ELIANA.








ELIANA:
BEING
THE HITHERTO UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS
OF
CHARLES LAMB.
"The king's chaff is as good as other people's corn." —OLD PROVERB.
NEW YORK:
HURD AND HOUGHTON.
BOSTON: WILLIAM VEAZIE.
1865.




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
WILLIAM  VEAZIE,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
BOSTON:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,
No. 5, Water Street.




PREFACE.
SIR THOMAS MORE, in the dedicatory epistle of the "Utopia,"
addressed to his friend Peter Giles, says, speaking of the
readers of books in his day, "There be some so unkind and
ungenteel, that though they take great pleasure and delectation in the work, yet, for all that, they cannot find in their
hearts to love the author thereof, nor to afford him a good
word; being much like uncourteous, unthankful, and churlish
guests, which, when they have with good and dainty meat
well filled their bellies, depart home, giving no thanks to the
feast-maker." *
This, and indeed all that the wise, witty, and learned Lord
High Chancellor says of the reading public in the times of
Henry VIII., -- a literary San Marino, - is true of the reading public of the present day.
If, however, it is the misfortune of most authors to be
perused by such unkind and unthankful readers as those Sir
Thomas speaks of, there are a few favorite and fortunate penmen that not only obtain their readers' admiration, but also
win their reader's love.
Such a one is CHARLES LAMB. Other writers may have
more readers; but none have so many true, hearty, enthusiastic admirers as he.  If to the public at large — the
miscellaneous rabble of whom Milton speaks so scornfully in
"Paradise Regained" —he is but little known, by the truest
* I quote from the old translation of Raphe Robinson.
[vl




vi                     PREFACE.
and most intelligent lovers of literature he is read with
unusual pleasure and delight. If ordinary readers —those
who -
"Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan,
Nor Mareotic juice from Ccecuban "find but little in him to praise or to admire, with all lovers and
appreciators of true wit, genuine humor, fine fancy, beautiful
imagination, and exquisite pathos, he is a prodigious favorite.
Indeed, there is something - a nameless, indescribable charm -
about this author's productions, which captivates and enravishes his readers.  By those whose mental palate is fine
enough to taste and appreciate the exquisite flavor of his
style, and to relish and enjoy his rich, peculiar, delicious
humor, the "Essays of Elia" are read with extraordinary
satisfaction, and prized as highly as the curate in "Don
Quixote" prized the "Diana" of Gil Polo.
And though Lamb found many admiring readers in his
lifetime, since his death his fame and popularity have increased greatly. Then he was generally looked upon as a
mere eccentric, —a person of more quaintness than humor,
of more oddity than genius. Now he is acknowledged to be
a most beautiful and original genius, - one of the " fixed stars
of the literary system," whose light will never pale or grow
dim, and whose peculiar brightness and beauty will long be
the wonder and delight of a choice and select number of
men and women.
Yet, despite all their love and admiration of Charles
Lamb, —nay, rather in consequence of it, —his admirers
must blame him for what Mr. Barron Field was pleased to
eulogize him for, —writing so little. Undoubtedly, in most
authors, suppression in writing would be a virtue. In Lamb
it was a fault. Instead of writing only two volumes of essays,




PREFACE.                      ii
Elia should have written a dozen. He had read, heard,
thought, and seen enough to furnish matter for twice that
number. He himself confesseth, in a letter written a year
or two before his death, that he felt as if he had a thousand
essays swelling within him. Oh that Elia, like Mr. Spectator,
had printed himself out before he died!
But notwithstanding Lamb's fame and popularity, notwithstanding all readers of his inimitable Essays lament that one
who wrote so delightfully as Elia did should have written so
little, there has not yet been published a complete collection
of his writings. The standard edition of his works, edited
by Talfourd, is far from being complete. Surely the author
of "Ion " was unwise in not publishing all of Lamb's productions. Carlyle said he wanted to know all about Margaret
Fuller, even to the color of her stockings; and the admirers
of Elia want to possess every scrap and fragment of his
inditing. They cannot let oblivion have the least "notelet"
or "essaykin" of his. For, however inferior to his best productions these uncollected articles may be, they must contain
more or less of Lamb's humor, sense, and observation. Somewhat of his delightful individuality must be stamped upon
them. In brief, they cannot but contain much that would
amuse and entertain all admirers of their author. For myself, I would rather read the poorest of these uncollected
Essays of Elia than the best productions of some of the most
popular of modern authors.  "The king's chaff is as good
as other people's corn," saith the old proverb. "There is
a pleasure arising from the very bagatelles of men renowned
for their knowledge and genius," says Goldsmith; "and we
receive with veneration those pieces, after they are dead,
which would lessen them in our estimation while living:
sensible that we shall enjoy them no more, we treasure up,




viii                   PREFACE.
as precious relics, every saying and word that has escaped
them; but their writings of every kind we deem inestimable."
For years I have been hopefully and patiently waiting for
somebody to collect and publish these scattered and all but
forgotten articles of Lamb's; but at last, seeing no likelihood
of its being done at present, if ever in my day, and fearing
that I might else never have an opportunity of perusing these
strangely neglected writings of my favorite author, I commenced the task of searching out and discovering them
myself for mine own delectation. And after a deal of fruitless
and aimless labor (for, unlike Johannes Scotus Erigena, in
his quest of a treatise of Aristotle, I' had no oracle to consult), after spending nearly as many weeks in turning over the
leaves of I know not how many volumes of old, dusty, musty,
fusty periodicals, as Mr. Vernon ran miles after a butterfly, I
was amply rewarded for all my pains; for I not only found
all, or nearly all, of Lamb's uncollected writings that are
spoken of in his " Life and Letters," but a goodly number of
articles from his pen which neither he nor his biographer has
even alluded to. As I read these (to me) new essays, poems,
and letters of Elia, I could not but feel somewhat indignant
that such excellent productions of such an excellent writer
should have been "underkept and down supprest" so long. I
was as much ravished with these new-found Essays of Lamb's
as good old Nicholas Gerbelius (see Burton's "Anatomy of
Melancholy," partition ii., section 2, member 4) was with a
few Greek authors restored to light. If I had had one or
two loving, enthusiastic admirers of Charles Lamb to enjoy
with me the delight of perusing these uncollected Elias, I
should have been " all felicity up to the brim."  For with me,
as with Michael de Montaigne and Hans Andersen, there is




PREFACE.                      i
no pleasure without communication; and therefore, partly
to please myself, and partly to please the admirers of Elia,
I have collected and published all of Charles Lamb's writings
that I found "sleeping" in out-of-fashion books and out-of-date
periodicals.
To ninety-nine hundredths of their author's readers, the
contents of this volume will be as good as manuscript; and
not only will the contents of " Eliana " be new to most readers, but they will be found to be not wholly unworthy of him
who wrote the immortal dissertation on " Roast Pig." Albeit
not to be compared with Elia's best and most finished productions, many of the articles in this collection contain some
of the finest qualities and peculiarities of his genius; and
most of them - especially the essays and sketches - are, as
good old Bishop Hall would say, flowered with the blossoms
of learning and observation.
Though the generality of readers may not find much to
amuse or entertain them in this volume, without doubt all
genuine admirers, all true lovers, of the gentle, genial, delightful Elia, to whom almost every word of their favorite author's
inditing is -
"Farsed with pleasaunce,"
will be mightily pleased with these productions of his inimitable pen, now first collected together.
J. E. B.
CHELSEA, May, 1864.








CONTENTS.
ESSAYS AND SKETCHES.
PAGE
TABLE-TALK..                     17
THE GENTLE GIANTESS...............  26
THE REYNOLDS GALLERY...........          31
GUY  FAUX...................    34
A VISION OF HORNS................  46
JOHN KEMBLE, AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO a ~.   54
THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF
" THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN.......   9
REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN........  67
ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST ".........   70
THE MONTHS..................  74
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MIR. LISTON.........  80
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN, IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE "LONDON MAGAZINE........   91
THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.............  95
THE RELIGION OF ACTORS............ 104
THE  ASS....................   108
IN RE SQUIRRELS...............  112
ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS....... 114
POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER ON EARS "...      117
ELlA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS..........   119
T,~ 1.




xii                     CONTENTS.
ESSAYS AND SKETCHES (continued).
PAGE
UNITARIAN PROTESTS, IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT
PERSUASION NEWLY MARRIED........... 122
ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES; WITH SOME
ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF DAMNED AUTHORS...... 128
CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.......... 137
ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE............ 139
THE OLD ACTORS..141
CAPTAIN STARKEY................ 143
A POPULAR FALLACY, THAT A DEFORMED PERSON IS A LORD. 148
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN
NEGLECTED................. 151
ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES.... 159
ELIA ON HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD "......  161
THE LAST PEACH....163
REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY............ 167
A SATURDAY'S DINNER..172
A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. BY A FRIEND..          181
THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. A FARCE... 189
THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES........   221
TALES.
REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ., OF BIRMINGHAM.. 337
CUPID'S REVENGE................ 346
THE DEFEAT OF TIME; OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES... 867
MARIA HOWE; OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH STORIES.... 375
SUSAN YATES; OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH...... 384
ARABELLA HARDY; OR, THE SEA VOYAGE........ 392




CONTENTS.                     xiii
POEMS.
PAGE
EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING. FROM THE
LATIN OF PALINGENIUS............. 403
THE PARTING SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER TO THE
POET. FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS, IN THE ZODIACUs VITE..................  404
HERCULES PACIFICATUS. A TALE FROM SUIDAS..... 406
A FRAGMENT.................. 410
FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS  -, FRENCH TEACHER AT MRS.
GISBORN'S SCHOOL, ENFIELD...........   412
TO C. ADERS, ESQ., ON HIS COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS BY THE
OLD GERMAN MASTERS............. 413
LETTERS.
TO A BOOKSELLER.4.......       a.                417
TO J. PAYNE COLLIER......                418
TO JOSEPH COTTLE................ 419
TO THE SAME...........                     420
TO THE SAME........ * *                       421
TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE........             422
TO S. T. COLERIDGE..............    424
TO THOMAS HOOD................ 425
TO THE SAME...........                     427
TO LEIGH HUNT................. 428
TO MRS. SHELLEY................ 430
TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TABLE-BOOK.......    432
TO THE SAME.................. 433
TO P G. PATMORE................ 434








ESSAYS AND SKETCHES.








ESSAYS AND SKETCHES.
TABLE-TALK.*
IT is a desideratum in works that treat de re culinarid,
that we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed
flavors: as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with
roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the haunch of
mutton seeks the alliance of currant-jelly, the shoulder
civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself unctuous, seeketh the adventitious
lubricity of melted butter, - and why the same part in
pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the
French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why
salt fish points to parsnip, brawn makes a dead-set at
mustard; why cats prefer valerian to heart's-ease, old
ladies vice versd, - though this is rather travelling out
of the road of the dietetics, and may be thought a
question more curious than relevant; why salmon (a
strong sapor per se) fortifieth its condition with the
mighty lobster-sauce, whose embraces are fatal to the
delicater relish of the turbot; why oysters in death rise
up against the contamination of brown sugar, while
* From the " London Athenaeum," 1834.
2                [17]




18                TABLE-TALK.
they are posthumously amorous of vinegar; why the
sour mango and the sweet jam by turns court and are
accepted by the compliable mutton-hash, - she not yet
decidedly declaring for either. We are as yet but in
the empirical stage of cookery. W'e feed ignorantly,
and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that
is in us; so that, if Nature should furnish us with a
new meat, or be prodigally pleased to restore the
phoenix, upon a given flavor, we might be able to pronounce instantly, on philosophical principles, what the
sauce to it should be, - what the curious adjuncts.
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action
by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.'Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to
deny him; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of
your pocket.
Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their
fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it, -how such a woman
in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table.
Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of,
that could not have struck the particular fancy of any
man that had any fancy at all. These I call furniture
wives; as men buy furniture pictures, because they suit
this or that niche in their dining-parlors.
Your universally cried-up beauties are the very last
choice which a man of taste would make. What
pleases all cannot have that individual charm which
makes this or that countenance engaging to you, and to




TABLE-TALK.                19
you only perhaps, you know not why. What gained
the fair Gunnings titled husbands, who, after all, turned
out very sorry wives? Popular repute.
It is a sore trial when a daughter shall marry against
her father's approbation. A little hard-heartedness,
and aversion to a reconcilement, is almost pardonable.
After all, Will Dockwray's way is, perhaps, the wisest.
His best-loved daughter made a most imprudent match;
in fact, eloped with the last man in the world that her
father would have wished her to marry. All the world
said that he would never speak to her again. For
months she durst not write to him, much less come near
him. But, in a casual rencounter, he met her in the
streets of Ware, - Ware, that will long remember the
mild virtues of William Dockwray, Esq. What said
the parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered
under her at the sight of him?  "Ha, Sukey! is it
you?" with that benevolent aspect with which he paced
the streets of Ware, venerated as an angel: "come
and dine with us on Sunday." Then turning away,
and again turning back, as if he had forgotten something, he added, "And, Sukey, do you hear? — bring
your husband with you." This was all the reproof
she ever heard from him. Need it be added, that the
match turned out better for Susan than the world
expected?
The vices of some men are magnificent. Compare
the amours of Henry the Eighth and Charles the
Second. The Stuart had mistresses: the Tudor kept
wives.




20                 TABLE-TALK.
" We read the'Paradise Lost' as a task," says Dr.
Johnson.  Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of
which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient. " Nobody ever wished it longer;" nor the moon
rounder, he might have added. Why,'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine
that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from
it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to
the stature of the Medicean Venus?  Do we wish her
taller?
Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity
among us, it is consolatory that a sect has sprung up in
the heart of the metropolis, and is daily on the increase,
of teachers of that healing doctrine which Pope upheld,
and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit:
we mean those practical preachers of optimism, or the
belief that whatever is is best; the cads of omnibuses,
who from their little back pulpits, not once in three or
four hours, as those proclaimers of " God and his
prophet" in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at
the entry or exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an
almost prophetic tone, to exclaim (Wisdom crying out,
as it were, in the streets), " ALLIS RIGHT! "
Advice is not so commonly thrown away as is imagined. We seek it in difficulties. But, in common
speech, we are apt to confound with it admonition; as
when a friend reminds one that drink is prejudicial to the
health, &c. We do not care to be told of that which
we know better than the good man that admonishes.
M - sent to his friend L, who is no water



TABLE-TALK.                 21
drinker, a twopenny tract "Against the Use of Fermented Liquors." L- acknowledged the obligation,
as far as to twopence. Penotier's advice was the safest,
after all"I advised him"
But I must tell you. The dear, good-meaning, nothinking creature had been dumfounding a company
of us with a detail of inextricable difficulties, in which
the circumstances of an acquaintance of his were involved. No clew of light offered itself. He grew more
and more misty as he proceeded. We pitied his friend,
and thought,"God help the man so rapt in Error's endless maze!"
when, suddenly brightening up his placid countenance,
like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have
the solution admired, —
" At last," said he, "I advised him "Here he paused, and here we were again interminably
thrown back. By no possible guess could any of us
aim at the drift of the meaning he was about to be
delivered of.
" I advised him," he repeated, " to have some advice
upon the subject."
A general approbation followed; and it was unanimously agreed, that, under all the circumstances of the
case, no sounder or more judicious counsel could have
been given.
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
Parson W-  is not quite so continent as Diana,
yet prettily dissembleth his frailty. Is Parson W-,




22                 TABLE-TALK.
therefore, a hypocrite? I think, not. Where the concealment of a vice is less pernicious than the barefaced
publication of it would be, no additional delinquency is
incurred in the secrecy. Parson WTV     is simply an
immoral clergyman.  But if Parson W   - were to be
for ever haranguing on the opposite virtue; choosing
for his perpetual text, in preference to all other pulpittopics, the remarkable resistance recorded in the 39th
of Exodus [Genesis?]; dwelling, moreover, and dilating upon it, - then Parson W      might be reasonably suspected of hypocrisy.  But Parson W -
rarely diverteth into such line of argument, or toucheth
it briefly. His ordinary topics are fetched from "obedience to the powers that are," "submission to the civil
magistrate in all commands that are not absolutely
unlawful;" on which he can delight to expatiate with
equal fervor and sincerity.
Again: to despise a person is properly to look down
upon him with none or the least possible emotion; but
when Clementina, who has lately lost her lover, with
bosom heaving, eyes flashing, and her whole frame in
agitation, pronounces with a peculiar emphasis that she
" despises the fellow," depend upon it that he is not quite
so despicable in her eyes as she would have us imagine.
One more instance. If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, a truism, it were well that we limited
the use of it.  Every commonplace or trite observation
is not a truism.  For example: A good name helps a
man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple
truth, however hackneyed.  It has a distinct subject
and predicate.  But when the thing predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily




TABLE-TALK.                23
involved that by no possible conception they can be
separated, then it becomes a truism; as to say, "A good
name is a proof of a man's estimation in the world."
We seem to be saying something, when we say nothing.
I was describing to F   - some knavish tricks of a
mutual friend of ours. " If he did so and so," was the
reply, "he cannot be an honest man."  Here was a
genuine truism, truth upon truth, inference and proposition identical, or rather a dictionary definition usurping the place of an inference.
We are ashamed at sight of a monkey, -somehow
as we are shy of poor relations.
C-.  imagined a Caledonian compartment in Hades,
where there should be fire without sulphur.
Absurd images are sometimes irresistible.  I will
mention two,- an elephant in a coach-office gravely
coming to have his trunk booked; a mermaid over a
fish-kettle cooking her own tail.
It is the praise of Shakspeare, with reference to the
playwriters his contemporaries, that he has so few
revolting characters. Yet he has one that is singularly
mean and disagreeable, — the King in " Hamlet."
Neither has he characters of insignificance, unless the
phantom that stalks over the stage as Julius Caesar, in
the play of that name, may be accounted one. Neither
has he envious characters, excepting the short part of
Don John, in " Much Ado about Nothing." Neither
has he unentertaining characters, if we except Parolles,




24                       TABLE-TALK.
and the little that there is of the Clown, in " All's
Well that Ends Well."
Is it possible that Shakspeare should never have read
Homer, in Chapman's version at least? If he had read
it, could he mean to travesty it in the parts of those big
boobies, Ajax and Achilles? Ulysses, Nestor, and
Agamemnon are true to  their parts in  the "Iliad:"
they are gentlemen at least. Thersites, though unamusing, is fairly deducible from  it.  Troilus and Cressida
are a fine graft upon it. But those two big bulks -
It would settle the dispute as to whether Shakspeare
intended Othello for a jealous character, to consider
how differently we are affected towards him and for
Leontes in the " Winter's Tale."   Leontes is that character. Othello's fault was simply credulity.
"Lear. Who are you?
Mine eyes are none o' the best. I'll tell you straight.
Are you not Kent?
Kent. The same; your servant Kent.
Where is your servant Caius?
Lear.'Twas a good fellow, I can tell you that;
He'd strike, and quickly too: he is dead and rotten.
Kent. No, my good lord: I am the very man -
Lear. I'll see that straight -
Kent. That from your first of difference and decay
Have followed your sad steps.
Lear. You are welcome hither.
Albany. He knows not what he says; and vain is it
That we present us to him.
Edgar. Look up, my lord.
Kent. Vex not his ghost. Oh! let him pass. He hates him
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer."
So ends "King Lear," the most stupendous of the




TABLE-TALK.                   25
Shakspearian dramas; and Kent, the noblest feature of
the conceptions of his divine mind. This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer, having a topic
presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common
minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious
few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.
What a pudder would a common dramatist have raised
here of a reconciliation-scene, a perfect recognition,
between the assumed Caius and his master! - to the
suffusing of many fair eyes, and the moistening of cambric handkerchiefs. The old dying king partially catching at the truth, and immediately lapsing into obliviousness, with the high-minded carelessness of the other
to have his services appreciated, - as one that -
" Served not for gain,
Or followed out of form,"are among the most judicious, not to say heart-touching,
strokes in Shakspeare.
Allied to this magnanimity it is, where the pith and
point of an argument, the amplification of which might
compromise the modesty of the speaker, is delivered
briefly, and, as it were, parenthetically; as in those few
but pregnant words, in which the man in the old " Nutbrown Maid " rather intimates than reveals his unsuspected high birth to the woman:"Now understand, to Westmoreland,
Which is my heritage,
I will you bring, and with a ring,
By way of marriage,
I will you take, and lady make."
Turn we to the version of it, ten times diluted, of
dear Mat. Prior, - in his own way unequalled, and a




26              THE GENTLE GIANTESS.
poet now-a-days too much neglected.  "In me," quoth
Henry, addressing the astounded Emma, - with a flourish and an attitude, as we may conceive,"In me behold the potent Edgar's heir,
Illustrious earl! him terrible in war,
Let Loire confess."
And with a deal of skimble-skamble stuff, as Hotspur
would term it, more, presents the lady with a full and
true enumeration of his papa's rent-roll in the fat soil
by Deva.
But, of all parentheses (not to quit the topic too suddenly), commend me to that most significant one, at
the commencement of the old popular ballad of " Fair
Rosamond: ""When good King Henry ruled this land
The second of that name,"
Now mark,
"(Besides the queen) he dearly loved
A fair and comely dame."
There is great virtue in this besides.
THE GENTLE GIANTESS.*
THE Widow Blacket, of Oxford, is the largest female
I ever had the pleasure of beholding. There may be
her parallel upon the earth; but surely I never saw it.
I take her to be lineally descended from the maid's aunt
of Brainford, who caused Master Ford such uneasiness.
She hath Atlantean shoulders; and, as she stoopeth in
* From the " London Magazine," 1822.




THE GENTLE GIANTESS.             27
her gait, — with as few offences to answer for in her own
particular as any of Eve's daughters, - her back seems
broad enough to bear the blame of all the peccadilloes
that have been committed since Adam.  She girdeth
her waist - or what she is pleased to esteem as such -
nearly up to her shoulders; from beneath which, that
huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys,
who follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh
abroad, from getting up, and riding. But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. She is indeed,
as the Americans would express it, something awful.
Her person is a burthen to herself no less than to the
ground which bears her. To her mighty bone, she
hath a pinguitude withal, which makes the depth of
winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress
in the warmer solstice is pitiable. During the months
of July and August, she usually renteth a cool cellar,
where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when
Sirius rageth. She dates from a hot Thursday, - some
twenty-five years ago. Her apartment in summer is
pervious to the four winds. Two doors, in north and
south direction, and two windows, fronting the rising
and the setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal
point, catch the contributory breezes.  She loves to
enjoy what she calls a quadruple draught.  That must
be a shrewd zephyr that can escape her. I owe a
painful face-ache, which oppresses me at this moment,
to a cold caught, sitting by her, one day in last July, at
this receipt of coolness. Her fan, in ordinary, resembleth a banner spread, which she keepeth continually on
the alert to detect the least breeze. She possesseth an




28             THE GENTLE GIANTESS.
active and gadding mind, totally incommensurate with
her person. No one delighteth more than herself in
country exercises and pastimes. I have passed many
an agreeable holy-day with her in her favorite park at
WVoodstock. She performs her part in these delightful
ambulatory excursions by the aid of a portable garden
chair. She setteth out with you at a fair foot-gallop,
which she keepeth up till you are both well breathed,
and then she reposeth for a few seconds. Then she is up
again for a hundred paces or so, and again resteth;
her movement, on these sprightly occasions, being
something between walking and flying. Her great
weight seemeth to propel her forward, ostrich-fashion.
In this kind of relieved marching, I have traversed
with her many scores of acres on those well-wooded
and well-watered domains. Her delight at Oxford is in
the public walks and gardens, where, when the weather
is not too oppressive, she passeth much of her valuable time. There is a bench at Maudlin, or rather situated between the frontiers of that and —'s College
(some litigation, latterly, about repairs, has vested the
property of it finally in-'s), where, at the hour
of noon, she is ordinarily to be found sitting, — so
she calls it by courtesy, - but, in fact, pressing and
breaking of it down with her enormous settlement; as
both those foundations, who, however, are good-natured
enough to wink at it, have found, I believe, to their
cost.  Here she taketh the fresh air, principally at
vacation-times, when the walks are freest from interruption of the younger fry of students. Here she passeth
her idle hours, not idly, but generally accompanied
with a book, - blessed if she can but intercept some res



THE GENTLE GIANTESS.             29
ident Fellow (as usually there are some of that brood
left behind.at these periods) or stray Master of Arts
(to most of whom she is better known than their dinnerbell), with whom she may confer upon any curious
topic of literature. I have seen these shy gownsmen,
who truly set but a very slight value upon female conversation, cast a hawk's eye upon her from the length
of Maudlin Grove, and warily glide off into into another
walk, - true monks as they are, and ungently neglecting the delicacies of her polished converse for their
own perverse and uncommunicating solitariness! Within-doors, her principal diversion is music, vocal and
instrumental; in both which she is no mean professor.
Her voice is wonderfully fine; but, till I got used to it,
I confess it staggered me. It is, for all the world, like
that of a piping bulfinch; while, from her size and
stature, you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine singers reserve for
the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility,
or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through
the composition; so that her time, to a common air or
ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth, - running
the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon
its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you
are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new
and surprising. The spacious apartment of her outward frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a
trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose,
a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of
diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and




A)0                 THE GENTLE GIANTESS.
meagre constitution.   With more than man's bulk, her
humors and occupations are eminently feminine. She
sighs, - being six foot high. She languisheth, - being, two  feet wide.   She worketh  slender sprigs upon
the  delicate  muslin, — her  fingers  being  capable  of
moulding a Colossus.   She sippeth her wine out of her
glass daintily, -  her capacity  being  that of a tun  of
Heidelberg. She goeth mincingly with those feet of
hers, whose solidity need not fear the black ox's pressure.   Softest and largest of thy sex, adieu!  By what
parting attribute may I salute thee, last and best of
the Titanesses, - Ogress, fed with milk instead of
blood; not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's
stately structures, — Oxford, who, in its deadest time of
vacation, can never properly be said to be empty,
having thee to fill it.*
* Lamb, in the following extract from a letter to Miss Wordsworth, gives
the original sketch of " The Gentle Giantess:" "Ask anybody you meet
who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll
say Mrs. -. She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens; one on the
confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies
as to repairing it. In warm weather, she retires into an ice-cellar (literally), and dates from a hot Thursday some twenty years back. She sits in
a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draught, which
gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every
morning at ten, cheapening fowls; which I observe the Cambridge poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump." The reader will observe, that,
in the essay, Elia has changed the locality of the stout woman, and places
her in Oxford, instead of Cambridge. - EDITOR.




THE REYNOLDS GALLERY.             31
THE REYNOLDS GALLERY.*
THE Reynolds Gallery has, upon the whole, disappointed me. Some of the portraits are interesting. They
are faces of characters whom we (middle-aged gentlemen) were born a little too late to remember, but about
whom we have heard our fathers tell stories till we
almost fancy to have seen them. There is a charm in the
portrait of a Rodney or a Keppel, which even a picture
of Nelson must want for me. I should turn away after
a slight inspection from the best likeness that could be
made of Mrs. Anne Clarke; but Kitty Fisher is a considerable personage. Then the dresses of some of the
women so exactly remind us of modes which we can
just recall; of the forms under which the venerable relationship of aunt or mother first presented themselves
to our young eyes; the aprons, the coifs, the lappets, the
hoods. Mercy on us! what a load of head-ornaments
seem to have conspired to bury a pretty face in the picture of Mrs. Long, yet could not! Beauty must have
some " charmed life " to have been able to surmount the
conspiracy of fashion in those days to destroy it.
The portraits which least pleased me were those of
boys, as infant Bacchuses, Jupiters, &c.  But the
artist is not to be blamed for the disguise.  No
doubt, the parents wished to see their children deified
in their lifetime.  It was but putting a thunderbolt
(instead of a squib) into young master's hands; and a
* From the " London Examiner," 1813.




32           THE REYNOLDS GALLERY.
whey-faced chit was transformed into the infant ruler
of Olympus, - him who was afterward to shake heaven
and earth with his black brow. Another good boy
pleased his grandmamma with saying his prayers so well,
and the blameless dotage of the good old woman imagined in him an adequate representative of the infancy
of the awful Prophet Samuel. But the great historical
compositions, where the artist was at liberty to paint from his
own idea, - the Beaufurt and the Ugolino: why, then, I
must confess, pleading the liberty of table-talk for my
presumption, that they have not left any very elevating
impressions on my mind. Pardon a ludicrous comparison. I know, madam, you admire them both; but
placed opposite to each other as they are at the gallery,
as if to set the one work in competition with the other,
they did remind me of the famous contention for the
prize of deformity, mentioned in the 173d number of
the "Spectator."  The one stares, and the other grins;
but is there common dignity in their countenances?
Does any thing of the history of their life gone by peep
through the ruins of the mind in the face, like the
unconquerable grandeur that surmounts the distortions
of the Laoco6n? The figures which stand by the bed
of Beaufort are indeed happy representations of the
plain unmannered old nobility of the English historical plays of Shakspeare; but, for any thing else, give
me leave to recommend those macaroons.
After leaving the Reynolds Gallery (where, upon the
whole, I received a good deal of pleasure), and feeling
that I had quite had my fill of paintings, I stumbled
upon a picture in Piccadilly (No. 22, I think), which
purports to be a portrait of Francis the First by Leo



THE REYNOLDS GALLERY.            33
nardo da Vinci. Heavens, what a difference! It is but a
portrait, as most of those I had been seeing; but, placed
by them, it would kill them, swallow them up as Moses'
rod the other rods. Where did these old painters get
their models? I see no such figures, not in my dreams,
as this Francis, in the character, or rather with the
attributes, of John the Baptist. A more than martial
majesty in the brow and upon the eyelid; an arm
muscular, beautifully formed; the long, graceful, massy
fingers compressing, yet so as not to hurt, a lamb more
lovely, more sweetly shrinking, than we can conceive
that milk-white one which followed Una; the picture
altogether looking as if it were eternal, —combining
the truth of flesh with a promise of permanence like
marble.
Leonardo, from the one or two specimens we have of
him in England, must have been a stupendous genius.
I scarce can think he has had his full fame, — he who
could paint that wonderful personification of the Logos,
or third person of the Trinity, grasping a globe, late in
the possession of Mr. Troward of Pall Mall, where the
hand was, by the boldest license, twice as big as the
truth of drawing warranted; yet the effect, to every
one that saw it, by some magic of genius was confessed to be not monstrous, but miraculous and silencing.
It could not be gainsaid.
3




34                   GUY FAUX.
GUY FAUX.*
A VERY ingenious and subtle writer,t whom there is
good reason for suspecting to be an ex-Jesuit, not
unknown at Douay some five and twenty years since
(he will not obtrude himself at M —th again in a
hurry), about a twelvemonth back set himself to prove
the character of the Powder-Plot conspirators to have
been that of heroic self-devotedness and true Christian
martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candor, he
actually gained admission for his treatise into a London
weekly paper: not particularly distinguished for its
zeal towards either religion. But, admitting Catholic
principles, his arguments are shrewd and incontrovertible. He says," Guy Faux was a fanatic; but he was no hypocrite.
He ranks among good haters. He was cruel, bloodyminded, reckless of all considerations but those of an
infuriated and bigoted faith; but he was a true son of
the Catholic Church, a martyr, and a confessor, for all
that. He who can prevail upon himself to devote his
life for a cause, however we may condemn his opinions
or abhor his actions, vouches at least for the honesty of
his principles and the disinterestedness of his motives.
He may be guilty of the worst practices; but he is capable of the greatest.  He is no longer a slave, but free.
* From the " London Magazine," 1823.
t William Hazlitt.
t The " London Examiner," then edited by Leigh Hunt.




GUY FAUX.                  35
The contempt of death is the beginning of virtue. The
hero of the Gunpowder Plot was, if you will, a fool, a
madman, an assassin; call him what names you please:
still he was neither knave nor coward. He did not
propose to blow up the parliament, and come off, scotfree, himself: he showed that he valued his own life no
more than theirs in such a cause, where the integrity
of the Catholic faith and the salvation of perhaps millions of souls was at stake. He did not call it a murder, but a sacrifice, which he was about to achieve: he
was armed with the Holy Spirit and with fire; he was
the Church's chosen servant and her blessed martyr.
He comforted himself as'the best of cut - throats.'
How many wretches are there that would have undertaken to do what he intended, for a sum of money, if
they could have got off with impunity! How few are
there who would have put themselves in Guy Faux's
situation to save the universe! Yet, in the latter case,
we affect to be thrown into greater consternation than
at the most unredeemed acts of villany; as if the absolute disinterestedness of the motive doubled the horror
of the deed! The cowardice and selfishness of mankind
are in fact shocked at the consequences to themselves
(if such examples are held up for imitation); and they
make a fearful outcry against the violation of every
principle of morality, lest they, too, should be called on
for any such tremendous sacrifices; lest they, in their
turn, should have to go on the forlorn hope of extraofficial duty. Charity begins at home is a maxim that
prevails as well in the courts of conscience as in those
of prudence. We would be thought to shudder at the
consequences of crime to others, while we tremble for




36                  GUY FAUX.
them to ourselves. We talk of the dark and cowardly
assassin; and this is well, when an individual shrinks
from the face of an enemy, and purchases his own safety
by striking a blow in the dark: but how the charge
of cowardly can be applied to the public assassin, who,
in the very act of destroying another, lays down his
life as the pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and
boldness, I am at a loss to devise. There may be barbarous prejudice, rooted hatred, unprincipled treachery,
in such an act; but he who resolves to take all the
danger and odium upon himself can no more be branded with cowardice, than Regulus devoting himself for
his country, or Codrus leaping into the fiery gulf. A
wily Father Inquisitor, coolly and with plenary authority condemning hundreds of helpless, unoffending
victims to the flames, or to the horrors of a living
tomb, while he himself would not suffer a hair of his
head to be hurt, is, to me, a character without any qualifying trait in it. Again: the Spanish conqueror and
hero, the favorite of his monarch, who enticed thirty
thousand poor Mexicans into a large open building
under promise of strict faith and cordial good-will, and
then set fire to it, making sport of the cries and agonies of these deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting
the most hardened cruelty with the most heartless selfishness. His plea was, keeping no faith with heretics;
this was Guy Faux's too: but I am sure at least that
the latter kept faith with himself; he was in earnest in
his professions. His was not gay, wanton, unfeeling
depravity; he did not murder in sport: it was serious
work that he had taken in hand. To see this arch-bigot,
this heart-whole traitor, this pale miner in the infernal




GUY FAUX.                         37
regions, skulking in his retreat with his cloak and dark
lantern, moving cautiously about among his barrels of
gunpowder loaded with death, but not yet ripe for destruction, regardless of the lives of others, and more than
indifferent to his own, presents a picture of the strange
infatuation of the human understanding, but not of the
depravity of the human will, without an equal. There
were thousands of pious Papists privy to and ready
to applaud the deed when done: there was no ohe but
our old fifth-of-November friend, who still flutters in
rags and straw on the occasion, that had the courage
to attempt it. In him stern duty and unshaken faith
prevailed over natural frailty."*
It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to
admit the force of this reasoning: we can only not help
smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the
gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for
the very quintessence of sublimated reason in England
at the commencement of the nineteenth century.  We
will just, as a contrast, show what we Protestants
(who are a party concerned) thought upon the same
subject at a period rather nearer to the heroic project
in question.
The Gunpowder Treason was the subject which called
* In Hazlitt's delightful report of the conversation at one of Charles
Lamb's Wednesday-evening parties (it is to be regretted that he did not report
the conversation at all of these assemblages of wits, humorists, and good
fellows), Elia thus speaks in defence of the hero of the Gunpowder Plot:
" I cannot but think that Guy Faux, that poor fluttering annual scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something
to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his
barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him
to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion. But, if I say any more, there is that
fellow Godwin will make something out of it." -EDITOR.




38                  GUY FAUX.
forth the earliest specimen which is left us of the pulpit
eloquence of Jeremy Taylor. WVhen he preached the
sermon on that anniversary, which is printed at the end
of the folio edition of his Sermons, he was a young
man, just commencing his ministry under the auspices
of Archbishop Laud. From the learning and maturest
oratory which it manifests, one should rather have
conjectured it to have proceeded from the same person
after he was ripened by time into a Bishop and Father
of the Church.  "And, really, these Romano-barbari
could never pretend to any precedent for an act so barbarous as theirs. Adramelech, indeed, killed a king;
but he spared the people. Haman would have killed
the people, but spared the king; but that both king
and people, princes and judges, branch and rush and
root, should die at once (as if Caligula's wish were
actuated, and all England upon one head), was never
known till now, that all the malice of the world met in
this as in a centre. The Sicilian even-song, the matins
of St. Bartholomew, known for the pitiless and damned
massacres, were but KaXrvoV Kiac 5vatp, the dream of the
shadow of smoke, if compared with this great fire. In
tam occupato steculo fabulas vulgares nequitia non invenit.
This was a busy age. Herostratus must have invented
a more sublimed malice than the burning of one temple,
or not have been so much as spoke of since the discovery of the powder treason. But I must make more
haste; I shall not else climb the sublimity of this impiety. Nero was sometimes the populare odium, was
popularly hated, and deserved it too: for he slew his
master, and his wife, and all his family, once or twice
over; opened his mother's womb; fired the city,




GUY FAUX.                   39
laughed at it-, slandered the Christians for it: but yet
all these were but princiyia malorum, the very first rudiments of evil. Add, then, to these, Herod's masterpiece at Ramah, as it was deciphered by the tears and
sad threnes of the matrons in a universal mourning
for the loss of their pretty infants; yet this of Herod
will prove but an infant wickedness, and that of Nero
the evil but of one city. I would willingly have found
out an example, but see I cannot. Should I put into
the scale the extract of all the old tyrants famous in
antique stories, —
Bistonii stabulum regis, Busiridis aras,
Antiphatxe mensas, et Taurica regna Thoantis;'should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was
fancied by the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, -this alone
would weigh them down, as if the Alps were put in
scale against the dust of a balance. For, had this accursed treason prospered, we should have had the whole
kingdom mourn for the inestimable loss of its chiefest
glory, its life, its present joy, and all its very hopes for
the future.  For such was their destined malice, that
they would not only have inflicted so cruel a blow, but
have made it incurable, by cutting off our supplies of
joy, the whole succession of the Line Royal. Not
only the vine itself, but all the gemmiule, and the tender
olive branches, should either have been bent to their
intentions, and made to grow crooked, or else been
broken.
"And now, after such a sublimity of malice, I will
not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighboring
temples, which needs must have perished in the flame;
nor in the disturbing the ashes of our entombed kings,




40                     GUY FAUX.
devouring their dead ruins like sepulchral dogs: these
are but minutes in respect of the ruin prepared for the
living temples: —
Stragem sed istam non tulit
Christus cadentum Principum
Impune, ne forsan sui
Patris periret fabrica.
Ergo quwe poterit lingua retexere
Laudes, Christe, tuas, qui domitum struis
Infidum populum cum Duce perfido!'"
In such strains of eloquent indignation did Jeremy
Taylor's young oratory inveigh against that stupendous
attempt which he truly says had no parallel in ancient
or modern times. A century and a half of European
crimes has elapsed since he made the assertion, and his
position remains in its strength.  He wrote near the
time in which the nefarious project had like to have been
completed. Men's minds still were shuddering from
the recentness of the escape. It must have been within
his memory, or have been sounded in his ears so young
by his parents, that he would seem, in his maturer
years, to have remembered it. No wonder, then, that
he describes it in words that burn. But to us, to whom
the tradition has come slowly down, and has had time
to cool, the story of Guido Vaux sounds rather like a
tale, a fable, and an invention, than true history. It
supposes such gigantic audacity of daring, combined
with such more than infantile stupidity in the motive, -
such a combination of the fiend and the monkey,- that
credulity is almost swallowed up in contemplating the
singularity of the attempt.  It has accordingly, in some
degree, shared the fate of fiction. It is familiarized to
us in a kind of serio-ludicrous way, like the story of




GUY FAUX.                      41
Guy of Wtarwick, or Valentine and Orson.  The way
which we take to perpetuate the memory of this deliverance is well adapted to keep up this fabular notion.
Boys go about the streets annually with a beggarly
scare-crow dressed up, which is to be burnt indeed, at
night, with holy zeal; but, meantime, they beg a penny
for poor Guy: this periodical petition, which we have
heard from our infancy, combined with the dress and
appearance of the effigy, so well calculated to move
compassion, has the effect of quite removing from
our fancy the horrid circumstances of the story which is
thus commemorated; and in poor Guy vainly should
we try to recognize any of the features of that tremendous madman in iniquity, Guido Vaux, with his horrid
crew of accomplices, that sought to emulate earthquakes
and bursting volcanoes in their more than mortal
mischief.
Indeed, the whole ceremony of burning Guy Faux,
or the Pope, as he is indifferently called, is a sort of Treason Travestie, and admirably adapted to lower our feelings upon this memorable subject. The printers of the
little duodecimo Prayer Book, printed by T. Baskett,*
in 1749, which has the effigy of his sacred majesty
George II. piously prefixed, have illustrated the service (a very fine one in itself), which is appointed for
the anniversary of this day, with a print, which it is
not very easy to describe; but the contents appear to
* The same, I presume, upon whom the clergyman in the song of the
"Vicar and Moses," not without judgment, passes this memorable censure: -
"Here, Moses the king:'Tis a scandalous thing
That this Baskett should print for the Crown."




42                  GUY FAUX.
be these: The scene is a room, I conjecture, in the
king's palace. Two persons -one of whom I take to
be James himself, from his wearing his hat, while the
other stands bare-headed —are intently surveying a
sort of speculum, or magic mirror, which stands upon
a pedestal in the midst of the room, in which a little
figure of Guy Faux with his dark lantern, approaching
the door of the Parliament House, is made discernible
by the light proceeding from a great eye which shines
in from the topmost corner of the apartment, by which
eye the pious artist no doubt meant to designate Providence.  On the other side of the mirror is a figure
doing something, which puzzled me when a child, and
continues to puzzle me now. The best I can make of
it is, that it is a conspirator busy laying the train;
but, then, why is he represented in the king's chamber?
Conjecture upon so fantastical a design is vain; and I
only notice the print as being one of the earliest graphic
representations which woke my childhood into wonder,
and doubtless combined, with the mummery before mentioned, to take off the edge of that horror which the
naked historical mention of Guido's conspiracy could
not have failed of exciting.
Now that so many years are past since that abominable machination was happily frustrated, it will not, I
hope, be considered a profane sporting with the subject,
if we take no very serious survey of the consequences
that would have flowed from this plot if it had had a
successful issue. The first thing that strikes us, in a selfish point of view, is the material change which it must
have produced in the course of the nobility. All the
ancient peerage being extinguished, as it was intended,




GUY FAUX.                  43
at one blow, the Red-Book must have been closed for
ever, or a new race of peers must have been created to
supply the deficiency. As the first part of this dilemma
is a deal too shocking to think of, what a fund of
mouth-watering reflections does this give rise to in the
breast of us plebeians of A.D. 1823! Why, you or I,
reader, might have been Duke of -, or Earl of —-.
I particularize no titles, to avoid the least suspicion
of intention to usurp the dignities of the two noblemen
whom I have in my eye; but a feeling more dignified than envy sometimes excites a sigh, when I think
how the posterity of Guido's Legend of Honor (among
whom you or I might have been) might have rolled
down, " dulcified," as Burke expresses it, "by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long flow of generations, from the hard, acidulous, metallic tincture of the
spring." *  What new orders of merit think you this
English Napoleon would have chosen?  Knights of the
Barrel, or Lords of the Tub, Grand Almoners of
the Cellar, or Ministers of Explosion.  We should
have given the train couchant, and the fire rampant, in
our arms; we should have quartered the dozen white
matches in our coats: the Shallows would have been
nothing to us.
Turning away from these mortifying reflections, let
us contemplate its effects upon the other house; for
they were all to have gone together, —king, lords,
commons.
T'o assist our imagination, let us take leave to suppose (and we do it in the harmless wantonness of fancy)
-to suppose that the tremendous explosion had taken
* Letter to a Noble Lord.




44                  GUY FAUX.
place in our days. We better know what a House of
Commons is in our days, and can better estimate our
loss. Let us imagine, then, to ourselves, the united
members sitting in full conclave above; Faux just
ready with his train and matches below,- in his
hand a "reed tipt with fire."  He applies the fatal
engine.
To assist our notions still further, let us suppose
some lucky dog of a reporter, who had escaped by
miracle upon some plank of St. Stephen's benches, and
came plump upon the roof of the adjacent Abbey; from
whence descending, at some neighboring coffee-house,
first wiping his clothes and calling for a glass of lemonade, he sits down and reports what he had heard and
seen (quorum pars magna fuit), for the " Morning Post "
or the " Courier." We can scarcely imagine him describing the event in any other words but some such
as these:" A motion was put and carried, that this house do
adjourn; that the speaker do quit the chair. The house
ROSE amid clamors for order."
In some such way the event might most technically
have been conveyed to the public. But a poetical mind,
not content with this dry method of narration, cannot
help pursuing the effects of this tremendous blowing
up, this adjournment in the air, sine die. It seems the
benches mount, - the chair first, and then the benches;
and first the treasury bench, hurried up in this nitrous
explosion, -the members, as it were, pairing off; Whigs
and Tories taking their friendly apotheosis together (as
they did their sandwiches below in Bellamy's room).
Fancy, in her flight, keeps pace with the aspiring legis



GUY FAUX.                  45
lators: she sees the awful seat of order mounting, till it
becomes finally fixed, a constellation, next to Cassiopeia's
chair, -the wig of him that sat in it taking its place
near Berenice's curls. St. Peter, at heaven's wicket,
- no, not St. Peter, - St. Stephen, with open arms,
receives his own.
While Fancy beholds these celestial appropriations,
Reason, no less pleased, discerns the mighty benefit
which so complete a renovation must produce below.
Let the most determined foe to corruption, the most
thorough-paced redresser of abuses, try to conceive a
more absolute purification of the house than this was
calculated to produce. Why, pride's purge was nothing to it. The whole borough-mongering system
would have been got rid of, fairly exploded; with
it the senseless distinctions of party must have disappeared, faction must have vanished, corruption have
expired in air. From Hundred, Tything, and Wapentake, some new Alfred would have convened, in all
its purity, the primitive Witenagemote,- fixed upon
a basis of property or population permanent as the
poles.
From this dream of universal restitution, Reason and
Fancy with difficulty awake to view the real state of
things.  But, blessed be Heaven! St. Stephen's walls
are yet standing, all her seats firmly secured; nay,
some have doubted (since the Septennial Act) whether
gunpowder itself, or any thing short of a committee
above stairs, would be able to shake any one member
from his seat. That great and final improvement to
the Abbey, which is all that seems wanting, —the
removing Westminster Hall and its appendages, and let



46                   A VISION  OF HORNS.
ting in the view of the Thames, - must not be expected
in our days. Dismissing, therefore, all such speculations as mere tales of a tub, it is the duty of every
honest Englishman to endeavor, by means less wholesale than Guido's, to ameliorate, without extinguishing,
parliaments; to hold the lantern to the dark places of
corruption; to apply the match to the rotten parts of the
system only; and to wrap himself up, not in the muffling  mantle  of conspiracy, but in  the  warm, honest
cloak of integrity and patriotic intention.
A VISION OF HORNS.*
MY thoughts had been engaged last evening  in  solving the problem, why in all times and places the horn
has been agreed upon as the symbol, or honorable
badge, of married  men.  Moses' horn, the  horn  of
Ammon, of Amalthea, and  a cornucopia  of legends
besides, came to my recollection, but afforded no satis* From the "London Magazine," 1825.
In a letter to Miss Hutchinson, Lamb thus speaks of this article: " The'Horns' is in a poor taste, resembling the most labored papers in the' Spectator.' I had signed it' Jack Horner:' but Taylor and Hessey said it would
be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it; and
wrung from me my slow consent." It seems that the " Vision" (" the foolish
Vision," Lamb calls it) displeased Bernard Barton's daughter; but Elia
hoped she would receive, in atonement for the " Horns " (as no doubt the
"' quiet Quakeress" gladly did), his beautiful story, " Barbara S."  But
despite the disparaging words of its writer, and the wounded sensibility of
Miss Lucy Barton, I venture to say that " The Vision of Horns" is a
pleasant and entertaining paper. - EDITOR.




A VISION OF HORNS.              47
factory solution, or rather involved the question in
deeper obscurity.  Tired with the fruitless chase of
inexplicant analogies, I fell asleep, and dreamed in this
fashion -
Methought certain scales or films fell from my eyes,
which had hitherto hindered these little tokens from
being visible.  I was somewhere in the Cornhill (as it
might be termed) of some Utopia.  Busy citizens
jostled each other, as they may do in our streets, with
care (the care of making a penny) written upon their
foreheads; and something else, which is rather imagined
than distinctly imaged, upon the brows of my own
friends and fellow-townsmen.
In my first surprise, I supposed myself gotten into
some forest, — Arden, to be sure, or Sherwood; but
the dresses and deportment, all civic, forbade me to
continue in that delusion. Then a scriptural thought
crossed me (especially as there were nearly as many
Jews as Christians among them), whether it might not
be the children of Israel going up to besiege Jericho. I
was undeceived of both errors by the sight of many faces
which were familiar to me. I found myself strangely
(as it will happen in dreams) at one and the same time
in an unknown country with known companions. I
met old friends, not with new faces, but with their old
faces oddly adorned in front, with each man a certain
corneous exeresence. Dick Mitis, the little cheesemonger in St. -'s Passage, was the first that saluted me,
with his hat off (you know Dick's way to a customer);
and, I not being aware of him, he thrust a strange
beam into my left eye, which pained and grieved me
exceedingly; but, instead of apology, he only grinned




48             A VISION OF HORNS.
and fleered in my face, as much as to say, "It is the
custom of the country," and passed on.
I had scarce time to send a civil message to his lady,
whom I have always admired as a pattern of a wife,
and do indeed take Dick and her to be a model of conjugal agreement and harmony, when I felt an ugly
smart in my neck, as if something had gored it behind;
and, turning round, it was my old friend and neighbor,
Dulcet, the confectioner, who, meaning to be pleasant,
had thrust his protuberance right into my nape, and
seemed proud of his power of offending.
Now I was assailed right and left, till in my own
defence I was obliged to walk sideling and wary, and
look about me, as you guard your eyes in London
streets; for the horns thickened, and came at me like
the ends of umbrellas poking in one's face.
I soon found that these towns-folk were the civilest,
best-mannered people in the world; and that, if they had
offended at all, it was entirely owing to their blindness.
They do not know what dangerous weapons they protrude in front, and will stick their best friends in the
eye with provoking complacency. Yet the best of it
is, they can see the beams on their neighbors' foreheads,
if they are as small as motes; but their own beams they
can in no wise discern.
There was little Mitis, that I told you I just encountered. He has simply (I speak of him at home in his
own shop) the smoothest forehead in his own conceit.
He will stand you a quarter of an hour together, conternplating the serenity of it in the glass, before he
begins to shave himself in a morning; yet you saw
what a desperate gash he gave me.




A VISION OF HORNS.              49
Desiring to be better informed of the ways of this
extraordinary people, I applied myself to a fellow of
some assurance, who (it appeared) acted as a sort of
interpreter to strangers: he was dressed in a military
uniform, and strongly resembled Col. -, of the
Guards.  And "Pray, sir," said I, " have all the inhabitants of your city these troublesome excrescences? I
beg pardon: I see you have none. You perhaps are
single."-" Truly, sir," he replied with a smile, "for
the most part we have, but not all alike. There are
some, like Dick, that sport but one tumescence. Their
ladies have been tolerably faithful, have confined
themselves to a single aberration or so: these we call
Unicorns. Dick, you must know, is my Unicorn. [He
spoke this with an air of invincible assurance.] Then
we have Bicorns, Tricorns, and so on up to Millecorns.
[Here methought I crossed and blessed myself in my
dream.]   Some again we have, - there goes one:
you see how happy the rogue looks, - how he walks
smiling, and perking up his face, as if he thought himself the only man. He is not married yet; but on
Monday next he leads to the altar the accomplished
widow Dacres, relict of our late sheriff."
" I see, sir," said I, " and observe that he is happily
free from the national goitre (let me call it) which
distinguishes most of your countrymen."
"Look a little more narrowly," said my conductor.
I put on my spectacles; and, observing the man a
little more diligently, above his forehead I could mark
a thousand little twinkling shadows dancing the hornpipe; little hornlets, and rudiments of horn, of a soft
and pappy consistence (for I handled some of them),
4




50             A VISION OF HORNS.
but which, like coral out of water, my guide informed
me, would infallibly stiffen and grow rigid within a
week or two from the expiration of his bachelorhood.
Then I saw some horns strangely growing out behind; and my interpreter explained these to be married
men, whose wives had conducted themselves with infinite propriety since the period of their marriage, but
were thought to have antedated their good men's titles,
by certain liberties they had indulged themselves in,
prior to the ceremony. This kind of gentry wore their
horns backwards, as has been said, in the fashion of
the old pig-tails; and, as there was nothing obtrusive
or ostentatious in them, nobody took any notice of it.
Some had pretty little budding antlers, like the first
essays of a young fawn. These, he told me, had wives,
whose affairs were in a hopeful way, but not quite
brought to a conclusion.
Others had nothing to show: only by certain red
angry marks and swellings in their foreheads, which
itched the more they kept rubbing and chafing them, it
was to be hoped that something was brewing.
I took notice that every one jeered at the rest, only
none took notice of the sea-captains; yet these were as
well provided with their tokens as the best among them.
This kind of people, it seems, taking their wives upon
so contingent tenures, their lot was considered as
nothing but natural: so they wore their marks without impeachment, as they might carry their cockades;
and nobody respected them a whit the less for it.
I observed, that the more sprouts grew out of a
man's head, the less weight they seemed to carry
with them; whereas a single token would now and




A VISION OF HORNS.             51
then appear to give the wearer some uneasiness. This
shows that use is a great thing.
Some had their adornings gilt, which needs no explanation; while others, like musicians, went sounding
theirs before them, - a sort of music which I thought
might very well have been spared.
It was pleasant to see some of the citizens encounter
between themselves; how they smiled in their sleeves
at the shock they received from their neighbor, and none
seemed conscious of the shock which their neighbor experienced in return.
Some had great corneous stumps, seemingly torn off
and bleeding. These, the interpreter warned me, were
husbands who had retaliated upon their wives, and the
badge was in equity divided between them.
While I stood discerning these things, a slight tweak
on my cheek unawares, which brought tears into my
eyes, introduced to me my friend Placid, between whose
lady and a certain male cousin some idle flirtations I
remember to have heard talked of; but that was all.
He saw he had somehow hurt me, and asked my pardon with that round, unconscious face of his; and
looked so tristful and contrite for his no-offence, that
I was ashamed for the man's penitence. Yet I protest
it was but a scratch. It was the least little hornet of a
horn that could be framed. " Shame on the man," I
secretly exclaimed, "who could thrust so much as the
value of a hair into a brow so unsuspecting and inoffensive! What, then, must they have to answer for, who
plant great, monstrous, timber-like, projecting antlers
upon the heads of those whom they call their friends,
when a puncture of this atomical tenuity made my eyes




52             A VISION OF HORNS.
to water at this rate   All the pincers at Surgeons'
Hall cannot pull out for Placid that little hair."
I was curious to know what became of these frontal
excrescences when the husbands died; and my guide
informed me that the chemists in their country made a
considerable profit by them, extracting from them certain subtile essences: and then I remembered that
nothing was so efficacious in my own, for restoring
swooning matrons, and wives troubled with the vapors,
as a strong sniff or two at the composition appropriately
called hartshorn, - far beyond sal volatile.
Then also I began to understand why a man, who is
the jest of the company, is said to be the butt,- as
much as to say, such a one butteth with the horn.
I inquired if by no operation these wens were ever
extracted; and was told that there was indeed an order
of dentists, whom they call canonists in their language,
who undertook to restore the forehead to its pristine
smoothness; but that ordinarily it was not done without
much cost and trouble; and, when they succeeded in
plucking out the offending part, it left a painful void,
which could not be filled up; and that many patients
who had submitted to the excision were eager to marry
again, to supply with a good second antler the baldness
and deformed gap left by the extraction of the former,
as men losing their natural hair substitute for it a less
becoming periwig.
Some horns I observed beautifully taper, smooth,
and (as it were) flowering. These I understand were
the portions brought by handsome women to their
spouses; and I pitied the rough, homely, unsightly
deformities on the brows of others, who had been de



A VISION OF HORNS.             53
ceived by plain and ordinary partners. Yet the latter
I observed to be by far the most common; the solution of which I leave to the natural philosopher.
One tribe of married men I particularly admired at,
who, instead of horns, wore ingrafted on their forehead a sort of horn-book. " This," quoth my guide,
" is the greatest mystery in our country, and well worth
an explanation. You must know that all infidelity is
not of the senses. We have as well intellectual as
material wittols. These, whom you see decorated with
the order of the book, are triflers, who encourage about
their wives' presence the society of your men of genius,
(their good friends, as they call them), — literary disputants, who ten to one out-talk the poor husband, and
commit upon the understanding of the woman a violence
and estrangement in the end, little less painful than the
coarser sort of alienation.  Whip me these knaves, -
[my conductor here expressed himself with a becoming
warmth], — whip me them, I say, who, with no excuse
from the passions, in cold blood seduce the minds, rather
than the persons, of their friends' wives; who, for the
tickling pleasure of hearing themselves prate, dehonestate the intellects of married women, dishonoring the
husband in what should be his most sensible part. If
I must be - [here he used a plain word] let it be by
some honest sinner like myself, and not by one of these
gad-flies, these debauchers of the understanding, these
flattery-buzzers." He was going on in this manner,
and I was getting insensibly pleased with my friend's
manner (I had been a little shy of him at first), when
the dream suddenly left me, vanishing, as Virgil speaks,
through the gate of Horn.




54                   JOHN KEMBLE,
JOHN KEMBLE, AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF
"ANTONIO." *
THE story of his swallowing opium-pills to keep him
lively upon the first night of a certain tragedy, we may
presume to be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry on the part
of the suffering author. But, indeed, John had the art
of diffusing a complacent equable dulness (which you
knew not where to quarrel with) over a piece which he
did not like, beyond any of his contemporaries. John
KeImble had made up his mind early, that all the good
tragedies which could be written had been written; and
he resented any new attempt. His shelves were full.
The old standards were scope enough for his ambition.
He ranged in them absolute; and "fair in Otway, full
in Shakspeare shone." He succeeded to the old lawful
thrones, and did not care to adventure bottomry with a
Sir Edward Mortimer, or any casual,speculator that
offered.
I remember, too acutely for my peace, the deadly
extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.'s "Antonio."   G., satiate with  visions of political justice
(possibly not to be realized in our time), or willing to
let the sceptical worldlings see that his anticipations of
* From the "London Magazine," 1822.
To Elia's essay on "The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," as
originally published in the " London Magazine," this circumstantial account
of the cold and stately manner in which John Kemble performed the part
of Antonio, in Godwin's unfortunate play of that name, was the conclusion.
In reprinting the article, Lamb omitted this part of it. - EDITOR.




AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO."    55
the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for men
as they are and have been, wrote a tragedy. He chose
a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish; the plot simple,
without being naked; the incidents uncommon, without being overstrained. Antonio, who gives the name
to the piece, is a sensitive young Castilian, who, in a
fit of his country honor, immolates his sister -
But I must not anticipate the catastrophe. The play,
reader, is extant in choice English; and you will employ
a spare half-crown not injudiciously in the quest of it.
The conception was bold; and the denouement, the
time and place in which the hero of it existed, considered, not much out of keeping: yet it must be confessed that it required a delicacy of handling, both from
the author and the performer, so as not much to shock
the prejudices of a modern English audience. G., in
my opinion, had done his part. John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher, had undertaken to play
Antonio. Great expectations were formed. A philosopher's first play was a new era. The night arrived.
I was favored with a seat in an advantageous box, between the author and his friend M. G. sat cheerful
and confident. In his friend M.'s looks, who had
perused the manuscript, I read some terror. Antonio,
in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could
dispute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John
always dressed most provokingly correct on these occasions. The first act swept by, solemn and silent. It
went off, as G. assured M., exactly as the opening act
of a piece -the protasis —should do. The cue of the
spectators was to be mute. The characters were but in




56                JOHN KEMBLE,
their introduction.  The passions and the incidents
would be developed hereafter. Applause hitherto would
be impertinent.  Silent attention was the effect alldesirable.  Poor M. acquiesced; but in his honest,
friendly face I could discern a working which told how
much more acceptable the plaudit of a single hand
(however misplaced) would have been than all this
reasoning. The second act (as in duty bound) rose a
little in interest; but still John kept his forces under, —
in policy, as G. would have it, - and the audience were
most complacently attentive. The protasis, in fact, was
scarcely unfolded. The interest would warm in the
next act, against which a special incident was provided.
M. wiped his cheek, flushed with a friendly perspiration, -'tis M.'s way of showing his zeal, — " from
every pore of him a perfume falls." I honor it above
Alexander's.  He had once or twice during this act
joined his palms in a feeble endeavor to elicit a sound;
they emitted a solitary noise without an echo: there
was no deep to answer to his deep. G. repeatedly
begged him to be quiet.  The third act at length
brought on the scene which was to warm the piece progressively to the final flaming-forth of the catastophe.
A philosophic calm settled upon the clear brow of G.
as it approached. The lips of M. quivered. A challenge was held forth upon the stage, and there was
promise of a fight. The pit roused themselves on this
extraordinary occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed
disposed to make a ring; when suddenly Antonio,
who was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot
challenger, Don Gusman (who, by the way, should
have had his sister), balks his humor, and the pit's




AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF " ANTONIO."    57
reasonable expectation at the same time, with some
speeches out of the new philosophy against duelling.
The audience were here fairly caught; their courage
was up, and on the alert; a few blows, ding dong, as
iR   s, the dramatist, afterwards expressed it to me,
might have done the business, - when their most exquisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist in
the mortifying negation of their own pleasure. They
could not applaud, for disappointment; they would not
condemn, for morality's sake. The interest stood stonestill; and John's manner was not at all calculated to
unpetrify it. It was Christmas-time, and the atmosphere furnished some pretext for asthmatic affections.
One began to cough: his neighbor sympathized with
him, till a cough became epi'demical. But when, from
being half artificial in the pit, the cough got frightfully
naturalized among the fictitious persons of the drama,
and Antonio himself (albeit it was not set down in the
stage directions) seemed more intent upon relieving his
own lungs than the distresses of the author and his
friends, then G. "first knew fear," and, mildly turning to M., intimated that he had not been aware that
Mr. Kemble labored under a cold, and that the performance might possibly have been postponed with
advantage for some nights further, - still keeping the
same serene countenance, while M. sweat like a bull.
It would be invidious to pursue the fates of this illstarred evening. In vain did the plot thicken in the
scenes that followed, in vain the dialogue wax more
passionate and stirring, and the progress of the sentiment point more and more clearly to the arduous
development which impended. In vain the action was




58               JOHN KEMBLE,
accelerated, while the acting stood still.  From the
beginning, John had taken his stand, -had wound
himself up to an even tenor of stately declamation,
from which no exigence of dialogue or person could
make him swerve for an instant. To dream of his
rising with the scene (the common trick of tragedians)
was preposterous; for from the onset he had planted
himself, as upon a terrace, on an eminence vastly above
the audience, and he kept that sublime level to the end.
He looked from his throne of elevated sentiment upon
the under-world of spectators with a most sovereign and
becoming contempt. There was excellent pathos delivered out to them: an they would receive it, so; an
they would not receive it, so. There was no offence
against decorum in all this; nothing to condemn, to
damn: not an irreverent symptom of a sound was
to be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on
through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict
what would come of it; when, towards the winding-up
of the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed
to stagger Elvira herself, —for she had been coolly
arguing the point of honor with him, - suddenly whips
out a poniard, and stabs his sister to the heart. The
effect was as if a murder had been committed in cold
blood. The whole house rose up in clamorous indignation, demanding justice.  The feeling rose far above
hisses. I believe at that instant, if they could have got
him, they would have torn the unfortunate author to
pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, or of a
complexion different from what they themselves would
have applauded upon another occasion in a Brutus or an
Appius; but, for want of attending to Antonio's words,




AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO."    59
which palpably led to the expectation of no less dire an
event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which
seemed to promise a sleep of a less alarming nature
than it was his cue to inflict upon Elvira, they found
themselves betrayed into an accompliceship of murder,
a perfect misprision of parricide, while they dreamed
of nothing less.
M., I believe, was the only person who suffered
acutely from the failure; for G. thenceforward, with a
serenity unattainable but by the true philosophy, abandoning a precarious popularity, retired into his fast hold
of speculation, - the drama in which the world was to
be his tiring-room, and remote posterity his applauding
spectators at once and actors.
THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER;
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF "THE COMPLETE ENGLISH.
TRADESMAN." *
THE GOOD CLERK. — He writeth a fair and swift hand,
and is competently versed in the four first rules of arithmetic, in the Rule of Three (which is sometimes called
the Golden Rule), and in Practice. We mention these
things that we may leave no room for cavillers to say
that any thing essential hath been omitted in our definition; else, to speak the truth, these are but ordinary
* From the "Reflector," No. 4.




60               THE GOOD CLERK.
accomplishments, and such as every understrapper at a
desk is commonly furnished with. The character we
treat of soareth higher.
He is clean and neat in his person, not from a vainglorious desire of setting himself forth to advantage in
the eyes of the other sex, with which vanity too many
of our young sparks now-a-days are infected; but to
do credit, as we say, to the office. For this reason, he
evermore taketh care that his desk or his books receive
no soil; the which things he is commonly as solicitous
to have fair and unblemished, as the owner of a fine
horse is to have him appear in good keep.
He riseth early in the morning; not because early
rising conduceth to health (though he doth not altogether despise that consideration), but chiefly to the
intent that he may be first at the desk. There is his
post, there he delighteth to be, unless when his meals
or necessity calleth him away; which time he alway esteemeth as lost, and maketh as short as possible.
He is temperate in eating and drinking, that he may
preserve a clear head and steady hand for his master's
service. He is also partly induced to this observation
of the rules of temperance by his respect for religion
and the laws of his country; which things, it may once
for all be noted, do add special assistances to his actions,
but do not and cannot furnish the main spring or motive
thereto. His first ambition, as appeareth all along, is
to be a good clerk; his next, a good Christian, a good
patriot, &c.
Correspondent to this, he keepeth himself honest, not
for fear of the laws, but because he hath observed how
unseemly an article it maketh in the day-book or ledger




" THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN."    61
when a sum is set down lost or missing; it being his
pride to make these books to agree and to tally, the one
side with the other, with a sort of architectural symmetry and correspondence.
He marrieth, or marrieth not, as best suiteth with his
employer's views. Some merchants do the rather desire
to have married men in their counting-houses, because
they think the married state a pledge for their servants'
integrity, and an incitement to them to be industrious;
and it was an observation of a late Lord-Mayor of London, that the sons of clerks do generally prove clerks
themselves, and that merchants encouraging persons in
their employ to marry, and to have families, was the best
method of securing a breed of sober, industrious young
men attached to the mercantile interest. Be this as it
may, such a character as we have been describing will
wait till the pleasure of his employer is known on this
point; and regulateth his desires by the custom of the
house or firm to which he belongeth.
He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so much
time lost from his employ. What spare time he hath
for conversation, which, in a counting-house such as we
have been supposing, can be but small, he spendeth in
putting seasonable questions to such of his fellows (and
sometimes respectfully to the master himself) who can
give him information respecting the price and quality of
goods, the state of exchange, or the latest improvements
in book-keeping; thus making the motion of his lips,
as well as of his fingers, subservient to his master's
interest. Not that he refuseth a brisk saying, or a
cheerful'sally of wit, when it comes unforced, is free
of offence, and hath a convenient brevity.  For this




62                 THE GOOD CLERK.
reason, he hath commonly some such phrase as this in
his mouth:"It's a slovenly look
To blot your book."
Or,
"Red ink for ornament, black for use:
The best of things are open to abuse."
So upon the eve of any great holy-day, of which he
keepeth one or two at least every year, he will merrily
say, in the hearing of a confidential friend, but to none
other, -
" All work and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy."
Or,
"A bow always bent must crack at last."
But then this must always be understood to be spoken
confidentially, and, as we say, under the rose.
Lastly, his dress is plain, without singularity; with
no other ornament than the quill, which is the badge of
his function, stuck behind the dexter ear, and this rather
for convenience of having it at hand, when he hath been
called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his
seat there again shortly, than from any delight which he
taketh in foppery or ostentation. The color of his
clothes is generally noted to be black rather than brown,
brown rather than blue or green. His whole deportment is staid, modest, and civil.  His motto is " Regularity."
This character was sketched in an interval of business, to divert some of the melancholy hours of a counting-house. It is so little a creature of fancy, that it is
scarce any thing more than a recollection of some of those
frugal and economical maxims, which, about the beginning of the last century (England's meanest period),




"THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN."            63
were endeavored to be inculcated and instilled into the
breasts of the London Apprentices  by a class of instructors who might not inaptly be termed " The Masters of Mean Morals." The astonishing narrowness and
illiberality of the lessons contained in some of those
books is inconceivable by those whose studies have not
led them that way, and would almost induce one to subscribe to the hard censure which Drayton has passed
upon the mercantile spirit: —
"The gripple merchant, born to be the curse
Of this brave isle."
I have now lying before me that curious book by Daniel Defoe, "The Complete English Tradesman." The
pompous detail, the studied analysis of every little mean
art, every sneaking address, every trick and subterfuge,
short of larceny, that is necessary to the tradesman's
occupation, with the hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues
(in Defoe's liveliest manner) interspersed, all tending to
the same amiable purpose, - namely, the sacrificing of
every honest emotion of the soul to what he calls the
main chance, -  if you read it in an ironical sense, and as
a piece of covered satire, make it one of the most amusing
books which Defoe ever writ, as much so as any of his
best novels. It is difficult to say what his intention
was in writing it. It is almost impossible to suppose
him in earnest. Yet such is the bent of the book to
narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims
were as catching and infectious as those of a licentious
cast, which happily is not the case, had I been living at
* This term designated a larger class of young men than that to which it
is now confined. It took in the articled clerks of merchants and bankers, the
George Barnwells of the day.




64               THE GOOD CLERK.
that time, I certainly should have recommended to the
Grand Jury of Middlesex, who presented " The Fable of
the Bees," to have presented this book of Defoe's in preference, as of a far more vile and debasing tendency.
I will give one specimen of his advice to the Young
tradesman on the government of his temper: " The retail
tradesman in especial, and even every tradesman in his
station, must furnish himself with a competent stock of
patience. I mean that sort of patience which is needful to bear with all sorts of impertinence, and the most
provoking curiosity that it is impossible to imagine the
buyers, even the worst of them, are, or can be, guilty
of. A tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and
blood about him, no passions, no resentment; he must never
be angry, no, not so much as seem to be so, if a customer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods,
and scarce bids money for any thing; nay, though they
really come to his shop with no intent to buy, as many
do, only to see what is to be sold, and though he knows
they cannot be better pleased than they are at some
other shop where they intend to buy,'tis all one; the
tradesman must take it; he must place it to the account
of his calling, that'tis his business to be ill used, and resent
nothing; and so must answer as obligingly to those that
give him an hour or two's trouble, and buy nothing, as
he does to those, who, in half the time, lay out ten or
twenty pounds. The case is plain; and if some do give
him trouble, and do not buy, others make amends, and do
buy; and as for the trouble,'tis the business of the shop."
Here follows a most admirable story of a mercer,
who by his indefatigable meanness, and more than
Socratic patience under affronts, overcame and recon



"THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN."        65
ciled a lady, who, upon the report of another lady that
he had behaved saucily to some third lady, had determined to shun his shop, but, by the over-persuasions of a
fourth lady, was induced to go to it; which she does,
declaring beforehand that she will buy nothing, but give
him all the trouble she can. Her attack and his defence,
her insolence and his persevering patience, are described
in colors worthy of a Mandeville; but it is too long to
recite. " The short inference from this long discourse,"
says he, " is this, - that here you see, and I could give
you many examples like this, how and in what manner
a shop-keeper is to behave himself in the way of his
business; what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and
ridiculous things, he must bear in his trade; and must
not show the least return, or the least signal of disgust:
he must have no passions, no fire in his temper; he
must be all soft and smooth; nay, if his real temper be
naturally fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his
shop; he must be a perfect complete hypocrite if he will be
a complete tradesman.*  It is true, natural tempers are
not to be always counterfeited: the man cannot easily
be a lamb in his shop, and a lion in himself; but, let it
be easy or hard, it must be done, and is done. There are
men who have by custom and usage brought themselves
to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than they
when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furious and raging in every other part of life: nay, the
provocations they have met with in their shops have so
irritated their rage, that they would go up stairs from
their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of mad* As no qualification accompanies this maxim, it must be understood as
the genuine sentiment of the author!
5




6 6              THE GOOD CLERK.
ness, and beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps
mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence
of it had gotten vent, and the passions abate and cool.
I heard once of a shop-keeper that behaved himself thus
to such an extreme, that, when he was provoked by the
impertinence of the customers beyond what his temper
could bear, he would go up stairs and beat his wife,
kick his children about like dogs, and be as furious for
two or three minutes as a man chained down in Bedlam; and again, when that heat was over, would sit
down, and cry faster than the children he had abused;
and, after the fit, he would go down into the shop again,
and be as humble, courteous, and as calm, as any man
whatever; so absolute a government of his passions had
he in the shop, and so little out of it: in the shop, a
soulless animal that would resent nothing; and in the
family, a madman: in the shop, meek like a lamb; but
in the family outrageous, like a Lybian lion. The sum
of the matter is, it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself, by all the ways possible, to his business;
his customers are to be his idols: so far as he may worship
idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them, and worship
them; at least, he is not in any way to displease them,
or show any disgust or distaste, whatsoever they may
say or do. The bottom of all is, that he is intending
to get money by them; and it is not for him that gets
money to offer the least inconvenience to them by
whom he gets it: he is to consider, that, as Solomon
says, "the borrower is servant to the lender;" so the seller is servant to the buyer. What he says on the head
of "Pleasures and Recreations" is not less amusing:
"The tradesman's pleasure should be in his business;




REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.    67
his companions should be his books (he means his
ledger, waste-book, &c.); and, if he has a family, he
makes his excursions up stairs, and no further. None of
my cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from diverting himself, as we call it, with his fireside, or keeping
company with his wife and children." Liberal allowance! nay, almost licentious and criminal indulgence!
-But it is time to dismiss this Philosopher of Meanness.
More of this stuff would illiberalize the pages of the
" Reflector."  Was the man in earnest, when he could
bring such powers of description, and all the charms of
natural eloquence, in commendation of the meanest,
vilest, wretchedest degradations of the human character?
or did he not rather laugh in his sleeve at the doctrines
which he inculcated; and, retorting upon the grave citizens of London their own arts, palm upon them a sample of disguised satire under the name of wholesome
instruction?
REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.
To the Editor of the " Every-day Book."
To your account of Sir Jeffery Dunstan, in columns
829-30 (where, by an unfortunate erratum, the effigies
of two Sir Jeferys appear, when the uppermost figure
is clearly meant for Sir Harry Dimsdale), you may add
that the writer of this has frequently met him in his
latter days, about 1790 or 1791, returning in anevening, after his long day's itineracy, to his domicile, - a
wretched shed in the most beggarly purlieu of Bethnal




68    REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.
Green, a little on this side the Mile-end Turnpike. The
lower figure in that leaf most correctly describes his then
appearance, except that no graphic art can convey an
idea of the general squalor of it, and of his bag (his
constant concomitant) in particular.  Whether it contained "old wigs" at that time, I know not; but it
seemed a fitter repository for bones snatched out of
kennels than for any part of a gentleman's dress, even
at second-hand.
The ex-member for Garrat was a melancholy instance
of a great man whose popularity is worn out.  He
still carried his sack; but it seemed a part of his identity
rather than an implement of his profession; a badge of
past grandeur: could any thing have divested him of that,
he would have shown a "poor forked animal" indeed.
My life upon it, it contained no curls at the time I
speak of. The most decayed and spiritless remnants of
what was once a peruke would have scorned the filthy
case; would absolutely have " burst its cerements."
No: it was empty, or brought home bones, or a few
cinders possibly.  A strong odor of burnt bones, I
remember, blended with the scent of horse-flesh seething into dog's meat, and, only relieved a little by the
breathings of a few brick-kilns, made up the atmosphere of the delicate suburban spot which this great
man had chosen for the last scene of his earthly vanities. The cry of " old wigs" had ceased with the possession of any such fripperies: his sack might have
contained not unaptly a little mould to scatter upon
that grave to which he was now advancing; but it told
of vacancy and desolation. His quips were silent too,
and his brain was empty as his sack: he slank along,




REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.         69
and seemed to decline popular observation. If a few
boys followed him, it seemed rather from habit than
any expectation of fun.
"Alas! how changed from him,
The life of humor, and the soul of whim,
Gallant and gay on Garrat's hustings proud! "
But it is thus that the world rewards its favorites in
decay. What faults he had, I know not. I have heard
something of a peccadillo or so. But some little deviation from the precise line of rectitude might have been
winked at in so tortuous and stigmatic a frame. Poor
Sir Jeffery! it were well if some M.P.'s in earnest
have passed their parliamentary existence with no more
offences against integrity than could be laid to thy
charge! A fair dismissal was thy due, not so unkind
a degradation; some little snug retreat, with a bit of
green before thine eyes, and not a burial alive in the
fetid beggaries of Bethnal. Thou wouldst have ended
thy days in a manner more appropriate to thy pristine
dignity, installed in munificent mockery (as in mock
honors you had lived), —a poor knight of Windsor!
Every distinct place of public speaking demands an
oratory peculiar to itself. The forensic fails within the
walls of St. Stephen. Sir Jeffery was a living instance
of this; for, in the flower of his popularity, an attempt
was made to bring him  out upon the stage (at which
of the winter theatres I forget, but I well remember the
anecdote) in the part of Doctor Last.* The announcement drew a crowded house; but, notwithstanding infinite tutoring, -by Foote or Garrick, I forget which, -
when the curtain drew up, the heart of Sir Jeffery
* It was at the Haymarket Theatre. - Editor of " Every-day Book."




70       ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST."
failed, and he faltered on, and made nothing of his
part, till the hisses of the house at last, in very kindness,
dismissed him from the boards. Great as his parliamentary eloquence had shown itself, brilliantly as his
off-hand sallies had sparkled on a hustings, they here
totally failed him.  Perhaps he had an aversion to
borrowed wit, and, like my Lord Foppington, disdained to entertain himself (or others) with the forced
products of another man's brain. Your man of quality
is more diverted with the natural sprouts of his own.
ON A  PASSAGE IN  "THE TEMPEST." *
As long as I can remember the play of " The Tempest,"
one passage in it has always set me upon wondering.
It has puzzled me beyond measure. In vain I strove
to find the meaning of it. I seemed doomed to cherish
infinite, hopeless curiosity.
It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of
Sycorax from Argier, adds, -
"For one thing that she did,
They would not take her life."
How have I pondered over this when a boy! How
have I longed for some authentic memoir of the witch
to clear up the obscurity! Was the story extant in the
chronicles of Algiers? Could I get at it by some fortunate introduction to the Algerine ambassador? Was a
voyage thither practicable? The Spectator, I knew,
# From the "London Magazine" for 1823




ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST."        71
went to Grand Cairo only to measure the pyramid.
Was not the object of my quest of at least as much importance? The blue-eyed hag! could she have done any
thing good or meritorious? might that succubus relent?
then might there be hope for the Devil. I have often
admired since, that none of the commentators have boggled at this passage; how they could swallow this
camel, - such a tantalizing piece of obscurity, such an
abortion of an anecdote.
At length, I think I have lighted upon a clew which
may lead to show what was passing in the mind of
Shakspeare when he dropped this imperfect rumor.
In the "Accurate Description of Africa, by John Ogilby
(folio), 1670," page 230, I find written as follows.
The marginal title to the narrative is, " Charles the Fifth
besieges Algier."
"In the last place, we will briefly give an account of
the emperour, Charles the Fifth, when he besieg'd this
city; and of the great loss he suffer'd therein.
"This prince, in the year one thousand five hundred
forty-one, having embarqued upon the sea an army of
twenty-two thousand men aboard eighteen gallies, and
an hundred tall ships, not counting the barques and
shallops, and other small boats, in which he had engaged
the principal of the Spanish and Italian nobility, with a
good number of the Knights of Malta; he was to land
on the coast of Barbary, at a cape call'd Matifou. From
this place unto the city of Algier, a flat shore or strand
extends itself for about four leagues, the which is exceeding favorable to gallies. There he put ashore with his
army, and in a few days caused a fortress to be built,
which unto this day is call'd the castle of the Emperour.




72       ON A PASSAGE IN " THE TEMPEST."
"In the meantime the city of Algier took the alarm,
having in it at that time but eight hundred Turks, and
six thousand Moors, poor-spirited men, and unexercised
in martial affairs; besides it was at that time fortifi'd
only with walls, and had no out-works: insomuch that'
by reason of its weakness, and the great forces of the
Emperour, it could not in appearance escape taking.
In fine, it was attempted with such order, that the army
came up to the very gates, where the Chevalier de Sauignac, a Frenchman by nation, made himself remarkable
above all the rest, by the miracles of his valor. For
having repulsed the Turks, who, having made a sally at
the gate call'd Babason, and there desiring to enter
along with them, when he saw that they shut the gate
upon him, he ran his ponyard into the same, and left it
sticking deep therein. They next fell to battering the
city by the force of cannon; which the assailants so
weakened, that in that great extremity the defendants
lost their courage, and resolved to surrender.
"But as they were thus intending, there was a witch
of the town, whom the history doth not name, which
went to seek out Assam Aga, that commanded within,
and pray'd him to make it good yet nine days longer,
with assurance, that within that time he should infallibly
see Algier delivered from that siege, and the whole army
of the enemy dispersed, so that Christians should be as
cheap as birds. In a word, the thing did happen in the
manner as foretold; for upon the twenty-first day of
October, in the same year, there fell a continual rain
upon the land, and so furious a storm at sea, that one
might have seen ships hoisted into the clouds, and in
one instant again precipitated into the bottom of the




ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST."        73
water: insomuch that that same dreadful tempest was
followed with the loss of fifteen gallies, and above an
hundred other vessels; which was the cause why the
Emperour, seeing his army wasted by the bad weather,
pursued by a famine, occasioned by wrack of his ships, in
which was the greatest part of his victuals and amunition, he was constrain'd to raise the siege, and set sail
for Sicily, whither he retreated with the miserable reliques of his fleet.
"In the meantime that witch being acknowledged
the deliverer of Algier, was richly remunerated, and the
credit of her charms authorized. So that ever since,
witchcraft hath been very freely tolerated; of which the
chief of the town, and even those who are esteem'd to
be of greatest sanctity among them, such as are the
_Marabous, a religious order of their sect, do for the
most part make profession of it, under a goodly pretext of certain revelations which they say they have had
from their prophet, Mahomet.
"And hereupon those of Algier, to palliate the shame
and the reproaches that are thrown upon them for making use of a witch in the danger of this siege, do say
that the loss of the forces of Charles V. was caused by
a prayer of one of their Marabous, named Cidy Utica,
which was at that time in great credit, not under the
notion of a magitian, but for a person of a holy life.
Afterwards in remembrance of their success, they have
erected unto him a small mosque without the Babason
gate, where he is buried, and in which they keep sundry
lamps burning in honor of him: nay they sometimes
repair thither to make their sala, for a testimony of
greater veneration."




74                THE MONTHS.
Can it be doubted, for a moment, that the dramatist
had come fresh from reading some older narrative of this
deliverance of Algier by a witch, and transferred the
merit of the deed to his Sycorax, exchanging only the
"rich remuneration," which did not suit his purpose, to
the simple pardon of her life? Ogilby wrote in 1670;
but the authorities to which he refers for his account
of Barbary are Johannes de Leo or Africanus, Louis
Marmol, Diego de Haedo, Johannes Gramaye, Braeves,
Cel. Curio, and Diego de Torres, names totally unknown
to me, and to which I beg leave to refer the curious
reader for his fuller satisfaction.
THE MONTHS.*
RUMMAGING over the contents of an old stall at a
half book, half old-iron shop, in an alley leading from
Wardour Street to Soho Square, yesterday, I lit upon a
ragged duodecimo which had been the strange delight
of my infancy, and which I had lost sight of for more
than forty years, —the "Queen-like Closet, or Rich
Cabinet;" written by Hannah Woolly, and printed
for R. C. and T. S., 1681; being an abstract of receipts in cookery, confectionery, cosmetics, needlework, morality, and all such branches of what were
then considered as female accomplishments. The price
demanded was sixpence, which the owner (a little squab
* From Hone's " Every-day Book."




THE MONTHS.                 75
duodecimo of a character himself) enforced with the
assurance that his " own mother should not have it for a
farthing less."  On my demurring at this extraordinary
assertion, the dirty little vender re-enforced his assertion
with a sort of oath, which seemed more than the occasion
demanded: " And now," said he, "I have put my soul
to it." Pressed by so solemn an asseveration, I could
no longer resist a demand which seemed to set me,
however unworthy, upon a level with his dearest relations; and, depositing a tester, I bore away the tattered
prize in triumph. I remembered a gorgeous description of the twelve months of the year, which I thought
would be a fine substitute for those poetical descriptions
of them which your " Every-day Book " had nearly exhausted out of Spenser. " This will be a treat," thought
I, " for friend Hone." To memory they seemed no less
fantastic and splendid than the other. But what are the
mistakes of childhood! On reviewing them, they turned
out to be only a set of commonplace receipts for working the seasons, months, heathen gods and goddesses,
&c., in samplers! Yet, as an instance of the homely
occupations of our great-grandmothers, they may be
amusing to some readers.  "I have seen," says the notable Hannah Woolly, " such ridiculous things done in
work, as it is an abomination to any artist to behold.
As for example: You may find, in some pieces, Abraham and Sarah, and many other persons of old time,
clothed as they go now-a-days, and truly sometimes
worse; for they most resemble the pictures on ballads.
Let all ingenious women have regard, that when they
work any image, to represent it aright.  First, let it be
drawn well, and then observe the directions which are




76                THE MONTHS.
given by knowing men.  I do assure you, I never
durst work any Scripture-story without informing myself
from the ground of it; nor any other story, or single
person, without informing myself both of the visage
and habit; as followeth:"If you work Jupiter, the imperial feigned God, he
must have long, black, curled hair, a purple garment
trimmed with gold, and sitting upon a golden throne,
with bright yellow clouds about him."
THE TWELVE MONTHS OF THE YEAR.
March. Is drawn in tawny, with a fierce aspect; a
helmet upon his head, and leaning on a spade; and
a basket of garden seeds in his left hand, and in his
right hand the sign of Aries; and winged.
April. A young man in green, with a garland of
myrtle and hawthorn-buds; winged; in one hand primroses and violets, in the other the sign Taurus.
May. With a sweet and lovely countenance; clad in a
robe of white and green, embroidered with several flowers; upon his head a garland of all manner of roses; on
the one hand a nightingale, in the other a lute. His
sign must be Gemini.
June. In a mantle of dark grass-green; upon his
head a garland of bents, kings-cups, and maiden-hair;
in his left hand an angle, with a box of cantharides; in
his right, the sign Cancer; and upon his arms a basket
of seasonable fruits.
July. In a jacket of light yellow, eating cherries;
with his face and bosom sun-burnt; on his head a
wreath of centaury and wild thyme; a scythe on his




THE MONTHS.                  77
shoulder, and a bottle at his girdle; carrying the sign
Leo.
August. A young man of fierce and choleric aspect,
in a flame-colored garment; upon his head a garland
of wheat and rye; upon his arm a basket of all manner
of ripe fruits; at his belt a sickle: his sign Virgo.
September. A merry and cheerful countenance, in a
purple robe; upon his head a wreath of red and white
grapes; in his left hand a handful of oats; withal carrying a horn of plenty, full of all manner of ripe fruits;
in his right hand the sign Libra.
October. In a garment of yellow and carnation; upon
his head a garland of oak-leaves with acorns; in his
right hand the sign Sco:pio; in his left hand a basket
of medlars, services, and chestnuts, and any other fruits
then in season.
November. In a garment of changeable green and
black; upon his head a garland of olives, with the firuit
in his left hand; bunches of parsnips and turnips in his
right: his sign Sagittarius.
December. A horrid and fearful aspect, clad in Irish
rags, or coarse frieze girt unto him; upon his head three
or four night-caps, and over them a Turkish turban;
his nose red, his mouth and beard clogged with icicles;
at his back a bundle of holly, ivy, or mistletoe; holding
in furred mittens the sign of C'apricornus.
January. Clad all in white, as the earth looks with
the snow, blowing his nails; in his left arm a billet;
the sign Aquarius standing by his side.
February. Clothed in a dark sky-color, carrying in
his right hand the sign Pisces.
The following receipt, " To dress up a chimney very




78                 THE MONTHS.
fine for the summer time, as I have done many, and
they have been liked very well," may not be unprofitable to the housewives of this century:" First, take a pack-thread, and fasten it even to the
inner part of the chimney, so high as that you can see
no higher as you walk up and down the house. You
must drive in several nails to hold up all your work.
Then get good store of old green moss from trees, and
melt an equal proportion of beeswax and rosin together;
and, while it is hot, dip the wrong ends of the moss in
it, and presently clap it upon your pack-thread, and
press it down hard with your hand. You must make
haste, else it will cool before you can fasten it, and then
it will fall down. Do so all around where the packthread goes; and the next row you must join to that, so
that it may seem all in one: thus do till you have
finished it down to the bottom.  Then take some other
kind of moss, of a whitish color and stiff, and of several
sorts or kinds, and place that upon the other, here and
there carelessly, and in some places put a good deal,
and some a little; then any kind of fine snail-shells, in
which the snails are dead, and little toad-stools, which
are very old, and look like velvet, or any other thing
that was old and pretty: place it here and there as your
fancy serves, and fasten all with wax and rosin. Then,
for the hearth of your chimney, you may lay some
orpan-sprigs in order all over, and it will grow as it
lies; and, according to the season, get what flowers you
can, and stick in as if they grew,'and a few sprigs of
sweet-brier: the flowers you must renew every week;
but the moss will last all the summer, till it will be
time to make a fire; and the orpan will last near two




THE MONTHS.                   79
months.  A chimney thus done doth grace- a room  exceedingly." *
One phrase in the above should particularly recommend it to such of your female readers as, in the nice
language of the day, have done growing some time, -
" little toad-stools, &c., and any thing that is old and
pretty."  Was ever antiquity so smoothed over?  The
culinary recipes have nothing remarkable in them,
except the costliness of them. Every thing (to the
meanest meats) is sopped in claret, steeped in claret,
basted with claret, as if claret were as cheap as
ditch-water. I remember Bacon recommends opening a turf or two in your garden-walks, and pouring
into each a bottle of claret, to recreate the sense of
smelling, being no less grateful than beneficial. We
hope the chancellor of the exchequer will attend to this
in his next reduction of French wines, that we may
once more water our gardens with right Bourdeaux.
The medical recipes are as whimsical as they are cruel.
Our ancestors were not at all effeminate on this head.
Modern sentimentalists would shrink at a cock plucked
and bruised in a mortar alive to make a cullis, or a
live mole baked in an oven (be sure it be alive) to make
a powder for consumption. But the whimsicalist of all
are the directions to servants (for this little book is
a compendium of all duties): the footman is seriously
admonished not to stand lolling against his master's
chair while he waits at table; for " to lean on a chair
when they wait is a particular favor shown to any
* Alas! in these days of stoves and furnaces, we have no " chimneys "
or fireplaces to "dress up" in the beautiful manner Mistress Woolly describes. - EDITOR.




80       BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.
superior servant, as the chief gentleman, or the waitingwoman when she rises from the table." Also he must
not " hold the plates before his mouth to be defiled with
his breath, nor tQuch them on the right [inner] side."
Surely Swift must have seen this little treatise.
Hannah concludes with the following address, by
which the self-estimate which she formed of her usefulness may be calculated:"Ladies, I hope you're pleas'd and so shall I
If what I've writ, you may be gainers by:
If not; it is your fault, it is not mine,
Your benefit in this I do design.
Much labor and much time it hath me cost,
Therefore I beg, let none of it be lost.
The money you shall pay for this my book,
You'll not repent of, when in it you look.
No more at present to you I shall say,
But wish you all the happiness I may."
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.*
THE subject of our Memoir is lineally descended
from  Johan  de L'Estonne  (see  "Domesday  Book,"
where he is so written), who came in with the Conqueror, and had lands awarded him  at Lupton Magna,
in Kent.   His particular merits or services, Fabian,
whose authority I chiefly follow, has forgotten, or perhaps thought it immaterial, to specify. Fuller thinks
that he was standard-bearer to Hugo de Agmondesham,
a powerful Norman baron, who was slain by the hand
* From the " London Magazine," 1825.




BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.       81
of Harold himself at the fatal battle of Hastings. Be
this as it may, we find a family of that name flourishing
some centuries later in that county. John Delliston,
knight, was high sheriff for Kent, according to Fabian,
quinto Henrici Sexti; and we trace the lineal branch
flourishing downwards,- the orthography varying, according to the unsettled usage of the times, from Delleston to Leston or Liston, between which it seems to
have alternated, till, in the latter end of the reign of
James I., it finally settled into the determinate and
pleasing dissyllabic arrangement which it still retains.
Aminadab Liston, the eldest male representative of the
family of that day, was of the strictest order of Puritans.  Mr. Foss, of Pall Mall, has obligingly communicated to me an undoubted tract of his, which bears
the initials only, A. L., and is entitled, " The Grinning
Glass, or Actor's Mirrour; where in the vituperative
Visnomy of Vicious Players for the Scene is as virtuously reflected back upon their mimetic Monstrosities
as it has viciously (hitherto) vitiated with its vile Vanities her Votarists." A strange title, but bearing the
impress of those absurdities with which the title-pages
of that pamphlet-spawning age abounded. The work
bears date 1617.  It preceded the " Histriomastix" by
fifteen years; and, as it went before it in time, so it
comes not far short of it in virulence.  It is amusing
to find an ancestor of Liston's thus bespattering the
players at the commencement of the seventeenth century: —
" Thinketh He" (the actor), " with his costive countenances, to wry a sorrowing soul out of her anguish,
6




82      BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.
or by defacing the divine denotement of destinate
dignity (daignely described in the face humane and no
other) to reinstamp the Paradice-plotted similitude with
a novel and naughty approximation (not in the first
intention) to those abhorred and ugly God-forbidden
correspondences, with flouting Apes' jeering gibberings,
and Babion babbling-like, to hoot out of countenance
all modest measure, as if our sins were not sufficing to
stoop our backs without He wresting and crooking his
members to mistimed mirth (rather malice) in deformed
fashion, leering when he should learn, prating for praying, goggling his eyes (better upturned for grace),
whereas in Paradice (if we can go thus high for His
profession) that devilish Serpent appeareth his undoubted Predecessor, first induing a mask like some
roguish roistering Roscius (I spit at them all) to beguile with Stage shows the gaping Woman, whose Sex
hath still chiefly upheld these Mysteries, and are voiced
to be the chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am told, the
custom is commonly to mumble (between acts) apples,
not ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin
(worse in effect than the Apples of Discord), whereas
sometimes the hissings sounds of displeasure, as I hear,
do lively reintonate that snake-taking-leave, and diabolical goings off, in Paradice."
The Puritanic effervescence of the early Presbyterians
appears to have abated with time, and the opinions of
the more immediate ancestors of our subject to have
subsided at length into a strain of moderate Calvinism.
Still a tincture of the old leaven was to be expected
among the posterity of A. L.




BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.     83
Our hero was an only son of Habakkuk Liston, settled as an Anabaptist minister upon the patrimonial
soil of his ancestors. A regular certificate appears,
thus entered in the Church-book at Lupton Magna:
"Johannes, filius Habakkuk et Rebeccce Liston, Dissentientium, natus quinto Decembri, 1780, baptizatus sexto Februarii sequentis; Sponsoribus J. et W. Woollaston, und
cum Maria Merryweather."  The singularity of an Anabaptist minister conforming to the child-rites of the
Church would have tempted me to doubt the authenticity of this entry, had I not been obliged with the
actual sight of it by the favor of Mr. Minns, the intelligent and worthy parish clerk of Lupton. Possibly
some expectation in point of worldly advantages from
some of the sponsors might have induced this unseemly
deviation, as it must have appeared, from the practice
and principles of that generally rigid sect. The term
Dissentientium was possibly intended by the orthodox
clergyman as a slur upon the supposed inconsistency.
What, or of what nature, the expectations we have
hinted at may have been, we have now no means of
ascertaining. Of the Woollastons no trace is now discoverable in the village. The name of Merryweather
occurs over the front of a grocer's shop at the western
extremity of Lupton.
Of the infant Liston we find no events recorded
before his fourth year, in which a severe attack of the
measles bid fair to have robbed the rising generation of
a fund of innocent entertainment. He had it of the
confluent kind, as it is called; and the child's life was
for a week or two despaired of. His recovery he always attributes (under Heaven) to the humane inter



86      BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON,
book in his hand, -not a play-book, — meditating.
Boyle's "Reflections" was at one time the darling volume; which, in its turn, was superseded by Young's
"Night Thoughts," which has continued its hold upon
him through life. He carries it always about him;
and it is no uncommon thing for him to be seen,
in the refreshing intervals of his occupation, leaning
against a side-scene, in a sort of Herbert-of-Cherbury
posture, turning over a pocket-edition of his favorite
author.
But the solitudes of Charnwood were not destined
always to obscure the path of our young hero. The
premature death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, at the age of
seventy, occasioned by incautious burning of a pot of
charcoal in her sleeping-chamber, left him in his nineteenth year nearly without resources.  That the stage
at all should have presented itself as an eligible scope
for his talents, and, in particular, that he should have
chosen a line so foreign to what appears to have been
his turn of mind, may require some explanation.
At Charnwood, then, we behold him thoughtful,
grave, ascetic. From his cradle averse to flesh-meats
and strong drink; abstemious even beyond the genius
of the place, and almost in spite of the remonstrances
of his great-aunt, who, though strict, was not rigid,
water was his habitual drink, and his food little beyond
the mast and beech-nuts of his favorite groves.  It is a
medical fact, that this kind of diet, however favorable
to the contemplative powers of the primitive hermits,
&c., is but ill adapted to the less robust minds and
bodies of a later generation.  Hypochondria almost
constantly ensues. It was so in the case of the young




BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.      85
sudden giddiness (probably a mixture of both), suddenly lost his footing, and, to use Mr. Liston's phrase,
disappeared, and was doubtless broken into a thousand
pieces. The sound of his head, &c., dashing successively upon the projecting masses of the chasm, had
such an effect upon the child, that a serious sickness
ensued; and, even for many years after his recovery, he
was not once seen so much as to smile.
The joint death of both his parents, which happened
not many months after this disastrous accident, and
were probably (one or both of them) accelerated by it,
threw our youth upon the protection of his maternal
great-aunt, Mrs. Sittingbourn. Of this aunt we have
never heard him speak but with expressions amounting
almost to reverence.  To the influence of her early
counsels and manners he has always attributed the firmness with which, in maturer years, thrown upon a way
of life commonly not the best adapted to gravity and
self-retirement, he has been able to maintain a, serious
character, untinctured with the levities incident to his
profession. Ann Sittingbourn (we have seen her portrait by Hudson) was stately, stiff, tall, with a cast
of features strikingly resembling the subject of this
memoir. Her estate in Kent was spacious and well
wooded; the house one of those venerable old mansions
which are so impressive in childhood, and so hardly
forgotten in succeeding years. In the venerable solitudes of Charnwood, among thick shades of the oak
and beach (this last his favorite tree), the young Liston
cultivated those contemplative habits which have never
entirely deserted him in after-years.  Here he was commonly in the summer months to be met with, with a




86      BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.
book in his hand, - not a play-book, - meditating.
Boyle's "Reflections " was at one time the darling volume; which, in its turn, was superseded by Young's
"Night Thoughts," which has continued its hold upon
him through life. He carries it always about him;
and it is no uncommon thing for him to be seen,
in the refreshing intervals of his occupation, leaning
against a side-scene, in a sort of Herbert-of-Cherbury
posture, turning over a pocket-edition of his favorite
author.
But the solitudes of Charnwood were not destined
always to obscure the path of our young hero. The
premature death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, at the age of
seventy, occasioned by incautious burning of a pot of
charcoal in her sleeping-chamber, left him in his nineteenth year nearly without resources.  That the stage
at all should have presented itself as an eligible scope
for his talents, and, in particular, that he should have
chosen a line so foreign to what appears to have been
his turn of mind, may require some explanation.
At Charnwood, then, we behold him thoughtful,
grave, ascetic. From his cradle averse to flesh-meats
and strong drink; abstemious even beyond the genius
of the place, and almost in spite of the remonstrances
of his great-aunt, who, though strict, was not rigid,
water was his habitual drink, and his food little beyond
the mast and beech-nuts of his favorite groves. It is a
medical fact, that this kind of diet, however favorable
to the contemplative powers of the primitive hermits,
&c., is but ill adapted to the less robust minds and
bodies of a later generation.  Hypochondria almost
constantly ensues. It was so in the case of the young




BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.    87
Liston.  HIe was subject to sights, and had visions.
Those arid beech-nuts, distilled by a complexion naturally adust, mounted into an occiput already prepared
to kindle by long seclusion and the fervor of strict
Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood, he
was assailed by illusions similar in kind to those which
are related of the famous Anthony of Padua. Wild
antic faces would ever and anon protrude themselves
upon his sensorium. Whether he shut his eyes, or kept
them open, the same illusions operated. The darker
and more profound were his cogitations, the droller and
more whimsical became the apparitions. They buzzed
about him thick as flies, flapping at him, flouting him,
hooting in his ear, yet with such comic appendages,
that what at first was his bane became at length his
solace; and he desired no better society than that of
his merry phantasmata.  We shall presently find in
what way this remarkable phenomenon influenced his
future destiny.
On the death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, we find him
received into the family of Mr. Willoughby, an eminent
Turkey merchant, resident in Birchin Lane, London.
We lose a little while here the chain of his history, -
by what inducements this gentlemen was determined to
make him an inmate of his house. Probably he had
had some personal kindness for Mrs. Sittingbourn formerly; but, however it was, the young man was here
treated more like a son than a clerk, though he was
nominally but the latter. Different avocations, the
change of scene, with that alternation of business and
recreation which in its greatest perfection is to be had
only in London, appear to have weaned him in a short




88     BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.
time from the hypochondriacal affections which had
beset him at Charnwood.
In the three years which followed his removal to
Birchin Lane, we find him making more than one voyage to the Levant, as chief factor for Mr. Willoughby
at the Porte. We could easily fill our biography with
the pleasant passages which we have heard him relate
as having happened to him at Constantinople; such as
his having been taken up on suspicion of a design of
penetrating the seraglio, &c.: but, with the deepest
convincement of this gentleman's own veracity, we
think that some of the stories are of that whimsical,
and others of that romantic nature, which, however
diverting, would be out of place in a narrative of this
kind, which aims not only at strict truth, but at avoiding the very appearance of the contrary.
We will now bring him over the seas again, and
suppose him in the counting-house in Birchin Lane, his
protector satisfied with the returns of his factorage, and
all going on so smoothly, that we may expect to find
Mr. Liston at last an opulent merchant upon'Change,
as it is called. But see the turns of destiny! Upon a
summer's excursion into Norfolk in the year 1801, the
accidental sight of pretty Sally Parker, as she was
called (then in the Norwich company), diverted his
inclinations at once from commerce; and he became, in
the language of commonplace biography, stage-struck.
Happy for the lovers of mirth was it that our hero took
this turn; he might else have been to this hour that
unentertaining character, a plodding London merchant.
We accordingly find him shortly after making his
debut, as it is called, upon the Norwich boards, in the




BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.     89
season of that year, being then in the twenty-second year
of his age. Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose
the part of Pyrrhus, in the "Distressed Mother," to
Sally Parker's Hermione. We find him afterwards as
Barnwell, Altamont, Chamont, &c.; but, as if Nature
had destined him to the sock, an unavoidable infirmity
absolutely discapacitated him for tragedy.  His person,
at this latter period of which I have been speaking, was
graceful, and even commanding; his countenance set to
gravity: he had the power of arresting the attention of
an audience at first sight almost beyond any other tragic
actor. But he could not hold it. To understand this
obstacle, we must go back a few years to those appalling reveries at Charnwood. Those illusions, which had
vanished before the dissipation of a less recluse life and
more free society, now in his solitary tragic studies,
and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to
tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vividness. In the midst of some most pathetic passage (the
parting of Jaffier with his dying friend, for instance), he
would suddenly be surprised with a fit of violent horselaughter.  While the spectators were all sobbing before
him with emotion, suddenly one of those grotesque
faces would peep out upon him, and he could not resist
the impulse. A timely excuse once or twice served his
purpose; but no audiences could be expected to bear
repeatedly this violation of the continuity of feeling.
He describes them (the illusions) as so many demons
haunting him, and paralyzing every effect. Even now,
I am told, he cannot recite the famous soliloquy in
"Hamlet," even in private, without immoderate bursts
of laughter. However, what he had not force of reason




90        BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.
sufficient to overcome he had good sense enough to turn
into emolument, and determined to make a commodity
of his distemper. He prudently exchanged the buskin
for the sock, and the illusions instantly ceased; or, if
they occurred for a short season, by their very cooperation added a zest to his comic vein, - some of his
most catching  faces being  (as he expresses it) little
more than transcripts and copies of those extraordinary
phantasmata.
We have now drawn out our hero's existence to the
period when he was about to meet, for the first time, the
sympathies of a London audience. The particulars of
his success since have been too much before our eyes to
render a circumstantial detail of them  expedient.  I
shall only mention, that Mr. Willoughby, his resentments having had time to subside, is at present one of
the fastest friends of his old renegado factor; and that
Mr. Liston's hopes of Miss Parker vanishing along with
his unsuccessful suit to Melpomene, in the autumn of
1811 he married his present lady, by whom he has
been blessed with one son, Philip, and two daughters,
Ann and Angustina.*
* Lamb once said, of all the lies he ever put off, - and he put off a good
many, - indeed, he valued himself on being " a matter-of-lie man," believing truth to be too precious to be wasted upon everybody, - of all the lies
he ever put off, he valued his "Memoir of Liston " the most. "It is," he
confessed to Miss Hutchinson, "from top to toe, every paragraph, pure invention, and has passed for gospel, -has been republished in the newspapers,
and in the penny play-bills of the night, as an authentic account." And
yet, notwithstanding its incidents are all imaginary, its facts all fictions,
is not Lamb's "Memoir of Liston" a truer and more trustworthy work
than any of the productions of those contemptible biographers, unfortunately not yet extinct, so admirably ridiculed in the thirty-fifth number of
the "Freeholder"?  In fact, is not this "lying Life of Liston" a very clever
satire on those biographers, who, like the monkish historians mentioned by




AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF MR. MUNDEN.                     91
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN,*
IN  A  LETTER  TO  THE  EDITOR  OF THE  " LONDON
MAGAZINE." t
HARK'EE, Mr. Editor. A word in your ear. They
tell me you are going to put me in print, - in print,
sir; to publish my life. What is my life to you, sir?
What is it to you whether I ever lived at all? My life
is a very good life, sir. I am insured at the Pelican,
sir. I am threescore years and six, - six; mark me,
sir: but I can  play Polonius, which, I believe, few  of
your corre -  correspondents  can  do, sir.   I  suspect
tricks, sir: I smell a rat; I do, I do. You would cog
the die upon us; you would, you would, sir. But I
will forestall you, sir. You would be deriving me from
William the Conqueror, with a murrain to you. It is
Fuller in his " Church History of Britain," swell the bowels of their books
with empty wind, in default of sufficient solid food to fill them; who,
according to Addison, ascribe to the unfortunate persons, whose lives tl-ey
pretend to write, works which they never wrote, and actions which they never
performed; celebrate virtues which they were never famous for, and excuse
faults they were never guilty of? And does not Lamb, in this work, very
happily ridicule the pedantry and conceit of certain grave and dignified biographers whose works are to be found in most gentlemen's libraries?- EDITOR.
* From the " London Magazine," 1825.
t This is another of Lamb's " lie-children." Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography, speaking of some of Elia's contributions to the " London Magazine,"
thus mentions the mock Memoirs of Liston and Munden: "He [Lamb]
wrote in the same magazine two Lives of Liston and Munden, which the public took for serious, and which exhibit an extraordinary jumble of imaginary
facts and truth of by-painting. Munden he made born at Stoke Pogis;
the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his
words." - EDITOR.




92        AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.
no such thing, sir. The town shall know better, sir.
They begin to smoke your flams, sir. Mr. Liston may
be born where he pleases, sir; but I will not be born
at Lup —Lupton Magna for anybody's pleasure, sir.
My son and I have looked over the great map of Kent
together, and we can find no such place as you would
palm upon us, sir; palm upon us, I say. Neither
Magna nor Parva, as my son says, and he knows Latin,
sir; Latin. If you write my life true, sir, you must
set down, that I, Joseph Munden, comedian, came into
the world upon Allhallows Day, Anno Domini 17591759; no sooner nor later, sir: and I saw the first
light -the first light, remember, sir, at Stoke Pogis 
Stoke Pogis, comitatu Bucks, and not at Lup -Lup
Magna, which I believe to be no better than moonshine
-moonshine; do you mark me, sir? I wonder you can
put such flim-flams upon us, sir; I do, I do. It does not
become you, sir; I say it, - I say it. And my father
was an honest tradesman, sir: he dealt in malt and
hops, sir; and was a corporation-man, sir; and of the
Church of England, sir, and no Presbyterian; nor Ana
— Anabaptist, sir; however you may be disposed to
make honest people believe to the contrary, sir. Your
bams are found out, sir. The town will be your stale
puts no longer, sir; and you must not send us jolly
fellows, sir, - we that are comedians, sir, - you must
not send us into groves and char - charnwoods a
moping, sir. Neither charns, nor charnel-houses, sir.
It is not our constitution, sir: I tell it you-I
tell it you. I was a droll dog from my cradle. I
came into the world tittering, and the midwife tittered,
and the gossips spilt their caudle with tittering;




AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.        93
and, when I was brought to the font, the parson could
not christen me for tittering. So I was never more
than half baptized. And, when I was little Joey, I
made'em all titter; there was not a melancholy face
to be seen in Pogis.  Pure nature, sir. I was born a
comedian. Old Screwup, the undertaker, could tell
you, sir, if he were living.  WThy, I was obliged to be
locked up every time there was to be a funeral at Pogis.
I was -I was, sir. I used to grimace at the mutes, as
he called it, and put'em out with my mops and my
mows, till they couldn't stand at a door for me. And
when I was locked up, with nothing but a cat in my
company, I followed my bent with trying to make her
laugh; and sometimes she would, and sometimes she
would not. And my schoolmaster could make nothing
of me: I had only to thrust my tongue in my cheek -
in my cheek, sir, and the rod dropped from his fingers;
and so my education was limited, sir. And I grew up
a young fellow, and it was thought convenient to enter
me upon some course of life that should make me serious; but it wouldn't do, sir. And I was articled to a
dry-salter. My father gave forty pounds premium with
me, sir. I can show the indent- dent —dentures,
sir. But I was born to be a comedian, sir: so I ran
away, and listed with the players, sir; and I topt my
parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and played
my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis, in
the part of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years
of age; and he did not know me again, but he knew
me afterwards; and then he laughed, and I laughed,
and, what is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me
up my articles for the joke's sake: so that I came into




94        AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.
court afterwards with clean hands- with clean handsdo you see, sir?
[Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two or
three sheets onwards, which we presume to be occasioned by the absence of Mr. Munden, jun., who clearly
transcribed it for the press thus far. The rest (with
the exception of the concluding paragraph, which is
seemingly resumed in the first handwriting) appears to
contain a confused account of some lawsuit, in which
the elder Munden was engaged; with a circumstantial
history of the proceedings or a case of breach of promise of marriage, made to or by (we cannot pick out
which) Jemima Munden, spinster; probably the comedian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any sister;
with a few dates, rather better preserved, of this great
actor's engagements, - as " Cheltenham (spelt Cheltnam), 1776;" "Bath, 1779;" "London, 1789;"
together with stage anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wilson, Lee, Lewis, &c.; over which we have strained our
eyes to no purpose, in the hope of presenting something amusing to the public. Towards the end, the
manuscript brightens up a little, as we said, and concludes in the following manner.]
---- stood before them for six and thirty years,
[we suspect that Mr. Munden is here speaking of his
final leave-taking of the stage], and to be dismissed at
last. But I was heart-whole to the last sir. What
though a few drops did course themselves down the old
veteran's cheeks: who could help it, sir? I was a
giant that night, sir; and could have played fifty parts,
each as arduous as Dozy.  My faculties were never




THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.                     95
better, sir. But I was to be laid upon the shelf. It
did not suit the public to laugh with their old servant
any longer, sir.   [Here some moisture  has blotted  a
sentence or two.]   But I can play Polonius still, sir;
I can, I can.
Your servant, sir,
JOSEPH MUNDEN.
THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.*
"Nought but a blank remains, a dead void space,
A step of life that promised such a race." -DRYDEN.
NAPOLEON  has now  sent us back from  the grave sufficient echoes of his living renown: the twilight of
posthumous fame has lingered long enough over the
spot where the sun of his glory set; and his name must
at length repose in the silence, if not in the darkness, of
night. In this busy and evanescent scene, other spirits
of the age are rapidly snatched away, claiming our
undivided sympathies and regrets, until in turn they
yield to some newer and more absorbing grief. Another name is now added to the list of the mighty departed,- a name whose influence upon the hopes and
* From the " New Monthly Magazine," 1825.
Since writing this article, we have been informed that the object of
our funeral oration is not definitively dead, but only moribund. So much
the better: we shall have an opportunity of granting the request made to
Walter by one of the children in the wood, and "kill him two times."  The
Abbd de Vertot having a siege to write, and not receiving the materials in
time, composed the whole from his invention. Shortly after its completion,
the expected documents arrived, when he threw them aside, exclaiming,
"You are of no use to me now: I have carried the town."




9 6          THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
fears, the fates and fortunes, of our countrymen, has
rivalled, and perhaps eclipsed, that of the defunct "child
and champion of Jacobinism," while it is associated with
all the sanctions of legitimate government, all the sacred
authorities of social order and our most holy religion.
We speak of one, indeed, under whose warrant heavy
and incessant contributions were imposed upon our fellow-citizens, but who exacted nothing without the signet
and the sign-manual of most devout Chancellors of
the Exchequer. Not to dally longer with the sympathies of our readers, we think it right to premonish
them that we are composing an epicedium upon no less
distinguished a personage than the Lottery, whose last
breath, after many penultimate puffs, has been sobbed
forth by sorrowing contractors, as if the world itself
were about to be converted into a blank. There is a
fashion of eulogy, as well as of vituperation; and,
though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter predicament, we hesitate not to assert that multis ille bonis
flebilis occidit. Never have we joined in the sensiless
clamor which condemned the only tax whereto we became
voluntary contributors, - the only resource which gave
the stimulus without the danger or infatuation of gambling; the only alembic which in these plodding days
sublimized our imaginations, and filled them with more
delicious dreams than ever flitted athwart the sensorium of Alnaschar.
Never can the writer forget, when, as a child, he was
hoisted upon a servant's shoulder in Guildhall, and
looked down upon the installed and solemn pomp of the
then drawing Lottery. The two awful cabinets of iron,
upon whose massy and mysterious portals the royal




THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.          97
initials were gorgeously emblazoned, as if, after having
deposited the unfulfilled prophecies within, the king
himself had turned the lock, and still retained the key
in his pocket; the blue-coat boy, with his naked arm,
first converting the invisible wheel, and then diving into
the dark recess for a ticket; the grave and reverend
faces of the coniimissioners eying the announced number; the scribes below calmly committing it to their
huge books; the anxious countenances of the surrounding populace; while the giant figures of Gog and Magog,
like presiding deities, looked down with a grim silence
upon the whole proceeding, - constituted altogether a
scene, which, combined with the sudden wealth supposed
to be lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was well
calculated to impress the imagination of a boy with
reverence and amazement.  Jupiter, seated between
the two fatal urns of good and evil, the blind goddess
with her cornucopia, the Parcee wielding the distaff, the
thread of life, and the abhorred shears, seemed but dim
and shadowy abstractions of mythology, when I had
gazed upon an assemblage exercising, as I dreamt, a
not less eventful power, and all presented to me in
palpable and living operation. Reason and experience,
ever at their old spiteful work of catching and destroying the bubbles which youth delighted to follow, have
indeed dissipated much of this illusion: but my mind so
far retained the influence of that early impression, that
I have ever since continued to deposit my humble offerings at its shrine, whenever the ministers of the Lottery
went forth with type and trumpet to announce its periodical dispensations; and though nothing has been doled
out to me from its undiscerning coffers but blanks, or
7




98              THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
those more vexatious tantalizers of the spirit, denominated small prizes, yet do I hold myself largely indebted to this most generous diffuser of universal happiness.
Ingrates that we are! are we to be thankful for no
benefits that are not palpable to sense, to recognize no
favors that are not of marketable value, to acknowledge no wealth unless it can be counted with the five
fingers? If we admit the mind to be the sole depository of genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not
been elevated into a temporary Elysium by the magic of
the Lottery? NThich of us has not converted his ticket,
or even his sixteenth share of one, into a nest-egg of
Hope, upon which he has sate brooding in  the secret
roosting-places of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantastical apparitions?
What a startling revelation of the passions if all the
aspirations engendered by the Lottery could be made
manifest! Many an impecuniary epicure has gloated
over his locked-up warrant for future wealth, as a
means of realizing the dream of his namesake in the
"Alchemist: " -
"My meat shall all come in in Indian shells, -
Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies;
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels,
Boiled i' the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl,
(Apicius' diet'gainst the epilepsy.)
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamant and carbuncle.
My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons,
Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have
The beards of barbels served, instead of salads;
Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce,
For which I'll say unto my cook,' There's gold:
Go forth, and be a knight."'




THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.           99
Many a doting lover has kissed the scrap of paper
whose promissory shower of gold, was to give up to him
his otherwise unattainable Danae; Nimrods have transformed the same narrow symbol into a saddle, by which
they have been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless
hunters; while nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean
form into" Rings, gauds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats,"
and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the
obsequious husband, the two-footmaned carriage, and
the opera-box. By the simple charm of this numbered
and printed rag, gamesters have, for a time at least,
recovered their losses; spendthrifts have cleared off
mortgages from their estates; the imprisoned debtor has
leapt over his lofty boundary of circumscription and
restraint, and revelled in all the joys of liberty and
fortune; the cottage-walls have swelled out into more
goodly proportion than those of Baucis and Philemon;
poverty has tasted the luxuries of competence; labor has
lolled at ease in a perpetual arm-chair of idleness; sickness has been bribed into banishment; life has been
invested with new charms; and death deprived of its
former terrors. Nor have the affections been less gratified than the wants, appetites, and ambitions of mankind. By the conjurations of the same potent spell,
kindred have lavished anticipated benefits upon one
another, and charity upon all. Let it be termed a delusion,- a fool's paradise is better than the wise man's
Tartarus; be it branded as an ignis-fatuus, - it was at
least a benevolent one, which, instead of beguiling its
followers into swamps, caverns, and pitfalls, allured




100         THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
them on with all the blandishments of enchantment to
a garden of Eden, —an ever-blooming Elysium  of
delight. True, the pleasures it bestowed were evanescent: but which of our joys are permanent? and who
so inexperienced as not to know that anticipation is
always of higher relish than reality, which strikes a balance both in our sufferings and enjoyments? "The fear
of ill exceeds the ill we fear; " and fruition, in the same
proportion, invariably'falls short of hope.  " Men are
but children of a larger growth," who may amuse themselves for a long time in gazing at the reflection of the
moon in the water; but, if they jump in to grasp it,
they may grope for ever, and only get the farther from
their object. He is the wisest who keeps feeding upon
the future, and refrains as long as possible from undeceiving himself by converting his pleasant speculations
into disagreeable certainties.
The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket
early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last
possible moment, during the whole of which intervening
period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up
in his desk; and was not this well worth all the money?
Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for
even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during
two or three months? Crede quod babes, ct babes;
and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at
such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing
along Cheapside saw the figures 1,069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window
of a lottery-office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried
by this discovery, not less welcome than unexpected,
he resolved to walk round St. Paul's that he might con



THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.         101
sider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to
his wife and family; but, upon repassing the shop, he
observed that the number was altered to 10,069, and,
upon inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his
ticket was a blank, and had only been stuck up in the
window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually
calmed his agitation; but he always speaks of himself
as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and
maintains that his ten-minutes' walk round St. Paul's
was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket.
A prize thus obtained, has, moreover, this special advantage, - it is beyond the reach of fate; it cannot
be squandered; bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it;
friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up;
it bears a charmed life, and none of woman born can
break its integrity, even by the dissipation of a single
fraction.  Show  me the property in these perilous
times that is equally compact and impregnable. We
can no longer become enriched for a quarter of an
hour; we can no longer succeed in such splendid failures: all our chances of making such a miss have
vanished with the last of the Lotteries.
Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact; and sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical
configurations and mysterious stimulants to lottery adventure, will be disfurnished of its figures and figments.
People will cease to harp upon the one lucky number
suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception,
while they are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand
falsified dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus
will stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of numbers.




102             THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.
And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of
puffing, in all its pristine glory, when the lottery professors shall have abandoned  its  cultivation?   They
were the first, as they will assuredly be the last, who
fully developed the resources of that ingenious art; who
cajoled and decoyed the most suspicious and wary
reader into a perusal of their advertisements by devices
of endless variety and cunning; who baited their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost-stories, crimcons, bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and
every diversity of joy and sorrow, to catch newspapergudgeons.* Ought not such talents to be encouraged?
Verily the abolitionists have much to answer for!
And now, having established the felicity of all those
who gained imaginary prizes, let us proceed to show that
the equally numerous class who were presented with
real blanks have not less reason to consider themselves
happy. Most of us have cause to be thankful for that
which is bestowed; but we have all, probably, reason
to be still more grateful for that which is withheld, and
more especially for our being denied the sudden possession of riches. In the Litany, indeed, we call upon the
Lord to deliver us "in all time of our wealth; " but
how few of us are sincere in deprecating such a cala* " Of all the puffs," says Hazlitt, " lottery-puffs are the most ingenious."
He thinks a collection of them would be an amusing vade-mecum. Byron,
you know, was accused of writing lottery-puffs: and Lamb, in his younger
days, to eke out " a something contracted income," essayed to write them; but
he did not succeed very well in the task. His samples were returned on his
hands, as " done in too severe and terse a style." Some Grub-street hack
- a nineteenth-century Tom Brown or Mr. Dash - succeeded in composing
these popular and ingenious productions; but the man who wrote the Essays
of Elia could not write a successful lottery-puff! At this, exult, 0 mediocrity! and take courage, man of genius! — EDITOR.




THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.        103
mity! Massinger's Luke, and Ben Jonson's Sir Epicure
Mammon, and Pope's Sir Balaam, and our own daily
observation, might convince us that the Devil "now
tempts by making rich, not making poor."  We may
read in the " Guardian " a circumstantial account of a
man who was utterly ruined by gaining a capital prize;
we may recollect what Dr. Johnson said to Garrick,
when the latter was making a display of his wealth at
Hampton Court, —"Ah, David, David! these are the
things that make a death-bed terrible;" we may recall the Scripture declaration, as to the difficulty a rich
man finds in entering into the kingdom of Heaven;
and, combining all these denunciations against opulence,
let us heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky
escape from the calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand
pound prize! The fox in the fable, who accused the unattainable grapes of sourness, was more of a philosopher
than we are generally willing to allow. He was an adept
in that species of moral alchemy which turns every
thing to gold, and converts disappointment itself into a
ground of resignation and content.  Such we have
shown to be the great lesson inculcated by the Lottery,
when rightly contemplated; and, if we might parody
M. de Chateaubriand's jingling expression, -" i Roi est
inort: vive le Roi! " - we should be tempted to exclaim,
"The Lottery is no more: long live the Lottery! "




104             THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.
THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.*
THE world has hitherto so little troubled its head with
the points of doctrine held by a community which
contributes in other ways so largely to its amusement,
that, before the late mischance of a celebrated tragic
actor, it scarce condescended to look into the practice
of any individual player, much less to inquire into the
hidden and abscondite springs of his actions. Indeed,
it is with some violence to the imagination that we conceive of an actor as belonging to the relations of private
life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind
with the characters which they assume upon the stage.
How oddly does it sound, when we are told that the late
Miss Pope, for instance, - that is to say, in our notion
of her, Mrs. Candor, -  was a good daughter, an affectionate sister, and exemplary in all the parts of domestic
life! With still greater difficulty can we carry our notions to church, and conceive of Liston kneeling upon
a hassock, or Munden uttering a pious ejaculation, —
"making mouths at the invisible event."  But the times
are fast improving; and, if the process of sanctity begun
under the happy auspices of the present licenser go on
* From the " New Monthly Magazine," 1826.
Writing to Bernard Barton in the spring of 1826, Lamb says, speaking
of his literary projects, "A little thing without name will also be printed
on the' Religion of the Actors:' but it is out of your way; so I recommend
you, with true author's hypocrisy, to skip it." I wonder if " good B. B."
read the article; and, if he did, how he liked it. Quaker though he was, he
could not but have been pleased with it. - EDITOR.




THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.          105
to its completion, it will be as necessary for a comedian
to give an account of his faith as of his conduct. Fawcett must study the five points; and Dicky Suett, if he
were alive, would have had to rub up his catechism.
Already the effects of it begin to appear. A celebrated
performer has thought fit to oblige the world with a
confession of his faith, - or Br -'s " Religio Dramatici." This gentleman, in his laudable attempt to shift
from his person the obloquy of Judaism, with the forwardness of a new convert, in trying to prove too
much, has, in the opinion of many, proved too little.
A simple declaration of his Christianity was sufficient;
but, strange to say, his apology has not a word about
it. We are left to gather it from some expressions
which imply that he is a Protestant; but we did not
wish to inquire into the niceties of his orthodoxy. To
his friends of the old persuasion, the distinction was impertinent; for what cares Rabbi Ben Kimchi for the
differences which have split our novelty? To the great
body of Christians that hold the pope's supremacy —
that is to say, to the major part of the Christian worldhis religion will appear as much to seek as ever. But
perhaps he conceived that all Christians are Protestants,
as children and the common people call all, that are not
animals, Christians. The mistake was not very considerable in so young a proselyte, or he might think
the general (as logicians speak) involved in the particular. All Protestants are Christians; but I am a
Protestant; ergo, &c.: as if a marmoset, contending
to be a man, overleaping that term as too generic and
vulgar, should at once roundly proclaim himself to be a
gentleman. The argument would be, as we say, ex




106          THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.
abundanti. From whichever cause this excessus in terminis proceeded, we can do no less than congratulate the
general state of Christendom upon the accession of so
extraordinary a convert. Who was the happy instrument of the conversion, we are yet to learn: it comes
nearest to the attempt of the late pious Dr. Watts to
Christianize the Psalms of the Old Testament. Something of the old Hebrew raciness is lost in the transfusion; but much of its asperity is softened and pared
down in the adaptation.
The appearance of so singular a treatise at this conjuncture has set us upon an inquiry into the present
state of religion upon the stage generally. By the
favor of the church-wardens of St. Martin's in the
Fields, and St. Paul's, Covent Garden, who have very
readily, and with great kindness, assisted our pursuit, we are enabled to lay before the public the following particulars. Strictly speaking, neither of the two
great bodies is collectively a religious institution. We
had expected to have found a chaplain among them,
as at St. Stephen's and other court establishments;
and were the more surprised at the omission, as the last
Mr. Bengough at the one house, and Mr. Powell at
the other, from a gravity of speech and demeanor, and
the habit of wearing black at their first appearances
in the beginning offifth or the conclusion of fourth acts,
so eminently pointed out their qualifications for such
office. These corporations, then, being not properly
congregational, we must seek the solution of our question in the tastes, attainments, accidental breeding, and
education of the individual members of them. As we
were prepared to expect, a majority at both houses ad



THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.          107
here to the religion of the Church Established, — only
that at one of them a pretty strong leaven of Catholicism
is suspected; which, considering the notorious education of the manager at a foreign seminary, is not so
much to be wondered at. Some have gone so far as
to report that Mr. T    y, in particular, belongs to an
order lately restored on the Continent. We can contradict this: that gentleman is a member of the Kirk
of Scotland; and his name is to be found, much to his
honor, in the list of seceders from the congregation of
Mr. Fletcher. While the generality, as we have said,
are content to jog on in the safe trammels of national
orthodoxy, symptoms of a sectarian spirit have broken
out in quarters where we should least have looked for it.
Some of the ladies at both houses are deep in controverted points.  Miss F-  e, we are credibly informed,
is a Sub- and Madame V     a Supra- Lapsarian. Mr.
Pope is the last of the exploded sect of the Ranters.
Mr. Sinclair has joined the Shakers. Mr. Grimaldi, sen., after being long a Jumper, has lately fallen
into some whimsical theories respecting the fall of
man; which he understands, not of an allegorical, but
a real tumble, by which the whole body of humanity
became, as it were, lame to the performance of good
works. Pride he will have to be nothing but a stiff
neck; irresolution, the nerves shaken; an inclination
to sinister paths,  crookedness of the joints; spiritual
deadness, a paralysis; want of charity, a contraction
in the fingers; despising of government, a broken head;
the plaster, a sermon; the lint to bind it up, the text;
the probers, the preachers; a pair of crutches, the old
and new law; a bandage, religious obligation: a fanci



108                      THE ASS.
ful mode of illustration, derived from the accidents and
habits of his past calling spiritualized, rather than from
any accurate acquaintance with the Hebrew text, in
which report speaks him but a raw scholar. Mr. Elliston, from all that we can learn, has his religion yet to
choose; though some think him a Muggletonian.
THE ASS.*
MR. COLLIER, in his "Poetical Decameron" (Third
Conversation), notices a tract printed in 1595, with
the author's initials only, A. B., entitled "The Noblenesse of the Asse; a work rare, learned, and excellent."
He has selected the following pretty passage from it:
"He (the ass) refuseth no burden: he goes whither he
is sent, without any contradiction.  He lifts not his foote
against any one; he bytes not; he is no fugitive, nor
malicious affected.  He doth all things in good sort, and
to his liking that hath cause to employ him. If strokes
be given him, he cares not for them; and, as our modern
poet singeth, -'Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe,
And to that end dost beat him many times:
He cares not for himselfe, much less thy blow.' " t
Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage which
this useful servant to man should receive at man's hand,
* From Hone's "Every-day Book."
t " Who this modern poet was," says Mr. Collier, " is a secret worth discovering." The wood-cut on the title of the pamphlet is —an ass, with a
wreath of laurel round his neck.




THE ASS.                  109
did prudently in furnishing him with a tegument impervious to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child or a
weak hand can make feeble impressions on him. His
back offers no mark to a puny foeman. To a common
whip or switch his hide presents an absolute insensibility. You might as well pretend to scourge a schoolboy
with a tough pair of leather breeches on. His jerkin is
well fortified; and therefore the costermongers, "between the years 1790 and 1800," did more politicly than
piously in lifting up a part of his upper garment. I
well remember that beastly and bloody custom. I have
often longed to see one of those refiners in discipline
himself at the cart's tail, with just such a convenient
spot laid bare to the tender mercies of the whipster.
But, since Nature has resumed her rights, it is to be
hoped that this patient creature does not suffer to extremities; and that, to the savages who still belabor his
poor carcass with their blows (considering the sort of
anvil they are laid upon), he might in some sort, if he
could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, "Lay on:
you beat but upon the case of Anaxarchus."
Contemplating this natural safe-guard, this fortified
exterior, it is with pain I view the sleek, foppish,
combed, and curried person of this animal as he is disnaturalized at watering-places, &c., where they affect
to make a palfrey of him. Fie on all such sophistications! It will never do, master groom. Something
of his honest, shaggy exterior will still peep up in spite
of you,- his good, rough, native, pine-apple coating.
You cannot "refine a scorpion into a fish, though you
rinse it and scour it with ever so cleanly cookery."*
* Milton, from memory.




110                     THE ASS.
The modern poet quoted by A. B. proceeds to celebrate a virtue for which no one to this day had been
aware that the ass was remarkable:
"One other gift this beast hath as his owne,
Wherewith the rest could not be furnished;
On man himself the same was not bestowne:
To wit, on him is ne'er engendered
The hateful vermine that doth teare the skin,
And to the bode [body] doth mlake his passage in."
And truly, when one thinks on the suit of impenetrable armor with which Nature (like Vulcan to another
Achilles) has provided him, these subtile enemies to
our repose would have shown some dexterity in getting
into his quarters. As the bogs of Ireland by tradition
expel toads and reptiles, he may well defy these small
deer in his fastnesses. It seems the latter had not
arrived at the exquisite policy adopted by the human
vermin "between 1790 and 1800."
But the most singular and delightful gift of the ass,
according to the writer of this pamphlet, is his voice, the
"goodly, sweet, and continual brayings" of which,
"whereof they forme a melodious and proportionable
kinde of musicke," seem to have affected him with no
ordinary pleasure. "Nor thinke I," he adds, "that
any of our immoderate musitians can deny but that
their song is full of exceeding pleasure to be heard;
because therein is to be discerned both concord, discord, singing in the meane, the beginning to sing in
large compasse, then following into rise and fall, the
halfe-note, whole note, musicke of five voices, firme
singing by four voices, three together, or one voice
and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties amongst




THE ASS.                 111
them, when one delivers forth a long tenor or a short,
the pausing for time, breathing in measure, breaking
the minim or very least moment of time. Last of all,
to heare the musicke of five or six voices chaunged to
so many of asses is amongst them to heare a song of
world without end."
There is no accounting for ears, or for that laudable
enthusiasm with which an author is tempted to invest a
favorite subject with the most incompatible perfections:
I should otherwise, for my own taste, have been inclined
rather to have given a place to these extraordinary musicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet-sounds,
imagined by old Jeremy Collier (Essays, 1698, part ii.
on Music), where, after describing the inspirating effects
of martial music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious
conjecture, whether a sort of anti-music might not be
invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of
"sinking the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the
blood, and inspiring despair and cowardice and consternation.'Tis probable," he says, "the roaring of
lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together
with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imitated and compounded, might go a great way in this
invention." The dose, we confess, is pretty potent, and
skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to
the Ass of Silenus, who, if we may trust to classic lore,
by his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or
screech-owl, dismayed and put to rout a whole army
of giants?  Here was anti-music with a vengeance;
a whole Pan-Dis-Harmonicon in a single lungs of
leather!
But I keep you trifling too long on this asinine sub



112                     IN  RE SQUIRRELS.
ject.   I have  already passed  the  Pons Asinorum, and
will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem
Boy'r, my schoolmaster: —
"Ass  in  presenti  seldom   makes  a  WISE  MAN   in
futuro."
IN RE SQUIRRELS.*
WHAT is gone with the cages with  the  climbing  squirrel, and bells to them, which were formerly the indispensable appendage to the outside of a tinman's shop,
and were, in fact, the only live signs? One, we believe,
still hangs out on Holborn; but they are fast vanishing
with the good old modes of our ancestors.t They seem
to have been superseded by that still more ingenious refinement of modern humanity,-the tread-mill; in which
* From Hone's " Every-day Book."
t Lamb not only had a passionate fondness for old books and -
" The old familiar faces,"
but he loved the old associations. He was no admirer of your modern Improvements. Unlike Dr. Johnson, he did not go into the "most stately
shops," but purchased his books and engravings at the stalls and from
second-hand dealers. In his eyes, the old Inner-Temple Church was a handsomer and statelier structure than the finest cathedral in England; and to his
ear, as well as to the ear of Will Honeycomb, the old familiar cries of the
peripatetic London merchants were more musical than the songs of larks and
nightingales. It grieved him sorely to see an old building demolished which
he had passed and repassed for years, in his daily walks to and from his business; or an old custom abolished whose observance he had witnessed when
a child. " The disappearance of the old clock from St. Dunstan's Church,"
says Moxon in his pleasant tribute to Lamb's memory in Leigh Hunt's Journal, "drew tears from his eyes; nor could he ever pass without emotion the
place where Exeter'Change once stood. The removal had spoiled a reality in
Gay.'The passer-by,' he said,'no longer saw the combs dangle in his
face.' This almost broke his heart." -EDITOR.




IN RE SQUIRRELS.                 113
human squirrels still perform a similar round of ceaseless,
improgressive clambering, which must be nuts to them.
We almost doubt the fact of the teeth of this creature
being so purely orange-colored as Mr. Urban's correspondent gives out. One of our old poets - and they
were pretty sharp observers of Nature - describes them
as brown. But perhaps the naturalist referred to meant
"of the color of a Maltese orange,"* which is rather
more obfuscated than your fruit of Seville or St. Michael's, and may help to reconcile the difference.  VWe
cannot speak from observation; but we remember at,
school getting our fingers into the orangery of one of
these little gentry (not having a due caution of the traps
set there), and the result proved sourer than lemons.
The author of the "Task" somewhere speaks of their
anger as being " insignificantly fierce; "but we found the
demonstration of it on this occasion quite as significant
as we desired, and have not been disposed since to look
any of these " gift horses " in the mouth. Maiden aunts
keep these " small deer," as they do parrots, to bite people's fingers, on purpose to give them good advice "not
to adventure so near the cage another time." As for
their "six quavers divided into three quavers and a dotted
crotchet," I suppose they may go into Jeremy Bentham's
next budget of fallacies, along with the " melodious and
proportionable kinde of musicke " recorded, in your last
number, of an highly gifted animal.
* Fletcher in the " Faithful Shepherdess." The satyr offers to Clorin -
" Grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned poet's good, -
Sweeter yet did never crown
The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown
Than the squirrels' teeth that crack them."
8




114        DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS.
ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY
NOVELS.*
IT has happened not seldom that one work of some
author has so transcendently surpassed in execution the
rest of his compositions, that the world has agreed to
pass a sentence of dismissal upon the latter, and to consign them to total neglect and oblivion. It has done
wisely in this not to suffer the contemplation of excellences of a lower standard to abate or stand in the way
of the pleasure it has agreed to receive from the masterpiece.
Again: it has happened, that from no inferior merit
of execution in the rest, but from superior good fortune
in the choice of its subject, some single work shall have
been suffered to eclipse, and cast into shade, the deserts
of its less fortunate brethren. This has been done with
more or less injustice in the case of the popular allegory
of Bunyan, in which the beautiful and scriptural image
of a pilgrim or wayfarer (we are all such upon earth),
addressing itself intelligibly and feelingly to the bosoms
of all, has silenced, and made almost to be forgotten, the
more awful and scarcely less tender beauties of the "Holy
War made by Shaddai upon Diabolus," of the same
author, - a romance less happy in its subject, but surely
well worthy of a secondary immortality. But in no instance has this excluding partiality been exerted with
more unfairness than against what may be termed the
secondary novels or romances of De Foe.
* From Walter Wilson's Life of De Foe.




DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS.         115
While all ages and descriptions of people hang delighted over the "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," and
shall continue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts,
how few comparatively will bear to be told that there
exist other fictitious naratives by the same writer,four of them at least of no inferior interest, except what
results from a less felicitous choice of situation! " Roxana," " Singleton," " Moll Flanders," "Colonel Jack,"
are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear
the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and
eye of every one of them! They are, in their way, as
full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic;
only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm
that has bewitched the world, of the striking solitary
situation.
But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the
desert? or cannot the heart in the midst of crowds feel
frightfully alone? Singleton on the world of waters,
prowling about with pirates less merciful than the creatures of any howling wilderness,- is he not alone,
with the faces of men about him, but without a guide
that can conduct him through the mists of educational
and habitual ignorance, or a fellow-heart that can interpret to him the new-born yearnings and aspirations of
unpractised penitence? Or when the boy Colonel Jack,
in the loneliness of the heart (the worst solitude),
goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure in the hollow
tree by night, and miraculously loses, and miraculously
finds it again, — whom hath he there to sympathize
with him? or of what sort are his associates?
The narrative manner of De Foe has a naturalness




116         DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS.
about it beyond that of any other novel or romance
writer. His fictions have all the air of true stories.
It is impossible to believe, while you are reading them,
that a real person is not narrating to you everywhere
nothing but what really happened to himself.  To this
the extreme homeliness of their style mainly contributes.
We use the word in its best and heartiest sense, - that
which comes home to the reader. The narrators everywhere are chosen from low life, or have had their origin
in it: therefore they tell their own tales (Mr. Coleridge
has anticipated us in this remark), as persons in their
degree are observed to do, with infinite repetition, and
an overacted exactness, lest the hearer should not have
minded, or have forgotten, some things that had been
told before.  Hence the emphatic sentences marked in
the good old (but deserted) Italic type; and hence,
too, the frequent interposition of the reminding old
colloquial parenthesis, "I say," " Mind," and the like,
when the story-teller repeats what, to a'practised
reader, might appear to have been sufficiently insisted
upon before: which made an ingenious critic observe,
that his works, in this kind, were excellent reading for
the kitchen. And, in truth, the heroes and heroines of
De Foe can never again hope to be popular with a much
higher class of readers than that of the servant-maid
or the sailor. Crusoe keeps its rank only by tough
prescription. Singleton, the pirate; Colonel Jack, the
thief; Moll Flanders, both thief and harlot; Roxana, harlot and something worse, - would be startling
ingredients in the bill-of-fare of modern literary delicacies. But, then, what pirates, what thieves, and what
harlots, is the thief, the harlot, and the pirate of De Foe I




POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER ON EARS."   117
We would not hesitate to say, that in no other book of
fiction, where the lives of such characters are described,
is guilt and delinquency made less seductive, or the suffering made more closely to follow the commission, or
the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or the intervening flashes of religious visitation upon the rude
andl uninstructed soul more meltingly and fearfully painted. They, in this, come near to the tenderness of Bunyan; while the livelier pictures and incidents in them,
as in HIogarth or in Fielding, tend to diminish that fastidiousness to the concerns and pursuits of common life
which an unrestrained passion for the ideal and the
sentimental is in danger of producing.
POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER ON EARS."*
A WRITER, whose real name, it seems, is Boldero, but
who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve
months with some'very pleasant lucubrations under the
assumed signature of Leigh Hunt,t in his "Indicator"
of the 31st JaAuary last has thought fit to insinuate
that I, Elia, do not write the little sketches which bear
my signature in this magazine, but that the true author
of them is a Mr. L —b. Observe the critical period
* From the " London Magazine," 1821.
t Clearly a fictitious appellation; for, if we admit the latter of these
names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh? Christian nomenclature
knows no such.




118   POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER OF EARS."
at which he has chosen to impute the calumny, - on
the very eve of the publication of our last number,affording no scope for explanation for a full month;
during which time I must needs lie writhing and tossing under the cruel imputation of nonentity.  Good
Heavens! that a plain man must not be allowed to be
They call this an age of personality; but surely
this spirit of anti-personality (if I may so express it)
is something worse.
Take away my moral reputation, — I may live to
discredit that calumny; injure my literary fame, — I
may write that up again: but, when a gentleman is
robbed of his identity, where is he?
Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail
and perishing trifle at the best: but here is an assassin
who aims at our very essence; who not only forbids
us to be any longer, but to have been at all. Let our
ancestors look to it.
Is the parish register nothing?  Is the house in
Princes Street, Cavendish Square, where we saw the
light six and forty years ago, nothing?  Were our progenitors from stately Genoa, where we flourished four
centuries back, before the barbarous name of Boldero *
was known to a European mouth, nothing? WVas the
goodly scion of our name, transplanted into England
in the reign of the seventh Henry, nothing? Are the
archives of the steelyard, in succeeding reigns (if
haply they survive the fury of our envious enemies),
showing that we flourished in prime repute, as merchants, down to the period of the Commonwealth,
nothing?
* It is clearly of transatlantic origin.




ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.         119
"Why, then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing."
I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have
power to move me so.
ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.*
A CORRESPONDENT, who writes himself Peter Ball,
or Bell, - for his handwriting is as ragged as his manners, — admonishes me of the old saying, that some
people (under a courteous periphrasis, I slur his less
ceremonious epithet) had need have good memories.
In my " Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," I have
delivered myself, and truly, a templar born.  Bell
clamors upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a
fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon
a weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in
question (see Postscript to my " Chapter on Ears "), I
profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish
Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But
who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that, in
that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry, I was answering a
fool according to his folly, - that Elia there expresseth
himself ironically as to an approved slanderer, who
hath no right to the truth, and can be no fit recipient
of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his delusions; or, leading him  from  error still to contradictory error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the
* From the " London Magazine," 1821.




120        ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.
mire, and give him line till he suspend himself. No
understanding reader could be imposed upon by such
obvious rodomontade to suspect me for an alien, or believe me other than English.
To a second correspondent, who signs himself "A
Wiltshire Man," and claims me for a countryman upon
the strength of an equivocal phrase in my "Christ's Hospital," a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over the
Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he
nicely detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell
was too obtuse to strike upon. Referring to the passage, I must confess, that the term "native town,"
applied to Calne, preimd facie seems to bear out the
construction which my friendly correspondent is willing
to put upon it. The context too, I am afraid, a little
favors it. But where the words of an author, taken
literally, compared with some other passage in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable contradiction, it hath been the custom  of the ingenuous
commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition
that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was
chiefly intended. So, by the word " native," I may be
supposed to mean a town where I might have been
born, or where it might be desirable that I should
have been born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon
a dry, chalky soil, in which I delight; or a town
with the inhabitants of which I passed some weeks, a
summer or two ago, so agreeably, that they and it
became in a manner native to me. Without some such
latitude of interpretation in the present case, I see not
how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics,
as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two




ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.             121
places, from which all modern and ancient testimony is
alike abhorrent. Bacchus cometh the nearest to it,
whom I remember Ovid to have honored with the epithet " twice born." * But, not to mention that he is so
called (we conceive) in reference to the places whence
rather than the places where he was delivered, -  for, by
either birth, he may probably be challenged for a
Theban,- in a strict way of speaking, he was a filius
femoris by no means in the same sense as he had been
before a filius alvi; for that latter was but a secondary
and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a denizen
of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by
way of explanation was thought due to the courteous' Wiltshire Man."
To "Indagator," "Investigator,"'Incertus," and tle
rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true
localities of his birth, - as if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his parish, - to all such
church-warden critics he answereth, that, any explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed
his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but
that, if he seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand
it, he will be born again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever period, shall seem good
unto him.
"Modb me Thebis, modb Athenis."
* "Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis abalvo
Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum)
Insuitur femori.....
Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi."
Metamorph., lib. iii.




122           UNITARIAN PROTESTS.
UNITARIAN PROTESTS; *
IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT PERSUASION NEWLY
MARRIED.
DEAR M-, - Though none of your acquaintance
can with greater sincerity congratulate you upon this
happy conjuncture than myself, one of the oldest of
them, it was with pain I found you, after the ceremony,
depositing in the vestry-room what is called a Protest.
I thought you superior to this little sophistry.  What!
after submitting to the service of the Church of England; after consenting to receive a boon from her, in
the person of your amiable consort, - was it consistent
with sense, or common good manners, to turn round
upon her, and flatly taunt her with false worship? This
language is a little of the strongest in your books and
from your pulpits, though there it may well enough be
excused from religious zeal and the native warmth of
nonconformity.  But at the altar, -the Church-ofEngland altar, — adopting her forms, and complying
with her requisitions to the letter, - to be consistent,
together with the practice, I fear, you must drop the
language of dissent. You are no longer sturdy noncons: you are there occasional conformists. You submit to accept the privileges communicated by a form of
words, exceptionable, and perhaps justly, in your view;
but, so submitting, you have no right to quarrel with the
* From the " London Magazine," 1825.




UNITARIAN PROTESTS.           123
ritual which you have just condescended to owe an obligation to. They do not force you into their churches.
You come voluntarily, knowing the terms.  You
marry in the name of the Trinity. There is no evading this by pretending that you take the formula with
your own interpretation: (and, so long as you can
do this, where is the necessity of protesting?) for the
meaning of a vow is to be settled by the sense of
the imposer, not by any forced construction of the
taker; else might all vows, and oaths too, be eluded
with impunity. You marry, then, essentially as Trinitarians; and the altar no sooner satisfied than, hey,
presto i with the celerity of a juggler, you shift habits,
and proceed pure Unitarians again in the vestry. You
cheat the church out of a wife, and go home smiling in
your sleeves that you have so cunningly despoiled the
Egyptians. In plain English, the Church has married
you in the name of so and so, assuming that you took
the words in her sense: but you outwitted her; you
assented to them in your sense only, and took from her
what, upon a right understanding, she would have
declined giving you.
This is the fair construction to be put upon all
Unitarian marriages, as at present contracted; and, so
long as you Unitarians could salve your consciences
with the equivoque, I do not see why the Established
Church should have troubled herself at all about the
matter.  But the protesters necessarily see further.
They have some glimmerings of the deception; they
apprehend a flaw somewhere; they would fain be honest, and yet they must marry notwithstanding; for
honesty's sake, they are fain to dehonestate themselves




124            UNITARIAN PROTESTS.
a little. Let me try the very words of your own
protest, to see what confessions we can pick out of
them.
" As Unitarians, therefore, we " (you and your newly
espoused bride) " most solemnly protest against the service " (which yourselves have just demanded), " because
we are thereby called upon not only tacitly to acquiesce, but to profess a belief, in a doctrine which is a
dogma, as we believe, totally unfounded." But do you
profess that belief during the ceremony? or are you
only called upon for the profession, but do not make
it? If the latter, then you fall in with the rest of your
more consistent brethren who waive the protest; if the
former, then, I fear, your protest cannot save you.
Hard and grievous it is, that, in any case, an institution so broad and general as the union of man and
wife should be so cramped and straitened by the
hands of an imposing hierarchy, that, to plight troth to
a lovely woman, a man must be necessitated to compromise his truth and faith to Heaven; but so it must
be, so long as you choose to marry by the forms of the
church over which that hierarchy presides.
" Therefore," say you, " we protest."  Oh poor and
much fallen word, Protest!  It was not so that the first
heroic reformers protested. They departed out of Babylon once for good and all; they came not back for
an occasional contact with her altars, - a dallying, and
then a protesting against dalliance; they stood not
shuffling in the porch, with a Popish foot within, and
its lame Lutheran fellow without, halting betwixt.
These were the true Protestants.  You are — protesters.




UNITARIAN PROTESTS.            125
Besides the inconsistency of this proceeding, I must
think it a piece of impertinence, unseasonable at least,
and out of place, to obtrude these papers upon the
officiating clergyman; to offer to a public functionary
an instrument which by the tenor of his function he is
not obliged to accept, but rather he is called upon to
reject. Is it done in his clerical capacity? He has
no power of redressing the grievance. It is to take
the benefit of his ministry, and then insult him. If
in his capacity of fellow - Christian only, what are
your scruples to him, so long as you yourselves are
able to get over them, and do get over them by the
very fact of coming to require his services? The thing
you call a Protest might with just as good a reason be
presented to the chul'ch-warden for the time being, to
the parish-clerk, or the pew-opener.
The Parliament alone can redress your grievance,
if any. Yet I see not how with any grace your people
can petition for relief, so long as, by the very fact of
your coming to church to be married, they do bond fide
and strictly relieve themselves. The Upper House, in
particular, is not unused to these same things, called
Protests, among themselves.  But how  would this
honorable body stare to find a noble lord conceding a
measure, and in the next breath, by a solemn protest,
disowning it! A protest there is a reason given for
non-compliance, not a subterfuge for an equivocal occasional compliance. It was reasonable in the primitive
Christians to avert from their persons, by whatever
lawful means, the compulsory eating of meats which
had been offered unto idols. I dare say, the Roman
prefects and exarchates had plenty of petitioning in their




126            UNITARIAN PROTESTS.
days. But what would a Festus or Agrippa have
replied to a petition to that effect, presented to him
by some evasive Laodicean, with the very meat between
his teeth, which he had been chewing voluntarily, rather than abide the penalty? Relief for tender consciences means nothing, where the conscience has
previously relieved itself; that is, has complied with the
injunctions which it seeks preposterously to be rid of.
Relief for conscience there is properly none, but what
by better information makes an act appear innocent
and lawful with which the previous conscience was not
satisfied to comply. All else is but relief from penalties, from scandal incurred by a complying practice,
where the conscience itself is not fully satisfied.
"But," say you, "we have hard measure: the Quakers are indulged with the liberty denied to us."  They
are; and dearly have they earned it. You have come in
(as a sect at least) in the cool of the evening, -at
the eleventh hour. The Quaker character was hardened
in the fires of persecution in the seventeenth century;
not quite to the stake and fagot, but little short of that:
they grew up and thrived against noisome prisons, cruel
beatings, whippings, stockings. They have since endured a century or two of scoffs, contempts; they have
been a by-word and a nay-word; they have stood unmoved: and the consequence of long conscientious
resistance on one part is invariably, in the end, remission on the other. The legislature, that denied you the
tolerance, which I do not know that at that time you even
asked, gave them the liberty, which, without granting,
they would have assumed. No penalties could have
driven them into the churches.  This is the conse



UNITARIAN PROTESTS.           127
quence of entire measures. Had the early Quakers
consented to take oaths, leaving a protest with the
clerk of the court against them in the same breath
with which they had taken them, do you in your conscience think that they would have been indulged at this
day in their exclusive privilege of affirming? Let your
people go on for a century or so, marrying in your
own fashion, and I will warrant them, before the end
of it, the legislature will be willing to concede to them
more than they at present demand.
Either the institution of marriage depends not for
its validity upon hypocritical compliances with the ritual
of an alien church (and then I do not see why you cannot marry among yourselves, as the Quakers, without
their indulgence, would have been doing to this day), or
it does depend upon such ritual compliance. And then,
in your protests, you offend against a divine ordinance.
I have read in the Essex-street Liturgy a form for the
celebration of marriage. Why is this become a dead
letter? Oh! it has never been legalized; that is to say,
in the law's eye, it is no marriage. But do you take
upon you to say, in the view of the gospel it would be
none?  Would your own people, at least, look upon a
couple so paired to be none? But the case of dowries,
alimonies, inheritances, &c., which depend for their validity upon the ceremonial of the church by law established, - are these nothing? That our children are not
legally Filii Nullius, - is this nothing?  I answer,
Nothing; to the preservation of a good conscience,
nothing; to a consistent Christianity, less than nothing.
Sad worldly thorns they are indeed, and stumblingblocks well worthy to be set out of the way by a




128          HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
legislature calling itself Christian; but not likely to be
removed in a hurry by any shrewd legislators who perceive that the petitioning complainants have not so
much as bruised a shin in the resistance, but, prudently
declining the briers and the prickles, nestle quietly
down in the smooth two-sided velvet of a protesting occasional conformity.
I am, dear sir,
With much respect, yours, &c.,
ELIA.
ON
THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES;
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF DAMNED AUTHORS.*
MR. REFLECTOR, —I am one of those persons whom
the world has thought proper to designate by the title
of Damned Authors.  In that memorable season of
dramatic failures, 1806-7, —in which no fewer, I think,
than two tragedies, four comedies, one opera, and three
farces, suffered at Drury-lane Theatre, - I was found
guilty of constructing an afterpiece, and was damned.
Against the decision of the public in such instances
there can be no appeal. The clerk of Chatham might
as well have protested against the decision of Cade and
his followers, who were then the public. Like him, I
was condemned because I could write.
* From the "Reflector," No. 3.




HISSING AT THE THEATRES.          129
Not but it did appear to some of us that the measures
of the popular tribunal at that period savored a little of
harshness and of the summum jus. The public mouth
was early in the season fleshed upon the "Vindictive
Man," and some pieces of that nature; and it retained,
through the remainer of it, a relish of blood. As Dr.
Johnson would have said, "Sir, there was a habit of
sibilation in the house."
Still less am I disposed to inquire into the reason of
the comparative lenity, on the other hand, with which
some pieces were treated, which, to indifferent judges,
seemed at least as much deserving of condemnation as
some of those which met with it. I am willing to put
a favorable construction upon the votes that were given
against us; I believe that there was no bribery or designed partiality in the case: only "our nonsense did
not happen to suit their nonsense;" that was all.
But against the manner in which the public, on these
occasions, think fit to deliver their disapprobation, I
must and ever will protest.
Sir, imagine- but you have been present at the
damning of a piece (those who never had that felicity,
I beg them to imagine) - a vast theatre, like that which
Drury Lane was before it was a heap of dust and
ashes (I insult not over its fallen greatness; let it recover itself when it can for me, let it lift up its towering
head once more, and take in poor authors to write for
it; hic ccestus artemque repono), — a theatre like that, filled
with all sorts of disgusting sounds, -shrieks, groans,
hisses, but chiefly the last, like the noise of many
waters, or that which Don Quixote heard from the
fulling-mills, or that wilder combination of devilish
9




130           HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
sounds which St. Anthony listened to in the wilderness.
Oh! Mr. Reflector, is it not a pity, that the sweet
human voice, which was given man to speak with, to
sing with, to whisper tones of love in, to express compliance, to convey a favor, or to grant a suit, - that
voice, which in a Siddons or a Braham rouses us, in a
siren Catalani charms and captivates us, —that the
musical, expressive human voice should be converted
into a rival of the noises of silly geese, and irrational,
venomous snakes?
I never shall forget the sounds on my night. I never
before that time fully felt the reception which the Author
of All Ill, in the "Paradise Lost," meets with from the
critics in the pit, at the final close of his " Tragedy upon
the Human Race," — though that, alas! met with too
much success -
" From innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbena dire,
Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear,
And Dipsas."
For hall substitute theatre, and you have the very
image of what takes place at what is called the damnation
of a piece, - and properly so called; for here you see
its origin plainly, whence the custom was derived, and
what the first piece was that so suffered. After this,
none can doubt the propriety of the appellation.
But, sir, as to the justice of bestowing such appalling, heart-withering denunciations of the popular ob



HISSING AT THE THEATRES.          131
loquy upon the venial mistake of a poor author, who
thought to please us in-the act of filling his pockets, -
for the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than
that, - it does, I own, seem to me a species of retributive justice far too severe for the offence.  A culprit in
the pillory (bate the eggs) meets with no severer exprobration.
Indeed, I have often wondered that some modest
critic has not proposed that there should be a wooden
machine to that effect erected in some convenient part
of the proscenium, which an unsuccessful author should
be required to mount, and stand his hour, exposed to
the apples and oranges of the pit. This amende honorable would well suit with the meanness of some
authors, who, in their prologues, fairly prostrate their
skulls to the audience, and seem to invite a pelting.
Or why should they not have their pens publicly
broke over their heads, as the swords of recreant knights
in old times were, and an oath administered to them
that they should never write again?
Seriously, Messieurs the Public, this outrageous way
which you have got of expressing your displeasures is
too much for the occasion. When I was deafening
under the effects of it, I could not help asking what
crime of great moral turpitude I had committed: for
every man about me seemed to feel the offence as personal to himself; as something which public interest and
private feelings alike called upon him, in the strongest
possible manner, to stigmatize with infamy.
The Romans, it is well known to you, Mr. Reflector,
took a gentler method of marking their disapprobation of
an author's work. They were a humane and equitable




132         HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
nation. The left the furca and the yatibulum, the axe
and the rods, to great offenders: for these minor and
(if I may so term them) extra-moral offences, the bent
thumb was considered as a sufficient sign of disapprobation, - vertere pollicem; as the pressed thumb, premere
pollicem, was a mark of approving.
Andl really there seems to have been a sort of fitness
in this method, a correspondency of sign in'the punishment to the offence. For, as the action of writing is
performed by bending the thumb forward, the retroversion or bending back of that joint did not unaptly
point to the opposite of that action; implying that it
was the will of the audience that the author should
write no more: a much more significant as well as more
humane way of expressing that desire than our custom of hissing, which is altogether senseless and indefensible. Nor do we find that the Roman audiences
deprived themselves, by this lenity, of any tittle of that
supremacy which audiences in all ages have thought
themselves bound to maintain over such as have been
candidates for their applause. On the contrary, by this
method they seem to have had the author, as we should
express it, completely under finger and thumb.
The provocations to which a dramatic genius is exposed from the public are so much the more vexatious
as they are removed from any possibility of retaliation,
the hope of which sweetens most other injuries; for the
public never writes itself Not but something very like
it took place at the time of the 0. P. differences. The
placards which were nightly exhibited, were, properly
speaking, the composition of the public. The public
wrote them, the public applauded them; and precious




HISSING AT THE THEATRES.          133
morceaux of wit and eloquence they were, -except
some few, of a better quality, which it is well known
were furnished by professed dramatic writers. After
this specimen of what the public can do for itself, it
should be a little slow in condemning what others do
for it.
As the degrees of malignancy vary in people according as they have more or less of the Old Serpent (the
father of hisses) in their composition, I have sometimes
amused myself with analyzing this many-headed hydra,
which calls itself the public, into the component parts
of which it is " complicated, head and tail," and seeing
how many varieties of the snake kind it can afford.
First, there is the Common English Snake.- This
is that part of the auditory who are always the majority
at damnations; but who;,having no critical venom in
themselves'to sting them on, stay till they hear others
hiss, and then join in for company.'The Blind Wormj is a species very nearly allied to
the foregoing. Some naturalists have doubted whether
they are not the same.
The Rattlesnake. -These are your obstreperous
talking critics, - the impertinent guides of the pit, —
who will not give a plain man leave to enjoy an evening's entertainment; but, with their frothy jargon and
incessant finding' of faults, (either drown his pleasure
quite, or force him, in his own defence, to join in their
clamorous censure.' The hiss always originates with
these. When this creature springs his rattle, you would
think, from the noise it makes, there was something in
it; but you have only to examine the instrument from
which the noise proceeds, and you will find iti typical of




134         HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
a critic's tongue — a shallow membrane, empty, voluble, and, seated in the most contemptible part of the
creature's bodey
The Whipsnake. — This is he that lashes the poor
author the next day in the newspapers.
The Deaf Adder, or Surda Echidna of Linnaeus.
Under this head may be classed all that portion of the
spectators (for audience they properly are not), who,
not finding the first act of a piece answer to their preconceived notions of what a first act should be, like
Obstinate in John Bunyan positively thrust their fingers in their ears, that they may not hear a word of
what is comings though perhaps the very next act may
be composed in a style as different as possible, and be
written quite to their own tastes. These adders refuse
to hear the voice of the charmer, because the tuning of
his instrument gave them offence.
I should weary you, and myself too, if I were to go
through all the classes of the serpent kind. Two qualities are common to them all. (They are creatures of
remarkably cold digestions rand chiefly haunt pits and
low grounds'
I proceed with more pleasure to give you an account
of a club to which I have the honor to belong. There
are fourteen of us, who are all authors that have been
once in our lives what is called damned. We meet on
the anniversaries of our respective nights, and make
ourselves merry at the expense of the public.  The
chief tenets which distinguish our society, and which
every man among us is bound to hold for gospel,
are, -




HISSING AT THE THEATRES.          135
That the public, or mob, in all ages, have been a set
of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages.
That no man of genius, in his senses, would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful rabble.
That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to
pick their pockets; and, that failing, we are at full
liberty to vilify and abuse them as much as ever we
think fit.
That authors, by their affected pretences to humility,
which they made use of as a cloak to insinuate their
writings into the callous senses of the multitude, obtuse
to every thing but the grossest flattery, have by degrees
made that great beast their master; as we may act submission to children till we are obliged to practise it in
earnest. That authors are and ought to be considered
the masters and preceptors of the public, and not vice
versd.  That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus,
and Musaeus; and would be so again, if it were not that
writers prove traitors to themselves. That, in particular, in the days of the first of those three great authors
just mentioned, audiences appear to have been perfect
models of what audiences should be; for though, along
with the trees and the rocks and the wild creatures
which he drew after him to listen to his strains, some
serpents doubtless came to hear his music, it does not
appear that any one among them ever lifted up a dissentient voice. They knew what was due to authors in
those days. Now every stock and stone turns into a
serpent, and has a voice.
That the terms " courteous reader " and " candid auditors," as having given rise to a false notion in those to
whom they were applied, as if they conferred upon them




136          HISSING AT THE THEATRES.
some right, which they cannot have, of exercising their
judgments, ought to be utterly banished and exploded.
These are our distinguishing tenets. To keep up the
memory of the cause in which we suffered, as the ancients sacrificed a goat, a supposed unhealthy animal, to
~Esculapius, on our feast-nights we cut up a goose, an
animal typical of the popular voice, to the deities of
Candor and Patient Hearing. A zealous member of the
society once proposed that we should revive the obsolete
luxury of viper-broth; but, the stomachs of some of the
company rising at the proposition, we lost the benefit
of that highly salutary and antidotal dish.
The privilege of admission to our club is strictly
limited to such as have been fairly damned. A piece
that has met with ever so little applause, that has but
languished its night or two, and then gone out, will
never entitle its author to a seat among us. An exception to our usual readiness in conferring this privilege
is in the case of a writer, who, having been once condemned, writes again, and becomes candidate for a
second martyrdom. Simple damnation we hold to be
a merit; but to be twice damned we adjudge infamous.
Such a one we utterly reject, and blackball without a
hearing: -
h" The common damned shun his society."
Hoping that your publication of our regulations may
be a means of inviting some more members into our
society, I conclude this long letter.
I am, sir, yours,
SEMEL-DAMNATUS. *
* The germ of this article is contained in the following passage from a
letter to Manning (then sojourning among the Mandarins), in which Lamb,




CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.                    137
CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.*
CHARLES LAMB, born in the Inner Temple, 10th
February, 1775; educated in Christ's Hospital; afterhalf humorously, half pathetically, describes the reception the town gave
his famous and unfortunate farce, " Mr. H.: " -
" So I go creeping on since I was lamed with that cursed fall from off the
top of Drury-Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a year ago.
However, I have been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty
free with me upon that occasion. Hang'em, how they hissed! It was not
a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese;
with roaring sometimes like bears; mows and mops like apes; sometimes
snakes, that hissed me into madness.'Twas like Saint Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us! that God should give his favorite children, men, mouths
to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with,
and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders,
bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through
them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent
labors of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them! Heaven
be pleased to make the teeth rot out of them all, therefore! Make them a
reproach, and all that pass by them to loll out their tongue at them! Blind
mouths! as Milton somewhere calls them." -EDITOR.
* This, the briefest, and perhaps the wittiest and most truthful, autobiography in the language, was published in the "' New Monthly Magazine "
a few months after its author's death, with the following preface or introduction from the pen of some unknown admirer of Elia: —
" We have been favored, by the kindness of Mr. Upcott, with the following sketch, written in one of his manuscript collections, by Charles Lamb. It
will be read with deep interest by all, but with the deepest interest by those
who had the honor and the happiness of knowing the writer. It is so singularly characteristic, that we can scarcely persuade ourselves we do not hear
it, as we read, spoken from his living lips. Slight as it is, it conveys the most
exquisite and perfect notion of the personal manner and habits of our friend.
For the intellectual rest, we lift the veil of its noble modesty, and can even
here discern them. Mark its humor, crammed into a few thinking words, -
its pathetic sensibility in the midst of contrast, - its wit, truth, and feelin g,-and, above all, its fanciful retreat at the close, under a phantom cloud
of death." -EDITOR.




138       CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
wards a clerk in the Accountants' Office, East-India
House; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after
thirty-three years' service; is now a gentleman at
large; can remember few specialities in his life worth
noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying
(teste su6 manu). Below the middle stature; cast of
face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion; stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation
in a quaint aphorism, or a poor quibble, than in set and
edifying speeches; has consequently been libelled as a
person always aiming at wit; which, as he told a dull
fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as
aiming at dulness. A small eater, but not drinker;
confesses a partiality for the production of the juniperberry; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and
then a casual puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon
the public a tale, in prose, called "Rosamund Gray;"
a dramatic sketch, named "John Woodvil;" a' Farewell Ode to Tobacco," with sundry other poems, and
light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octavos, and pompously christened his works, though in
fact they were his recreations; and his true works may
be found on the shelves of Leadenhall Street, filling
some hundred folios. He is also the true Elia, whose
Essays are extant in a little volume, published a year
or two since, and rather better known from that name
without a meaning than from any thing he has done, or
can hope to do, in his own. He was also the first to
draw the public attention to the old English dramatists,
in a work called " Specimens of English Dramatic Writ



ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.                     139
ers who lived about the Time of Shakspeare," published
about fifteen years since. In short, all his merits and
demerits to set forth would take to the end of Mr.
Upcott's book, and then not be told truly.
He died         18, much lamented.*
Witness his hand,
CmHALES LAMB.
18th April, 1827.
ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.t
WHEN   I  heard  of the  death  of Coleridge, it was
without grief. It seemed to me that he long had been
on the confines of the next world, — that he had a
* To anybody. -Please to fill up these blanks.
t Disraeli wrote a book on the Quarrels of Authors. Somebody should
write one.on the Friendships of Literary Men. If such a work is ever written, Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be honorably mentioned therein. Among all the friendships celebrated in tale or history,
there is none more admirable than that which existed between these two
eminent men. The "golden thread that tied their hearts together" was
never broken. Their friendship was never " chipt or diminished;" but, the
longer they lived, the stronger it grew. Death could not destroy it.
Lamb, after Coleridge's death, as if weary of "this green earth," as if
not caring if " sun and sky and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and
fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside
conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself," went out
with life, willingly sought " Lavinian shores."
" Lamb," as Mr. John Forster says in his beautiful tribute to his memory,
" never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little else
(his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great spirit
joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of
mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun,' cleanse his bosom of the
perilous stuff that weighed' upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he
would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death of




140           ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.
hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not
grieve. But, since, I feel how great a part he was of
me. His great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot
think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to
him.  He was the proof and  touchstone of all my
cogitations.  He was a Grecian (or in the first form)
at Christ's Hospital; where I was Deputy-Grecian; and
the same subordination and deference to him I have
preserved through a life-long acquaintance. Great in
his writings, he was greatest in his conversation. In
him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow
every one his share of talk. He would talk from morn
to dewy eve, nor cease till far midnight; yet who ever
would interrupt him? who would obstruct that continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion?
He had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain.
Many who read the abstruser parts of his "Friend"
would complain that his works did not answer to his
spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a
tone in oral delivery which seemed to convey sense to
those who  were otherwise imperfect recipients.   He
was my fifty-years-old friend without a dissension.
Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can
Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks ago, and
remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He interrupted
himself and them almost every instant with some play of affected wonder
or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the words,' Coleridge is dead.'
Nothing could divert him from that; for the thought of it never left him.
About the same time, we had written to him to request a few lines for the
literary album of a gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration of his
genius. It was the last request we were destined to make, the last kindness
we were allowed to receive. He wrote in Mr. Keymer's volume, -and
wrote of Coleridge." — EDITOR.




THE OLD ACTORS.              141
see again. I seem to love the house he died at more
passionately than when he lived. I love the faithful
Gilmans more than while they exercised their virtues
towards him living. What was his mansion is consecrated to me a chapel.
EDMONTON, NOV. 21, 1834.
THE OLD ACTORS.*
I DO not know a more mortifying thing than to be
conscious of a foregone delight, with a total oblivion of
the person and manner which conveyed it. In dreams
I often stretch and strain after the countenance of Edwin
whom I once saw in "Peeping Tom." I cannot catch a
feature of him. He is no more to me than Nokes or
Pinkethman. Parsons, and, still more, Dodd, were near
being lost to me till I was refreshed with their portraits
(fine treat) the other day at Mr. Matthews's gallery at
Highgate; which, with the exception of the Hogarth
pictures a few years since exhibited in Pall Mall, was
the most delightful collection I ever gained admission to.
There hang the players, in their single persons and
in grouped scenes, from the Restoration, - Bettertons,
Booths, Garricks, -justifying the prejudices which we
entertain for them; the Bracegirdles, the Mountforts,
and the Oldfields, fresh as Cibber has described them;
the Woffington (a true Hogarth) upon a couch, dallying and dangerous; the screen scene in Brinsley's famous
comedy; with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon whom I have
* From the " London Magazine," 1822.




142              THE OLD ACTORS.
not seen; and the rest, whom, having seen, I see still
there. There is Henderson, unrivalled in Comus, whom
I saw at second-hand in the elder Harley; Harley, the
rival of Holman, in Horatio; Holman, with the bright
glittering teeth, in Lothario, and the deep pavior's sighs
in Romeo, the jolliest person (" our son is fat ") of any
Hamlet I have yet seen, with the most laudable attempts (for a personable man) at looking melancholy;
and Pope, the abdicated monarch of tragedy and comedy, in Harry the Eighth; and Lord Townley. There
hang the two Aickins, brethren in mediocrity; Wroughton, who in Kitely seemed to have forgotten that in
prouder days he had personated Alexander; the specious
form of John Palmer, with the special effrontery of
Bobby; Bensley, with the trumpet-tongue; and little
Quick (the retired Dioclesian of Islington), with his
squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle. There are fixed, cold
as in life, the immovable features of Moody, who, afraid
of o'erstepping Nature, sometimes stopped short of her;
and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, who, with no such
fears, not seldom leaped o' the other side. There hang
Farren and Whitfield, and Burton and Phillimore,
names of small account in those times, but which,
remembered now, or casually recalled by the sight of an
old play-bill, with their associated recordations, can
"drown an eye unused to flow." There too hangs, not
far removed from them in death, the graceful plainness
of the first Mrs. Pope, with a voice unstrung by age,
but which in her better days must have competed with
the silver tones of Barry himself, so enchanting in decay
do I remember it, -of all her lady parts, exceeding
herself in the "Lady Quakeress" (there earth touched




CAPTAIN STARKEY.                    143
heaven) of O'Keefe, when she played it to the "merry
cousin " of Lewis; and Mrs. Mattocks, the sensiblest of
viragos; and Miss Pope, a gentlewoman ever, to the
verge of ungentility, with Churchill's compliment still
burnishing upon her gay honeycomb lips. There are
the two Bannisters, and Sedgwick, and Kelly, and Dignum (Diggy), and the by-gone features of Mrs. Ward,
matchless in Lady Loverule; and the collective majesty
of the whole Kemble family; and (Shakspeare's woman)
Dora Jordan; and, by her, two antics, who, in former
and in latter days, have chiefly beguiled us of our griefs;
whose portraits we shall strive to recall, for the sympathy of those who may not have had the benefit of viewing the matchless Highgate collection.*
CAPTAIN STARKEY.
To the Editor of the " Every-day Book: "DEAR SIR, - I read your account of this unfortunate
being, and his forlorn piece of self-history,t with that
smile of half-interest which the annals of insignificance
excite, till I came to where he says, "I was bound ap* Here follows, in the article as originally published, the well-known
masterly pen-and-ink portraits of Suett and Munden. The article on Suett,
Lamb incorporated into the " Essay on some of the old Actors:" that on
Munden, he reprinted as a separate chapter in the first series of the Essays
of Elia. - EDITOR.
t " Memoirs of the Life of Benjamin Starkey, late of London, but now an
inmate of the Freemen's Hospital in Newcastle. Written by himself. With
a portrait of the author, and a fac-simile of his handwriting. Printed and
sold by William Hall, Great Market, Newcastle." 1818. 12mo, pp. 14.




144             CAPTAIN STARKEY.
prentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer, and
teacher of languages and mathematics," &c.; when I
started as one does in the recognition of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. This, then, was that Starkey of whom I have heard my sister relate so many pleasant anecdotes; and whom, never having seen, I yet seem
almost to remember. For nearly fifty years, she had
lost all sight of him; and, behold! the gentle usher of
her youth, grown into an aged beggar, dubbed with an
opprobrious title to which he had no pretensions; an
object and a May-game! To what base purposes may
we not return! What may not have been the meek
creature's sufferings, what his wanderings, before he
finally settled down in the comparative comfort of an old
hospitaller of the almonry of Newcastle? And is poor
Starkey dead?
I was a scholar of that "eminent writer" that he speaks
of; but Starkey had quitted the school about a year
before I came to it. Still the odor of his merits had left
a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils.
The schoolroom stands where it did, looking into a discolored, dingy garden in the passage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Buildings. It is still a school,
though the main prop, alas! has fallen so ingloriously;
and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the
lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven
knows what " languages " were taught in it then! I am
sure that neither my sister nor myself brought any out
of it but a little of our native English. By "mathematics," reader, must be understood "ciphering."  It
was, in fact, a humble day-school, at which reading and
writing were taught to us boys in the morning; and the




CAPTAIN STARKEY.             145
same slender erudition was communicated to the girls,
our sisters, &c., in the evening. Now, Starkey presided,
under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr.
Cook, now or lately a respectable singer and performer at
Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat,
corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone- especially while he was inflicting punishment- which is so
much more terrible to children than the angriest looks
and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but, when
they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, where we could only hear the
plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum
and the solemnity. But the ordinary chastisement was
the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that
almost obsolete weapon now,- the ferule. A ferule
was a sort of flat ruler, widened, at the inflicting end,
into a shape resembling a pear, -but nothing like so
sweet,- with a delectable hole in the middle to raise
blisters, like a cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument of torture, and the
malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness,
with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod
is accompanied with something ludicrous; but by no
process can I look back upon this blister-raiser with any
thing but unmingled horror.  To make him look more
formidable, -if a pedagogue had need of these heightenin gs, — Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns
formerly in use with school-masters, the strange figures
upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of
10




146             CAPTAIN STARKEY.
pain and suffering. But, boyish fears apart, Bird, I believe, was, in the main, a humane and judicious master.
Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each
other; and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after,
with its moral lesson, "Art improves Nature;" the still
earlier pot-hooks and the hangers, some traces of which
I fear may yet be apparent in this manuscript; the
truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a
mockery of our imprisonment; the prize for best spelling which had almost turned my head, and which, to this
day, I cannot reflect upon without a vanity, which I ought
to be ashamed of; our little leaden inkstands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks; the bright,
punctually-washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with another and another ink-spot! What a world
of little associated circumstances, pains, and pleasures,
mingling their quotas of pleasure, arise at the reading
of those few simple words, -"Mr. WTilliam Bird, an
eminent writer, and teacher of languages and mathematics in Fetter Lane, Holborn"!
Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp
of old-fashionedness in his face which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any particular age in the
object. You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven and thirty. This antique cast always
seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems he
was not always the abject thing he came to. My sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr.
Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her
idea of him when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's




CAPTAIN STARKEY.              147
school.  Old age and poverty- a life-long poverty,
she thinks -could at no time have so effaced the
marks of native gentility which were once so visible in
a face otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn.
From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would
have wanted bread before he would have begged or borrowed a half-penny.  "If any of the girls," she says,
"who were my school-fellows, should be reading, through
their aged spectacles, tidings, from the dead, of their
youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do,
at having teased his gentle spirit." They were big
girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with
the silence necessary; and, however old age and a long
state of beggary seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days his language
occasionally rose to the bold and figurative: for, when
he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary
phrase was, "Ladies, if you will not hold your peace,
not all the powers in heaven can make you." Once he
was missing for a day or two: he had run away. A little, old, unhappy-looking man brought him back, —it
was his father, - and he did no business in the school
that day, but sat moping in a corner, with his hands
before his face; and the girls, his tormentors, in pity
for his case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him.
"I had been there but a few months," adds she, "when
Starkey, who was the chief instructor of us girls, communicated to us a profound secret, - that the tragedy of'Cato' was shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and
that we were to be invited to the representation." That
Starkey lent a helping hand in fashioning the actors, she
remembers; and, but for his unfortunate person, he




148             A POPULAR FALLACY.
might have had some distinguished part in the scene to
enact. As it was, he had the arduous task of prompter
assigned to him; and his feeble voice was heard clear and
distinct, repeating the text during the whole performance. She describes her recollection of the cast of characters, even now, with a relish. Martia, by the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa,
and of whom she never afterwards heard tidings; Lucia,
by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular friend;
Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain
boy, and shorter by the head than his two sons in the
scene, &c.  In conclusion, Starkey appears to have
been one of those mild spirits, which, not originally deficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into
dejection and feebleness.  He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament, to society, if Fortune
had taken him into a very little fostering; but, wanting
that, he became a captain,- a by-word, - and lived
and died a broken bulrush.
A POPULAR FALLACY,*
THAT A DEFORMED PERSON IS A LORD.
AFTER a careful perusal of the most approved works
that treat of nobility, and of its origin in these realms
in particular, we are left very much in the dark as to the
original patent in which this branch of it is recognized.
Neither Camden in his "Etymologie and Original of
Barons," nor Dugdale in his "Baronage of England,"
* From the " New Monthly Magazine," 1826.




A POPULAR FALLACY.              149
nor Selden (a more exact and laborious inquirer than
either) in his " Titles of Honor," afford a glimpse of satisfaction upon the subject.  There is an heraldic term,
indeed, which seems to imply gentility, and the right to
coat armor (but nothing further), in persons thus qualified. But the sinister beard is more probably interpreted
by the best writers on this science, of some irregularity
of birth than of bodily conformation. Nobility is either
hereditary or by creation, commonly called patent. Of
the former kind, the title in question cannot be, seeing
that the notion of it is limited to a personal distinction
which does not necessarily follow in the blood. Honors
of this nature, as Mr. Anstey very well observes, descend,
moreover, in a right line. It must be by patent, then, if
any thing. But who can show it? How comes it to
be dormant?  Under what king's reign is it patented?
Among the grounds of nobility cited by the learned Mr.
Ashmole, after " Services in the Field or in the Council
Chamber," he judiciously sets down "Honors conferred
by the sovereign out of mere benevolence, or as favoring
one subject rather than another for some likeness or conformity observed (or but supposed) in him to the royal
nature;" and instances the graces showered upon Charles
Brandon, who, "in his goodly person being thought not
a little to favor the port and bearing of the king's own
majesty, was by that sovereign, King Henry the Eighth,
for some or one of these respects, highly promoted and
preferred." Here, if anywhere, we thought we had
discovered a clew to our researches. But after a painful
investigation of the rolls and records under the reign of
Richard the Third, or "Richard Crouchback," as he is
more usually designated in the chronicles, — from a tra



150             A POPULAR FALLACY.
ditionary stoop or gibbosity in that part, - we do not
find that that monarch conferred any such lordships as
are here pretended, upon any subject or subjects, on a
simple plea of " conformity" in that respect to the " royal
nature." The posture of affairs, in those tumultuous
times preceding the battle of Bosworth, possibly left
him at no leisure to attend to such niceties. Further
than his reign, we have not extended our inquiries; the
kings of England who preceded or followed him being
generally described by historians to have been of straight
and clean limbs, the "natural derivative," says Daniel,*
"of high blood, if not its primitive recommendation to
such ennoblement, as denoting strength and martial
prowess, -the qualities set most by in that fighting age."
Another motive, which inclines us to scruple the validity of this claim, is the remarkable fact, that none of the
persons in whom the right is supposed to be vested do
ever insist upon it themselves. There is no instance of
any of them "suing his patent," as the law-books call
it; much less of his having actually stepped up into his
proper seat, as, so qualified, we might expect that some
of them would have had the spirit to do, in the House
of Lords. On the contrary, it seems to be a distinction
thrust upon them.  "Their title of'lord,"' says one of
their own body, speaking of the common people, "I
never much valued, and now I entirely despise; and yet
they will force it upon me as an honor which they
have a right to bestow, and which I have none to refuse." t Upon a dispassionate review of the subject, we
are disposed to believe that there is no right to the
* History of England, " Temporibus Edwardi Primi et sequentibus."
t Hay on Deformity.




LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN.                     151
peerage incident to mere bodily configuration; that the
title in dispute is merely honorary, and depending upon
the breath of the common people, which in these realms
is so far from the power of conferring nobility, that the
ablest constitutionalists have agreed in nothing more
unanimously than in the maxim, that "the king is the
sole fountain of honor."
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE
EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.*
To the Editor of the " London Magazine: " —
DEAR SIR, —I send you a bantering "Epistle to an Old Gentleman
whose Education is supposed to have been neglected." Of course, it was
suggested by some letters of your admirable Opium-Eater, the discontinuance
of which has caused so much regret to myself in common with most of your
readers. You will do me injustice by supposing, that, in the remotest degree,
it was my intention to ridicule those papers. The fact is, the most serious
things may give rise to an innocent burlesque; and, the more serious they
are, the fitter they become for that purpose. It is not to be supposed that
Charles Cotton did not entertain a very high regard for Virgil, notwithstanding he travestied that poet. Yourself can testify the deep respect I
have always held for the profound learning and penetrating genius of our
friend. Nothing upon earth would give me greater pleasure than to find
that he has not lost sight of his entertaining and instructive purpose.
I am, dear sir, yours and his sincerely,  ELLA.
MY DEAR SIR, - The question which you have done
me the honor to propose to me, through the medium of
our common friend, Mr. Grierson, I shall endeavor to
answer with as much exactness as a limited observation and experience can warrant.
You ask, -  or rather Mr. Grierson, in his own interesting language, asks for you, -  "Whether a person at
the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency than a
* From the " London Magazine," 1825.




152       LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN
tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the
English alphabet at first sight amounts to, by dint of
persevering application and good masters, -a docile
and ingenuous disposition on the part of the pupil
always presupposed, - may hope to arrive, within a
presumable number of years, at that degree of attainments which shall entitle the possessor to the character,
which you are on so many accounts justly desirous of
acquiring, of a learned man."
This is fairly and candidly stated, - only I could wish
that on one point you had been a little more explicit. In
the mean time, I will take it for granted, that by a "knowledge of the alphabetic characters" you confine your
meaning to the single powers only, as you are silent on
the subject of the diphthongs and harder combinations.
Why, truly, sir, when I consider the vast circle of
sciences, - it is not here worth while to trouble you
with the distinction between learning and science, which
a man must be understood to have made the tour of in
these days, before the world will be willing to concede
to him the title which you aspire to, —I am almost disposed to reply to your inquiry by a direct answer in
the negative.
However, where all cannot be compassed, a great
deal that is truly valuable may be accomplished. I am
unwilling to throw out any remarks that should have a
tendency to damp a hopeful genius; but I must not, in
fairness, conceal from you that you have much to do.
The consciousness of difficulty is sometimes a spur to
exertion. Rome - or rather, my dear sir, to borrow
an illustration from a place as yet more familiar to you,
Rumford- Rumford was not built in a day.




WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.  153
Your mind as yet, give me leave to tell you, is in
the state of a sheet of white paper. We must not
blot or blur it over too hastily. Or, to use an opposite simile, it is like a piece of parchment all bescrawled and bescribbled over with characters of no
sense or import, which we must carefully erase and
remove before we can make way for the authentic
characters or impresses which are to be substituted in
their stead by the corrective hand of science.
Your mind, my dear sir, again, resembles that same
parchment, which we will suppose a little hardened by
time and disuse. We may apply the characters; but
are we sure that the ink will sink?
You are in the condition of a traveller that has all
his journey to begin. And, again, you are worse off
than the traveller which I have supposed; for you
have already lost your way.
You have much to learn, which you have never been
taught; and more, I fear, to unlearn, which you have
been taught erroneously. You have hitherto, I dare
say, imagined that the sun moves round the earth.
When you shall have mastered the true solar system,
you will have quite a different theory upon that point,
I assure you. I mention but this instance. Your own
experience, as knowledge advances, will furnish you
with many parallels.
I can scarcely approve of the intention, which Mr.
Grierson informs me you had contemplated, of entering
yourself at a common seminary, and working your way
up from the lower to the higher forms with the children.
I see more to admire in the modesty than in the expediency of such a resolution. I own I cannot reconcile




154       LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN
myself to the spectacle of a gentleman at your time of
life, seated, as must be your case at first, below a tyro
of four or five; for at that early age the rudiments of
education usually commence in this country. I doubt
whether more might not be lost in the point of fitness
than would be gained in the advantages which you propose to yourself by this scheme.
You say you stand in need of emulation; that this
incitement is nowhere to be had but at a public school;
that you should be more sensible of your progress by
comparing it with the daily progress of those around
you. But have you considered the nature of emulation, and how it is sustained at those tender years
which you would have to come in competition with?
I am afraid you are dreaming of academic prizes and
distinctions. Alas! in the university for which you
are preparing, the highest medal would be a silver
penny; and you must graduate in nuts and oranges.
I know that Peter, the great Czar - or Emperor -of
Muscovy, submitted himself to the discipline of a dockyard at Deptford, that he might learn, and convey to
his countrymen, the noble art of ship-building. You
are old enough to remember him, or at least the talk
about him. I call to mind also other great princes,
who, to instruct themselves in the theory and practice
of war, and set an example of subordination to their
subjects, have condescended to enroll themselves as private soldiers; and, passing through the successive ranks
of corporal, quarter-master, and the rest, have served
their way up to the station at which most princes are
willing enough to set out, - of general and commander-in-chief over their own forces. But - besides that




WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.  155
there is oftentimes great sham and pretence in their
show of mock humility- the competition which they
stooped to was with their co-evals, however inferior to
them in birth.  Between ages so very disparate as
those which you contemplate, I fear there can no salutary emulation subsist.
Again: in the other alternative, could you submit to
the ordinary reproofs and discipline of a day-school?
Could you bear to be corrected for your faults? Or
how would it look to see you put to stand, as must be
the case sometimes, in a corner?
I am afraid the idea of a public school in your circumstances must be given up.
But is it impossible, my dear sir, to find some person
of your own age, - if of the other sex, the more agreeable, perhaps, - whose information, like your own, has
rather lagged behind their years, who should be willing
to set out from the same point with yourself? to undergo the same tasks?- thus at once inciting and sweetening each other's labors in a sort of friendly rivalry.
Such a one, I think, it would not be difficult to find in
some of the western parts of this island, - about Dartmoor, for instance.
Or what if, from your own estate, — that estate,
which, unexpectedly acquired so late in life, has inspired into you this generous thirst after knowledge, -
you were to select some elderly peasant, that might best
be spared from the land, to come and begin his education with you, that you might till, as it were, your
minds together, — one whose heavier progress might
invite, without a fear of discouraging, your emulation? We might then see —starting from an equal




156        LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN
post — the difference of the clownish and the gentle
blood.
A private education, then, or such a one as I have
been describing, being determined'on, we must in the
next place look out for a preceptor; for it will be some
time before either of you, left to yourselves, will be able
to assist the other to any great purpose in his studies.
And now, my dear sir, if, in describing such a tutor
as I have imagined for you, I use a style a little above
the familiar one in which I have hitherto chosen to address you, the nature of the subject must be my apology. Dif'icile est de scientiis inscienter loqui; which is
as much as to say, that, "in treating of scientific matters, it is difficult to avoid the use of scientific terms."
But I shall endeavor to be as plain as possible. I am
not going to present you with the ideal of a pedagogue
as it may exist in my fancy, or has possibly been realized in the persons of Buchanan and Busby. Something less than perfection will serve our turn.  The
scheme which I propose in this first or introductory letter
has reference to the first four or five years of your education only; and, in enumerating the qualifications of
him that should undertake the direction of your studies,
I shall rather point out the minimum, or least, that I
shall require of him, than trouble you in the search of
attainments neither common nor necessary to our immediate purpose.
He should be a man of deep and extensive knowledge. So much at least is indispensable. Something
older than yourself, I could wish him, because years
add reverence.
To his age and great learning, he should be blessed




WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.  157
with a temper and a patience willing to accommodate
itself to the imperfections of the slowest and meanest
capacities. Such a one, in former days, Mr. Hartlib
appears to have been; and such, in our days, I take Mr.
Grierson to be: but our friend, you know, unhappily
has other engagements. I do not demand a consummate grammarian; but he must be a thorough master
of vernacular orthography, with an insight into the
accentualities and punctualities of modern Saxon, or
English. He must be competently instructed (or how
shall he instruct you?) in the tetralogy, or four first
rules, upon which not only arithmetic, but geometry,
and the pure mathematics themselves, are grounded.
I do not require that he should have measured the globe
with Cook or Ortelius; but it is desirable that he should
have a general knowledge (I do not mean a very nice
or pedantic one) of the great division of the earth
into four parts, so as to teach you readily to name the
quarters. He must have a genius capable in some degree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce from
thence the not much dissimilar computation of the cardinal points, or hinges, upon which those invisible phenomena, which naturalists agree to term winds, do
perpetually shift and turn. He must instruct you, in
imitation of the old Orphic fragments (the mention of
which has possibly escaped you), in numeric and harmonious responses, to deliver the number of solar revolutions within which each of the twelve periods, into
which the Annus Vulgaris, or common year, is divided,
doth usually complete and terminate itself. The intercalaries, and other subtle problems, he will do well to
omit, till riper years, and course of study, shall have




158        LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN.
rendered you more capable thereof. He must be capable of embracing all history, so as, from the countless
myriads of individual men who have peopled this globe
of earth, -for it is a globe, - by comparison of their
respective births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct, prowess, &c., to pronounce, and teach you to pronounce,
dogmatically and catechetically, who was the richest,
who was the strongest, who was the wisest, who was
the meekest, man that ever lived; to the facilitation
of which solution, you will readily conceive, a smattering of biography would in no inconsiderable degree
conduce.  Leaving the dialects of men (in one of
which I shall take leave to suppose you by this time
at least superficially instituted), you will learn to
ascend with him to the contemplation of that unarticulated language which was before the written tongue;
and, with the aid of the elder Phrygian or 2Esopic key,
to interpret the sounds by which the animal tribes communicate their minds, evolving moral instruction with
delight from the dialogue of cocks, dogs, and foxes.
Or, marrying theology with verse, from whose mixture
a beautiful and healthy offspring may be expected, in
your own native accents (but purified), you will keep
time together to the profound harpings of the more
modern or Wattsian hymnics.
Thus far I have ventured to conduct you to a " hillside, whence you may discern the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first
ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly
prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the
harp of Orpheus was not more charming." *
* Milton's " Tracate on Education," addressed to Mr. Hartlib.




AMBIGUITIES FROM PROPER NAMES.        159
With my best respects to Mr. Grierson, when you
see him,
I remain, dear sir, your obedient servant,
ELLA.
ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM
PROPER NAMES.*
How oddly it happens that the same sound shall suggest to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the
most opposite! I was conversing, a few years since,
with a young friend upon the subject of poetry, and
particularly that species of it which is known by the
name of the epithalamium. I ventured to assert that
the most perfect specimen of it in our language was the
" Epithalamium " of Spenser upon his own marriage.
My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste,
and would not willingly be thought ignorant of any
thing remotely connected with the belles-lettres, expressed
a degree of surprise, mixed with mortification, that he
should never have heard of this poem; Spenser being
an author with whose writings he thought himself peculiarly conversant.
I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy
of the poet's works which I have at home. He seemed
pleased with the offer, though the mention of the folio
seemed again to puzzle him.  But, presently after,
* From "The Reflector," No. 2. All the facts (and fictions too, if there
be any) in this article will be found in one of Lamb's early letters to
Wordsworth. - EDITOR.




160      AMBIGUITIES FROM PROPER NAMES.
assuming a grave look, he compassionately muttered to
himself, "Poor Spencer! "
There was something in the tone with which he spoke
these words that struck me not a little. It was more
like the accent with which a man bemoans some recent
calamity that has happened to a friend, than that tone
of sober grief with which we lament the sorrows of a
person, however excellent and however grievous his
afflictions may have been, who has been dead more than
two centuries. I had the curiosity to inquire into the
reasons of so uncommon an ejaculation. My young
gentleman, with a more solemn tone of pathos than
before, repeated, " Poor Spencer!" and added, "He has
lost his wife!"
My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a
height, that I began to think the brain of my young
friend must be cracked, or some unaccountable revery
had gotten possession of it. But, upon further explanation, it appeared that the word " Spenser" — which to
you or me, reader, in a conversation upon poetry too,
would naturally have called up the idea of an old poet
in a ruff, one Edmund Spenser, that flourished in the
days of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called
"The Fairy Queen," with "The Shepherd's Calendar,"
and many more verses besides-did, in the mind of my
young friend, excite a very different and quite modern
idea; namely, that of the Honorable William Spencer,
one of the living ornaments, if I am not misinformed,
of this present poetical era, A.D. 1811.




ELIA ON  " CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD."    161
ELIA ON HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A
DRUNKARD." *
MANY are the sayings of Elia, painful and frequent
his lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such  his
modesty!) without a name; scattered about in obscure
periodicals and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust
of some of these it is our intention occasionally to
revive a tract or two that shall seem worthy of a better
fate, especially at a time like the present, when the pen
of our industrious contributor, engaged  in  a laborious
* From the " London Magazine," 1822.
Willis, in his " Pencillings by the Way," describing his interview with
Charles and Mary Lamb, says, "Nothing could be more delightful than the
kindness and affection between the brother and the sister; though Lanlb was
continually taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with the most
singular gravity upon every topic that was started.' Poor Mary!' said he:'she hears all of an epigram but the point.' —' What are you saying of me,
Charles?' she asked.'Mr. Willis,' said he, raising his voice,'admires
your " Confessions of a Drunkard" very mluch, and I was saying it was no
merit of yours that you understood the subject.' We had been speaking of
this admirable essay (which is his own) half an hour before."
That essay has been strangely and purposely misunderstood. Elia, albeit
he loved the cheerfal glass, was not a drunkard. The "poor nameless
egotist" of the Confessions is not Charles Lamb. In printing the article in
the " London Magazine " (it was originally contributed to a collection of
tracts published by Basil Montagu), Elia introduced it to the readers of that
periodical in the above explanatory paragraphs. They should be printed
in all editions of Elia as a note to the article they explain and comment
on; for many persons, like the writer in the London "Quarterly Review,"
believe, or profess to believe, that this " fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance " is a true tale. " How far it was from actual
truth," says Talfourd, " the Essays of Elia, the production of a later day, in
which the maturity of his feeling, humor, and reason, is exhibited, may sufficiently show." -EDITOR.
11




162   ELIA ON " CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD."
digest of his recent Continental tour, may haply want
the leisure to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. MWe have been induced,- in the first instance,
to reprint a thing which he put forth in a friend's volume some years since, entitled "The Confessions of
a Drunkard," seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages
with fruitful quotations therefrom; adding, from their
peculiar brains, the gratuitous affirmation, that they
have reason to believe that the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard, forsooth!) partly sat for his own
picture. The truth is, that our friend had been reading
among the essays of a contemporary, who has perversely been confounded with him, a paper in which
Edax (or the Great Eater) humorously complaineth of
an inordinate appetite; and it struck him that a better.paper - of deeper interest and wider usefulness -
might be made out of the imagined experiences of a
Great Drinker. Accordingly he set to work, and, with
that mock fervor and counterfeit earnestness with which
he is too apt to over-realize his descriptions, has given
us- a frightful picture indeed, but no more resembling
the man Elia than the fictitious Edax may be supposed
to identify itself with Mr. L., its author. It is, indeed, a compound extracted out of his long observations
of the effects of drinking upon all the world about him;
and this accumulated mass of misery he hath centred
(as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single
figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may have passed into the picture; (as who, that
is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt
the after-operation of a too-generous cup?) but then




THE LAST PEACH.              163
how heightened! how exaggerated! how little within
the sense of the Review, where a part, in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole!
But it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime,
brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly,
spawned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of
Bacchus, and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless.
Elia shall string them up one day, and show their
colors, -or, rather, how colorless and vapid the whole
fry, - when he putteth forth his long-promised, but unaccountably hitherto delayed, "Confessions of a Waterdrinker."
THE LAST PEACH.*
I AM the miserablest man living.  Give me counsel,
dear Editor. I was bred up in the strictest principles
of honesty, and have passed my life in punctual adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be ingrained
in our family. Yet I live in constant fear of one day
coming to the gallows.
Till the latter end of last autumn, I never experienced these feelings of self-mistrust, which ever since
have imbittered my existence. From the apprehension
of that unfortunate man,t whose story began to make
so great an impression upon the public about that time,
I date my horrors. I never can get it out of my head
* From the " London Magazine"' *5.
t Fauntleroy.




164                   THE LAST PEACH.
that I shall some time or other commit a forgery, or do
some equally vile thing.  To  make matters worse, I
am in a banking-house. I sit surrounded with a cluster
of bank-notes. These were formerly no more to me
than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now as toads
and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins
and pitfalls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleasure in counting out, and scraping up with my little tin
shovel (at which I was the most expert in the bankinghouse), now  scald my hands.  When I go to  sign my
name, I set down that of another person, or write my
own in a counterfeit character. I am beset with temptations without motive. I want no more wealth than I
possess. A more contended being than myself, as to
money matters, exists not.   What should I fear?
When  a child, I was once let loose, by favor of a
nobleman's gardener, into his lordship's magnificent
fruit-garden, with full leave to pull the currants and the
gooseberries; only I was interdicted from touching the
wall-fruit.*   Indeed, at that season  (it was the  end
* This garden belonged to "Blakesmoor," the fine old family mansion
of the Plummers of Hertfordshire, in whose family Lamb's maternal grandmother - the "grandame" of his poem of that name, and the "greatgrandmother Field" of Elia's "Dream Children" - was housekeeper for
many years.
About this great house, where he passed so many happy holidays when a
boy, and of which he writes so beautifully in two of the Essays of Elia, Lamb
thus speaks in one of his letters to Barton:"You have well described your old, fashionable, grand, paternal hall.
Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place?
I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the'London'). Nothing fills a child's
mind like a large old mansion: better if un - or partially — occupied, peopled with thle spirits of deceased members for the county, and justices of the
quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my
feelings at seven years old! Those marble busts of the emperors —they
seemed as if they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living




THE LAST PEACH.                    165
of autumn), there was little left. Only on the south
wall (can I forget the hot feel of the brick-work?)
lingered the one last peach. Now, peaches are a fruit
which I always had, and still have, an almost utter
aversion to. There is something to my palate singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavor of them.  I know
not by what demon of contradiction inspired; but I was
haunted with an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear
myself as often as I would from the spot, I found myself still recurring to it; till, maddening with desire
(desire I cannot call it), with wilfulness rather, - without appetite, - against appetite, I may call it, - in an
evil hour I reached out my hand, and plucked it. Some
few raindrops just then fell; the sky (from a bright
day) became overcast; and I was a type of our first
parents., after the eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless.
The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savor had
tempted me, dropped from my hand, never to be tasted.
All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me
but that the Hebrew word, in the second chapter of
Genesis, translated " apple," should be rendered "peach."
Only this way can I reconcile that mysterious story.
Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash and
valuables, longing to pluck, without an idea of enjoyment further.   I cannot reason myself out of these
fears: I dare not laugh at them. I was tenderly and
ages of Rome, in that old marble hall, and I to partake of their permanency.
Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they
are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and its
princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper, that, chirping about the ground,
escapes his scythe only by my littleness. Even now he is whetting one of his
smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps.'Well! "- EDITOR.




166                    THE LAST PEACH.
lovingly brought up.   What then?   Who that in life's
entrance had seen the babe F, from  the lap stretching out his little fond mouth to catch the maternal kiss,
could have predicted, or as much as imagined, that life's
very different exit? The sight of my own fingers torments me; they seem so admirably constructed forpilfering.   Then  that jugular vein, which  I have in
common; in  an  emphatic  sense may I say with
David, I am "fearfully made." All my mirth is poisoned by these unhappy suggestions.  If, to dissipate reflection, I hum a tune, it changes to the "Lamentations
of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. I awake
with a shocking feeling of my hand in some pocket.
Advise me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady.
Tell me, do you feel any thing allied to it in yourself?
Do you never feel an  itching, as it were,- a  dactylomania,- or am I alone? You have my honest confession. My next may appear from Bow Street.
SUSPENSURUS. *
* The day after the execution of Fauntleroy, and some months before
the publication of this little sketch, Lamb thus solemnly, yet humorously
withal, writes to the Quaker poet: "And now, my dear sir, trifling apart,
the gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The
fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast
reflecting eyes around on such of my friends, as, by a parity of situation, are
exposed to a similarity of temptation. lMy very style seems to myself to
become more impressive than usual with the charge of them. Who that
standeth knoweth but he may yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most willing to believe, have never deviated into others' property. You think it
impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence: but so
thought Fauntleroy once; so have thought many besides him, who at last
have expiated as he hath done. You are as yet upright; but you are
a banker, or, at least, the next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the subject; but cash must pass through your hands, sometimes to a great amount.
If in an unguarded hour —but I will hope better. Consider the scandal it
will bring upon those of your persuasion! Thousands would go to see




REFLECTIONS IN  THE PILLORY.                    167
REFLECTIONS IN TIlE PILLORY. *
About the year 18-, one R-d, a respectable London merchant (since
dead), stood in the pillory for some alleged fraud upon the revenue.
Among his papers were found the following " Reflections," which we have
obtained by favor of our friend Elia, who knew him well, and had heard
him describe the train of his feelings, upon that trying occasion, almost in
the words of the manuscript. Elia speaks of him as a man (with the exception of the peccadillo aforesaid) of singular integrity in all his private dealings, possessing great suavity of manner, with a certain turn for humor. As
our object is to present human nature under every possible circumstance, we
do not think that we shall sully our pages by inserting it. - EDITOR OF
"LONDON MAGAZINE."
SCENE, - Opposite the Royal Exchange.
TIME, - Twelve to one, noon.
KETCH, my good fellow, you have a neat hand.
Prithee, adjust this new collar to my neck gingerly.
I am not used to these wooden cravats. There, softly,
softly. That seems the exact point between ornament
and strangulation. A thought looser on this side.
Now it will do. And have a care in turning me,
a Quaker hanged that would be indifferent to the fate of a Presbyterian
or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on the sale of
your poems alone, not to mention higher considerations! I tremble, I am
sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims of the law, at
one time of their life, made as sure of never being hanged, as I, in my own
presumption, am ready, too ready, to do myself.  What are we better
than they? Do we come into the world with different necks? Is there
any distinctive mark under our left ears? Are we unstrangulable, I ask
you? Think on these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my
own fingers; not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something),
but for the exquisite.,adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, fingering, &c." - EDITOR.
* From the " London Magazine," 1825.




168        REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.
that I present my aspect due vertically. I now face the
orient. In a quarter of an hour I shift southward, -
do you mind? - and so on till I face the east again,
travelling with the sun. No half-points, I beseech
you, -N. N. by W., or any such elaborate niceties.
They become the shipman's card, but not this mystery.
Now leave me a little to my own reflections.
Bless us, what a company is assembled in honor of
me! How grand I stand here! I never felt so sensibly before the effect of solitude in a crowd. I muse in
solemn silence upon that vast miscellaneous rabble in
the pit there. From my private box, I contemplate,
with mingled pity and wonder, the gaping curiosity of
those underlings. There are my Whitechapel supporters. Rosemary Lane has emptied herself of the very
flower of her citizens to grace my show. Duke's place
sits desolate. What is there in my face, that strangers
should come so far from the east to gaze upon it?
[Here an egg, narrowly misses him.]  That offering was
well meant, but not so cleanly executed. By the tricklings, it should not be either myrrh or frankincense.
Spare your presents, my friends: I am noways mercenary. I desire no missive tokens of your approbation. I am past those valentines. Bestow these coffins
of untimely chickens upon mouths that water for them.
Comfort your addle spouses with them at home, and stop
the mouths of your brawling brats with such Olla Podridas: they have need of them.  [A  brick is let fly.]
Disease not, I pray you, nor dismantle your rent and
ragged tenements, to furnish me with architectural decorations, which I can excuse.  This fragment might
have stopped a flaw against snow comes. [A coal flies.]




REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.       169
Cinders are dear, gentlemen. This nubbling might
have helped the pot boil, when your dirty cuttings from
the shambles at three-ha'pence a pound shall stand at a
cold simmer. Now, south about, Ketch. I would
enjoy Australian popularity.
What, my friends from over the water! Old benchers - flies of a day - ephemeral Romans - welcome!
Doth the sight of me draw souls from limbo? can it
dispeople purgatory? - Ha!
What am I, or what was my father's house, that I
should thus be set up a spectacle to gentlemen and
others? Why are all faces, like Persians at the sunrise,
bent singly on mine alone? It was wont to be esteemed
an ordinary visnomy, a quotidian merely. Doubtless
these assembled myriads discern some traits of nobleness,
gentility, breeding, which hitherto have escaped the common observation, — some intimations, as it were, of
wisdom, valor, piety, and so forth. My sight dazzles;
and, if I am not deceived by the too-familiar pressure
of this strange neckeloth that envelops it, my countenance gives out lambent glories. For some painter now
to take me in the lucky point of expression! - the posture so convenient! -the head never shifting, but standing quiescent in a sort of natural frame!  But these
artisans require a westerly aspect. Ketch, turn me.
Something of St. James's air in these my new friends.
How my prospects shift and brighten!  Now, if Sir
Thomas Lawrence be anywhere in that group, his
fortune is made for ever. I think I see some one taking
out a crayon. I will compose my whole face to a smile,
which yet shall not so predominate but that gravity
and gayety shall contend, as it were, - you understand




170        REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.
me? I will work up my thoughts to some mild rapture,
- a gentle enthusiasm, - which the artist may transfer,
in a manner, warm to the canvas. I will inwardly apostrophize my tabernacle.
Delectable mansion, hail! House not made of every
wood! Lodging that pays no rent; airy and commodious; which, owing no window-tax, art yet all case
ment, out of which men have such pleasure in peering
and overlooking, that they will sometimes stand an hour
together to enjoy thy prospects!  Cell, recluse from
the vulgar!  Quiet retirement from the great Babel,
yet affording sufficient glimpses into it! Pulpit, that
instructs without note or sermon-book; into which
the preacher is inducted without tenth or first-fruit!
Throne, unshared and single, that disdainest a Brentford competitor! Honor without co-rival! Or hearest
thou, rather, magnificent theatre, in which the spectator
comes to see and to be seen? From thy giddy heights I
look down upon the common herd, who stand with eyes
upturned, as if a winged messenger hovered over them;
and mouths open, as if they expected manna. I feel, I
feel, the true episcopal yearnings. Behold in me, my
flock, your true overseer! VThat though I cannot lay
hands, because my own are laid; yet I can mutter benedictions. True otium cum dignitate! Proud Pisgah
eminence! pinnacle sublime! 0 Pillory!'tis thee I
sing! Thou younger brother to the gallows, without
his rough and Esau palms, that with ineffable contempt surveyest beneath thee the grovelling stocks,
which claims presumptuously to be of thy great race!
Let that low wood know that thou art far higher born.
Let that domicile for groundling rogues and base earth



REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.               171
kissing varlets envy thy preferment, not seldom fated
to be the wanton baiting-house, the temporary retreat,
of poet and of patriot. Shades of Bastwick and of
Prynne hover over thee,-Defoe is there, and more
greatly daring Shebbeare, - fromn their (little more elevated) stations they look down with recognitions.
Ketch, turn me.
I now veer to the north. Open your widest gates,
thou proud Exchange of London, that I may look in
as proudly!  Gresham's wonder, hail!  I stand upon
a level with all your kings. They and I, from equal
heights, with equal superciliousness, o'erlook the plodding money-hunting tribe below, who, busied in their
sordid speculations, scarce elevate their eyes to notice
your ancient, or my recent, grandeur.   The  second
Charles smiles on  me  from  three  pedestals! *  He
closed the Exchequer: I cheated the Excise. Equal
our darings, equal be our lot.
Are those the quarters?'tis their fatal chime. That
the ever-winged hours would but stand still! but I
must descend, - descend from this dream of greatness.
Stay, stay, a little while, importunate hour-hand! A
moment or two, and I shall walk on foot with the undistinguished many. The clock speaks one. I return
to common life.  Ketch, let me out.
* A statue of Charles II., by the elder Cibber, adorns the front of the
Exchange. He stands also on high, in the train of his crowned ancestors,
in his proper order, within that building. But the merchants of London, in
a superfetation of loyalty, have, within a few years, caused to be erected
another effigy of him on the ground in the centre of the interior. We do
not hear that a fourth is in contemplation.




172                A SATURDAY'S DINNER.
A SATURDAY'S DINNER.*
" When a man keeps a constant table, he may be allowed sometimes to
serve up a cold dish of meat, or toss up the fragments of a feast into a rago&t.
I have sometimes, in a scarcity of provisions, been obliged to take the same
kind of liberty, and to entertain my reader with the leavings of a former
treat. I must this day have recourse to the same method, and beg my
guests to sit down to a kind of Saturday's dinner." - Tatler, No. 258.
THE  different way  in  which  the  same  story may be
told by different persons was never more strikingly
~illustrated than by the manner in which the celebrated
Jeremy Collier has described the effects of Timotheus'
music upon Alexander, in the second part of his Essays.
We all know how Dryden has treated the subject. Let
us now hear his great contemporary and antagonist:
"Timotheus, a Grecian," says Collier, "was so great a
master, that he could make a man storm and swagger
like a tempest; and then, by altering the notes and the
time,. he could take him down again, and sweeten his
humor in a trice. One time, when Alexander was at
dinner, the man played him a Phrygian air. The prince
immediately rises, snatches up his lance, and puts himself into a posture of fighting; and the retreat was no
* Under this heading, I have placed sundry scraps and fragments of
Lamb's inditing, which are too short to be printed in distinct chapters, and
too good (I think) to be left out of this collection. Mr. Moxon says that
Elia had a strong aversion to roast beef and to fowl, and to any wines but
port or sherry. " Tripe and cow-heel were to him delicacies, - rare dainties! "  And I suspect, that, to a true lover of Lamb, our " Saturday's Dinner" will be better and more satisfactory than the costly and splendid
banquets of some of the popular and fashionable literary caterers of the
day. - EDITOR.




A SATURDAY'S DINNER.           173
sooner sounded by the change of the harmony, but his
arms were grounded, and his fire extinct; and he sat
down as orderly as if he had come from one of Aristotle's lectures. I warrant you, Demosthenes would have
been flourishing about such business a long hour, and
may be not have done it neither. But Timotheus had
a nearer cut to the soul: he could neck a passion at a
stroke, and lay it asleep. Pythagoras once met with
a parcel of drunken fellows, who were likely to be troublesome enough. He presently orders music to play
grave, and chops into a Dorian. Upon this they all
threw away their garlands, and were as sober and as
shame-faced as one would wish."  It is evident that
Dryden in his inspired ode, and Collier in all this pudder of prose, meant the same thing. But what a work
does the latter make with his " necking a passion at his
stroke," "making a man storm and swagger like a
tempest," and then " taking him down, and sweeting his
humor in a trice" I What in Dryden is " softly sweet
in Lydian measures," Collier calls "chopping into a
Dorian." This Collier was the same, who, in his Biographical Dictionary, says of Shakspeare, that "though
his genius generally was jocular, and inclining to festivity, yet he could when he pleased be as serious as anybody."
Oh the comfort of sitting down heartily to an old folio,
and thinking surely that the next hour or two will be
your own - and the misery of being defeated by the
useless call of somebody, who is come to tell you that
he has just come from hearing Mr. Irving! What is
that to you? Let him go home, and digest what the
good man has said. You are at your chapel, in your
oratory.




174             A SATURDAY'S DINNER.
My friend Hume (not M.P.) has a curious manuscript in his possession, the original draught of the celebrated "Beggar's Petition," (who cannot say by heart
the "Beggar's Petition"?) as it was written by some
school-usher (as I remember), with corrections interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the doctor's improvement, I recollect one most
judicious alteration —
"A pampered menial drove me from the door."
It stood originally, -
"A livery servant drove me," &c.
Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language
properly substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against Wordsworth.
There is something to me repugnant, at any time, in
a written hand. The text never seems determinate.
Print settles it.  I had thought of the "Lycidas" as of
a full-grown beauty, - as springing up with all its parts
absolute,- till, in an evil hour, I was shown the original copy of it, together with the other minor poems of
its author, in the library of Trinity, kept like something
to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the
Cam, or sent them, after the latter cantos of Spenser,
into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the
fine things in their ore! -interlined, corrected, as if their
words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure;
as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good;
as if inspiration were made up of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent! I will never go into
the workshop of any great artist again, nor desire a




A SATURDAY'S DINNER.          175
sight of his picture, till it is fairly off the easel; no, not
if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting another
Galatea.
Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's
day, could distinguish between a day of religious rest
and a day of recreation; and while they exacted a
vigorous abstinence from all amusements (even to
walking out of nursery-maids with their charges in the
fields) upon the sabbath, in lieu of the superstitious
observance of the saints' days, which they abrogated,
they humanely gave to the apprentices and poorer sort
of people every alternate Thursday for a day of entire
sport and recreation. A strain of piety and policy to
be commended above the profane mockery of the Stuarts and their " Book of Sports."
I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecting
affectation - at the indignation of a crowd that was
justling in with me at the pit-door of Covent-Garden
Theatre to have a sight of Master Betty - then at once
in his dawn and his meridian- in Hamlet. I had been
invited quite unexpectedly to join a party whom I met
near the door of the play-house; and I happened to
have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steeven's "Shakspeare," which, the time not admitting of my
carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors
opening, - the rush, as they term it, — I deliberately
held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which
the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly
read by the lamplight. The clamor became universal.




176           A SATURDAY'S DINNER.
" The affectation of the fellow! " cried one. "Look at
that gentleman reading, papa!" squeaked a young lady,
who, in her admiration of the novelty, almost forgot her
fears. I read on. "He ought to have his book knocked
out of his hand!" exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms
were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute
his kind intention. Still I read on, and, till the time
came to pay my money, kept as unmoved as Saint
Anthony at his holy offices, with the satyrs, apes, and
hobgoblins moping, and making mouths at him, in the
picture; while the good man sits as undisturbed at the
sight as as if he were sole tenant of the desert. The
individual rabble (I recognized more than one of their
ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of mine but a few
nights since; and I was determined the culprits should
not a second time put me out of countenance.
Samuel Johnson, whom, to distinguish from the doctor, we may call the Whig, was a very remarkable writer.
He may be compared to his contemporary, Dr. Fox,
whom he resembled in many points. He is another
instance of King William's discrimination, which was so
superior to that of any of his ministers. Johnson was
one of the most formidable of the advocates for the Exclusion Bill; and he suffered by whipping and imprisonment under James accordingly. Like Asgill, he argues
with great apparent candor and clearness till he gets his
opponent within reach; and then comes a blow as from
a sledge-hammer. I do not know where I could put my
hand on a book containing so much sense and constitutional doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's Works;
and what party in this country would read so severe a lec



A SATURDAY'S DINNER.             177
ture in it as our modern Whigs?  A close reasoner and
a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent
use of connections. Read any page of Johnson, you
cannot alter one conjunction without spoiling the sense:
it is a linked chain throughout. In your modern books,
for the most part, the sentences in a page have the same
connection with each other that marbles have in a bag:
they touch without adhering.*
We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a
great author by denying him every thing else. Thus
Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit,
and faculty of illustration, than other men, are supposed
to have been incapable of nature or feeling: they are
usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnell; whereas, in the very thickest of their conceits, -
in the bewildering mazes of tropes and figures, -a
warmth of soul and generous feeling shines through,
the " sum " of which, " forty thousand " of those natural
poets, as they are called, " with all their quantity," could
not make up.
D. t commenced life, after a course of hard study, in
the "House of pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish, fanatic schoolmaster at -, at a salary of eight
pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this
poor stipend he never received above half in all the
laborious years he served this man. He tells a plea* This criticism was written by Lamb on the fly-leaf of his copy of
"The Works of Mr. Samuel Johnson." - EDITOR.
t George Dyer.
12




178            A SATURDAY'S DINNER.
sant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his
ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against
the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr.
would take no immediate notice; but after supper, when the school was called together to even-song,
he would never fail to introduce some instructive homily
against riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire of them,- ending with,
"Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the
heinous sin of avarice.  Having food and raiment, let
us therewithal be content.  Give me Agur's wish,"
and the like, — which, to the little auditory, sounded
like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity,
but, to poor D., was a receipt in full for that quarter's
demands at least.
And D. has been under-working for himself ever
since, - drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, - wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections
of the classics, and in those unostentatious but solid
services to learning which commonly fall to the lot of
laborious scholars who have not the art to sell themselves
to the best advantage. He has published poems which
do not sell, because their character is inobtrusive, like
his own; and because he has been too much absorbed
in ancient literature to know what the popular mark in
poetry is, even if he could have hit it. And therefore
his verses are properly what he terms them, — crotchets;
voluntaries; odes to Liberty and Spring; effusions;
little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables
and window-seats, at parting from friends' houses, and
from all the inns of hospitality, where he has been
courteously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrim



A SATURDAY'S DINNER.           179
age. If his Muse of kindness halt a little behind the
strong lines, in fashion in this excitement-craving age,
his prose is the best of the sort in the world, and
exhibits a faithful transcript of his own healthy, natural
mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of conversation.
"Pray God, your honor relieve me," said a poor
beads-woman to my friend L-  one day: "I have
seen better days."-" So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking up at the welkin, which was just
then threatening a storm; and the jest (he will have it)
was as good to the beggar as a tester.
It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to the
stocks or the parish beadle.
But L  - has a way of viewing things in a paradoxical light on some occasions.
I have in my possession a curious volume of Latin
verses, which I believe to be unique. It is entitled,
Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatorum libri quinque.
It purports to be printed at Perth, and bears date
1679. By the appellation which the author gives himself in the preface, hypodidasculus, I suppose him to have
been an usher at some school. It is no uncommon
thing now-a-days for persons concerned in academies
to affect a literary reputation in the way of their trade.
The "' master of a seminary for a limited number of
pupils at Islington " lately put forth an edition of that
scarce tract, " The Elegy in a Country Churchyard " (to
use his own words), with notes and head-lines! But
to our author. These epigrams of Alexander Fulton,
Scotchman, have little remarkable in them besides ex



180              A SATURDAY'S DINNER.
treme dulness and insipidity; but there is one, which,
by its being marshalled in the front of the volume,
seems to have been the darling of its parent, and for its
exquisite flatness, and the surprising strokes of an anachronism with which it is pointed, deserves to be rescued
from oblivion. It is addressed, like many of the others,
to a fair one: -
AD MARIULAM SUAM AUTOR.
"Moserunt bella olim Helenae decor atque venustas
Europen inter frugifer amque Asiam.
Tam bona, quam tu, tam prudens, sin illa fuisset,
Ad lites issent Africa et America! "
*Which, in humble imitation of mine author's peculiar
poverty of style, I have ventured thus to render into
English: -
THE AUTHOR TO HIS MOGGY.
"For Love's illustrious cause, and Helen's charms,
All Europe and all Asia rushed to arms.
Had she with these thy polished sense combined,
All Afric and America had joined! "
The happy idea of an American war undertaken in
the cause of beauty ought certainly to recommend the
author's memory to the countrymen of Madison and
Jefferson; and the bold anticipation of the discovery of
that continent in the time of the Trojan War is a flight
beyond the Sibyl's books.




A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.          181
A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.*
BY A FRIEND.
THIS gentleman, who for some months past had been
in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute
to nature. He just lived long enough (it was what
he wished) to see his papers collected into a volume.  The pages of the "London Magazine" will
henceforth know him no more.
Exactly at twelve last night, his queer spirit departed; and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with
the old year. The mournful vibrations were caught in
the dining-room of his friends T. and H.; t and the
company, assembled there to welcome in another 1st
of January, checked their carousals in mid-mirth, and
were silent.  Janus wept.  The gentle P      r,: in a
whisper, signified his intention of devoting an elegy;
and Allan C.,~ nobly forgetful of his countrymen's
wrongs, vowed a memoir to his manes full and friendly
as a " Tale of Lyddaleross."
To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humor
of the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty
well exhausted; and a two years' and a half existence
has been a tolerable duration for a phantom.
* From the " London Magazine," 1823. A part of this article was republished by its author as a preface to "The Last Essays of Elia." —
EDITOR.
t Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the " London Magazine."
t Proctor, better known as Barry Cornwall.
~ Cunningham.




182       A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.
I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I
have heard objected to my late friend's writings was
well founded. Crude they are, I grant you,- a sort
of unlicked, incondite things, — villanously pranked
in an affected array of antique modes and phrases.
They had not been his if they had been other than
such; and better it is that a writer should be natural
in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did
not know that what he tells us as of himself was
often true only (historically) of another; as in his
Third Essay (to save many instances), where, under the first person (his favorite figure), he shadows
forth the forlorn estate of a country boy placed at a
London school, far from his friends and connections, —
in direct opposition to his own early history. If it be
egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the
griefs and affections of another, - making himself
many, or reducing many unto himself,- then is the
skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero or
heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of
all; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that
narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion
uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to
his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story
modestly?
My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like him hated him; and
some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little




A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.       183
concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He
observed neither time nor place, and would even out
with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist
he would pass for a free-thinker; while the other faction
set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that
he belied his sentiments. Few understood him; and I
am not certain that at all times he quite understood
himself. IIe too much affected that dangerous figure, —
irony. HIe sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain,
unequivocal hatred.  He would interrupt the gravest
discussion with some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not
quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your
long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit
of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of
speech, forbade him to be an orator; and he seemed
determined that no one else should play that part when
he was present. He was petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in
what is called good company, but, where he has been a
stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow;
till, some unlucky occasion provoking it, he would stutter
out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps,
if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for
the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but, nine
times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send
away a whole company his enemies.  His conceptions
rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has been
accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but
struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He
chose his companions for some individuality of character
which they manifested. Hence not many persons of




184       A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.
science, and few professed literati, were of his councils.
They were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain
fortune; and, as to such people commonly nothing is
more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though
moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a
great miser. To my knowledge, this was a mistake.
His intimados, to confess a truth, were, in the world's
eye, a ragged regiment.  He found them floating on the
surface of society; and the color, or something else, in
the weed, pleased him. The burrs stuck to him; but
they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never
greatly cared for the society of what are called good
people.  If any of these were scandalized (and offences were sure to arise), he could not help it. When
he has been remonstrated with for not making more
concessions to the feelings of good people, he would
retort by asking, What one point did these good people
ever concede to him? He was temperate in his meals
and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of
abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed
he might be thought a little excessive..He took it, he
would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the
friendly vapor ascended, how his prattle would curl
up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied
him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a
statist!
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice
that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out.
He felt the approaches of age; and, while he pretended
to cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to
bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this sub



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.      185
ject, he expressed himself with a pettishness which I
thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his
suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some
children belonging to a school of industry had met us,
and bowed and courtesied, as he thought, in an especial
manner to him. " They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He had a horror, which he
carried to a foible, of looking like any thing important
and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer
to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from
being treated like a grave or respectable character, and
kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should
so entitle him. He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. He did not
conform to the march of time, but was dragged along
in the procession. His manners lagged behind his
years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga
virilis never sat gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented
the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses;
but, such as they were, they are a key to explicate some
of his writings.
He left little property behind him. Of course, the
little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon
his cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were
found in his escritoire, which have been handed over to
the editor of this magazine, in which it is to be hoped
they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed signature.
He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the
export-department of the East-India House will forgive




186      A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.
me if I acknowledge the readiness with which they
assisted me in the retrieval of his few manuscripts.
They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk
at which he had been planted for forty years; showed
me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably
neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed
tracts, might be called his "Works."  They seemed
affectionate to his memory, and universally commended
his expertness in book-keeping.  It seems he was
the inventor of some ledger which should combine the
precision and certainty of the Italian double entry (I
think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some
newer German system; but I am not able to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard
him express a warm regard for his associates in office,
and how fortunate he considered himself in having his
lot thrown in amongst them. There is more sense.
more discourse, more shrewdness, and even talent,
among these clerks (he would say), than in twice the
number of authors by profession that I have conversed
with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the "old
days of the India House," when he consorted with
Woodroffe and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and worthy representative, bating the point of
sanctity, of old facetious Bishop Corbet); and Hoole,
who translated Tasso; and Bartlemy Brown, whose
father (God assoil him therefore!) modernized Walton;
and sly, warm-hearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they
called him in those days) and Campe and Fombelle, and
a world of choice spirits, more than I can remember to
name, who associated in those days with Jack Burrell
(the bon vivant of the South-Sea House); and little




A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.       187
Eyton (said to be a fac-simile of Pope, — he was a
miniature of a gentleman), that was cashier under him;
and Dan Voight of the custom-house, that left the
famous library.
Well, Elia is gone, - for aught I know, to be reunited with them, - and these poor traces of his pen
are all we have to show for it. How little survives of
the wordiest authors! Of all they said or did in their
lifetime, a few glittering words only! His Essays found
some favorers, as they appeared separately. They shuffled their way in the crowd well enough singly: how
they will read, now they are brought together, is a
question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to
draw out into one piece his " weaved-up follies."
PHIL-ELIA.








THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
A FARCE.




CHARACTERS.
FLINT, a Pawnbroker.
DAVENPORT, in love with Marian.
PENI)ULOUS, a Reprieved Gentleman.
CUTLET, a Sentimental Butcher.
GOLDING, a Magistrate.
WILLIAMI, Apprentice to Flint.
BEN, Cutlet's Boy.
Miss FLYN.
BETTY, her Maid.
MARIAN, Daughter to Flint.
LucY, her Maid.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.*
A FARCE.
ACT I.
SCENE I. - An Apartment at FLINT'S House.
FLINT. WILLIAM.
Flint.  CARRY those umbrellas, cottons, and wearingapparel, up stairs. You may send that chest of tools
to Robins's.
William. That which you lent six pounds upon to
the journeyman carpenter that had the sick wife?
Flint.  The same.
William. The man says, if you can give him till
Thursday -
Flint. Not a minute longer. His time was out yesterday. These improvident fools!
* "For literary news, in my poor way," writes Lamb to Southey, in
August, 1825, "I have a one-act farce, going to be acted at Haymarket;
but when? is the question.'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to
follow'Mr. H.'"
Talfourd says that the farce thus referred to was founded upon Lamb's
essay "On the Inconvenience of being Hanged;" and therefore it must
be " The Pawnbroker's Daughter."  But " The Pawnbroker's Daughter"
is in two acts; and according to the letter to Mrs. Shelley, published in this
volume, it was not finished in July, 1827; and, consequently, could not have
been ready for the stage in the summer of 1825. The piece, however, was
never performed, but was published, 1880, in " Blackwood's Magazine." -
EDITOR.




192        THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
William. The finical gentleman has been here about
that seal that was his grandfather's.
_Flint. He cannot have it. Truly, our trade would
be brought to a fine pass if we were bound to humor
the fancies of our customers. This man would be taking
a liking to a snuff-box that he had inherited, and that
gentlewoman might conceit a favorite chemise that had
descended to her.
William. The lady in the carriage has been here crying about those jewels. She says, if you cannot let her
have them at the advance she offers, her husband will
coame to know that she has pledged them.
Flint. I have use for those jewels.  Send Marian to
me.  [hxit WILLIAM.] I know no other trade that is expected to depart from its fair advantages but ours.
I do not see the baker, the butcher, the shoemaker,
or, to go higher, the lawyer, the physician, the divine,
give up any of their legitimate gains, even when the
pretences of their art had failed; yet we are to be
branded with an odious name, stigmatized, discountenanced even by the administrators of those laws
which acknowledge us, - scowled at by lower sort of
people, whose needs we serve!
fEnter MARIAN.
Come hither, Marian. Come, kiss your father. The
report runs that he is full of spotted crime. What is
your belief, child?
Marian. That never good report went with our calling, father. I have heard you say, the poor look only
to the advantages which we derive from them, and
overlook the accommodations which they receive from
us. But the poor are the poor, father, and have little




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.         193
leisure to make distinctions. I wish we could give up
this business.
_Flint. You have not seen that idle fellow, Davenport?
Marian. No, indeed, father, since your injunction.
Flint. I take but my lawful profit. The law is not
over-favorable to us.
Marian. Marian is no judge of these things.
Flint. They call me oppressive, grinding - I know
not what'Marian. Alas!
Flint. Usurer, extortioner. Am I these things?
Marian. You are Marian's kind and careful father.
That is enough for a child to know.
Flint. Here, girl, is a little box of jewels, which the
necessities of a foolish woman of quality have transferred into our true and lawful possession. Go, place
them with the trinkets that were your mother's. They
are all yours, Marian, if you do not cross me in your
marriage. No gentry shall match into this house to
flout their wife hereafter with her parentage. I will
hold this business with convulsive grasp to my dying
day. I will plague these poor, whom you speak so
tenderly of.
Marian. You frighten me, father. Do not frighten
Marian.
Flint. I have heard them say, " There goes Flint IFlint, the cruel pawnbroker!"
Marian. Stay at home with Marian. You shall
hear no ugly words to vex you.
Flint. You shall ride in a gilded chariot upon the
necks of these poor, Marian. Their tears shall drop
13




194       THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
pearls for my girl. Their sighs shall be good wind for
us. They shall blow good for my girl. Put up the
jewels, Marian.                             [Exit.
Enter LucY.
Lucy. Miss, miss, your father has taken his hat, and
stepped out; and Mr. Davenport is on the stairs; and
I come to tell youMarian. Alas I who let him in?
Enter DAVENPORT.
Day. My dearest girlMarian. My father will kill me if he finds you have
been here!
Dav. There is no time for explanations.  I have
positive information that your father means, in less
than a week, to dispose of you to that ugly Saunders.
The wretch has bragged of it to his acquaintance, and
already calls you his.
Ma rian. 0 Heavens I
Dav. Your resolution must be summary, as the time
which calls for it. Mine or his you must be, without
delay. There is no safety for you under this roof.
Marian. My fatherDav. Is no father, if he would sacrifice you.
Marian. But he is unhappy. Do not speak hard
words of my father.
Dav. Marian must exert her good sense.
Lucy (as if watching at the window).  Oh, miss,
your father has suddenly returned  I see him with
Mr. Saunders coming down the street I Mr. Saunders,
ma'am!
Marian. Begone, begone, if you love me, Davenport!




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.            195
Dav. You must go with me, then, else here I am
fixed.
Lucy. Ay, miss, you must go, as Mr. Davenport
says. Here is your cloak, miss, and your hat, and
your gloves. Your father, ma'am!Marian. Oh! where? where?   Whither do  you
hurry me, Davenport?
Dav. Quickly, quickly, Marian! At the back-door.
[Exit MARIAN, with DAVENPORT, reluctantly; in herflight
still holding the jewels.
Lucy. Away!-away! What a lucky thought of
mine to say her father was coming! he would never
have got her off else. Lord, Lord, I do love to help
lovers I
[Exit, following them.
SCENE II.- A Butcher's Shop.
CUTLET. BEN.
Cutlet. Reach me down that book off the shelf where
the shoulder of veal hangs.
Ben. Is this it?
Cutlet. No, — this is "Flowers of Sentiment:" the
other, —ay, this is a good book. "An Argument
against the Use of Animal Food. By J. R."  T/hat
means Joseph Ritson.  I will open it anywhere, and
read, just as it happens. One cannot dip amiss in such
books as these. The motto, I see, is from Pope; I
dare say, very much to the purpose. (Reads:) —
"The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand "Bless us! is that saddle of mutton gone home to Mrs.
Simpson's?  It should have gone an hour ago.




196          THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Ben. I was just going with it.
Cutlet. Well, go. Where was I? Oh!"And licks the hand just raised to shed its blood."
What an affecting picture!  (Turns over the leaves, and
reads:)" It is probable that the long lives which are recorded of the people before
the Flood were owing to their being confined to vegetable diet."
Ben. The young gentleman in Pullen's Row, Islington, that has got the consumption, has sent to know if
you can let him have a sweetbread.
Cutlet. Take two, — take all that are in the shop.
What a disagreeable interruption!  (Reads again:)~" Those fierce and angry passions, which impel man to wage destructive
war with man, may be traced to the ferment in the blood, produced by
animal diet."
Ben. The two pounds of rump-steaks must go home
to Mr. Molyneux's.  He is in training to fight Cribb.
Cutlet. Well, take them: go along, and do not
trouble me with your disgusting details.
Cutlet (throwing down the book). Why was I bred
to this detestable business?  Was it not plain that this
trembling sensibility, which has marked my character
from earliest infancy, must disqualify me for a profession which - what do ye want? - what do ye buy?
Oh! it is only somebody going past.  I thought it had
been a customer- Why was not I bred a glover,
like my cousin Langston? To see him poke his two
little sticks into a delicate pair of real Woodstock, —
" A very little stretching, ma'am, and they will fit exactly." -Or a haberdasher, like my next-door neighbor,-  " Not a better bit of lace in all town, my lady:
Mrs. Breakstock took the last of it last Friday; all but




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.         197
this bit, which I can afford to let your ladyship have at
a bargain - reach down that drawer on your left hand,
Miss Fisher."
Enter, in haste, DAVENPORT, MARIAN, and LUCY.
Lucy. This is the house I saw a bill up at, ma'am;
and a droll creature the landlord is.
Dav. WTe have no time for nicety;
Cutlet. What do ye want? what do ye buy? Oh! it
is only Mrs. Lucy.
LUCY whispers CUTLET.
Cutlet. I have a set of apartments at the end of my
garden. They are quite detatched from the shop. A
single lady at present occupies the ground-floor.
Marian. Ay, ay, anywhere.
Dav. In, inCutlet. Pretty lamb!- she seems agitated.
DAVENPORT and MARIAN go90 in with CUTLET.
Lucy. I am mistaken if my young lady does not
find an agreeable companion in these apartments. Almost a namesake.  Only the difference of Flyn and
Flint. I have some errands to do, or I would stop and
have some fun with this droll butcher.
CUTLET retua'ns.
Cutlet. WThy, how odd this is! Your young lady
knows my young lady. They are as thick as flies.
Lucy. You may thank me for your new lodger, Mr.
Cutlet. But, bless me, you do not look well!
Cutlet. To tell you the truth, I am rather heavy
about the eyes. Want of sleep, I believe.
Lucy. Late hours, perhaps. Raking last night?
Cutlet. No: that is not it, Mrs. Lucy. My repose




198       THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
was disturbed by a very different cause from what
you may imagine. It proceeded from too much thinking.
Lucy. The deuse it did! And what, if I may be so
bold, might be the subject of your Night Thoughts?
Cutlet. The distress of my fellow-creatures. I never
lay my head down on my pillow, but I fall a-thinking,
How many at this very instant are perishing i- some
with coldLucy. What! in the midst of summer?
Cutlet. Ay. Not here; but in countries abroad,
where the climate is different from ours. Our summers
are their winters, and vice versd, you know. Some
with cold -
Lucy. What a canting rogue it is! I should like to
trump up some fine story to plague him.     [Aside.
Cutlet. Others with hunger; some a prey to the
rage of wild beasts —
Lucy. He has got this by rote, out of some book.
Cutlet. Some drowning, crossing crazy bridges in the
dark; some by the violence of the devouring flameLucy. I have it. For that matter, you need not
send your humanity a-travelling, Mr. Cutlet. For instance, last nightCutlet. Some by fevers, some by gunshot-woundsLucy. Only two streets offCutlet. Some in drunken quarrelsLucy (aloud). The butcher's shop at the corner.
Cutlet. What were you saying about poor Cleaver?
Lucy. He has found his ears at last. (Aside.) That
he has had his house burnt down.
Cnutet. Bless me!




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.            199
Lucy. I saw four small children taken in at the
green-grocer's.
Cutlet. Do you know if he is insured?
Lucy. Some say he is, but not to the full amount.
Cutlet. Not to the full amount? - how shocking! He
killed more meat than any of the trade between here
and Carnaley Market; and the poor babes, — four of
them, you say,-what a melting sight! He served
some good customers about Marybone —         I always
think more of the children, in these cases, than of the
fathers and mothers - Lady Lovebrown liked his veal
better than any man's in the market- I wonder
whether her ladyship is engaged — I must go and
comfort poor Cleaver, however.                  [Exit.
Lucy. Now is this pretender to humanity gone to
avail himself of a neighbor's supposed ruin to inveigle
his customers from him. Fine feelings! —pshaw!
[Exit.
Re-enter CUTLET.
Cutlet. What a deceitful young hussy! there is not
a word of truth in her. There has been no fire. How
can people play with one's feelings so?  (Sings:)"For tenderness formed" -
No: I'll try the air I made upon myself. The words
may compose me.  (Sings:) -
A weeping Londoner I am:
A washer-woman was my dam;
She bred me up in a cock-loft,
And fed my mind with sorrows soft.
For when she wrung, with elbows stout,
From linen wet the water out,
The drops so like the tears did drip,
They gave my infant nerves the hyp.




200           THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Scarce three clean muckingers a week
Would dry the brine that dewed my cheek:
So, while I gave my sorrow scope,
I almost ruined her in soap.
My parish learning I did win
In ward of Farrington-Within;
Where, after school, I did pursue
My sports, as little boys will do.
Cockchafers -none like me was found
To set them spinning round and round.
Oh, how my tender heart would melt
To think what those poor varmin felt!
I never tied tin-kettle, clog,
Or salt-box, at the tail of dog,
Without a pang more keen at heart
Than he felt at his outward part.
And when the poor thing clattered off,
To all the unfeeling mob a scoff,
Thought I, " What that dumb creature feels,
With half the parish at his heels!"
Arrived, you see, to man's estate,
The butcher's calling is my fate;
Yet still I keep my feeling ways,
And leave the town on slaughtering-days.
At Kentish Town, or Highgate Hill,
I sit, retired, beside some rill;
And tears bedew my glistening eye,
To think my playful lambs must die.
But, when they're dead, I sell their meat
On shambles kept both clean and neat:
Sweetbreads also I guard full well,
And keep them from the blue-bottle.
Envy, with breath sharp as my steel,
Has ne'er yet blown upon my veal;
And mouths of dames, and daintiests fops,
Do water at my nice lamb-chops.
[Exit, half laughing, half crying.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.        201
SCENE. -A Street. DAVENPORT, SOlUS.
Day. Thus far have I secured my charming prize.
I can appreciate, while I lament, the delicacy which
makes her refuse the protection of my sister's roof.
But who comes here?
Enter PENDULOUS, agitated.
It must be. That fretful animal-motion, — that face
working up and down with uneasy sensibility, like new
yeast, - Jack - Jack Pendulous!
Pen. It is your old friend, and very miserable.
Dav. Vapors, Jack. I have not known you fifteen
years to have to guess at your complaint. Why, they
troubled you at school. Do you remember when you
had to speak the speech of Buckingham, when he is
going to execution?
Pen. Execution! -he has certainly heard it. (Aside.)
Dav. What a pucker you were in over-night!
Pen. May be so, may be so, Mr. Davenport. That
was an imaginary scene. I have had real troubles
since.
Dav. Pshaw! so you call every common accident.
Pen. Do you call my case so common, then?
Dav. What case?
Pen. You have not heard, then?
Dav. Positively, not a word.
Pen. You must know I have been - (whispers) —
tried for a felony since then.
Dav. Nonsense!
Pen. No subject for mirth, Mr. Davenport. A confounded short-sighted fellow swore that I stopped him
and robbed him on the York race-ground, at nine on a
fine moonlight evening, when I was two hundred miles




202       THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
off in Dorsetshire. These hands have been held up at
a common bar.
Dav. Ridiculous! -it could not have gone so far.
Pen. A great deal farther, I assure you, Mr. Davenport. I am ashamed to say how far it went. You
must know, that, in the first shock and surprise of the
accusation, shame —you know I was always susceptible
-shame put me upon disguising my name, that, at
all events, it might bring no disgrace upon my family.
I called myself James Thompson.
Dav. For Heaven's sake, compose yourself.
Pen. I will. An old family ours, Mr. Davenport,never had a blot upon it till now, -a family famous
for the jealousy of its honor for many generations, -
think of that, Mr. Davenport, —that felt a stain like
a woundDav. Be calm, my dear friend.
Pen. This served the purpose of a temporary concealment well enough; but, when it came to the — alibi,
I think they call it, —excuse these technical terms,
they are hardly fit for the mouth of a gentleman, — the
witnesses —that is another term — that I had sent for up
from Melcombe Regis, and relied upon for clearing up
my character, by disclosing my real name, John Pendulous, so discredited the cause which they came to
serve, that it had quite a contrary effect to what was
intended. In short, the usual forms passed, and you
behold me here, the miserablest of mankind.
Dav. (aside). He must be light-headed.
Pen. Not at all, Mr. Davenport. I hear what you
say; though you speak it all on one side, as they do at
the play-house.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.         203
Dav. The sentence could never have been carried
into-pshaw! —you are joking: the truth must have
come out at last.
Pen. So it did, Mr. Davenport, -just two minutes
and a second too late, by the sheriff's stop-watch. Time
enough to save my life, - my wretched life, - but an
age too late for my honor. Pray, change the subject:
the detail must be as offensive to you.
Dav. With all my heart, to a more pleasing theme.
The lively Maria Flyn —are you friends in that quarter
still? Have the old folks relented?
Pen. They are dead, and have left her mistress of
her inclinations. But it requires great strength of mind
to
Dav. To what?
Pen. To stand up against the sneers of the world.
It is not every young lady that feels herself confident
against the shafts of ridicule, though aimed by the hand
of prejudice. Not but in her heart, I believe, she prefers me to all mankind. But think, what would the
world say, if, in defiance of the opinions of all mankind, she should take to her arms a -reprieved man!
Dav. Whims! You might turn the laugh of the
world upon itself in a fortnight. These things are but
nine-days' wonders.
Pen. Do you think so, Mr. Davenport?
Dav. Where does she live?
Pen. She has lodgings in the next street, in a sort of
garden-house, that belongs to one Cutlet. I have not
seen her since the affair. I was going there at her
request.
Dav. Ha, ha, ha!




204        THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Pen. Why do you laugh?
Dav. The oddest fellow! I will tell you —  But
here he comes.
Enter CUTLET.
Cutlet (to Davenport). Sir, the young lady at my
house is desirous you should return immediately. She
has heard something from home.
Pen. What do I hear?
Dav.'Tis her fears, I dare say. My dear Pendulous,
you will exeuse me - I must not tell him our situation at present, though it cost him a fit of jealousy. We
shall have fifty opportunities for explanation.  [Exit.
Pen. Does that gentleman visit the lady at your
lodgings?
Cutlet. He is quite familiar there, I assure you. He
is all in all with her, as they say.
Pen. It is but too plain. Fool that I have been,
not to suspect, that, while she pretended scruples, some
rival was at the root of her infidelity!
Cutlet. You seem distressed, sir. Bless me I
Pen. I am, friend, above the reach of comfort.
Cutlet. Consolation, then, can be to no purpose?
Pen. None.
Cutlet. I am so happy to have met with him!
Pen. Wretch, wretch, wretch!
Cutlet. There he goes! How he walks about, biting
his nails! I would not exchange this luxury of unavailing pity for worlds.
Pen. Stigmatized by the world —
Cutlet. My case exactly. Let us compare notes.
Pen. For an accident which
Cutlet. For a profession which —




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.        205
Pen. In the eye of reason, has nothing in it -
Cutlet. Absolutely nothing in itPen. Brought up at a public barCutlet. Brought up to an odious trade
Pen. With nerves like mine -
Cutlet. With nerves like minePen. Arraigned, condemnedCutlet. By a foolish worldPen. By a judge and jury —
Cutlet. By an invidious exclusion, disqualified for
sitting upon a jury at allPen. Tried, cast, andCutlet. What?
Pen. HANGED, sir; HANGED by the neck, till I wasCutlet. Bless me!
Pen. Why should not I publish it to the whole
world, since she, whose prejudice alone I wished to over3ome, deserts me?
Cutlet. Lord have mercy upon us! Not so bad as
that comes to, I hope?
Pen. When she joins in the judgment of an illiberal
world against meCutlet. You said HANGED, sir; that is, I meanperhaps I mistook you. How ghostly he looks!
Pen. Fear me not, my friend: I am  no ghost
though I heartily wish I were one.
Cutlet. Why, then, ten to one you werePen. Cut down. The odious words shall out, though
it choke me.
Cutlet. Your case must have some things in it very
curious. I dare say, you kept a journal of your sensations!




206         THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Pen. Sensations!
Cutlet. Ay: while you were being —you know what
I mean.. They say, persons in your situation have
lights dancing before their eyes, - bluish. But, then,
the worst of all is coming to one's self again.
Pen. Plagues, furies, tormentors! I shall go mad!
[Exit.
Cutlet. There, he says he shall go mad!  Well, my
head has not been very right of late: it goes with a
whirl and a buzz, somehow. I believe I must not think
so deeply. Common people, that don't reason, know
nothing of these aberrations.
"Great wits go mad, and small ones only dull;
Distracting cares vex not the empty skull:
They seize on heads that think, and hearts that feel,
As flies attack the- better sort of veal."
ACT IL
SCENE at FLINT's. FLINT. WILLIAM.
Flint. I have over-walked myself, and am quite exhausted. Tell Marian to come and play to me.
William. I shall, sir.
Flint. I have been troubled with an evil spirit of
late; I think, an evil spirit.  It goes and comes, as
my daughter is with or from me. It cannot stand
before her gentle look, when, to please her father, she
takes down her music-book.
Enter WILLIAM.
William. Miss Marian went out soon after you, and
is not returned.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.         207
Flint. That is a pity, -that is a pity! Where can
the foolish girl be gadding?
William. The shopmen say she went out with Mr.
Davenport.
Flint. Davenport?  Impossible!
William. They say, they are sure it was he, by the
same token that they saw her slip into his hand, when
she was past the door, the casket which you gave her.
Flint. Gave her, William?  I only intrusted it to
her.  She has robbed me! Marian is a thief! You
must go to the justice, William, and get out a warrant
against her immediately. Do you help them in the
description. Put in "Marian Flint," in plain words,
- no remonstrances, William, -" daughter of Reuben
Flint," - no remonstrances; but do it -
William. Nay, sir -
Flint. I am rock, absolute rock, to all that you can
say, -a piece of solid rock. What is it that makes
my legs to fail, and my whole frame to totter, thus?
It has been my over-walking. I am very faint: support
me in, William.                             [E~xeunt.
SCENE.- The Apartment of Miss FLYN.
Miss FLYN. BETTY.
Miss F.'Tis past eleven. Every minute, I expect
Mr. Pendulous here. What a meeting do I anticipate!
Betty. Anticipate, truly! what other than a joyful
meeting can it be between two agreed lovers, who have
been parted for these four months?
Miss F. But, in that cruel space, what accidents have
happened! - (aside) -As yet, I perceive she is ignorant of this unfortunate affair.




208        THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Betty. Lord, madam! what accidents?  He has not
had a fall or a tumble, has he? He is not coming upon
crutches?
Miss F. Not exactly a fall — (aside) - I wish I had
courage to admit her to my confidence.
Betty. If his neck is whole, his heart is so too, I
warrant it.
Miss F. His neck! -(aside) -She certainly mistrusts something.  He writes me word that this must
be his last interview.
Betty. Then I guess the whole business. The wretch
is unfaithful. Some creature or other has got him into
a noose.
Miss F. A noose!
Betty. And I shall never more see him hang —
Miss F. Hang! did you say, Betty?
Betty. About that dear, fond neck, I was going to
add, madam; but you interrupted me.
Miss F. I can no longer labor with a secret which
oppresses me thus. Can you be trusty?
Betty. Who? I, madam? — (aside) — Lord! I am
so glad! Now I shall know all!
Miss F. This letter discloses the reasons of his unaccountable long absence from me. Peruse it, and say
if we have not reason to be unhappy.
[BETTY retires to the window to read the letter.
Mr. PENDULOUS enters.
Miss F. My dear Pendulous!
Pen. Maria! — Nay, shun the embrace of a disgraced man, who comes but to tell you that you must
renounce his society for ever.
Miss F. Nay, Pendulous, avoid me not.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.          209
Pen. (aside). That was tender. I may be mistaken.
Whilst I stood on honorable terms, Maria might have
met my caresses without a blush.
[BETTY, who has not attended to the entrance of PENDULOUS,
through her eagerness to read the letter, comes forward.
Betty. Ha, ha, ha! What a funny story, madam!
And is this all you make such a fuss about? I would
not care if twenty of my lovers had been- (seeing PENDULOUS) -Lord! sir, I ask pardon.
Pen. Are we not alone, then?
Miss F.'Tis only Betty, my old servant.  You remember Betty?
Pen. What letter is that?
Miss F. Oh! something from her sweetheart, I suppose.
Betty. Yes, ma'am; that is all. I shall die of laughing.
Pen. You have not surely been showing herMiss F. I must be ingenuous.  You must know,
then, that I was just giving Betty a hint, as you came in.
Pen. A hint!
Miss F. Yes, of our unfortunate embarrassment.
Pen. My letter!
Miss F. I thought it as well that she should know it
at first.
Pen.'Tis mighty well, madam! —'tis as it should be.
I was ordained to be a wretched laughing-stock to all
the world; and it is fit that our drabs and our servant
wenches should have their share of the amusement.
Betty. Marry, come up I Drabs and servant wenches!
and this from a person in his circumstances!
[BETTY flings herself out of the room, mutterinq.
14




210        THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Miss F. I understand not this language. I was
prepared to give my Pendulous a tender meeting; to
assure him, that, however in the eyes of the superficial
and the censorious he may have incurred a partial degradation, in the esteem of one, at least, he stood as high
as ever; that it was not in the power of a ridiculous
accident —involving no guilt, no shadow of imputation
- to separate two hearts cemented by holiest vows, as
ours have been. This untimely repulse to my affections
may awaken scruples in me, which hitherto, in tenderness to you, I have suppressed.
Pen. I very well understand what you call tenderness, madam; but, in some situations, pity -pity -is
the greatest insult.
Miss F. I can endure no longer.  When you are in
a calmer mood, you will be sorry that you have wrung
my heart so.                                   [Exit.
Pen. Maria!  She is gone-in tears; yet, it seems,
she has had her scruples. She said she had tried to
smother them. Her maid Betty intimated as much.
Re-enter BETTY.
Pen. Never mind Betty, sir: depend upon it, she
will never peach.
Pen. Peach!
Betty. Lord, sir, these scruples will blow over. Go
to her again when she is in a better humor. You know,
we must stand off a little at first, to save appearances.
Pen. Appearances! we!
Betty. It will be decent to let some time elapse.
Pen. Time elapse!"Lost, wretched Pendulous! to scorn betrayed, -
The scoff alike of mistress and of maid!




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.         211
What now remains for thee, forsaken man,
But to complete thy fate's abortive plan,
And finish what the feeble law began? "  [Exeunt.
Re-enter Miss FLYN, with MARIAN.
Miss F. Now both our lovers are gone, I hope my
friend will have less reserve. You must consider this
apartment as yours while you stay here.'Tis larger
and more commodious than your own.
Marian. You are kind, Maria. My sad story I have
troubled you with. I have some jewels here, which I
unintentionally brought away. I have only to beg you
will take the trouble to restore them to my father; and,
without disclosing my present situation, to tell him that
my next step - with or without the concurrence of Mr.
Davenport - shall be to throw myself at his feet to be
forgiven. I dare not see him till you have explored
the way for me. I am convinced, I was tricked into
this elopement.
Miss F. Your commands shall be obeyed implicitly.
Marian. You are good. (Agitated.)
Miss F. Moderate your apprehensions, my sweet
friend. I, too, have known my sorrows - (smiling) -
You have heard of the ridiculous affair?
LMarian. Between Mr. Pendulous and you? Davenport informed me of it; and we both took the liberty
of blaming the over-niceness of your scruples.
Miss F. You mistake me. The refinement is entirely
on the part of my lover. He thinks me not nice enough.
I am obliged to feign a little reluctance, that he may
not take quite a distaste to me. Will you believe it,
that he turns my very constancy into a reproach; and
declares, that a woman must be devoid of all delicacy,




212       THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
that, after a thing of that sort, could endure the sight
of her husband inMarian. In what?
Miss F. The sight of a man at all inMarian. I comprehend you not.
Miss F. In - in a - (whispers) - night-cap, my
dear; and now the mischief is out.
Marian. Is there no way to cure him?
Miss F. None; unless I were to try the experiment,
by placing myself in the hands of justice for a little
while, how far an equality in misfortune might breed a
sympathy in sentiment. Our reputations would be both
upon a level then, you know. What think you of a
little innocent shop-lifting, in sport?
Marian. And, by that contrivance, to be taken before
a magistrate? The project sounds oddly.
Miss F. And yet I am more than half-persuaded it
is feasible.
Enter BETTY.
Betty. Mr. Davenport is below, ma'am, and desires
to speak with you.
Marian. You will excuse me.  (Going - turning
back.)  You will remember the casket?        [Exit.
Miss F. Depend on me.
Betty. And a strange man desires to see you, ma'am.
I do not half like his looks.
Miss F. Show him in.
[Exit BETTY, and returns with apolice-oficer. BETTY goes out.
Officer. Your servant, ma'am. Your name isMiss F. Flyn, sir. Your business with me?
Officer (alternately surveying the lady and his paper of
instructions). Marian Flint?




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.          213
Miss F. Maria Flyn.
Officer. Ay, ay: Flyn or Flint.'Tis all one. Some
write plain Mary, and some put Ann after it. I come
about a casket.
Miss F. I guess the whole business.  He takes me
for my friend. Something may come out of this. I
will humor him.
Officer (aside).  Answers to the description to a
tittle.  "Soft, gray eyes; pale complexion"Miss F. Yet I have been told by flatterers that my
eyes were blue - (takes out a pocket-glass). I hope I
look pretty tolerably to-day.
Officer. "Blue!" - they are a sort of bluish-gray,
now I look better; and as for color, that comes and
goes. Blushing is often a sign of a hardened offender.
Do you know any thing of a casket?
Miss F. Here is one which a friend has just delivered
to my keeping.
Officer. And which I must beg leave to secure, together with your ladyship's person.  "Garnets, pearls,
diamond-bracelet," -here they are, sure enough.
Miss F. Indeed I am innocent.
Officer. Every man is presumed so till he is found
otherwise.
Miss F. Police wit! Have you a warrant?
Officer. Tolerably cool, that. Here it is, signed by
Justice Golding, at the requisition of Reuben Flint, who
deposes that you have robbed him.
Miss F. How lucky this turns out! —(aside) -Can
I be indulged with a coach.
Officer. To Marlborough Street? certainly- an old
offender -  (aside)- The thing shall be conducted with
as much delicacy as is consistent with security.




214        THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Miss F. Police manners! I will trust myself to
your protection, then.                        [Exeunt.
SCENE.- Peoice-offe.
JUSTICE, FLINT, OFFICERS, &C.
Justice. Before we proceed to extremities, Mr. Flint,
let me entreat you to consider the consequences. What
will the world say to your exposing your own child?
Flint. The world is not my friend. I belong to a
profession which has long brought me acquainted with
its injustice. I return scorn for scorn, and desire its
censure above its plaudits.
Justice. But, in this case, delicacy must make you
pause.
Flint. Delicacy I ha, ha! —pawnbroker! —fitly these
words suit. Delicate pawnbroker  - delicate devil! -
let the law take its course.
Justice. Consider, the jewels are found.
Flint.'Tis not the silly bawbles I regard.  Are you
a man? are you a father? and think you I could stoop
so low, vile as I stand here, as to make money - filthy
money —of the stuff which a daughter's touch has
desecrated? Deep in some pit first I would bury them.
Justice. Yet pause a little. Consider. An only child.
Flint. Only, only! - there, it is that stings me, -
makes me mad. She was the only thing I had to love
me,- to bear me up against the nipping injuries of the
world.  I prate when I should act.  Bring in your
prisoner.
[The JUSTICE makes a sign to the OFFICER, who goes out,
and returns with Miss FLYN.
Flint. What a mockery of my sight is here! This
is no daughter.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.        215
Officer. Daughter or no daughter, she has confessed
to this casket.
Flint (handling it).  The very same.  Was it in
the power of these pale splendors to dazzle the sight
of honesty, - to put out the regardful eye of piety and
daughter-love?  Why, a poor glow-worm shows more
brightly. Bear witness how I valued them! - (tramnples
on them.) - Fair lady, know you aught of my child?
Miss F. I shall here answer no questions.
Justice. You must explain how you came by these
jewels, madam.
Miss F. (aside).  Now, confidence, assist me! A
gentleman in the neighborhood will answer for me.
Justice. His name?
Miss F. Pendulous.
Justice. That lives in the next street?
Miss F. The same. Now I have him, sure.
Justice. Let him be sent for: I believe the gentleman
to be respectable, and will accept his security.
Flint. Why do I waste my time where I have no
business? None, —I have none any more in the world,
none.
Enter PEN-DULOUS.
Pen. What is the meaning of this extraordinary
summons? - Maria here!
Flint. Know you any thing of my daughter, sir?
Pen. Sir, I neither know her nor yourself, nor why
I am brought hither; but for this lady, if you have
afiy thing against her, I will answer with my life and
fortune.
Justice. Make out the bail-bond.
Officer (surveying Pendulous). Please your worship,




216        THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
before you take that gentleman's bond, may I have
leave to put in a word?
Pen. (agitated). I guess what is coming.
Officer. I have seen that gentleman hold up his hand
at a crimnal bar.
Justice. Ha!
Miss F. (aside). Better and better.
Officer. My eyes cannot deceive me.  His lips
quivered about, while he was being tried, just as they
do now. His name is not Pendulous.
Miss F. Excellent!
Officer. He pleaded to the name of Thompson at
York Assizes.
Jlstice. Can this be true?
Miss F. I could kiss the fellow!
Officer. He was had up for a foot-pad.
Miss F. A dainty fellow!
Pen. My iniquitous fate pursues me everywhere.
Justice. You confess, then?
Pen. I am steeped in infamy.
Miss F. I am as deep in the mire as yourself.
Pen. My reproach can never be washed out.
Miss F. Nor mine.
Pen. I am doomed to everlasting shame.
Mlfiss F. We are both in a predicament.
Justice. I am in a maze where all this will end.
Enter MARIAN and DAVENPORT.
Mlarian (kneeling).  My dear father!
Flint. Do I dream?
Mliarian. I am your Marian.
Justice. Wonders thicken.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.         217
Flint. The casketMiss F. Let me clear up the rest.
Flint. The casket
Miss F. Was inadvertently in your daughter's hand,
when, by an artifice of her maid Lucy, set on, as she
confesses, by this gentleman here -
Dav. I plead guilty.
Miss F. She was persuaded that you were, in a hurry, going to marry her to an object of her dislike; nay,
that he was actually in the house for the purpose. The
speed of her flight admitted not of her depositing the
jewels; but to me, who have been her inseparable companion since she quitted your roof, she intrusted the
return of them, which the precipitate measures of this
gentleman (pointing to the officer) alone prevented. Mr.
Cutlet, whom I see coming, can witness this to be true.
Enter CUTLET, in haste.
Cutlet. Ay, poor lamb! poor lamb! I can witness.
I have run in such a haste, hearing how affairs stood,
that I have left my shambles without a protector. If
your worship had seen how she cried (pointing to
Marian) and trembled, and insisted upon being brought
to her father! Mr. Davenport here could not stay her.
Flint. I can forbear no longer. Marian, will you
play once again, to please your old father?
Marian. I have a good mind to make you buy me a
new grand piano for your naughty suspicions of me.
Day. What is to become of me?
Flint. I will do more than that: the poor lady shall
have her jewels again.
Marian. Shall she?




218       THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.
Flint. Upon reasonable terms (smiling). And now,
I suppose, the court may adjourn.
Dav. Marian!
Flint. I guess what is passing in your mind, Mr.
Davenport: but you have behaved, upon the whole, so
like a man of honor, that it will give me pleasure, if
you will visit at my house for the future; but(smiling) — not clandestinely, Marian.
Marian. Hush, father!
Flint. I own I had prejudices against gentry; but I
have met with so much candor and kindness among my
betters this day, - from this gentleman in particular
(turning to the JUSTICE), — that I begin to think of
leaving off business, and setting up for a gentleman
myself.
Justice. You have the feelings of one.
Flint. Marian will not object to it.
Justice. But —(turning to Miss FLYN) -what motive
could induce this lady to take so much disgrace upon
herself, when a word's explanation might have relieved
her?
Miss F. This gentleman - (turning to PENDULOUS)
- can explain.
Pen. The devil!
Miss F. This gentleman, I repeat it, whose backwardness in concluding a long and honorable suit, from
a mistaken delicacy -
Pen. How?
Miss F. Drove me upon the expedient of involving
myself in the same disagreeable embarrassments with
himself, in the hope that a more perfect sympathy
might subsist between us for the future.




THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.         219
Pen. I see it,- I see it all!
Justice (to PENDULOUS).  You were then tried at
York?
Pen. I was- CASTJustice. Condemned.
Pen. EXECUTED.
Justice. How!
Pen. CUT DOWN, and CAME TO LIFE AGAIN! False
delicacy, adieu! The true sort — which this lady has
manifested, by an expedient, which, at first sight, might
seem a little unpromising - has cured me of the other.
We are now on even terms.
Miss F. And may —
Pen. Marry, - I know it was your word.
Miss F. And make a very quiet —
Pen. Exemplary -
Miss F. Agreeing pair ofPen. ACQUITTED FELONS.
Flint. And let the prejudiced against our profession
acknowledge that a money-lender may have the heart
of a father; and that, in the casket whose loss grieved
him so sorely, he valued nothing so dear as - (turning
to MARIAN) - one poor domestic jewel.








THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.




"You like the'Odyssey.' Did you ever read my'Adventures of
Ulysses,' —founded on Chapman's old translation, —for children or men?
Chapman is divine; and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of
his divinity." —LAMB, is a letter to Bernard Barton.




PREFACE
TO
THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
THIS work is designed as a supplement to the "Adventures
of Telemachus." It treats of the conduct and sufferings of
Ulysses, the father of Telemachus. The picture which it
exhibits is that of a brave man struggling with adversity;
by a wise use of events, and with an inimitable presence of
mind under difficulties, forcing out a way for himself through
the severest trials to which human life can be exposed; with
enemies, natural and preternatural, surrounding him on all
sides. The agents in this tale, besides men and women, are
giants, enchanters, sirens, - things which denote external force
or internal temptations; the twofold danger which a wise fortitude must expect to encounter in its course through this world.
The fictions contained in it will be found to comprehend some
of the most admired inventions of Grecian mythology.
The groundwork of the story is as old as the " Odyssey;"
but the moral and the coloring are comparatively modern.
By avoiding the prolixity which marks the speeches and the
descriptions in Homer, I have gained a rapidity to the narration, which I hope will make it more attractive, and give it
more the air of a romance, to young readers; though I am
sensible, that, by the curtailment, I have sacrificed in many
places the manners to the passion, the subordinate character[223]




224                     PREFACE.
istics to the essential interest of the story. The attempt is
not to be considered as seeking a comparison with any of the
direct translations of the " Odyssey," either in prose or verse;
though, if I were to state the obligations which I have had to
one obsolete version,* I should run the hazard of depriving
myself of the very slender degree of reputation which I
could hope to acquire from a trifle like the present undertaking.
* The translation of Homer, by Chapman, in the reign of James I.




THE
ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
CHAPTER I.
THE CICONS. —TIE FRUIT OF THE LOTOS-TREE. — POLYPHEMUS AND THE
CYCLOPS. -THE KINGDOM OF THE WINDS, AND GOD jOLUS' FATAL
PRESENT. -THE L.ESTRYGONIAN MAN-EATERS.
THIS history tells of the wanderings of Ulysses and his
followers in their return from Troy, after the destruction
of that famous city of Asia by the Grecians. He was
inflamed with a desire of seeing again, after a ten-years
absence, his wife and native country Ithaca. He was
king of a barren spot, and a poor country in comparison
of the fruitful plains of Asia, which he was leaving, or
the wealthy kingdoms which he touched upon in his
return; yet, wherever he came, he could never see a
soil which appeared in his eyes half so sweet or desirable
as his country earth. This made him refuse the offers
of the goddess Calypso to stay with her, and partake of
her immortality in the delightful island; and this gave
him strength to break from the enchantments of Circe,
the daughter of the Sun.
From Troy, ill winds cast Ulysses and his fleet upon
the coast of the Cicons, a people hostile to the Grecians.
Landing his forces, he laid siege to their chief city,
15                [225]




226        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
Ismarus, which he took, and with it much spoil, and
slew many people. But success proved fatal to him;
for his soldiers, elated with the spoil, and the good store
of provisions which they found in that place, fell to eating and drinking, forgetful of their safety, till the Cicons,
who inhabited the coast, had time to assemble their
friends and allies from the interior; who, mustering in
prodigious force, set upon the Grecians while they
negligently revelled and feasted, and slew many of them,
and recovered the spoil. They, dispirited and thinned
in their numbers, with difficulty made their retreat good
to the ships.
Thence they set sail, sad at heart, yet something
cheered, that, with such fearful odds against them, they
had not all been utterly destroyed. A dreadful tempest
ensued, which for two nights and two days tossed them
about; but, the third day, the weather cleared, and they
had hopes of a favorable gale to carry them to Ithaca;
but, as they doubled the Cape of Malea, suddenly a
north wind arising drove them back as far as Cythera.
After that, for the space of nine days, contrary winds
continued to drive them in an opposite direction to the
point to which they were bound; and the tenth day they
put in at a shore where a race of men dwell that are
sustained by the fruit of the lotos-tree. Here Ulysses
sent some of his men to land for fresh water, who were
met by certain of the inhabitants, that gave them some
of their country food to eat, not with any ill intention
towards them, though in the event it proved pernicious;
for, having eaten of this fruit, so pleasant it proved to
their appetite, that they in a minute quite forgot all
thoughts of home or of their countrymen, or of ever




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        227
returning back to the ships to give an account of what
sort of inhabitants dwelt there, but they would needs
stay and live there among them, and eat of that precious
food for ever; and when Ulysses sent other of his men
to look for them, and to bring them back by force, they
strove and wept, and would not leave their food for
heaven itself, so much the pleasure of that enchanting
fruit had bewitched them. But Ulysses caused them to
be bound hand and foot, and cast under the hatches;
and set sail with all possible speed from that baneful
coast, lest others after them might taste the lotos, which
had such strange qualities to make men forget their
native country and the thoughts of home.
Coasting on all that night by unknown and out-ofthe-way shores, they came by daybreak to the land
where the Cyclops dwell; a sort of giant shepherds, that
neither sow nor plough, but the earth untilled produces
for them rich wheat and barley and grapes: yet they
have neither bread nor wine, nor know the arts of cultivation, nor care to know them; for they live each man
to himself, without laws or government, or any thing
like a state or kingdom; but their dwellings are in
caves, on the steep heads of mountains, every man's
household governed by his own caprice, or not governed
at all, their wives and children as lawless as themselves;
none caring for others, but each doing as he or she
thinks good. Ships or boats they have none, nor artificers to make them; no trade or commerce, or wish to
visit other shores: yet they have convenient places for
harbors and for shipping. Here Ulysses, with a chosen
party of twelve followers, landed, to explore what sort
of men dwelt there, - whether hospitable and friendly to




228'       THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
strangers, or altogether wild and savage; for, as yet,
no dwellers appeared in sight.
The first sign of habitation which they came to was a
giant's cave, rudely fashioned, but of a size which betokened the vast proportions of its owner; the pillars
which supported it being the bodies of huge oaks or
pines, in the natural state of the tree; and all about
showed more marks of strength than skill in whoever
built it. Ulysses, entering it, admired the savage contrivances and artless structure of the place, and longed
to see the tenant of so outlandish a mansion; but well
conjecturing that gifts would have more avail in extracting courtesy, than strength would succeed in forcing it,
from such a one as he expected to find the inhabitant,
he resolved to flatter his hospitality with a present of
Greek wine, of which he had store in twelve great vessels, - so strong, that no one ever drank it without an
infusion of twenty parts of water to one of wine, yet
the fragrance of it even then so delicious, that it would
have vexed a man who smelled it to abstain from tasting it; but whoever tasted it, it was able to raise his
courage to the height of heroic deeds. Taking with
them a goat-skin flagon full of this precious liquor,
they ventured into the recesses of the cave. Here they
pleased themselves a whole day with beholding the
giant's kitchen, where the flesh of sheep and goats lay
strewed; his dairy, where goat-milk stood ranged in
troughs and pails; his pens, where he kept his live animals; but those he had driven forth to pasture with
him when he went out in the morning. While they
were feasting their eyes with a sight of these curiosities,
their ears were suddenly deafened with a noise like the




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        229
falling of a house. It was the owner of the cave, who
had been abroad all day, feeding his flock, as his custom
was, in the mountains, and now drove them home in
the evening from pasture. He threw down a pile of
firewood, which he had been gathering against suppertime, before the mouth of the cave, which occasioned
the crash they heard. The Grecians hid themselves in
the remote parts of the cave at sight of the uncouth
monster. It was Polyphemus, the largest and savagest
of the Cyclops, who boasted himself to be the son of
Neptune. HIe looked more like a mountain crag than
a man; and to his brutal body he had a brutish mind
answerable. He drove his flock, all that gave milk,
to the interior of the cave, but left the rams and the hegoats without. Then, taking up a stone so massy that
twenty oxen could not have drawn it, he placed it at the
mouth of the cave to defend the entrance, and sat him
down to milk his ewes and his goats; which done, he
lastly kindled a fire, and, throwing his great eye round
the cave (for the Cyclops have no more than one eye,
and that placed in the midst of their forehead), by the
glimmering light he discerned some of Ulysses' men.
"Ho, guests! what are you? - merchants or wandering thieves-? " he bellowed out in a voice which took
from them all power of reply, it was so astounding.
Only Ulysses summoned resolution to answer, that
they came neither for plunder nor traffic, but were Grecians, who had lost their way, returning from Troy;
which famous city, under the conduct of Agamemnon,
the renowned son of Atreus, they had sacked, and laid
level with the ground. Yet now they prostrated themselves humbly before his feet, whom they acknowledged




230        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
to be mightier than they, and besought him that he
would bestow the rites of hospitality upon them; for
that Jove was the avenger of wrongs done to strangers,
and would fiercely resent any injury which they might
suffer.
"Fool!" said the Cyclop, " to come so far to preach
to me the fear of the gods. We Cyclops care not for
your Jove, whom you fable to be nursed by a goat, nor
any of your blessed ones. We are stronger than they,
and dare bid open battle to Jove himself, though you
and all your fellows of the earth join with him!" And
he bade them tell him where their ship was in which
they came, and whether they had any companions.
But Ulysses, with a wise caution, made answer, that
they had no ship or companions, but were unfortunate
men, whom the sea, splitting their ship in pieces, had
dashed upon his coast, and they alone had escaped.
He replied nothing, but, griping two of the nearest of
them as if they had been no more than children, he
dashed their brains out against the earth, and, shocking
to relate, tore in pieces their limbs, and devoured them,
yet warm and trembling, making a lion's meal of them,
lapping the blood: for the Cyclops are man-eaters, and
esteem human flesh to be a delicacy far above goat's or
kid's; though, by reason of their abhorred customs, few
men approach their coast, except some stragglers, or
now and then a shipwrecked mariner. At a sight so
horrid, Ulysses and his men were like distracted people.
He, when he had made an end of his wicked supper,
drained a draught of goat's milk down his prodigious
throat, and lay down and slept among his goats. Then
Ulysses drew his sword, and half resolved to thrust it




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         231
with all his might in at the bosom of the sleeping monster: but wiser thoughts restrained him, else they had
there without help all perished; for none but Polyphemus himself could have removed that mass of stone
which he had placed to guard the entrance. / So they
were constrained to abide all that night in fear.
When day came, the Cyclop awoke, and, kindling a
fire, made his breakfast of two other of his unfortunate
prisoners; then milked his goats, as he was accustomed;
and pushing aside the vast stone, and shutting it again,
when he had done, upon the prisoners, with as much
ease as a man opens and shuts a quiver's lid, he let out
his flock, and drove them before him with whistlings
(as sharp as winds in storms) to the mountains.
Then Ulysses, of whose strength or cunning the Cyclop seems to have had as little heed as of an infant's,
being left alone with the remnant of his men which
the Cyclop had not devoured, gave manifest proof how
far manly wisdom excels brutish force. He chose a
stake from among the wood which the Cyclop had piled
up for firing, in length and thickness like a mast, which
he sharpened, and hardened in the fire; and selected four
men, and instructed them what they should do with this
stake, and made them perfect in their parts.
When the evening was come, the Cyclop drove home
his she~ep; and as fortune directed it, either of purpose,
or that his memory was overruled by the gods to his
hurt (as in the issue it proved), he drove the males of
his flock, contrary to his custom, along with the dams
into the pens. Then shutting to the stone of the cave,
he fell to his horrible supper. When he had despatched
two more of the Grecians, Ulysses waxed bold with the




232        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
contemplation of his project, and took a bowl of Greek
wine, and merrily dared the Cyclop to drink.
"Cyclop," he said, "take a bowl of wine from the
hand of your guest: it may serve to digest the man's
flesh that you have eaten, and show what drink our
ship held before it went down. All I ask in recompense, if you find it good, is to be dismissed in a whole
skin. Truly you must look to have few visitors, if you
observe this new custom of eating your guests."
The brute took and drank, and vehemently enjoyed
the taste of wine, which was new to him, and swilled
again at the flagon, and entreated for more; and prayed
Ulysses to tell him his name, that he might bestow a
gift upon the man who had given him such brave liquor.
The Cyclops, he said, had grapes; but this rich juice,
he swore, was simply divine. Again Ulysses plied
him with the wine, and the fool drank it as fast as he
poured out; and again he asked the name of his benefactor, which Ulysses, cunningly dissembling, said,
"My name is Noman: my kindred and friends in my
own country call me Noman."-" Then," said the Cyclop, " this is the kindness I will show thee, Noman: I
will eat thee last of all thy friends." He had scarce
expressed his savage kindness, when the fumes of the
strong wine overcame him, and he reeled down upon
the floor, and sank into a dead sleep.
Ulysses watched his time while the monster lay insensible; and, heartening up his men, they placed the
sharp end of the stake in the fire till it was heated redhot; and some god gave them a courage beyond that
which they were used to have, and the four men with
difficulty bored the sharp end of the huge stake, which




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         233
they had heated red-hot, right into the eye of the
drunken cannibal; and Ulysses helped to thrust it in
with all his might still further and further, with effort,
as men bore with an auger, till the scalded blood gushed
out, and the eyeball smoked, and the strings of the eye
cracked as the burning rafter broke in it, and the eye
hissed as hot iron hisses when it is plunged into water.
He, waking, roared with the pain, so loud that all the
cavern broke into claps like thunder. They fled, and
dispersed into corners. He plucked the burning stake
from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave.
Then he cried out with a mighty voice for his brethren
the Cyclops, that dwelt hard by in caverns upon hills.
They, hearing the terrible shout, came flocking fiorn
all parts to inquire what ailed Polyphemus, and what
cause he had for making such horrid clamors in the
night-time to break their sleeps; if his fright proceeded
from any mortal; if strength or craft had given him his
death's blow. He made answer from within, that Noman had hurt him, Noman had killed him, Noman was
with him in the cave. They replied, "If no man has
hurt thee, and no man is with thee, then thou art alone;
and the evil that afflicts thee is from the hand of Heaven,
which none can resist or help." So they left him, and
went their way, thinking that some disease troubled him.
Ite, blind, and ready to split with the anguish of th
pain, went groaning up and down in the dark to find the
doorway; which when he found, he removed the stone,
and sat in the threshold, feeling if he could lay hold on
any man going out with the sheep, which (the day now
breaking) were beginning to issue forth to their accustomed pastures. But Ulysses, whose first artifice in




234        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
giving himself that ambiguous name had succeeded so
well with the Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be
caught by that palpable device; but, casting about in
his mind all the ways which he could contrive for escape
(no less than all their lives depending on the success),
at last he thought of this expedient. He made knots
of the osier twigs upon which the Cyclop commonly
slept, with which he tied the fattest and fleeciest of the
rams together, three in a rank; and under the belly of
the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last; wrapping himself fast with both his hands in the rich wool
of one, the fairest of the flock.
And now the sheep began to issue forth very fast:
the males went first; the females, unmilked, stood by,
bleating, and requiring the hand of their shepherd in
vain to milk them, their full bags sore with being unemptied, but he much sorer with the loss of sight.
Still, as the males passed, he felt the backs of those
fleecy fools, never dreaming that they carried his enemies under their bellies. So they passed on till the last
ram came loaded with his wool and Ulysses together.
He stopped that ram, and felt him, and had his hand
once in the hair of Ulysses, yet knew it not; and he
chid the ram for being last, and spoke to it as if it understood him, and asked it whether it did not wish that
its master had his eye again, which that abominable
Noman with his execrable rout had put out, when they
had got him down with wine; and he willed the ram to
tell him whereabouts in the cave his enemy lurked, that
he might dash his brains, and strew them about, to ease
his heart of that tormenting revenge which rankled in it.
After a deal of such foolish talk to the beast, he let it go.




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         235
When Ulysses found himself free, he let go his hold,
and assisted in disengaging his friends.  The rams
which had befriended them they carried off with them
to the ships, where their companions, with tears in their
eyes, received them as men escaped from death. They
plied their oars, and set their sails; and, when they were
got as far off from shore as a voice could reach, Ulysses
cried out to the Cyclop, "Cyclop, thou shouldst not
have so much abused thy monstrous strength as to
devour thy guests. Jove by my hand sends thee requital to pay thy savage inhumanity." The Cyclop heard,
and came forth enraged; and in his anger he plucked a
fragment of a rock, and threw it with blind fury at the
ships.  It narrowly escaped lighting upon the bark
in which Ulysses sat; but with the fall it raised so
fierce an ebb as bore back the ship till it almost touched
the shore. "Cyclop," said Ulysses, "if any ask thee
who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish in thine
eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes: the King of
Ithaca am I called, the waster of cities."  Then they
crowded sail, and beat the old sea, and forth they went
with a forward gale, —sad for fore-past losses, yet glad
to have escaped at any rate, - till they came to the isle
where IEolus reigned, who is god of the winds.
Here Ulysses and his men were courteously received
by the monarch, who showed him his twelve children
which have rule over the twelve winds. A month they
staid and feasted with him; and at the end of the month
he dismissed them with many presents, and gave to
Ulysses at parting an ox's hide, in which were enclosed
all the winds: only he left abroad the western wind, to
play upon their sails, and waft them gently home to




236        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
Ithaca. This bagr, bound in a glittering silver band so
close that no breath could escape, Ulysses hung up at
the mast. His companions did not know its contents,
but guessed that the monarch had given to him some
treasures of gold or silver.
Nine days they sailed smoothly, favored by the western wind; and by the tenth they approached so nigh as
to discern lights kindled on the shores of their country
earth: when, by ill fortune, Ulysses, overcome with
fatigue of watching the helm, fell a-sleep. The mariners
seized the opportunity, and one of them said to the
rest, " A fine time has this leader of ours: wherever he
goes, he is sure of presents, when we come away emptyhanded. And see what King 2Eolus has given him!
-store, no doubt, of gold and silver." A word was
enough to those covetous wretches, who, quick as
thought, untied the bag,; and, instead of gold, out
rushed with mighty noise all the winds. Ulysses with
the noise awoke, and saw their mistake, but too late:
for the ship was driving with all the winds back far
from Ithaca, far as to the Island of 2Eolus from which
they had parted; in one hour measuring back what in
nine days they had scarcely tracked, and in sight of
home too! Up he flew amazed, and, raving, doubted
whether he should not fling himself into the sea for
grief of his bitter disappointment.  At last, he hid
himself under the hatches for shame. And scarce could
he be prevailed upon, when he was told he was arrived
again in the harbor of King 2Eolus, to go himself or
send to that monarch for a second succor; so much
the disgrace of having misused his royal bounty (though
it was the crime of his followers, and not his own)




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        237
weighed upon him: and when at last he went, and took
a herald with him, and came where the god sat on his
throne, feasting with his children, he would not thrust
in among them at their meat, but set himself down, like
one unworthy, in the threshold.
Indignation seized 2Eolus to behold him in that manner returned; and he said, "Ulysses, what has brought
you back? Are you so soon tired of your country? or
did not our present please you? We thought we had
given you a kingly passport." Ulysses made answer:
" My men have done this ill mischief to me: they did
it while I slept." - "Wretch! " said Lolus, "avaunt,
and quit our shores! it fits not us to convoy men whom
the gods hate, and will have perish."
Forth they sailed, but with far different hopes than
when they left the same harbor the first time with all
the winds confined, only the west wind suffered to play
upon their sails to waft them in gentle murmurs to
Ithaca. They were now the sport of every gale that
blew, and despaired of ever seeing home more. Now
those covetous mariners were cured of their surfeit for
gold, and would not have touched it if it had lain in
untold heaps before them.
Six days and nights they drove along; and on the
seventh day they put into Lamos, a port of the Laestrygonians.- So spacious this harbor was, that it held
with ease all their fleet, which rode at anchor, safe from
any storms, all but the ship in which Ulysses was embarked. He, as if prophetic of the mischance which
followed, kept still without the harbor, making fast his
bark to a rock at the land's point, which he climbed
with purpose to survey the country. He saw a city




238        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
with smoke ascending from the roofs, but neither
ploughs going, nor oxen yoked, nor any sign of agricultural works. Making choice of two men, he sent
them to the city to explore what sort of inhabitants
dwelt there. His messengers had not gone far before
they met a damsel, of stature surpassing human, who
was coming to draw water from a spring. They asked
her who dwelt in that land. She made no reply, but
led them in silence to her father's palace. He was a
monarch, and named Antiphas. He and all his people
were giants. When they entered the palace, a woman,
the mother of the damsel, but far taller than she, rushed
abroad, and called for Antiphas. He came, and, snatching up one of the two men, made as if he would devour
him. The other fled. Antiphas raised a mighty shout;
and instantly, this way and that, multitudes of gigantic
people issued out at the gates, and, making for the harbor, tore up huge pieces of the rocks, and flung them at
the ships which lay there, - all which they utterly overwhelmed and sank; and the unfortunate bodies of men
which floated, and which the sea did not devour, these
cannibals thrust through with harpoons, like fishes, and
bore them off to their dire feast. Ulysses, with his single bark that had never entered the harbor, escaped;
that bark which was now the only vessel left of all the
gallant navy that had set sail with him from Troy.
He pushed off from the shore, cheering the sad remnant
of his men, whom horror at the sight of their countrymen's fate had almost turned to marble.




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.          239
CHAPTER II.
THE HOUSE OF CIRCE. - MEN CHANGED INTO BEASTS. - THE VOYAGE TO
HELL. —THE BANQUET OF THE DEAD.
ON went the single ship till it came to the Island of
AEqea, where Circe, the dreadful daughter of the Sun,
dwelt.  She was deeply skilled in magic, a haughty
beauty, and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was her
parent, and begot her and her brother Mcetes (such
another as herself) upon Perse, daughter to Oceanus.
Here a dispute arose among Ulysses' men, which of
them should go ashore, and explore the country; for
there was a necessity that some should go to procure
water and provisions, their stock of both being nigh
spent: but their hearts failed them when they called to
mind the shocking fate of their fellows whom the Laestrygonians had eaten, and those which the foul Cyclop
Polyphemus had crushed between his jaws; which
moved them so tenderly in the recollection, that they
wept. But tears never yet supplied any man's wants:
this Ulysses knew full well; and dividing his men (all
that were left) into two companies, at the head of one
of which was himself, and at the head of the other
Eurylochus, a man of tried courage, he cast lots which
of them should go up into the country; and the lot fell
upon Eurylochus and his company, two and twenty in
number, who took their leave, with tears, of Ulysses
and his men that staid, whose eyes wore the same wet
badges of weak humanity; for they surely thought




240        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
never to see these their companions again, but that, on
every coast where they should come, they should find
nothing but savages and cannibals.
Eurylochus and his party proceeded up the country,
till in a dale they descried the house of Circe, built of
bright stone, by the road's side. Before her gate lay
many beasts, - as wolves, lions, leopards, - which, by
her art, of wild she had rendered tame.  These arose
when they saw strangers, and ramped upon their hinder
paws, and fawned upon Eurylochus and his men, who
dreaded the effects of such monstrous kindness; and,
staying at the gate, they heard the enchantress within,
sitting at her loom, singing such strains as suspended
all mortal faculties, while she wove a web, subtile and
glorious, and of texture inimitable on earth, as all the
housewiferies of the deities are. Strains so ravishingly
sweet provoked even the sagest and prudentist heads
among the party to knock and call at the gate.  The
shining gate the enchantress opened, and bade them
come in and feast.  They unwise followed, all but
Eurylochus, who staid without the gate, suspicious that
some train was laid for them.  Being entered, she
placed them in chairs of state, and set before them meal
and honey and Smyrna wine, but mixed with baneful
drugs of powerful enchantment. When they had eaten
of these, and drunk of her cup, she touched them with
her charming-rod, and straight they were transformed
into swine, - having the bodies of swine, the bristles
and snout and grunting noise of that animal; only they
still retained the minds of men, which made them the
more to lament their brutish transformation. Having
changed them, she shut them up in her sty with many




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.       241
more whom her wicked sorceries had formerly changed,
and gave them swine's food —mast and acorns and
chestnuts -to eat.
Eurylochus, who beheld nothing of these sad changes
from where he was stationed without the gate, only,
instead of his companions that entered (who he thought
had all vanished by witchcraft), beheld a herd of swine,
hurried back to the ship to give an account of what he
had seen; but so frighted and perplexed, that he could
give no distinct report of any thing: only he remembered a palace, and a woman singing at her work, and
gates guarded by lions. But his companions, he said,
were all vanished.
Then Ulysses - suspecting some foul witchcraft -
snatched his sword and his bow, and commanded Eurylochus instantly to lead him to the place; but Eurylochus
fell down, and, embracing his knees, besought him, by
the name of a man whom the gods had in their protection, not to expose his safety, and the safety of them
all, to certain destruction.
"Do thou then stay, Eurylochus," answered Ulysses;
" eat thou and drink in the ship in safety, while I go
alone upon this adventure: necessity, from whose law
is no appeal, compels me."
So saying, he quitted the ship, and went on shore,
accompanied by none: none had the hardihood to offer
to partake that perilous adventure with him, so much
they dreaded the enchantments of the witch. Singly
he pursued his journey till he came to the shining gates
which stood before her mansion; but, when he essayed
to put his foot over her threshold, he was suddenly
stopped by the apparition of a young man bearing a
16




242        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
golden rod in his hand, who was the god Mercury.
He held Ulysses by the wrist, to stay his entrance; and
"Whither wouldest thou go," he said, "0 thou most
erring of the sons of men? Knowest thou not that this
is the house of great Circe, where she keeps thy friends
in a loathsome sty, changed from the fair forms of men
into the detestable and ugly shapes of swine? Art thou
prepared to share their fate, from which nothing can
ransom thee?" But neither his words, nor his coming
from heaven, could stop the daring foot of Ulysses,
whom compassion for the misfortune of his friends had
rendered careless of danger; which when the god perceived, he had pity to see valor so misplaced, and gave
him the flower of the herb moly, which is sovereign
against enchantments. The moly is a small unsightly
root, its virtues but little known, and in low estimation;
the dull shepherd treads on it every day with his clouted
shoes: but it bears a small white flower, which is medicinal against charms, blights, mildews, and damps.
" Take this in thy hand," said Mercury, " and with it
boldly enter her gates: when she shall strike thee with
her rod, thinking to change thee, as she has changed
thy friends, boldly rush in upon her with thy sword,
and extort from her the dreadful oath of the gods, that
she will use no enchantments against thee; then force
her to restore thy abused companions."  He gave
Ulysses the little white flower; and, instructing him
how to use it, vanished.
When the god was departed, Ulysses with loud
knockings beat at the gate of the palace. The shining
gates were opened as before, and great Circe with hospitable cheer invited in her guest. She placed him on




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.       243
a throne with more distinction than she had used to his
fellows; she mingled wine in a costly bowl, and he drank
of it, mixed with those poisonous drugs. When he had
drunk, she struck him with her charming-rod, and "To
your sty!" she cried. " Out, swine! mingle with your
companions." But those powerful words were not
proof against the preservative which Mercury had given
to Ulysses: he remained unchanged, and, as the god
had directed him, boldly charged the witch with his
sword, as if he meant to take her life; which when she
saw, and perceived that her charms were weak against
the antidote which Ulysses bore about him, she'cried
out, and bent her knees beneath his sword, embracing
his, and said, " Who or what manner of man art thou?
Never drank any man before thee of this cup, but he
repented it in some brute's form. Thy shape remains
unaltered as thy mind. Thou canst be none other than
Ulysses, renowned above all the world for wisdom,
whom the Fates have long since decreed that I must
love. This haughty bosom bends to thee. O Ithacan!
a goddess wooes thee to her bed."
" O Circe  " he replied, " how canst thou treat of love
or marriage with one whose friends thou hast turned
into beasts? and now offerest him thy hand in wedlock,
only that thou mightest have him in thy power, to live
the life of a beast with thee, - naked, effeminate, subject
to thy will, perhaps to be advanced in time to the honor
of a place in thy sty. What pleasure canst thou promise which may tempt the soul of a reasonable man,thy meats, spiced with poison; or thy wines, drugged
with death? Thou must swear to me, that thou wilt
never attempt against me the treasons which thou hast




244        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
practised upon my friends." The enchantress, won by
the terror of his threats, or by the violence of that new
love which she felt kindling in her veins for him, swore
by Styx, the great oath of the gods, that she meditated
no injury to him. Then Ulysses made show of gentler
treatment, which gave her hopes of inspiring him with
a passion equal to that which she felt. She called her
handmaids, four that served her in chief, -who were
daughters to her silver fountains, to her sacred rivers,
and to her consecrated woods, -to deck her apartments,
to spread rich carpets, and set out her silver tables with
dishes of the purest gold, and meat as precious as that
which the gods'eat, to entertain her guest.  One
brought water to wash his feet; and one brought wine
to chase away, with a refreshing sweetness, the sorrows
that had come of late so thick upon him, and hurt his
noble mind. They strewed perfumes on his head; and,
after he had bathed in a bath of the choicest aromatics,
they brought him rich and costly apparel to put on.
Then he was conducted to a throne of massy silver; and
a regale, fit for Jove when he banquets, was placed
before him. But the feast which Ulysses desired was
to see his friends (the partners of his voyage) once
more in the shapes of men; and the food which could
give him nourishment must be taken in at his eyes.
Because he missed this sight, he sat melancholy and
thoughtful, and would taste of none of the rich delicacies placed before him; which when Circe noted, she
easily divined the cause of his sadness, and, leaving the
seat in which she sat throned, went to her sty, and let
abroad his men, who came in like swine, and filled the
ample hall, where Ulysses sat, with gruntings. Hardly




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         245
had he time to let his sad eye run over their altered
forms and brutal metamorphosis, when, with an ointment
which she smeared over them, suddenly their bristles
fell off, and they started up in their own shapes, men
as before. They knew their leader again, and clung
about him, with joy of their late restoration, and some
shame for their late change; and wept so loud, blubbering out their joy in broken accents, that the palace
was filled with a sound of pleasing mourning; and the
witch herself, great Circe; was not unmoved at the
sight. To make her atonement complete, she sent for
the remnant of Ulysses' men who staid behind at the
ship, giving up their great commander for lost; who
when they came, and saw him again alive, circled with
their fellows, no expression can tell what joy they felt:
they even cried out with rapture; and, to have seen their
frantic expressions of mirth, a man might have supposed
that they were just in sight of their country earth, the
cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only Eurylochus would hardly
be persuaded to enter that palace of wonders; for he
remembered with a kind of horror how his companions
had vanished from his sight.
Then great Circe spake, and gave order that there
should be no more sadness among them, nor remembering of past sufferings. For as yet they fared like men
that are exiles from their country; and, if a gleam of
mirth shot among them, it was suddenly quenched with
the thought of their helpless and homeless condition.
Her kind persuasions wrought upon Ulysses and the
rest, that they spent twelve months in all manner of
delight with her in her palace. For Circe was a powerful magician, and could command the moon from her




246        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
sphere, or unroot the solid oak from its place to make
it dance for their diversion; and by the help of her
illusions she could vary the taste of pleasures, and
contrive delights, recreations, and jolly pastimes, -to
"fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the
tedious year as in a delightful dream."
At length, Ulysses awoke from the trance of the faculties into which her charms had thrown him; and the
thought of home returned with tenfold vigor to goad
and sting him, -that home where he had left his virtuous
wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus. One
day, when Circe had been lavish of her caresses, and
was in her kindest humor, he moved to her subtly,
and as it were afar off, the question of his home-return;
to which she answered firmly, "O Ulysses! it is not in
my power to detain one whom the gods have destined
to further trials. But leaving me, before you pursue
your journey home, you must visit the house of Ades,
or Death, to consult the shade of Tiresias, the Theban
prophet; to whom alone, of all the dead, Proserpine,
queen of hell, has committed the secret of future events:
it is he that must inform you whether you shall ever see
again your wife and country." — " O Circe! " he cried;
"that is impossible: who shall steer my course to
Pluto's kingdom?  Never ship had strength to make
that voyage." - "Seek no guide," she replied; "but
raise you your mast, and hoist your white sails, and sit
in your ship in peace: the north wind shall waft you
through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the
ocean, and come to where grow the poplar groves, and
willows pale, of Proserpine; where Pyriphlegethon and
Cocytus and Acheron mingle their waves. Cocytus is




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        247
an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit,
and make it a cubit broad and a cubit long; and pour
in milk and honey and wine, and the blood of a ram,
and the blood of a black ewe; and turn away thy face
while thou pourest in, and the dead shall come flocking
to taste the milk and the blood: but suffer none to
approach thy offering till thou hast inquired of Tiresias
all which thou wishest to know."
He did as great Circe had appointed. He raised his
mast, and hoisted his white sails, and sat in his ship in
peace. The north wind wafted him through the seas,
till he crossed the ocean, and came to the sacred woods
of Proserpine. He stood at the confluence of the three
floods, and digged a pit, as she had given directions,
and poured in his offering, — the blood of a ram and
the blood of a black ewe, milk and honey and wine;
and the dead came to his banquet, —aged men and
women and youths, and children who died in infancy.
But none of them would he suffer to approach,. and dip
their thin lips in the offering, till Tiresias was served,
not though his own mother was among the number,
whom now for the first time he knew to be dead; for he
had left her living when he went to Troy; and she had
died since his departure, and the tidings never reached
him: though it irked his soul to use constraint upon
her, yet, in compliance with the injunction of great Circe,
he forced her to retire along with the other ghosts.
Then Tiresias, who bore a golden sceptre, came and
lapped of the offering; and immediately he knew Ulysses, and began to prophesy: he denounced woe to Ulysses, woe, woe, and many sufferings, through the anger of
Neptune for the putting-out of the eye of the sea-god's son.




248        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
Yet there was safety after suffering, if they could abstain
from slaughtering the oxen of the Sun after they landed in
the Triangular Island.  For Ulysses, the gods had destined him from a king to become a beggar, and to perish
by his own guests, unless he slew those who knew him not.
This prophecy, ambiguously delivered, was all that
Tiresias was empowered to unfold, or else there was no
longer place for him; for now the souls of the other
dead came flocking in such numbers, tumultuously
demanding the blood, that freezing horror seized the
limbs of the living Ulysses, to see so many, and all
dead, and he the only one alive in that region. Now
his mother came and lapped the blood, without restraint
from her son: and now she knew him to be her son,
and inquired of him why he had come alive to their
comfortless habitations; and she said, that affliction
for Ulysses' long absence had preyed upon her spirits,
and brought her to the grave.
Ulysses' soul melted at her moving narration; and
forgetting the state of the dead, and that the airy
texture of disembodied spirits does not admit of the
embraces of flesh and blood, he threw his arms about
her to clasp her: the poor ghost melted from his
embrace, and, looking mournfully upon him, vanished
away.
Then saw he other females, -Tyro, who, when she
lived, was the paramour of Neptune, and by him had
Pelias and Neleus; Antiope, who bore two like sons
to Jove, - Amphion and Zethus, founders of Thebes;
Alcmena, the mother of Hercules, with her fair daughter, afterwards her daughter-in-law, Megara. There
also Ulysses saw Jocasta, the unfortunate mother and




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        249
wife of CEdipus; who, ignorant of kin, wedded with
her son, and, when she had discovered the unnatural
alliance, for shame and grief hanged herself. He continued to drag a wretched life above the earth, haunted
by the dreadful Furies. There was Leda, the wife of
Tyndarus, the mother of the beautiful Helen, and of
the two brave brothers, Castor and Pollux, who obtained this grace from Jove, -that, being dead, they
should enjoy life alternately, living in pleasant places
under the earth.  For Pollux had prayed that his
brother Castor, who was subject to death, as the son
of Tyndarus, should partake of his own immortality,
which he derived from an immortal sire: this the Fates
denied; therefore Pollux was permitted to divide his
immortality with his brother Castor, dying and living
alternately. There was Iphimedeia, who bore two sons
to Neptune, that were giants, -Otus and Ephialtes:
Earth in her prodigality never nourished bodies to such
portentous size and beauty as these two children were
of, except Orion. At nine years old they had imaginations of climbing to heaven to see what the gods were
doing: they thought to make stairs of mountains, and
were for piling Ossa upon Olympus, and setting Pelion
upon that; and had perhaps performed it, if they had
lived till they were striplings; but they were cut off
by death in the infancy of their ambitious project.
Phaedra was there, and Procris and Ariadne, mournful
for Theseus' desertion; and Maera and Clymene and
Eryphile, who preferred gold before wedlock faith.
But now came a mournful ghost, that late was Agamemnon, son of Atreus, the mighty leader of all the
host of Greece and their confederate kings that warred




250        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
against Troy. He came with the rest to sip a little of
the blood at that uncomfortable banquet. Ulysses was
moved with compassion to see him among them, and
asked him what untimely fate had brought him there;
if storms had overwhelmed him coming from Troy, or
if he had perished in some mutiny by his own soldiers
at a division of the prey.
"By none of these," he replied, "did I come to my
death; but slain at a banquet to which I was invited
by ~tgisthus after my return home.  He conspiring
with my adulterous wife, they laid a scheme for my
destruction, training me forth to a banquet as an ox
goes to the slaughter; and, there surrounding me, they
slew me with all my friends about me.
"Clytemnestra, my wicked wife, forgetting the vows,
which she swore to me in wedlock, would not lend a
hand to close my eyes in death. But nothing is so
heaped with impieties as such a woman, who would kill
her spouse that married her a maid. When I brought
her home to my house a bride, I hoped in my heart
that she would be loving to me and to my children.
Now her black treacheries have cast a foul aspersion
on her whole sex. Blest husbands will have their loving wives in suspicion for her bad deeds."
"Alas! " said Ulysses, "there seems to be a fatality
in your royal house of Atreus, and that they are hated
of Jove for their wives. For Helen's sake, your brother Menelaus' wife, what multitudes fell in the wars
of Troy!"
Agamemnon replied, "For this cause, be not thou
more kind than wise to any woman.  Let not thy
words express to her at any time all that is in thy mind:




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.          251
keep still some secrets to thyself. But thou by any
bloody contrivances of thy wife never needst fear to fall.
Exceeding wise she is, and to her wisdom she has a
goodness as eminent; Icarius' daughter, Penelope the
chaste: we left her a young bride when we parted from
our wives to go to the wars, her first child suckling at
her breast,-the young Telemachus, whom you shall see
grown up to manhood on your return; and he shall
greet his father with befitting welcomes. My Orestes,
my dear son, I shall never see again. His mother has
deprived his father of the sight of him, and perhaps
will slay him as she slew his sire. It is now no world
to trust a woman in. — But what says fame? is my
son yet alive? lives he in Orchomen, or in Pylus? or is
he resident in Sparta, in his uncle's court?  As yet, I
see, divine Orestes is not here with me."
To this Ulysses replied, that he had received no certain tidings where Orestes abode; only some uncertain
rumors, which he could not report for truth.
While they held this sad conference, with  kind
tears striving to render unkind fortunes more palatable,
the soul of great Achilles joined them.  " What desperate adventure has brought Ulysses to these regions?"
said Achilles: " to see the end of dead men, and their
foolish shades?"
Ulysses answered him, that he had come to consult
Tiresias respecting his voyage home.  "But thou, O
son of Thetis! " said he, " why dost thou disparage the
state of the dead? Seeing that, as alive, thou didst surpass all men in glory, thou must needs retain thy pre
eminence here below: so great Achilles triumphs over
death."




252        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
But Achilles made reply, that he had much rather be
a peasant-slave upon the earth, than reign over all the
dead, - so much did the inactivity and slothful condition of that state displease his unquenchable and restless
spirit. Only he inquired of Ulysses if his father Peleus
were living, and how his son Neoptolemus conducted
himself.
Of Peleus, Ulysses could tell him nothing; but of
Neoptolemus he thus bore witness: "From Scyros I
convoyed your son by sea to the Greeks; where I can
speak of him; for I knew him. He was chief in council and in the field. When any question was proposed,
so quick was his conceit in the forward apprehension
of any case, that he ever spoke first, and was heard
with more attention than the older heads. Only myself and aged Nestor could compare with him in giving
advice. In battle I cannot speak his praise, unless I
could count all that fell by his sword. I will only
mention one instance of his manhood. When we sat
hid in the belly of the wooden horse, in the ambush
which deceived the Trojans to their destruction, I, who
had the management of that stratagem, still shifted my
place from side to side to note the behavior of our men.
In some I marked their hearts trembling, through all
the pains which they took to appear valiant; and, in
others, tears, that, in spite of manly courage, would
gush forth. And, to say truth, it was an adventure of
high enterprise, and as perilous a stake as was ever
played in war's game. But in him I could not observe
the least sign of weakness; no tears nor tremblings, but
his hand still on his good sword, and ever urging me
to set open the machine, and let us out before the time




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         253
was come for doing it: and, when we sallied out, he was
still first in that fierce destruction and bloody midnight
desolation of King Priam's city."
This made the soul of Achilles to tread a swifter
pace, with high-raised feet, as he vanished away, for
the joy which he took in his son being applauded by
Ulysses.
A sad shade stalked by, which Ulysses knew to be
the ghost of Ajax, his opponent, when living, in that
famous dispute about the right of succeeding to the arms
of the deceased Achilles. They being adjudged by the
Greeks to Ulysses, as the prize of wisdom above bodily
strength, the noble Ajax in despite went mad, and slew
himself. The sight of his rival, turned to a shade by
his dispute, so subdued the passion of emulation in
Ulysses, that, for his sake, he wished that judgment
in that controversy had been given against himself,
rather than so illustrious a chief should have perished
for the desire of those arms which his prowess (second
only to Achilles in fight) so eminently had deserved.
"Ajax!" he cried, " all the Greeks mourn for thee as
much as they lamented for Achilles. Let not thy wrath
burn for ever, great son of Telamon. Ulysses seeks
peace with thee, and will make any atonement to thee
that can appease thy hurt spirit." But the shade stalked
on, and would not exchange a word with Ulysses,
though he prayed it with many tears and many earnest
entreaties. " He might have spoken to me," said Ulysses, " since I spoke to him; but I see the resentments of
the dead are eternal."
Then Ulysses saw a throne, on which was placed a
judge distributing sentence.  He that sat on the throne




254        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
was Minos, and he was dealing out just judgments to
the dead. He it is that assigns them their place in bliss
or woe.
Then came by a thundering ghost, - the large-limbed
Orion, the mighty hunter, who was hunting there the
ghosts of the beasts which he had slaughtered in desert
hills upon the earth; for the dead delight in the occupations which pleased them in the time of their living
upon the earth.
There was Tityus, suffering eternal pains because he
had sought to violate the honor of Latona as she passed
from Pytho into Panopeus. Two vultures sat perpetually preying upon his liver with their crooked beaks;
which, as fast as they devoured, is for ever renewednor can he fray them away with his great hands.
There was Tantalus, plagued for his great sins,
standing up to his chin in water, which he can never
taste; but still, as he bows his head, thinking to quench
his burning thirst, instead of water he licks up unsavory dust. All fruits pleasant to the sight, and of delicious flavor, hang in ripe clusters about his head,
seeming as though they offered themselves to be plucked
by him; but, when he reaches out his hand, some wind
carries them far out of his sight into the clouds: so he
is starved in the midst of plenty by the righteous doom
of Jove, in memory of that inhuman banquet at which
the sun turned pale, when the unnatural father served
up the limbs of his little son in a dish, as meat for his
divine guests.
There was Sisyphus, that sees no end to his labors.
His punishment is, to be for ever rolling up a vast stone
to the top of a mountain; which, when it gets to the




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         255
top, falls down with a crushing weight, and all his
work is to be begun again. He was bathed all over in
sweat, that reeked out a smoke which covered his head
like a mist. His crime had been the revealing of state
secrets.
There Ulysses saw Hercules: not that Hercules who
enjoys immortal life in heaven among the gods, and is
married to Hebe, or Youth; but his shadow, which remains below. About him the dead flocked as thick as
bats, hovering around, and cuffing at his head: he
stands with his dreadful bow, ever in the act to shoot.
There also might Ulysses have seen and spoken with
the shades of Theseus and Pirithous and the old heroes;
but he had conversed enough with horrors: therefore,
covering his face with his hands that he might see no
more spectres, he resumed his seat in his ship, and
pushed off. The bark moved of itself, without the help
of any oar, and soon brought him out of the regions of
death into the cheerful quarters of the living, and to
the Island of A3ea, whence he had set forth.
CHAPTER III.
THE SONG OF THE SIRENS. - SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. - THE OXEN OF THB
SUN. -THE JUDGMENT. - THE CREW KILLED BY LIGHTNING.
" UNHAPPY man, who at thy birth wast appointed
twice to die I Others shall die once; but thou, besides
that death that remains for thee, common to all men,
hast in thy lifetime visited the shades of death. Thee
Scylla, thee Charybdis, expect.  Thee the deathful
Sirens lie in wait for, that taint the minds of whoever




256        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
listen to them with their sweet singing. Whosoever
shall but hear the call of any Siren, he will so despise
both wife and children, through their sorceries, that the
stream of his affection never again shall set homewards;
nor shall he take joy in wife or children thereafter, or
they in him."
With these prophetic greetings great Circe met
Ulysses on his return. He besought her to instruct
him in the nature of the Sirens, and by what method
their baneful allurements were to be resisted.
"They are sisters three," she replied, "that sit in' a
mead (by which your ship must needs pass) circled
with dead men's bones. These are the bones of men
whom they have slain, after with fawning invitements
they have enticed them into their fen. Yet such is the
celestial harmony of their voice accompanying the persuasive magic of their words, that, knowing this, you
shall not be able to withstand their enticements. Therefore, when you are to sail by them, you shall stop the
ears of your companions with wax, that they may hear
no note of that dangerous music; but for yourself, that
you may hear, and yet live, give them strict command
to bind you hand and foot to the mast, and in no case
to set you free till you are out of the danger of the
temptation, though you should entreat it, and implore
it ever so much, but to bind you rather the more for
your requesting to be loosed. So shall you escape that
snare."
Ulysses then prayed her that she would inform him
what Scylla and Charybdis were, which she had taught
him by name to fear.  She replied, " Sailing from 2Eawa
to Trinacria, you must pass at an equal distance be



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         257
tween two fatal rocks. Incline never so little either
to the one side or the other, and your ship must meet
with certain destruction. No vessel ever yet tried that
pass without being lost, but the'Argo,' which owed her
safety to the sacred freight she bore, — the fleece of
the golden-backed ram, which could not perish. The
biggest of these rocks which you shall come to, Scylla
hath in charge. There, in a deep whirlpool at the foot
of the rock, the abhorred monster shrouds her face;
who if she were to show her full form, no eye of man
or god could endure the sight: thence she stretches out
all her six long necks, peering and diving to suck up
fish, dolphins, dog-fish, and whales, whole ships and
their men, — whatever comes within her raging gulf.
The other rock is lesser, and of less ominous aspect;
but there dreadful Charrbdis sits, supping the black
deeps.  Thrice a day she drinks her pits dry, and
thrice a day again she belches them all up: but, when
she is drinking, come not nigh; for, being once caught,
the force of Neptune cannot redeem you from her
swallow. Better trust to Scylla; for she will but have
for her six necks six men: Charybdis, in her insatiate
draught, will ask all."
Then Ulysses inquired, in case he should escape
Charybdis, whether he might not assail that other monster with his sword: to which she replied, that he must
not think that he had an enemy subject to death or
wounds to contend with; for Scylla could never die.
Therefore his best safety was in flight, and to invoke
none of the gods but Cratis, who is Scylla's mother,
and might perhaps forbid her daughter to devour them.
For his conduct after he arrived at Trinacria, she referred
17




258          THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
him to the admonitions which had been given him by
Tiresias.
Ulysses having communicated her instructions, as far
as related to the Sirens, to his companions, who had
not been present at that interview, -but concealing from
them the rest, as he had done the terrible predictions
of Tiresias, that they might not be deterred by fear
from pursuing their voyage,- the time for departure
being come, they set their sails, and took a final leave
of great Circe; who by her art calmed the heavens,
and gave them smooth seas, and a right fore-wind
(the seaman's friend) to bear them on their way to
Ithaca.
They had not sailed past a hundred leagues, before the
breeze which Circe had lent them suddenly stopped.
It was stricken dead. All the sea lay in prostrate
slumber. Not a gasp of air could be felt. The ship
stood still. Ulysses guessed that the island of the Sirens
was not far off, and that they had charmed the air so
with their devilish singing. Therefore he made him
cakes of wax, as Circe had instructed him, and stopped
the ears of his men with them: then, causing himself
to be bound hand and foot, he commanded the rowers
to ply their oars, and row as fast as speed could carry
them past that fatal shore. They soon came within
sight of the Sirens, who sang in Ulysses' hearing, -
" Come here, thou, worthy of a world of praise,
That dost so high the Grecian glory raise, -
Ulysses! Stay thy ship, and that song hear
That none passed ever, but it bent his ear,
But left him ravished, and instructed more
By us than any ever heard before.
For we know all things, - whatsoever were
In wide Troy labored; whatsoever there




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.          259
The Grecians and the Trojans both sustained
By those high issues that the gods ordained:
And whatsoever all the earth can show,
To inform a knowledge of desert, we know."
These were the words; but the celestial harmony of
the voices which sang them no tongue can describe: it
took the ear of Ulysses with ravishment. He would
have broken his bonds to rush after them; and threatened, wept, sued, entreated, commanded, crying out
with tears and passionate imprecations, conjuring his
men by all the ties of perils past which they had endured in common, by fellowship and love, and the
authority which he retained among them, to let him
loose; but at no rate would they obey him. And still
the Sirens sang. Ulysses made signs, motions, gestures, promising mountains of gold if they would set
him free; but their oars only moved faster. And still
the Sirens sang. And still, the more he adjured them to
set him free, the faster with cords and ropes they bound
him; till they were quite out of hearing of the Sirens'
notes, whose effect great Circe had so truly predicted.
And well she might speak of them; for often she had
joined her own enchanting voice to theirs, while she has
sat in the flowery meads, mingled with the Sirens and
the Water Nymphs, gathering their potent herbs and
drugs of magic quality. Their singing altogether has
made the gods stoop, and "heaven drowsy with the
harmony."
Escaped that peril, they had not sailed yet a hundred
leagues further, when they heard a roar afar off, which
Ulysses knew to be the barking of Scylla's dogs, which
surround her waist, and bark incessantly.  Coming
nearer, they beheld a smoke ascend, with a horrid mur



260        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
mur, which arose from that other whirlpool, to which
they made nigher approaches than to Scylla. Through
the furious eddy which is in that place, the ship stood
still as a stone: for there was no man to lend his hand
to an oar; the dismal roar of Scylla's dogs at a distance,
and the nearer clamors of Charybdis, where every thing
made an echo, quite taking from them the power of exertion. Ulysses went up and down, encouraging his men,
one by one; giving them good words; telling them that
they were in greater perils when they were blocked up
in the Cyclop's cave; yet, Heaven assisting his counsels,
he had delivered them out of that extremity. That he
could not believe but they remembered it; and wished
them to give the same trust to the same care which he
had now for their welfare. That they must exert all
the strength and wit which they had, and try if Jove
would not grant them an escape, even out of this peril.
In particular, he cheered up the pilot who sat at the
helm, and told him that he must show more firmness
than other men, as he had more trust committed to him;
and had the sole management, by his skill, of the vessel
in which all their safeties were embarked. That a rock
lay hid within those boiling whirlpools which he saw,
on the outside of which he must steer, if he would avoid
his own destruction, and the destruction of them all.
They heard him, and, like men, took to the oars; but
little knew what opposite danger, in shunning that rock,
they must be thrown upon. For Ulysses had concealed
from them the wounds, never to be healed, which Scylla
was to open: their terror would else have robbed them
all of all care to steer, or move an oar, and have made
them hide under the hatches, for fear of seeing her,




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         261
where he and they must have died an idle death. But,
even then, he forgot the precautions which Circe had
given him to prevent harm to his person; who had
willed him not to arm, or show himself once to Scylla:
but, disdaining not to venture life for his brave companions, he could not contain, but armed in all points,
and taking a lance in either hand, he went up to the
fore-deck, and looked when Scylla would appear.
She did not show herself as yet; and still the vessel
steered closer by her rock, as it sought to shun that
other more dreaded: for they saw how horribly Charybdis' black throat drew into her all the whirling deep,
which she disgorged again; that all about her boiled like
a kettle, and the rock roared with troubled waters;
which when she supped in again, all the bottom turned
up, and disclosed far under shore the swart sands naked,
whose whole stern sight frayed the startled blood from
their faces, and made Ulysses turn his to view the wonder of whirlpools. Which when Scylla saw from out
her black den, she darted out her six long necks, and
swooped up as many of his friends; whose cries Ulysses
heard, and saw them too late, with their heels turned
up, and their hands thrown to him for succor, who had
been their help in all extremities, but could not deliver
them now; and he heard them shriek out as she tore
them; and, to the last, they continued to throw their
hands out to him for sweet life. In all his sufferings,
he never had beheld a sight so full of miseries.
Escaped from Scylla and Charybdis, but with a diminished crew, Ulysses and the sad remains of his followers reached the Trinacrian shore. Here, landing, he
beheld oxen grazing, of such surpassing size and beauty,




262        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
that, both from them and from the shape of the island
(having three promontories jutting into the sea), he
judged rightly that he was come to the Triangular Island,
and the oxen of the Sun, of which Tiresias had forewarned him.
So great was his terror, lest through his own fault,
or that of his men, any violence or profanation should
be offered to the holy oxen, that even then, tired as they
were with the perils and fatigues of the day past, and
unable to stir an oar or use any exertion, and though
night was fast coming on, he would have had them reembark immediately, and make the best of their way
from that dangerous station: but his men, with one
voice, resolutely opposed it; and even the too-cautious
Eurylochus himself withstood the proposal; so much
did the temptation of a little ease and refreshment (ease
tenfold sweet after such labors) prevail over the sagest
counsels, and the apprehension of certain evil outweigh
the prospect of contingent danger. They expostulated,
that the nerves of Ulysses seemed to be made of steel,
and his limbs not liable to lassitude like other men's;
that waking or sleeping seemed indifferent to him; but
that they were men, not gods, and felt the common appetites for food and sleep; that, in the night-time, all
the winds most destructive to ships are generated; that
black night still required to be served with meat and
sleep, and quiet havens and ease; that the best sacrifice
to the sea was in the morning.  With such sailor-like
sayings and mutinous arguments, which the majority
have always ready to justify disobedience to their betters,
they forced Ulysses to comply with their requisition,
and, against his will, to take up his night-quarters on




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        263
shore. But he first exacted from them an oath, that
they would neither maim nor kill any of the cattle
which they saw grazing, but content themselves with
such food as Circe had stowed their vessel with when
they parted from  IEaea.  This they, man by man,
severally promised, imprecating the heaviest curses on
whoever should break it; and, mooring their bark within a creek, they went to supper, contenting themselves
that night with such food as Circe had given them, not
without many sad thoughts of their friends whom Scylla
had devoured, the grief of which kept them, great part
of the night, waking.
In the morning, Ulysses urged them again to a religious observance of the oath that they had sworn; not
in any case to attempt the blood of those fair herds which
they saw grazing, but to content themselves with the
ship's food; for the god who owned those cattle sees and
hears all.
They faithfully obeyed, and remained in that good
mind for a month; during which they were confined to
that station by contrary winds, till all the wine and the
bread were gone which they had brought with them.
When their victuals were gone, necessity compelled them
to stray in quest of whatever fish or fowl they could
snare, which that coast did not yield in any great abundance. Then Ulysses prayed to all the gods that dwelt
in bountiful heaven, that they would be pleased to
yield them some means to stay their hunger, without
having recourse to profane and forbidden violations:
but the ears of heaven seemed to be shut, or some god
incensed plotted his ruin; for at mid-day, when he
should chiefly have been vigilant and watchful to prevent




264        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
mischief, a deep sleep fell upon the eyes of Ulysses,
during which he lay totally insensible of all that passed
in the world, and what his friends or what his enemies
might do for his welfare or destruction. Then Eurylochus took his advantage. He was the man of most
authority with them after Ulysses. He represented to
them all the misery of their condition: how that every
death is hateful and grievous to mortality; but that, of
all deaths, famine is attended with the most painful,
loathsome, and humiliating circumstances; that the subsistence which they could hope to draw from fowling
or fishing was too precarious to be depended upon; that
there did not seem to be any chance of the winds changing to favor their escape; but that they must inevitably
stay there and perish, if they let an irrational superstition
deter them from the means which Nature offered to their
hands; that Ulysses might be deceived in his belief that
these oxen had any sacred qualities above other oxen;
and even admitting that they were the property of the
god of the Sun, as he said they were, the Sun did neither
eat nor drink; and the gods were best served, not by a
scrupulous conscience, but by a thankful heart, which
took freely what they as freely offered. With these and
such like persuasions, he prevailed on his half-famished
and half-mutinous companions to begin the impious
violation of their oath by the slaughter of seven of the
fairest, of these oxen which were grazing. Part they
roasted and ate, and part they offered in sacrifice to the
gods; particularly to Apollo, god of the Sun, vowing
to build a temple to his godhead when they should arrive
in Ithaca, and deck it with magnificent and numerous
gifts. Vain men, and superstition worse than that which




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        265
they so lately derided, to imagine that prospective penitence can excuse a present violation of duty, and that the
pure natures of the heavenly powers will admit of compromise or dispensation for sin!
But to their feast they fell; dividing the roasted portions of the flesh, savory and pleasant meat to them, but
a sad sight to the eyes, and a savor of death in the
nostrils, of the waking Ulysses, who just woke in time
to witness, but not soon enough to prevent, their rash
and sacrilegious banquet. He had scarce time to ask
what great mischief was this which they had done unto
him, when, behold, a prodigy! The ox-hides which they
had stripped began to creep as if they had life; and the
roasted flesh bellowed, as the ox used to do when he
was living. The hair of Ulysses stood up an end with
affright at these omens; but his companions, like men
whom the gods had infatuated to their destruction, persisted in their horrible banquet.
The Sun, from his burning chariot, saw how Ulysses'
men had slain his oxen; and he cried to his father Jove,
"Revenge me upon these impious men, who have slain
my oxen, which it did me good to look upon when I
walked my heavenly round. In all my daily course,
I never saw such bright and beautiful creatures as those
my oxen were." The father promised that ample retribution should be taken of those accursed men; which
was fulfilled shortly after, when they took their leaves
of the fatal island.
Six days they feasted, in spite of the signs of heaven;
and on the seventh, the wind changing, they set their
sails, and left the island: and their hearts were cheerful
with the banquets they had held; all but the heart of




266        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
Ulysses, which sank within him, as with wet eyes he
beheld his friends, and gave them for lost, as men
devoted to divine vengeance. Which soon overtook
them; for they had not gone many leagues before a
dreadful tempest arose which burst their cables. Down
came their mast, crushing the skull of the pilot in its
fall: off he fell from the stern into the water; and the
bark, wanting his management, drove along at the wind's
mercy. Thunders roared, and terrible lightnings of
Jove came down: first a bolt struck Eurylochus, then
another, and then another, till all the crew were killed,
and their bodies swam about like sea-mews; and the
ship was split in pieces.  Only Ulysses survived; and
he had no hope of safety but in tying himself to the
mast, where he sat riding upon the waves, like one that
in no extremity would yield to fortune. Nine days was
he floating about with all the motions of the sea, with
no other support than the slender mast under him, till
the tenth night cast him, all spent and weary with toil,
upon the friendly shores of the Island Ogygia.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ISLAND OF CALYPSO. - IMMORTALITY REFUSED.
HENCEFORTH the adventures of the single Ulysses
must be pursued. Of all those faithful partakers of
his toil, who with him left Asia, laden with the spoils
of Troy, now not one remains, but all a prey to the
remorseless waves, and food for some great fish; their
gallant navy reduced to one ship, and that finally swal



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         267
lowed up and lost. Where now are all their anxious
thoughts of home? that perseverance with which they
went through the severest sufferings and the hardest
labors to which poor seafarers were ever exposed, that
their toils at last might be crowned with the sight of
their native shores and wives at Ithaca? Ulysses is now
in the Isle Ogygia, called the Delightful Island.  The
poor shipwrecked chief, the slave of all the elements, is
once again raised by the caprice of fortune into a shadow of prosperity.  He that was cast naked upon the
shore, bereft of all his companions, has now a goddess
to attend upon him; and his companions are the nymphs
which never die. Who has not heard of Calypso, —
her grove crowned with alders and poplars; her grotto,
against which the luxuriant vine laid forth his purple
grapes; her ever-new delights, crystal fountains, running brooks, meadows flowering with sweet balm-gentle
and with violet, — blue violets, which, like veins, enamelled the smooth breasts of each fragrant mead? It were
useless to describe over again what has been so well
told already, or to relate those soft arts of courtship
which the goddess used to detain Ulysses, — the same in
kind which she afterwardq practised upon his less wary
son, whom Minerva, in the shape of Mentor, hardly
preserved from her snares, when they came to the Delightful Island together in search of the scarce departed
Ulysses.
A memorable example of married love, and a worthy
instance how dear to every good man his country is,
was exhibited by Ulysses. If Circe loved him sincerely,
Calypso loves him with tenfold more warmth and passion. She can deny him nothing but his departure.




268        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
She offers him every thing, even to a participation of
her immortality: if he will stay and share in her pleasures, he shall never die. But death with glory has
greater charms for a mind heroic than a life that shall
never die, with shame; and, when he pledged his vows
to his Penelope, he reserved no stipulation that he
would forsake her whenever a goddess should think him
worthy of her bed, but they had sworn to live and grow
old together: and he would not survive her if he could;
nor meanly share in immortality itself, from which she
was excluded.
These thoughts kept him pensive and melancholy in
the midst of pleasure. His heart was on the seas,
making voyages to Ithaca. Twelve months had worn
away, when Minerva from heaven saw her favorite;
how he sat still pining on the sea-shores (his daily
custom), wishing for a ship to carry him home. She
(who is Wisdom herself) was indignant that so wise
and brave a man as Ulysses should be held in effeminate bondage by an unworthy goddess; and, at her
request, her father Jove ordered Mercury to go down
to the earth to command Calypso to dismiss her guest.
The divine messenger tied fast to his feet his winged
shoes, which bear him over land and seas; and took in
his hand his golden rod, the ensign of his authority.
Then, wheeling in many an airy round, he staid not
till he alighted on the firm top of the Mountain Pieria:
thence he fetched a second circuit over the seas, kissing
the waves in his flight with his feet, as light as any seamew fishing dips her wings, till he touched the Isle
Ogygia, and soared up from the blue sea to the grotto
of the goddess, to whom his errand was ordained.




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        269
His message struck a horror, checked by love,
through all the faculties of Calypso. She replied to it,
incensed, "You gods are insatiate, past all that live,
in all things which you affect; which makes you so
envious and grudging.  It afflicts you to the heart
when any goddess seeks the love of a mortal man in
marriage, though you yourselves without scruple link
yourselves to women of the earth. So it fared with
you when the delicious-fingered Morning shared Orion's
bed: you could never satisfy your hate and your jealousy till you had incensed the chastity-loving dame,
Diana, who leads the precise life, to come upon him by
stealth in Ortygia, and pierce him through with her
arrows. And when rich-haired Ceres gave the reins
to her affections, and took Iasion (well worthy) to her
arms, the secret was not so cunningly kept but Jove
had soon notice of it; and the poor mortal paid for his
felicity with death, struck through with lightnings.
And now you envy me the possession of a wretched
man, whom tempests have cast upon my shores, making
him lawfully mine; whose ship Jove rent in pieces
with his hot thunderbolts, killing all his friends. Himn
I have preserved, loved, nourished; made him mine by
protection; my creature, -by every tie of gratitude,
mine; have vowed to make him deathless like myself:
him you will take from me. But I know your power,
and that it is vain for me to resist. Tell your king
that I obey his mandates."
With an ill grace, Calypso promised to fulfil the
commands of Jove; and, Mercury departing, she went
to find Ulysses, where he sat outside the grotto, not
knowing of the heavenly message, drowned in dis



270        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
content, not seeing any human probability of his ever
returning home.
She said to him, "'Unhappy man, no longer afflict
yourself with pining after your country, but build you
a ship, with which you may return home; since it is
the will of the gods; who doubtless, as they are greater
in power than I, are greater in skill, and best can tell
what is fittest for man. But I call the gods, and my
inward conscience, to witness, that I had no thought
but what stood with thy safety, nor would have done or
counselled any thing against thy good. I persuaded
thee to nothing which I should not have followed myself in thy extremity; for my mind is innocent and
simple. Oh! if thou knewest what dreadful sufferings
thou must yet endure, before ever thou reachest thy
native land, thou wouldest not esteem so hardly of a
goddess's offer to share her immortality with thee; nor,
for a few years' enjoyment of a perishing Penelope,
refuse an imperishable and never-dying life with Calyp8o.
He replied, "Ever-honored, great Calypso, let it not
displease thee, that I, a mortal man, desire to see and
converse again with a wife that is mortal: human
objects are best fitted to human infirmities.  I well
know how far in wisdom, in feature, in stature, proportion, beauty, in all the gifts of the mind, thou exceedest my Penelope: she is a mortal, and subject to
decay; thou immortal, ever growing, yet never old:
yet in her sight all my desires terminate, all my wishes;
in the sight of her, and of my country earth. If any
god, envious of my return, shall lay his dreadful hand
upon me as I pass the seas, I submit; for the same




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.          271
powers have given me a mind not to sink under oppression. In wars and waves, my sufferings have not been
small."
She heard his pleaded reasons, and of force she must
assent: so to her nymphs she gave in charge from her
sacred woods to cut down timber, to make Ulysses a
ship. They obeyed, though in a work unsuitable to
their soft fingers; yet to obedience no sacrifice is hard:
and Ulysses busily bestirred himself, laboring far more
hard than they, as was fitting, till twenty tall trees,
driest and fittest for timber, were felled. Then, like a
skilful shipwright, he fell to joining the planks; using
the plane, the axe, and the auger, with such expedition,
that in four days' time a ship was made, complete with
all her decks, hatches, side-boards, yards.  Calypso
added linen for the sails, and tackling; and, when she
was finished, she was a goodly vessel for a man to sail
in, alone or in company, over the wide seas. By the
fifth morning, she was launched; and Ulysses, furnished
with store of provisions, rich garments, and gold and
silver, given him by Calypso, took a last leave of her
and of her nymphs, and of the Isle Ogygia which had
so befriended him.
CHAPTER  V.
THE TEMPEST. —THE SEA-BIRD'S GIFT.- THE ESCAPE BY SWIMMING.THE SLEEP IN THE WOODS.
AT the stern of his solitary ship, Ulysses sat, and steered
right artfully. No sleep could seize his eyelids. He
beheld the Pleiads, the Bear, which is by some called




272        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
the Wain, that moves round about Orion, and keeps
still above the ocean; and the slow-setting sign Bootes,
which some name the Wagoner. Seventeen days he
held his course; and, on the eighteenth, the coast of
Phaeacia was in sight. The figure of the land, as seen
from the sea, was pretty and circular, and looked something like a shield.
Neptune, returning from visiting his favorite 2Ethiopians, from the mountains of the Solymi descried
Ulysses ploughing the waves, his domain. The sight
of the man he so much hated for Polyphemus' sake, his
son, whose eye Ulysses had put out, set the god's heart
on fire; and snatching into his hand his horrid seasceptre, the trident of his power, he smote the air and
the sea, and conjured up all his black storms, calling
down night from the cope of heaven, and taking the
earth into the sea, as it seemed, with clouds, through
the darkness and indistinctness which prevailed; the
billows rolling up before the fury of all the winds, that
contended together in their mighty sport.
Then the knees of Ulysses bent with fear, and then
all his spirit was spent; and he wished that he had been
among the number of his countrymen who fell before
Troy, and had their funerals celebrated by all the
Greeks, rather than to perish thus, where no man could
mourn him or know him.
As he thought these melancholy thoughts, a huge
wave took him, and washed him overboard: ship and all
upset amidst the billows; he struggling afar off, clinging
to her stern broken off, which he yet held; her mast
cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed
winds that struck it; sails and sail-yards fell into the




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        273
deep; and he himself was long drowned under water,
nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave,
as if they strove which should depress him most; and
the gorgeous garments given him by Calypso clung
about him, and hindered his swimming. Yet neither for
this, nor for the overthrow of his ship, nor his own
perilous condition, would he give up his drenched vessel; but, wrestling with Neptune, got at length hold
of her again, and then sat in her hull, insulting
over death, which he had escaped, and the salt waves,
which he gave the seas again to give to other men.
His ship, striving to live, floated at random, cuffed from
wave to wave, hurled to and fro by all the winds: now
Boreas tossed it to Notus, Notus passed it to Eurus,
and Eurus to the West Wind, who kept up the horrid
tennis.
Them in their mad sport Ino Leucothea beheld, —Ino
Leucothea, now a sea-goddess, but once a mortal, and
the daughter of Cadmus. She with pity beheld Ulysses
the mark of their fierce contention; and, rising firom the
waves, alighted on the ship, in shape like to the sea-bird
which is called a cormorant; and in her beak she held a
wonderful girdle made of sea-weeds, which grow at the
bottom of the ocean, which she dropped at his feet; and
the bird spake to Ulysses, and counselled him not to
trust any more to that fatal vessel against which God
Neptune had levelled his furious wrath, nor to those illbefriending garments which Calypso had given him, but
to quit both it and them, and trust for his safety to
swimming. "And here," said the seeming bird: "take
this girdle, and tie about your middle, which has virtue
to protect the wearer at sea, and you shall safely reach
18




274        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
the shore; but, when you have landed, cast it far from
you back into the sea." He did as the sea-bird instructed him: he stripped himself naked, and, fastening
the wondrous girdle about his middle, cast himself
into the seas to swim. The bird dived past his sight
into the fathomless abyss of the ocean.
Two days and two nights he spent in struggling with
the waves, though sore buffeted, and almost spent, never
giving up himself for lost; such confidence he had in
that charm which he wore about his middle, and in the
words of that divine bird. But, the third morning,
the winds grew calm, and all the heavens were clear.
Then he saw himself nigh land, which he knew to be
the coast of the Phaeacians, a people good to strangers,
and abounding in ships; by whose favor he doubted not
that he should soon obtain a passage to his own country.
And such joy he conceived in his heart as good sons
have, that esteem their father's life dear, when long
sickness has held him down to his bed, and wasted his
body, and they see at length health return to the old
man, with restored strength and spirits, in reward of
their many prayers to the gods for his safety: so precious was the prospect of home-return to Ulysses, that
he might restore health to his country (his better parent), that had long languished as full of distempers in
his absence. And then for his own safety's sake he had
joy to see the shores, the woods, so nigh and within
his grasp as they seemed; and he labored with all the
might of hands and feet to reach with swimming that
nigh-seeming land.
But, when he approached near, a horrid sound of a
huge sea beating against rocks informed him that here




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        275
was no place for landing, nor any harbor for man's resort: but, through the weeds and the foam which the sea
belched up against the land, he could dimly discover the
rugged shore all bristled with flints, and all that part
of the coast one impending rock, that seemed impossible
to climb; and the water all about so deep, that not a
sand was there for any tired foot to rest upon; and
every moment he feared lest some wave more cruel than
the rest should crush him against a cliff, rendering worse
than vain all his landing: and, should he swim to seek
a more commodious haven farther on, he was fearful,
lest, weak and spent as he was, the winds would force
him back a long way off into the main, where the terrible god Neptune, for wrath that he had so nearly escaped
his power, having gotten him again into his domain,
would send out some great whale (of which those seas
breed a horrid number) to swallow him up alive; with
such malignity he still pursued him.
While these thoughts distracted him with diversity of
dangers, one bigger wave drove against a sharp rock
his naked body, which it gashed and tore, and wanted
little of breaking all his bones, so rude was the shock.
But, in this extremity, she prompted him that never failed
him at need. Minerva (who is Wisdom itself) put it
into his thoughts no longer to keep swimming off and
on, as one dallying with danger, but boldly to force the
shore that threatened him, and to hug the rock that had
torn him so rudely; which with both hands he clasped,
wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow
which had driven him upon it was passed: but then
again the rock drove back that wave so furiously, that
it reft him of his hold, sucking him with it in its return;




276         THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
and the sharp rock, his cruel friend, to which he clinged
for succor, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in
parting, that he fell off, and could sustain no longer.
Quite under water he fell; and, past the help of fate,
there had the hapless Ulysses lost all portion that he
had in this life, if Minerva had not prompted his
wisdom in that peril to essay another course, and to
explore some other shelter, ceasing to attempt that
landing-jplace.
She guided his wearied and nigh-exhausted limbs to
the mouth of the fair river Callicoe, which, not far from
thence, disbursed its watery tribute to the ocean. Here
the shores were easy and accessible, and the rocks
(which rather adorned than defended its banks) so
smooth, that they seemed polished of purpose to invite the landing of our sea-wanderer, and to atone for
the uncourteous treatment which those less hospitable
cliffs had afforded him. And the god of the river, as if
in pity, stayed his current, and smoothed his waters, to
make his landing more easy: for sacred to the ever-living deities of the fresh waters, be they mountain-stream,
river, or lake, is the cry of erring mortals that seek their
aid; by reason, that, being inland-bred, they partake
more of the gentle humanities of our nature than those
marine deities whom Neptune trains up in tempests in
the unpitying recesses of his salt abyss.
So, by the favor of the river's god, Ulysses crept to
land, half-drowned. Both his knees faltering, his strong
hands falling down through weakness from the excessive toils he had endured, his cheeks and nostrils flowing
with froth of the sea-brine, much of which he had swallowed in that conflict, voice and breath spent, dbwn he




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         277
sank as in death. Dead weary he was. It seemed
that the sea had soaked through his heart, and the pains
he felt in all his veins were little less than those which
one feels that has endured the torture of the rack. But
when his spirits came a little to themselves, and his
recollection by degrees began to return, he rose up,
and unloosing from his waist the girdle or charm which
that divine bird had given him, and remembering the
charge which he had received with it, he flung it far
from him into the river. Back it swam with the course
of the ebbing stream till it reached the sea, where the
fair hands of Ino Leucothea received it, to keep it as a
pledge of safety to any future shipwrecked mariner, that,
like Ulysses, should wander in those perilous waves.
Then he kissed the humble earth in token of safety;
and on he went by the side of that pleasant river, till
he came where a thicker shade of rushes that grew on
its banks seemed to point out the place where he might
rest his sea-wearied limbs. And here a fresh perplexity
divided his mind, - whether he should pass the night,
which was coming on, in that place, where, though he
feared no other enemies, the damps and frosts of the
chill sea-air in that exposed situation might be death to
him in his weak state; or whether he had better climb
the next hill, and pierce the depth of some shady wood,
in which he might find a warm and sheltered though
insecure repose, subject to the approach of any wild
beast that roamed that way. Best did this last course
appear to him, though with some danger, as that which
was more honorable, and savored more of strife and selfexertion, than to perish without a struggle, the passive
victim of cold and the elements.




278        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
So he bent his course to the nearest woods; where,
entering in, he found a thicket, mostly of wild olives
and such low trees, yet growing so intertwined and knit
together, that the moist wind had not leave to play
through their branches, nor the sun's scorching beams to
pierce their recesses, nor any shower to beat through,
they grew so thick, and, as it were, folded each in the
other. Here, creeping in, he made his bed of the leaves
which were beginning to fall, of which was such abundance, that two or three men might have spread them
ample coverings, such as might shield them from the
winter's rage, though the air breathed steel, and blew
as it would burst. Here, creeping in, he heaped up
store of leaves all about him, as a man would billets
upon a winter fire, and lay down in the midst. Rich
seed of virtue lying hid in poor leaves! Here Minerva
soon gave him sound sleep; and here all his long toils
past seemed to be concluded, and shut up within the
little sphere of his refreshed and closed eyelids.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PRINCESS NAUSICAA.- THE WASHING.- THE GAME WITH THE BALL.THE COURT OF P1H1EACIA AD KING ALCINOUS.
MEANTIME Minerva, designing an interview between
the king's daughter of that country and Ulysses when
he should awake, went by night to the palace of King
Alcinous, and stood at the bedside of the Princess Nausicaa in the shape of one of her favorite attendants, and
thus addressed the sleeping princess:



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         279
"Nausicaa, why do you lie sleeping here, and never
bestow a thought upon your bridal ornaments? of which
you have many and beautiful, laid up in your wardrobe
against the day of your marriage, which cannot be far
distant; when you shall have need of all, not only to
deck your own person, but to give away in presents
to the virgins, that, honoring you, shall attend you to the
temple. Your reputation stands much upon the timely
care of these things: these things are they which fill
father -and reverend mother with delight. Let us arise
betimes to wash your fair vestments of linen and silks
in the river: and request your sire to lend you mules
and a coach; for your wardrobe is heavy, and the place
where we must wash is distant; and, besides, it fits not
a great princess like you to go so far on foot."
So saying, she went away, and Nausicaa awoke full,of pleasing thoughts of her marriage, which the dream
had told her was not far distant; and, as soon as it was
dawn, she arose and dressed herself, and went to find
her parent.
The queen, her mother, was already up, and seated
among her maids, spinning at her wheel, as the fashion
was in those primitive times, when great ladies did not
disdain housewifery; and the king, her father, was preparing to go abroad at that early hour to council with
his grave senate.
" My father," she said, " will you not order mules and
a coach to be got ready, that I may go and wash, I and
my maids, at the cisterns that stand without the city?"
"What washing does my daughter speak of?" said
Alcinous.
" Mine and my brothers' garments," she replied, " that




280        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
have contracted soil by this time with lying by so long
in the wardrobe. Five sons have you, that are my
brothers: two of them are married, and three are bachelors. These last it concerns to have their garments neat
and unsoiled: it may advance their fortunes in marriage. And who but I, their sister, should have a care
of these things? You yourself, my father, have need
of the whitest apparel, when you go, as now, to tke
council."
She used this plea, modestly dissembling her care of
her own nuptials to her father; who was not displeased
at this instance of his daughter's discretion: for a seasonable care about marriage may be permitted to a
young maiden, provided it be accompanied with modesty,
and dutiful submission to her parents in the choice of
her future husband. And there was no fear of Nausicaa
choosing wrongly or improperly; for she was as wise as
she was beautiful, and the best in all Phawacia were
suitors to her for her love. So Alcinous readily gave
consent that she should go, ordering mules and a coach
to be prepared. And Nausicaa brought from her chamber all her vestments, and laid them up in the coach;
and her mother placed bread and wine in the coach, and
oil in a golden cruse, to soften the bright skins of
Nausicaa and her maids when they came out of the river.
Nausicaa, making her maids get up into the coach
with her, lashed the mules, till they brought her to the
cisterns which stood a little on the outside of the town,
and were supplied with water from the river Callicoe.
There her attendants unyoked the mules, took out
the clothes, and steeped them in the cisterns, washing
them in several waters, and afterwards treading them




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         281
clean with their feet; venturing wagers who should have
done soonest and cleanest, and using many pretty pastimes to beguile their labors as young maids use, while
the princess looked on.  When they had laid their
clothes to dry, they fell to playing again; and Nausicaa
joined them in a game with the ball, which is used in
that country; which is performed by tossing the ball
from hand to hand with great expedition, she who begins
the pastime singing a song. It chanced that the princess, whose turn it became to toss the ball, sent it so far
from its mark, that it fell beyond into one of the cisterns
of the river; at which the whole company, in merry consternation, set up a shriek so loud as waked the sleeping
Ulysses, who was taking his rest, after his long toils, in
the woods, not far distant from the place where these
young maids had come to wash.
At the sound of female voices, Ulysses crept forth
from his retirement; making himself a covering with
boughs and leaves as well as he could to shroud his
nakedness.  The sudden appearance of his weatherbeaten and almost naked form so frighted the maidens,
that they scudded away into the woods and all about to
hide themselves: only Minerva (who had brought about
this interview, to admirable purposes, by seemingly accidental means) put courage into the breast of Nausicaa,
and she staid where she was, and resolved to know
what manner of man he was, and what was the occasion
of his strange coming to them.
He, not venturing (for delicacy) to approach and
clasp her knees, as suppliants should, but standing far
off, addressed this speech to the young princess: —
"Before I presume rudely to press my petitions, I




282        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
should first ask whether I am addressing a mortal woman, or one of the goddesses. If a goddess, you seem
to me to be likest to Diana, the chaste huntress, the
daughter of Jove. Like hers are your lineaments, your
stature, your features, and air divine."
She making answer that she was no goddess, but a
mortal maid, he continued:" If a woman, thrice blessed are both the authors of
your birth; thrice blessed are your brothers, who even
to rapture must have joy in your perfections, to see you
grown so like a young tree, and so graceful. But most
blessed of all that breathe is he that has the gift to engage your young neck in the yoke of marriage. I never
saw that man that was worthy of you. I never saw
man or woman that at all parts equalled you. Lately
at Delos (where I touched) I saw a young palm which
grew beside Apollo's temple; it exceeded all the trees
which ever I beheld for straightness and beauty: I can
compare you only to that. A stupor past admiration
strikes me, joined with fear, which keeps me back from
approaching you to embrace your knees. Nor is it
strange; for one of freshest and firmest spirit would
falter, approaching near to so bright an object: but I am
one whom a' cruel habit of calamity has prepared to receive strong impressions. Twenty days the unrelenting
seas have tossed me up and down, coming from Ogygia;
and at length cast me shipwrecked last night upon your
coast. I have seen no man or woman since I landed
but yourself. All that I crave is clothes, which you
may spare me; and to be shown the way to some neighboring town. The gods, who have care of strangers,
will requite you for these courtesies."




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         283
She, admiring to hear such complimentary words proceed out of the mouth of one whose outside looked so
rough and unpromising, made answer: "Stranger, I
discern neither sloth nor folly in you; and yet I see that
you are poor and wretched: from which I gather that
neither wisdom nor industry can secure felicity; only
Jove bestows it upon whomsoever he pleases. He, perhaps, has reduced you to this plight. However, since
your'wanderings have brought you so near to our city,
it lies in our duty to supply your wants. Clothes, and
what else a human hand should give to one so suppliant,
and so tamed with calamity, you shall not want. We
will show you our city, and tell you the name of our
people. This is the land of the Phaeacians, of which my
father, Alcinous, is king."
Then calling her attendants, who had dispersed on the
first sight of Ulysses, she rebuked them for their fear,
and said, "This man is no Cyclop, nor monster of sea
or land, that you should fear him; but he seems manly,
staid, and discreet, and though decayed in his outward
appearance, yet he has the mind's riches, wit and fortitude, in abundance. Show him the cisterns where he
may wash him from the seaweeds and foam that hang
about him, and let him have garments that fit him
out of those which we have brought with us to the cisterns."
Ulysses, retiring a little out of sight, cleansed him in
the cisterns from the soil and impurities with which the
rocks and waves had covered all his body; and, clothing himself with befitting raiment which the princess's
attendants had given him, he presented himself in more
worthy shape to Nausicaa. She admired to see what




284        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
a comely personage he was, now he was dressed in all
parts: she thought him some king or hero, and secretly
wished that the gods would be pleased to give her such
a husband.
Then causing her attendants to yoke her mules, and
lay up the vestments, which the' sun's heat had sufficiently dried, in the coach, she ascended with her maids,
and drove off to the palace: bidding Ulysses, as she
departed, keep an eye upon the coach, and to follow it
on foot at some distance; which she did, because, if she
had suffered him to have ridden in the coach with her,
it might have subjected her to some misconstructions of
the common people, who are always ready to vilify and
censure their betters, and to suspect that charity is not
always pure charity, but that love or some sinister
intention lies hid under its disguise. So discreet and
attentive to appearance in all her actions was this admirable princess.
Ulysses, as he entered the city, wondered to see its
magnificence; its markets, buildings, temples; its walls
and rampires; its trade, and resort of men; its harbors
for shipping, which is the strength of the Phoaacian
state. But when he approached the palace, and beheld
its riches, the proportion of its architecture, its avenues,
gardens, statues, fountains, he stood rapt in admiration,
and almost forgot his own condition in surveying the
flourishing estate of others: but, recollecting himself,
he passed on boldly into the inner apartment, where the
king and queen were sitting at dinner with their peers;
Nausicaa having prepared them for his approach.
To them humbly kneeling, he made it his request,
that, since fortune had cast him naked upon their shores,




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.       285
they would take him into their protection, and grant
him a conveyance by one of the ships, of which their
great Phaeacian state had such good store, to carry him
to his own country. Having delivered his request, to
grace it with more humility, he went and sat himself
down upon the hearth among the ashes, as the custom
was in those days when any would make a petition to
the throne.
He seemed a petitioner of so great state, and of so
superior a deportment, that Alcinous himself arose to
do him honor, and, causing him to leave that abject
station which he had assumed, placed him next to his
throne upon a chair of state; and thus he spake to his
peers: -
" Lords and councillors of Phoeacia, ye see this man,
who he is we know not, that is come to us in the guise
of a petitioner. He seems no mean one: but, whoever
he is, it is fit, since the gods have cast him upon our
protection, that we grant him the rights of hospitality
while he stays with us; and, at his departure, a ship
well manned, to convey so worthy a personage as he
seems to be, in a manner suitable to his rank, to his
own country."
This counsel the peers with one consent approved;
and, wine and meat being set before Ulysses, he ate and
drank, and gave the gods thanks who had stirred up
the royal bounty of Alcinous to aid him in that extremity. But not as yet did he reveal to the king and
queen who he was, or whence he had come: only in
brief terms he related his being cast upon their shores,
his sleep in the woods, and his meeting with the Princess Nausicaa; whose generosity, mingled with discre



286        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
tion, filled her parents with delight, as Ulysses in
eloquent phrases adorned and commended her virtues.
But Alcinous, humanely considering that the troubles
which his guest had undergone required rest, as well as
refreshment by food, dismissed him early in the evening to his chamber; where, in a magnificent apartment, Ulysses found a smoother bed, but not a sounder
repose, than he had enjoyed the night before, sleeping
upon leaves which he had scraped together in his necessity.
CHAPTER VIL
THE SONGS OF DEMODOCUS. -THE CONVOY HOME. -THE MARINERS TRANSFORMED TO STONE.- THE YOUNG SHEPHERD.
WHEN it was daylight, Alcinous caused it to be proclaimed by the heralds about the town, that there was
come to the palace a stranger, shipwrecked on their
coast, that in mien and person resembled a god; and
inviting all the chief people of the city to come and do
honor to the stranger.
The palace was quickly filled with guests, old and
young; for whose cheer, and to grace Ulysses more,
Alcinous made a kingly feast, with banquetings and
music. Then Ulysses being seated at a table next the
king and queen, in all men's view, after they had feasted, Alcinous ordered Demodocus, the court-singer, to
be called to sing some song of the deeds of heroes,
to charm the ear of his guest. Demodocus came, and
reached his harp, where it hung between two pillars of
silver; and then the blind singer, to whom, in recom



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        287
pense of his lost sight, the Muses had given an inward
discernment, a soul and a voice to excite the hearts of
men and gods to delight, began in grave and solemn
strains to sing the glories of men highliest famed. He
chose a poem, whose subject was, The stern Strife
stirred up between Ulysses and great Achilles, as, at a
banquet sacred to the gods, in dreadful language they
expressed their difference; while Agamemnon sat rejoiced in soul to hear those Grecians jar: for the oracle
in Pytho had told him, that the period of their wars in
Troy should then be, when the kings of Greece, anxious
to arrive at the wished conclusion, should fall to strife,
and contend which must end the war, force or stratagem.
This brave contention he expressed so to the life, in
the very words which they both used in the quarrel, as
brought tears into the eyes of Ulysses at the remembrance of past passages of his life; and he held his large
purple weed before his face to conceal it. Then, craving
a cup of wine, he poured it out in secret libation to
the gods, who had put into the mind of Demodocus
unknowingly to do him so much honor. But, when the
moving poet began to tell of other occurrences where
Ulysses had been present, the memory of his brave
followers who had been with him in all difficulties, now
swallowed up and lost in the ocean, and of those kings
that had fought with him at Troy, some of whom were
dead, some exiles like himself, forced itself so strongly
upon his mind, that, forgetful where he was, he sobbed
outright with passion; which yet he restrained, but not
so cunningly but Alcinous perceived it, and, without
taking notice of it to Ulysses, privately gave signs that
Demodocus should cease from his singing.




288        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
Next followed dancing in the Phwacian fashion, when
they would show respect to their guests; which was
succeeded by trials of skill, games of strength, running,
racing, hurling of the quoit, mock fights, hurling of
the javelin, shooting with the bow; in some of which,
Ulysses, modestly challenging his entertainers, performed
such feats of strength and prowess, as gave the admiring
Phaeacians fresh reason to imagine that he was either
some god, or hero of the race of the gods.
These solemn shows and pageants in honor of his
guest, King Alcinous continued for the space of many
days, as if he could never be weary of showing courtesies to so worthy a stranger. In all this time he never
asked him his name, nor sought to know more of him
than he of his own accord disclosed; till on a day as
they were seated feasting, after the feast was ended,
Demodocus, being called, as was the custom, to sing
some grave matter, sang how Ulysses, on that night
when Troy was fired, made dreadful proof of his valor,
maintaining singly a combat against the whole household of Deiphobus; to which the divine expresser gave
both act and passion, and breathed such a fire into
Ulysses' deeds, that it inspired old death with life in
the lively expressing of slaughters, and rendered life so
sweet and passionate in the hearers, that all who heard
felt it fleet from them in the narration: which made
Ulysses even pity his own slaughterous deeds, and feel
touches of remorse, to see how song can revive a dead
man from the grave, yet no way can it defend a living
man from death; and in imagination he underwent
some part of death's horrors, and felt in his living body
a taste of those dying pangs which he had dealt to




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        289
others, that, with the strong conceit, tears (the true
interpreters of unutterable emotion) stood in his eyes.
Which King Alcinous noting, and that this was now
the second time that he had perceived him to be moved
at the mention of events touching the Trojan wars, he
took occasion to ask whether his guest had lost any
friend or kinsman at Troy, that Demodocus' singing
had brought into his mind. Then Ulysses, drying the
tears with his cloak, and observing that the eyes of all
the company were upon him, desirous to give them
satisfaction in what he could, and thinking this a fit
time to reveal his true name and destination, spake as
follows:
"The courtesies which ye all have shown me, and
in particular yourself and princely daughter, O King
Alcinous! demand from me that I should no longer
keep you in ignorance of what or who I am; for to
reserve any secret from you, who have with such openness of friendship embraced my love, would argue
either a pusillanimous or an ungrateful mind in me.
Know, then, that I am that Ulysses, of whom I perceive
ye have heard something; who heretofore have filled the
world with the renown of my policies. I am he, by
whose counsels, if Fame is to be believed at all, more
than by the united valor of all the Grecians, Troy fell.
I am that unhappy man whom the heavens and angry
gods have conspired to keep an exile on the seas, wandering to seek my home, which still flies from me. The
land which I am in quest of is Ithaca; in whose ports
some ship belonging to your navigation-famed Pheacian
state may haply at some time have found a refuge from
tempests. If ever you have experienced such kindness,
19




290        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
requite it now, by granting to me, who am the king
of that land, a passport to that land."
Admiration seized all the court of Alcinous to behold
in their presence one of the number of those heroes who
fought at Troy; whose divine story had been made
known to them by songs and poems, but of the truth
they had little known, or rather they had hitherto accounted those heroic exploits as fictions and exaggerations of poets: but, having seen and made proof of the
real Ulysses, they began to take those supposed inventions to be real verities, and the tale of Troy to be as
true as it was delightful.
Then King Alcinous made answer: " Thrice fortunate
ought we to esteem our lot in having seen and conversed with a man of whom report hath spoken so loudly,
but, as it seems, nothing beyond the truth. Though
we could desire no felicity greater than to have you
always among us, renowned Ulysses, yet, your desire
having been expressed so often and so deeply to return
home, we can deny you nothing, though to our own
loss. Our kingdom of Phaeacia, as you know, is chiefly
rich in shipping. In all parts of the world, where there
are navigable seas, or ships can pass, our vessels will
be found. You cannot name a coast to which they do
not resort. Every rock and every quicksand is known
to them, that lurks in the vast deep. They pass a bird
in flight; and with such unerring certainty they make
to their destination, that some have said that they have
no need of pilot or rudder, but that they move instinctively, self-directed, and know the minds of their
voyagers. Thus much, that you may not fear to trust
yourself in one of our Phbacian ships. To-morrow, if




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         291
you please, you shall launch forth. To-day spend with
us in feasting, who never can do enough when the gods
send such visitors."
Ulysses acknowledged King Alcinous' bounty; and,
while these two royal personages stood interchanging
courteous expressions, the heart of the Princess Nausicaa
was overcome. She had been gazing attentively upon
her father's guest, as he delivered his speech: but, when
he came to that part where he declared himself to be
Ulysses, she blessed herself, and her fortune, that in
relieving a poor shipwrecked mariner, as he seemed no
better, she had conferred a kindness on so divine a hero
as he proved; and, scarce waiting till her father had
done speaking, with a cheerful countenance she addressed
Ulysses, bidding him be cheerful, and when he returned
home, as by her father's means she trusted he would
shortly, sometimes to remember to whom he owed his
life, and who met him in the woods by the river Callicoe.
"Fair flower of Phtacia," he replied, "so may all
the gods bless me with the strife of joys in that desired
day, whenever I shall see it, as I shall always acknowledge to be indebted to your fair hand for the gift of life
which I enjoy, and all the blessings which shall follow
upon my home-return. The gods give thee, Nausicaa,
a princely husband; and from you two spring blessings
to this state."  So prayed Ulysses, his heart overflowing with admiration and grateful recollections of King
Alcinous' daughter.
Then, at the king's request, he gave them a brief
relation of all the adventures that had befallen him
since he launched forth from Troy: during which the




292        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
Princess Nausicaa took great delight (as ladies are commonly taken with these kind of travellers' stories) to
hear of the monster Polyphemus, of the men that devour
each other in Loastrygonia, of the enchantress Circe,
of Scylla, and the rest; to which she listened with a
breathless attention, letting fall a shower of tears from
her fair eyes, every now and then, when Ulysses told of
some more than usual distressful passage in his travels:
and all the rest of his auditors, if they had before entertained a high respect for their guest, now felt their
veneration increased tenfold, when they learned from
his own mouth what perils, what sufferance, what endurance, of evils beyond man's strength to support,
this much-sustaining, almost heavenly man, by the greatness of his mind and by his invincible courage, had
struggled through.
The night was far spent before Ulysses had ended
his narrative: and with wishful glances he cast his eyes
towards the eastern parts, which the sun had begun to
flecker with his first red; for, on the morrow, Alcinous
had promised that a bark should be in readiness to
convoy him to Ithaca.
In the morning, a vessel well manned and appointed
was waiting for him; into which the king and queen
heaped presents of gold and silver, massy plate, apparel,
armor, and whatsoever things of cost or rarity they
judged would be most acceptable to their guest: and,
the sails being set, Ulysses, embarking with expressions
of regret, took his leave of his royal entertainers, of the
fair princess (who had been his first friend), and of
the peers of Phkeacia; who, crowding down to the beach
to have the last sight of their illustrious visitant, beheld




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         293
the gallant ship with all her canvas spread, bounding
and curvetting over the waves like a horse proud of
his rider, or as if she knew that in her capacious womb's
rich freightage she bore Ulysses.
He whose life past had been a series of disquiets, in
seas among rude waves, in battles amongst ruder foes,
now slept securely, forgetting all; his eyelids bound in
such deep sleep as only yielded to death: and, when
they reached the nearest Ithacan port by the next morning, he was still asleep. The mariners, not willing to
awake him, landed him softly, and laid him in a cave at
the foot of an olive-tree, which made a shady recess in
that narrow harbor, the haunt of almost none but the
sea-nymphs, which are called Naiads; few ships before
this Phaeacian vessel having put into that haven, by
reason of the difficulty and narrowness of the entrance.
Here leaving him asleep, and disposing in safe places
near him the presents with which King Alcinous had
dismissed him, they departed for Phaeacia, where these
wretched mariners never again set foot: but just as
they arrived, and thought to salute their country earth,in sight of their city's turrets, and in open view of their
friends, who from the harbor with shouts greeted their
return, - their vessel and all the mariners which were in
her were turned to stone, and stood transformed and
fixed in sight of the whole Phaeacian city; where it yet
stands, by Neptune's vindictive wrath, who resented
thus highly the contempt which those Pheacians had
shown in convoying home a man whom the god had
destined to destruction. Whence it comes to pass, that
the Phaeacians at this day will at no price be induced
to lend their ships to strangers, or to become the car



294        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
riers for other nations, so highly do they still dread the
displeasure of their sea-god, while they see that terrible
monument ever in sight.
When Ulysses awoke (which was not till some time
after the mariners had departed), he did not at first
know his country again; either that long absence had
made it strange, or that Minerva (which was more
likely) had cast a cloud about his eyes, that he should
have greater pleasure hereafter in discovering his mistake: but like a man suddenly awaking in some desert
isle, to which his sea-mates have transported him in his
sleep, he looked around, and, discerning no known objects, he cast his hands to heaven for pity, and complained on those ruthless men who had beguiled him
with a promise of conveying him home to his country,
and perfidiously left him to perish in an unknown land.
But then the rich presents of gold and silver given him
by Alcinous, which he saw carefully laid up in secure
places near him, staggered him; which seemed not like
the act of wrongful or unjust men, such as turn pirates
for gain, or land helpless passengers in remote coasts to
possess themselves of their goods.
While he remained in this suspense, there came up to
him a young shepherd, clad in the finer sort of apparel,
such as kings' sons wore in those days when princes
did not disdain to tend sheep; who, accosting him, was
saluted again by Ulysses, who asked him what country
that was on which he had -been just landed, and
whether it were part of a continent or an island. The
young shepherd made show of wonder to hear any one
ask the name of that land; as country people are apt
to esteem those for mainly ignorant and barbarous who




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.       295
do not know the names of places which are familiar to
them, though perhaps they who ask have had no opportunities of knowing, and may have come from far
countries.
"I had thought," said he, "that all people knew our
land. It is rocky and barren, to be sure; but well
enough: it feeds a goat or an ox well; it is not wanting either in wine or in wheat; it has good springs of
water, some fair rivers, and wood enough, as you may
see. It is called Ithaca."
Ulysses was joyed enough to find himself in his own
country: but so prudently he carried his joy, that, dissembling his true name and quality, he pretended to the
shepherd that he was only some foreigner who by stress
of weather had put into that port; and framed on the
sudden a story to make it plausible how he had come
from Crete in a ship of Phaeacia: when the young
shepherd, laughing, and taking Ulysses' hand in both
his, said to him, "He must be cunning, I find, who
thinks to overreach you. What! cannot you quit your
wiles and your subtleties, now that you are in a state
of security? must the first word with which you salute
your native earth be an untruth? and think you that
you are unknown?"
Ulysses looked again; and he saw, not a shepherd,
but a beautiful woman, whom he immediately knew to
be the goddess Minerva, that in the wars of Troy had
frequently vouchsafed her sight to him; and had been
with him since in perils, saving him unseen.
" Let not my ignorance offend thee, great Minerva,"
he cried, " or move thy displeasure, that in that shape
I knew thee not; since the skill of discerning of deities




296        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
is not attainable by wit or study, but hard to be hit by
the wisest of mortals. To know thee truly, through all
thy changes, is only given to those whom thou art
pleased to grace.  To all men thou takest all likenesses. All men in their wits think that they know
thee, and that they have thee. Thou art Wisdom itself.
But a semblance of thee, which is false wisdom, often
is taken for thee; so thy counterfeit view appears to
many, but thy true presence to few: those are they,
which, loving thee above all, are inspired with light
from thee to know thee. But this I surely know, that,
all the time the sons of Greece waged war against Troy,
I was sundry times graced with thy appearance; but,
since, I have never been able to set eyes upon thee
till now, but have wandered at my own discretion, to
myself a blind guide, erring up and down the world,
wanting thee."
Then Minerva cleared his eyes, and he knew the
ground on which he stood to be Ithaca, and that cave
to be the same which the people of Ithaca had in former
times made sacred to the sea-nymphs, and where he
himself had done sacrifices to them a thousand times;
and full in his view stood Mount Nerytus, with all his
woods: so that now he knew for a certainty that he was
arrived in his own country; and, with the delight which
he felt, he could not forbear stooping down, and kissing
the soil.




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         297
CHAPTER  VIII.
THE CHANG;E FROM A KING TO A BEGGAR. - ]EUMEUS AND THE HERDSMEN
TELEMACHUS.
NOT long did Minerva suffer him to indulge vain
transports; but, briefly recounting to him the events
which had taken place in Ithaca during his absence, she
showed him that his way to his wife and throne did not
lie so open, but that, before he were re-instated in the
secure possession of them, he must encounter many
difficulties. His palace, wanting its king, was become
the resort of insolent and imperious men, the chief
nobility of Ithaca and of the neighboring isles, who, in
the confidence of Ulysses being dead, came as suitors to
Penelope. The queen (it was true) continued single,
but was little better than a state-prisoner in the power
of these men, who, under a pretence of waiting her decision, occupied the king's house, rather as owners than
guests, lording and domineering at their pleasure, profaning the palace, and wasting the royal substance,
with their feasts and mad riots. Moreover, the goddess
told him, how, fearing the attempts of these lawless men
upon the person of his young son Telemachus, she herself had put it into the heart of the prince to go and
seek his father in far countries; how, in the shape of
Mentor, she had borne him company in his long search;
which though failing, as she meant it should fail, in its
first object, had yet had this effect, - that through hardships he had learned endurance; through experience he




298        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
had gathered wisdom; and, wherever his footsteps had
been, he had left such memorials of his worth, as the fame
of Ulysses' son was already blown throughout the world.
That it was now not many days since Telemachus had
arrived in the island, to the great joy of the queen, his
mother, who had thought him dead, by reason of his long
absence, and had begun to mourn for him with a grief
equal to that which she endured for Ulysses; the goddess herself having so ordered the course of his adventures, that the time of his return should correspond
with the return of Ulysses, that they might together
concert measures how to repress the power and insolence of those wicked suitors. This the goddess told
him; but of the particulars of his son's adventures, of
his having been detained in the Delightful Island, which
his father had so lately left, of Calypso and her nymphs,
and the many strange occurrences which may be read
with profit and delight in the history of the prince's
adventures, she forbore to tell him as yet, as judging
that he would hear them with greater pleasure from the
lips of his son, when he should have him in an hour of
stillness and safety, when their work should be done,
and none of their enemies left alive to trouble them.
Then they sat down, the goddess and Ulysses, at the
foot of a wild olive-tree, consulting how they might
with safety bring about his restoration. And when
Ulysses revolved in his mind how that his enemies were
a multitude, and he single, he began to despond; and
he said, " I shall die an ill death, like Agamemnon: in
the threshold of my own house I shall perish, like that
unfortunate monarch, slain by some one of my wife's
suitors." But then, again, calling to mind his ancient




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         299
courage, he secretly wished that Minerva would but
breathe such a spirit into his bosom as she inflamed
him with in the hour of Troy's destruction, that he
might encounter with three hundred of those impudent
suitors at once, and strew the pavements of his beautiful
palace with their bloods and brains.
And Minerva knew his thoughts; and she said, "I
will be strongly with thee, if thou fail not to do thy
part. And for a sign between us that I will perform
my promise, and for a token on thy part of obedience,
I must change thee, that thy person may not be known
of men. "
Then Ulysses bowed his head to receive the divine
impression; and Minerva, by her great power, changed
his person so that it might not be known. She changed
him to appearance into a very old man, yet such a one
as by his limbs and gait seemed to have been some
considerable person in his time, and to retain yet some
remains of his once prodigious strength. Also, instead
of those rich robes in which King Alcinous had clothed
him, she threw over his limbs such old and tattered rags
as wandering beggars usually wear. A staff supported
his steps, and a scrip hung to his back, such as travel
ling mendicants use to hold the scraps which are given
to them at rich men's doors. So from a king he became
a beggar, as wise Tiresias had predicted to him in the
shades.
To complete his humiliation, and to prove his obedience by suffering, she next directed him in this beggarly
attire to go and present himself to his old herdsman,
Eumaeus, who had the care of his swine and his cattle,
and had been a faithful steward to him all the time of




300        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
his absence. Then, strictly charging Ulysses that he
should reveal himself to no man but to his own son,
whom she would send to him when she saw occasion,
the goddess went her way.
The transformed Ulysses bent his course to the cottage of the herdsman; and, entering in at the front court,
the dogs, of which Eumoeus kept many fierce ones for
the protection of the cattle, flew with open mouths upon
him, as those ignoble animals have oftentimes an antipathy to the sight of any thing like a beggar; and
would have rent him in pieces with their teeth, if Ulysses had not had the prudence to let fall his staff, which
had chiefly provoked their fury, and sat himself down
in a careless fashion upon the ground. But, for all that,
some serious hurt had certainly been done to him, so
raging the dogs were, had not the herdsman, whom the
barking of the dogs had fetched out of the house, with
shouting and with throwing of stones repressed them.
He said, when he saw Ulysses, "Old father, how
near you were to being torn in pieces by these rude
dogs! I should never have forgiven myself, if, through
neglect of mine, any hurt had happened to you. But
Heaven has given me so many cares to my portion, that
I might well be excused for not attending to every
thing; while here I lie grieving and mourning for the
absence of that majesty which once ruled here, and am
forced to fatten his swine and his cattle for food to evil
men, who hate him, and who wish his death; when he
perhaps strays up and down the world, and has not
wherewith to appease hunger, if indeed he yet lives
(which is a question), and enjoys the cheerful light of
the sun." This he said, little thinking that he of whom




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         301
he spoke now stood before him, and that in that uncouth disguise and beggarly obscurity was present the
hidden majesty of Ulysses.
Then he had his guest into the house, and set meat
and drink before him; and Ulysses said, " May Jove and
all the other gods requite you for the kind speeches and
hospitable usage which you have shown me! "
Eumseus made answer, "My poor guest, if one in
much worse plight than yourself had arrived here, it
were a shame to such scanty means as I have, if I had
let him depart without entertaining him to the best of
my ability. Poor men, and such as have no houses
of their own, are by Jove himself recommended to our
care. But the cheer which we that are servants to
other men have to bestow is but sorry at most; yet
freely and lovingly I give it you. Indeed, there once
ruled here a man, whose return the gods have set their
faces against, who, if he had been suffered to reign in
peace and grow old among us, would have been kind to
me and mine. But he is gone; and, for his sake, would
to God that the whole posterity of Helen might perish
with her, since in her quarrel so many worthies have
perished! But such as your fare is, eat it, and be welcome; such lean beasts as are food for poor herdsmen.
The fattest go to feed the voracious stomachs of the
queen's suitors. Shame on their unworthiness! There
is no day in which two or three of the noblest of the
herd are not slain to support their feasts and their surfeits."
Ulysses gave good ear to his words; and, as he ate
his meat, he even tore it and rent it with his teeth, for
mere vexation that his fat cattle should be slain to glut




302        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
the appetites of those godless suitors. And he said,
" What chief or what ruler is this that thou commendest
so highly, and sayest that he perished at Troy? I am
but a stranger in these parts. It may be I have heard
of some such in my long travels."
Eumaeus answered, " Old father, never any one, of
all the strangers that have come to our coast with news
of Ulysses being alive, could gain credit with the queen
or her son yet. These travellers, to get raiment or a
meal, will not stick to invent any lie. Truth is not the
commodity they deal in. Never did the queen get any
thing of them but lies. She receives all that come,
graciously; hears their stories, inquires all she can; but
all ends in tears and dissatisfaction.  But in God's
name, old father, if you have got a tale, make the most
on't; it may gain you a cloak or a coat from somebody
to keep you warm: but, for him who is the subject of
it, dogs and vultures long since have torn him limb
from limb, or some great fish at sea has devoured him,
or he lieth with no better monument upon his bones
than the sea-sand. But for me past all the race of men
were tears created; for I never shall find so kind a
royal master more: not if my father or my mother
could come again, and visit me from the tomb, would
my eyes be so blessed as they should be with the sight
of him again, coming as from the dead. In his last
rest my soul shall love him. He is not here, nor do I
name him as a flatterer, but because I am thankful for
his love and care which he had to me, a poor man; and,
if I knew surely that he were past all shores that the
sun shines upon, I would invoke him as a deified thing."
For this saying of Eumaeus the waters stood in Ulys



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        303
ses' eyes; and he said, " My friend, to say and to affirm
positively that he cannot be alive is to give too much
license to incredulity. For, not to speak at random,
but with as much solemnity as an oath comes to, I say
to you, that Ulysses shall return; and whenever that day
shall be, then shall you give to me a cloak and a coat;
but till then I will not receive so much as a thread of
a garment, but rather go naked: for no less than the
gates of hell do I hate that man whom poverty can
force to tell an untruth. Be Jove, then, witness to my
words, that this very year, nay, ere this month be fully
ended, your eyes shall behold Ulysses dealing vengeance in his own palace upon the wrongers of his wife
and his son."
To give the better credence to his words, he amused
Eumaeus with a forged story of his life; feigning of
himself that he was a Cretan born, and one that went
with Idomeneus to the wars of Troy. Also he said
that he knew Ulysses, and related various passages
which he alleged to have happened betwixt Ulysses and
himself; which were either true in the main, as having
really happened between Ulysses and some other person,
or were so like to truth, as corresponding with the
known character and actions of Ulysses, that Eumseus'
incredulity was not a little shaken.  Among other
things, he asserted that he had lately been entertained
in the court of Thesprotia, where the king's son of the
country had told him that Ulysses had been there but
just before him, and was gone upon a voyage to the
oracle of Jove in Dodona, whence he should shortly
return, and a ship would be ready by the bounty of the
Thesprotians to convoy him straight to Ithaca.  " And,




304        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
in token that what I tell you is true," said Ulysses, " if
your king come not within the period which I have
named, you shall have leave to give your servants commandment to take my old carcass, and throw it headlong from some steep rock into the sea, that poor men,
talking example by me, may fear to lie." But Eumoeus
made answer, that that should be small satisfaction or
pleasure to him.
So, while they sat discoursing in this manner, supper
was served in; and the servants of the herdsman, who
had been out all day in the fields, came in to supper,
and took their seats at the fire; for the night was bitter
and frosty.  After supper, Ulysses, who had well
eaten and drunken, and was refreshed with the herdsman's good cheer, was resolved to try whether his host's
hospitality would extend to the lending him a good
warm mantle or rug to cover him in the night season;
and, framing an artful tale for the purpose, in a merry
mood, filling a cup of Greek wine, he thus began:" I will tell you a story of your king Ulysses and
myself. If there is ever a time when a man may have
leave to tell his own stories, it is when he has drunken
a little too much. Strong liquor driveth the fool, and
moves even the heart of the wise, - moves and impels
him to sing and to dance, and break forth in pleasant
laughters, and perchance to prefer a speech too, which
were better kept in. When the heart is open, the
tongue will be stirring. But you shall hear. We led
our powers to ambush once under the walls of Troy."
The herdsmen crowded about him, eager to hear any
thing which related to their king Ulysses and the wars
of Troy; and thus he went on:



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        305
"I remember Ulysses and Menelaus had the direction of that enterprise; and they were pleased to join
me with them in the command. I was at that time in
some repute among men; though fortune has played me
a trick since, as you may perceive. But I was somebody in those times, and could do something. Be that
as it may, a bitter freezing night it was, — such a night
as this: the air cut like steel, and the sleet gathered on
our shields like crystal. There were some twenty of us,
that lay close couched down among the reeds and bulrushes that grew in the moat that goes round the city.
The rest of us made tolerable shift; for every man had
been careful to bring with him a good cloak or mantle.
to wrap over his armor and keep himself warm: but I,
as it chanced, had left my cloak behind me, as not expecting that the night would prove so cool; or rather, I
believe, because I had at that time a brave suit of new
armor on, which, being a soldier, and having some of
the soldier's vice about me, - vanity, - I was not willing should be hidden under a cloak. But I paid for my
indiscretion with my sufferings; for with the inclement
night, and the wet of the ditch in which we lay, I was
well-nigh frozen to death: and, when I could endure no
longer, I jogged Ulysses, who was next to me, and had
a nimble ear, and made known my case to him, assuring him that I must inevitably perish. He answered, in
a low whisper,' Hush! lest any Greek should hear you,
and take notice of your softness.' Not a word more he
said, but showed as if he had no pity for the plight I
was in. But he was as considerate as he was brave;
and even then, as he lay with his head reposing upon
his hand, he was meditating how to relieve me, without
20




306        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
exposing my weakness to the soldiers. At last, raising
up his head, he made as if he had been asleep, and said,' Friends, I have been warned in a dream to send to the
fleet to King Agamemnon for a supply, to recruit our
numbers; for we are not sufficient for this enterprise:'
and, they believing him, one Thoas was despatched on
that errand, who departing, for more speed, as Ulysses
had foreseen, left his upper garment behind him, a good
warm mantle, to which I succeeded, and, by the help of
it, got through the night with credit. This shift Ulysses
made for one in need; and would to Heaven that I had
now that strength in my limbs which made me in those
days to be accounted fit to be a leader under Ulysses!
I should not then want the loan of a cloak or a mantle to wrap about me, and shield my old limbs from the
night-air."
The tale pleased the herdsmen; and Eumaeus, who
more than all the rest was gratified to hear tales of
Ulysses, true or false, said, that for his story he deserved
a mantle and a night's lodging, which he should have;
and he spread for him a bed of goat and sheep skins by
the fire: and the seeming beggar, who was indeed the
true Ulysses, lay down and slept under that poor roof,
in that abject disguise to which the will of Minerva had
subjected him.
When morning was come, Ulysses made offer to
depart, as if he were not willing to burthen his host's
hospitality any longer, but said that he would go and try
the humanity of the town's folk, if any there would
bestow upon him a bit of bread or a cup of drink.
Perhaps the queen's suitors (he said) out of their full
feasts would bestow a scrap on him: for he could wait




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         307
at table, if need were, and play the nimble serving-man;
he could fetch wood (he said) or build a fire, prepare
roast meat or boiled, mix the wine with water, or do
any of those offices which recommended poor men like
him to services in great men's houses.
"Alas! poor guest," said Eumoeus, " you know not
what you speak. What should so poor and old man as
you do at the suitors' tables? Their light minds are
not given to such grave servitors. They must have
youths, richly tricked out in flowing vests, with curled
hair, like so many of Jove's cup-bearers, to fill out the
wine to them as they sit at table, and to shift their
trenchers. Their gorged insolence would but despise
and make a mock at thy age. Stay here. Perhaps the
queen or Telemachus, hearing of thy arrival, may send
to thee of their bounty."
As he spake these words, the steps of one crossing
the front court were heard, and a noise of the dogs
fawning and leaping about as for joy: by which token
Eummeus guesed that it was the prince, who, hearing of
a traveller being arrived at Eumoeus' cottage that
brought tidings of his father, was come to search the
truth; and Eumtus said, "It is the tread of Telemachus, the son of King Ulysses." Before he could well
speak the words, the prince was at the door; whom
Ulysses rising to receive, Telemachus would not suffer
that so aged a man as he appeared should rise to do
respect to him; but he courteously and reverently took
him by the hand, and inclined his head to him, as if he
had surely known that it was his father indeed: but
Ulysses covered his eyes with his hands, that he might
not show the waters which stood in them. And Tele



308        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
machus said, " Is this the man who can tell us tidings
of the king, my father?"
"He brags himself to be a Cretan born," said
Eumeus, " and that he has been a soldier and a traveller; but whether he speak the truth or not, he alone
can tell. But, whatsoever he has been, what he is now
is apparent. Such as he appears, I give him to you;
do what you will with him: his boast at present is that
he is at the very best a supplicant."
"Be he what he may," said Telemachus, "I accept
him at your hands. But where I should bestow him I
know not, seeing that, in the palace, his age would not
exempt him from the scorn and contempt which my
mother's suitors in their light minds would be sure to
fling upon him: a mercy if he escaped without blows;
for they are a company of evil men, whose profession is
wrongs and violence."
Ulysses answered, " Since it is free for any man to
speak in presence of your greatness, I must say that
my heart puts on a wolfish inclination to tear and to
devour, hearing your speech, that these suitors should
with such injustice rage, where you should have the rule
solely. What should the cause be?  Do you wilfully
give way to their ill manners? or has your government
been such as has procured ill-will towards you from your
people? or do you mistrust your kinsfolk and friends
in such sort, as, without trial, to decline their aid?
A man's kindred are they that he might trust to when
extremities run high."
Telemachus replied, "The kindred of Ulysses are
few. I have no brothers to assist me in the strife. But
the suitors are powerful in kindred and friends. The




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        309
house of old Arcesius has had this fate from the heavens, that from old it still has been supplied with single
heirs. To Arcesius, Laertes only was born; from Laertes decended only Ulysses; from Ulysses, I alone have
sprung, whom he left so young, that from me never
comfort arose to him. But the end of all rests in the
hands of the gods."
Then, Eumveus departing to see to some necessary
business of his herds, Minerva took a woman's shape,
and stood in the entry of the door, and was seen to
Ulysses: but by his son she was not seen; for the presences of the gods are invisible save to those to whom
they will to reveal themselves. Nevertheless, the dogs
which were about the door saw the goddess, and durst
not bark, but went crouching and licking of the dust
for fear. And, giving signs to Ulysses that the time
was now come in which he should make himself known
to his son, by her great power she changed back his
shape into the same which it was before she transformed
him; and Telemachus, who saw the change, but nothing
of the manner by which it was effected, only he saw
the appearance of a king in the vigor of his age where
but just now he had seen a worn and decrepit beggar,
was struck with fear, and said, " Some god has done
this house this honor;" and he turned away his eyes,
and would have worshipped. But his father permitted
not, but said, " Look better at me. I am no deity: why
put you upon me the reputation of godhead? I am no
more but thy father: I am even he. I am that Ulysses,
by reason of whose absence thy youth has been exposed
to such wrongs from injurious men." Then kissed he
his son, nor could any longer refrain those tears which




310        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
he had held under such mighty restraint before, though
they would ever be forcing themselves out in spite of
him; but now, as if their sluices had burst, they came
out like rivers, pouring upon the warm cheeks of his
son. Nor yet by all these violent arguments could
Telemachus be persuaded to believe that it was his
father, but he said some deity had taken that shape to
mock him; for he affirmed, that it was not in the power
of any man, who is sustained by mortal food, to change
his shape so in a moment from age to youth: for " but
now," said he, "you were all wrinkles, and were old;
and now you look as the gods are pictured."
His father replied, "Admire, but fear not, and know
me to be at all parts substantially thy father, who in
the inner powers of his mind, and the unseen workings
of a father's love to thee, answers to his outward shape
and pretence. There shall no more Ulysseses come here.
I am he, that after twenty years' absence, and suffering
a world of ill, have recovered at last the sight of my
country earth. It was the will of Minerva that I should
be changed as you saw me. She put me thus together:
she puts together or takes to pieces whom she pleases.
It is in the law of her free power to do it, - sometimes
to show her favorites under a cloud, and poor, and again
to restore to them their ornaments. The gods raise
and throw down men with ease."
Then Telemachus could hold out no longer: but he
gave way now to a full belief and persuasion of that
which for joy at first he could not credit, - that it was
indeed his true and very father that stood before him;
and they embraced, and mingled their tears.
Then said Ulysses, "Tell me who these suitors are,




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        311
what are their numbers, and how stands the queen thy
mother affected to them."
"She bears them still in expectation," said Telemachus, "which she never means to fulfil, that she will
accept the hand of some one of them in second nuptials;
for she fears to displease them by an absolute refusal.
So from day to day she lingers them on with hope,
which they are content to bear the deferring of, while
they have entertainment at free cost in our palace."
Then said Ulysses, "Reckon up their numbers, that
we may know their strength and ours, if we, having
none but ourselves, may hope to prevail against them."
"O father!" he replied, "I have ofttimes heard of
your fame for wisdom, and of the great strength of your
arm; but the venturous mind which your speeches now
indicate moves me even to amazement: for in no wise
can it consist with wisdom or a sound mind, that two
should try their strengths against a host. Nor five, or
ten, or twice ten strong, are these suitors, but many
more by much: from Dulichium came there fifty and
two, they and their servants; twice twelve crossed the
seas hither from Samos; from Zacynthus, twice ten; of
our native Ithacans, men of chief note, are twelve who
aspire to the bed and crown of Penelope; and all these!under one strong roof, -a fearful odds against two! My
father, there is need of caution, lest the cup which your
great mind so thirsts to taste of vengeance prove bitter
to yourself in the drinking; and therefore it were well
that we should bethink us of some one who might assist
us in this undertaking."
" Thinkest thou," said his father, " if we had Minerva
and the king of skies to be our friends, would their




312        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
sufficiencies make strong our part? or must we look out
for some further aid yet?"
"They you speak of are above the clouds," said Telemachus, "and are sound aids indeed, as powers that
not only exceed human, but bear the chiefest sway
among the gods themselves."
Then Ulysses gave directions to his son to go and
mingle with the suitors, and in no wise to impart his
secret to any,.- not even to the queen, his mother; but
to hold himself in readiness, and to have his weapons and
his good armor in preparation. And he charged him,
that when he himself should come to the palace, as he
meant to follow shortly after, and present himself in his
beggar's likeness to the suitors, that whatever he should
see which might grieve his heart, with what foul usage and
contumelious language soever the suitors should receive
his father, coming in that shape, though they should
strike and drag him by the heels along the floors, that
he should not stir nor make offer to oppose them, further than by mild words to expostulate with them, until
Minerva from heaven should give the sign which should
be the prelude to their destruction. And Telemachus,
promising to obey his instructions, departed: and the
shape of Ulysses fell to what it had been before; and he
became to all outward appearance a beggar, in base and
beggarly attire.




rHE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         313
CHAPTER IX.
THE QUEEN'S SUITORS. - THE BATTLE OF THE BEGGARS. —THE ARMOR
TAKEN DOWN. -THE MEETING WITH PENELOPE.
FROM the house of Eummeus the seeming beggar took
his way, leaning on his staff, till he reached the palace;
entering in at the hall where the suitors sat at meat.
They, in the pride of their feasting, began to break their
jests in mirthful manner when they saw one looking
so poor and so aged approach. He, who expected no
better entertainment, was nothing moved at their behavior; but, as became the character which he had
assumed, in a suppliant posture crept by turns to every
suitor, and held out his hands for some charity, with
such a natural and beggar-resembling grace, that he
might seem to have practised begging all his life: yet
there was a sort of dignity in his most abject stoopings,
that whoever had seen him would have said, " If it had
pleased Heaven that this poor man had been born a
king, he would gracefully have filled a throne." And
some pitied him, and some gave him alms, as their
present humors inclined them; but the greater part reviled him, and bade him begone, as one that spoiled
their feast: for the presence of misery has this power
with it, — that, while it stays, it can dash and overturn
the mirth even of those who feel no pity, or wish to
relieve it; Nature bearing this witness of herself in the
hearts of the most obdurate.
Now, Telemachus sat at meat with the suitors, and
knew that it was the king, his father, who in that shape




314        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
begged an alms; and when his father came and presented himself before him in turn, as he had done to the
suitors one by one, he gave him of his own meat which
he had in his dish, and of his own cup to drink: and
the suitors were past measure offended to see a pitiful
beggar, as they esteemed him, to be so choicely regarded
by the prince.
Thef Antinous, who was a great lord, and of chief
note among the suitors, said, "Prince Telemachus does
ill to encourage these wandering beggars, who go from
place to place, affirming that they have been some considerable persons in their time; filling the ears of such as
hearken to them with lies, and pressing with their bold
feet into kings' palaces. This is some saucy vagabond,
some travelling Egyptian."
"I see," said Ulysses, "that a poor man should get
but little at your board: scarce should he get salt from
your hands, if he brought his own meat."
Lord Antinous, indignant to be answered with such
sharpness by a supposed beggar, snatched up a stool,
with which he smote Ulysses where the neck and shoulders join. This usage moved not Ulysses: but in his
great heart he meditated deep evils to come upon them
all, which for a time must be kept close; and he went
and sat himself down in the doorway to eat of that
which was given him; and he said, " For life or possessions a man will fight; but for his belly this man smites.
If a poor man has any god to take his part, my Lord
Antinous shall not live to be the queen's husband."
Then Antinous raged highly, and threatened to drag
him by the heels, and to rend his rags about his ears,
if he spoke another word.




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        315
But the other suitors did in no wise approve of the
harsh language, nor of the blow which Antinous had
dealt; and some of them said, "Who knows but one
of the deities goes about, hid under that poor disguise?
for, in the likeness of poor pilgrims, the gods have many
times descended to try the dispositions of men, whether
they be humane or impious." While these things
passed, Telemachus sat and observed all, but held his
peace, remembering the instructions of his father. But
secretly he waited for the sign which Minerva was to
send from heaven.
That day, there followed Ulysses to the court one of
the common sort of beggars, Irus by name, - one that
had received alms before-time of the suitors, and was
their ordinary sport, when they were inclined (as that
day) to give way to mirth, to see him eat and drink;
for he had the appetite of six men, and was of huge
stature and proportions of body, yet had in him no
spirit nor courage of a man. This man, thinking to
curry favor with the suitors, and recommend himself
especially to such a great lord as Antinous was, began
to revile and scorn Ulysses, putting foul language upon
him, and fairly challenging him to fight with the fist.
But Ulysses, deeming his railings to be nothing more
than jealousy, and that envious disposition which beggars
commonly manifest to brothers in their trade, mildly
besought him not to trouble him, but to enjoy that portion which the liberality of their entertainers gave him,
as he did, quietly; seeing that, of their bounty, there
was sufficient for all.
But Irus, thinking that this forbearance in Ulysses
was nothing more than a sign of fear, so much the more




316        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
highly stormed and bellowed, and provoked him  to
fight: and by this time the quarrel had attracted the
notice of the suitors, who with loud laughters and shouting egged on the dispute; and Lord Antinous swore by
all the gods it should be a battle, and that in that hall
the strife should be determined. To this the rest of the
suitors, with violent clamors, acceded; and a circle was
made for the combatants, and a fat goat was proposed
as the victor's prize, as at the Olympic or the Pythian
games. Then Ulysses, seeing no remedy, or being not
unwilling that the suitors should behold some proof of
that strength which ere long in their own persons they
were to taste of, stripped himself, and prepared for the
combat. But first he demanded that he should have
fair play shown him; that none in that assembly should
aid his opponent, or take part against him: for, being
an old man, they might easily crush him with their
strengths. And Telemachus passed his word that no
foul play should be shown him, but that each party
should be left to their own unassisted strengths; and to
this he made Antinous and the rest of the suitors
swear.
But when Ulysses had laid aside his garments, and
was bare to the waist, all the beholders admired at the
goodly sight of his large shoulders being of such exquisite shape and whiteness, and at his great and brawny
bosom, and the youthful strength which seemed to
remain in a man thought so old; and they said, " What
limbs and what sinews he has I" and coward fear seized
on the mind of that great vast beggar, and he dropped
his threats and his big words, and would have fled: but
Lord Antinous stayed him, and threatened him, that, if




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        317
he declined the combat, he would put him in a ship, and
land him on the shores where King Echetus reigned, -
the roughest tyrant which at that time the world contained, and who had that antipathy to rascal beggars
such as he, that, when any landed on his coast, he would
crop their ears and noses, and give them to the dogs to
tear.  So Irus, in whom fear of King Echetus prevailed
above the fear of Ulysses, addressed himself to fight.
But Ulysses, provoked to be engaged in so odious a
strife with a fellow of his base conditions, and loathing
longer to be made a spectacle to entertain the eyes of
his foes, with one blow, which he struck him beneath
the ear, so shattered the teeth and jaw-bone of this
soon-baffled coward, that he laid him sprawling in the
dust, with small stomach or ability to renew the contest. Then, raising him on his feet, he led him bleeding
and sputtering to the door, and put his staff into his
hand, and bade him go use his command upon dogs and
swine, but not presume himself to be lord of the guests
another time, nor of the beggary I
The suitors applauded in their vain minds the issue
of the contest, and rioted in mirth at the expense of
poor Irus, who they vowed should be forthwith embarked, and sent to King Echetus; and they bestowed
thanks on Ulysses for ridding the court of that unsavory
morsel, as they called him: but in their inward souls
they would not have cared if Irus had been victor, and
Ulysses had taken the foil; but it was mirth to them to
see the beggars fight.  In such pastimes and light
entertainments the day wore away.
When evening was come, the suitors betook themselves to music and dancing; and Ulysses leaned his




318        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES,
back against a pillar from which certain lamps hung
which gave light to the dancers, and he made show of
watching the dancers; but very different thoughts were
in his head. And, as he stood near the lamps, the light
fell upon his head, which was thin of hair, and bald, as
an old man's.  And Eurymachus, a suitor, taking
occasion from some words which were spoken before,
scoffed, and said, " Now I know for a certainty that some
god lurks under the poor and beggarly appearance of
this man; for, as he stands by the lamps, his sleek head
throws beams around it, like as it were a glory." And
another said, "He passes his time, too, not much
unlike the gods; lazily living exempt from labor, taking offerings of men."-" I warrant," said Eurymachus again, " he could not raise a fence or dig a ditch
for his livelihood, if a man would hire him to work in
a garden."
"I wish," said Ulysses, "that you who speak this,
and myself, were to be tried at any task-work; that I
had a good crooked scythe put in my hand, that was
sharp and strong, and you such another, where the
grass grew longest, to be up by daybreak, mowing
the meadows till the sun went down, not tasting of food
till we had finished; or that we were set to plough four
acres in one day of good glebe land, to see whose furrows were evenest and cleanest; or that we might have
one wrestling-bout together; or that in our right hands
a good steel-headed lance were placed, to try whose
blows fell heaviest and thickest upon the adversary's
head-piece. I would cause you such work, as you
should have small reason to reproach me with being
slack at work. But you would do well to spare me




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        319
this reproach, and to save your strength till the owner
of this house shall return, -till the day when Ulysses
shall return; when, returning, he shall enter upon his
birthright."
This was a galling speech to those suitors, to whom
Ulysses' return was indeed the thing which they most
dreaded; and a sudden fear fell upon their souls, as if
they were sensible of the real presence of that man who
did indeed stand amongst them, but not in that form as
they might know him; and Eurymachus, incensed,
snatched a massy cup which stood on a table near, and
hurled it at the head of the supposed beggar, and but
narrowly missed the hitting of him; and all the suitors
rose, as at once, to thrust him out of the hall, which
they said his beggarly presence and his rude speeches
had profaned. But Telemachus cried to them to forbear, and not to presume to lay hands upon a wretched
man to whom he had promised protection.  He asked
if they were mad, to mix such abhorred uproar with his
feasts. He bade them take their food and their wine;
to sit up or to go to bed at their free pleasures, so long
as he should give license to that freedom: but why
should they abuse his banquet, or let the words which
a poor beggar spake have power to move their spleens
so fiercely?
They bit their lips, and frowned for anger, to be
checked so by a youth: nevertheless, for that time
they had the grace to abstain, either for shame, or
that Minerva had infused into them a terror of Ulysses' son.
So that day's feast was concluded without bloodshed;
and the suitors, tired with their sports, departed sever



320        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
ally each man to his apartment. Only Ulysses and
Telemachus remained. And now Telemachus, by his
father's direction, went and brought down into the hall
armor and lances from the armory; for Ulysses said,
" On the morrow we shall have need of them." And
moreover he said, " If, any one shall ask why you have
taken them down, say it is to clean them, and scour
them from the rust which they have gathered since the
owner of this house went for Troy." And, as Telemachus stood by the armor, the lights were all gone out,
and it was pitch dark, and the armor gave out glistering beams as of fire; and he said to his father, " The
pillars of the house are on fire." And his father said,
" It is the gods who sit above the stars, and have power
to make the night as light as the day;" and he took
it for a good omen. And Telemachus fell to cleaning
and sharpening of the lances.
Now, Ulysses had not seen his wife Penelope in all
the time since his return; for the queen did not care
to mingle with the suitors at their banquets, but, as
became one that had been Ulysses' wife, kept much in
private, spinning, and doing her excellent housewiferies
among her maids in the remote apartments of the
palace. Only upon solemn days she would come down
and show herself to the suitors. And Ulysses was filled
with a longing desire to see his wife again, whom for
twenty years he had not beheld; and he softly stole
through the known passages of his beautiful house, till
he came where the maids were lighting the queen
through a stately gallery that led to the chamber where
she slept. And, when the maids saw Ulysses, they
said, " It is the beggar who came to the court to-day,




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        321
about whom all that uproar was stirred up in the hall:
what does he here?" But Penelope gave commandment that he should be brought before her; for she said,
" It may be that he has travelled, and has heard something concerning Ulysses."
Then was Ulysses right glad to hear himself named
by his queen; to find himself in no wise forgotten, nor
her great love towards him decayed in all that time that
he had been away. And he stood before his queen; and
she knew him not to be Ulysses, but supposed that he
had been some poor traveller. And she asked him of
what country he was.
He told her (as he had before told to Eumaeus) that
he was a Cretan born, and, however poor and cast
down he now seemed, no less a man than brother to
Idomeneus, who was grandson to King Min'os; and,
though he now wanted bread, he bad once had it in his
power to feast Ulysses. Then he feigned how Ulysses,
sailing for Troy, was forced by stress of weather to put
his fleet in at a port of Crete, where for twelve days he
was his guest, and entertained by him with all befitting
guest-rites; and he described the very garments which
Ulysses had on, by which Penelope knew he had seen
her lord.
In this manner, Ulysses told his wife many tales of
himself, at most but painting, but painting so near to
the life, that the feeling of that which she took in at
her ears became so strong, that the kindly tears ran
down her fair cheeks, while she thought upon her lord,
dead as she thought him, and heavily mourned the loss
of him whom she missed, whom she could not find,
though in very deed he stood so near her.
21




322        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
Ulysses was moved to see her weep: but he kept his
own eyes as dry as iron or horn in their lids; putting a
bridle upon his strong passion, that it should not issue
to sight.
Then told he how he had lately been at the court of
Thresprotia, and what he had learned concerning Ulysses there, in order as he had delivered to Eumeus:
and Penelope was wont to believe that there might be
a possibility of Ulysses being alive; and she said, "I
dreamed a dream  this morning.  Methought I had
twenty household fowl which did eat wheat steeped in
water from my hand; and there came suddenly from the
clouds a crook-beaked hawk, who soused on them, and
killed them all, trussing their necks; then took his
flight back up to the clouds. And, in my dream, methought that I wept and made great moan for my fowls,
and for the destruction which the hawk had made; and
my maids came about me to comfort me. And, in the
height of my griefs, the hawk came back; and, lighting
upon the beam of my chamber, he said to me in a man's
voice, which sounded strangely, even in my dream, to
hear a hawk to speak:' Be of good cheer,' he said,' O
daughter of Icarius I for this is no dream which thou
hast seen, but that which shall happen to thee indeed.
Those household fowl which thou lamentest so without
reason are the suitors who devour thy substance, even
as thou sawest the fowl eat from thy hand; and the
hawk is thy husband, who is coming to give death to
the suitors.' And I awoke, and went to see to my
fowls, if they were alive, whom I found eating wheat
from their troughs, all well and safe as before my
dream."




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        323
Then said Ulysses, "This dream can endure no other
interpretation than that which the hawk gave to it, who
is your lord, and who is coming quickly to effect all
that his words told you."
" Your words," she said, " my old guest, are so sweet,
that, would you sit and please me with your speech, my
ears would never let my eyes close their spheres for
very joy of your discourse: but none that is merely
mortal can live without the death of sleep, so the gods
who are without death themselves have ordained it, to
keep the memory of our mortality in our minds, while
we experience, that, as much as we live, we die every
day; in which consideration I will ascend my bed,
which I have nightly watered with my tears since he
that was the joy of it departed for that bad city: " she
so speaking, because she could not bring her lips to
name the name of Troy, so much hated. So for that
night they parted, - Penelope to her bed, and Ulysses
to his son, and to the armor and the lances in the hall;
where they sat up all night cleaning and watching by
the armor.
CHAPTER X.
TE MADNESS FROM ABOVE. -THE BOW OF ULYSSES. -THE SLAUGHTER. —
THE CONCLUSION.
WHEN daylight appeared, a tumultuous concourse of
the suitors again filled the hall; and some wondered,
and some inquired, what meant that glittering store of
armor and lances which lay on heaps by the entry of the
door: and all that asked, Telemachus made reply, that




324        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
he had caused them to be taken down to cleanse them
of the rust and of the stain which they had contracted
by lying so long unused, even ever since his father went
for Troy; and with that answer their minds were easily
satisfied. So to their feasting and vain rioting again
they fell. Ulysses, by Telemachus' order, had a seat
and a mess assigned him in the doorway; and he had
his eye ever on the lances. And it moved gall in some
of the great ones there present to have their feast still
dulled with the society of that wretched beggar, as they
deemed him; and they reviled and spurned at him with
their feet. Only there was one Philaetius, who had
something of a better nature than the rest, that spake
kindly to him, and had his age in respect. He, coming
up to Ulysses, took him by the hand with a kind of fear,
as if touched exceedingly with imagination of his great
worth, and said thus to him: "Hail, father stranger!
My brows have sweat to see the injuries which you have
received; and my eyes have broken forth in tears when I
have only thought, that, such being oftentimes the lot of
worthiest men, to this plight Ulysses may be reduced,
and that he now may wander from place to place as you
do: for such, who are compelled by need to range here
and there, and have no firm home to fix their feet upon,
God keeps them in this earth, as under water; so are
they kept down and depressed. And a dark thread is
sometimes spun in the fates of kings."
At this bare likening of the beggar to Ulysses, Minerva
from heaven made the suitors for foolish joy to go mad,
and roused them to such a laughter as would never stop:
they laughed without power of ceasing; their eyes stood
full of tears for violent joys. But fears and horrible




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         325
misgivings succeeded; and one among them stood up
and prophesied: "Ah, wretches!" he said, "what madness from heaven has seized you, that you can laugh?
See you not that your meat drops blood? A night, like
the night of death, wraps you about; you shriek without knowing it; your eyes thrust forth tears; the fixed
walls, and the beam that bears the whole house up, fall
blood; ghosts choke up the entry; full is the hall with
apparitions of murdered men; under your feet is hell;
the sun falls from heaven, and it is midnight at noon."
But, like men whom the gods had infatuated to their
destruction, they mocked at his fears; and Eurymachus
said, "This man is surely mad: conduct him forth into
the market-place; set him in the light; for he dreams
that'tis night within the house."
But Theoclymenus (for that was the prophet's name),
whom Minerva had graced with a prophetic spirit, that
he, foreseeing, might avoid the destruction which awaited them, answered, and said, "Eurymachus, I will not
require a guide of thee: for I have eyes and ears, the
use of both my feet, and a sane mind within me; and
with these I will go forth of the doors, because I know
the imminent evils which await all you that stay, by
reason of this poor guest, who is a favorite with all the
gods." So saying, he turned his back upon those inhospitable men, and went away home, and never returned
to the palace.
These words which he spoke were not unheard by
Telemachus, who kept still his eye upon his father, expecting fervently when he would give the sign which
was to precede the slaughter of the suitors.
They, dreaming of no such thing, fell sweetly to their




326        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
dinner, as joying in the great store of banquet which was
heaped in full tables about them; but there reigned not a
bitterer banquet planet in all heaven than that which hung
over them this day, by secret destination of Minerva.
There was a bow which Ulysses left when he went for
Troy. It had lain by since that time, out of use, and
unstrung; for no man had strength to draw that bow
save Ulysses. So it had remained as a monument of
the great strength of its master. This bow, with the
quiver of arrows belonging thereto, Telemachus had
brought down from the armory on the last night, along
with the lances: and now Minerva, intending to do
Ulysses an honor, put it into the mind of Telemachus
to propose to the suitors to try who was strongest to
draw that bow; and he promised, that, to the man who
should be able to draw that bow, his mother should be
given in marriage, - Ulysses' wife the prize to him who
should bend the bow of Ulysses.
There was great strife and emulation stirred up among
the suitors at those words of the Prince Telernachus.
And to grace her son's words, and to confirm the promise which he had made, Penelope came and showed herself that day to the suitors; and Minerva made her that
she appeared never so comely in their sight as that day:
and they were inflamed with the beholding of so much
beauty, proposed as the price of so great manhood; and
they cried out, that if all those heroes who sailed to
Colchis for the rich purchase of the golden-fleeced ram
had seen earth's richer prize, Penelope, they would not
have made their voyage, but would have vowed their
valors and their lives to her; for she was at all parts
faultless.




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        327
And she said, " The gods have taken my beauty from
me since my lord went for Troy." But Telemachus
willed his mother to depart, and not be present at that
contest; for he said, "It may be, some rougher strife
shall chance of this than may be expedient for a woman
to witness."  And she retired, she and her maids, and
left the hall.
Then the bow was brought into the midst, and a mark
was set up by Prince Telemachus; and Lord Antinous,
as the chief among the suitors, had the first offer; and
he took the bow, and, fitting an arrow to the string, he
strove to bend it. But not with all his might and main
could he once draw together the ends of that tough bow;
and, when he found how vain a thing it was to endeavor
to draw Ulysses' bow, he desisted, blushing for shame
and for mere anger. Then Eurymachus adventured,
but with no better suceess: but as it had torn the hands
of Antinous, so did the bow tear and strain his hands,
and marred his delicate fingers; yet could he not once
stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to
bring fat and unctuous matter; which melting at the
fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it,
and make it more pliable: but not with all the helps of
art could he succeed in making it to move. After him
Liodes and Amphinomus and Polybus and Eurynomus and Polyctorides essayed their strength; but not
any one of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors,
had any better luck: yet not the meanest of them there
but thought himself well worthy of Ulysses' wife;
though, to shoot with Ulysses' bow, the completest
champion among them was by proof found too feeble.
Then Ulysses prayed that he might have leave to try:




328        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
and immediately a clamor was raised among the suitors,
because of his petition; and they scorned and swelled
with rage at his presumption, and that a beggar should
seek to contend in a game of such noble mastery. But
Telemachus ordered that the bow should be given him,
and that he should have leave to try, since they had
failed; "for," he said, "the bow is mine, to give or to
withhold:" and none durst gainsay the prince.
Then Ulysses gave a sign to his son, and he commanded the doors of the hall to be made fast; and all
wondered at his words, but none could divine the cause.
And Ulysses took the bow into his hands; and, before he
essayed to bend it, he'surveyed it at all parts, to see
whether, by long lying by, it had contracted any stiffness which hindered the drawing: and, as he was busied
in the curious surveying of his bow, some of the suitors
mocked him, and said, "Past doubt, this man is a right
cunning archer, and knows his craft well. See how he
turns it over and over, and looks into it, as if he could
see through the wood!" And others said, "We wish
some one would tell out gold into our laps but for so long
a time as he shall be in drawing of that string." But
when he had spent some little time in making proof of
the bow, and had found it to be in good plight, like as
an harper in tuning of his harp draws out a string, with
such ease or much more did Ulysses draw to the head
the string of his own tough bow; and, in letting of it go,
it twanged with such a shrill noise as a swallow makes
when it sings through the air: which so much amazed
the suitors, that their colors came and went, and the
skies gave out a noise of thunder, which at heart cheered
Ulysses; for he knew that now his long labors, by the




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.        329
disposal of the Fates, drew to an end. Then fitted he an
arrow to the bow; and, drawing it to the head, he sent
it right to the mark which the prince had set up. Which
done, he said to Telemachus, "You have got no disgrace yet by your guest; for I have struck the mark I
shot at, and gave myself no such trouble in teasing the
bow with fat and fire as these men did, but have made
proof that my strength is not impaired, nor my age so
weak and contemptible as these were pleased to think
it.  But come: the day going down calls us to supper;
after which succeed poem and harp, and all delights
which used to crown princely banquetings."
So saying, he beckoned to his son, who straight girt
his sword to his side, and took one of the lances (of
which there lay great store from the armory) in his
hand, and, armed at all points, advanced towards his
father.
The upper rags which Ulysses wore fell from his
shoulder, and his own kingly likeness returned; when
he rushed to the great hall-door with bow and quiver
full of shafts, which down at his feet he poured, and in
bitter words presignified his deadly intent to the suitors.
"Thus far," he said, "this contest has been decided
harmless: now for us there rests another mark, harder
to hit, but which my hands shall essay notwithstanding,
if Pheebus, god of archers, be pleased to give me the
mastery."  With that he let fly a deadly arrow at Antinous, which pierced him in the throat, as he was in
the act of lifting a cup of wine to his mouth. Amazement seized the suitors as their great champion fell
dead; and they raged highly against Ulysses, and said
that it should prove'the dearest shaft which he ever let




330        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
fly; for he had slain a man whose like breathed not in
any part of the kingdom: and they flew to their arms,
and would have seized the lances; but Minerva struck
them with dimness of sight, that they went erring up
and down the hall, not knowing where to find them.
Yet so infatuated were they by the displeasure of Heaven,
that they did not see the imminent peril which impended
over them; but every man believed that this accident
had happened beside the intention of the doer. Fools!
to think by shutting their eyes to evade destiny, or that
any other cup remained for them but that which their
great Antinous had tasted I
Then Ulysses revealed himself to all in that presence,
and that he was the man whom they held to be dead at
Troy, whose palace they had usurped, whose wife in his
lifetime they had sought in impious marriage, and that
for this reason destruction was come upon them. And
he dealt his deadly arrows among them, and there was
no avoiding him, nor escaping from his horrid person;
and Telemachus by his side plied them thick with those
murderous lances from which there was no retreat, till
fear itself made them valiant, and danger gave them
eyes to understand the peril. Then they which had
swords drew them, and some with shields that could find
them, and some with tables and benches snatched up in
haste, rose in a mass to overwhelm and crush those two:
yet they singly bestirred themselves like men, and defended themselves against that great host; and through
tables, shields, and all, right through, the arrows of Ulysses clove, and the irresistible lances of Telemachus; and
many lay dead, and all had wounds. And Minerva, in
the likeness of a bird, sate upon the beam which went




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         331
across the hall, clapping her wings with a fearful noise:
and sometimes the great bird would fly among them,
cuffing at the swords and at the lances, and up and down
the hall would go, beating her wings, and troubling
every thing, that it was frightful to behold; and it frayed
the blood from the cheeks of those heaven-hated suitors.
But to Ulysses and his son she appeared in her own
divine similitude, with her snake-fringed shield, a goddess armed, fighting their battles. Nor did that dreadful pair desist till they had laid all their foes at their
feet. At their feet they lay in shoals: like fishes when
the fishermen break up their nets, so they lay gasping
and sprawling at the feet of Ulysses and his son. And
Ulysses remembered the prediction of Tiresias, which
said that he was to perish by his own guests, unless he
slew those who knew him not.
Then certain of the queen's household went up, and
told Penelope what had happened; and how her lord
Ulysses was come home, and had slain the suitors.
But she gave no heed to their words, but thought that
some frenzy possessed them, or that they mocked her;
for it is the property of such extremes of sorrow as she
had felt not to believe when any great joy cometh. And
she rated and chid them exceedingly for troubling her.
But they the more persisted in their asseverations of the
truth of what they had affirmed; and some of them had
seen the slaughtered bodies of the suitors dragged forth
of the hall. And they said, " That poor guest, whom
you talked with last night, was Ulysses." Then she was
yet more fully persuaded that they mocked her; and she
wept. But they said, "This thing is true which we
have told. We sat within, in an inner room in the




332        THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
palace, and the doors of the hall were shut on us: but
we heard the cries and the groans of the men that were
killed, but saw nothing, till at length your son called to
us to come in; and, entering, we saw Ulysses standing
in the midst of the slaughtered." But she, persisting
in her unbelief, said that it was some god which had
deceived them to think it was the person of Ulysses.
By this time, Telemachus and his father had cleansed
their hands from the slaughter, and were come to where
the queen was talking with those of her household; and,
when she saw Ulysses, she stood motionless, and had no
power to speak, -sudden surprise and joy and fear and
many passions so strove within her. Sometimes she
was clear that it was her husband that she saw, and
sometimes the alteration which twenty years had made
in his person (yet that was not much) perplexed her,
that she knew not what to think, and for joy she could
not believe, and yet for joy she would not but believe;
and, above all, that sudden change from a beggar to a
king troubled her, and wrought uneasy scruples in her
mind. But Telemachus, seeing her strangeness, blamed
her, and called her an ungentle and tyrannous mother;
and said that she showed a too great curiousness of
modesty to abstain from embracing his father, and to
have doubts of his person, when, to all present, it was
evident that he was the very real and true Ulysses.
Then she mistrusted no longer; but ran and fell upon
Ulysses' neck, and said, "Let not my husband be angry
that I held off so long with strange delays: it is the
gods, who, severing us for so long time, have caused
this unseemly distance in me.  If Menelaus' wife had
used half my caution, she would never have taken so




THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.         333
freely to a stranger's bed; and she might have spared
us all these plagues which have come upon us through
her shameless deed."
These words, with which Penelope excused herself,
wrought more affection in Ulysses than if, upon a first
sight, she had given up herself implicitly to his embraces; and he wept for joy to possess a wife so discreet,
so answering to his own staid mind, that had a depth
of wit proportioned to his own, and one that held chaste
virtue at so high a price. And he thought the possession
of such a one cheaply purchased with the loss of all
Circe's delights, and Calypso's immortality of joys; and
his long labors and his severe sufferings past seemed as
nothing, now they were crowned with the enjoyment of
his virtuous and true wife, Penelope. And as sad men
at sea, whose ship has gone to pieces nigh shore, swimming for their lives, all drenched in foam and brine,
crawl up to some poor patch of land, which they take
possession of with as great a joy as if they had the
world given them in fee, - with such delight did this
chaste wife cling to her lord restored, till the dark night
fast coming on reminded her of that more intimate and
happy union, when, in her long-widowed bed, she
should once again clasp a living Ulysses.
So, from that time, the land had rest from the suitors.
And the happy Ithacans, with songs and solemn sacrifices of praise to the gods, celebrated the return of Ulysses; for he that had been so long absent was returned
to wreak the evil upon the heads of the doers: in the
place where they had done the evil, there wreaked he
his vengeance upon them.








TALES.








TALES.
REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ.,
OF BIRMINGHAM.*
I AM the only son of a considerable brazier in Birmingham, who, dying in 1803, left me successor to the
business, with no other encumbrance than a sort of
rent-charge, which I am enjoined to pay out of it, of
ninety-three pounds sterling per annum, to his widow,
my mother; and which the improving state of the concern, I bless God, has hitherto enabled me to discharge
with punctuality. (I say, I am enjoined to pay the
said sum, but not strictly obligated: that is to say, as
the will is worded, I believe the law would relieve me
from the payment of it; but the wishes of a dying parent should in some sort have the effect of law.) So
that, though the annual profits of my business, on an
average of the last three or four years, would appear
to an indifferent observer, who should inspect my shopbooks, to amount to the sum of one thousand three
hundred and three pounds, odd shillings, the real proceeds in that time have fallen short of that sum to the
amount of the aforesaid payment of ninety-three pounds
sterling annually.
* From " The New Monthly Magazine," 1826.
22              [337]




;566     REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.
I was always my father's favorite. He took a delight,
to the very last, in recounting the little sagacious tricks
and innocent artifices of my childhood. One manifestation thereof I never heard him repeat without tears
of joy trickling down his cheeks. It seems, that when
I quitted the parental roof (Aug. 27, 1788), being then
six years and not quite a month old, to proceed to the
Free School at Warwick, where my father was a sort
of trustee, my mother - as mothers are usually provident on these occasions - had stuffed the pockets of the
coach, which was to convey me and six more children of
my own growth that were going to be entered along
with me at the same seminary, with a prodigious quantity of gingerbread, which I remember my father said
was more than was needed: and so indeed it was; for, if
I had been to eat it all myself, it would have got stale
and mouldy before it had been half spent. The consideration whereof set me upon my contrivances how I might
secure to myself as much of the gingerbread as would
keep good for the next two or three days, and yet none
of the rest in manner be wasted. I had a little pair
of pocket-compasses, which I usually carried about me
for the purpose of making draughts and measurements,
at which I was always very ingenious, of the various engines and mechanical inventions in which such a town
as Birmingham abounded. By the means of these,
and a small penknife which my father had given me, I
cut out the one-half of the cake, calculating that the
remainder would reasonably serve my turn; and subdividing it into many little slices, which were curious to
see for the neatness and niceness of their proportion, I
sold it out in so many pennyworths to my young com



REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.      339
panions as served us all the way to Warwick, which is
a distance of some twenty miles from this town: and
very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves with it,
feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem, I put
double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my purse,
and secured as much as I thought would keep good and
moist for my next two or three days' eating. When I
told this to my parents on their first visit to me at
Warwick, my father (good man) patted me on the
cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he could
never make enough of me; but my mother unaccountably burst into tears, and said "it was a very niggardly
action," or some such expression, and that "she would
rather it would please God to take me" —meaning,
God help me, that I should die - "than that she should
live to see me grow up a mean man: " which shows the
difference of parent from parent, and how some mothers
are more harsh and intolerant to their children than
some fathers; when we might expect quite the contrary.
My father, however, loaded me with presents from that
time, which made me the envy of my school-fellows.
As I felt this growing disposition in them, I naturally
sought to avert it by all the means in my power; and
from that time I used to eat my little packages of fruit,
and other nice things, in a corner, so privately that I
was never found out. Once, I remember, I had a
huge apple sent me, of that sort which they call cats'heads. I concealed this all day under my pillow; and
at night, but not before I had ascertained that my bedfellow was sound asleep, - which I did by pinching him
rather smartly two or three times, which he seemed to
perceive no more than a dead person, though once or




340       REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.
twice he made a motion as he would turn, which frightened me, — I say, when I had made all sure, I fell to
work upon my apple; and, though it was as big as
an ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get through
before it was time to get up. And a more delicious
feast I never made; thinking all night what a good
parent I had (I mean my father) to send me so many
nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had no
parent or friend in the world to send him any thing nice:
and, thinking of his desolate condition, I munched and
munched as silently as I could, that I might not set
him a-longing if he overheard me. And yet, for all this
considerateness and attention to other people's feelings,
I was never much a favorite with my school-fellows;
which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never
defrauded any one of them of the value of a halfpenny,
or told stories of them to their master, as some little
lying boys would do, but was ready to do any of them
all the services in my power that were consistent
with my own well-doing. I think nobody can be expected to go further than that. But I am detaining
my reader too long in recording of my juvenile days.
It is time I should go forward to a season when it
became natural that I should have some thoughts of
marrying, and, as they say, settling in the world.
Nevertheless, my reflections on what I may call the
boyish period of my life may have their use to some
readers. It is pleasant to trace the man in the boy;
to observe shoots of generosity in those young years;
and to watch the progress of liberal sentiments, and
what I may call a genteel way of thinking, which is
discernible in some children at a very early age, and




REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.      341
usually lays the foundation of all that is praiseworthy in
the manly character afterwards.
With the warmest inclinations towards that way of
life, and a serious conviction of its superior advantages
over a single one, it has been the strange infelicity of my
lot never to have entered into the respectable estate of
matrimony. Yet I was once very near it. I courted
a young woman in my twenty-seventh year; for so
early I began to feel symptoms of the tender passion!
She was well to do in the world, as they call it; but
yet not such a fortune, as, all things considered, perhaps I might have pretended to. It was not my own
choice altogether; but my mother very strongly pressed
me to it.  She was always putting it to me, that " I had
comings-in sufficient, — that I need not stand upon a
portion;" though the young woman, to do her justice,
had considerable expectations, which yet did not quite
come up to my mark, as I told you before. She had
this saying always in her mouth, that "I had money
enough; that it was time I enlarged my housekeeping,
and to show a spirit befitting my circumstances." In
short, what with her importunities, and my own desires
in part co-operating, —for, as I said, I was not yet
quite twenty-seven, -a time when the youthful feelings
may be pardoned, if they show a little impetuosity, -
I resolved, I say, upon all these considerations, to set
about the business of courting in right earnest. I was
a young man then; and having a spice of romance in
my character (as the reader has doubtless observed long
ago), such as that sex is apt to be taken with, I had
reason in no long time to think my addresses were any
thing but disagreeable. Certainly the happiest part of




342      REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.
a young man's life is the time when he is going a-courting. All the generous impulses are then awake, and
he feels a double existence in participating his hopes
and wishes with another being. Return yet again for
a brief moment, ye visionary views, — transient enchantments! ye moonlight rambles with Cleora in the
Silent Walk at Vauxhall, (N.B. -About a mile from
Birmingham, and resembling the gardens of that name
near London, only that the price of admission is lower,)
when the nightingale has suspended her notes in June
to listen to our loving discourses, while the moon
was overhead! (for we generally used to take our tea
at Cleora's mother's before we set out, not so much to
save expenses as to avoid the publicity of a repast in
the gardens, - coming in much about the time of halfprice, as they call it,) -ye soft intercommunions of
soul, when, exchanging mutual vows, we prattled of
coming felicities! The loving disputes we have had
under those trees, when this house (planning our future
settlement) was rejected, because, though cheap, it was
dull; and the other house was given up, because, though
agreeably situated, it was too high-rented! - one was too
much in the heart of the town, another was too far from
business. These minutik will seem impertinent to the
aged and the prudent. I write them only to the young.
Young lovers, and passionate as being young (such
were Cleora and I then), alone can understand me.
After some weeks wasted, as I may now call it, in this
sort of amorous colloquy, we at length fixed upon the
house in the High Street, No. 203, just vacated by the
death of Mr. Hutton of this town, for our future residence.  I had all the time lived in lodgings (only




REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.       343
renting a shop for business), to be near my mother, -
near, I say: not in the same house; for that would have
been to introduce confusion into our housekeeping,
which it was desirable to keep separate. Oh the loving
wrangles, the endearing differences, I had with Cleora,
before we could quite make up our minds to the house
that was to receive us - I pretending, for argument's
sake, the rent was too high, and she insisting that the.
taxes were moderate in proportion; and love at last
reconciling us in the same choice. I think at that time,
moderately speaking, she might have had any thing out
of me for asking. I do not, nor shall ever, regret that
my character at that time was marked with a tinge
of prodigality.  Age comes fast enough upon us, and,
in its good time, will prune away all that is inconvenient
in these excesses. Perhaps it is right that it should do
so. Matters, as I said, were ripening to a conclusion
between us, only the house was yet not absolutely taken,
-some necessary arrangements, which the ardor of my
youthful impetuosity could hardly brook at that time
(love and youth will be precipitate), -some preliminary arrangements, I say, with the landlord, respecting
fixtures, -very necessary things to be considered in a
young man about to settle in the world, though not
very accordant with the impatient state of my then
passions, -some obstacles about the valuation of the
fixtures, -had hitherto precluded (and I shall always
think providentially) my final closes with his offer;
when one of those accidents, which, unimportant in
themselves, often arise to give a turn to the most serious
intentions of our life, intervened, and put an end at
once to my projects of wiving and of housekeeping.




344       REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.
I was never much given to theatrical entertainments;
that is, at no time of my life was I ever what they call
a regular play-goer: but on some occasion of a benefitnight, which was expected to be very productive, and
indeed turned out so, Cleora expressing a desire to be
present, I could do no less than offer, as I did very
willingly, to squire her and her mother to the pit.  At
that time, it was not customary in our town for tradesfolk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit, as
they now do, in the boxes. At the time appointed, I
waited upon the ladies, who had brought with them a
young man, a distant relation, whom it seems they had
invited to be of the party. This a little disconcerted
me, as I had about me barely silver enough to pay for
our three selves at the door, and did not at first know
that their relation had proposed paying for himself.
However, to do the young man justice, he not only paid
for himself, but for the old lady besides; leaving me
only to pay for two, as it were. In our passage to the
theatre, the notice of Cleora was attracted to some
orange wenches that stood about the doors vending
their commodities. She was leaning on my arm; and
I could feel her every now and then giving me a nudge,
as it is called, which I afterwards discovered were hints
that I should buy some oranges. It seems, it is a custom at Birmingham, and perhaps in other places, when
a gentleman treats ladies to the play, - especially when a
full night is expected, and that the house will be inconveniently warm, —to provide them with this kind of
fruit, oranges being esteemed for their cooling property.
But how could I guess at that, never having treated
ladies to a play before, and being, as I said, quite a




REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS.       345
novice at these kind of entertainments?  At last, she
spoke plain out, and begged that I would buy some of
"those oranges," pointing to a particular barrow. But,
when I came to examine the fruit, I did not think the
quality of it was answerable to the price. In this way,
I handled several baskets of them; but something in
them all displeased me. Some had thin rinds, and some
were plainly over-ripe, which is as great a fault as not
being ripe enough; and I could not (what they call)
make a bargain. While I stood haggling with the
women, secretly determining to put off my purchase till
I should get within the theatre, where I expected we
should have better choice, the young man, the cousin
(who, it seems, had left us without my missing him), came
running to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges,
inside and out, as they say. It seems, not liking the
look of the barrow-fruit any more than myself, he had
slipped away to an eminent fruiterer's, about three doors
distant, which I never had the sense to think of, and
had lain out a matter of two shillings in some of the
best St. Michael's, I think, I ever tasted. What a
little hinge, as I said before, the most important affairs
in life may turn upon I The mere inadvertence to the
fact that there was an eminent fruiterer's within three
doors of us, though we had just passed it without the
thought once occurring to me, which he had taken advantage of, lost me the affection of my Cleora. From
that time, she visibly cooled towards me; and her partiality was as visibly transferred to this cousin. I was
long unable to account for this change in her behavior;
when one day, accidentally discoursing of oranges to
my mother, alone, she let drop a sort of reproach to me,




346                 CUPID'S REVENGE.
as if I had offended Cleora by my nearness, as she
called it, that evening. Even now, when Cleora has
been wedded some years to that same officious relation,
as I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded that such
a trifle could have been the motive to her inconstancy;
for could she suppose that I would sacrifice my dearest
hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I
was going to treat her to the play, and her mother too
(an expense of more than four times that amount), if
the young man had not interfered to pay for the latter,
as I mentioned? But the caprices of the sex are past
finding out: and I begin to think my mother was in the
right; for doubtless women know women better than
we can pretend to know them.*
CUPID'S REVENGE.t
LEONTIUS, Duke of Lycia, who in times past had
borne the character of a wise and just governor, and
was endeared to all ranks of his subjects, in his latter
days fell into a sort of dotage, which manifested itself
in an extravagant fondness for his daughter Hidaspes.
This young maiden, with the Prince Leucippus, her
brother, were the only remembrances left to him of a
* These " Reminiscences " were advertised to be continued; but this
chapter of them is all that ever appeared. —EDITOR.
t This story was originally published in " Harper's Magazine." It was
printed from the author's manuscript, which the publishers purchased of
Lamb's friend, Thomas Allsop. By the kind permission of the Messrs.
Harper, "Cupid's Revenge" appears in this volume. - EDITOR.




CUPID'S REVENGE.             347
deceased and beloved consort. For her, nothing was
thought too precious. Existence was of no value to
him but as it afforded opportunities of gratifying her
wishes.. To be instrumental in relieving her from the
least little pain or grief, he would have lavished his
treasures to the giving-away of the one-half of his
dukedom.
All this deference on the part of the parent had yet
no power upon the mind of the daughter to move her
at any time to solicit any unbecoming suit, or to disturb the even tenor of her thoughts. The humility
and dutifulness of her carriage seemed to keep pace
with his apparent willingness to release her from the
obligations of either. She might have satisfied her
wildest humors and caprices; but, in truth, no such
troublesome guests found harbor in the bosom of the
quiet and unaspiring maiden.
Thus far the prudence of the princess served to coun
teract any ill effects which this ungovernable partiality
in a parent was calculated to produce in a less virtuous
nature than Hidaspes'; and this foible of the duke's, so
long as no evil resulted from it, was passed over by the
courtiers as a piece of harmless frenzy.
But upon a solemn day, - a sad one, as it proved foi
Lycia, — when the returning anniversary of the princess's birth was kept with extraordinary rejoicings, the
infatuated father set no bounds to his folly, but would
have his subjects to do homage to her for that day, as to
their natural sovereign; as if he, indeed, had been dead,
and she, to the exclusion of the male succession, was become the rightful ruler of Lycia. He saluted her by the
style of Duchess; and with a terrible oath, in the presence




348              CUPID'S REVENGE.
of his nobles, he confirmed to her the grant of all things
whatsoever that she should demand on that day, and
for the six next following; and if she should ask any
thing, the execution of which must be deferred until
after his death, he pronounced a dreadful curse upon
his son and successor if he failed to see to the performance of it.
Thus encouraged, the princess stepped forth with a
modest boldness; and, as if assured of no denial, spake
as follows.
But, before we acquaint you with the purport of her
speech, we must premise, that in the land of Lycia,
which was at that time pagan, above all their other
gods the inhabitants did in an especial manner adore the
deity who was supposed to have influence in the disposing of people's affections in love. Him, by the name
of God Cupid, they feigned to be a beautiful boy, and
winged; as indeed, between young persons, these frantic
passions are usually least under constraint; while the
wings might signify the haste with which these ill-judged
attachments are commonly dissolved, and do indeed go
away as lightly as they come, flying away in an instant
to light upon some newer fancy. They painted him
blindfolded, because these silly affections of lovers make
them blind to the defects of the beloved object, which
every one is quick-sighted enough to discover but themselves; or because love is for the most part led blindly,
rather than directed by the open eye of the judgment,
in the hasty choice of a mate. Yet, with that inconsistency of attributes with which the heathen people
commonly over-complimented their deities, this blind
love, this Cupid, they figured with a bow and arrows;




CUPID'S REVENGE.             349
and, being sightless, they yet feigned him to be a notable archer and an unerring marksman. No heart was
supposed to be proof against the point of his inevitable
dart. By such incredible fictions did these poor pagans
make a shift to excuse their vanities, and to give a sanction to their irregular affections, under the notion that
love was irresistible; whereas, in a well-regulated mind,
these amorous conceits either find no place at all, or,
having gained a footing, are easily stifled in the beginning by a wise and manly resolution.
This frenzy in the people had long been a source of
disquiet to the discreet princess; and many were the
conferences she had held with the virtuous prince, her
brother, as to the best mode of taking off the minds
of the Lycians from this vain superstition. An occasion, furnished by the blind grant of the old duke, their
father, seemed now to present itself.
The courtiers then, being assembled to hear the
demand which the princess should make, began to conjecture, each one according to the bent of his own
disposition, what the thing would be that she should
ask for. One said, " Now surely she will ask to have
the disposal of the revenues of some wealthy province, to lay them out - as was the manner of Eastern
princesses —in costly dresses and jewels becoming a
lady of so great expectancies." Another thought that
she would seek an extension of power, as women naturally love rule and dominion. But the most part were
in hope that she was about to beg the hand of some
neighbor prince in marriage, who, by the wealth and contiguity of his dominions, might add strength and safety
to the realm of Lycia..But in none of these things was




350              CUPID'S REVENGE.
the expectation of these crafty and worldly-minded
courtiers gratified; for Ilidaspes, first making lowly
obeisance to her father, and thanking him on bended
knees for so great grace conferred upon her, - according to a plan preconcerted with Leucippus, - made suit
as follows:" Your loving care of me, 0 princely father! by which
in my tenderest age you made up to me for the loss of
a mother at those years when I was scarcely able to
comprehend the misfortune, and your bounties to me
ever since, have left me nothing to ask for myself, as
wanting and desiring nothing.  But, for the people
whom you govern, I beg and desire a boon. It is known
to all nations, that the men of Lycia are noted for a
vain and fruitless superstition, - the more hateful as it
bears a show of true religion, but is indeed nothing
more than a self-pleasing and bold wantonness. Many
ages before this, when every man had taken to himself
a trade, as hating idleness far worse than death, some
one that gave himself to sloth and wine, finding himself by his neighbors rebuked for his unprofitable life,
framed to himself a god, whom he pretended to obey
in his dishonesty; and, for a name, he called him
Cupid.  This god of merely man's creating — as the
nature of man is ever credulous of any vice which takes
part with his dissolute conditions - quickly found followers enough.  They multiplied in every age, especially among your Lycians, who to this day remain
adorers of this drowsy deity, who certainly was first
invented in drink, as sloth and luxury are commonly
the first movers in these idle loVe-passions.  This
winged boy- for so they fancy him — has his sacri




CUPID'S REVENGE.            351
flees, his loose images set up in the land, through all
the villages; nay, your own sacred palace is not exempt from them, to the scandal of sound'devotion,
and dishonor of the true deities, which are only they
who give good gifts to man, - as Ceres, who gives us
corn; the planter of the olive, Pallas; Neptune, who
directs the track of ships over the great ocean, and binds
distant lands together in friendly commerce; the inventor of medicine and music, Apollo; and the cloud-compelling Thunderer of Olympus: whereas the gifts of
this idle deity - if indeed he have a being at all out
of the brain of his frantic worshippers - usually prove
destructive and pernicious. My suit, then, is, that this
unseemly idol throughout the land be plucked down,
and cast into the fire; and that the adoring of the same
may be prohibited on pain of death to any of your subjects henceforth found so offending."
Leontius, startled at this unexpected demand from
the princess, with tears besought her to ask some wiser
thing, and not to bring down upon herself and him the
indignation of so great a god.
"There is no such god as you dream of," said
then Leucippus boldly, who had hitherto forborne to
second the petition of the princess; " but a vain opinion
of him has filled the land with love and wantonness.
Every young man and maiden, that feel the least desire
to one another, dare in no case to suppress it; for they
think it to be Cupid's motion, and that he is a god! "
Thus pressed by the solicitations of both his children,
and fearing the oath which he had taken, in an evil hour
the misgiving father consented; and a proclamation was
sent throughout all the provinces for the putting-down




352              CUPID'S REVENGE.
of the idol, and suppression of the established Cupidworship.
Notable, you may be sure, was the stir made in all
places among the priests, and among the artificers in
gold, in silver, or in marble, who made a gainful trade,
either in serving at the altar, or in the manufacture of
the images no longer to be tolerated. The cry was
clamorous as that at Ephesus when a kindred idol was
in danger; for " great had been Cupid of the Lycians."
Nevertheless, the power of the duke, backed by the
power of his more popular children, prevailed; and
the destruction of every vestage of the old religion was
but as the work of one day throughout the country.
And now, as the pagan chronicles of Lycia inform
us, the displeasure of Cupid went out, - the displeasure of a great god, - flying through all the dukedom,
and sowing evils. But, upon the first movers of the
profanation, his angry hand lay heaviest; and there was
imposed upon them a strange misery, that all might
know that Cupid's revenge was mighty. With his
arrows hotter than plagues, or than his own anger,
did he fiercely right himself; nor could the prayers of
a few concealed worshippers, nor the smoke arising
from an altar here and there which had escaped the general overthrow, avert his wrath, or make him to cease
from vengeance, until he had made of the once-flourishing country of Lycia a most wretched land. He sent
no famines, he let loose no cruel wild beasts among
them,- inflictions with one or other of which the rest
of the Olympian deities are fabled to have visited the
nations under their displeasure, —but took a nearer
course of his own; and his invisible arrows went to the




CUPID'S REVENGE.            353
moral heart of Lycia, infecting and filling court and
country with desires of unlawful marriages, unheard-of
and monstrous affections, prodigious and misbecoming
unions.
The symptoms were first visible in the changed bosom
of Hidaspes.  This exemplary maiden, - whose cold
modesty, almost to a failing, had discouraged the addresses of so many princely suitors that had sought her
hand in marriage, - by the venom of this inward pestilence, came on a sudden to cast eyes of affection upon a
mean and deformed creature, Zoilus by name, who was
a dwarf, and lived about the palace, the common jest
of the courtiers. In her besotted eyes he was grown a
goodly gentleman: and to her maidens, when any of
them reproached him with the defect of his shape in her
hearing, she would reply, that "to them, indeed, he
might appear defective, and unlike a man, as, indeed,
no man was like unto him; for in form and complexion
he was beyond painting. He is like," she said, "to
nothing that we have seen; yet he doth resemble Apollo, as I have fancied him, when, rising in the east,
he bestirs himself, and shakes daylight from his hair."
And, overcome with a passion which was heavier than
she could bear, she confessed herself a wretched creature, and implored forgiveness of God Cupid, whom she
had provoked; and, if possible, that he would grant it
to her that she might enjoy her love. Nay, she would
court this piece of deformity to his face; and when
the wretch, supposing it to be done in mockery, has
said that he could wish himself more ill-shaped than he
was, so it would contribute to make her grace merry,
she would reply, " Oh! think not that I jest; unless it
23




354             CUPID'S REVENGE.
be a jest not to esteem my life in comparison with thine;
to hang a thousand kisses in an hour upon those lips;
unless it be a jest to vow that I am willing to become
your wife, and to take obedience upon me." And by
his "own white hand," taking it in hers, - so strong was
the delusion, - she besought him to swear to marry her.
The term had not yet expired of the seven days within which the doting duke had sworn to fulfil her will,
when, in pursuance of this frenzy, she presented herself
before her father, leading in the dwarf by the hand, and,
in the face of all the courtiers, solemnly demanding his
hand in marriage. And, when the apish creature made
show of blushing at the unmerited honor, she, to comfort him, bade him not to be ashamed; for, " in her
eyes, he was worth a kingdom."
And now, too late, did the fond father repent him of
his dotage. But when by no importunity he could prevail upon her to desist from her suit, for his oath's sake
he must needs consent to the marriage. But the ceremony was no sooner, to the derision of all present,
performed, than, with the just feelings of an outraged
parent, he commanded the head of the presumptuous
bridegroom to be stricken off, and committed the distracted princess close prisoner to her chamber, where,
after many deadly swoonings, with intermingled outcries upon the cruelty of her father, she, in no long
time after, died; making ineffectual appeals, to the last,
to the mercy of the offended Power, - the Power that
had laid its heavy hand upon her, to the bereavement of
her good judgment first, and finally to the extinction
of a life that might have proved a blessing to Lycia.
Leontius had scarcely time to be sensible of her dan



CUPID'S REVENGE.             355
ger before a fresh cause for mourning overtook him.
His son Leucippus, who had hitherto been a pattern
of strict life and modesty, was stricken with a second
arrow from the deity, offended for his overturned altars, in which the prince had been a chief instrument.
The god caused his heart to fall away, and his crazed
fancy to be smitten with the excelling beauty of a
wicked widow, by name Bacha. This woman, in the
first days of her mourning for her husband, by her dissembling tears and affected coyness had drawn Leucippus so cunningly into her snares, that, before she would
grant him a return of love, she extorted from the easyhearted prince a contract of marriage, to be fulfilled
in the event of his father's death. This guilty intercourse, which they covered with the name of marriage,
was not carried with such secrecy but that a rumor of
it ran about the palace, and by some officious courtier
was brought to the ears of the old duke, who, to satisfy himself of the truth, came hastily to the house of
Bacha, where he found his son courting. Taking the
prince to task roundly, he sternly asked who that creature was that had bewitched him out of his honor thus.
Then Bacha, pretending ignorance of the duke's person,
haughtily demanded of Leucippus what saucy old man
that was, that without leave had burst into the house
of an afflicted widow to hinder her paying her tears (as
she pretended) to the dead. Then the duke- declaring
himself, and threatening her for having corrupted his
son, giving her the reproachful terms of witch and sorceress, Leucippus mildly answered, that he "did her
wrong." The bad woman, imagining that the prince
for very fear would not betray their secret, now con



35 6             CUPID'S REVENGE.
ceived a project of monstrous wickedness; which was
no less than to insnare the father with the same arts
which had subdued the son, that she might no longer
be a concealed wife, nor a princess only under cover,
but, by a union with the old man, become at once the
true and acknowledged Duchess of Lycia. In a posture of humility, she confessed her ignorance of the
duke's quality; but, now she knew it, she besought his
pardon for her wild speeches, which proceeded, she said,
from a distempered head, which the loss of a dear husband had affected. He might command her life, she told
him, which was now of small value to her. The tears
which accompanied her words, and her mourning weeds
(which, for a blind to the world, she had not yet cast off),
heightening her beauty, gave a credence to her protestations of her. innocence. But the duke continuing to
assail her with reproaches, with a matchless confidence,
assuming the air of injured virtue, in a somewhat lofty
tone she replied, that though he were her sovereign, to
whom in any lawful cause she was bound to submit,
yet, if he sought to take away her honor, she stood up
to defy him. That, she said, was a jewel dearer than
any he could give her, which, so long as she should keep,
she should esteem herself richer than all the princes of
the earth that were without it. If the prince, his son,
knew any thing to her dishonor, let him tell it. And
here she challenged Leucippus before his father to speak
the worst of her. If he would, however, sacrifice a
woman's character to please an unjust humor of the
duke's, she saw no remedy, she said, now he was dead
(meaning her late husband) that with his life would have
defended her reputation.




CUPID'S REVENGE.            357
Thus appeared to, Leucippus, who had stood a while
astonished at her confident falsehoods, though ignorant
of the full drift of them, considering that not the reputation only, but probably the life, of a woman whom he
had so loved, and who had made such sacrifices to him
of love and beauty, depended. upon his absolute concealment of their contract, framed his mouth to a
compassionate untruth, and with solemn asseverations
confirmed to his father her assurances of her innocence.
He denied not that with rich gifts he had assailed her
virtue, but had found her relentless to his solicitations;
that gold nor greatness had any power over her. Nay,
so far he went on to give force to the protestations of
this artful woman, that he confessed to having offered
marriage to her, which she, who scorned to listen to
any second wedlock, had rejected.
All this while, Leucippus secretly prayed to Heaven
to forgive him while he uttered these bold untruths;
since it was for the prevention of a greater mischief
only, and had no malice in it.
But, warned by the sad sequel which ensued, be thou
careful, young reader, how in any case you tell a lie.
Lie not, if any man but ask you "how you do," or
"what o'clock it is."  Be sure you make no false
excuse to screen a friend that is most dear to you.
Never let the most well-intended falsehood escape your
lips; for Heaven, which is entirely Truth, will make
the seed which you have sown of untruth to yield miseries a thousand-fold upon yours, as it did upon the head
of the ill-fated and mistaken Leucippus.
Leontius, finding the assurances of Bacha so confidently seconded by his son, could no longer withhold




358              CUPID'S REVENGE.
his belief; and, only forbidding their meeting for the
future, took a courteous leave of the lady, presenting
her at the same time with a valuable ring, in recompense, as he said, of the injustice which he had done
her in his false surmises of her guiltiness. In truth,
the surpassing beauty of the lady, with her appearing
modesty, had made no less impression upon the heart
of the fond old duke than they had awakened in the
bosom of his more pardonable son. His first design
was to make her his mistress; to the better accomplishing of which, Leucippus was dismissed from the court,
under the pretext of some honorable employment abroad.
In his absence, Leontius spared no offers to induce her
to comply with his purpose. Continually he solicited
her with rich offers, with messages, and by personal
visits. It was a ridiculous sight, if it were not rather
a sad one, to behold this second and worse dotage,
which by Cupid's wrath had fallen upon this fantastical
old new lover. All his occupation now was in dressing
and pranking himself up in youthful attire to please the
eyes of his new mistress. His mornings were employed
in the devising of trim fashions, in the company of
tailors, embroiderers, and feather-dressers.  So infatuated was he with these vanities, that, when a servant
came and told him that his daughter was dead, - even
she whom he had but lately so highly prized, -the words
seemed spoken to a deaf person. He either could not or
would not understand them; but, like one senseless, fell
to babbling about the shape of a new hose and doublet.
His crutch, the faithful prop of long aged years, was
discarded; and he resumed the youthful fashion of a
sword by his side, when his years wanted strength to




CUPID'S REVENGE.             3,59
have drawn it. In this condition of folly, it was no
difficult task for the widow, by affected pretences of
honor, and arts of amorous denial, to draw in this doting duke to that which she had all along aimed at, —the
offer of his crown in marriage. She was now Duchess
of Lycia! In her new elevation, the mask was quickly
thrown aside, and the impious Bacha appeared in her
true qualities. She had never loved the duke, her husband; but had used him as the instrument of her greatness. Taking advantage of his amorous folly, which
seemed to gain growth the nearer he approached to his
grave, she took upon her the whole rule of Lycia;
placing and displacing, at her will, all the great officers
of state; and filling the court with creatures of her
own, the agents of her guilty pleasures, she removed
from the duke's person the oldest and trustiest of his
dependants.
Leucippus, who at this juncture was returned from
his foreign mission, was met at once with the news of
his sister's death and the strange wedlock of the old
duke. To the memory of Hidaspes he gave some tears;
but these were swiftly swallowed up in his horror and
detestation of the conduct of Bacha. In his first fury,
he resolved upon a full disclosure of all that had passed
between him and his wicked step-mother. Again, he
thought, by killing Bacha, to rid the world of a monster. But tenderness for his father recalled him to
milder counsels. The fatal secret, nevertheless, sat upon
him like lead, while he was determined to confide it to
no other.  It took his sleep away, and his desire of
food; and, if a thought of mirth at any time crossed
him, the dreadful truth would recur to check it, as if a




360              CUPID'S REVENGE.
messenger should have come to whisper to him of some
friend's death. WVith difficulty he was brought to wish
their highnesses faint joy of their marriage; and, at
the first sight of Bacha, a friend was fain to hold his
wrist hard to prevent him from fainting. In' an interview, which after, at her request, he had with her alone,
the bad woman shamed not to take up the subject lightly; to treat as a trifle the marriage vow that had passed
between them; and, seeing him sad and silent, to
threaten him with the displeasure of the duke, his
father, if by words or looks he gave any suspicion to
the world of their dangerous secret.  "What had happened," she said, " was by no fault of hers. People
would have thought her mad if she had refused the
duke's offer. She had used no arts to entrap his father.
It was Leucippus' own resolute denial of any such thing
as a contract having passed between them which had
led to the proposal."
The prince, unable to extenuate his share of blame
in the calamity, humbly besought her, that " since, by
his own great fault, things had been brought to their
present pass, she would only live honest for the future,
and not abuse the credulous age of the old duke, as
he well knew she had the power to do.  For himself, seeing that life was no longer desirable to him, if
his death was judged by her to be indispensable to her
security, she was welcome to lay what trains she pleased
to compass it, so long as she would only suffer his
father to go to his grave in peace, since he had never
wronged her."
This temperate appeal was lost upon the heart of
Bacha, who from that moment was secretly bent upon




CUPID'S REVENGE.            361
effecting the destruction of Leucippus. Her project
was, by feeding the ears of the duke with exaggerated
praises of his son, to awaken a jealousy in the old man,
that she secretly preferred Leucippus. Next, by wilfully insinuating the great popularity of the prince (which
was no more indeed than the truth) among the Lycians,
to instil subtle fears into the duke that his son had laid
plots for circumventing his life and throne. By these
arts she was working upon the weak mind of the duke
almost to' distraction, when, at a meeting concocted by
herself between the prince and his father, the latter
taking Leucippus soundly to task for these alleged treasons, the prince replied only by humbly drawing his
sword, with the intention of laying it at his father's feet;
andl begging him, since he suspected him, to sheathe it
in his own bosom, for of his life he had been long weary.
Bacha entered at the crisis, and, ere Leucippus could
finish his submission, with loud outcries alarmed the
courtiers, who, rushing into the presence, found the
prince with sword in hand indeed, but with far other
intentions than this bad woman imputed to him, plainly accusing him of having drawn it upon his father!
Leucippus was quickly disarmed; and the old duke,
trembling between fear and age, committed him to close
prison, from which, by Bacha's aims, he never should
have come out alive but for the interference of the
common people, who, loving their prince, and equally
detesting Bacha, in a simultaneous mutiny arose, and
rescued him from the hands of the officers.
The court was now no longer a place of living for
Leucippus; and hastily thanking his countrymen for his
deliverance, which in his heart he rather deprecated




362              CUPID'S REVENGE.
than welcomed, as one that wished for death, he took
leave of all court hopes, and, abandoning the palace,
betook himself to a life of penitence in solitudes.
Not so secretly did he select his place of penance, in
a cave among lonely woods and fastnesses, but that his
retreat was traced by Bacha; who, baffled in her purpose, raging like some she-wolf, despatched an emissary
of her own to destroy him privately.
There was residing at the court of Lycia, at this
time, a young maiden, the daughter of Bacha by her
first husband, who had hitherto been brought up in the
obscurity of a poor country abode with an uncle; but
whom Bacha now publicly owned, and had prevailed
upon the easy duke to adopt as successor to the throne
in wrong of the true heir, his suspected son Leucippus.
This young creature, Urania by name, was as artless
and harmless as her mother was crafty and wicked.
To the unnatural Bacha she had been an object of neglect and aversion; and for the project of supplanting
Leucippus only had she fetched her out of retirement.
The bringing-up of Urania had been among country
hinds and lasses: to tend her flocks or superintend her
neat dairy had been the extent of her breeding. From
her calling, she had contracted a pretty rusticity of dialect, which, among the fine folks of the court, passed for
simplicity and folly. She was the unfittest instrument
for an ambitious design that could be chosen; for her
manners in a palace had a tinge still of her old occupation; and, to her mind, the lowly shepherdess's life
was best.
Simplicity is oft a match for prudence: and Urania
was not so simple but she understood that she had been




CUPID'S REVENGE.             3 63
sent for to court only in the prince's wrong; and in her
heart she was determined to defeat any designs that
might be contriving against her brother-in-law. The
melancholy bearing of Leucippus had touched her with
pity. This wrought in her a kind of love, which, for
its object, had no further end than the well-being of the
beloved.  She looked for no return of it, nor did
the possibility of such a blessing in the remotest way
occur to her, - so vast a distance she had imaged between her lowly bringing-up and the courtly breeding
and graces of Leucippus.  Hers was no raging flame,
such as had burned destructive in the bosom of poor
Hidaspes.  Either the vindictive god in mercy had
spared this young maiden, or the wrath of the confounding Cupid was restrained by a higher Power from
discharging the most malignant of his arrows against
the peace of so much innocence. Of the extent of her
mother's malice she was too guileless to have entertained
conjecture; but from hints and whispers, and, above
all, from that tender watchfulness with which a true
affection like Urania's tends the safety of its object, -
fearing even where no cause for fear subsists, - she
gathered that some danger was impending over the
prince, and with simple heroism resolved to countermine the treason.
It chanced upon a day that Leucippus had been
indulging his sad meditations in forests far from
human converse, when he was struck with the appearance of a human being, so unusual in that solitude.
There stood before him a seeming youth, of delicate
appearance, clad in coarse and peasantly attire.  "He
was come," he said, " to seek out the prince, and to be




364             CUPID'S REVENGE.
his poor boy and servant, if he would let him." —"Alas!
poor youth," replied Leucippus: "why do you follow
me, who am as poor as you are? "-" In good faith,"
was his pretty answer, " I shall be well and rich enough
if you will but love me." And, saying so, he wept.
The prince, admiring this strange attachment in a boy,
was moved with compassion; and seeing him exhausted,
as if with long travel and hunger, invited him in to his
poor habitation, setting such refreshments before him as
that barren spot afforded. But by no entreaties could he
be prevailed upon to take any sustenance; and all that
day, and for the two following, he seemed supported
only by some gentle flame of love that was within him.
He fed only upon the sweet looks and courteous entertainment which he received from Leucippus. Seemingly, he wished to die under the loving eyes of his master.
" I cannot eat," he prettily said; " but I shall eat tomorrow."- " You will be dead by that time," replied
Leucippus. "I shall be well then," said he; " since
you will not love me." Then the prince asking him
why he sighed so, " To think," was his innocent reply,
" that such a fine man as you should die, and no gay
lady love him." —" But you will love me," said Leucippus. "Yes, sure," said he, "till I die; and, when I am
in heaven, I shall wish for you." "This is a love,"
thought the other, "that I never yet heard tell of. But
come, thou art sleepy, child: go in, and I will sit with
thee." Then, from some words which the poor youth
dropped, Leucippus, suspecting that his wits were beginning to ramble, said, " What portends this?" -   I
am not sleepy," said the youth; "but you are sad.
I would that I could do any thing to make you merry 




CUPID'S REVENGE.             365
Shall I sing?" But soon, as if recovering strength,
"There is one approaching!" he wildly cried out.
"Master, look to yourself!"
His words were true: for now entered, with provided
weapon, the wicked emissary of Bacha, that we told of;
and, directing a mortal thrust at the prince, the supposed
boy, with a last effort, interposing his weak body, received it in his bosom, thanking the heavens in death
that he he had saved "so good a master."
Leucippus, having slain the villain, was at leisure to
discover, in the features of his poor servant, the countenance of his devoted sister-in-law! Through solitary
and dangerous ways she had sought him in that disguise; and, finding him, seems to have resolved upon a
voluntary death by fasting, - partly that she might die
in the presence of her beloved, and partly that she
might make known to him in death the love which she
wanted boldness to disclose to him while living, but
chiefly because she knew, that, by her demise, all obstacles would be removed that stood between her prince
and his succession to the throne of Lycia.
Leucippus had hardly time to comprehend the
strength of love in his Urania, when a trampling of
horses resounded through his solitude. It was a party
of Lycian horsemen, that had come to seek him, dragging the detested Bacha in their train, who was now to
receive the full penalty of her misdeeds. Amidst her
frantic fury upon the missing of her daughter, the old
duke had suddenly died, not without suspicion of her
having administered poison to him. Her punishment
was submitted to Leucippus, who was now, with joyful
acclaims, saluted as the rightful Duke of Lycia. He,




366              CUPID'S REVENGE.
as no way moved with his great wrongs, but considering her simply as the parent of Urania, saluting her
only by the title of " Wicked Mother," bade her to live.
" That reverend title," he said, and pointed to the
bleeding remains of her child, "must be her pardon.
He would use no extremity against her, but leave her
to Heaven." The hardened mother, not at all relenting
at the sad spectacle that lay before her, but making
show of dutiful submission to the young duke, and with
bended knees approaching him, suddenly with a dagger inflicted a mortal stab upon him; and, with a
second stroke stabbing herself, ended both their wretched lives.
Now was the tragedy of Cupid's wrath awfully completed; and, the race of Leontius failing in the deaths
of both his children, the chronicle relates, that under
their new duke, Ismenus, the offence to the angry
Power was expiated; his statues and altars were, with
more magnificence than ever, re-edified; and he ceased
thenceforth from plaguing the land.
Thus far the pagan historians relate erring.  But
from this vain idol story a not unprofitable moral may
be gathered against the abuse of the natural but dangerous passion of love. In the story of Hidaspes, we
see the preposterous linking of beauty with deformity;
of princely expectancies with mean and low conditions,
in the case of the prince, her brother; and of decrepit
age with youth, in the ill end of their doting father,
Leontius. By their examples we are warned to decline
all unequal and ill-assorted unions.




THE DEFEAT OF TIME.            367
THE DEFEAT OF TIME;
OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES.*
TITANIA and her moonlight elves were assembled under
the canopy of a huge oak, that served to shelter them
from the moon's radiance, which, being now at her full
noon, shot forth intolerable rays, - intolerable, I mean,
to the subtile texture of their little shadowy bodies, -
but dispensing an agreeable coolness to us grosser mortals. An air of discomfort sate upon the queen and
upon her courtiers. Their tiny friskings and gambols
were forgot; and even Robin Goodfellow, for the first
time in his little airy life, looked grave. For the queen
had had melancholy forebodings of late, founded upon an
ancient prophecy laid up in the records of Fairyland,
that the date of fairy existence should be then extinct
when men should cease to believe in them. And she
knew how that the race of the Nymphs, which were her,
predecessors, and had been the guardians of the sacred
floods, and of the silver fountains, and of the consecrated hills and woods, had utterly disappeared before the
chilling touch of man's incredulity; and she sighed bitterly at the approaching fate of herself and of her subjects, which was dependent upon so fickle a lease as the
capricious and ever mutable faith of man. When, as
if to realize her fears, a melancholy shape came gliding
in, and that was-Time, who with his intolerable scythe
* From Hone's " Table-book."




368            THE DEFEAT OF TIME;
mows down kings and kingdoms; at whose dread approach the fays huddled together as a flock of timorous
sheep; and the most courageous among them crept into
acorn-cups, not enduring the sight of that ancientest of
monarchs. Titania's first impulse was to wish the presence of her false lord, King Oberon,- who was far
away, in the pursuit of a strange beauty, a fay of Indian Land, - that with his good lance and sword, like
a faithful knight and husband, he might defend her
against Time. But she soon checked that thought as
vain; for what could the prowess of the mighty Oberon
himself, albeit the stoutest champion in Fairyland, have
availed against so huge a giant, whose bald top touched
the skies? So, in the mildest tone, she besought the
spectre, that in his mercy he would overlook and pass
by her small subjects, as too diminutive and powerless
to add any worthy trophy to his renown. And she besought him to employ his resistless strength against the
ambitious children of men, and to lay waste their
aspiring works; to tumble down their towers and turrets, and the Babels of their pride, - fit objects of his
devouring scythe, - but to spare her and her harmless
race, who had no existence beyond a dream; frail objects
of a creed that lived but in the faith of the believer.
And with her little arms, as well as she could, she
grasped the stern knees of Time; and, waxing speechless with fear, she beckoned to her chief attendants, and
maids of honor, to come forth from their hiding-places,
and to plead the plea of the fairies. And one of those
small, delicate creatures came forth at her bidding, clad
all in white like a chorister; and in a low, melodious
tone, not louder than the hum of a pretty bee, —when it




OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES.          369
seems to be demurring whether it shall settle upon this
sweet flower or that before it settles, - set forth her
humble petition. " We fairies," she said, "are the most
inoffensive race that live, and least deserving to perish.
It is we that have the care of all sweet melodies, that
no discords may offend the sun, who is the great soul of
music. We rouse the lark at morn; and the pretty
Echoes, which respond to all the twittering choir, are of
our making. Wherefore, great King of Years, as ever
you have loved the music which is raining from a morning cloud sent from the messenger of day, the lark, as
he mounts to heaven's gate, beyond the ken of mortals;
or if ever you have listened with a charmed ear to the
night-bird, that -'In the flowery spring,
Amidst the leaves set, makes the thickets ring
Of her sour sorrows, sweetened with her song,' -
spare our tender tribes, and we will muffle up the
sheep-bell for thee, that thy pleasure take no interruption whenever thou shalt listen unto Philomel."
And Time answered, that "he had heard that song
too long; and he was even wearied with that ancient
strain that recorded the wrong of Tereus. But, if she
would know in what music Time delighted, it was, when
sleep and darkness lay upon crowded cities, to hark to
the midnight chime which is tolling from a hundred
clocks, like the last knell over the soul of a dead
world; or to the crush of the fall of some age-worn edifice, which is as the voice of himself when he disparteth
kingdoms."
A second female fay took up the plea, and said, " We
be the handmaids of the Spring, and tend upon the birth
24




370            THE DEFEAT OF TIME;
of all sweet buds: and the pastoral cowslips are our
friends; and the pansies; and the violets, like nuns;
and the quaking harebell is in our wardship; and the
hyacinth, once a fair youth, and dear to Phoebus."
Then Time made answer, in his wrath striking the
harmless ground with his hurtful scythe, that "they
must not think that he was one that cared for flowers,
except to see them wither, and to take her beauty from
the rose."
And a third fairy took up the plea, and said, "We
are kindly things; and it is we that sit at evening, and
shake rich odors from sweet bowers upon discoursing
lovers, that seem to each other to be their own sighs;
and we keep off the bat and the owl from their privacy,
and the ill-boding whistler; and we flit in sweet dreams
across the brains of infancy, and conjure up a smile upon
its soft lips to beguile the careful mother, while its little soul is fled for a brief minute or two to sport with
our youngest fairies."
Then Saturn (which is Time) made answer, that
"they should not think that he delighted in tender
babes, that had devoured his own, till foolish Rhea
cheated him with a stone, which-he swallowed, thinking
it to be the infant Jupiter." And thereat, in token, he
disclosed to view his enormous tooth, in which appeared
monstrous dints left by that unnatural meal; and his
great throat, that seemed capable of devouring up the
earth and all its inhabitants at one meal. "And for
lovers," he continued, "my delight is, with a hurrying
hand to snatch them away from their love-meetings
by stealth at nights; and, in absence, to stand like a
motionless statue, or their leaden planet of mishap




OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES.        371
(whence I had my name), till I make their minutes
seem ages."
Next stood up a male fairy, clad all in green, like a
forester or one of Robin Hood's mates, and, doffing his
tiny cap, said, "We are small foresters, that live in
woods, training the young boughs in graceful intricacies,
with blue snatches of the sky between: we frame all
shady roofs and arches rude; and sometimes, when we
are plying our tender hatchets, men say that the tapping woodpecker is nigh. And it is we that scoop the
hollow cell of the squirrel, and carve quaint letters upon
the rinds of trees, which, in sylvan solitudes, sweetly
recall to the mind of the heat-oppressed swain, ere he
lies down to slumber, the name of his fair one, dainty
Aminta, gentle Rosalind, or chastest Laura, as it may
happen."
Saturn, nothing moved with this courteous address,
bade him be gone, or, "if he would be a woodman, to
go forth and fell oak for the fairies' coffins which would
forthwith be wanting. For himself, he took no delight
in haunting the woods, till their golden plumage (the
yellow leaves) were beginning to fall, and leave the
brown-black limbs bare, like Nature in her skeleton
dress."
Then stood up one of those gentle fairies that are
good to man, and blushed red as any rose while he told
a modest story of one of his own good deeds.  "It
chanced upon a time," he said, "that while we were
looking cowslips in the meads, while yet the dew was
hanging on the buds like beads, we found a babe left in
its swathing-clothes, - a little sorrowful, deserted thing,
begot of love, but begetting no love in others; guiltless




372            THE DEFEAT OF TIME;
of shame, but doomed to shame for its parents' offence
in bringing it by indirect courses into the world. It
was pity to see the abandoned little orphan left to the
world's care by an unnatural mother. How the cold dew
kept wetting its childish coats! and its little hair, how
it was bedabbled, that was like gossamer! Its pouting
mouth, unknowing how to speak, lay half opened like
a rose-lipped shell; and its cheek was softer than any
peach, upon which the tears, for very roundness, could
not long dwell, but fell off, in clearness like pearls, -
some on the grass, and some on his little hand; and
some haply wandered to the little dimpled well under
his mouth, which Love himself seemed to have planned
out, but less for tears than for smilings. Pity it was,
too, to see how the burning sun had scorched its helpless limbs; for it lay without shade or shelter, or
mother's breast, for foul weather or fair. So, having
compassion on its sad plight, my fellows and I turned
ourselves into grasshoppers, and swarmed about the
babe, making such shrill cries as that pretty little chirping creature makes in its mirth, till with our noise we
attracted the attention of a passing rustic, a tenderhearted hind, who, wondering at our small but loud concert, strayed aside curiously, and found the babe, where
it lay in the remote grass, and, taking it up, lapped
it in his russet coat, and bore it to his cottage, where
his wife kindly nurtured it till it grew up a goodly
personage. How this babe prospered afterwards, let
proud London tell. This was that famous Sir Thomas
Gresham, who was the chiefest of her merchants, the
richest, the wisest. Witness his many goodly vessels
on the Thames, freighted with costly merchandise, jew



OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES.        373
els from Ind, and pearls for courtly dames, and silks of
Samarcand. And witness, more than all, that stately
Bourse (or Exchange) which he caused to be built, a
mart for merchants from east and west, whose graceful
summit still bears, in token of the fairies' favors, his
chosen crest, the grasshopper. And, like the grasshopper, may it please you, great king, to suffer us also to
live, partakers of the green earth!"
The fairy had scarce ended his plea, when a shrill cry,
not unlike the grasshopper's, was heard. Poor Puck -
or Robin Goodfellow, as he is sometimes called- had
recovered a little from his first fright, and, in one of his
mad freaks, had perched upon the beard of old Time,
which was flowing, ample, and majestic; and was amusing himself with plucking at a hair which was indeed so
massy, that it seemed to him that he was removing some
huge beam of timber, rather than a hair; which Time
by some ill chance perceiving, snatched up the impish
mischief with his great hand, and asked what it was.
" Alas! " quoth Puck, " a little random elf am I, born
in one of Nature's sports; a very weed, created for the
simple, sweet enjoyment of myself, but for no other
purpose, worth, or need, that ever I could learn.'Tis
I that bob the angler's idle cork, till the patient man is
ready to breathe a curse. I steal the morsel from the
gossip's fork, or stop the sneezing chanter in mid psalm;
and, when an infant has been born with hard or homely
features, mothers say I changed the child at nurse: but
to fulfil any graver purpose I have not wit enough, and
hardly the will. I am a pinch of lively dust to frisk
upon the wind: a tear would make a puddle of me;
and so I tickle myself with the lightest straw, and shun




374            THE DEFEAT OF TIME.
all griefs that might make me stagnant. This is my
small philosophy."
Then Time, dropping him on the ground, as a thing
too inconsiderable for his vengeance, grasped fast his
mighty scythe: and now, not Puck alone, but the whole
state of fairies, had gone to inevitable wreck and destruction, had not a timely apparition interposed, at whose
boldness Time was astounded; for he came not with the
habit or the forces of a deity, who alone might cope
with Time, but as a simple mortal, clad as you might
see a forester that hunts after wild conies by the cold
moonshine; or a stalker of stray deer, stealthy and bold.
But by the golden lustre in his eye, and the passionate
wanness in his cheek, and by the fair and ample space
of his forehead, which seemed a palace framed for the
habitation of all glorious thoughts, he knew that this was
his great rival, who had power given him to rescue whatsoever victims Time should clutch, and to cause them to
live for ever in his immortal verse. And, muttering the
name of Shakspeare, Time spread his roc-like wings,
and fled the controlling presence; and the liberated
court of the fairies, with Titania at their head, flocked
around the gentle ghost, giving him thanks, nodding to
him, and doing him courtesies, who had crowned them
henceforth with a permanent existence, to live in the
minds of men, while verse shall have power to charm,
or midsummer moons shall brighten.
What particular endearments passed between the fairies and their poet, passes my pencil to delineate; but,
if you are curious to be informed, I must refer you,
gentle reader, to the "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,"




MARIA HOWE.                375
a most agreeable poem lately put forth by my friend
Thomas Hood; of the first half of which the above is
nothing but a meagre and a harsh prose abstract.
Farewell I
The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of
Apollo.
MARIA HOWE;
OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES.*
I WAS brought up in the country. From my infancy I
was always a weak and tender-spirited girl, subject to
fears and depressions. My parents, and particularly
my mother, were of a very different disposition. They
were what is usually called gay. They loved pleasure
and parties and visiting; but, as they found the turn of
my mind to be quite opposite, they gave themselves
little trouble about me, but upon such occasions generally left me to my choice, which was much oftener to
stay at home, and indulge myself in my solitude, than
to join in their rambling visits. I was always fond of 
being alone, yet always in a manner afraid. There
was a book-closet which led into my mother's dressingroom. Here I was extremely fond of being shut up
by myself, to take down whatever volumes I pleased,
and pore upon them, -no matter whether they were
fit for my years or no, or whether I understood them.
* This and the two following juvenile stories are from " Mrs. Leicester's
School." - EDITOR.




376               MARIA HOWE
Here, when the weather would not permit my going
into the dark walk (my walk, as it was called) in the
garden, - here, when my parents have been from home,
I have staid for hours together, till the loneliness,
which pleased me so at first, has at length become quite
frightful, and I have rushed out of the closet into the
inhabited parts of the house, and sought refuge in the
lap of some one of the female servants, or of my aunt,
who would say, seeing me look pale, that Maria had
been frightening herself with some of those nasty books:
so she used to call my favorite volumes, which I would
not have parted with, no, not with one of the least of
them, if I had had the choice to be made a fine princess,
and to govern the world. But my aunt was no reader.
She used to excuse herself, and say that reading hurt
her eyes. I have been naughty enough to think that
this was only an excuse; for I found that my aunt's
weak eyes did not prevent her from poring ten hours a
day upon her Prayer-book, or her favorite Thomas a
Kempis. But this was always her excuse for not reading any of the books I recommended. My aunt was
my father's sister. She had never been married. My
father was a good deal older than my mother, and my
aunt was ten years older than my father. As I was
often left at home with her, and as my serious disposition so well agreed with hers, an intimacy grew up
between the old lady and me; and she would often say
that she loved only one person in the world, and that
was me. Not that she and my parents were on very
bad terms; but the old lady did not feel herself respected
enough. The attention and fondness which she showed
to me, conscious as I was that I was almost the only




OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES.    377
being she felt any thing like fondness to, made me love
her, as it was natural: indeed, I am ashamed to say,
that I fear I almost loved her better than both my parents put together. But there was an oddness, a silence,
about my aunt, which was never interrupted but by her
occasional expressions of love to me, that made me stand
in fear of her. An odd look from under her spectacles
would sometimes scare me away, when I had been peering up in her face to make her kiss me. Then she had
a way of muttering to herself, which, though it was
good words and religious words that she was mumbling,
somehow I did not like. My weak spirits, and the
fears I was subject to, always made me afraid of any
personal singularity or oddness in any one.  I am
ashamed, ladies, to lay open so many particulars of our
family; but indeed it is necessary to the understanding
of what I am going to tell you of a very great weakness,
if not wickedness, which I was guilty of towards my
aunt. But I must return to my studies, and tell you
what books I found in the closet, and what reading I
chiefly admired. There was a great " Book of Martyrs,"
in which I used to read, or rather I used to spell out
meanings; for I was too ignorant to make out many
words: but there it was written all about those good
men who chose to be burned alive, rather than forsake
their religion, and become naughty Papists.  Some
words I could make out, some I could not: but I made
out enough to fill my little head with vanity; and I used
to think I was so courageous I could be burned too;
and I would put my hands upon the flames which were
pictured in the pretty pictures which the book had,
and feel them. But you know, ladies, there is a great




378               MARIA HOWE;
difference between the flames in a picture, and real fire;
and I am now ashamed of the conceit which I had of
my own courage, and think how poor a martyr I should
have made in those days. Then there was a book not
so big, but it had pictures in. It was called Culpepper's
"Herbal." It was full of pictures of plants and herbs; but
I did not much care for that. Then there was Salmon's
" Modern History," out of which I picked a good deal.
It had pictures of Chinese gods, and the great hooded
serpent, which ran strangely in my fancy. There were
some law-books too; but the old English frightened me
from reading them. But, above all, what I relished
was Stackhouse's "History of the Bible," where there
was the picture of the ark, and all the beasts getting
into it. This delighted me, because it puzzled me:
and many an aching head have I got with poring into
it, and contriving how it might be built, with such and
such rooms, to hold all the world, if there should be another flood; and sometimes settling what pretty beasts
should be saved, and what should not; for I would have
no ugly or deformed beast in my pretty ark. But this
was only a piece of folly and vanity, that a little reflection might cure me of. Foolish girl that I was, to
suppose that any creature is really ugly, that has all its
limbs contrived with heavenly wisdom, and was doubtless formed to some beautiful end!-though a child
cannot comprehend it.. Doubtless a frog or a toad is
not uglier in itself than a squirrel or a pretty green
lizard; but we want understanding to see it.
These fancies, ladies, were not so very foolish or
naughty, perhaps, but they may be forgiven in a child
of six years old; but what I am going to tell, I shall




OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES.    379
be ashamed of, and repent, I hope, as long as I live.
It will teach me not to form rash judgments. Besides
the picture of the ark, and many others which I have
forgot, Stackhouse contained one picture which made
more impression upon my childish understanding than
all the rest: it was the picture of the raising-up of
Samuel, which I used to call the Witch-of-Endor picture. I was always very fond of picking up stories
about witches. There was a book called "Glanvil on
Witches," which used to lie about in this closet: it was
thumbed about, and showed it had been much read in
former times. This was my treasure. Here I used to
pick out the strangest stories. My not being able to
read them very well, probably made them appear more
strange and out of the way to me. But I could collect
enough to understand that witches were old women,
who gave themselves up to do mischief; how, by the
help of spirits as bad as themselves, they lamed cattle,
and made the corn not grow; and how they made
images of wax to stand for people that had done them
any injury, or they thought had done them injury;
and how they burned the images before a slow fire,
and stuck pins in them; and the persons which these
waxen images represented, however far distant, felt
all the pains and torments in good earnest which were
inflicted in show upon these images: and such a horror I had of these wicked witches, that though I am
now better instructed, and look upon all these stories as
mere idle tales, and invented to fill people's heads with
nonsense, yet I cannot recall to mind the horrors which
I then felt, without shuddering, and feeling something
of the old fit return.




380               MARIA HOWE;
This foolish book of witch-stories had no pictures in
it; but I made up for them out of my own fancy, and
out of the great picture of the raising-up of Samuel, in
Stackhouse. I was not old enough to understand the
difference there was between these silly, improbable
tales, which imputed such powers to poor old women,
who are the most helpless things in the creation, and
the narrative in the Bible, which does not say that the,
witch, or pretended witch, raised up the dead body of
Samuel by her own power, but, as it clearly appears,
he was permitted by the divine will to appear, to
confound the presumption of Saul; and that the witch
herself was really as much frightened and confounded
at the miracle as Saul himself, not expecting a real appearance, but probably having prepared some juggling,
sleight-of-hand tricks, and sham appearance, to deceive
the eyes of Saul; whereas neither she, nor any one
living, had ever the power to raise the dead to life, but
only He who made them from the first. These reasons
I might have read in Stackhouse itself, if I had been
old enough, and have read them in that very book since
I was older; but, at that time, I looked at little beyond
the picture.
These stories of witches so terrified me, that my
sleeps were broken; and, in my dreams, I always had
a fancy of a witch being in the room with me. I know
now that it was only nervousness; but though I can
laugh at it now as well as you, ladies, if you knew
what I suffered, you would be thankful that you have
had sensible people about you to instruct you, and teach
you better. I was let grow up wild, like an ill weed;
and thrived accordingly. One night, that I had been




OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES.    381
terrified in my sleep with my imaginations, I got out of
bed, and crept softly to the adjoining room. My room
was next to where my aunt usually sat when she was
alone. Into her room I crept for relief from my fears.
The old lady was not yet retired to rest, but was sitting
with her eyes half open, half closed; her spectacles tottering upon her nose; her head nodding over her Prayerbook; her lips mumbling the words as she read them,
or half read them, in her dozing posture; her grotesque
appearance, her old-fashioned dress, resembling what I
had seen in that fatal picture in Stackhouse. All this,
with the dead time of night, as it seemed to me (for I
had gone through my first sleep), joined to produce a
wicked fancy in me, that the form which I had beheld
was not my aunt, but some witch. Her mumbling of
her prayers confirmed me in this shocking idea. I had
read in Glanvil of those wicked creatures reading their
prayers backuwards; and I thought that this was the
operation which her lips were at this time employed
about. Instead of flying to her friendly lap for that
protection which I had so often experienced when I have
been weak and timid, I shrunk back, terrified and bewildered, to my bed, where I lay, in broken sleeps and
miserable fancies, till the morning, which I had so much
reason to wish for, came. My fancies a little wore
away with the light; but an impression was fixed, which
could not for a long time be done away. In the daytime, when my father and mother were about the house,
when I saw them familiarly speak to my aunt, my fears
all vanished; and when the good creature has taken me
upon her knees, and shown me any kindness more than
ordinary, at such times I have melted into tears, and




382               MARIA HOWE;
longed to tell her what naughty, foolish fancies I had
had of her.  But, when night returned, that figure
which I had seen recurred, -the posture, the half-closed
eyes, the mumbling and muttering which I had heard.:A confusion was in my head, who it was I had seen
that night: it was my aunt, and it was not my aunt; it
was that good creature, who loved me above all the
world, engaged at her good task of devotions, - perhaps
praying for some good to me. Again, it was a witch-,
a creature hateful to God and man, reading backwards
the good prayers; who would perhaps destroy me. In
these conflicts of mind I passed several weeks, till, by a
revolution in my fate, I was removed to the house of a
female relation of my mother's in a distant part of the
country, who had come on a visit to our house, and
observing my lonely ways, and apprehensive of the ill
effect of my mode of living upon my health, begged
leave to take me home to her house to reside for a short
time. I went, with some reluctance at leaving my
closet, my dark walk, and even my aunt, who had been
such a source of both love and terror to me. But I,went, and soon found the grand effects of a change of
scene. Instead of melancholy closets and lonely avenues of trees, I saw lightsome rooms and cheerful faces.
I had companions of my own age. No books were
allowed me but what were rational and sprightly, —that
gave me mirth, or gave me instruction. I soon learned
to laugh at witch-stories; and when I returned, after
three or four months' absence, to our own house, my
good aunt appeared to me in the same light in which I
had viewed her from my infancy, before that foolish
fancy possessed me; or rather, I should say, more kind,




OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES.   383
more fond, more loving than before. It is impossible
to say how much good that lady (the kind relation of
my mother's that I spoke of) did to me by changing
the scene. Quite a new turn of ideas was given to me.
I became sociable and companionable. My parents soon
discovered a change in me; and I have found a similar
alteration in them. They have been plainly more fond
of me since that change, as from that time I learned to
conform myself more to their way of living. I have
never since had that aversion to company, and going out
with them, which used to make them regard me with
less fondness than they would have wished to show. I
impute all that I had to complain of in their neglect to
my having been a little unsociable, uncompanionable
mortal. I lived in this manner for a year or two,
passing my time between our house and the lady's who
so kindly took me in hand, till, by her advice, I was
sent to this school; where I have told you, ladies,
what, for fear of ridicule, I never ventured to tell any
person besides, -the story of my foolish and naughty
fancy.




384               SUSAN YATES;
SUSAN YATES;
OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH.
I WAS born and brought up in a house in which my
parents had all their lives resided, which stood in the
midst of that lonely tract of land called the Lincolnshire
Fens.  Few families besides our own lived near the
spot; both because it was reckoned an unwholesome
air, and because its distance from any town or market
made it an inconvenient situation. My father was in
no very affluent circumstances; and it was a sad necessity which he was put to, of having to go many miles
to fetch any thing from the nearest village, which was
full seven miles distant, through a sad, miry way, that
at all times made it heavy walking, and, after rain, was
almost impassable. But he had no horse or carriage
of his own.
The church, which belonged to the parish in which
our house was situated, stood in this village; and its distance being, as I said before, seven miles from our house,
made it quite an impossible thing for my mother or me
to think of going to it. Sometimes, indeed, on a fine
dry Sunday, my father would rise early, and take a walk
to the village, just to see how goodness thrived, as he
used to say; but he would generally return tired, and the
worse for his walk. It is scarcely possible to explain to
any one who has not lived in the fens what difficult and
dangerous walking it is. A mile is as good as four,




OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH.        385
I have heard my father say, in those parts. My mother,
who, in the early part of her life, had lived in a more
civilized spot, and had been used to constant churchgoing, would often lament her situation. It was from
her I early imbibed a great curiosity and anxiety to see
that thing which I had heard her call a church, and so
often lament that she could never go to. I had seen
houses of various structures, and had seen in pictures
the shapes of ships and boats, and palaces and temples,
but never rightly any thing that could be called a church,
or that could satisfy me about its form. Sometimes I
thought it must be like our house; and sometimes I fancied it must be more like the house of our neighbor,
Mr. Sutton, which was bigger and handsomer than ours.
Sometimes I thought it was a great hollow cave, such
as I have heard my father say the first inhabitants of the
earth dwelt in. Then I thought it was like a wagon
or a cart, and that it must be something movable. The
shape of it ran in my mind strangely; and one day I
ventured to ask my mother, what was that foolish thing
she was always longing to go to, and which she called
a church. Was it any thing to eat or drink? or was it
only like a great huge plaything, to be seen and stared
at? I was not quite five years of age when I made this
inquiry.
This question, so oddly put, made my mother smile:
but, in a little time, she put on a more grave look, and
informed me that a church was nothing that I had supposed it; but it was a great building, far greater than
any house which I had seen, where men and women
and children came together twice a day, on Sundays, to
hear the Bible read, and make good resolutions for the
25




386               SUSAN YATES;
week to come. She told me that the fine music which
we sometimes heard in the air came from the bells of
St. Mary's Church, and that we never heard it but
when the wind was in a particular point. This raised
my wonder more than all the rest; for I had somehow
conceived that the noise which I heard was occasioned
by birds up in the air, or that it was made by the angels,
whom (so ignorant I was till that time) I had always
considered to be a sort of birds: for, before this time,
I was totally ignorant of any thing like religion; it being
a principle of my father, that young heads should not
be told too many things at once, for fear they should
get confused ideas, and no clear notions of any thing.
We had always, indeed, so far observed Sundays, that
no work was done upon that day; and upon that day I
wore my best muslin frock, and was not allowed to sing
or to be noisy: but I never understood why that day
should differ from any other. We had no public meetings: indeed, the few straggling houses which were near
us would have furnished but a slender congregation;
and the loneliness of the place we lived in, instead of
making us more sociable, and drawing us closer together, as my mother used to say it ought to have done,
seemed to have the effect of making us more distant,
and averse to society, than other people. One or two
good neighbors, indeed, we had, but not in numbers to
give me an idea of church attendance.
But now my mother thought it high time to give me
some clearer instruction in the main points of religion;
and my father came readily into her plan. I was now
permitted to sit up half an hour later on Sunday evening, that I might hear a portion of Scripture read, which




OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH.        387
had always been their custom; though, by reason of my
tender age, and my father's opinion on the impropriety
of children being taught too young, I had never till
now been an auditor. I was taught my prayers, and
those things which you, ladies, I doubt not, had the
benefit of being instructed in at a much earlier age.
The clearer my notions on these points became, they
only made me more passionately long for the privilege
of joining in that social service from which it seemed
that we alone, of all the inhabitants of the land, were
debarred; and, when the wind was in that point which
enabled the sound of the distant bells of St. Mary's to
be heard over the great moor which skirted our house,
I have stood out in the air to catch the sounds, which I
almost devoured: and the tears have come into my eyes,
when sometimes they seemed to speak to me, almost in
articulate sounds, to come to church, and because of the
great moor which was between me and them I could
not come; and the too tender apprehensions of these
things have filled me with a religious melancholy.
With thoughts like these, I entered into my seventh
year.
And now the time was come, when the great moor
was no longer to separate me from the object of my
wishes and of my curiosity. My father having some
money left him by the will of a deceased relation, we
ventured to set up a sort of a carriage: no very superb
one, I assure you, ladies; but, in that part of the world,
it was looked upon with some envy by our poorer
neighbors. The first party of pleasure which my father
proposed to take in it was to the village where I had
so often wished to go; and my mother and I were to




388               SUSAN YATES;
accompany him: for it was very fit, my father observed,
that little Susan should go to church, and learn how to
behave herself; for we might sometime or other have
occasion to live in London, and not always be confined
to that out-of-the-way spot.
It was on a Sunday morning that we set out, my little
heart beating with almost breathless expectation. The
day was fine, and the roads as good as they-ever are in
those parts. I was so happy and so proud! I was lost
in dreams of what I was going to see. At length, the
tall steeple of St. Mary's Church came in view. It was
pointed out to me by my father as the place from which
that music had come which I had heard over the moor,
and fancied to be angels singing. I was wound up to
the highest pitch of delight at having visibly presented
to me the spot from which had proceeded that unknown
friendly music; and when it began to peal, just as we
approached the village, it seemed to speak, "Susan is
come!" as plainly as it used to invite me to come when I
heard it over the moor. I pass over our alighting at
the house of a relation, and all that passed till I went
with my father and mother to church.
St. Mary's Church is a great church for such a small
village as it stands in. My father said it had been a
cathedral, and that it had once belonged to a monastery;
but the monks were all gone. Over the door, there
was stone-work representing the saints and bishops;
and here and there, along the sides of the church, there
were figures of men's heads, made in a strange, grotesque way. I have since seen the same sort of figures
in the round tower of the Temple Church in London.
My father said they were very improper ornaments for




OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH.       389
such a place; and so I now think them: but it seems
the people who built these great churches, in old times,
gave themselves more liberties than they do now; and
I remember, that when I first saw them, and before
my father had made this observation, though they were
so ugly and out of shape, and some of them seemed to
be grinning, and distorting their features with pain or
with laughter, yet, being placed upon a church to which
I had come with such serious thoughts, I could not help
thinking they had some serious meaning; and I looked
at them with wonder, but without any temptation to
laugh. I somehow fancied they were the representation
of wicked people, set up as a warning.
When we got into the church, the service was not
begun; and my father kindly took me round to show
me the monuments, and every thing else remarkable.
I remember seeing one of a venerable figure, which
my father said had been a judge. The figure was
kneeling, as if it were alive, before a sort of desk, with
a book, I suppose the Bible, lying on it. I somehow
fancied the figure had a sort of life in it, it seemed so
natural; or that the dead judge, that it was done for,
said his prayers at it still. This was a silly notion: but
I was very young, and had passed my little life in a
remote place, where I had never seen any thing, nor
knew any thing; and the awe which I felt at first being
in a church took from me all power but that of wondering. I did not reason about any thing: I was too
young. Now I understand why monuments are put up
for the dead, and why the figures which are put upon
them are described as doing the actiorns which they did
in their lifetimes, and that they are a sort of pictures




390               SUSAN YATES;
set up for our instruction. But all was new and surprising to me on that day, -the long windows with
little panes, the pillars, the pews made of oak, the. little
hassocks for the people to kneel on, the form of the
pulpit, with the sounding-board over it, gracefully
carved in flower-work. To you, who have lived all
your lives in populous places, and have been taken to
church from the earliest time you can remember, my
admiration of these things must appear strangely ignorant; but I was a lonely young creature, that had been
brought up in remote places, where there was neither
church, nor church-going inhabitants. I have since
lived in great towns, and seen the ways of churches
and of worship; and I am old enough now to distinguish between what is essential in religion, and what is
merely formal or ornamental.
When my father had done pointing out to me the
things most worthy of notice about the church, the
service was almost ready to begin: the parishioners had
most of them entered, and taken their seats; and we
were shown into a pew, where my mother was already
seated. Soon after, the clergyman entered, and the
organ began to play what is called the Voluntary. I
had never seen so many people assembled before. At
first, I thought that all eyes were upon me, and that
because I was a stranger. I was terribly ashamed and
confused at first: but my mother helped me to find out
the places in the Prayer-book; and being busy about
that took off some of my painful apprehensions. I was
no stranger to the order of the service, having often
read in the Prayer-book at home: but, my thoughts
being confused, it puzzled me a little to find out the




OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH.        391
responses and other things which I thought I knew so
well; but I went through it tolerably well. One thing
which has often troubled me since is, that I am afraid
I was too full of myself, and of thinking how happy I
was, and what a privilege it was for one that was so
young to join in the service with so many grown people;
so that I did not attend enough to the instruction which
I might have received. I remember, I foolishly applied
every thing that was said, to myself, so as it could mean
nobody but myself, I was so full of my own thoughts.
All that assembly of people seemed to me as if they were
come together only to show me the way of a church.
Not but I received some very affecting impressions from
some things which I heard that day: but the standing-up
and the sitting-down of the people, the organ, the singing, - the way of all these things took up more of my
attention than was proper; or I thought it did. I believe I behaved better, and was more serious, when I
went a second time and a third time: for now we went,
as a regular thing, every Sunday; and continued to do
so, till, by a still further change for the better in my
father's circumstances, we removed to London. Oh! it
was a happy day for me, my first going to St. Mary's
Church: before that day, I used to feel like a little outcast in the wilderness; like one that did not belong to
the world of Christian people. I have never felt like a
little outcast since. But I never can hear the sweet
noise of bells, that I don't think of the angels singing,
and what poor but pretty thoughts I had of angels in
my uninstructed solitude.




392             ARABELLA HARDY;
ARABELLA HARDY;
OR, THE SEA VOYAGE.
I WAS born in the East Indies. I lost my father and
mother young. At the age of five, my relations thought
it proper that I should be sent to England for my
education. I was to be intrusted to the care of a young
woman who had a character for great humanity and
discretion; but just as I had taken leave of my friends,
and we were about to take our passage, the young
woman suddenly fell sick, -and could not go on board.
In this unpleasant emergency, no one knew how to act.
The ship was at the very point of sailing, and it was
the last which was to sail for the season. At length,
the captain, who was known to my friends, prevailed
upon my relation, who had come with us to see us embark, to leave the young woman on shore, and to let me
embark separately. There was no possibility of getting
any other female attendant for me, in the short time
allotted for our preparation; and the opportunity of
going by that ship was thought too valuable to be lost.
No other ladies happened to be going; and so I was
consigned to the care of the captain and his crew, -
rough and unaccustomed attendants for a young creature, delicately brought up as I had been: but, indeed,
they did their best to make me not feel the difference.
The unpolished sailors were my nursery-maids and my
waiting-women. Every thing was done by the captain




OR, THE SEA VOYAGE.           393
and the men to accommodate me, and make me easy.
I had a little room made out of the cabin, which was to
be considered as my room, and nobody might enter into
it. The first mate had a great character for bravery,
and all sailor-like accomplishments; but with all this
he had a gentleness of manners, and a pale, feminine
cast of face, from ill health and a weakly constitution,
which subjected him to some ridicule from the officers,
and caused him to be named Betsy. He did not much
like the appellation; but he submitted to it the better,
saying that those who gave him a woman's name well
knew that he had a man's heart, and that, in the face of
danger, he would go as far as any man. To this young
man, whose real name was Charles Atkinson, by a
lucky thought of the captain, the care of me was especially intrusted. Betsy was proud of his charge; and,
to do him justice, acquitted himself with great diligence
and adroitness through the whole of the voyage. From
the beginning, I had somehow looked upon Betsy as a
woman, hearing him so spoken of; and this reconciled
me in some measure to the want of a maid, which I had
been used to. But I was a manageable girl at all
times, and gave nobody much trouble.
I have not knowledge enough to give an account of
my voyage, or to remember the names of the seas we
passed through, or the lands which we touched upon,
in our course. The chief thing I can remember (for I
do not recollect the events of the voyage in any order)
was Atkinson taking me upon deck to see the great
whales playing about in the sea. There was one great
whale came bounding up out of the sea, and then he
would dive into it again, and then he would come up




394             ARABELLA HARDY;
at a distance where nobody expected him; and another
whale was following after him. Atkinson said they
were at play, and that the lesser whale loved that bigger
whale, and kept it company all through the wide seas:
but I thought it strange play, and a frightful kind of
love; for I every minute expected they would come up
to our ship, and toss it. But Atkinson said a whale
was a gentle creature, and it was a sort of sea-elephant;
and that the most powerful creatures in nature are
always the least hurtful. And he told me how men
went out to take these whales, and stuck long pointed
darts into them; and how the sea was discolored with
the blood of these poor whales for many miles' distance:
and I admired the courage of the men; but I was sorry
for the inoffensive whale. Many other pretty sights he
used to show me, when he was not on watch, or doing
some duty for the ship. No one was more attentive to
his duty than he: but, at such times as he had leisure,
he would show me all pretty sea-sights, - the dolphins
and porpoises that came before a storm; and all the
colors which the sea changed to, - how sometimes it was
a deep blue, and then a deep green, and sometimes it
would seem all on fire. All these various appearances
he would show me, and attempt to explain the reason
of them to me as well as my young capacity would
admit of. There was a lion and a tiger on board, going
to England as a present to the king; and it was a great
diversion to Atkinson and me, after I had got rid of my
first terrors, to see the ways of these beasts in their
dens, and how venturous the sailors were in putting
their hands through the grates, and patting their rough
coats. Some of the men had monkeys, which ran loose




OR, THE SEA VOYAGE.          395
about; and the sport was for the men to lose them, and
find them again.  The monkeys would run up the
shrouds, and pass from rope to rope, with ten times
greater alacrity than the most experienced sailor could
follow them: and sometimes they would hide themselves
in the most unthought-of places; and, when they were
found, they would grin, and make mouths, as if they
had sense. Atkinson described to me the ways of these
little animals in their native woods; for he had seen
them. Oh, how many ways he thought of to amuse
me in that long voyage!
Sometimes he would describe to me the odd shapes
and varieties of fishes that were in the sea; and tell me
tales of the sea-monsters that lay hid at the bottom,
and were seldom seen by men; and what a glorious
sight it would be if our eyes could be sharpened to
behold all the inhabitants of the sea at once, swimming
in the great deeps, as plain as we see the gold and
silver fish in a bowl of glass. With such notions he
enlarged my infant capacity to take in many things.
When in foul weather I have been terrified at the motion of the vessel as it rocked backwards and forwards,
he would still my fears, and tell me that I used to be
rocked so once in a cradle; and that the sea was God's
bed, and the ship our cradle, and we were as safe in
that greater motion as when we felt that lesser one in
our little wooden sleeping-places. When the wind was
up, and sang through the sails, and disturbed me with
its violent clamors, he would call it music, anfd bid me
hark to the sea-organ; and with that name he quieted
my tender apprehensions. When I have looked around
with a mournful face at seeing all men about me, he




396             ARABELLA HARDY;
would enter into my thoughts, and tell me pretty stories
of his mother and his sisters, and a female cousin that
he loved better than his sisters, whom he called Jenny;
and say, that, when we got to England, I should go and
see them; and how fond Jenny would be of his little
daughter, as he called me. And, with these images of
women and females which he raised in my fancy, he
quieted me for a while. One time, and never but once,
he told me that Jenny had promised to be his wife, if
ever he came to England; but that he had his doubts
whether he should live to get home, for he was very
sickly. This made me cry bitterly.
That I dwell so long upon the attention of this Atkinson, is only because his death, which happened just
before we got to England, affected me so much, that he
alone of all the ship's crew has engrossed my mind ever
since; though, indeed, the captain and all were singularly kind to me, and strove to make up for my uneasy
and unnatural situation. The boatswain would pipe
for my diversion, and the sailor-boy would climb the
dangerous mast for my sport. The rough foremast-man
would never willingly appear before me till he had
combed his long black hair smooth and sleek, not to
terrify me. The officers got up a sort of play for my
amusement; and Atkinson, or, as they called him,
Betsy, acted the heroine of the piece. All ways that
could be contrived were thought upon to reconcile me
to my lot. I was the universal favorite: I do not
know how deservedly; but I suppose it was because I
was alone, and there was no female in the ship besides
me. Had I come over with female relations or attendants, I should have excited no particular curiosity: I




OR, THE SEA VOYAGE.          397
should have required no uncommon attentions. I was
one little woman among a crew of men; and I believe
the homage which I have read that men universally pay
to women was in this case directed to me, in the absence
of all other womankind.  I do not know how that
might be; but I was a little princess among them, and
I was not six years old.
I remember, the first drawback which happened to my
comfort was Atkinson's not appearing the whole of one
day. The captain tried to reconcile me to it by saying
that Mr. Atkinson was confined to his cabin; that he
was not quite well, but a day or two would restore him.
I begged to be taken in to see him; but this was not
granted. A day, and then another, came, and another,
and no Atkinson was visible; and I saw apparent solicitude in the faces of all the officers, who nevertheless
strove to put on their best countenances before me, and
to be more than usually kind to me. At length, by the
desire of Atkinson himself, as I have since learned, I
was permitted to go into his cabin, and see him. He
was sitting up, apparently in a state of great exhaustion:
but his face lighted up when he saw me; and he kissed
me, and told me that he was going a great voyage, far
longer than that which we had passed together, and he
should never come back. And, though I was so young,
I understood well enough that he meant this of his
death; and I cried sadly: but he comforted me, and
told me that I must be his little executrix, and perform
his last will, and bear his last words to his mother and
his sisters, and to his cousin Jenny, whom I should see
in a short time; and he gave me his blessing, as a father
would bless his child; and he sent a last kiss by me to




398             ARABELLA HARDY;
all his female relations; and he made me promise that
I would go and see them, when I got to England. And
soon after this he died: but I was in another part of
the ship when he died; and I was not told it till we got
to shore, which was a few days after; but they kept
telling me that he was better and better, and that I
should soon see him, but that it disturbed him to talk
with any one. Oh, what a grief it was, when I learned
that I had lost an old shipmate, that had made an irksome situation so bearable by his kind assiduities! and
to think that he was gone, and I could never repay him
for his kindness I
When I had been a year and a half in England, the
captain, who had made another voyage to India and
back, thinking that time had alleviated a little the sorrow of Atkinson's relations, prevailed upon my friends,
who had the care of me in England, to let him introduce
me to Atkinson's mother and sisters. Jenny was no
more. She had died in the interval; and I never saw
her. Grief for his death had brought on a consumption,
of which she lingered about a twelvemonth, and then
expired. But in the mother and the sisters of this excellent young man I have found the most valuable friends
I possess on this side the great ocean. They received
me from the captain as the little protegee of Atkinson:
and from them I have learned passages of his former
life; and this in particular, -that the illness of which he
died was brought on by a wound, of which he never
quite recovered, which he got in a desperate attempt,
when- he was quite a boy, to defend his captain against
a superior force of the enemy which had boarded him,
and which, by his premature valor inspiriting the men,




OR, THE SEA VOYAGE.           399
they finally succeeded in repulsing.  This was that
Atkinson, who, from his pale and feminine appearance, was called Betsy: this was he whose womanly
care of me got him the name of a woman; who, with
more than female attention, condescended to play the
handmaid to a little unaccompanied orphan, that fortune
had cast upon the care of a rough sea-captain and his
rougher crew.








PO E  IS.
26








POEMS.
EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING.*
FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS.
The poet, after a seeming approval of suicide from a consideration of the
cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the negative importance of existence, contemplated in itself, without reference to good or
evil.
OF these sad truths consideration had,
Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad,
So wicked: but the tenet rather hold
Of wise Calanus and his followers old,
Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought,
And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought
From this dark den of crime, this horrid lair
Of men, that savager than monsters are;
And, scorning longer in this tangled mesh
Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh,
Did with their desperate hands anticipate
The too, too slow relief of lingering fate.
And if religion did not stay thine hand,
And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand,
I would in like case counsel thee to throw
This senseless burden off, of cares below.
* From the " London Athenaeum," 1832.
[403O




404          THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER
Not wine, as wine, men choose, but as it came
From such or such a vintage:'tis the same
With life, which simply must be understood
A blank negation, if it be not good.
But if'tis wretched all, - as men decline
And loathe the sour lees of corrupted wine,-'Tis so to be contemned. Merely TO BE
Is not a boon to seek, or ill to flee;
Seeing that every vilest little THING
Has it in common, - from a gnat's small wing,
A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone,
And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO BE,
And TO BE BLEST, be one, I do not see
In bare existence, as existence, aught
That's worthy to be loved or to be sought.
THE PARTING SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER TO THE POET.*
FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS, IN THE ZODIACUS VITIE.
BUT now time warns (my mission at an end)
That to Jove's starry court I re-ascend;
From whose high battlements I take delight
To scan your earth, diminished to the sight,
Pendant and round, and, as an apple, small,
Self-propt, self-balanced, and secure from fall
By her own weight; and how with liquid robe
Blue Ocean girdles round her tiny globe,
* From the " London Athenaeum," 1882.




TO THE POET.               405
WVhile lesser Nereus, gliding like a snake,
Betwixt her lands his flexile course doth take,
Shrunk to a rivulet; and how the Po,
The mighty Ganges, Tanais, Ister, show
No bigger than a ditch which rains have swelled.
Old Nilus' seven proud mouths I late beheld,
And mocked the watery puddles. Hosts steel-clad
Ofttimes I thence beheld; and how the sad
Peoples are punished by the fault of kings,
Which from the purple fiend Ambition springs.
Forgetful of mortality, they live
In hot strife for possessions fugitive,
At which the angels grieve. Sometimes I trace
Of fountains, rivers, seas, the change of place;
By ever-shifting course, and Time's unrest,
The vale exalted, and the mount deprest
To an inglorious valley; ploughshares going
-Where tall trees reared their tops, and fresh trees growing
In antique postures; cities lose their site;
Old things wax new. Oh! what a rare delight
To him, who, from this vantage, can survey
At once stern Afric and soft Asia,
WVith Europe's cultured plains, and, in their turns,
Their scattered tribes! - those whom the hot Crab
burns,
The tawny Ethiops; Orient Indians;
Getulians; ever-wandering Scythians;
Swift Tartan hordes; Cilicians rapacious,
And Parthians with black-bended bow pugnacious;
Sabeans incense bring; men of Thrace;
Italian, Spaniard, Gaul; and that rough race




406           HERCULES PACIFICATUS.
Of Britons, rigid as their native colds;
With all the rest the circling sun beholds.
But clouds and elemental mists deny
These visions blest to any fleshly eye.
HERCULES PACIFICATUS.*
A TALE FROM SUIDAS.
IN days of yore, ere early Greece
Had dreamed or patrols or police,
A crew of rake-hells in terrorem
Spread wide, and carried all before'em;
Rifled the poultry and the women,
And held that all things were in common;
Till Jove's great son the nuisance saw,
And did abate it by club law.
Yet not so clean he made his work,
But here and there a rogue would lurk
In caves and rocky fastnesses,
And shunned the strength of Hercules.
Of these, more desperate than others,
A pair of ragamuffin brothers
In secret ambuscade joined forces,
To carry on unlawful courses.
These robbers' names - enough to shake usWere Strymon one, the other Cacus;
And, more the neighborhood to bother,
A wicked dam they had for mother,
* From the " Englishman's Magazine," 1831.




HERCULES PACIFICATUS.           407
Wrho knew their craft, but not forbid it:
And whatsoe'er they nymmed she. hid it;
Received them with delight and wonder
When they brought home some special plunder;
Called them her darlings, and her white boys,
Her ducks, her dildings; all was right, boys.
"Only," she said, "my lads, have care
Ye fall not into Black Back's snare;
For, if he catch, he'll maul your corpus,
And clapper-claw you to some purpose."
She was, in truth, a kind of witch;
Had grown by fortune-telling rich;
To spells and conjurings did tackle her,
And read folks' dooms by light oracular,
In which she saw as clear as daylight
What mischief on her bairns would a-light.
Therefore she had a special loathing
For all that owned that sable clothing.
Who can'scape fate, when we're decreed to't?
The graceless brethren paid small heed to't.
A brace they were of sturdy fellows,
As we may say, that feared no colors;
And sneered with modern infidelity
At the old gypsy's fond credulity.
It proved all true, though, as she'd mumbled;
For on a day the varlets stumbled
On a green spot, - sit linguce fides,('Tis Suidas tells it,) where Alcides,
Secure, as fearing no ill neighbor,
Lay fast asleep after a "Labor."
His trusty oaken plant was near:




408           HERCULES PACIFICATUS.
The prowling rogues look round, and leer,
And each his wicked wits'gan rub,
How to bear off the famous club;
Thinking that they, sans price or hire, would
Carry't straight home, and chop for fire-wood:'Twould serve their old dame half a winter.
You stare; but, faith, it was no splinter:
I would not, for much money, spy
Such beam in any neighbor's eye.
The villains, these exploits not dull in,
Incontinently fell a-pulling.
They found it heavy, no slight matter,
But tugged and tugged it, till the clatter
Woke Hercules, who in a trice
Whipt up the knaves, and, with a splice
He kept on purpose,- which before
Had served for giants many a score,To end of club tied each rogue's head fast;
Strapping feet too, to keep them steadfast;
And pickaback them carries townwards,
Behind his brawny back, head-downwards;
(So foolish calf- for rhyme, I bless X. -
Comes nolens volens out of Essex;)
Thinking to brain them with his dextra,
Or string them up upon the next tree.
That club - so equal fates condemn -
They thought to catch has now catched them.
Now, Hercules, we may suppose,
Was no great dandy in his clothes;
Was seldom, save on Sundays, seen
In calimanco or nankeen;




HERCULES PACIFICATUS.          409
On anniversaries, would try on
A jerkin, spick-span new, from lion;
Went bare for the most part, to be cool,
And save the time of his groom of the stole.
Besides, the smoke he had been in,
In Stygian Gulf, had dyed his skin
To a natural sable,- a right hell-fit,
That seemed to careless eyes black velvet.
The brethren from their station scurvy,
Where they hung dangling topsy-turvy,
With horror view the black costume;
And each presumes his hour is come:
Then softly to themselves'gan mutter
The warning words their dame did utter,
Yet not so softly, but with ease
Were overheard by Hercules.
Quoth Cacus, " This is he she spoke of,
Which we so often made a joke of."
" I see," said the other; " thank our sin for't,'Tis Black Back, sure enough: we're in for't."
His godship, who, for all his brag
Of roughness, was at heart a wag,
At his new name was tickled finely,
And fell a-laughing most divinely.
Quoth he, " I'll tell this jest in heaven;
The musty rogues shall be forgiven;"
So, in a twinkling, did uncase them,
On mother-earth once more to place them.
The varlets, glad to be unhampered,
Made each a leg, then fairly scampered.




410                      A FRAGMENT.
A FRAGMENT.
[His Satanic Majesty seems to have been exceedingly popular with the
English bards and bardlings of thirty and odd years ago. The London
booksellers' counters were covered with "Devil's Walks," "True Devil's
Walks,", " Devil's Drives," " Devil's Progresses," " Devil's Bargains," and
I know not how many more poems on the same renowned personage. Not
only Southey and Coleridge chose Beelzebub for the subject of a poem, but
even Elia sung of Satan, and told in immortal verse the true and wonderful
history of the Devil's courtship and marriage; which Moxon published in a
dainty little tome, with six humorous designs, price one shilling. The exact
title of the work, the bibliographical reader will be pleased to learn, is
" Satan in Search of a Wife; with the whole Progress of his Courtship and
Marriage, and who danced at the Wedding. By an Eye-witness."
And, although the market was rather overstocked with poems concerning
the Evil One, Lamb's little effusion had a pretty fair sale. The copyright on
a shilling volume must have been small; yet Elia, in a letter to Moxon, says,
"You hinted that there might be something under ten pounds by and by
accruing to me, - devil's money (you are sanguine; say seven pounds ten
shillings)."
The merits of this jeu d'esprit may be very small; indeed, I have no
doubt that it is about the poorest thing its author ever printed: yet should
I like to see it - bechuse Charles Lamb wrote it. But I have not been able
to find a copy of " Satan in Search of a Wife."
The following extract from the work, which I found in an old number of
the "London Athennum," will, I hope, be acceptable to some of Lamb's
readers. If we cannot get the whole cake, let us be thankful for the smallest
bit thereof. - EDITOR.]
THE Devil was sick and queasy of late,
And his sleep and his appetite failed him:
His ears they hung down; and his tail it was clapped
Between his poor hoofs, like a dog that's been rapped.
None knew what the devil ailed him.
He tumbled and tossed on his mattress o' nights,
That was fit for a fiend's disportal;
For'twas made of the finest of thistle and thorn,




A FRAGMENT.               411
Which Alecto herself had gathered, in scorn
Of the best down-beds that are mortal.
His giantly chest in earthquakes heaved,
With groanings corresponding;
And mincing and few were the words he spoke,
While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind, broke
From a heart that seemed desponding.
Now, the Devil an old wife had for his dam;
I think none e'er was older:
Her years - old Parr's were nothing to them;
And a chicken to her was Methusalem,
You'd say, could you behold her.
She remembered Chaos a little child,
Strumming upon hand-organs:
At the birth of old Night a gossip she sat,
The ancientest there; and was godmother at
The christening of the Gorgons.
Her bones peeped through a rhinoceros' skin,
Like a mummy through its cerement;
But she had a mother's heart, and guessed
What pinched her son, whom she thus addressed
In terms that bespoke endearment:- -
" What ails my Nicky, my darling imp,
My Lucifer bright, my Beelze?
My pig, my pug-with-a-curly-tail,
You are not well: can a mother fail
To see that which all hell see? "




412        FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS -.
" O mother dear! I am dying, I fear:
Prepare the yew and the willow,
And the cypress black; for I get no ease,
By day or by night, for the cursed fleas
That skip about my pillow."
"Your pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer,
For I wash'd'em in Styx last night, son,
And your blankets both, and dried them upon
The brimstony banks of Acheron:
It is not the fleas that bite, son.
I wish my Nicky is not in love."
" 0 mother, you have nicked it!"
And he turned his head aside with a blusah:
Not red-hot pokers, or crimson plush,
Could half so deep have pricked it.
FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS —, FRENCH TEACHER
AT MRS. GISBORN'S SCHOOL, ENFIELD.*
IMPLORED for verse, I send you what I can;
But you are so exact a French-woman,
As I am told, Jemima, that I fear
To wound with English your Parisian ear,
And think I do your curious volume wrong,
With lines not written in the Frenchman's tongue.
Had I a knowledge equal to my will,
With airy chansons I your leaves would fill;
* From " Blackwood's Magazine," 1829.




TO C. ADERS, ESQ.            413
m7ith fables that should emulate the vein
Of sprightly Gresset or of La Fontaine;
Or scenes comiques that should approach the air
Of your favorite, renowned Molidre.
But at my suit the Muse of France looks sour,
And strikes me dumb! Yet what is in my power
To testify respect for you, I pray
Take in plain English, - our rough Enfield way.
TO C. ADERS, ESQ.,*
ON HIS COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS BY THE OLD GERMAN MASTERS.
FRIENDLIEST of men, Aders, I never come
Within the precincts of this sacred room,
But I am struck with a religious fear,
Which says, " Let no profane eye enter here."
-With imagery from heaven the walls are clothed,
Making the things of time seem vile and loathed.
Spare saints, whose bodies seem sustained by love,
WTith martyrs old in meek procession move.
Here kneels a weeping Magdalen, less bright
To human sense for her blurred cheeks; in sight
Of eyes new-touched by Heaven, more winning fair
Than when her beauty was her only care.
A hermit here strange mysteries doth unlock
In desert sole, his knees worn by the rock.
There angel harps are sounding, while below
Palm-bearing virgins in white order go.
* From Hone's "Year-book."




414             TO C. ADERS, ESQ.
Madonnas, varied with so chaste design
While all are different, each seems genuine,
And hers the only Jesus: hard outline
And rigid form, by Durer's hand subdued
To matchless grace and sacro-sanctitude,
Durer, who makes thy slighted Germany
Vie with the praise of paint-proud Italy.
Whoever enterest here, no more presume
To name a parlor or a drawing-room;
But, bending lowly to each holy story,
Make this thy chapel and thine oratory.




LETTER S.








LETTER S.
TO A BOOKSELLER.
THANEK you for the books.* I am ashamed to take
tithe thus of your press. I am worse to a publisher
than the two Universities and the British Museum.
A. C. I will forthwith read. B. C. (I can't get out of
the A, B, C) I have more than read. Taken altogether,'tis too lovely; but what delicacies!  I like most
"King Death;" glorious'bove all, "The Lady with
the Hundred Rings;" " The Owl; " " Epistle to What's
his Name " t (here may be I'm partial); " Sit down, Sad
Soul;" "The Pauper's Jubilee" (but that's old, and
yet'tis never old); "The Falcon;" "Felon's Wife;'
damn "Madame Pasty" (but that is borrowed);
Apple-pie is very good,
And so is apple-pasty;
But
0 Lord!'tis very nasty:
but chiefly the dramatic fragments, — scarce three of
which should have escaped my specimens, had an
antique name been prefixed.  They exceed his first.
So much for the nonsense of poetry: now to the se* "The Maid of Eloan," by Allan Cunningham; and Barry Cornwall's
"Songs and Dramatic Fragments."
t Charles Lamb.
27               [417]




418           TO J. PAYNE COLLIER.
rious business of life. Up a court (Blandford Court) in
Pall Mall (exactly at the back of Marlborough House),
with iron gate in front, and containing two houses, at
No. 2, did lately live Leishman, my tailor. He is
moved somewhere in the neighborhood, devil knows
where. Pray find him out, and give him the opposite.
I am so much better, though my head shakes in writing
it, that, after next Sunday, I can well see F. and you.
Can you throw B. C. in? Why tarry the wheels of
my "Hogarth"?
CHARLES LAMm.
TO J. PAYNE COLLIER
THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND, Dec. 10.
DEAR J. P. C., — I know how zealously you feel
for our friend S. T. Coleridge; and I know that you
and your family attended his lectures four or five years
ago. He is in bad health, and worse mind: and, unless something is done to lighten his mind, he will soon
be reduced to his extremities; and even these are not
in the best condition. I am sure that you will do for
him what you can; but at present he seems in a mood
to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of
physic, nor of metaphysic, nor a new course of life,
but a new course of lectures on Shakspeare and poetry.
There is no man better qualified (always excepting
number one); but I am pre-engaged for a series of
dissertations on Indian and India-pendence, to be completed, at the expense of the company, in I know not
(yet) how many volumes foolscap folio.  I am busy




TO JOSEPH COTTLE.            419
getting up my Hindoo mythology; and, for the purpose, I am once more enduring Southey's curse (of
"Kehama").  To be serious, Coleridge's state and
affairs make me so; and there are particular reasons
just now, and have been any time for the last twenty
years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a
little encouragement. I have not seen him lately; and
he does not know that I am writing.
Yours (for Coleridge's sake) in haste,
C. LAMB.
TO JOSEPH COTTLE.
DEAR SIR, - It is so long since I have seen or heard
from you, that I fear that you will consider a request I
have to make as impertinent. About three years since,
when I was in Bristol, I made an effort to see you by
calling at Brunswick Square; but you were from home.
The request I have to make is, that you would very
much oblige me, if you have any small portrait of yourself, by allowing me to have it copied, to accompany a
selection of the likenesses of " Living Bards" which
a most particular friend of mine is making. If you have
no objection, and would oblige me by transmitting such
portrait, I will answer for taking the greatest care of it,
and for its safe return. I hope you will pardon the liberty.
From an old friend and well-wisher,
CHARLES LAMB.




42(J             TO JOSEPH COTTLE.
TO THE SAME.
DEAR Sn, — My friend, whom you have obliged by
the loan of your picture, has had it very nicely copied
(and a very spirited drawing it is; so every one thinks
who has seen it). The copy is not much inferior to
yours, done by a daughter of Joseph's, R. A.
I accompany the picture with my warm thanks, both
for that, and your better favor, the " Messiah," which I
assure you I have read through with great pleasure.
The verses have great sweetness, and a New-Testament
plainness about them which affected me very much. I
could just wish, that, in page 63, you had omitted the
lines 71 and 72, and had ended the period with" The willowy brook was there, but that sweet sound —
When to be heard again on earthly ground? "
Two very sweet lines, and the sense perfect.
And in page 154, line 68,"He spake,' I come, ordained a world to save,
To be baptized by thee in Jordan's wave.' "
These words are hardly borne out by the story, and
seem scarce accordant with the modesty with which our
Lord came to take his common portion among the baptismal candidates. They also anticipate the beauty of
John's recognition of the Messiah, and the subsequent
confirmation by the Voice and Dove.
You will excuse the remarks of an old brother bard,
whose career, though long since pretty well stopped,
was co-eval in its beginning with your own, and who is
sorry his lot has been always to be so distant from you.




TO JOSEPH COTTLE.            421
It is not likely that C. L. will see Bristol again; but,
if J. C. should ever visit London, he will be a most
welcome visitor to C. L. My sister joins in cordial
remembrances.
Dear sir, yours truly,  CHARLES LAMB.
TO THE SAME.
LONDON, INDIA HOUSE, May 26, 1829.
MY DEAR SIR, — I am quite ashamed of not having
acknowledged your kind present earlier; but that unknown something, which was never yet discovered,
though so often speculated upon, which stands in the
way of lazy folks answering letters, has presented its
usual obstacle. It is not forgetfulness nor disrespect
nor incivility, but terribly like all these bad things.
I have been in my time a great epistolary scribbler:
but the passion, and with it the facility, at length wears
out; and it must be pumped up again by the heavy
machinery of duty or gratitude, when it should run free.
I have read your " Fall of Cambria " with as much pleasure as I did your " Messiah." Your Cambrian poem I
shall be tempted to repeat oftenest, as human poems
take me in a mood more frequently congenial than
divine. The character of Llewellyn pleases me more
than any thing else, perhaps; and then some of the
lyrical pieces are fine varieties.
It was quite a mistake that I could dislike any thing
you should write against Lord Byron; for I have a
thorough aversion to his character, and a very moderate
admiration of his genius: he is great in so little a way.




422        TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE.
To be a poet is to be the man, not a petty portion of
occasional low passion worked up in a permanent form
of humanity. Shakspeare has thrust such rubbishly
feelings into a corner, -the dark dusky heart of Don
John, in the " Much Ado about Nothing." The fact is,
I have not seen your "Expostulatory Epistle" to him. I
was not aware, till your question, that it was out.
I shall inquire, and get it forthwith.
Southey is in town, whom I have seen slightly;
Wordsworth expected, whom I hope to see much of. I
write with accelerated motion; for I have two or three
bothering clerks and brokers about me, who always
press in proportion as you seem to be doing something
that is not business. I could exclaim a little profanely;
but I think you do not like swearing.
I conclude, begging you to consider that I feel myself
much obliged by your kindness; and shall be most
happy at any and at all times to hear from you.
Dear sir, yours truly,     CEARLES LAMB.
TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE.
TWELFTH DAY,'23.
THE pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear
pigmy. There was some contention as to who should
have the ears; but, in spite of his obstinacy (deaf as
these little creatures are to advice), I contrived to get
at one of them.
It came in boots too, which I took as a favor. Generally these pretty toes, pretty toes I are missing; but
I suppose he wore them to look taller.




TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE.            423
lHe must have been the least of his race. His little
foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take
him to have been a Chinese and a female.
If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have
farrowed two such prodigious volumes; seeing how
much good can be contained in - how small a compass I
He crackled delicately.
I left a blank at the top of my letter, not being
determined which to address it to: so farmer and
farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May
your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your
chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and
your laborers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the
day is long!
VIVE L'AGRICULTURE!
How do you make your pigs so little?
They are vastly engaging at the age:
I was so myself.
Now I am a disagreeable old hog,
A middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half.
My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired!
I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect; and
can read the Lord's Prayer in common type, by the
help of a candle, without making many mistakes.
Believe me, that, while my faculties last, I shall ever
cherish a proper appreciation of your many kindnesses
in this way, and that the last lingering relish of past
favors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that
little ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many
happy returns, not of the pig, but of the New Year,
to both! Mary, for her share of the pig and the
memoirs, desires to send the same.
Yours truly,            C. LAMB.




424                  TO S. T. COLERIDGE.
TO S. T. COLERIDGE.
THESES QUzEDAM THEOLOGICA.
[The careful reader will observe that these famous theological propositions as here given, just as they were sent to Coleridge, differ somewhat
from the transcript of them given in the letter to Southey, published in
Talfourd's " Life and Letters of Charles Lamb." Here you have the original
theses themselves: there you have a revised and amended copy of them.
The letter to Coleridge accompanying these learned and knotty questions is
not included in any edition of Lamb's Works. " Mr. Coleridge," says Cottle,
in his " Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey," " at first appeared greatly
hurt at this letter." -EDITOR.]
First, Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man?
Second, Whether the Archangel Uriel could affirm an untruth? and, if
he could, whether he would?
Third, Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather to be reckoned among those qualities which the schoolmen term virtutes minus
splendidce 
Fourth, Whether the higher order of Seraphim illuminati ever sneer?
Fifth, Whether pure intelligences can love?
Sixth, Whether the Seraphim ardentes do not manifest their virtues by
the way of vision and theory? and whether practice be not a sub-celestial
and merely human virtue?
Seventh, Whether the vision beatific be any thing more or less than a
perpetual representment to each individual angel of his own present attainments and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal lookingglasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and self-satisfaction?
Eighth, and last, Whether an immortal and amenable soul may not come
to be condemned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand?
LEARNED SIR, MY FRIEND, -Presuming on our long
habits of friendship, and emboldened further by your late
liberal permission to avail myself of your correspondence in case I want any knowledge (which I intend to
do when I have no Encyclopmedia or Ladies' Magazine
at hand to refer to in any matter of science), I now
submit to your inquiries the above theological propo



TO THOMAS HOOD.              425
sitions, to be by you defended or oppugned, or both,
in the schools of Germany; whither, I am told, you are
departing, to the utter dissatisfaction of your native
Devonshire, and regret of universal England, but to my
own individual consolation, if, through the channel of
your wished return, learned sir, my friend, may be
transmitted to this our island, from those famous theological wits of Leipsic and Gittingen, any rays of
illumination, in vain to be derived from  the home
growth of our English halls and colleges. Finally
wishing, learned sir, that you may see Schiller, and
swing in a wood (vide poems), and sit upon a tun,
and eat fat hams of Westphalia,
I remain
Your friend and docile pupil to instruct,
CIHARmLEs LAmB.
TO THOMAS HOOD.*
AND what dost thou at the Priory?  Cucullus non
facit Monachum. English me that, and challenge old
Lignum Janua to make a better.
My old New River has presented no extraordinary
novelties lately; but there Hope sits every day, speculating upon traditionary gudgeons.  I think she has
taken the fisheries. I now know the reason why our
forefathers were denominated East and West Angles.
Yet is there no lack of spawn; for I wash my hands in
fishets that come through the pump every morning thick
* Then "unrheumatizing himself" at Hastings.




426              TO THOMAS HOOD.
as motelings, —little things that perish untimely, and
never taste the brook. You do not tell me of those
romantic land bays that be as thou goest to Lover's
Seat: neither of that little churchling in the midst of a
wood (in the opposite direction, nine furlongs from the
town), that seems dropped by the Angel that was tired of
carrying two packages; marry, with the other he made
shift to pick his flight to Loretto. Inquire out, and see
my little Protestant Loretto.  It stands apart from
trace of human habitation; yet hath it pulpit, readingdesk, and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson
Crusoe had reared it to soothe himself with old churchgoing images. I forget its Xtian name, and what shesaint was its gossip.
You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street; a
Baker, who has the finest collection of marine monsters
in ten sea-counties, - sea-dragons, polypi, mer-people,
most fantastic. You have only to name the old gentleman in black (not the Devil) that lodged with him a
week (he'll remember) last July, and he will show
courtesy. He is by far the foremost of the savans.
His wife is the funniest thwarting little animal I They
are decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I
have made an end of my say. My epistolary time is
gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not
say as agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am
dwindled to notes and letterets. But, in good earnest,
I shall be most happy to hail thy return to the waters
of old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like inland murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows.
" He sang in meads, how sweet the brooklets ran,
To the rough ocean and red restless sands."




TO THOMAS HOOD.                        427
I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed
upon the equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo;
or quo pro quid, as Tom Woodgate would correct me.
My service to him.                                    C. L.*
TO THE SAME.
DEAR LAMB, -You are an impudent varlet; but I
will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton's on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds
for that night only. Miss M. and her tragedy may be
dished: so may not you and your rib. Health attend
you.
Yours,                 T, HooD, ESQ.
ENFIELD.
Miss Bridget Hood sends love. t
* "The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the' Lions;' but on
a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we verified
the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his man, howbeit we
tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery or cakery in its window. The whole was a batch of fancy bread, - one of those fictions which
the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends." - HOOD.
t The secret alluded to in this " notelet" was, that the article in the
"Gem," entitled " The Widow," and published under Lamb's well-known
signature, was written by Hood.
Of course, the reader will see by the subscription, T. Hood, Esq., that
the letter was not written by the author of the "Song of the Shirt." Miss
Bridget Hood is Mary Lamb; and the writer of the epistle is Charles Lamb
himself. - EDITOR.




428               TO LEIGH HUNT.
TO LEIGH HUNT.
ILLUSTREZZIMO SIGNOR, - I have obeyed your mandate to a tittle. I accompany this with a volume; but
what have you done with the first I sent you? Have
you swapped it with some lazzaroni for macaroni, or
pledged it with a gondolierer for a passage? Peradventuri the Cardinal Gonsalvi took a fancy to it: his
Eminence has done my Nearness an honor.'Tis but a
step to the Vatican. As you judge, my works do not
enrich the workman; but I get vat I can for'em.
They keep dragging me on, a poor, worn mill-horse, in
the eternal round of the damned magazine; but'tis
they are blind, not I. Colburn (where I recognize
with delight the gay W. Honeycomb renovated) hath
the ascendency.* I was with the Novellos last week.
They have a large, cheap house and garden, with a
dainty library (magnificent) without books; but, what
will make you bless yourself (I am too old for wonder),
something has touched the right organ in Vincentio at
last.  He attends a Wesleyan chapel on Kingsland
Green. He at first tried to laugh it off, - he only went
for the singing; but the cloven foot - I retract - the
lamb's trotters are at length apparent. Mary Isabella attributes it to a lightness induced by his headaches; but I think I see in it a less accidental influence.
* A series of pleasant, gossiping articles by Leigh Hunt, called "The
Family Journal," and pretended to be written by a descendant of Mr. Spectator's friend, Will Honeycomb - EDITOR.




TO LEIGH HUNT.              429
Mr. Clark is at perfect staggers I the whole fabric of
his infidelity is shaken. He has no one to join him in
his horse-insults and indecent obstreperousnesses against
Christianity; for Holmes (the bonny Holmes) is gone
to Salisbury to be organist, and Isabella and the Clark
make but a feeble quorum.  The children have all
neat little clasped pray-books; and I have laid out
seven shillings eight pence in Watts's Hymns for Christmas presents for them.  The eldest girl alone holds
out. She has been at Boulogne, skirting upon the vast
focus of Atheism, and imported bad principles in patois
French.  But the strongholds are crumbling. N. appears as yet to have but a confused notion of the Atonement. It makes him giddy, he says, to think much
about it; but such giddiness is spiritual sobriety. Well,
Byron is gone; and --   is now the best poet in England. Fill up the gap to your fancy. Barry Cornwall
has at last carried the pretty A. S. They are just in
the treacle-moon. Hope it won't clog his wings (gaum,
we used to say at school).  Mary, my sister, has worn
me out with eight weeks' cold and toothache, her average complement in the winter; and it will not go away.
She is otherwise well, and reads novels all day long.
She has had an exempt year, a good year; for which,
forgetting the minor calamity, she and I are most
thankful. Alsager is in a flourishing house, with wife
and children about him, in Mecklenburg Square,'
almost too fine to visit. Baron Field is come home
from Sydney; but as yet I can hear no tidings of a
pension. He is plump and friendly; his wife, really
a very superior woman. He resumes the bar. I have
got acquainted with Mr. Irving, the Scotch preacher,




430             TO MRS. SHELLEY.
whose fame must have reached you. He is a humble
disciple at the foot of Gamaliel S. T. C. Judge how
his own sectarists must store, when I tell you he has
dedicated a book to S. T. C., acknowledging to have
learnt more of the nature of faith, Christianity, and
Christian Church, from him than from all the men he
ever conversed with! He is a most amiable, sincere,
modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple.
Mrs. Montague told him the dedication would do him
no good.'That shall be a reason for doing it,' was
his answer. Judge, now, whether this man be a quack.
Dear H., take this imperfect notelet for a letter: it
looks so much the more like conversing on, nearer
terms. Love to all the Hunts, old friend Thornton,
and all.            Yours ever,
C. LAMB.
TO MRS. SHELLEY.
ENFIELD, July 26, 1827.
DEAR MRS. SHELLEY, — At the risk of throwing
away some fine thoughts, I must write to say how
pleased we were with your very kind remembering of
us (who have unkindly run away from all our friends)
before you go. Perhaps you are gone, and then my
tropes are wasted. If any piece of better fortune has
lighted upon you than you expected, but less than we
wish you, we are rejoiced. We are here trying to like
solitude, but have scarce enough to justify the experiment. 5We get some, however. The six days are our
sabbath; the seventh —why, Cockneys will come for a
little fresh air, and so -




TO MRS. SHELLEY.            431
But by your month, or October at furthest, we hope
to see Islington: I, like a giant refreshed with the
leaving-off of wine; and Mary, pining for Mr. Moxon's books and Mr. Moxon's society. Then we shall
meet.
I am busy with a farce in two acts; * the incidents
tragi-comic. I can do the dialogue commey for; but
the damned plot —I believe I must omit it altogether.
The scenes come after one another like geese, not marshalling like cranes or a Hyde-Park review. The story
is as simple as G. D., and the language plain as his
spouse. The characters are three women to one man;
which is one more than laid hold on him in the " Evangely."  I think that prophecy squinted towards my
drama.
I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of
artfully succeeding scenes through a whole play, as the
courses are arranged in a cookery-book: I to find wit,
passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles: to
lay in the dead colors, —I'd Titianesque'em up: to
mark the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed,
yours or mine); and, where tears should course, I'd
draw the waters down: to say where a joke should
come in or a pun be left out: to bring my personce on
and off like a Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them
there: to bring three together on the stage at once;
they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than
two; and there they stand till it is the time, without
being the season, to withdraw them.
I am teaching Emma Latin, to qualify her for a
superior governess-ship; which we see no prospect of
* "The Pawnbroker's Daughter."




432    TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TABLE-BOOK."
her getting.'Tis like feeding a child with chopped hay
from a spoon. Sisyphus - his labors were as nothing
to it.
Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a
deponent enters, like Chaos, more to embroil the fray.
Her prepositions are suppositions; her conjunctions
copulative have no connection in them; her concords
disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!"
and " Oh I " with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue;
and she herself is a lazy, blockheadly supine. As I
say to her, ass in prcesenti rarely makes a wise man
in futuro.
But I dare say it was so with you when you began
Latin, and a good while after.
Good-by  Mary's love.
Yours truly,            C. LAMB.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TABLE-BOOK."
DEAR SIR, - Somebody has fairly played a hoax on
you (I suspect that pleasant rogue M-x-n*) in sending
the sonnet in my name, inserted in your last number.
True it is that I must own to the verses being mine,
but not written on the occasion there pretended; for I
have not yet had the pleasure of seeing the lady t in
the part of Emmeline, and I have understood that the
force of her acting in it is rather in the expression of
new-born sight than of the previous want of it. The
lines were really written upon her performance in the
* Edward Moxon.      t Miss Kelley.




TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TABLE-BOOK."   433
"Blind Boy," and appeared in the " Morning Chronicle " some years back. I suppose our facetious friend
thought that they would ser-re again, like an old coat
new turned.
Yours (and his nevertheless),
C. LAMB.
TO THE SAME.
SIR, - A correspondent in your last number rather
hastily asserts that there is no other authority than Davenport's tragedy * for the poisoning of Matilda by
King John.  It oddly enough happens, that in the
same number appears an extract from a play of Heywood's, of an older date, in two parts; in which play
the fact of such poisoning, as well as her identity with
Maid Marian, are equally established. Michael Drayton also hath a legend, confirmatory (as far as poetical
authority can go) of the violent manner of her death.
But neither he nor Davenport confounds her with Robin's mistress. Besides the named authorities, old Fuller
(I think) somewhere relates, as matter of chronicle
history, that, old Fitzwalter (he is called Fitzwater
both in Heywood and in Davenport) being banished
after his daughter's murder (some years subsequently),
King John, at a tournament in France, being delighted
with the valiant bearing of a combatant in the lists,
and inquiring his name, was told that it was his old
faithful servant, Fitzwalter, who desired nothing more
heartily than to be reconciled to his liege; and an
* "King John and Matilda," a tragedy by Robert Davenport.
28




434                  TO P. G. PATMORE.
affecting reconciliation followed. In the common collection, called "Robin Hood's Garland"  (I have not
seen Ritson's), no mention is made, if I remember, of
the  nobility  of Marian.   Is  she  not the  daughter
of plain Squire Gamwell of old Gamwell Hall?   Sorry
that I cannot gratify the curiosity of your " disembodied
spirit "   (who as such is, methinks, sufficiently "veiled"
from our notice) with more authentic testimonies, I
rest
Your humble abstracter,                  C. L.
TO P. G. PATMORE.
DEAR P., - I am poorly. I have been to a funeral,
where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of
the mourners; and we had wine. I can't describe to
you the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals.   Dash  could;  for it was not unlike  what he
makes. t
The letter I sent you was directed to the care of E.
White, India House, for Mrs. Hazlitt; which Mrs. Hazlitt, I don't yet know: but A. has taken it to France on
speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs.
* The signature of the correspondent referred to in the first sentence of
the letter.
t Hood, in his charming "' Literary Reminiscences," relates the following
story concerning this dog and his sometime master: " I remember, in one of
our strolls, being called to account very pompously by the proprietor of an
Enfield villa, who asserted that my dog Dash, who never hunted any thing
in his dog-days, had chased the sheep: whereupon Elia, taking the dog's
part, said, very emphatically,'Hunt lambs, sir? why, he has never hunted
me! "- EDITOR.




TO P. G. PATMORE.            435
present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H.; and to
which of the three Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I
don't know. I wanted to open it; but it's transportation. I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I
would strongly recommend you to take for one story
Massinger's "Old Law."  It is exquisite.  I can think
of no other.
Dash is frightful this morning. He whines, and
stands up on his hind-legs. He misses Beckey, who is
gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other day;
and he couldn't eat his victuals after it. Pray God his
intellects be not slipping.
Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose it's no
use to ask you to come and partake of'em, else there's
a steam-vessel.*
I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got
on tolerably; but it will be refused, or worse. I never
had luck with any thing my name was put to.
Oh, I am so poorly! I waked it at my cousin's the
bookbinder's, who is now with God; or, if he is not,
it's no fault of mine.
We hope the frank wines do not disagree with Mrs.
Patmore. By the way, I like her.
Did you ever taste frogs?  Get them, if you can.
They are little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.
Christ, how sick I am  - not of the world, but of the
widow's shrub.  She's sworn under six thousand
pounds; but I think she perjured herself. She howls
in E la; and I comfort her in B flat. You understand
music?
If you haven't got " Massinger," you have nothing to
* Mr. Patmore was then at Paris.




436              TO P. G. PATMORE.
do but go to the first bibliotheque you can light upon
at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford's edition); and, if
they haven't got it, you can have "Athalie," par Monsieur Racine, and make the best of it! But that " Old
Law "'s delicious!
" No shrimps!" (That's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles are to be done.)
I am uncertain where this wandering letter may
reach you.  What you mean by " Poste Restante," God
knows. Do you. mean I must pay the postage? So I
do to Dover.
We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons.  She was howling, — part howling, and part
giving directions to the proctor, - when, crash! down
went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the
clerks grin; and I grinned, and the widow tittered;
and then I knew  that she was not inconsolable.
nMary was more frightened than hurt.
She'd make a good match for anybody (by "she,"
I mean the widow).
"If he bring but a relict away,
He is happy, nor heard to complain." - Shenstone.
Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of
his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off: but
I think it rather an agreeable excrescence; like his
poetry, redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt.
Godwin was taken up for picking pockets.  Beckey
takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up in a
steam- machine.  The coroner found it insanity.  I
should not like him to sit on my letter. *
* The reader, says Mr. Patmore, need not be told that all the above items
of home-news are pure fiction.




TO P. G. PATMORE.                       437
Do you observe my direction?   Is it Gaelic? -  classical?
Do  try  and  get some  frogs.    You  must ask  for
"grenouilles"  (green  eels).   They  don't understand
"frogs;" though it's a common phrase with us.
If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne), inquire if
old Godfrey is living, and how  he got home from  the
crusades. He must be a very old man now.
If there is any thing new in politics or literature in
France, keep it till I see you again; for I'm in no
hurry.    Chatty-Briant  (Chateaubriand)  is  well, I
hope.
I think I have no more news; only give both our
loves (" all three," says Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and
bid her get quite well, as I am at present, bating qualms,
and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.*
C. L.
LONDRES, July 19, 1827.
* In this and some of his other letters, Lamb writes very much in the
manner in which Shakspeare's fools and jesters - in some respects the wisest
and thoughtfulest characters in his works - talk. If his words be " light as
air," they vent "truths deep as the centre."  If the "Fool" in "Lear" had
written letters to his friends and acquaintances, I think they would have
marvellously resembled this epistle to Patmore; and if, in saying this, I compliment the "Fool," I hope I do not derogate from the genius of Elia.
Jaques, you remember, after hearing the " motley fool" moral on the time,
declares that " motley's the only wear;" and I opine that Lamb would consider it no small praise to be likened, in wit, wisdom, and eloquence, to
Touchstone, or to the clown in "Twelfth Night." -EDITOR.
THE END.
Boston: Printed by John Wilson and Son.