingly dwelt with such eloquence on the opportuni- ties thrown in the way of the rich who lose purses to behave nobly, that his congregation several times half rose from their seats out of enthusiasm, and longed for some convenient loss of property that might enable them to show their disinterestedness. At the conclusion of it, however, a man stepped forward, and said, that anxious as he was to do justice to the finder of the purse, which he knew to be his the moment he saw it (only he was loth to interrupt the reverend father), he had claims upon him at home in the person of his wife and thirteen children, — fourteen perhaps, he might noio say, — which, to his great sor- row, prevented him from giving the finder more than a quarter of a piece ; this however he offered him with the less scruple, since he saw the seraphic disposition of the reverend preacher and his congregation, who he had no doubt would make ample amends for this involuntary deficiency on the part of a poor family man, the whole portion of whose wife and children might be said to be wrapped up in that purse. His sleep under the olive- tree had been his last for these six nights (here the other man said, with a tremulous joy of acknowledgment, that it was indeed just six nights since he had found it) ; and Heaven only knew when he should have had another, if his children's bread, so to speak, had not been found again." With these words, the sharper (for such, of course, he was) presented the quarter of a piece to his companion, who made all but a prostration for it ; and hastened with the purse out of the church. The other man's circumstances were then inquired into, and as he was found to have almost as many children as the purse-owner, and no possessions at all, as he said, but his honesty, — all his chil- 94 THE INDICATOR, [chap, xx dren being equally poor and pious, — a considerable subscription was raised for him ; so large, indeed, that on the appearance of a new claimant next day, the pockets of the good people were found empty. This was no other than the Genoese merchant, who having turned back on his road when he missed his purse, did not stop till he came to Sienna, and heard the news of the day before. Imagine the feelings of the deceived people ! Saint Bernardin was convinced that the two cheats were devils in disguise. The resident canon had thought pretty nearly as much all alon"-, but had held his tongue, and now hoped it would be a lesson to people not to listen to everybody who could talk, especially to the neglect of Saint Antonio's monastery. As to the people themselves, they thought variously. Most of them were mortified at having been cheated : and some swore they never would be cheated again, let appearances be what they might. Others thought that this was a resolution somewhat equi- vocal, and more convenient than happy. For our parts, we think the last were right : and this reminds us of a true English story, more good than striking, which we heard a short while ago from a friend. He knew a man of rugged manners, but good heart (not that the two things, as a lover of parentheses will say, are at all bound to go together), who had a wife some- what given to debating with hackney-coachmen, and disputing acts of settlement respecting half-miles, and quarter-miles, and abominable additional sixpences. The good housewife was lin- gering at the door, and exclaiming against one of these mon- strous charioteers, whose hoarse low voice was heard at inter- vals, full of lying protestations and bad weather, when the hus- band called out from a back-room, " Never mind there, never mind : — let her be cheated ; let her be cheated." This is a digression : but it is as well to introduce it, in order to take away a certain bitterness out of the mouth of the other's moral. We now come to a very unromantic set of rogues ; the Spanish ones. In a poetical sense, at least, they are unromantic ; though doubtless the mountains of Spain have seen as picturesque vaga- bonds in their time as any. There are the robbers in Gil Bias, who have, at least, a respectable cavern, and loads of polite superfluities. Who can forget the lofty-named Captain Rolando, CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 95 with his sturdy height and his whiskers, showing with a lighted torch his treasure to the timid stripling, Gil Bias ? The most illustrious theft in Spanish story is one recorded of no less a person than the fine old national hero, the Cid. As the suffer- ers were Jews, it might be thought that his conscience would not have hurt him in those days ; but " My Cid " was a kind of early soldier in behalf of sentiment ; and though he went to work roughly, he meant nobly and kindly. " God knows," said he, on the present occasion, " I do this thing more of necessity than of wilfulness ; but by God's help I shall redeem all." The case was this. The Cid, who was too good a subject to please his master, the king, had quarrelled with him, or rather, had been banished ; and nobody was to give him house-room or food. A number of friends, however, followed him ; and by the help of his nephew, Martin Antolinez, he proposed to raise some money. Martin accordingly negotiated the business with a couple of rich Jews, who, for a deposite of two chests full of spoil, which they were not to open for a year, on account of political circumstan- ces, agreed to advance six hundred marks. " Well, then," said Martin Antolinez, " ye see that the night is advancing ; the Cid is in haste, give us the marks." " This is not the way of busi- ness," said they ; we must take first, and then give." Martin accordingly goes with them to the Cid, who in the meantime has filled a couple of heavy chests with sand. The Cid smiled as they kissed his hand, and said, " Ye see I am going out of the land because of the king's displeasure ; but I shall leave some- thing with ye." The Jews made a suitable answer, and were then desired to take the chests; but, though strong men, they could not raise them from the ground. Tliis put them in such spirits, that after telling out the six hundred marks (which Don Martin took without weighing), they offered the Cid a present of a fine red skin ; and upon Don Martin's suggesting that he thought his own services in the business merited a pair of hose, they con- sulted a minute with each other, in order to do everything judi- ciously, and then gave him money enough to buy, not only the hose, but a rich doublet and good cloak into the bargain.* * See Mr. Southey's excellent compilation entitled The Chronicles of the Cid, Book III., Sec. 2] . The version at the end of the book, attributed to Mr. 0- 96 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx The regular sharping rogues, however, that abound in Spanish books of adventure, have one species of romance about them of a very peculiar nature. It may be called, we fear, as far as Spain is concerned, a " romance of real life." We allude to the absolute want and hunger which is so often the original of their sin. A vein of this craving irature runs throughout most of the Spanish novels. In other countries theft is generally represent- ed as the result of an abuse of plenty, or of some other kind of profligacy, or absolute ruin. But it seems to be an understood thing, that to be poor in Spain is to be in want of the common- est necessaries of life. If a poor man, here and there, happens not to be in so destitute a state as the rest, he thinks himself bound to maintain the popular character for an appetite, and manifests the most prodigious sense of punctuality and antici- pation in all matters relating to meals. Who ever thinks of Sancho, and does not think of ten minutes before luncheon ? Don Quixote, on the other hand, counts it ungenteel and undig- nified to be hungry. The cheat who flatters Gil Bias reckons himself entitled to be insultingly triumphant, merely because he has got a dinner out of him. Of all these ingenious children of necessity, whose roguery has been sharpened by perpetual want, no wit was surely ever kept at so subtle and fierce an edge as that of the never-to-be-decently- treated Lazarillo de Tormes. If we ourselves had not been" at a sort of monastic school, and known the beatitude of dry bread and a draught of spring- water, his history would seem to inform us, for the first time, what hunger was. His cunning so truly keeps pace with it, that he s6«ms recompensed for the wants of his stomach by the abundant energies of his head. One-half of his imagination is made up of dry bread ?nd fcraps, and the other of meditating how to'get at them. Every thought of his mind and every feeling of his affection coalesces a^id tends to one point with a ventripetal force. It was said of a contriving lady, that she Hookham Frere, of a passage out of the Potnin del Cid, is the most naive and terse bit of translation we ever met wiw. It rides along, like the Cid himself 01. horseback, •'•ith an infinite mix ^^p of ardor and self-possession: bending, when it cnooses, with grace, o .c'ling down everything with mastery. CHAP XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 97 took her very tea by stratagem. Lazarillo is not so lucky. It is enough for him, if by a train of the most ingenious contrivances, he can lay successful siege to a crust. To rout some broken victuals ; to circumvent an onion or so, extraordinary, is the utmost aim of his ambition. An ox-foot is his beau-ideal. He has as intense and circuitous a sense of a piece of cheese, as a mouse at a trap. He swallows surreptitious crumbs with as much zest as a young servant-girl does a plate of preserves. But to his story. He first serves a blind beggar, with whom he lives miserably, except when he commits thefts, which subject him to miserable beatings. He next lives with a priest, and finds his condition worse. His third era of esuriency takes place in the house of a Spanish gentleman ; and here he is worse off than ever. The reader wonders, as he himself did, how he can possibly ascend to this climax of starvation. To overreach a blind beggar might be thought easy. The reader will judge by a specimen or two. The old fellow used to keep his mug of liquor between his legs, that Lazarillo might not touch it without his knowledge. He did, however ; and the beg- gar discovering it, took to holding the mug in future by the handle. Lazarillo then conti'ives to suck some of the liquor off with a reed, till the beggar defeats this contrivance by keeping one hand upon the vessel's mouth. His antagonist, upon this, makes a hole near the bottom of the mug, filling it up with wax, and so tapping the can with as much gentleness as possible, whenever his thirst makes him bold. This stratagem threw the blind man into despair. He " used to swear and domineer," and wish both the pot and its contents at the devil. The follow, ing account of the result is a specimen of the English transla- tion of the work, which is done with great tact and spirit, we know not by whom, but it is worthy of De Foe. Lazarillo is supposed to tell his adventures himself. " ' You won't accuse me any more, I hope,' cried I, ' of drinking your wine,* after all the fine precautions you have taken to prevent it ?' To that he said not a word ; but feeling all about the pot, he at last un- luckily discovered the hole, which dissembling at that time, he * The reader is to understand a common southern wine, very cheap 08 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx let me alone till next day at dinner. Not dreaming, my reader must know, of tie old man's malicious stratagem, but getting in between his legs, according to my wonted custom, and receiving into my mouth the distilling dew, and pleasing myself with the success of my own ingenuity, my eyes upward, but half shut, the furious tyrant, taking up the sweet but hard pot, with both his hands, flung it down again with all his force upon my face ; with the violence of which blow, imagining the house had fallen upon my head, I lay sprawling without any sentiment or judg- ment ; my forehead, nose, and mouth, gushing out of blood, and the latter full of broken teeth, and broken pieces of the can. From that time forward, I ever abominated the monstrous old churl, and in spite of all his flattering stories, could easily ob- serve how my punishment tickled the old rogue's fancy. He washed my sores with wine ; and with a smile, ' What sayest thou,' quoth he, ' Lazarillo ? the thing that hurt thee, now restores thee to health. Courage, my boy.' But all his raillery could not make me change my mind." At another time, a countryman giving them a cluster of grapes, the old man, says Lazarillo, " would needs take that opportunity to show me a little kindness, after he had been chiding and beating me the whole day before. So setting our- selves down by a hedge, ' Come hither, Lazarillo,' quoth he, ' and let us enjoy ourselves a little, and eat these raisins toge- ther ; which that we may share like brothers, do you take but one at a time, and be sure not to cheat me, and I promise you, for my part, I shall take no more.' That I readily agreed to, and so we began our banquet ; but at the very second time he took a couple, believing, I suppose, that I would do the same. And finding he had shown me the way, I made no scruple all the while to take two, three, or four at a time ; sometimes more and sometimes less, as conveniently I could. When we had done, the old man shook his head, and holding the stalk in his hand, ' Thou hast cheated me, Lazarillo,' quoth he, ' for I could take my oath, that thou hast taken three at a time.' ' Who, I ! I beg your pardon,' q loth I, ' my conscience is as dear to me as another.' ' Pass that jest upon another,' answered the old fox; ' you saw me take two at a time without complaining of it, and CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 99 therefore you took three.' At that I could hardly forbear laugh- ing ; and at the same time admired the justness of his reason- ing." Lazarillo at length quitted the service of the old hard- hearted miser, and revenged himself upon him at the same time, in a very summary manner. They were returning homt one day on account of bad weather, when they had to cross a kennel which the rain had swelled to a little torrent. The beg- gar was about to jump over it as well as he could, when Laza- rillo persuaded him to go a little lower down the stream, because thei'e was a better crossing ; that is, there was a stone pillar on the other side, against which he knew the blind old fellow would nearly dash his brains out. " He was mightily pleased with my advice. ' Thou art in the right on it, good boy,' quoth he ; ' and I love thee with all my heart, Lazarillo. Lead me to the place thou speakest of; the water is very dangerous in winter, and especially to have one's feet wet.' And again — ' Be sure to set me in the right place, Lazarillo,' quoth he; 'and then do thou go over first.' I obeyed his orders, and set him exactly before the pillar, and so leaping over, posted myself behind it, looking upon him as a man would do upon a mad bull. ' Now your jump,' quoth I ; ' and you may get over to rights, without ever touching the water.' I had scarce done speaking, when the old man, like a ram that's fighting, ran three steps backwards, to take his start with the greater vigor, and so his head came with a vengeance against the stone pillar, which made him fall back into the kennel half dead." Lazarillo stops a moment to triumph over him with insulting language ; and then, says he, " resign- ing my blind, bruised, wet, old, cross, cunning master to the care of the mob that was gathered about him, I made the best of my heels, without ever looking about, till I had got the town gate upon my back ; and thence marching on a merry pace, I arrived before night at Torrigo." At the house of the priest, poor Lazarillo gets worse off than before, and is obliged o resort to the most extraordinary shifts to arrive at a morsel of bread. At one time, he gets a key of a tinker, and opening the old trunk in which the miser kept his bread (a sight, he says, like the opening of heaven), he takes small pieces out of three or four, in imitation of a mouse ; which 100 THE INI ICATOR. [chap. xx. so convinces the old hunks that the mice and rats have been at th^m, that he is more liberal of the bread than usual. He lets him have in particular " the parings above the parts where he thought the mice had been." Another of his contrivances is to palm off his pickings upon a serpent, with which animal a neighbor told the priest that his house had been once haunted. Lazarillo, who had been used when he lived with the beggar to husband pieces of money in his mouth (substituting some lesser coin in the blind man's hand, when people gave him anything), now employs the same hiding-place for his key ; but whistling through it unfortunately one night, as he lay breathing hard in his sleep, the priest concludes he has caught the serpent, and going to Lazarillo's bed with a broomstick, gives him at a ven- ture such a tremendous blow on the head, as half murders him. The key is then discovered, and the poor fellow turned out of doors. He is now hired by a lofty-looking hidalgo ; and follows him home, eating a thousand good things by anticipation. They pass through the markets, however, to ho purpose. The squire first goes to church too, and spends an unconscionable time at mass. At length they arrive at a dreary, ominous-looliing house, and ascend into a decent apartment, where the squire, after shaking his cloak, and blowing off the dust from a stone seat, lays it neatly down, and so makes a cushion of it to sit upon. There is no otlier furniture in the room, nor even in the neighboring rooms, except a bed " composed of the anatomy of an old hamper." The truth is, the squire is as poor as Laza- rillo, only too proud to own it; and so he starves both himself and his servant at home, and then issues gallantly forth of a morning, with his Toledo by his side, and a countenance of stately satisfaction ; returning home every day about noon with " a starched body, reaching out his neck like a greyhound." Lazarillo had not been a day in the house, before he found out how matters went. He was beginning, in his despair of a din- ncr, to eat some scraps of bread which had been given him in the morning, when the squire observing him, asked wha he was about. "Come hither, boy," said he, "what's that thou art eating?" — "I went," says Lazarillo, "and showed him three CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 101 pieces of bread, of which, taking away the best, ' Upon my faith,' quoth he, 'this bread seems to be very good.' — ' 'Tis too stale and hard, sir,' said I, 'to be good.' — 'I swear 'tis very good,' said the squire ; ' who gave it thee ? Were their hands clean that gave it thee ?' — ' I took it without asking any ques- tions, sir,' answered I, 'and you see I eat it as freely.' — ' Pray God it may be so,' answered the miserable squire ; and so put- ting the bread to his mouth, he eat it with no less appetite than I did mine ; adding to every mouthful, ' Gadzooks, this bread is excellent." Lazarillo, in short, here finds the bare table so completely turned upon him, that he is forced to become provider for his master as well as himself; which he does by fairly going out every day and begging : the poor squire winking at the indig- nity, though not without a hint at keeping the connection secret. The following extract shall be our climax, which it may well be, the hunger having thus ascended into the ribs of Spanish aristocracy. Lazarillo, one lucky day, has an ox-foot and some tripe given him by a butcher-woman. On coming home, with his treasure, he finds the hidalgo impatiently walking up and down, and fears he shall have a scolding for staying so long ; but the squire merely asks where he has been, and receives the account with an irrepressible air of delight. " I sate down," says Lazarillo, " upon the end of the stone seat, and began to eat that he might fancy I was feasting ; and observed, without seeming to take notice, that his eye was fixed upon my skirt, which was all tiie plate and table that I had. " May God pity me as I had compassion on tlmt poor squire ; daily experience made me sensible of his trouble. I did not know whether 1 should invite him, for since he had told me he had dined, I thought he would make a point of honor to refuse to eat ; but in short, being very desirous to supply his necessity, as I had done the day before, and which I was then much bet- ter in a condition to do, having already sufficiently stuffed my own guts, it was not long before an opportunity fairly offered itself; for he taking occasion to come near me in his walks, ' Lazarillo,' quoth hj (as soon as he observed me begin to eat), * I never sivv anybody eat so handsomely as thee ; a body can 102 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. scarce see thee fall to work without desiring to bear thee compa- ny ; let their stomachs be never so full, or their mouth be never so much out of taste.' Faith, thought I to myself, with such an emptj' belly as yours, my own mouth would water at a great deal less. " But finding he was come where I wished liim : ' Sir,' said I, * good stuff, makes a good workman. This is admirable bread, and here's an ox- foot so nicely dressed and so well-sea- soned, that anybody would delight to taste of it.' " ' How !" cried the squire, interrupting me, ' an ox-foot ?' — 'Yes, sir,' said I, 'an ox-foot.' — 'Ah! ihen,^ quoth he, 'thou hast in my opinio,n the delicatest bit in Spain ; there being neither partridge, pheasant, nor any other thing that I like nearly so well as that.' '"Will you please to try, sir?' said I (putting the ox-foot in his hand, with two good morsels of bread): 'when you have tasted it you will be convinced that it is a treat for a king, 'tis so well dressed and seasoned.' " Upon that, sitting down by my side, he began to eat, or rather to devour, what I had given him, so that the bones could hardly escape. 'Oh! the excellent bit,' did he cry, 'that this would be with a little garlic !' Ha! thought I to myself, how hastily thou eatest it without sauce. ' Gad,' said the squire, 'I have eateii this as heartily as if I had not tasted a bit of victuals to-day:' which I did very readily believe. " He then called for the pitcher with the water, which was as full as I had brouglit it home ; so you may guess whether he liad had any. When his squircshiphad drank, he civilly invit- ed me to do the like ; and thus ended our feast." We hope the reader is as much amused with this prolonga- tion of the subject as ourselves, for we are led on insensibly by these amusing thieves, and find we have more to write upon them, before we have done. We must give another specimen or two of the sharping Spaniard, out of Quevedo. The Adven- tures, by the way, of Lazarillo de Tonnes, were written in the sixteenth century by a Spanish gentleman, apparently of illus- trious family, Don Diego de Mendoza, who was s >metime am- bassador at Venice. This renders the story of the hidalgo still CHAP XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 103 more curious. Not that the author perhaj s ever felt the proud but condescending pangs which he describes ; this is not neces- sary for a man of imagination. He merely meant to give a hint to the poorer gentry not to overdo the matter on the side of loftiness, for their own sakes ; and hunger, whether among the proud or the humble, was too national a thing not to be entered into by his statistic apprehension. The most popular work connected with sharping adventures is Gil Bias, which, though known to us as a French production, seems unquestionably to have originated in the country where tlie scene is laid. It is a work exquisitely easy and true; but somehow we have no fancy for the knaves in it. They are of too smooth, sneaking, and safe a cast. They neither bespeak one's sympathy by necessity, nor one's admiration by daring. We except, of course, the robbers befoi'e-mentioned, who are a picturesque patch in the world, like a piece of rough poetry. Of tlie illustrious Guzman d'Alfarache, the most popular book of the kind, we believe, in Spain, and admired, we know, in this country by some excellent judges, we cannot with propriety speak, for we have only read a few pages at the beginning ; though we read them twice over, at two different times, and each time with the same intention of going on. In truth, as Guzman is called by way of eminence the Spanish Rogue, we must say for him, as far as our slight acquaintance warrants it, that he is also "as tedious as a king." They say, however, he has excellent stuff in him. We can speak as little of Marcos de Ohregon, of which a translation appeared a little while ago. We have read it, and, if we remember rightly, were pleased ; but want of memory on these occasions is not a good symptom. Quevedo, no ordinary person, is very amusing. His Visions of Hell, in particular, though of a very different kind from Dante's, are more edifying But our business at present is with his " History of Paul the Spanish Sharper, the Pattern of Rogues and Mirror of Vaga- bonds.^' We do not know that he deserves these appellations so much as some others ; but they are to be looked upon as titular ornaments, common to the Spanish Kleptocracy. He is extreme, ly pleasant, especially in his younger days. His mother, who 10 " 104 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. is no better than the progenitor of sucli a personage ought to be, happens to have the misfortune one day of l>eing carted. Paul, who was then a school-boy, was elected king on some boyish holiday ; and riding out upon a half-starved horse, it picked up a small cabbage as they went through the market. The market- women began pelting the king with rotten oranges and turnip tops • upon which, having feathers in his cap, and getting a no- tion in his head that they mistook him for his mother, who, agreeably to a Spanish custom, was tricked out in the same manner when she was carted, he halloo'd out, " Good women, though I wear feathers in my cap, I am none of Alonza Saturuo de Rebillo. She is my mother." Paul used to be set upon unlucky tricks by the son of a man of rank, who preferred enjoying a joke to getting punished for it. Among others, one Christmas, a counsellor happening to go by of the name of Pontic de Auguirre, the little Don told his companion to call Pontius Pilate, and then to run away. He did so, and the angry counsellor followed after him with a knife in his hand, so that he was forced to take refuge in the house of the schoolmaster. The lawyer laid his indictment, and Paul got a hearty flogging, during which he was enjoined never to call Pontius Pilate again ; to which he heartily agreed. The con- sequence was, that next day, when the boys were at prayers, Paul, coming to the Belief, and thinking that he was never again to name Pontius Pilate, gravely said, " Suffered under Pontic de Auguirre ;" which evidence of his horror of the scourge so interested the pedagogue, that, by a Catholic mode of dispensation, he absolved him from the next two whippings he should incur. But we forget that our little picaro was a thief. One speci- men of his talents this way, and we have done with the Span- iards. He went with j'oung Don Diego to the university ; and here getting applause for some tricks he played upon people, i and dandling, as it were, his growing propensity to theft, he in- vited his companions one evening to see him steal a box of com- fits from a confectioner's. He accordingly draws his rapier, which was stiff and well-pointed ; runs violently into the shop; and exclaiming, " You're a dead man !" makes a fierce lunge CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 105 at the confectioner between the body and arm. Down drops the man, half dead with fear ; the others rush out. But what of the box of comfits ? " Where is the box of comfits, Paul ?" said the rogues : " we do not see what you have done after all, except frighten the fellow?" — "Look here, my boys," answer- ed Paul. They looked, and at the end of his rapier beheld, with shouts of laughter, the vanquished box. He had marked it out on the shelf; and under pretence of lunging at the con- fectioner, pinked it away like a muffin. Upon turning to Quevedo, we find that the story has grown a little upon our memory, as to detail ; but this is the spirit of it. The prize here, it is to be observed, is something eatable, and the same yearning is a predominant property of Quevedo's sliarpers, as well as the others. Adieu, ye pleasant rogues of Spain ! ye surmounters of bad government, hunger, and misery, by the mere force of a lifrht climate and fingers ! The dinner calls ; — and to talk about you before it, is as good as taking a ride on horseback. We must return a moment to the Italian thieves, to relate a couple of stories related of Ariosto and Tasso. The former was for a short period governor of Grafagnana, a disturbed district in the Apennines, which his prudent and gentle policy brought back from its disaffection. Among its other troubles were nu- merous bands of robbers, two of the names of whose leaders, Domenico Maraco, and Filippo Pacchione, have come down to posterity. Ariosto, during the first days of his government, was riding out with a small retinue, when he had to pass through a number of suspicious-looking armed men. The two parties had scarcely cleared each other, when the chief of the strano-ers asked -a servant, who happened to be at some distance behind the others, who that person was. "It is the captain of the citadel here," said the man, " Lodovico Ariosto." The stranger no sooner heard the name, than he went running back to overtake the governor, who, stopping his horse, waited with some anxiety for the event. "I beg your pardon, Sir," said he, "but I was not aware that so great a person as the Signer Lodovico Ariosto was passing near me. My lame is Filippo Pacchione ; and 106 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx when I knew who it was, I could not go on without returning to pay the respect due to so illustrious a name." A doubt is thrown on this story, or rather o \ the particular person who gave occasion to it, by the similari.y of an adven- ture related of Tasso. Both of them however are very probable, let the similarity be what it may ; for both the poets had occa- sion to go through disturbed districts ; robbers abounded in both their times ; and the leaders being most probably men rather of desperate fortunes than want of knowledge, were likely enough to seize such opportunities of vindicating their better habits, and showing a romantic politeness. The enthusiasm too is quite in keeping with the national character ; and it is to be observed that the particulars of Tasso's adventure are different, though the spirit of it is the same. He was journeying, it is said, in company with others, for better security against the banditti who infested the borders of the papal territory, when they were told that Sciarra, a famous robber, was at hand in considerable force. Tasso was for pushing on, and de- fending themselves if attacked ; but his opinion was overrul- ed ; and the company threw themselves, for safety, into the city of Mola. Here Sciarra kept them in a manner blocked up ; but hearing that Tasso was among the travellers, he sent him word that he should not only be allowed to pass, but should have safe-conduct whithersoever he pleased. The lofty poet, making it a matter of delicacy, perhaps, to waive an advantage of which his company could not partake, declined the offer ; upon which Sciarra sent another message, saying, that upon the sole ac- count of Tasso, the ways should be left open. And they were so. We can call to mind no particular German thieves, except those who figure in romances, and in the Robbers of Schiller. To say the truth, we are writing just now with but few books to refer to ; and the better informed reader must pardon any defi- ciency he meets with in these egregious and furtive memoran- dums. Of the Robbers of Schiller an extraordinary effect is related. It is said to have driven a number of wild-headed young Germans upon playing at banditti, not in the bounds of a school or university, but seriously in a forest. The matter-of- fact spirit in which a German sets about being enthusiastic, is a CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 107 metaphysical curiosity which modern events render doubly inte- resting. It is extremely worthy of the attention of those rare personages, entitled reflecting politicians. But we must take care of that kind of digression. It is very inhuman of these politics, that the habit of attending to them, though with the greatest good-will and sincerity, will always be driving a man upon thinking how his fellow-creatures are going on. There is a pleasant, well-known story of a Prussian thief and Frederick the Second. We forget what was the precise valuable found upon the Prussian soldier, and missed from an image of the Virgin Mary ; but we believe it was a ring. He was tried for sacrilege, and the case seemed clear against him, when he puzzled his Catho- lic judges by informing them, that the fact was, the Virgin Mary had given him that ring. Here was a terrible dilemma. To dispute the possibility or even probability of a gift from the Virgin Mary, was to deny their . religion : while, on the other hand, to let the fellow escape on the pretence, was to canonize impudence itself. The worthy judges, in their perplexity, ap- plied to the king, who, under the guise of behaving delicately to tlieir faith, was not sorry to have such an opportunity of joking it. His majesty therefore pronounced, with becoming gravity, that the allegation of the soldier could not but have its due weight with all Catholic believers ; but that in future, it was forbidden any Prussian subject, military or civil, to accept a present from the Virgin Mary. The district, formerly rendered famous by the exploits of Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, and since become infamous by the tyranny of Ali Bey, has been very fei'tile in robbers. And no wonder : for a semi-barbarous people so governed became thieves by neces.sity. The name indeed, as well as profession, is in such good receipt with an Albanian, that according to late tra- vellers, it is a common thing for him to begin his history by say- ing, " When I was a robber " We remember reading of some Albanian or Sclavonian leader of banditti, who made his enemies suppo.se he had a numerous force with him, by distri- buting military caps upon the hedges. There are some other nations who are all tl 'eves, more or 10* 108 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx less ; or comprise such numbers of them as very much militate against the national character. Such are the piratical Malays ; the still more infamous Algerines ; and the mongrel tribes be- tween Arabia and Abyssinia. As to the Arabs, they have a prescriptive right, from tradition as well as local circumstances, to plunder everybody. The sanguinary ruffians of Ashantee and other black empires on the coast of Guinea are more like a government of murderers and ogres, than thieves. They are the next ruffians perhaps in existence to slave-dealers. The gentlest nation of pilferers are- the Otaheitans : and something is to be said for their irresistible love of hatchets and old nails. Let tlie European trader that is without sin, cast the first para- grapli at them. Let him think what he should feel inclined to do, were a ship of some unknown nation to come upon his coast, with gold and jewels lying scattered about the deck. For no less precious is iron to the South Sea Islander. A Paradisiacal state of existence would be, to him, not the Golden, but the Iron Age. An Otaheitan Jupiter would visit his Danae in a shower of tenpcnny nails. We are now come to a very multitudinous set of candidates for the halter, the thievesof our own beloved country. For what we know of the French thieves is connected with them, except- ing Cartouche ; and we remember nothing of him, but that he was a great ruffian, and died upon that worse ruffian, the rack. There is, to be sure, an eminent instance of a single theft in the Confessions of Rousseau ; and it is tlie second greatest blot in his book ; for he suffered a girl to be charged with and pun- ished for the theft, and maintained the lie to her face, though she was his friend, and appealed to him with tears. But it may be said for him, at any rate, that the world would not have known the story but for himself: and if such a disclosure be regarded by some as an additional offence (which it may be thought to be by some very delicate as well as dishonest people), we must recollect, that it was the object of his book to give a plain unso- phisticated account of a human being's experiences , and that many persons of excellent repute would have been" found to have committed actions as bad, had they given accounts of them- selves as candid. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that all children CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, A >JCIENT AND MODERN. 109 were thieves and liars : and somebody, we believe a Scotch- man, answered a fond speech about human nature, by exclaim, ing that " human nature was a rogue and a vagabond, or so many laws would not have been necessary to restrain it." We venture to differ, on this occasion, with both Englishman and Scotchman. Laws in particular, taking the bad with the good, are quite as likely to have made rogues, as restrained them. But we see, at any rate, what has been suspected of more ortho- dox persons than Rousseau ; to say nothing of less charitable advantages which might be taken of such opinions. Rousseau committed a petty theft ; and miserably did his false shame, the parent of so many crimes, make him act. But he won back to their infants' lips the bosoms of thousands of mothers. He re- stored to their bereaved and helpless owners thousands of those fountains of health and joy : and before he is abused, even for worse things than the theft, let those whose virtue consists in custom, think of this. As we have mixed fictitious with real thieves in this article, in a manner, we fear, somewhat uncritical (and yet the fictions are most likely founded on fact ; and the life of a real thief is a kind of dream and romance), we will despatch our fictitious English thieves before we come to the othei's. And we must make shorter work of them than we intended, or we shall never come to our friend Du Vail. The length to which this article has stretched out, will be a warning to us how we render our paper liable to be run away with in future. There is a very fine story of Three Thieves in Chaucer, which we must tell at large another time. The most prominent of the fabulous thieves in England is that bellipotent and immea- surable wag, Falstaff". If for a momentary freak, he thought it villanous to steal, at the next moment he thought it villanous not to steal. " Hal, I pr'ythee, trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God though and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of the council rated me the other day in the street, about you, Sir ; but I marked him not. And yet he talked very wisely ; but I regarded him not. And yet he talked wisely ; and in the streets, too. 110 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. " P. Henry. Thou didst well ; for ' Wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it.' " Falstaff. O, thou hast damnable iteration ; and art, indeed, able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal ; God forgive thee for it ! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew, nothing; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little bet. ter than one of the ^vicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over : by the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain : I'll be damned for never a king's son in Christendom, "P. Henry. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow. Jack ? " Falstaff. Where thou wilt, lad ; I'll make one : an I do not, call me villain, and bafllc me." We must take care how we speak of Macheatli, or we shall be getting political again. Fielding's Jonathan Wild the Great is also, in this sense, "caviare to the multitude." But we would say more if we had room. Count Fathom, a deliberate scoun- drel, compounded of the Jonathan Wilds and the more equivo- cal Cagliostros, and other adventurers, is a thief not at all to our taste. We are continually obliged to call his mother to our recollection, in order to bear him. The only instance in which the character of an absolute profligate pickpocket was ever made comparatively welcome to our graver feelings, is in the extraordinary story of " Manon VEscaut," by the Abbe Prevost. It is the story of a young man, so passionately in love with a profligate female, that he follows her through every species of vice and misery, even when she is sent as a convict to New Orleans. His love, indeed, is returned. He is obliged to sub- sist upon her vices, and, in return, is induced to help her with his own, becoming a cheat and a swindler to supply her outra- geous extravagances. On board the convict-ship (if we recol- lect) he waits on her through every species of squalidness, the convict-dress and her shaved head only redoubling his love by the help of pity. This seems a shocking and very immoral book ; yet multitudes of very reputable people have found a charm in it. The fact is, not only that Manon is beautiful, sprightly, really fond of her lover, and after all, becomes reformed ; but that it ^s delightful, and ought to be so, to the human heart, to see a vein of sentiment and real goodness look- CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. Ill ing out through all this callous surface of guilt. It is like meeting with a tree in a squalid hole of a city ; a flower or a frank face in a reprobate purlieu. The capabilities of human nature are not compromised. The virtue alone seems natural ; the guilt, as it so often is, seems artificial, and the result of some bad education or other circumstance. Nor is anybody injured. It is one of the shallowest of all shallow notions to talk of the harm of such works. Do we think nobody is to be harmed but the virtuous ; or that there are not privileged harms and vices to be got rid of, as well as unprivileged ? No good-hearted person will be injured by reading " Manon I'Escaut." There is the belief in goodness in it ; a faith, the want of which does so much harm, both to tlie vicious and the over-righteous. The prince of all robbers, English or foreign, is undoubtedly Robin Hood. There is a worthy Scottish namesake of his, Rob Roy, who has lately had justice done to all his injuries by a countryman ; and the author, it seems, has now come down from the borders to see the Rob of the elder times well treated. We were obliged to tear ourselves away from his first volume,* to go to this ill-repaying article. But Robin Hood will still remain the chief and " gentlest of thieves." He acted upon a larger scale, or in opposition to a larger injustice, to a whole political system. He "shook the superflux" to the poor, and "showed the heavens more just." However, what we have to say of him, we must keep till the trees are in leaf again, and the green- wood shade delightful. We dismiss, in one rabble-like heap, the real Jonathan Wilds, Avershaws, and other heroes of the Newgate Calendar, who have no redemption in their rascality ; and after them, for gentlemen- valets, may go the Barringtons, Major Semples, and other sneaking rogues, who held on a tremulous career of iniquity, betwixt pilfering and repenting. Yet Jack Sheppard must not be forgotten, with his ingenious and daring breaks-out of prison ; nor Turpin, who is said to have ridden his horse with such swiftness from York to London, that he was enabled to set up an alibi. We have omitted to notice the celebrated Bucaniers of * Of Ivanhoo 112 THE INDICATOR. [chat. xx. America ; but these are fellows, with regard to whom we are willing to take Dogberry's advice, and "steal out of their com- pany." Their history disappoints us with its dryness. All hail ! thou most attractive of scape-graces ! thou most accomplished of gentlemen of the road ! thou, worthy to be called one of "the minions of the moon," Monsieur Claude Du Vail, whom we have come such a long and dangerous journey to see ! Claude du Vail, according to a pleasant account of him in the Harleian Miscellany, was born at Domfront, in Normandy, in the year 1643. of Pierre Du Vail, miller, and Marguerite de la Roche, the fair daughter of a tailor. Being a sprightly boy, he did not remain in the country, but became servant to a person of quality at Paris, and with this gentleman he came over to England at the time of the Restoration. It is difficult td say, Whicli came over to pick the most pockets and hearts, Charles the Second or Claude du Vail. Be this as it may, his " courses" of life (" for," says the contemporary historian, " I dare not call them vices"), soon reduced him to the necessity of going upon the road; and here " he quickly became so famous, that in a proclamation for the taking several notorious highwaymen, he had the honor to be named first." " He took," says his bio- grapher, " the generous way of padding ;" that is to say, he be- haved with exemplary politeness to all coaches, especially those in which there were ladies, making a point of frightening them as amiably as possible, and insisting upon returning any favorite trinkets or keepsakes, for which they chose to appeal to him with " their most sweet voices." It was in this character that he performed an exploit, which is the eternal feather in the cap of highway gentility. We will relate it in the words of our informer. Riding out with some of his confederates, " he overtakes a coach, w^hich they had set overnight, having intelligence of a booty of four hundred pounds in it. In the coach was a knight, his lady, and only one serving- maid, who, perceiving five horsemen making up to them, pre- sently imagined that they were beset ; and they were confirmed in this apprehension by seeing them whisper to one another and 'ride backwards and forwards. The lady, to show she was not afraid, takes a flageolet out of her pocket, and plays ; Du Vall CHAP. XX.-] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MOlDERN. 113 takes the hint, plays also, and excellently v.'ell, upon a flageolet of his own, and in this posture he j ides up to the coach side. * Sir,' says he to the person in the coach, ' your lady plays excellently, and I doubt not but that she dances as well ; will you please to walk out, of the coach, and let me have the honor to dance one coranto with her upon the heath ?' ' Sir,' said the person in the coach, ' I dare not deny anything to one of your quality, and good mind; you seem a gentleman, and your request is very reasonable ;' which said, the lacquey opens the boot, out comes the knight, Du Vail leaps lightly off his horse, and hands the lady out of the coach; They danced, and here it was that Du Vail perfoi'med marvels; the best master in London, except those that are French, not being able to show such footing as he did in his great riding French boots. The dancing being over, he waits on the lady to her coach. As the knight was going in, says Du Vail to him, ' Sir, you have forgot to pay the music' ' No, I have not,' replies the knight, and putting his hand under the seat of the coach, pulls out a hundred pounds in a bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vail took with a very good grace, and courteously answered, ' Sir, you are liberal, and shall have no cause to repent your being so ; this liberality of yours shall excuse you the other three hundred pounds :' and giving him the word, that if he met with any more of the crew he might pass undisturbed, he civilly takes his leave of him. " This story, I confess, justifies the great kindness the ladies had for Du Vail ; for in this, as in an epitome, are contained all things that set a man off advantageously, and make him appear as the phrase is, much a gentleman. First, here was valor, that he and but four more durst assault a knight, a lady, a waiting- gentlewoman, a lacquey, a groom that rid by to open the gates, and the coachman, they being six to five, odds at football ; and besides, Du Vail had much the worst cause, and reason to believe, that whoever should arrive, would range themselves on the enemy's party. Then he showed his invention and saga-' city, that he could sur le champ, and, without studying, make that advantage on the lady's playing on the flageolet. He evinced his skill in instrumental music, by playing on his 114 THE INDICATOR. [chap.-xx. flageolet ; in vocal, by his singing ; for (as I should have told you before) thorp being no violins, Du Vail sung the coranto himself. He manifested his agility of body, by lightly dis- mounting off his horse, and with ease and freedom getting up again, when he took his leave ; his excellent deportment, by his incomparable dancing, and his graceful manner of taking the hundred pounds ; his generosity in taking no more ; his wit and eloquence, and readiness at repartees, in the whole discourse with the knight and lady, the gi-eatest part of which I have been forced to omit." The noise of the proclamation made DuVall return to Paris; but he came back in a short time for want of money. His reign, however, did not last long after his restoration. He made an unlucky attack, not upon some ill-bred passengers, but upon several bottles of wine, and was taken in consequence at the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos-street. His life was interceded for in vain ; he was arraigned and committed to Newgate ; and executed at Tyburn in the 27th year of his age ; showers of tears from fair eyes bedewing his fate, both while alive in prison and when dead at the fatal tree. Du Vall's success with the ladies of those days, whose ama- tory taste was of a turn more extensive than delicate, seems to have made some well-dressed English gentlemen jealous. The writer of Du Vall's life, who is a man of wit, evidently has something of bitterness in his railleries upon this point ; but he manages them very pleasantly. He pretends that he is an old bachelor, and has never been able to make his way with his fair countrywomen, on account of the French Vcilets that have stood in his way. He says he had two objects in writing the book. " One is, that the next Frenchman that is hanged, may not cause an uproar in this imperial city ; which I doubt not but I have effected. The other is a much harder task : to set my countrymen on even terms with the French, as to the English ladies' affections. If I should bring this about, I should esteem myself to have contributed much to the good of this kingdom. " One remedy there is, which, possibly, may conduce some- thing towards it. " I have heard that there is a new invention of transfusing the CHAP. XX.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 115 blood of one animal into another, and that it has been experimented by putting the blood of a sheep into an Englishman. I am against that way of experiments ; for, should we make all Eng- lishmen sheep, we should soon be a prey to the louve. " I think I can propose the making that experiment a more advantageous way. I would have all gentlemen, who have been a full year or more out of France, be let blood weekly, or oftener, if they can bear it. Mark how much they bleed ; transfuse so much French lacquey's blood into them ; replenish these last out of the English footmen, for it is no matter what becomes of them. Repeat this operation toties quoties, and in process of time you will find this event : either the English gentlemen will be as much beloved as the French lacqueys, or the French lacqueys as little esteemed as the English gentle- men." Butler has left an Ode, sprinkled with his usual wit, " To the happy Memory of the Most Renotvtied Du Vail," who, — Like a pious man, some years before Th' arrival of his fatal hour, Made every day he had to live To his last minute a preparative ; Taught the wild Arabs on the road To act in a more gentle mode ; Take prizes more obligingly from those, Who never had been bred^/o«s,- And how to hang in a more graceful fashion, Than e'er was known before to the dull English nation As it may be thought proper that we should end this lawless article with a good moral, we will give it two or three sentences from Shakspeare worth a whole volume of sermons against thieving. The boy who belongs to Falstaff's companions, and who begins to see through the shallowness of their cunning and way of life, says that Bardolph stole a lute-case, carried it twelve miles, and sold it for three halfpence. 11 116 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxi CHAPTER XXI. A few Thoughts on Sleep. This is an article for the reader to think of, v hen he or she is warm in bed, a little before he goes to sleep, the clothes at his ear, and the wind moaning in some distant crevice. " Blessings," exclaimed Sancho, " on him that first invented sleep I It wraps a man all round like a cloak." It is a deli- cious moment certainly — that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past ; the limbs have been just tix*ed enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful : the labor of the day is done. A gentle failure of the perceptions comes creeping over one : — the spirit of consciousness disengages itself more and more, with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of her sleeping child ; — the mind seems to have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye : — 'tis closing ; — 'tis more closing ; — 'tis closed. The mysterious spirit has gone to make its airy rounds. It is said that sleep is best before midnight ; and Nature her- self, with her darkness and chilling dews, informs us so. There is another reasoja for going to bed betimes : for it is universally acknowledged that lying late in the morning is a great shortener of life. At least, it is never found in company with longevity. It also tends to make people corpulent. But these matters belong rather to the subject of early rising, than of sleep. Sleep at a late hour in the morning is not half so pleasant as tlie more timely one. It is sometimes however excusable, espe- cially to a watchful or overworked head ; neither can we deny the seducing merits of " t'other doze," — the pleasing wilfulness of nestling in a new posture, when you know you ought to be CHAP. XXI.] A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP. 117 up, like the rest of the house. But then you cut up the day, and your sleep the next night. In the course of the day, few people think of sleeping, except after dinner ; and then it is often rather a hovering and nodding on the borders of sleep than sleep itself. This is a privilege allowable, we think, to none but the old, or the sickly, or the very tired and care-worn ; and it should be well understood, before it is exer- cised in company. To escape into slumber by an argument ; or to take it as an affair of course, only between you and your biliary duct ; or to assent with involuntary nods to all that you have just been disputing, is not so well : much less, to sit nod- ding and tottering beside a lady ; or to be in danger of dropping your head into the fruit-plate or your host's face ; or of waking up, and saying, " Just so," to the bark of a dog ; or " Yes, Ma- dam," to the black at your elbow. Care-worn people, however, might refresh themselves oflener with day-sleep than they do ; if their bodily state is such as to dispose them to it. It is a mistake to suppose that all care is wakeful. People sometimes sleep, as well as wake, by reason of their sorrow. The difference seems to depend upon the na- ture of their temperament ; though in the most excessive cases, sleep is perhaps Nature's never-failing relief, as swooning is upon the rack. A person with jaundice in his blood shall lie down and go to sleep at noon-day, when another of different complexion shall find his eyes as uncloseable as a statue's, though he has had no sleep for nights together. Without meaning to lessen the dignity of suffering, which has quite enough to do with its waking hours, it is this that may often ac- count for the profound sleeps enjoyed the night before hazard- ous battles, executions, and other demands upon an over-excited spirit. The most complete and healthy sleep that can be taken in the day, is in summer-time, out in a field. There is perhaps no solitary sensation so exquisite as that of slumbering on the grass or hay, shaded from the hot sun by a tree, with the conscious- ness of a fresh but light air running through the wide atmo- sphere, and the sky stretching far overhead upon all sides. Earth, and heaven, and a placid humanity, seem to have the 118 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxi creation to themselves. There is nothing between the slum- berer and the naked and glad innocence of nature. Next to this, but at a long interval, the most relishing snatch of slumber out of bed, is the one which a tired person takes, be- fore he retires for the night, while lingering in his sitting-room. The consciousness of being very sleepy and of having the power to go to bed immediately, gives great zest to the unwillingness to move. Sometimes he sits nodding in his chair ; but the sud- den and leaden jerks of the head to which a state of great sleepi- ness renders him liable, are generally too painful for so luxuri- ous a moment ; and lie gets into a more legitimate posture, sit- ting sideways with his head on the chair-back, or throwing his legs up at once on another chair, and half reclining. It is curi- ous, however, to find how long an inconvenient posture will be borne for the sake of this foretaste of repose. The worst of it is, tliat on going to bed, the charm sometimes vanishes ; per- haps from the colder temperature of the chamber ; for a fireside is a great opiate. Speaking of the painful positions into which a sleepy lounger will get himself, it is amusing to think of the more fantastic attitudes that so often take place in bed. If we could add any- thing to the numberless things that have been said about sleep by the poets, it would be upon this point. Sleep never shows himself a greater leveller. A man in his waking moments may look as proud and self-possessed as he pleases. He may walk proudly, he may sit proudly, he may eat his dinner proudly ; he may shave himself with an air of infinite superiority ; in a word, he may show himself grand and absurd upon the most trifling occasions. But Sleep plays the petrifying magician. He arrests the proudest lord as well as the humblest clown in the most ridiculous postures : so that if you could draw a gran- dee from his bed without waking him, no limb-twisting fool in a pantomime should create wilder laughter. The toy with the string between its legs, is hardly a posture-master more extrava- gant. Imagine a despot lifted up to the gaze of his valets, with his eyes shut, his mouth open, his left hand under his right ear, his other twisted and hanging helplessly before him like an idi- ot's, one knee lifted up, and the other leg stretched out, or both CHAP. XXI.] A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP. 119 knees huddled up together ; — what a scarecrow to lodge majes- tic power in ! But Sleep is kindly, even in his tricks ; and the poets have treated him with reverence. According to the ancient mytholo- gists, he had even one of the Graces to wife. He had a thou- sand sons, of whom the chief were Morpheus, or the Shaper ; Icelos, or the Likely ; Phantasus, the Fancy ; and Phobetor, the Terror. His dwelling some writers place in a dull and darkling part of the earth ; others, with greater compliment, in heaven ; and others, with another kind of propriety, by the sea- shore. There is a good description of it in Ovid ; but in these abstracted tasks of poetry, the moderns outvie the ancients ; and there is nobody who has built his bower for him so finely as Spenser. Archimago in the first book of the Faerie Queaie (Canto I. St. 39), sends a little spirit down to Morpheus to fetch him a Dream : He, making speedy way through spersed ayre, And through the world of waters, wide and deepe, To Morpheus' house doth hastily rcpaire Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe And low, where dawning day doth never peepe, His dwelling is. There, Tethys his wet bed Doth ever wash ; and Cynthia still doth steepe In silver dew his ever-drouping head, Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spred And more to lull him in his slumber soft A trickling streame from high rocke tumbling downe. And ever-drizzling rain ujjon the loft, Mixed with a murmuring winde, much like the soune Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune. No other noise, nor people's troublous cryes, As still are wont to annoy the walled towne, Might there be heard ; but carelesse Quiet lyes, Wrapt in eternall silence, far from enimyes. (Jhauccr has drawn the cave of the same god with greater simplicity ; but nothing can have a more deep and sullen effect than his cliffs and cold running waters. It seems as real as an actual solitude, or some quaint old picture in a book of travels 11* 120 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxi. in Tartary. He is telling the story of Ceyx and Alcyone in the Tjoem called his Dream. Juno tells a messenger to go to Mor- pheus and " bid him creep into the body" of the drowned king, to let his wife know the fatal event by his apparition. This messenger tooke leave, and went Upon his way ; and never he stent Till he came to the dark valley, That stant betweene rockes twey. There never yet grew corne, ne gras, Ne tree, ne naught that aught was, Beast, ne man, ne naught else ; Sav£ that there were a few wells Came running fro the cliffs adowne, That made a deadly sleeping soune, And runnen downe right by a cave. That was under a rocky grave, Amid the valley, wonder-deepe. There these goddis lay asleepe, Morpheus and Eclympasteire, That was the god of Sleepis heire, That slept and did none other worke. Where the credentials of this new son and heir Eclympasteire are to be found, we know not ; but he acts very much, it must be allowed, like an heir presumptive, in sleeping, and doing " none other work." We dare not trust ourselves with many quotations upon slee] from the poets : they are so numerous as well as beautiful We must content ourselves with mentioning that our two most favorite passages are one in the Philoctctes of Sophocles, admi- rable for its contrast to a scene of terrible agony, which it closes ; and the other the following address in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy of VaUntinian, the hero of which is also a sufferer under bodily torment. lie is in a chair, slumbering ; and these most exquisite lines are gently sung with music. Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes. Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose On this alFiicted prince. Fall like a cloud In gentle showers : give nothing that is loud Or painful to his slumbers : easy, sweet. CHAP. XXI.] A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP 121 And as a purling stream, thou son of Night, Pass by his troubled senses ; sing his paai Like hollow murmuring wind, or silver rain : Into this prince, gently, oh gently slide, And kiss him into slumbers, like a bride. How earnest and prayer-like are these pauses ! How lightly sprinkled, and yet how deeply settling, like rain, the fancy ! How quiet, affectionate, and perfect the conclusion ! Sleep is most graceful in an infant ; soundest, in one who has been tired in the open air ; completest, to the seaman after a hard voyage ; most welcome, to the mind haunted with one idea ; most touching to look at, in the parent that has wept ; lightest, in the playful child ; proudest, in the bride adored. 122 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxn CHAPTER XXII. The Fair Revenge. The elements of this story are to be found in the old poem called Albion's England, to which we referred in the article on Charles Brandon and Mary Queen of France. Aganippus, king of Argos, dying without heirs male, be- queathed his throne to his only daughter, the beautiful and be- loved Daphles. This female succession was displeasing to a nobleman who held large possessions on the frontiers ; and he came for the first time towards the court, not to pay his respects to the new queen, but to give her battle. Doracles (for that was his name) was not much known by the people. He had distin- guished himself for as jealous . an independence as a subject could well assume ; and though he had been of use in repelling invasion during the latter years of the king, he had never made his appearance to receive his- master's thanks personally. A correspondence, however, was understood to have gone on be- tween him and several noblemen about the court ; and there were those who, in spite of his inattention to popularity, sus- pected that it would go hard with the young queen, when the two armies came face to face. But neither these subtle statesmen, nor the ambitious young soldier Doracles, were aware of the eflTects to be produced by a strong personal attachment. The young queen, amiable as she was beautiful, had involuntarily bafHed his expectations from her courtiers, by exciting in the minds of some a real disinte- rested regard, while others nourished a hope of sharing her throne instead. At least they speculated upon becoming each the favorite minister, and held it a better thing to reign under that title and a charming mistress, than be the servants of a master, wilful and domineering. By the people she was adored ; CHAP. XXII.] THE FAIR REVENGE. 123 and when she came riding out of her palace on the morning of the fight, with an unaccustomed spear standing up in its rest by her side, her diademed hair flowing a little off into the wind, hor face paler than usual, but still tinted with its roses, and a look in which confidence in the love of her subjects, and tenderness for the wounds they were going to encounter, seemed to contend for the expression, the shout which they sent up would have told a stouter heart than a traitor's that the royal chamber was secure. The queen, during tne conflict, remained in a tent upon an eminence, to which the younger leaders vied who should best spur up their smoking horses, to bring her good news from time to time. The battle was short and bloody. Doracles soon found that he had miscalculated his point ; and all his skill and resolu- tion could not set the error to rights. It was allowed, that if either courage or military talent could entitle him to the throne, he would have a right to it ; but the popularity of Daphles sup- plied her cause with all the ardor which a lax state of subjec- tion on the part of the more powerful nobles might have denied it. When her troops charged, or made any other voluntary movement, they put all their hearts into their blows ; and when they were compelled to await the enemy, they stood as inflexible as walls of iron. It was like hammering upon metal statuary ; or staking the fated horses upon spears riveted in stone. Dora- cles was taken prisoner. The queen, re-issuing from her tent, crowned with laurel, came riding down the eminence, and re- mained at the foot with her generals, while the prisoners were taken by. Her pale face kept as royal a countenance of com- posed pity as sl>e could manage, while the commoner rebels passed along, aching with their wounded arms fastened behind, and shaking back their bloody and blinding locks for want of a hand to part them. But the blood mounted to her cheeks, when the proud and handsome Doracles, whom she now saw for the first time, blu.shed deeply as he cast a glance at his female con- queror, and then stepped haughtily along, hardling his gilded chains, as if they were an indifferent ornament. " I have con- quered him," thought she ; '^ it is a heavy blow to so proud a head ; and as he looks not unamiable, it might be politic, as well 124 THE INDICATOR. [chat. xxii. as courteous and kind in me, to turn his submission into a more willing one." Alas ! pity was helping admiration to a kinder set of offices than the generous-hearted queen suspected. The captive went to his prison a conqueror after all, for Daphles loved him. The second night, after having exhibited in her manners a strange mixture of joy and seriousness, and signified to her counsellors her intention of setting the prisoner free, she releas- ed him with her own hands. Many a step did she hesitate as she went down the stairs ; and when she came to the door, she ihed a full, but soft, and, as it seemed to her, a wilful and refreshing flood of tears, humbling herself for her approaching '.ask. When she had entered, she blushed deeply, and then .urning as pale, stood for a minute silent and without emotion. She then said, " Thy queen, Doracles, has come to show thee how kindly she can treat a great and gallant subject, who did ttot know her ;" and with these words, and almost before she was aware, the prisoner was released, and preparing to go. He appeared surprised, but not off his guard, nor in any temper to be over grateful. " Name," said he, " O queen, the conditions on which I depart, and they will be faithfully kept." Daphles moved her lips, but they spoke not. She waved her head and hand with a deadly smile, as if freeing him from all conditions, and he was turning to go, when she fell senseless on the floor. The haughty wai'rior raised lier with more impatience than good- will. He could guess at love in a woman ; but he had but a mean opinion botii of it and her sex ; and the deadly struggle in the heart of Daphles did not help him to distinguish the romantic passion which had induced her to put all her past and virgin notions of love into his person, from the commonest liking that might flatter his soldierly vanity. The queen, on awaking from her swoon, found herself com- pelled, in very justice to the intensity of a true passion, to ex- plain how pity had brought it upon her. " I might ask it," said she, " Doracles, in return/' and here she resumed something of her queen-like dignity ; " but I feel that my modesty will be sufficiently saved by the name of your wife ; and a substantial throne, with a return that shall lothing perplex or interfere with CHAP. XXII.] THE FAIR REVENGE. 105 thee, I do now accordingly offer thee, not as the condition of thy freedom, but as a diversion of men's eyes and thoughts from what they will think ill in me, if they find me rejected." And in getting out that hard word, her voice faltered a little, and her eyes filled with tears. Doracles, with the best grace his lately-defeated spirit could assume, spoke in willing terms of accepting her offer. They left the prison, and his full pardon having been proclaimed, the courtiers, with feasts and entertainments, vied who should seem best to approve their mistress's. choice, for so they were quick to understand it. The late captive, who was really as graceful and accomplished as a proud spirit would let him be, received and returned all their attention in princely sort, and Daphles was beginning to hope that he might turn a glad eye upon her some day, when news was brought her that he had gone from court, nobody knew whither. The next intelligence was too certain. He had passed the frontiers, and was leaguing with her enemies for another struggle. From that day gladness, though not kindness, went out of the face of Daphles. She wrote him a letter, without a word of re- proach in it, enough to bring back the remotest heart that had the least spark of sympathy ; but he only answered it in a spirit which showed that he regarded the deepest love but as a wanton trifle. That letter touched her kind wits. She had had a paper drawn up, leaving him her throne in case she .should die ; but some of her ministers, availing themselves of her enfeebled spirit, had summoned a meeting of the nobles, at which she was to preside in the dress she wore on the day of victory, the sight of which, it was tliought, with the arguments which they meant to use, would prevail upon the assembly to urge her to a revocation of the bequest. Her women dressed her whilst she was almost un- conscious of what they were doing, for she had now begun to fade quickly, body as well as mind. They put on her the white jrarments edffcd with silver waves, in remembrance of the stream of Inachus, the founder of the Argive monarchy ; the spear was brought out, to be stuck by the side of the throne, instead of the sceptre ; and their hands prepared to put the same laurel on her head which bound its healthy white temples when 126 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxii she sat on horseback and saw the prisoner go by. But at sight of its twisted and withered green, she took it in her hand, and looking about her in her chair with an air of momentary recol- lection, began picking it, and letting the leaves fall upon the floor. She went on thus, leaf after leaf, looking vacantly down- wards, and when she had stripped the circle half round, she leaned her cheek against the side of her sick chair, and shutting her eyes quietly, so died. The envoys from Argos went to the court of Calydon, where Doracles then was, and bringing him the diadem upon a black cushion, informed him at once of the death of the queen, and her nomination of him to the throne. He showed little more than a ceremonious gravity at the former news ; but could ill contain his joy at the latter, and set off instantly to take possession. Among the other nobles who feasted him, was one who, liaving been the companion of the late king, had become a second fatlier to his unhappy daughter.^ The new prince observing the me- lancholy which he scarcely affected to repress, and seeing him look up occasionally at a picture which had a veil over it, asked him what the picture was that seemed to disturb him so, and why it was veiled. " If it be the portrait of the late king," said Doracles, " pray think me worthy of doing honor to it, for he was a noble prince. Unveil it, pray. I insist upon it. What ! am I not worthy to look upon my predecessors, Phorbas ?" And at these words he frowned impatiently. Phorbas, with a trem- bling hand, but not for want of courage, withdrew the black covering ; and the portrait of Daphlcs, in all her youth and beauty, flashed upon the eyes of Doracles. It was not a melan- choly face. It was drawn before misfortune liad touched it, and sparkled with a blooming beauty, in which animal spirits and good-nature contended for predominance. Doracles paused and seemed struck. " The possessor of that face," said he, inquir- ing, ^' could never have been so sorrowful as I have heard ?" "Pardon me, sir," answered Phorbas, "I was as another father to her, and knew all." "It cannot be," returned the prince. The oldman begged hisothergucsts to withdraw a while, and then told Doracles how many fond and despairing things the queen had said of him, l)oth before ]ier wits began to fail and after. CHAP. XXII.] THE FAIR JIEVENGE. 127 " Her wits to fail !" murmured the king ; " I have known what it is to feel almost a mad impatience of the will ; but I knew not that these gentle creatures, women, could so feel for such a trifle." Phorbas brought out the laurel-crown, and told him how the half of it became bare. The impatient blood of Dora- cles mounted, but not in anger, to his face ; and, breaking up the party, he requested that the picture might be removed to his own chamber, promising, to return it. A whole year, however, did he keep it ; and as he had no foreign enemies to occupy his time, nor was disposed to enter into the common sports of peace, it was understood that he spent the greatest part of his time, when he was not in council, in the room where the picture hung. In truth, the image of the once smil- ing Daphles haunted him, wherever he went ; and to ease him- self of the yearning of wishing her alive again and seeing hei face, he was in the habit of being with it as much as possible. His self-will turned upon him, even in that gentle shape. Mil- lions of times did he wish back the loving author of his fortunes, whom he had treated with so clownish an ingratitude ; and mil- lions of times did the sense of the impotence of his wish run up in red hurry to his cheeks, and help to pull them into a gaunt melancholy. But this is not a repaying sorrow to dwell upon. He was one day, after being in vain expected at council, found lying madly on the floor of the room, dead. He had torn the portrait from the wall. His dagger was in his heart, and his cheek lay upon that blooming and smiling face, which, had it been living, would never have looked so at being revenged. 12 128 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxii CHAPTER XXIII. Spirit of tlic Ancient Mythology. From having a different creed of our own, and always encoun- tering the heathen mythology in a poetical and fabulous shape, we are apt to have a false idea of the religious feeling of the ancients. We are in the habit of supposing, whatever we allow when we come to reason upon the point, that they regarded their fables in the same poetical light as ourselves ; that they could not possibly put faith in Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto ; in the sacrifice of innocent turtle-doves, the libation of wine, and the notions about Tartarus and Ixion. Undoubtedly there were multitudes of free thinkers in the ancient world. Most of the Greek poets and philosophers appear to have differed with the literal notions of the many.*" A system of refined theism is understood to have been taught to the initiated in the celebrated Mysteries. The doctrines of Epicurus were so prevalent in the most intellectual age of Rome, that Lucretius wrote a poem upon them, in which he treats their founder as a divinity ; and Virgil, in the well-known passage of the Georgics, "Felix qui potuit," &c., exalts either Epicurus or Lucretius as a blessed being, who put hell and terroi under his feet. A -sickly temperament appears to have made him wish, rather than be ajale, to carry his own scepticism so far : yet he insinuates his belief in Tartarus, in the sixth book of his epic poem, where jEneas and the Sibyl, after the * It is remarkable that ^schylus and Euripides, the two dramatists whose faith in the national religion was most doubted, are said to have met with strange and violent deaths. The latter was torn to pieces by dogs, and the former killed by a tortoise which an eagle let fall upon his bald head, in mistake for a stone. These exits from the scene look very like the retributive death-beds which the bigots of all religions are so fond of ascrib- ing to one another. CHAP, xxiii.] SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 129 description of the lower world, go out through the ivory gate, which was the passage of false visions.* Crosar, according to a speech of his in Sallust, derided the same notions in open senate ; and Cicero, in other parts of his writings, as well as in a public pleading, speaks of them as fables and impertinence, — " ineptiis ac fabulis." But however this plain-dealing may look on the part of the men of letters, there is reason to believe, that even in those times, the people, in general, were strong upon the points of faith. The extension of the Greek philosophy may have insen- sibly rendered them familiar with latitudes of interpretation on the part of others. They would not think it impious in Cicero and Cato to have notions of the Supreme Being more consistent with the elevation of their minds. But ibr themselves, they adhered from habit, to the literal creed of their ancestors, as the Greek populace had done before them. The jealous enemies of Socrates contrived to have him put to death on a charge ot irreverence for the gods. A frolic of the libertine Alcibiades, which, to say the least of it, was in bad taste — the defacing the statues of Mercury — was followed with important consequences. The history of Socrates had the effect, in after times, at least in the ancient world, of saving philosophical speculators from the vindictive egotism of opinion. But even in the days of Augus- tus, Ovid wrote a popular work full of mythological fables ; and Virgil himself, whose creed, perhaps, only rejected what was unkindly, gave the hero of his intended popular epic the particular appellation of pious. That Augustus should pique himself on the same attribute proves little ; for he was a cold- blooded man of the world, and could play the hypocrite for the worst and most despotic purposes. Did he now and then lecture his poetical friends upon this point, respecting their own appear, ances with the world ? There is a curious ode of Horace (Book I., Ode xxxiv.), in which he says, that he finds himself compelled to give up his sceptical notions, and to attend more to public worship, because it had thundered one day when the * Did Dante forqet this, when he took Virgil for his guide through the Inferno ? 130 THE IirDICATOR. [chap, xxin sky was cloudless. The critics are divided in their opinion of his object in this ode. Some think him in earnest, others in jest. It is the only thing of the sort in his works, and is, at all events, of an equivocal character, that would serve his purpose on either side of the question. The opinions of the ancients upon religion may be divided into three general classes. The great multitude believed any- thing ; the very few disbelieved everything ; the philosophers and poets entertained a refined natural religion, which, while it pronounced upon nothing, rejected what was evidently unworthy of the spirit of creation, and regarded the popular deities as personifications of its various workings. All these classes had their extravagances, in proportion to their ignorance, or vicious- ness, or metaphysical perplexity. The multitude, whose no- tions were founded on ignorance, habit, and fear, admitted many absurd, and some cruel imaginations. The mere man of the world measured eveiything by his own vain and petty standard, and thought the whole goods of the universe a scramble for tlxe cunning and hypocritical. The over-refining followers of Plato, endeavoring to pierce into the nature of things b}'' the mere effort of the will, arrived at conclusions visible to none but their own yearning and impatient eyes, and lost themselves in the ethereal dogmatisms of Plotinus and Porphyry. The greatest pleasure arising to a modern imagination from the ancient mythology, is in a mingled sense of the old popular belief and of the philosophical refinements upon it. We take Apollo, and Mercury, and Venus, as shapes that existed in popu- lar credulity, as the greater fairies of the ancient world : and we regard them at the same time, as personifications of all that is beautiful and genial in the forms and tendencies of creation. But the result, coming as it docs, too, through avenues of beau- tiful poetry, both ancient and modern, is so entirely cheerful, that we are apt to think it must have wanted gravity to more believing eyes. We fancy that tlie old world saw nothing in religion but lively and graceful shapes, as remote from the more obscure and awful hintings of the world unknown, as physics appear to be from the metaphysical ; as the eye of a CHAP. XXIII.] SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 131 beautiful woman is from the inward speculations of a Brahmin ; or a lily at noonday from the wide obscurity of night-time. This supposition appears to be carried a great deal too far. We will not inquire, in this place, how far the mass of mankind, when these shapes were done away, did or did not escape from a despotic anthropomorphitism ; nor how far they were driven by the vaguer fears, and the opening of a more visible eternity, into avoiding the whole subject, rather than courting it ; nor how it is, that the nobler practical religion which was afforded them, has been unable to bring back their frightened theology from the angry and avaricious pursuits into which they fled for refuge. But, setting aside the portion of terror, of which heathenism partook in common with all faiths originating in uncultivated times, the ordinary run of pagans were perhaps more impressed with a sense of the invisible world, in conse- quence of the very visions presented to their imagination, than the same description of men under a more shadowy system. There is the same difference between the two. things, as between a populace believing in fairies, and a populace not believing. The latter is in the high road to something better, if not drawn aside into new terrors on the one hand or mere worldliness on the other. But the former is led to look out of the mere worldly common-places about it, twenty times to the other's once. It has a sense of a supernatural state of things, however gross. It has a link with another world, from which something like gravity is sure to strike into the most cheerful heart. Every forest, to the mind's eye of a Greek, was haunted with superior intelligences. Every stream had its presiding nymph, who was thanked for the draught of water. Every house had its pro- tecting gods, which had blessed the inmate's ancestors, and which would bless him also, if he cultivated the social affec- tions : for the same word which expressed piety towards the Gods expressed love towards relations and friends. If in all this there was nothing but the worship of a more graceful hu- manity, there may be worships much worse as well as much better. And the divinest spirit that ever appeared on earth has told us that the extension of human sympathy embraces all that is required of us, either to do or to foresee. 12* ■ 132 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxiii Imagine the feelings with which an ancient believer must have gone by the oracular oaks of Dodona ; or the calm groves of the Eumenides ; or the fountain where Proserpine vanished under ground with Pluto ; or the Great Temple of the myste- ries at Eleusis ; or the laurelled mountain Parnassus, on the side of which was the temple of Delphi, where Apollo was sup- posed to be present in person. Imagine Plutarch, a devout and yet a liberal believer, when he went to study theology and phi- losophy at Delphi : with what feelings must he not have passed along the woody paths of the hill, approaching nearer every instant to the divinity, and not sure that a glance of light through the trees was not the lustre pf the god himself going by ! This is mere poetry to .us, and very fine it is ; but to him it was poetry, and religion, and beauty, and gravity, and hush- ing awe, and a path as from one world to another. With similar feelings he would cross the ocean, an element that naturally detaches the mind from earth, and which the an- cients regarded as especially doing so. He had been in the Carpathian sea, the favorite haunt of Proteus, who was sup- posed to be gifted above every other deity with a knowledge of the causes of things. Towards evening, when the winds were rising, and the sailors had made their vows to Neptune, he would think of the old " shepherd of the seas of yore," and believe it possible that he might become visible to his eye- sight, driving through the darkling waters, and turning the sacred wildncss of his face towards the blessed ship. In all this, there is a deeper sense of another world, than in the habit of contenting oneself with a few vague terms and em- bodying but Mammon. There is a deeper sense of another world, precisely because there is a deeper sense of the present ; of its varieties, its benignities, its mystery. It was a strong sense of this, which made a living poet, who is accounted very orthodox in his religious opinions, give vent, in that fine sonnet, to his impatience at seeing the beautiful planet we live upon, with all its starry wonders about it, so little thought of, com- pared with what is ridiculously called the loorld. He seems to have dreaded tlie symptom, as an evidence of materialism, and of the planets being dry self-existing tilings, peopled with mere CHAP, xxni.] SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 133 successive mortalities, and unconnected with any superin- tendence or consciousness in the universe about them. It is abhon-ent from all we think and feel, that they should be so : and yet Love might make heavens of them, if they were. '• The world is too much with us. Late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers ; Little we see in Nature that is ours : We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; The winds tliat will be howling at all hours. And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlcrn; Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea. Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn " 134 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxiv. CHAPTER XXIV. Getting up on Cold Mornings. An Italian author — Giulio Cordara, a Jesuit — has written a poem upon insects, which he begins by insisting, that those trou- blesome and abominable little annuals were created for our annoyance, and that they were certainly not inhabitants of Paradise. We of the north may dispute this piece of theology : but on the other hand, it is as clear as the snow on the house- tops, that Adam was not under the necessity of shaving ; and that when Eve walked out of her delicious bower, she did not step upon ice three inches thick. Some people say -it is a very easy thing to get up of a cold morning. You have only, they tell you, to take the resolution ; and the thing is done. This may be very true ^just as a boy at school has only to take a flogging, and the thing is over. But we have not at all made up our minds upon it ; and we find it a very pleasant exercise to discuss the matter, cajididly, before we get up. This at least is not idling, though it may be lying. It affords an excellent answer to those, who ask how lying in bed can be indulged in by a reasoning being — a rational crea- ture. How ! Why with the argument calmly at work in one's head, and the clothes over one's shoulder. Oh ! it is a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour. If these people would be more charitable, they would get on with their argument better. But they are apt to reason so ill, and to assert so dogmatically, that one could wish to have them stand round one's bed of a bitter morning, and lie before their faces. They ought to hear both sides of the bed, the inside and out. If they cannot entertain themselves with their own thoughts for half an hour or so, it is not the fault of those who can. Candid inquiries nito one's decumbency, besides the greater or less privileges to be allowed a man in proportion to his ability CHAP. XXIV.] GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS. 135 of keeping early hours, the work given his faculties, &;c., will at least concede their due merits to such representations as the follow- ing. In the first place, says the injured but calm appealer, I have been warm all night, and find my system in a state perfectly suita- ble to a warm-blooded animal. To get outofthis siate into the cold, besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transi- tion, is so unnatural to such a creature, that the poets, refining upon the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold — from fire to ice. They are " haled" out of their " beds," says Milton, by " harpy-footed furies," — fellows who come to call them. On my first movement towards the anticipation of getting up, I find that such parts of the sheets and bolster as are exposed to the air of the room, are stone-cold. On opening my eyes, the first thing that meets them is my own breath rolling forth, as if in the open air, like smoke out of a chimney. Think of this symptom. Then I turn my eyes sideways, and see the window all frozen over. Think of that. Then the servant comes in. "It is very cold this morning, is it not?" — "Very cold, sir." — " "Very cold indeed, isn't it ?" — " Very cold indeed, sir." — " More than usually so, isn't it, even for this weather ?" Here the servant's wit and good nature are put to a considerable test, and the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer.) "Why, sir, I think it /