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ELIA 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 ■*- 
 
 A NEW EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEPRIARS. 
 

 rH 
 
 ^ CONTENTS. 
 
 CL 
 
 LU 
 
 CO 
 
 uJ 
 
 Dl 
 
 ^ THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 
 
 <L 
 
 -J 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION 
 
 ^ Christ’s hospital five and thirty years ago 
 ^ the two races of men 
 ^ NEW year’s eve .... 
 
 MRS. battles’ opinions ON WHIST 
 
 V 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS .... 
 
 V' 
 
 ^ * ALL fool’s DAY ..... 
 
 r 
 
 "^A Quaker’s meeting 
 
 ^THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 ^ valentine’s day . . . 
 
 - IMPERFECT sympathies 
 
 ^WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 
 
 '.J 
 
 MY RELATIONS ..... 
 
 Ll 
 
 ^ MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE . 
 
 Page 
 
 1 
 
 ]5 
 
 26 
 
 50 
 
 60 
 
 72 
 
 85 
 
 94 
 
 101 
 
 110 
 
 126 
 
 132 
 
 147 
 
 159 
 
 171 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Pag-e 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY . . . , . 180 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE . 188 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT . .... 208 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY .... . 220 
 
 DREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERIE . . . . 229 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS . . . . 237 
 
 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS . . . 248 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE 
 
 METROPOLIS ... . 261 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG . . . 275 
 
 A bachelor’s complaint of the BEHAVIOUR OF 
 
 MARRIED PEOPLE . . . 288 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS . . . . 301 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY 322 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN . . . 337 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 — ♦ 
 
 Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where 
 thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends 
 (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself) — 
 to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, 
 or Shackle well, or some other thy suburban retreat 
 northerly, — didst thou never observe a melancholy 
 looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to 
 the left — where Threadneedle-street abuts upon 
 Bishopsgate ? I dare say thou hast often admired 
 its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and dis- 
 closing to view a grave court, with cloisters, and 
 pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers- 
 out — a desolation somthing like Balclutha’s^. 
 
 This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy 
 interests. The throng of merchants was here— the 
 
 * I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate.— 
 OsSIAN. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 quick pulse of gain — and here some forms of busi- 
 ness are still kept up, though the soul be long since 
 fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticos; 
 imposing staircases, offices roomy as the state apart- 
 ments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with 
 a few straggling clerks ; the still more sacred inte- 
 riors of court and committee rooms, with venerable 
 faces of beadles, door-keepers — directors seated in 
 form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend,) 
 at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, 
 with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting 
 massy silver inkstands long since dry ; — the oaken 
 wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors 
 and sub-governors, of queen Anne, and the two 
 first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty; — huge 
 charts, which subsequent discoveries have anti- 
 quated ; — dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — 
 and soundings of the Bay of Panama ! The long 
 passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, 
 to walls, whose substance might defy any, short of 
 the last, conflagration : — with vast ranges of cellar- 
 age under all, where dollars and pieces of eight 
 once lay, an unsunned heap,” for Mammon to 
 have solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since 
 dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the 
 breaking of that famous Bubble. 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 3 
 
 Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such It 
 was forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent 
 relic ! What alterations may have been made in 
 it since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. 
 Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. No 
 wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. 
 A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The 
 moths, that were then battening upon its obsolete 
 ledgers and day-books, have rested from their de- 
 predations, but other light generations have suc- 
 ceeded, making fine fretwork among their single 
 and double entries. Layers of dust have accumu- 
 lated (a superfoetation of dirt !) upon the old layers, 
 that seldom used to be disturbed, save by some 
 curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore 
 the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne’s reign ; 
 or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil 
 some of the mysteries of that tremendous hoax, 
 whose extent the petty peculators of our day look 
 back upon with the same expression of incredulous 
 admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as 
 would become the puny face of modern conspiracy 
 contemplating the Titan sizeof Vaux’s superhuman 
 plot. 
 
 Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence 
 and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, 
 for a memorial ! 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring 
 and living commerce, — amid the fret and fever of 
 speculation — with the Bank, and the ’Change, and 
 the India-house about thee, in the hey-day of present 
 prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, 
 insulting thee, \\e\r poor neighbour out of business — 
 to the idle and merely contemplative, — to such as 
 me, old house! there is a charm in thy quiet: — a 
 .cessation — a coolness from business— an indolence 
 .almost cloistral — which is delightful I With what 
 reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and 
 courts at eventide ! They spoke of the past the 
 shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen 
 in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living 
 accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no 
 skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which 
 scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day 
 could lift from their enshrining shelves^ — with their 
 old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric inter- 
 lacings — their sums in triple columniations, set 
 down with formal superfluity of ciphers — with pious 
 sentences at the beginning, without which our re- 
 ligious ancestors never ventured to open a book of 
 business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers 
 of some of them almost persuading us that we are 
 got into some better library — are very agreeable 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSEo’ 5 
 
 and edifying spectacles. I can look upon these 
 defunct dragons with complacency. Thy heavy odd- 
 shaped ivory-handled pen-knives (our ancestors had 
 etery thing on a larger scale than we have hearts 
 for) are as good as any thing from Herculaneum. 
 The pounce-boxes of our days have gone retrograde. 
 
 The very clerks which I remember in the South 
 Sea House — I speak of forty years back — had an 
 air very different from those in the public offices 
 that I have had to do with since. They partook 
 of the genius of the place ! 
 
 They were mostly (for the establishment did not 
 admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally 
 (for they had not much to do) persons of a curious 
 and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for 
 a reason mentioned before. Humourists, for they 
 were of all descriptions ; and, not having been 
 brought together in early life (which has a tendency 
 to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to 
 each other), but, for the most part, placed in thi^ 
 house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily carried 
 into it their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, 
 if I may so speak, as into a common stock. Hence 
 they formed a sort of Noah’s ark. Odd fishes. A 
 lay-monastery. Domestic retainers in a great 
 house, kept more for show than use. Yet pleasant 
 
6 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 fellows, full of chat — and not a few among them 
 had arrived at considerable proficiency on the 
 German flute. 
 
 The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cam- 
 bro-Briton. He had something of the choleric 
 complexion of his countrymen stamped on his 
 visage, but was a worthy sensible man at bottom. 
 He wore his hair, to the last, powdered and frizzed 
 out, in the fashion which I remember to have seen 
 in caricatures of what were termed, in my young 
 days, Maccaronies. He was the last of that race 
 of beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat over his counter 
 all the forenoon, I think I see him, making up his 
 cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he 
 feared every one about him was a defaulter ; in his 
 hypochondry ready to imagine himself one; haunted, 
 at least, with the idea of the possibility of his be- 
 coming one ; his tristful visage clearing up a little 
 over his roast neck of veal at Anderton’s at two 
 (where his picture still hangs, taken a little before 
 his death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, 
 which he had frequented for the last five-and-twenty 
 years), but not attaining the meridian of its anima- 
 tion till evening brought on the hour of tea and 
 visiting. The simultaneous sound of his well- 
 known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 7 
 
 announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in 
 the families which this dear old bachelor gladdened 
 with his presence. Then was \\\s forte ^ his glorified 
 hour! How would he chirp, and expand, over a 
 muffin ! How would he dilate into secret history ! 
 His countryman. Pennant himself, in particular, 
 could not be more eloquent than he in relation to 
 old and new London— the site of old theatres, 
 churches, streets gone to decay — where Roso- 
 mond’s pond stood — the Mulberry-gardens — and 
 the Conduit in Cheap — with many a pleasant 
 anecdote, derived from paternal tradition, of those 
 grotesque figures which Hogarth has immortalized 
 in his picture of Noon ^ — the worthy descendants of 
 those heroic confessors, who, flying to this country, 
 from the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his 
 dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure religion in 
 the sheltering obscurities of Hog-lane, and the 
 vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 
 
 Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He 
 had the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would 
 have taken him for one, had you met him in one of 
 the passages leading to Westminster-halh By stoop, 
 I mean that gentle bending of the body forwards, 
 which, in great men, must be supposed to be the 
 effect of an habitual condescending attention to the 
 
8 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 applications of their inferiors. While he held you 
 in converse, you felt strained to the height in the 
 colloquy. The conference over, you were at leisure 
 to gmile at the comparative insignificance of the 
 pretensions which had just awed you. His intellect 
 was of the shallowest order. It did not reach to a 
 saw or a proverb. His mind was in its original 
 state of white paper. A sucking babe might have 
 posed him. What was it then ? Was he rich ? Alas, 
 no ! Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and 
 his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear 
 all was not well at all times within. She had a neat 
 meagre person, which it was evident she had not 
 sinned in over-pampering ; but in its veins was noble 
 blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth 
 of relationship, which I never thoroughly under- 
 stood, — much less can explain with any heraldic 
 certainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious, but 
 unfortunate house of Derwentwater. This was the 
 secret of Thomas’s stoop. This was the thought — 
 the sentiment — the bright solitary star of your lives, 
 —ye mild and happy pair, — which cheered you in 
 the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your 
 station ! This was to you instead of riches, instead 
 of rank, instead of glittering attainments ; and it 
 was worth them altogether, . You insulted none 
 
.THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 with it; but, while ydu wore it as a piece of defen- 
 sive armour only, no insult likewise could reach you 
 through it. Decus et solamen. 
 
 Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, 
 John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, 
 nor in good truth cared one fig about the matter. 
 He thought an accountant the greatest character 
 in the world, and himself the greatest accountant 
 in it.” Yet John was not without his hobby. The 
 fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, cer- 
 tainly, with other notes than to the Orphean lyre. 
 He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abominably. 
 His fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle- 
 street, which, without any thing very substantial 
 appended to them, were enough to enlarge a man’s 
 notions of himself that lived in them, (I know not 
 who is the occupier of them now,) resounded fort- 
 nightly to the notes of a concert of sweet breasts,” 
 as our ancestors would have called them, culled 
 from club-rooms and orchestras — chorus singers — 
 first and second violoncellos — double basses-r-and 
 clarionets — who ate his cold mutton, and drank his 
 punch, and praised his ear. He sate like Lord 
 Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was 
 quite another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, 
 that were purely ornamental, were tenished. You 
 B 3 
 
10 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 could not speak of any thing romantic without 
 rebuke. Politics were excluded. A newspaper was 
 thought too refined and abstracted. The whole 
 duty of man consisted in writing off dividend war- 
 rants. The striking of the annual balance in the 
 company’s books (which, perhaps, differed from the 
 balance of last year in the sum of 25Z. Is. 6d.) occu- 
 pied his days and nights for a month previous. Not 
 that Tipp was blind to the deadness of things (as 
 they call them in the city) in his beloved house, or 
 did not sigh for a return of the old stirring days 
 when South Sea hopes were young — (he w^as indeed 
 equal to the wielding of any the most intricate 
 accounts of the most flourishing company in these 
 or those days) : — but to a genuine accountant the 
 difference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional 
 farthing is as dear to his heart as the thousands 
 which stand before it. He is the true actor, who, 
 whether his part be a prince or a peasant, must act 
 it with like intensity. With Tipp form was every 
 thing. His life was formal. His actions seemed 
 ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring 
 than his heart. He made the best executor in the 
 world ; he was plagued with incessant executorships 
 accordingly, which excited his spleen and soothed 
 his vanity in equal ratios. He would swear (for 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 11 
 
 Tip swore) at the little orphans, whose rights he 
 would guard with a tenacity like the grasp of the 
 dying hand, that commended their interests to his 
 protection. With all this there was about him a 
 sort of timidity — (his few enemies used to give it 
 a worse name) — a something which, in reverence 
 to the dead, we will place, if you please, a little on 
 this side of the heroic. Nature certainly had been 
 pleased to endow J ohn Tipp with a sufficient mea- 
 sure of the principle of self-preservation. There is 
 a cowardice which we do not despise, because it 
 has nothing base or treacherous in its elements ; it 
 betrays itself, not you : it is mere temperament ; the 
 absence of the romantic and the enterprising; it 
 sees a lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, 
 greatly find quarrel in a straw,’^ when some sup- 
 posed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the 
 box of a stage-coach in his life ; or leaned against 
 the rails of a balcony ; or walked upon the ridge of 
 a parapet ; or looked down a precipice ; or let off a 
 gun ; or went upon a water-party ; or would willingly 
 let you go if he could have helped it : neither was 
 it recorded of him, that for lucre, or for intimi- 
 dation, he ever forsook friend or principle. 
 
 Whom next shall we summon from the dusty 
 dead, in whom common qualities become uncom- 
 
12 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 mon ? Can I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the 
 polished man of letters, the author ^ of the South Sea 
 House ? who never enteredst thy office in a morn- 
 ing, or quittedst it in mid-day — (what didst thou in 
 an office ?) — without some quirk that left a sting \ 
 Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, or survive 
 but in two forgotten volumes, which I had the good 
 fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three 
 days ago, and found thee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, 
 as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fasti- 
 dious days — thy topics are staled by the new-born 
 gauds ’’ of the time : — ^but great thou used to be in 
 Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham, 
 and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and Howe, and 
 Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended 
 in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellions' 
 colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Saw- 
 bridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and 
 
 Richmond, — and such small politics. 
 
 A little less facetious, and a gi'eat deal more 
 obstreperous, was fine rattling, rattleheaded Plumer. 
 He was descended, — not in a right line, reader, (for 
 his lineal pretensions, like his personal, favoured 
 a little of the sinister bend) from the Plumers of 
 Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and 
 certain family features not a little sanctioned the 
 
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE* 18 
 
 opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed 
 author) had been a rake in his days, and visited 
 much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was 
 uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still 
 living, who has represented the county in so many 
 successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion 
 near Ware. Walter flourished in George the 
 Second’s days, and was the same who was sum-, 
 moned before the House of Commons about a 
 business of franks, with the old Duchess of Marl- 
 borough. You may read of it in Johnson’s Life of 
 Cave, Cave came off cleverly in that business. It 
 is certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance 
 the rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever 
 it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. But, 
 besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an 
 
 engaging fellow, and sang gloriously. 
 
 Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, 
 
 mild, child-like, pastoral M ; a flute’s breathing 
 
 less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melo- 
 dies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst 
 chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished 
 Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more 
 lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire 
 was old surly M , the unapproachable church- 
 
 warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, 
 
14 
 
 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 
 
 when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring 
 of blustering winter ; — only unfortunate in thy 
 ending, which should have been mild, conciliatory, 
 swan-like. 
 
 Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes 
 rise up, but they must be mine in private : — already 
 I have fooled the reader to the top of his bent ; — 
 else could I omit that strange creature Woollett, 
 who existed in trying the question, and bought liti- 
 gations ? — and still stranger, inimitable, solemn 
 Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have 
 deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly 
 would he nib a pen — with what deliberation would 
 he wet a wafer ! 
 
 But it is time to close — night’s wheels are rattling 
 fast over me — it is proper to have done with this 
 solemn mockery. 
 
 Reader, what if I have been playing with thee 
 all this while — peradventure the very names, which 
 I have summoned up before thee, are fantastic — 
 insubstantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and old John 
 Naps of Greece 
 
 Be satisfied that something answering to them 
 has had a being. Their importance is from the 
 past. 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of 
 this article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with 
 cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though 
 it read not,) never fails to consult the quis sculpsit 
 in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece 
 
 to be a Vivares, or a Woollet methinks I hear 
 
 you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia ? 
 
 Because in my last I tried to divert thee with 
 some half forgotten humours of some old clerks 
 defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone 
 to decay, doubtless you have already set me down 
 
 in your mind as one of the self-same college a 
 
 votary of the desk — a notched and cropt scrivener 
 — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick 
 people are said to do, through a quill* 
 
 Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I con- 
 fess that it is my humour, my fancy — in ■the fore- 
 
16 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 part of the day, when the mind of your man of letters 
 requires some relaxation-~(and none better than 
 such as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his 
 
 beloved studies) — to while away some good hours 
 of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, 
 raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In 
 the first place * * * * * 
 
 and then it sends you home with such increased 
 appetite to your books ***** 
 not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste 
 wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most 
 kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, 
 epigrams, essays — so that the very parings of a 
 counting house are, in some sort, the settings up of 
 an author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded 
 all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and 
 ciphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the 
 flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation. — 
 It feels its promotion. ***** 
 So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dig- 
 nity of Elia is very little, if at all, compromised in 
 the condescension. 
 
 Not that, in my anxious detail of the many com- 
 modities incidental to the life of a public office, I 
 would be thought blind to certain flaws, which a 
 cunning carper might be able to pick in this J oseph’s 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 17 
 
 vest. And here I must have leave^ in the fulness 
 of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-away- 
 with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and 
 sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons,— 
 the red-letter days, now become, to all intents and 
 purposes, dead-letter days. There was Paul, and 
 Stephen, and Barnabas — 
 
 Andrew and John, men famous in old times 
 
 • — we were used to keep all their days holy, as Jong 
 back as I was at school at Christ’s. I remember 
 their effigies, by the same token, in the old Basket 
 Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy 
 posture — -holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act 
 of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. 
 
 1 honoured them all, and could almost have 
 
 wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love 
 to keep holy memories sacred: — only methought I 
 a little grudged at the coalition of the better Jude 
 with Simon— clubbing (as it were) their sanctities 
 together, to make up one poor gaudy-day between 
 them — as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. 
 
 These were bright visitations in a scholar’s and a 
 clerk’s life — far off their coming shone.’’ — I was 
 as good as an almanac in those days. I could have 
 told= you such 9, saint’s-day falls out next v7eek,, or 
 
18 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 the week after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by 
 some periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, 
 merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better than 
 one of the profane. Let me not be thought to 
 arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have 
 judged the further observation of these holy tides 
 to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of 
 such long standing, me thinks, if their Holinesses 
 
 the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded 
 
 but I am wading out of my depths. I am not the 
 man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical 
 authority 1 am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Arch- 
 bishop Usher — though at present in the thick 
 of their books, here in the heart of learning, 
 under the shadow of the mighty Bodley. 
 
 I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. 
 To such a one as myself, who has been defrauded 
 in his young years of the sweet food of academic 
 institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a 
 few idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universities. 
 Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls in 
 so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks unmo- 
 lested, and fancy myself of what degree or stand- 
 ing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch 
 up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel- 
 bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION, 
 
 19 
 
 humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the 
 peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. 
 In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. In- 
 deed I do not think I am much unlike that respect- 
 able character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, 
 and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, 
 as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of 
 the sort. I go about in black, which favours the 
 notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quad- 
 rangle, I can be content to pass for short nothing of 
 a Seraphic Doctor. 
 
 The walks at these times are so much one’s own, 
 — the tall trees of Christ’s, the groves of Magdalen ! 
 The halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting 
 one to slip in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some 
 Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress (that should 
 have been ours) whose portrait seems to smile upon 
 their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for 
 their own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at 
 the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique 
 hospitality : the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen 
 fire-places, cordial recesses ; ovens whose first pies 
 were baked four centuries ago ; and spits which have 
 cooked for Chaucer! Not the meanest minister 
 among the dishes but is hallowed to me through his 
 imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. 
 
2Q 
 
 QXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? 
 that, being nothing, art every thing ! When thou 
 werty thou wert not antiquity — then thou wert no- 
 thing, but hadst a remoter antiquity ^ as thou calledst 
 it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou 
 thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern ! What 
 mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what half 
 Januses* are we, that cannot look forward with the 
 same idolatry with which we for ever revert ! The 
 mighty future is as nothing, being every thing! 
 the past is every thing, being nothing ! 
 
 What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose 
 as brightly then as now, and man got him to his 
 work in the morning. Why is it we can never 
 hear mention of them without an accompanying 
 feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed 
 the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered 
 to and fro groping ! 
 
 Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford what do 
 most arride and solace me, are thy repositories of 
 mouldering learning, thy shelves 
 
 What a place to be in is an old library 1 It seems 
 as though all the souls of all the writers, that have 
 bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were 
 
 * Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION, 
 
 21 
 
 reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. 
 I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their 
 winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. 
 I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their 
 foliage ; and the odour of their old moth-scented 
 coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those 
 sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. 
 
 Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder 
 repose of MSS. Those varioi lectiones^ so tempting 
 to the more eru dite palates, do but disturb and 
 unsettle my faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The 
 credit of the three witnesses might have slept unim- 
 peached for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, 
 and to G. D. — whom, by the way, I found busy 
 as a moth over some rotten archive, rummaged out 
 of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. 
 With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. 
 He stood as passive as one by the side of the old 
 shelves. I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and 
 assign him his place. He might have mustered for 
 a tall Scapula. 
 
 D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learn- 
 ing. No inconsiderable portion of his moderate for- 
 tune, I apprehend, is consumed in journeys between 
 
 them and Clifford’s-inn where, like a dove on 
 
 the asp’s nest, he has long taken up his unconscious 
 
22 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 abode, amid an Incongruous assembly of attorneys, 
 attorney’s clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin of 
 the law, among whom he sits, ‘^in calm and sinless 
 peace.” The fangs of the law pierce him not — the 
 winds of litigation blow over his humble chambers 
 —the hard sheriff’s officer moves his hat as he passes 
 — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches him — none 
 thinks of offering violence or injustice to him — you 
 would as soon strike an abstract idea.” 
 
 D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course 
 of laborious years, in an investigation into all curious 
 matter connected with the two Universities ; and 
 has lately lit upon a MS. collection of charters, 
 
 relative to C , by which he hopes to settle some 
 
 disputed points— particularly that long controversy 
 between them as to priority of foundation. The 
 ardor with which he engages in these liberal pur- 
 suits, I am afraid, has not met with all the en- 
 couragement it deserved, either here, or at C . 
 
 Your caputs, and heads of colleges, care less than 
 any body else about these questions. — Contented 
 to suck the milky fountains of their Alma Maters, 
 without inquiring into the venerable gentlewomen’s 
 years, they rather hold such curiosities to be imper- 
 tinent — unreverend. They have their good glebe 
 lands in manu^ and care not much to rake into the 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 23 
 
 title-deeds. I gather at least so much from other 
 sources, for D. is not a man to complain. 
 
 D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I inter- 
 rupted him. A priori it was not very probable 
 that we should have met in Oriel. But D. would 
 have done the same, had I accosted him on the 
 sudden in his own walks in ClifFord’s-inn, or in 
 the Temple. In addition to a provoking short- 
 sightedness (the effect of late studies and watch- 
 ings at the midnight oil) D. is the most absent of 
 men. He made a call the other morning at our 
 friend M.’s in Bedford-square ; and, finding nobody 
 at home, was ushered into the hall, where, asking 
 for pen and ink, with great exactitude of purpose 
 he enters me his name in the book — which ordi- 
 narily lies about in such places, to record the failures 
 of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes 
 his leave with many ceremonies, and professions of 
 regret. Some two or three hours after, his walking 
 destinies returned him into the same neighbourhood 
 again, and again the quiet image of the fire-side 
 circle at ikf.’s — Mrs. M. presiding at it like a 
 Queen Lar, with pretty A, S. at her side — striking 
 irresistibly on his fancy, he makes another call (for- 
 getting that they were certainly not to return 
 from the country before that day week ”) and dis- 
 
24 
 
 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 appointed a second time, inquires for pen and paper 
 as before: again the book is brought, and in the 
 line just above that in which he is about to print 
 his second name (his re-script) — ^his first name 
 (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another Sosia, 
 or as if a man should suddenly encounter his own 
 duplicate ! — The effect may be conceived. D. made 
 many a good resolution against any such lapses in 
 future. I hope he will not keep them too rigorously. 
 
 For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is 
 sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be present 
 with the Lord. At the very time when, personally 
 encountering thee, he passes on with no recognition 
 
 or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised 
 
 — at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor — 
 or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato — or, with 
 Harrington, framing immortal commonwealths’’ — 
 devising some plan of amelioration to thy country, 
 
 or thy species peradventure meditating some 
 
 individual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee 
 thyself^ the returning consciousness of which made 
 him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal 
 presence. 
 
 D. is delightful any where, but he is at the best 
 in such places as these. He cares not much for 
 Bath. He is out of his element at Buxton, at Scar- 
 
OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 
 
 25 
 
 borough, or Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are 
 to him better than all the waters of Damascus.” 
 On the Muses’ hill he is happy, and good, as one 
 of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; 
 and when he goes about with you to show you 
 the halls and colleges, you think you have with 
 you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful. 
 
 c 
 
CHRISTAS HOSPITAL 
 
 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 In Mr. Lamb’s Works/’ published a year or two 
 since, I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school*, 
 such as it was, or now appears to him to have been, 
 between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very 
 oddly, that my own standing at Christ’s was nearly 
 corresponding with his ; and, with all gratitude to 
 him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he 
 has contrived to bring together whatever can be said 
 in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the 
 argument most ingeniously. 
 
 I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect 
 that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and 
 others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends 
 lived in town, and were near at hand ; and he had 
 the privilege of going to see them, almost as often 
 
 Recollections of Christas Hospital. 
 
Christ’s hospital. 
 
 27 
 
 as he wished, through some invidious distinction, 
 which was denied to us. The present worthy sub- 
 treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that 
 happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a morn- 
 ing, while we were battening upon our quarter of 
 a penny loaf — our crug — moistened with attenuated 
 small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the 
 pitched leathern jack it was poured from. Our 
 Monday’s milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the 
 peas soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were 
 enriched for him with a slice of ^^extraordinary 
 bread and butter,” from the hot-loaf of the Temple. 
 The Wednesday’s mess of millet, somewhat less 
 repugnant — (we had three banyan to four meat 
 days in the week) — was endeared to his palate with a 
 lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to 
 make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant 
 cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or 
 quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as 
 caro equina)^ with detestable marigolds floating in 
 the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton 
 crags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but 
 grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted 
 or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which ex- 
 cited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, 
 in almost equal proportion) — he had his hot plate 
 c 2 
 
28 
 
 christ‘’s hospital 
 
 of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics 
 unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal 
 kitchen (a great thing), and brought him daily by 
 his maid or aunt ! I remember the good old re- 
 lative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting down 
 upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, 
 disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those 
 cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite) ; 
 and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. 
 There was love for the bringer ; shame for the 
 thing brought, and the manner of its bringing ; 
 sympathy for those who were too many to share 
 in it ; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest 
 of the passions !) predominant, breaking down the 
 stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a 
 troubling over-consciousness. 
 
 I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and 
 those who should care for me, were far away. 
 Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could 
 reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, 
 after a little forced notice, which they had the grace 
 to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew 
 tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to 
 recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; 
 and, one after another, they all failed me, and I 
 felt myself alone among six hundred playmates. 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 29 
 
 O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his 
 early homestead ! The yearnings which I used to 
 have towards it in those unfledged years ! How, in 
 my dreams, would my native town (far in the west) 
 come back, with its church, and trees, and faces ! 
 How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish 
 of my heart exclaim upon sweet Caine in Wilt- 
 shire ! 
 
 To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions 
 left by the recollection of those friendless holidays. 
 The long warm days of summer never return but 
 they bring with them a gloom from the haunting 
 memory of those whole-day-leaves^ when, by some 
 strange arrangement, we were turned out, for the 
 live-long day, upon our own hands, whether we 
 had friends to go to, or none. I remember those 
 bathing-excursions, to the New-River, which L. re- 
 calls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — 
 for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much 
 care for such water-pastimes: — How merrily we 
 would sally forth into the fields ; and strip under the 
 first warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young dace 
 in the streams ; getting us appetites for noon, which 
 those of us that were penny-less (our scanty morning 
 crust long since exhausted) had not the means of 
 allaying — while the cattle, and the birds, and the 
 
30 
 
 christ'^s hospital 
 
 fishes, were at feed about us and we had nothing to 
 satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the day, 
 and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of 
 liberty, setting a keener edge upon them! — How 
 faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards 
 night-fall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, 
 half-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty 
 had expired ! 
 
 It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling 
 about the streets objectless — shivering at cold 
 windows of print-shops, to extract a little amuse- 
 ment ; or haply, as a last resort in the hopes of a 
 little novelty, to pay a fifty-times repeated visit 
 (where our individual faces should be as well 
 known to the warden as those of his own charges) 
 to the Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by 
 courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to 
 admission. 
 
 L.’s governor (so we called the patron who pre- 
 sented us to the foundation) lived in a manner under 
 his paternal roof. Any complaint which he had to 
 make was sure of being attended to. This was 
 understood at Christ’s, and was an effectual screen 
 to him against the severity of masters, or worse 
 tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these 
 young brutes are heart sickening to call to recol- 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 31 
 
 lection. I have been called out of my bed, and 
 waked for the purpose^ in the coldest winter nights 
 — and this not once, but night after night — in my 
 shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, 
 with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased my 
 callow overseer, when there has been any talking 
 heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six 
 last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest 
 children of us slept, answerable for an offence they 
 neither dared to commit, nor had the power to 
 hinder. — The same execrable tyranny drove the 
 younger part of us from the fires, when our feet were 
 perishing with snow ; and, under the crudest 
 penalties, forbad the indulgence of a drink of 
 water, when we lay in sleepless summer nights, 
 fevered with the season, and the day’s sports. 
 
 There was one H , who, I learned, in after 
 
 days, was seen expiating some maturer offence in 
 the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying that 
 this might be the planter of that name, who suf- 
 fered — at Nevis, I think, or St. Kitts, — some few 
 years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent 
 instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) This 
 petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended 
 him, with a red hot iron ; and nearly starved forty 
 of us, with exacting contributions, to the one half 
 
32 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 of our breads to pamper a young ass, which, incre- 
 dible as it may seem, with the connivance of the 
 nurse’s daughter (a young flame of his) he had con- 
 trived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of 
 the ward, as they called our dormitories. This 
 game went on for better than a week, till the fool- 
 ish beast, not able to fare well but he must cry roast 
 meat — happier than Caligula’s minion, could he 
 have kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas ! 
 than any of his species in the fables — waxing fat, 
 and kicking, in the fulness of bread, one unlucky 
 minute would needs proclaim his good fortune to 
 the world below ; and, laying out his simple throat, 
 blew such a ram’s horn blast, as (toppling down the 
 walls of his own Jericho) set concealment any 
 longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with 
 certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never un- 
 derstood that the patron underwent any censure on 
 the occasion. This was in the stewardship of L.’s 
 admired Perry. 
 
 Under the same facile administration, can L. 
 have forgotten the cool impunity with which the 
 nurses used to carry away openly, in open platters, 
 for their own tables, one out of two of every hot 
 joint, which the careful matron had been seeing 
 scrupulously weighed out for our dinners ? These 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 33 
 
 things were daily practised in that magnificent 
 apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we 
 presume) praises so highly for the grand paintings 
 by Verrio, and others,” with which it is hung 
 round and adorned.” But the sight of sleek well- 
 fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, at that time, I 
 believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the living 
 ones, who saw the better part of our provisions 
 carried away before our faces by harpies ; and our- 
 selves reduced (with the Trojan in the hall of 
 Dido) 
 
 To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 
 
 L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to 
 gags^ or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it 
 down to some superstition. But these unctuous 
 morsels are never grateful to young palates (chil- 
 dren are universally fat-haters), and in strong, 
 coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A 
 gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a goul^ and 
 
 held in equal detestation. suffered under the 
 
 imputation. 
 
 ’Twas said 
 
 He ate strange flesh. 
 
 He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather 
 up the remnants left at his table (not many, nor 
 c 3 
 
34 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 very choice fragments, you may credit me) — and, 
 in an especial manner, these disreputable morsels, 
 which he would convey away, and secretly stow in 
 the settle that stood at his bed-side. None saw 
 when he ate them. It was rumoured that he pri- 
 vately devoured them in the night. He was watched, 
 but no traces of such midnight practices were dis- 
 coverable. Some reported, that, on leave-days, he 
 had been seen to carry out of the bounds a large 
 blue check handkerchief, full of something. This 
 then must be the accursed thing. Conjecture next 
 was at work to imagine how he could dispose of it. 
 Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief 
 generally prevailed. He went about moping. None 
 spake to him. No one would play with him. He 
 was excommunicated; put out of the pale of the 
 school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, 
 but he underwent every m.ode of that negative pu- 
 nishment, which is more grievous than many stripes. 
 Still he persevered. At length he was observed by 
 two of his school-fellows, who were determined to 
 get at the secret, and had traced him one leave-day 
 for that purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, 
 such as there exist specimens of in Chancery-lane, 
 which are let out to various scales of pauperism 
 with open door, and a common staircase. After 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 35 
 
 him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth 
 up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, 
 which was opened by an aged woman, meanly clad. 
 Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The 
 informers had secured their victim. They had him 
 in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, 
 and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. 
 Hathaway, the then steward (for this happened a 
 little after my time), with that patient sagacity 
 which tempered all his conduct, determined to in- 
 vestigate the matter, before he proceeded to sen- 
 tence. The result was, that the supposed mendi- 
 cants, the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious 
 
 scraps, turned out to be the parents of ■, an 
 
 honest couple come to decay, — whom this season- 
 able supply had, in all probability, saved from men- 
 dicancy ; and that this young stork, at the expense 
 of his own good name, had all this while been only 
 feeding the old birds ! — The governors on this 
 occasion, much to their honour, voted a present 
 
 relief to the family of , and presented him with 
 
 a silver medal. The lesson which the steward read 
 upon RASH JUDGMENT, OH the occasion of publicly 
 
 delivering the medal to -, I believe, would not be 
 
 lost upon his auditory. — I had left school then, but 
 I well remember . He was a tall, shambling 
 
36 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 youth, with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated 
 to conciliate hostile prejudices. 1 have since seen 
 him carrying a baker’s basket. I think I heard he 
 did not do quite so well by himself, as he had done 
 by the old folks. 
 
 I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a 
 boy in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on 
 the blue clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage 
 the natural terrors of initiation. I was of tender 
 years, barely turned of seven ; and had only read of 
 such things in books, or seen them but in dreams. 
 I was told he had run away. This was the punish- 
 ment for the first offence. — As a novice I was soon 
 after taken to see the dungeons. These were little, 
 square. Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at 
 his length upon straw and a blanket — a mattress, I 
 think, was afterwards substituted — with a peep of 
 light, let in askance, from a prison-orifice at top, 
 barely enough to read by. Here the poor boy was 
 locked in by himself all day, without sight of any 
 but the porter who brought him his bread and 
 water — who might not speak to him ; — or of the 
 beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to 
 receive his periodical chastisement, which was al- 
 most welcome, because it separated him for a brief 
 interval from solitude : — and here he was shut up 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 37 
 
 by himself of nights^ out of the reach of any sound, 
 to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves, and 
 superstition incident to his time of life, might sub- 
 ject him to*. This was the penalty for the second 
 offence. Wouldst thou like, reader, to see what 
 became of him in the next degree ? 
 
 The culprit, who had been a third time an of- 
 fender, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed 
 irreversible, was brought forth, as at some solemn 
 auto da ft arrayed in uncouth and most appalling 
 attire— all trace of his late watchet weeds ” care- 
 fully effaced, he was exposed in a jacket, resembling 
 those which London lamplighters formerly delighted 
 in, with a cap of the same. The effect of this 
 divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it 
 could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted 
 features, it was as if some of those disfigurements in 
 Dante had seized upon him. In this disguisement 
 he was brought into the hall {L.^s favourite state- 
 roorri), where awaited him the whole number of his 
 school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was 
 
 * One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, 
 at length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the 
 sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. 
 — This fancy of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard’s brain ; 
 for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks, I could 
 willingly spit upon his statue. 
 
38 
 
 chbist’s hospital 
 
 thenceforth to share no more ; the awful presence 
 of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the 
 executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the 
 occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr import, 
 because never but in these extremities visible. These 
 were governors ; two of whom, by choice, or charter, 
 were always accustomed to officiate at these Ultima 
 Supplicia ; not to mitigate (so at least we under- 
 stood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old 
 Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, 
 w^ere colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle 
 turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered 
 to prepare him for the mysteries. The scourging 
 was, after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. 
 The lictor accompanied the criminal quite round the 
 hall. We were generally too faint with attending 
 to the previous disgusting circumstances, to make 
 accurate report with our eyes of the degree of cor- 
 poral suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave 
 out the back knotty and livid. After scourging, he 
 was made over, in his San Benito^ to his friends, 
 if he had any (but commonly such poor runagates 
 were friendles), or to his parish officer, who, to 
 enhance the effect of the scene, had his station 
 allotted to him on the outside of the hall gate. 
 
 These solemn pageantries were not played off 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 39 
 
 SO often as to spoil the general mirth of the commu» 
 nity. We had plenty of exercise and recreation 
 after school hours ; and, for myself, I must confess, 
 that I was never happier, than in them. The Upper 
 and the Lower Grammar Schools were held in the ' 
 same room ; and an imaginary line only divided 
 their bounds. Their character was as different as 
 that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Py- 
 renees. The Rev. James Boyer was the Upper 
 Master; but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over 
 that portion of the apartment, of which I had the 
 good fortune to be a member. We lived a life as 
 careless as birds. We talked and did just what w^e 
 pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an 
 accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, for any trou- 
 ble it gave us, we might take two years in getting 
 through the verbs deponent, and another two in 
 forgetting all that we had learned about them. 
 There was now and then the formality of saying a 
 lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across 
 the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the 
 sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod; and 
 in truth he wielded the cane with no great good 
 will — holding it like a dancer.” It looked in his 
 hands rather like an emblem than an instrument of 
 authority ; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. 
 
40 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 He was a good easy man, that did not care to ruffle 
 his owm peace, nor perhaps set any great consider- 
 ation upon the value of juvenile time. He came 
 among us, nowand then, but often stayed away whole 
 days from us ; and when he came, it made no differ- 
 ence to us — he had his private room to retire to, the 
 short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our 
 noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had 
 classics of our own, without being beholden to 
 insolent Greece or haughty Rome,’’ that passed 
 current among us — Peter Wilkins — the Adventures 
 of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle — the Fortunate 
 Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or we cultivated a 
 turn for mechanic and scientific operations ; making 
 little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those ingenious 
 parentheses, called cat-cradles ; or making dry peas 
 to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or studying 
 the art military over that laudable game French 
 and English,*” and a hundred other such devices to 
 pass awaythe time — mixing the useful with the 
 agreeable — as would have made the souls of Rous- 
 seau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. 
 
 Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest 
 divines who affect to mix in equal proportion the 
 gentleman^ the scholar ^ and the Christian; but, I 
 know not how, the first ingredient is generally found 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 41 
 
 to be the predominating dose in the composition. 
 He was engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly 
 bow at some episcopal levee, when he should have 
 been attending upon us. He had for many years 
 the classical charge of a hundred children, during 
 the four or five first years of their education ; and 
 his very highest form seldom proceeded further than 
 two or three of the introductory fables of Phaedrus. 
 How things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot 
 guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to have 
 remedied these abuses, always affected, perhaps 
 felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not 
 strictly his own. I have not been without my sus- 
 picions, that he was not altogether displeased at the 
 contrast we presented to his end of the school. We 
 were a sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He 
 would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to 
 borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with 
 Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, 
 ^^how neat and fresh the twigs looked.” While 
 his pale students were battering their brains over 
 Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that 
 enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves 
 at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little 
 into the secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did 
 but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders 
 
42 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 rolled innocuous for us : his storms came near, but 
 never touched us ; contrary to Gideon’s miracle, 
 while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry*. 
 His boys turned out the better scholars ; we, I sus- 
 pect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils 
 cannot speak of him without something of terror 
 allaying their gratitude ; the remembrance of Field 
 comes back with all the soothing images of indo- 
 lence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, 
 and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and 
 life itself a playing holiday.” 
 
 Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction 
 of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to 
 understand a little of his system. We occasionally 
 heard sounds of the Uliilantes, and caught glances 
 of Tartarus. B.was a rabid pedant. His English 
 style was crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems 
 (for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) 
 were grating as scrannel pipes f . — He would laugh, 
 
 * Cowley. 
 
 't' In this and every thing B. was the antipodes of his co-adjutor. 
 While the former was digging his hrains for crude anthems, worth a 
 pig-nut, F. would he recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more 
 flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under 
 the name of Vertumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the 
 chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, 
 but the town did not give it their sanction. — B. used to say of it, 
 in a way of half-compliment, half-irony, that it was too classical for 
 representation. 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 43 
 
 ay, and heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus’s 
 
 quibble about Rex or at the tristis severitas in 
 
 vultu, or inspicere in patinas^ of Terence — thin jests, 
 which at their first broaching could hardily have had 
 vis enough to move a Roman muscle. — He had two 
 wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The 
 one serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a 
 mild day. The other, an old, discoloured, unkempt, 
 angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execu- 
 tion. Woe to the school, when he made his morn- 
 ing appearance in \v\^ passy^ or passionate wig. No 
 comet expounded surer. — J. B. had a heavy hand. 
 I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor 
 trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon 
 its lips) with a Sirrah, do you presume to set 
 your wits at me?’’ — nothing was more common 
 than to see him make a head-long entry into the 
 school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and, 
 with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out^ 
 Od’s my life. Sirrah,” (his favourite adjuration) 
 I have a great mind to whip you,” — then, with as 
 sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his lair 
 — and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during 
 which all but the c ulprit had totally forgotten the 
 context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his 
 imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devifs 
 
44 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 Litany, with the expletory yell — and / will, too.^ 
 — In his gentler moods, when the rahidus furor was 
 assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method^ 
 peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of 
 whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the 
 same time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; 
 which in those times, when parliamentary oratory 
 was most at a height and flourishing in these realms, 
 was not calculated to impress the patient with a 
 veneration for the diffuser graces of rhetoric. 
 
 Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known 
 to fall ineffectual from his hand — when droll squint- 
 ing W — having been caught putting the inside of 
 the master’s desk to a use for which the architect 
 had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with 
 great simplicity averred, that he did not know that 
 the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irre- 
 cognition of any law antecedent to the oral or 
 declaratory^ struck so irresistibly upon the fancy 
 of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not 
 excepted) — that remission was unavoidable. 
 
 L. has given credit to B.’s great merits as an 
 instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pro- 
 nounced a more intelligible and ample encomium 
 on them. The author of the Country Spectator 
 doubts not to compare him with the ablest teachers 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 45 
 
 of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better 
 than with the pious ejaculation of C. — when he 
 heard that his old master was on his death-bed 
 
 Poor J. B. ! — may all his faults be forgiven ; and 
 may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all 
 head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his 
 sublunary infirmities.” 
 
 Under him were many good and sound scholars 
 bred. — First Grecian of my time was Lancelot 
 Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since 
 Co-grammar-master (and inseparable companion) 
 
 with Dr. T e. What an edifying spectacle did 
 
 this brace of friends present to those who remem- 
 bered the anti-socialities of their predecessors ! — 
 You never met the one by chance in the street 
 without a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by 
 the almost immediate sub-appearance of the other. 
 Generally arm in arm, these kindly coadjutors 
 lightened for each other the toilsome duties of their 
 profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it 
 convenient to retire, the other was not long in dis- 
 covering that it suited him to lay down the fasces 
 also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same 
 arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen 
 helped it to turn over the Cicero De Amicitia^ or 
 some tale of Antique Friendship, which the young 
 
46 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 heart even then was burning to anticipate ! — Co- 
 Grecian with S. was Th , who has since exe- 
 
 cuted with ability various diplomatic functions at the 
 
 Northern courts, Th was a tall, dark, saturnine 
 
 youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks. — Thomas 
 Fanshaw Middleton followed him (now Bishop of 
 Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in his teens. 
 He has the reputation of an excellent critic ; and is 
 author (besides the Country Spectator) of a Trea- 
 tise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. — M. is 
 said to bear his mitre high in India, where the regni 
 novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. 
 A humility quite as primitive as that of J ewel or 
 Hooker might not be exactly fitted to impress the 
 minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a 
 reverence for home institutions, and the church 
 which those fathers watered. The manners of M. 
 at school, though firm, were mild, and unassuming. 
 — Next to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, 
 author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited 
 of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, studious 
 Grecian. — Then followed poor S — —, ill-fated 
 M ! of these the Muse is silent. 
 
 Finding some of Edward’s race 
 Unhappy, pass their annals by. 
 
 Come back into memory, like as thou wert in 
 
FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 
 
 47 
 
 the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery 
 column before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned 
 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, Metaphy- 
 sician, Bard! — How have I seen the casual passer 
 through the Cloisters stand still, intranced with 
 admiration (while he weighed the disproportion 
 between the speech and the garh of the young 
 Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and 
 sweet intonations, the mysteries of J amblichus, or 
 Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not 
 pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting 
 
 Homer in his Greek, or Pindar while the walls 
 
 of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of 
 the inspired charity-hoy ! — Many were the wit- 
 combats,’’ (to dally awhile with the words of old 
 
 Fuller), between him and C, V. Le G , which 
 
 two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an 
 English man of war ; Master Coleridge, like the 
 former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but 
 slow in his performances. C.V.L., with the English 
 man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, 
 could turn with all tides, tack about, and take 
 advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit 
 and invention.” 
 
 Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly for- 
 gotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more 
 
48 
 
 Christ’s hospital 
 
 cordial laugh, with which thou wert wont to make 
 the old Cloisters shake, in thy cognition of some 
 poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipation of some 
 more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of 
 thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that 
 beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert 
 the Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of 
 thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath 
 of infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by pro- 
 voking pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly 
 converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half- 
 formed terrible hi for a gentler greeting — 
 
 bless thy handsome face /” 
 
 Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, 
 
 and the friends of Elia — the junior Le G and 
 
 F ; who impelled, the former by a roving 
 
 temper, the latter by too quick a sense of neglect — 
 ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are 
 sometimes subject to in our seats of learning — 
 exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp ; perish- 
 ing, one by climate, and one on the plains of 
 
 Salamanca : — Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet- 
 
 natured; F dogged, faithful, anticipative of 
 
 insult, warm-hearted, with something of the old 
 Roman height about him. 
 
Christ’s hospital. 
 
 49 
 
 Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master 
 
 of Hertford, with Marmaduke T — — , mildest of 
 Missionaries — and both my good friends still — 
 close the catalogue of Grecians in my time. 
 
 B 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 4 
 
 The human species, according to the best theory 
 I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, 
 the men who borrow^ and the men who lend. To 
 these two original diversities may be reduced 
 all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and 
 Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All 
 the dwellers upon earth, Parthians, and Medes, 
 and Elamites,” flock hither, and do naturally fall 
 in with one or other of these primary distinctions. 
 The infinite superiority of the former, which I 
 choose to designate as the great race^ is discernible 
 in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive 
 sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. He 
 shall serve his brethren.” There is something in 
 the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; 
 contrasting with the open, trusting, generous 
 manners of the other. 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 51 
 
 Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of 
 all ages — Alcibiades — FalstafF — Sir Richard Steele 
 — our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family 
 likeness in all four ! 
 
 What a carelessj even deportment hath your 
 ^borrower! what rosy gills! what a beautiful 
 reliance on Providence doth he manifest, — taking 
 no more thought than lilies ! What contempt for 
 money,- — accounting it (yours and mine especially) 
 no better than dross 1 What a liberal confounding 
 of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum ! 
 or rather, what a noble simplification of language 
 (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites 
 into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — 
 What near approaches doth he make to the primi- 
 tive community ^ — to the extent of one half of the 
 principle at least. 
 
 He is the true taxer who calleth all the world 
 up to be taxed;” and the distance is as vast between 
 him and one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan 
 Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it 
 tribute-pittance at Jerusalem 1 — His exactions, too, 
 have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So far re- 
 moved from your sour parochial or state-gatherers, 
 — those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of 
 welcome in their faces ! He cometh to you with a 
 D 2 
 
 library 
 
 univfRSITV ^ 
 
82 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 smile, and troubleth you with no receipt ; confining 
 himself to no set season. Every day is his Candle- 
 mas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth 
 the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your purse, 
 — which to that gentle warmth expands her silken 
 leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for ^ 
 which sun and wind contended ! He is the true 
 Propontic which never ebbeth ! The sea which 
 taketh handsomely at each man’s hand. In vain 
 the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles 
 with destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore 
 cheerfully, O man ordained to lend — that thou lose 
 not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the rever- 
 sion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine 
 own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! 
 — but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, 
 meet it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a 
 handsome sacrifice ! See how light he makes of it ! 
 Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. 
 
 Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon 
 my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph 
 Bigod, Esq., who parted this life on Wednesday 
 evening ; dying, as he had lived, without much 
 trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from 
 mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held 
 ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 53 
 
 sentiments he belied not the stock to which he 
 pretended. Early in life he found himself invested 
 with ample revenues ; which, with that noble dis- 
 interestedness which I have noticed as inherent in 
 men of the great race^ he took almost immediate 
 measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing : 
 for there is something revolting in the idea of a king 
 holding a private purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod 
 were all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of 
 disfurnishment ; getting rid of the cumbersome 
 luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) 
 
 To slacken virtue, and abate her edge. 
 
 Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, 
 
 he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great 
 enterprise, borrowing and to borrow ! ” 
 
 In his periegesis, or triumphant progress through- 
 out this island, it has been calculated that he laid 
 a tythe part of the inhabitants under contribution. 
 I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated : — but 
 having had the honour of accompanying my friend, 
 divers times, in his perambulations about this vast 
 city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the 
 prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a 
 sort of respectful acquaintance with us. He was 
 one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. 
 
54 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN, 
 
 It seems, these were his tributaries ; feeders of 
 his exchequer ; gentlemen, his good friends (as he 
 was pleased to express himself), to whom he had 
 occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their mul- 
 titudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took 
 a pride in numbering them; and, with Comus, 
 seemed pleased to be stocked with so fair a herd.” 
 
 With such sources, it was a wonder how he 
 contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He 
 did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often 
 in his mouth, that money kept longer than three 
 days stinks.” So he made use of it while it was 
 fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an 
 excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest 
 he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it 
 violently from him — as boys do burrs, or as if it 
 had been infectious,— into ponds, or ditches, or 
 deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; — or 
 he would bury it (where he would never seek it 
 again) by a river’s side under some bank, which 
 (he would facetiously observe) paid no interest — 
 but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as 
 Hagar’s offspring into the wilderness, while it was 
 sweet. He never missed it. The streams were 
 perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies 
 became necessary, the first person that had the 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 56 
 
 felicity to fall in with hira^ friend or stranger, was 
 sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod 
 had an undeniable way with him. He had a 
 cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald 
 forehead, just touched with grey {cana Jides), He 
 anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, 
 waiving for a while my theory as to the great race^ 
 I would put it to the most untheorising reader, 
 who may at times have disposable coin in his 
 pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the 
 kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I 
 am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary 
 rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his 
 mumping visnomy, tells you, that he expects 
 nothing better ; and, therefore, whose precon- 
 ceived notions and expectations you do in reality 
 so much less shock in the refusal. 
 
 When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of 
 heart ; his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how 
 ideal he was ; how great at the midnight hour ; and 
 when I compare with him the companions with 
 whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving 
 of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen 
 into the society of lender s, and little men. 
 
 To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased 
 in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there 
 
56 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 is a class of alienators more formidable than that 
 which I have touched upon ; I mean your borrowers 
 of hooks — those mutilators of collections, spoilers 
 of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd 
 volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his 
 depredations ! 
 
 That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, 
 like a great eye-tooth knocked out— (you are now 
 with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, 
 
 reader!) with the huge Switzer-like tomes on 
 
 each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed 
 posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest 
 of my folios. Opera Bonaventurce^ choice and massy 
 divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity 
 also, but of a lesser calibre, — Belarmine, and Holy 
 Thomas), showed but as dwarfs,— itself an Asca- 
 part 1 — that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith 
 of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, 
 for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that 
 the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, 
 for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant’s 
 powers of understanding and appreciating the 
 same.” Should he go on acting upon this theory, 
 which of our shelves is safe ? 
 
 The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two 
 shelves from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 57 
 
 but by the quick eye of a loser — was whilom the 
 commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. 
 C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that 
 treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and 
 was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its 
 beauties — but so have I known a foolish lover to 
 praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more 
 qualified to carry her off than himself. — Just below, 
 Dodsley’s dramas want their fourth volume, where 
 Vittoria Corombona is ! The remainder nine are as 
 distasteful as Priam’s refuse sons, when the Fates 
 borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of 
 Melancholy in sober state. — There loitered the 
 Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by some stream 
 side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower- 
 volume, with ‘^eyes closed,” mourns his ravished 
 mate. 
 
 One justice 1 must do my friend, that if he 
 sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, 
 at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an 
 equivalent to match it. I have a small under- 
 collection of this nature (my friend’s gatherings 
 in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten 
 at what odd places, and deposited with as little 
 memory at mine. I take in these orphans, the 
 twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are 
 D 3 
 
58 
 
 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand 
 in conjunction ; natives, and naturalised. The 
 latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their 
 true lineage as I am. — I charge no warehouse- 
 room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself 
 to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale 
 of them to pay expenses. 
 
 To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and 
 meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one 
 hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no ac- 
 count of the platter after it. But what moved thee, 
 wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry 
 off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to 
 thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, 
 the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle? — knowing at 
 the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most 
 assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the 
 illustrious folio : — what but the mere spirit of con- 
 tradiction, and childish love of getting the better of 
 thy friend? — Then, worst cut of all! to transport 
 it with thee to the Gallican land — 
 
 Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, 
 
 A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 
 
 Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex’s wonder ! 
 
 -hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of 
 
 jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, 
 
THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 
 
 o9 
 
 even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips 
 and mirthful tales ? Child of the Green-room, it 
 was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that 
 part-French, better-part Englishwoman ! — that she 
 could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in 
 kindly token of remembering us, than the works of 
 Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no French- 
 man, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was 
 ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle ! 
 Was there not Zimmermann on Solitude ? 
 
 Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate 
 collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart 
 overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let 
 it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he will return them 
 (generally anticipating the time appointed) with 
 usury; enriched with annotations, tripling their 
 value. I have had experience. Many are these 
 precious MSS. of his — (in matter oftentimes, and 
 almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the 
 originals) in no very clerkly hand — legible in my 
 Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; 
 and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, 
 now, alas ! wandering in Pagan lands. — I counsel 
 thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against 
 S. T. C. 
 
NEW YEAR’S EVE. 
 
 Every man hath two birth-days : two days, at 
 least, in every year, which set him upon revolving 
 the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration* 
 The one is that which in an especial manner he 
 termed his* In the gradual desuetude of old 
 observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper 
 birth-day hath nearly passed away, or is left to 
 children, who reflect nothing at all about the 
 matter, nor understand any thing in it beyond 
 cake and orange. But the birth of a Newr Year 
 is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by 
 king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First 
 of January with indifference. It is that from which 
 all date their time, and count upon what is left. It 
 is the nativity of our common Adam. 
 
 Of all sound of all bells — (bells, the music nighest 
 bordering upon heaven) — most solemn and touching 
 
NEW year’s eve. 
 
 61 
 
 is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never 
 hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a 
 concentration of all the images that have been 
 diffused over the past twelvemonth; all I have 
 done or suffered, performed or neglected — in that 
 regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as 
 when a person dies. It takes a personal colour ; 
 nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, 
 when he exclaimed 
 
 I saw the skirts of the departing Year. 
 
 It is no more than what in sober sadness every 
 one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful 
 leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it 
 with me, last night ; though some of my com- 
 panions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration 
 at the birth of the coming year, than any very 
 tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. 
 But I am none of those who — 
 
 Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 
 
 I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new 
 books, new faces, new years, — from some mental 
 twist which makes it difficult in me to face the pro- 
 spective. I have almost ceased to hope ; and am 
 sanguine only in the prospects of other (former) years. 
 I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I 
 
62 
 
 NEW year’s eve. 
 
 encounter pell-mell with past disappointments, I 
 am armour-proof against old discouragements. 
 I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I 
 play over again for love^ as the gamesters phrase it, 
 games, for which I once paid so dear. I would 
 scarce now have any of those untoward accidents 
 and events of my life reversed. I would no more 
 altei* them than the incidents of some well-contrived 
 novel. Methinks, it is better that I should have 
 pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I 
 was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice 
 
 W n, than that so passionate a love-adventure 
 
 should be lost. It was better that our family should 
 have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated 
 us of, than that I should have at this moment two 
 thousand pounds in hanco^ and be without the idea 
 of that specious old rogue. 
 
 In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity 
 to look back upon those early days. Do I advance 
 a paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the in- 
 tervention of forty years, a man may have leave to 
 love himself without the imputation of self-love ? 
 
 If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is 
 introspective — and mine is painfully so — -can have a 
 less respect for his present identity, than I have for 
 the man Elia. I know him to be light, and vain. 
 
NEW year’s eve. 
 
 63 
 
 and humoursome ; a notorious ^ ^ ^ ; addicted to 
 * * ^ ^ : averse from counsel, neither taking it, 
 nor offering it; — * * * besides; a stammering 
 buffoon ; what you will ; lay it on, and spare not ; 
 I subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou 
 
 canst be willing to lay at his door but 
 
 for the child Elia — that other me,” there, in the 
 back-ground — I must take leave to cherish the 
 remembrance of that young master — with as little 
 reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of 
 five-and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other 
 house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its 
 patient small-pox at five, and rougher medicaments. 
 I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow 
 at Christ’s, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle 
 posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that 
 unknown had w^atched its sleep. I know how it 
 shrank from any the least colour of falsehood.— 
 God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! Thou 
 art sophisticated. — I know how honest, how cou- 
 rageous (for a weakling) it was — how religious, 
 how imaginative, how hopeful ! From what have 
 I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed my- 
 self, — and not some dissembling guardian, presenting 
 a false identity, to give the rule to my unpractised 
 steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being ! 
 
64 
 
 NEW year’s eve. 
 
 That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of 
 sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symp- 
 tom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing 
 to another cause ; simply, that being without wife 
 or family, I have not learned to project myself 
 enough out of myself ; and having no offspring of 
 my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, 
 and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and 
 favourite 2 If these speculations seem fantastical to 
 thee reader — (a busy man, perchance), if I tread 
 out of the way of th y sympathy, and am singularly- 
 conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, 
 under the phantom cloud of Elia. 
 
 The elders, with whom I was brought up, were 
 of a character not likely to let slip the sacred 
 observance of any old institution ; and the ringing 
 out of the Old Year was kept by them with circum- 
 stances of peculiar ceremony. — In those days the 
 sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed 
 to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to 
 bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. 
 Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or 
 thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. 
 Not childhood alone, but the young man till 
 thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. 
 He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could 
 
NEW year’s eve. 
 
 65 
 
 preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he 
 brings it not home to himself, any more than in a 
 hot June we can appropriate to our imagination 
 the freezing days of December. But now, shall I 
 confess a truth ?■ — I feel these audits but too power- 
 fully. I begin to count the probabilities of my 
 duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of mo- 
 ments and shortest periods, like misers’ farthings. 
 In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, 
 I set more count upon their periods, and would fain 
 lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the 
 great wheel. I am not content to pass away like 
 a weaver’s shuttle.'’ Those metaphors solace me 
 not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mor- 
 tality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that 
 smoothly bears human life to eternity ; and reluct at 
 the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with 
 this green earth ; the face of town and country ; the 
 unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security 
 of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I 
 am content to stand still at the age to which I am 
 arrived ; I, and my friends : to be no younger, 
 no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be 
 weaned by age ; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they 
 say, into the grave. — Any alteration, on this earth 
 of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discom- 
 
66 
 
 NEW year’s eve. 
 
 poses me. My household-gods plant a terrrible fixed 
 foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They 
 do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state 
 of being staggers me. 
 
 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 fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, 
 and jests, and irony itself— diO these things go out 
 with life ? 
 
 Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when 
 you are pleasant with him ? 
 
 And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must 
 I part with the intense delight of having you (huge 
 armfuls) in my embraces? Must knowledge come 
 to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experi- 
 ment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar 
 process of reading ? 
 
 Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the 
 smiling indications which point me to them here, — 
 the recognisable face — the sweet assurance of a 
 look’’—? 
 
 In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying 
 — to give it its mildest name — does more especially 
 haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, be- 
 
NEW year’s eve. 
 
 67 
 
 neath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. 
 At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy 
 an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. 
 Then we are as strong again, as valiant again, as 
 wise again, and a great deal taller* The blast that 
 nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. 
 All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that 
 master feeling ; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity ; 
 moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral ap- 
 pearances, — that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus’ 
 sickly sister, like that innutritious one denounced 
 in the Canticles : — I am none of her minions — I 
 hold with the Persian. 
 
 Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, 
 brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like 
 humours, run into that capital plague-sore. — I have 
 heard some profess an indifference to life. Such 
 hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; 
 and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in 
 which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have 
 
 wooed death but out upon thee, I say, 
 
 thou foul, ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, exe- 
 crate, and (with Friar John) give thee to six-score 
 thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused or 
 tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper ; to be 
 branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no 
 
68 
 
 NEW year’s eve. 
 
 way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, 
 melancholy PrivatioUy or more frightful and con- 
 founding Positive ! 
 
 Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of 
 thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, like thy- 
 self. For what satisfaction hath a man, that he 
 shall lie down with kings and emperors in death,” 
 who in his life-time never greatly coveted the society 
 of such bed-fellows ? — or, forsooth, that so shall 
 the fairest face appear ? ” — why, to comfort me, 
 
 must Alice W n be a goblin ? More than all, 
 
 I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbe- 
 coming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary 
 tombstones. Every dead man must take upon him- 
 self to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that 
 
 such as he now is I must shortly be.” Not so 
 shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the 
 meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth 
 twenty of thee. Know thy betters ! Thy New 
 Years’ days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate 
 for 1821. Another cup of wine— and while that 
 turn-coat bell, that just now mournfully chanted the 
 obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes 
 lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal 
 the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheer- 
 ful Mr. Cotton. 
 
NEW year’s eve. 
 
 69 
 
 THE NEW YEAR. 
 
 Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 
 Tells us the day himself ’s not far; 
 
 And see where, breaking from the night. 
 He gilds the western hills with light. 
 
 With him old Janus doth appear, 
 
 Peeping into the future year, 
 
 With such a look as seems to say, 
 
 The prospect is not good that way. 
 
 Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 
 
 And ’gainst ourselves to prophesy •, 
 
 When the prophetic fear of things 
 A more tormenting mischief brings, 
 
 More full of soul -tormenting gall, 
 
 Than direst mischiefs can befall. 
 
 But stay ! but stay I methinks my sight. 
 Better inform’d by clearer light. 
 
 Discerns sereneness in that brow. 
 
 That all contracted seem’d but now. 
 
 His revers’d face may show distaste, 
 
 And frown upon the ills are past ; 
 
 But that which this way looks is clear, 
 And smiles upon the New-horn Year, 
 
 He looks too from a place so high, 
 
 The Year lies open to his eye ; 
 
 And all the moments open are 
 To the exact discoverer. 
 
 Yet more and more he smiles upon 
 The happy revolution. 
 
70 
 
 NEW year’s eve. 
 
 Why should we then suspect or fear 
 The influences of a year, 
 
 So smiles upon us the first morn, 
 
 And speaks us good so soon as born ? 
 Plague on ’t ! the last was ill enough, 
 
 This cannot but make better proof ; 
 
 Or, at the worst, as we brush’d through 
 The last, why so we may this too ; 
 
 And then the next in reason shou’d 
 Be superexcell ently good : 
 
 For the worst ills (we daily see) 
 
 Have no more perpetuity. 
 
 Than the best fortunes that do fall ; 
 Which also bring us wherewithal 
 Longer their being to support. 
 
 Than those do of the other sort : 
 
 And who has one good year in three, 
 
 And yet repines at destiny, 
 
 Appears ungrateful in the case, 
 
 And merits not the good he has. 
 
 Then let us welcome the New Guest 
 With lusty brimmers of the best ; 
 
 Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 
 And renders e’en Disaster sweet : 
 
 And though the Princess turn her back, 
 Let us but line ourselves with sack. 
 
 We better shall by far hold out. 
 
 Till the next Year she face about. 
 
 How say you, reader — do not these verses smack 
 of the rough magnanimity of the old English vein? 
 
NEW year’s eve. 
 
 71 
 
 Do they not fortify like a cordial; enlarging the 
 heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous 
 spirits, in the concoction ? Where be those puling 
 fears of death, just now expressed or affected ? — 
 Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging sun- 
 light of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave 
 of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypo- 
 chondries — And now another cup of the generous ! 
 and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you 
 all, my masters ! 
 
MRS. BATTLE’S OPINIONS ON 
 WHIST. 
 
 ♦— 
 
 A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour 
 of the game.” This was the celebrated wish of old 
 Sarah Battle (now with God) who, next to her de- 
 votions, loved a good game of whist. She was none 
 of your lukewarm gamesters, your half and half 
 players, who have no objection to take a hand, if 
 you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm 
 that they have no pleasure in winning ; that they 
 like to win one game, and lose another ; that they 
 can while away an hour very agreeably at a card- 
 table, but are indifferent whether they play or no ; 
 and will desire an adversary, who has slipt a wrong 
 card, to take it up and play another. These insuf- 
 ferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these 
 flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said 
 
MRS. battle’s opinions ON WHIST. 
 
 73 
 
 that they do not play at cards, but only play at 
 playing at them. 
 
 Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She 
 detested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, 
 and would not, save upon a striking emergency, 
 willingly seat herself at the same table with them. 
 She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined 
 enemy. She took, and gave, no concessions. She 
 hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever 
 passed it over in her adversary without exacting the 
 utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight : cut and 
 thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) 
 
 like a dancer.” She sate bolt upright ; and neither 
 showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. 
 All people have their blind side — their supersti- 
 tions ; and I have heard her declare, under the rose, 
 that Hearts was her favourite suit. 
 
 I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle 
 many of the best years of it — saw her take out her 
 snufF-box when it was her turn to play ; or snuflf 
 a candle in the middle of a game ; or ring for a ser- 
 vant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, 
 or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during 
 its process. As she emphatically observed, cards 
 were cards : and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in 
 her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs 
 E 
 
74 MRS. battle’s opinions on whist, 
 
 of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had 
 been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand ; and 
 who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he 
 thought there was no harm in unbending the mind 
 now and then, after serious studies, in recreations 
 of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble 
 occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, 
 considered in that light. It was her business, her 
 duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — 
 and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards — 
 over a book. 
 
 Pope was her favourite author : his Rape of the 
 Lock her favourite work. She once did me the 
 favour to play over with me (with the cards) his 
 celebrated game of Ombre in that poem ; and to 
 explain to me how far it agreed with, and in what 
 points it would be found to differ from, tradrille. 
 Her illustrations were apposite and poignant ; and 
 I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them 
 to Mr. Bowles ; but I suppose they came too late 
 to be inserted among his ingenious notes upon that 
 author. 
 
 Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first 
 love ; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. 
 The former, she said, was showy and specious, and 
 likely to allure young persons. The uncertainty 
 
MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST. 75 
 
 and quick shifting of partners — a thing which the 
 constancy of whist abhors ; —the dazzling supre- 
 macy and regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as 
 she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, 
 where his crown and garter give him no proper 
 power above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — 
 the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, 
 of playing alone ; above all, the overpowering 
 attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole ^ — to the triumph 
 of which there is certainly nothing parallel or 
 approaching, in the contingencies of whist; — all 
 these, she would say, make quadrille a game of cap- 
 tivation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist 
 was the solider game : that was her word. It was 
 a long meal ; not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. 
 One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration 
 with an evening. They gave time to form rooted 
 friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She de- 
 spised the chance-started, capricious, and ever fluc- 
 tuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of 
 quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty 
 ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, 
 depicted by Machiavel ; perpetually changing pos- 
 tures and connexions ; bitter foes to-day, sugared 
 darlings to morrow ; kissing and scratching in a 
 breath ; — but the wars of whist were comparable to 
 E 2 
 
76 MRS. battle’s opinions on whist. 
 
 the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational, antipathies 
 of the great French and English nations. 
 
 A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired 
 in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in 
 it, like the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. 
 
 flushes — tliat most irrational of all pleas that a 
 reasonable being can set up : — that any one should 
 claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same 
 mark and colour, without reference to the playing 
 of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions 
 of the cards themselves ! She held this to be a sole- 
 cism ; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration 
 is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and 
 looked deeper than the colours of things. — Suits 
 were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uni- 
 formity of array to distinguish them: but what 
 should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim 
 a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, 
 that never were to be marshalled — never to take 
 the field ? — She even wished that whist were more 
 simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have 
 stript it of some appendages, which, in the state of 
 human frailty, may be venially, and even commend- 
 ably allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding 
 of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one 
 suit always trumps ? — Why two colours, when the 
 
MRS. battle’s opinions ON WHIST. 
 
 77 
 
 mark of the suits would have sufficiently distin- 
 guished them without it ? — 
 
 ‘^But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably 
 refreshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of 
 pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully 
 appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic coun- 
 tries, where the music and the paintings draw in 
 many to worship, whom your quaker spirit of un- 
 sensualising would have kept out. — You, yourself, 
 have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess 
 to me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sand- 
 ham, among those clear Vandykes, or among the 
 Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your 
 bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all compar- 
 able to that you have it in your power to experi- 
 ence most evenings over a well-arranged assortment 
 of the court cards ? — the pretty antic habits, like 
 heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring 
 scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables— the 
 ‘hoary majesty of spades’ — Pam in all his glory ! — 
 “ All these might be dispensed with ; and, with 
 their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the 
 game might go on very well, picture-less. But the 
 beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. 
 Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they 
 must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a 
 
78 MRS. battle’s opinions on whist. 
 
 dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on, 
 instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature’s), 
 fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play 
 their gallant jousts and turneys in ! — Exchange 
 those delicately-turned ivory markers — (work of 
 Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, — or as 
 profanely slighting their true application as the 
 arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out 
 those little shrines for the goddess) — exchange them 
 for little bits of leather (our ancestors’ money) or 
 chalk and a slate ! ” — 
 
 The old lady, with a smile, confessed the sound- 
 ness of my logic ; and to her approbation of my 
 arguments on her favourite topic that evening, I 
 have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy 
 of a curious cribbage board, made of the finest 
 Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old 
 Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) 
 brought with him from Florence : — his, and a 
 trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her 
 death. 
 
 The former bequest (which I do not least value) 
 I have kept with religious care ; though she herself, 
 to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with 
 cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have 
 heard her say, — disputing with her uncle, who was 
 
MRS. battle's opinions ON WHIST. 79 
 
 very partial to it. She could never heartily bring 
 her mouth to pronounce — or ^^thafs a 
 
 go^ She called it an ungrammatical game. The 
 pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a 
 rubber (a five dollar stake), because she would not 
 take advantage of the turn-up knave, which would 
 have given it her, hut which she must have claimed 
 by the disgraceful tenure of declaring two for his 
 heels'^ There is something extremely genteel in 
 this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentle- 
 woman born. 
 
 Piquet she held the best game at the cards for 
 two persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry 
 of the terms^ — such as pique — repique — the capot — 
 they savoured (she thought) of affectation. But 
 games for two, or even three, she never greatly 
 cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She 
 would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends 
 are gain, with glory. But cards are war, in dis- 
 guise of a sport ; when single adversaries encounter, 
 the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, 
 it is too close a fight ; with spectators, it is not 
 much bettered. No looker-on can be interested, 
 except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of 
 money ; he cares not for your luck sympathetically^ 
 or for your play. — Three are still worse; a mere 
 
80 MRS. battle’s opinions on whist, 
 
 naked war of every man against every man, as in 
 cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a rotation 
 of petty and contradictory interests, a succession of 
 heartless leagues, and not much more hearty infrac- 
 tions of them, as in tradrille. — But in square games 
 {she meant whist) all that is possible to be attained 
 in card-playing is accomplished. There are the 
 incentives of profit with honour, common to every 
 species — though the latter can be but very imper- 
 fectly enjoyed in those other games, where the 
 spectator is only feebly a participator. But the par- 
 ties in whist are spectators and principals too. They 
 are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not 
 wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an 
 impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests 
 beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising 
 stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or 
 even an interested — by-stander witnesses it, but 
 because your partner sympathises in the contin- 
 gency. You win for two. You triumph for two. 
 Two are exalted. Two again are mortified ; which 
 divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles 
 (by taking off the invidiousness) your glories. Two 
 losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one 
 in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weak- 
 ened by multiplying the channels. War becomes 
 
MRS. battle’s opinions ON WHIST, 81 
 
 a civil game. — By such reasonings as these the 
 old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite 
 pastime. 
 
 No inducement could ever prevail upon her to 
 play at any game, where chance entered into the 
 composition, for nothing. Chance, she would 
 argue — and here again, admire the subtlety of her 
 conclusion ; — chance is nothing, but where some- 
 thing else depends upon it. It is obvious, that can- 
 not be glory. What rational cause of exultation 
 could it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred 
 times together by himself? or before spectators, 
 where no stake was depending ? — Make a lottery of 
 a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate 
 number — and what possible principle of our nature, 
 except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain 
 that number as many times successively, without a 
 prize? — Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance 
 in backgammon, where it was not played for money. 
 She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who 
 were taken with a lucky hit under such circum- 
 stances. Games of pure skill were as little to her 
 fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system 
 of over-reaching. Played for glory, they were a 
 mere setting of one man’s wit, — his memory, or 
 combination-faculty rather — against another’s; like 
 
 E 3 
 
82 MRS. battle’s opinions on whist. 
 
 a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and pro- 
 fitless. — She could not conceive a game wanting the 
 spritely infusion of chance, — the handsome excuses 
 of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in 
 a corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the 
 centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror 
 and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, 
 and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would 
 argue, (and I think in this case justly,) were 
 entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard 
 head-contests can in no instance ally with the 
 fancy. They reject form and colour. A pencil 
 and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper 
 arena for such combatants. 
 
 To those puny objectors against cards, as nur- 
 turing the bad passions, she would retort, that man 
 is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to 
 get the better in something or other; — that this 
 passion can scarcely be more safely expended than 
 upon a game at cards: that cards are a temporary 
 illusion; in truth, a mere, drama; for we do but 
 play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle 
 shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we 
 are as mightily concerned as those whose stake 
 is crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of 
 dream-fighting ; much ado ; great battling, and 
 
MRS. battle’s opinions ON WHIST. 
 
 83 
 
 little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned 
 ends; quite as diverting, and a great deal more 
 innoxious, than many of those more serious games 
 of life, which men play, without esteeming them 
 to be such. 
 
 With great deference to the old lady**s judgment 
 on these matters, I think I have experienced some 
 moments in my life, when playing at cards for 
 nothing has even been agreeable. When I am in 
 sickness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call 
 for the cards, and play a game at piquet for love 
 with my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 
 
 I grant there is something sneaking in it : but 
 with a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — when you 
 are subdued and humble, — you are glad to put up 
 with an inferior spring of action. 
 
 There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, 
 as sick whist, 
 
 I grant it is not the highest style of man — I 
 deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives 
 not, alas ! to whom I should apologise. — 
 
 At such times, those terms which my old friend 
 objected to, come in as something admissible. — I 
 love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they 
 mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior 
 interest. Those shadows of winning amuse me. 
 
84 MRS. battle’s opinions on whist. 
 
 That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
 capotted her)— -(dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) 
 — I wished it might have lasted for ever, though 
 we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was 
 a mere shade of play : I would be content to go on 
 in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should 
 be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle 
 lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed 
 to apply after the game was over; and, as I do 
 not much relish appliances, there it should ever 
 bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. 
 
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 I HAVE no ear. — 
 
 Mistake me not, reader, — nor imagine that I am 
 by nature destitute of those exterior twin appen- 
 dages, hanging ornaments, and (architecturally 
 speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. 
 Better my mother had never borne me. — I am, I 
 think, rather delicately than copiously provided 
 with those conduits ; and I feel no disposition to 
 envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her 
 exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets — 
 those indispensable side-intelligencers. 
 
 Neither have I incurred, or done any thing to 
 incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, 
 which constrained him to draw upon assurance — 
 to feel quite unabashed,” and at ease upon that 
 article. I was never, I thank my stars, in the 
 pillory ; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the 
 compass of my destiny, that I ever should be. 
 
86 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 When therefore I say that I have no ear, you 
 will understand me to mean— /or music. To say 
 that this heart never melted at the concourse of 
 sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel. Water 
 parted from the sea ” never fails to move it strangely. 
 So does In infancy T But they were used to be 
 sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instru- 
 ment in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman — 
 the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appellation 
 — the sweetest — why should I hesitate to name 
 
 Mrs. , once the blooming Fanny Weatheral 
 
 of the Temple — ^who had power to thrill the soul 
 of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats ; 
 and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with a 
 passion, that not faintly indicated the day-spring of 
 that absorbing sentiment, which was afterwards 
 destined to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, 
 for Alice W n. 
 
 I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to 
 harmony. But organically I am incapable of a 
 tune. I have been practising God save the King^^ 
 all my life ; whistling and humming of it over to 
 myself in solitary corners ; and am not yet arrived, 
 they tell me, wdthin many quavers of it. Yet hath 
 the loyalty of Elia never been impeached. 
 
 I am not without suspicion, that I have an un- 
 
A CHAPTER OF EARS. 
 
 87 
 
 developed faculty of music within me. For, thrum- 
 ming, in my wild way, on my friend A.’s piano, the 
 other morning, while he was engaged in an adjoin- 
 ing parlour, — on his return he was pleased to say, 
 he thought it could not he the maid / ” On his first 
 surprise at hearing the keys touched in somewhat 
 an airy and masterful way, not dreaming of me, his 
 suspicions had lighted on Jenny. But a grace, 
 snatched from a superior refinement, soon con- 
 vinced him that some being, — technically perhaps 
 deficient, but higher informed from a principle 
 common to all the fine arts, — had swayed the keys 
 to a mood which J enny, with all her (less-cultivated) 
 enthusiasm, could never have elicited from them. 
 I mention this as a proof of my friend’s penetra- 
 tion, and not with any view of disparaging Jenny. 
 
 Scientifically I could never be made to under- 
 stand (yet have I taken some pains) what a note in 
 music is; or how one note should differ from another. 
 Much less in voices can I distinguish a soprano 
 from a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough bass I 
 contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently 
 harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for 
 my misapplication of the simplest terms of that 
 which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, 
 I scarce know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate. 
 
88 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS* 
 
 perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand 
 in the like relation of obscurity to me ; and Soly Fa^ 
 Mi, Re, is as conjuring as Baralipton. 
 
 ^ It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, — 
 (constituted to the quick and critical perception of 
 all harmonious combinations, I Verily believe, be- 
 yond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon 
 the gamut ) to remain, as it were, singly unimpres- 
 sible to the magic influences of an art, which is said 
 to have such an especial stroke at soothing, elevat- 
 in, and refining the passions. — Yet, rather than 
 break the candid current of my confessions, I must 
 avow to you, that I have received a great deal more 
 pain than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty. 
 
 I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A 
 carpenter’s hammer, in a warm summer noon, will 
 fret me into more than midsummer madness. But 
 those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to 
 the measured malice of music. The ear is passive 
 to those single strokes ; willingly enduring stripes, 
 while it hath no task to con. To music it cannot 
 be passive. It will strive — mine at least will — ’spite 
 of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze ; like an 
 unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. 
 I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer 
 pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out 
 
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 89 
 
 into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to 
 solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged 
 to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of 
 endless, fruitless, barren attention ! I take refuge 
 in the unpretending assemblage of honest common- 
 life sounds; — and the purgatory of the Enraged 
 Musician becomes my paradise. 
 
 I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of 
 the purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching 
 the faces of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast 
 to Hogarth’s Laughing Audience !) immoveable, or 
 affecting some faint emotion, — till (as some have 
 said, that our occupations in the next world will be 
 but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I have 
 imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, 
 where some of the forms of the earthly one should 
 be kept up, with none of the enjoyment; or like 
 that — 
 
 Party in a parlour, 
 
 All silent, and all damned. 
 
 Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces 
 of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter 
 my apprehension. — Words are something ; but to be 
 exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds ; to be 
 long a dying, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; 
 to keep up languor by unintermitted effort ; to pile 
 
90 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an 
 interminable tedious sweetness ; to fill up sound 
 with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it ; 
 to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make 
 the pictures for yourself; to read a book, all stops y 
 and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; to 
 invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague 
 gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime — these 
 are faint shadows of what I have undergone from 
 a series of the ablest-executed pieces of this empty 
 instrumental music. 
 
 I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, 
 I have experienced something vastly lulling and 
 agreeable : — afterwards followeth the languor and 
 the oppression. Like that disappointing book in 
 Patmos; or, like the comings on of melancholy, 
 described by Burton, doth music make her first 
 insinuating approaches : — Most pleasant it is to 
 such as are melancholy given, to walk alone in 
 some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by 
 some brook side, and to meditate upon some de- 
 lightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect 
 him most, amahilis insaniay and mentis gratissimus 
 error. A most incomparable delight to build castles 
 in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an 
 infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and 
 
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 91 
 
 Strongly imagine, they act, or that they see done. — 
 So delightsome these toys at first, they could spend 
 whole days and nights without sleep, even whole 
 years in such contemplations, and fantastical medi- 
 tations, which are like so many dreams, and will 
 hardly be drawn from them — winding and un- 
 winding themselves as so many clocks, and still 
 pleasing their humours, until at the last the scene 
 TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and they being now 
 habitated to such meditations and solitary places, 
 can endure no company, can think of nothing but 
 harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, sus- 
 picion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and 
 weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden, 
 and they can think of nothing else : continually 
 suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this 
 infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, 
 and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal 
 object to their minds; which now, by no means, 
 no labour, no persuasions they can avoid, they , 
 cannot be rid of, they cannot resist.” 
 
 Something like this scene-turning ” I have 
 experienced at the evening parties, at the house of 
 
 my good Catholic friend Nov ; who, by the 
 
 aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of 
 players, converts his darwing-room into a chapel, 
 
92 
 
 A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 his week days into Sundays, and these latter into 
 minor heavens 
 
 When my friend commences upon one of those 
 solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon 
 my heedless ear, rambling in the side aisles of the 
 dim abbey, some five and thirty years since, waking 
 a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into 
 my young apprehension — (whether it be that^ in 
 which the psalmist, weary of the persecutions of 
 bad men, wisheth to himself dove’s wings — or that 
 other ^ which, with a like measure of sobriety and 
 pathos, inquireth by what means the young man 
 shall best cleanse his mind) — a holy calm pervadeth 
 me. — I am for the time 
 
 rapt above earth, 
 
 And possess joys not promised at my birth. 
 
 But when this master of the spell, not content 
 to have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, 
 to inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to 
 receive, — impatient to overcome her earthly ” 
 with his ^‘heavenly,” — still pouring in, for pro- 
 tracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea 
 of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, 
 above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin- 
 
 * I have been there, and still would go ; 
 
 ’Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr, Watts. 
 
A CHAPTER ON EARS. 
 
 93 
 
 seated, ride those Arions Haydn and Mozart, with 
 their attendant Tritons, Bach, Beethoven, and a 
 countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up 
 would but plunge me again in the deeps, — I 
 stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to 
 and fro at my wit’s end; — clouds, as of frankin- 
 cense, oppress me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle 
 before me — the genius of his religion hath me in 
 her toils — a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow 
 of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous — he is 
 Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of 
 dreams, a she-Pope too, — tri-coroneted like him- 
 self ! — I am converted, and yet a Protestant ; — 
 at once malleus hereticorum, and myself grand 
 heresiarch : or three heresies centre in my person : 
 — I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog and 
 Magog — what not? — till the coming in of the 
 friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a 
 draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly 
 my friend shows himself no bigot) at once recon- 
 ciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith ; and 
 restores to me the genuine unterrifying aspects of 
 my pleasant-countenanced host and hostess. 
 
ALL FOOLS’ DAY. 
 
 The compliments of the season to my worthy 
 masters, and a merry first of April to us all ! 
 
 Many happy returns of this day to you — and you 
 — and you^ Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put 
 a long face upon the matter. Do not we know one 
 another ? what need of ceremony among friends ? 
 we have all a touch of that same — you understand 
 me — a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man who 
 on such a day as this, the general festivaly should 
 affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. 
 I am free of the corporation, and care not who 
 knows it. He that meets me in the forest to-day, 
 shall meet with no wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultus 
 sum. Translate me that, and take the meaning of 
 it to yourself for your pains. What, man, we have 
 four quarters of the globe on our side, at the least 
 computation. 
 
ALL fools’ day. 
 
 95 
 
 Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we 
 will drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this 
 day — and let us troll the catch of Amiens — due ad 
 me — due ad me — how goes it ? 
 
 Here shall he see 
 Gross fools as he. 
 
 Now would I give a trifle to know historically and 
 authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever 
 lived. I would certainly give him in a bumper. 
 Marry, of the present breed, I think I could with- 
 out much difficulty name you the party. 
 
 Remove your cap a little further, if you please ; 
 it hides my bauble. And now each man bestride 
 his hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune he 
 pleases. I will give you, for my part, 
 
 - The crazy old church clock, 
 
 And the bewildered chimes. 
 
 Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It 
 is long since you went a salamander-gathering 
 down iEtna. Worse than samphire-picking by 
 some odds. ’Tis a mercy your worship did not 
 singe your mustachios. 
 
 Ha! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in faith did 
 you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean ? 
 
96 
 
 ALL fools’ day. 
 
 You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested 
 sect of the Calenturists. 
 
 Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of plas- 
 terers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient 
 Grand! You have claim to a seat here at my 
 right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You left 
 your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at 
 eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above 
 the level of the sea. Bless us‘, what a long bell you 
 must have pulled, to call your top workmen to their 
 nuncheon on the low grounds of Sennaar. Or did 
 you send up your garlick and onions by a rocket ? 
 I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our 
 Monument on Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. 
 Yet we think it somewhat. 
 
 What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — 
 cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall 
 have another globe, round as an orange, pretty 
 moppet ! 
 
 Mister Adams ’odso, I honour your coat — 
 
 pray do us the favour to read to us that sermon, 
 which you lent to Mistress Slipsop — the twenty 
 and second in your portmanteau there — on Female 
 Incontinence — the same — it will come in most 
 irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to the 
 time of the day. 
 
ALL fools’ day. 
 
 97 
 
 Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. 
 Pray correct that error. — 
 
 Duns, spare your definitions, I must fine you a 
 bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said 
 or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logi- 
 cal forms, w^aiter, that no gentleman break the tender 
 shins of his apprehension stumbling across them. 
 
 Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha! Cokes, is 
 it you ? — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay 
 my devoir to you. — Master Shallow, your worship’s 
 poor servant to command. — Master Silence, I will 
 use few words with you. — Slender, it shall go hard 
 if I edge not you in somewhere — You six will 
 engross all the poor wit of the company to-day.— 
 I know it, I know it. 
 
 Ha! honest R my fine old Librarian of 
 
 Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here again ? 
 Bless thy doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as 
 thy stories : — what dost thou flitting about the world 
 at this rate? — Thy customers are extinct, defunct, 
 bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago. — Thou goest 
 still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou 
 canst hawk a volume or two. — Good Granville 
 S 5 thy last patron, is flown. 
 
 King Pandion, he is dead, 
 
 All thy friends are lapt in lead. — 
 
 F 
 
98 
 
 ALL fools’ day. 
 
 Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take 
 
 your seat here, between Armado and Quisada ; for 
 in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to 
 thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the 
 goodly ornature of well-apparelled speech, and 
 the commendation of wise sentences, thou art 
 nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of 
 Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, 
 when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, 
 which declares that he might be happy with either, 
 situated between those two ancient spinsters— 
 when I forget the inimitable formal love which 
 thou didst make, turning now to the one, and 
 now to the other, with that Malvolian smile — as if 
 Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero; 
 and as if thousands of periods must revolve, before 
 the mirror of courtesy could have given his invidious 
 preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied 
 and meritorious-equal damsels. * * * * 
 
 To descend from these altitudes, and not to 
 protract our Fools’ Banquet beyond its appropriate 
 day, — for I fear the second of April is not many 
 hours distant — in sober verity I will confess a truth 
 to thee, reader. I love a Fool — as naturally, as if 
 I were of kith and kin to him. When a child, 
 with child-like apprehensions, that dived not below 
 
ALL fools’ day. 
 
 99 
 
 the surface of the matter, I read those Parables — 
 not guessing at the involved wisdom — I had more 
 yearnings towards that simple architect, that built 
 his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his 
 more cautious neighbour : I grudged at the hard 
 censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept 
 his talent; and — prizing their simplicity beyond 
 the more provident, and, to my apprehension, some- 
 what unfeminine wariness of their competitors — I 
 felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre^ 
 for those five thoughtless virgins. — I have never 
 made an acquaintance since, that lasted : or a 
 friendship, that answered ; with any that had not 
 some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I 
 venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. 
 The more laughable blunders a man shall commit 
 in your company, the more tests he giveth you, 
 that he will not betray or overreach you. I love 
 the safety, which a palpable hallucination warrants ; 
 the security, which a word out of season ratifies. 
 And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool 
 told it you, if you please, that he w^ho hath not a 
 dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much 
 worse matter in his composition. It is observed, 
 that the foolisher the fowl or fish, — woodcocks, — 
 dotterels, — cods’-heads, &c., the finer the flesh 
 F 2 
 
100 
 
 ALL fools’ day. 
 
 thereof/’ and what are commonly the world’s 
 received fools, but such whereof the w^orld is not 
 worthy ? and what have been some of the kindliest 
 patterns of our species, but so many darlings of 
 absurdity, minions of the goddess, and her white 
 boys ? — Reader, if you wrest my words beyond 
 their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that 
 are the April FooL 
 
A QUAKERS’ MEETING. 
 
 — ♦ — 
 
 Still-born Silence 1 thou that art 
 Flood-gate of the deeper heart I 
 Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 
 
 Frost o’ the mouth, and thaw o’ the mind ! 
 Secrecy’s confidant, and he 
 Who makes religion mystery ! 
 Admiration’s speaking’st tongue ! 
 
 Leave, thy desert shades among, 
 
 Reverend hermits’ hallowed cells, 
 
 Where retired devotion dwells ! 
 
 With thy enthusiasms come, 
 
 Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! * 
 
 Reader, would’st thou know what true peace and 
 quiet mean ; would’st thou find a refuge from the 
 noises and clamours of the multitude; would’st 
 thou enjoy at once solitude and society ; would’st 
 thou possess the depth of thy own spirit in stillness, 
 without being shut out from the consolatory faces of 
 thy species ; would’st thou be alone, and yet accom- 
 
 * From^‘‘ Poems of all Sorts,’’ by Richard Fleckno, 1653. 
 
102 
 
 A QUAKERS’ MEETING, 
 
 panied ; solitary, yet not desolate ; singular, yet not 
 without some to keep thee in countenance ; a unit 
 in aggregate ; a simple in composite : — come with 
 me into a Quakers’ Meeting. 
 
 Dost thou love silence deep as that before the 
 winds were made?” go not out into the wilderness, 
 descend not into the profundities of the earth ; shut 
 not up thy casements ; nor pour wax into the little 
 cells of thy ears, with little-faith’d self-mistrusting 
 Ulysses. — Retire with me into a Quakers’ Meeting. 
 
 For a man to refrain even from good words, and 
 to hold his peaces it is commendable ; but for a 
 multitude, it is great mastery. 
 
 What is the stillness of the desert, compared with 
 this place ? what the uncommunicating muteness 
 of fishes ? — here the goddess reigns and revels. — 
 
 Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud,” do not 
 with their inter-confounding uproars more augment 
 the brawl — nor the waves of the blown Baltic with 
 their clubbed sounds — than their opposite (Silence 
 her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more 
 intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath 
 her deeps> that call unto deeps. Negation itself 
 hath a positive more and less ; and closed eyes would 
 seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight. 
 
 There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude 
 
A QUAKERS^ MEETING. 
 
 103 
 
 cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a 
 man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that which 
 he can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so 
 absolutely as in a Quakers’ Meeting. — Those first 
 hermits did certainly understand this principle, 
 when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not 
 singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another’s want 
 of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his 
 brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicative- 
 ness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to 
 be reading a book through a long winter evening, 
 with a friend sitting by — say, a wife — he, or she, 
 too, (if that be probable,) reading another, without 
 interruption, or oral communication ? — can there be 
 no sympathy without the gabble of words ?— away 
 with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern- 
 haunting solitariness. Give me. Master Zimmer- 
 mann, a sympathetic solitude. 
 
 To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of 
 some cathedral, time-stricken ; 
 
 Or under hanging mountains, 
 
 Or by the fall of fountains ; 
 
 is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which 
 those enjoy, who come together for the purposes of 
 more complete, abstracted solitude. This is the 
 
104 
 
 A QUAKERS’ MEETING. 
 
 loneliness be felt.” — The Abbey Church of 
 Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit- 
 soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Qua- 
 kers’ Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions, 
 
 Sands, ignoble things, 
 
 Dropt from the ruined sides of kings — 
 
 but here is something, which thrown Antiquity 
 herself into the fore-ground — Silence — eldest of 
 things— language of old Night — primitive Dis- 
 courser — to which the insolent decays of moulder- 
 ing grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, 
 as we may say, unnatural progression. 
 
 How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
 
 Looking tranquillity! 
 
 Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischiev- 
 ous synod ! convocation without intrigue ! parlia- 
 ment without debate ! what a lesson dost thou read 
 to council, and to consistory !— if my pen treat of 
 you lightly — as haply it will wander — yet my spirit 
 hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, when 
 sitting among you in deepest peace, which some 
 out-welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, 
 I have reverted to the times of your beginnings, 
 and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewes- 
 bury.— I have witnessed that, which brought before 
 
A Quakers’ meeting. lOo 
 
 my eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the 
 rude jests and serious violences of the insolent sol- 
 diery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you — 
 for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the 
 out-cast and ofF-scouring of church and presbytery. 
 — I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had 
 wandered into your receptacle, with the avowed in- 
 tention of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit 
 of the place receive in a moment a new heart, and 
 presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs. 
 And I remember Penn before his accusers, and 
 Fox in the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in 
 spirit, as he tells us, and the Judge and the Jury 
 became as dead men under his feet.” 
 
 Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I 
 would recommend to you above all church-narra- 
 tives, to read Sewel’s History of the Quakers. It 
 is in folio, and is the abstract of the J ournals of 
 Fox and the primitive Friends. It is far more 
 edifying and affecting than any thing you will read 
 of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to 
 stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no sus- 
 picion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or 
 ambitious spirit. You will here read the true story 
 of that much-injured, ridiculed man (who perhaps 
 hath been a by- word in your mouth,) — James 
 F 3 
 
106 
 
 A QUAKERS’ MEETING. 
 
 Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with what patience, 
 he endured even to the boring through of his tongue 
 with red-hot irons, without a murmur; and with 
 what strength of mind, when the delusion he had 
 fallen into, which they stigmatised for blasphemy, 
 had given way to clearer thoughts, he could renounce 
 his error, in a strain of the beautifullest humility, 
 yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still ! — 
 so different from the practice of your common con- 
 verts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, 
 apostatize all, and think they can never get far 
 enough from the society of their former errors, even 
 to the renunciation of some saving truths, with 
 which they had been mingled, not implicated. 
 
 Get the Writings of John Woolman by heart; 
 and love the early Quakers. 
 
 How far the followers of these good men in our 
 days have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what 
 proportion they have substituted formality for it, 
 the Judge of Spirits can alone determine. I have 
 seen faces in their assemblies, upon which the dove 
 sate visibly brooding. Others again I have watched, 
 when my thoughts should have been better engaged, 
 in which I could possibly detect nothing but a blank 
 inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition 
 to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce contro- 
 
A Quakers’ meeting. 
 
 107 
 
 versial workings. — If the spiritual pretensions of the 
 Quakers have abated, at least they make few pre- 
 tences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their 
 preaching. It is seldom indeed that you shall see 
 one get up amongst them to hold forth. Only now 
 and then a trembling, female, generally ancient, 
 voice is heard — you cannot guess from what part of 
 the meeting it proceeds — with a low, buzzing, mu- 
 sical sound, laying out a few words which she 
 thought might suit the condition of some present,” 
 with a quaking diffidence, which leaves no possi- 
 bility of supposing that any thing of female vanity 
 was mixed up, where the tones were so full of ten- 
 derness, and a restraining modesty. — The men, for 
 what I have observed, speak seldomer. 
 
 Once only, and it was some years ago, I wit- 
 nessed a sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a 
 man of giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, 
 might have danced from head to foot equipt in iron 
 mail.’’ His frame was of iron too. But he was mal- 
 leable. I saw him shake all over with the spirit — I 
 dare not say, of delusion. The strivings of the outer 
 man were unutterable — he seemed not to speak, 
 but to be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed 
 down, and his knees to fail — his joints all seemed 
 loosening — it was a figui’e to set off against Paul 
 
108 
 
 A QUAKERS’ MEETING. 
 
 Preaching — the words he uttered were few, and 
 sound- — he was evidently resisting his will— keeping 
 down his own word- wisdom with more mighty effort, 
 than the world’s orators strain for theirs, He had 
 been a Wit in his youth,” he told us, with expressions 
 of a sober remorse. And it was not till long after 
 the impression had begun to wear away, that I was 
 enabled, with something like a smile, to recal the 
 striking incongruity of the confession — understand- 
 ing the term in its worldly acceptation — with the 
 frame and physiognomy of the person before me. 
 His brow would have scared away the Levities— the 
 Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves fled the face 
 of Dis at Enna. — By wit, even in his youth, I will 
 be sworn he understood something far within the 
 limits of an allowable liberty. 
 
 More frequently the Meeting is broken up without 
 a word having been spoken. But the mind has been 
 fed. You go away with a sermon not made with 
 hands. You have been in the milder caverns of 
 Trophonius ; or as in some den, where that fiercest 
 and savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, 
 that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and 
 captive. You have bathed with stillness. — O when 
 the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of 
 the janglings, and nonsense-noises of the world, . 
 
A QUAKERS’ MEETING. 
 
 109 
 
 what a balm and a solace it is, to go and seat your- 
 self, for a quiet half hour, upon some undisputed 
 corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers ! 
 
 Their garb and stillness conjoined, present an 
 uniformity, tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture 
 — forty feeding like one.” — 
 
 The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable 
 of receiving a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be 
 something more than the absence of its contrary. 
 Every Quakeress is a lily ; and when they come up 
 in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening 
 the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts 
 of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of 
 the Shining Ones. 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW 
 
 SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 My reading has been lamentably desultory and 
 immethodical. Odd, out of the way, old English 
 plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of 
 my notions, and ways of feeling. In every thing 
 that relates to science^ I am a whole Encyclopaedia 
 behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely 
 cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentle- 
 men, in king John’s days. I know less geography 
 than a school-boy of six weeks’ standing. To me a 
 map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. 
 I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; 
 whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great 
 divisions ; nor can form the remotest conjecture of 
 the position of New South Wales, or Van Diemen’s 
 Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. Ill 
 
 dear friend in the first-named of these two Terrae 
 Incognitae. I have no astronomy. I do not know 
 where to look for the Bear, or Charles’s Wain ; the 
 place of any star ; or the name of any of them at 
 sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness — 
 and if the sun on some portentous morn were to 
 make his first appearance in the West, I verily 
 believe, that, while all the world were gasping in 
 apprehension about me, I alone should stand unter- 
 rified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observa- 
 tion. Of history and chronology I possess some 
 vague points, such as one cannot help picking up 
 in the course of miscellaneous study ; but I never 
 deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even of my 
 own country. I have most dim apprehensions of the 
 four great monarchies ; and sometimes the Assyrian, 
 sometimes the Persian, floats as first in my fancy. 
 I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, 
 and her shepherd kings. My friend M., with great 
 pains-taking, got me to think I understood the first 
 proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair 
 at the second. I am entirely unacquainted with the 
 modern languages ; and, like a better man than 
 myself, have small Latin and less Greek.” I am 
 a stranger to the shapes and texture of the commonest 
 trees, herbs, flowers — not from the circumstance of 
 
112 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 my being town-born — for I should have brought 
 the same inobservant spirit into the world with me, 
 had I first seen it ^^on Devon’s leafy shores,” — 
 and am no less at a loss among purely town-objects, 
 tools, engines, mechanic processes. — Not that I 
 affect ignorance — but my head has not many man- 
 sions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to 
 fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold 
 without aching. I sometimes wonder, how I have 
 passed my probation with so little discredit in the 
 world, as I have done, upon so meagre a stock. But 
 the fact is, a man may do very well with a very 
 little knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed 
 company ; every body is so much more ready to 
 produce his own, than to call for a display of your 
 acquisitions. But in a tete-a-ttte there is no 
 shuffling. The truth will out. There is nothing 
 which I dread so much, as the being left alone for 
 a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed 
 man, that does not know me. I lately got into a 
 dilemma of this sort. — 
 
 In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate 
 and Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a 
 staid-looking gentleman, about the wrong side of 
 thirty, who was giving his parting directions (while 
 the steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, 
 
THii OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 113 
 
 to a tall youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, 
 his son, nor his servant, but something partaking of 
 all three. The youth was dismissed, and we drove 
 on. As we were the sole passengers, he naturally 
 enough addressed his conversation to me ; and we 
 discussed the merits of the fare, the civility and 
 punctuality of the driver ; the circumstance of an 
 opposition coach having been lately set up, with the 
 probabilities of its success — to all which I was ena- 
 bled to return pretty satisfactory answers, having 
 been drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years’ 
 daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage afore- 
 said-T-when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling 
 question, whether I had seen the show of prize cattle 
 that morning in Smithfield? Now as I had not 
 seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of 
 exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. 
 He seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, 
 at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just 
 come fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped 
 to compare notes on the subject. However he 
 assured me that I had lost a fine treat, as it far 
 exceeded the show of last year. We were now 
 approaching Norton Falgate, when the sight of some 
 shop-goods ticketed freshened him up into a disser- 
 tation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. 
 
114 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 I was now a little in heart, as the nature of my 
 morning avocations had brought me into some sort 
 of familiarity with the raw material ; and I was sur- 
 prised to find how eloquent I was becoming on 
 the state of the India market — when, presently, he 
 dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by 
 inquiring whether I had ever made any calculation 
 as to the value of the rental of all the retail shops 
 in London. Had he asked of me, what song the 
 Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when 
 he hid himself among women, I might, with Sir 
 Thomas Browne, have hazarded a ‘^wide solution*/’ 
 My companion saw my embarrassment, and, the 
 almhouses beyond Shoreditch just coming in view, 
 with great good-nature and dexterity shifted his 
 conversation to the subject of public charities; 
 which led to the comparative merits of provision for 
 the poor in past and present times, with observa- 
 tions on the old monastic institutions, and charitable 
 orders; but, finding me rather dimly impressed 
 with some glimmering notions from old poetic 
 associations, than strongly fortified with any specu- 
 lations reducible to calculation on the subject, he 
 gave the matter up ; and, the country beginning to 
 
 * Urn Burial. 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 115 
 
 open more and more upon us, as we approached 
 the turnpike at Kingsland (the destined termination 
 of his journey), he put a home thrust upon me, in 
 the most unfortunate position he could have chosen, 
 by advancing some queries relative to the North 
 Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out some- 
 thing about the Panorama of those strange regions 
 (which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the 
 question, the coach stopping relieved me from any 
 further apprehensions. My companion getting out 
 left me in the comfortable possession of my igno- 
 rance ; and I heard him, as he went off, putting 
 questions to an outside passenger, who had alighted 
 with him, regarding an epidemic disorder, that had 
 been rife about Dalston ; and which, my friend 
 assured him, had gone through five or six schools 
 in that neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon 
 me, that my companion was a schoolmaster ; and 
 that the youth, whom he had parted from at our 
 first acquaintance, must have been one of the bigger 
 boys, or the usher, — He was evidently a kind- 
 hearted man, who did not seem so much desirous 
 of provoking discussion by the questions which he 
 put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did 
 not appear that he took any interest, either, in 
 such kind of inquiries, for their own sake ; but that 
 
116 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 he was in some way bound to seek for knowledge^' 
 A greenish-coloured coat, which he had on, forbade 
 me to surmise that he was a clergyman. The 
 adventure gave birth to some reflections on the 
 difference between persons of his profession in past 
 and present times. 
 
 Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues ; 
 the breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the 
 Linacres : who believing that all learning was con- 
 tained in the languages which they taught^ and 
 despising every other acquirement as superficial and 
 useless, came to their task as to a sport! Passing 
 from infancy to age, they dreamed away all their 
 days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a per- 
 petual cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, 
 and prosodies ; renewing constantly the occupa- 
 tions which had charmed their studious childhood ; 
 rehearsing continually the part of the past ; life must 
 have slipped from them at last like one day. They 
 were always in their first garden, reaping harvests 
 of theit* golden time, among their Flori and their 
 Spici-legia : in Arcadia still, but kings ; the ferule 
 of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity 
 with that mild sceptre attributed to king Basileus ; 
 the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their 
 Philoclea; with the occasional dunceiy of some 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 117 
 
 untoward Tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude 
 of a Mopsa, or a clown Damsetas ! 
 
 With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet’s, 
 or (as it is sometimes called) Paul’s Accidence, set 
 forth! ^^To exhort every man to the learning of 
 grammar, that intendeth to attain the understanding 
 of the tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury 
 of wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain 
 and lost labour ; for so much as it is known, that 
 nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is 
 either feeble or faulty ; and no building be perfect 
 whereas/ the foundation and groundwork is ready 
 to fall, and unable to uphold the burden of the 
 frame.” How well doth this stately preamble (com- 
 parable to those which Milton commendeth as 
 having been the usage to prefix to some solemn 
 law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus”) 
 correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for 
 conformity, expressed in a succeeding clause, which 
 would fence about grammar-rules with the severity 
 of faith-articles ! — as for the diversity of grammars, 
 it is well profitably taken away by the king majes- 
 ties wisdom, who foreseeing the inconvenience, and 
 favourably providing the remedie, caused one kind 
 of grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently 
 drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to be 
 
118 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in 
 changing of schoolmaisters.” What a gusto in that 
 which follows : wherein it is profitable that he [the 
 pupil] can orderly decline his noun, and his verb.” 
 His noun ! 
 
 The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least 
 concern of a teacher in the present day is to incul- 
 cate grammar-rules. 
 
 The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a 
 little of every thing, because his pupil is required 
 not to be entirely ignorant of any thing. He must 
 be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. He is 
 to know something of pneumatics; of chemistry ; of 
 whatever is curious, or proper to excite the attention 
 of the youthful mind ; an insight into mechanics is 
 desirable, with a touch of statistics ; the quality of 
 soils, &c. botany, the constitution of his country, 
 cum multis aliis* You may get a notion of 
 some part of his expected duties by consulting the 
 famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. 
 Hartlib, « 
 
 All these things— these, or the desire of them — 
 he is expected to instil, not by set lessons from pro- 
 fessors, which he may charge in the bill, but at 
 school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or saunters 
 through green fields (those natural instructors). 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 119 
 
 with his pupils. The least part of what is expected 
 from him, is to be done in school-hours. He must 
 insinuate knowledge at the mollia tempora fandi. 
 He must seize every occasion — the season of the 
 year — the time of the day — a passing cloud — a 
 rainbow — a waggon of hay — a regiment of soldiers 
 going by — to inculcate something useful. He can 
 receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, 
 but must catch at it as an object of instruction. He 
 must interpret beauty into the picturesque. He 
 cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking 
 of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to 
 him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of 
 moral uses. The Universe — that Great Book, as 
 it has been called — is to him indeed, to all intents 
 and purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to 
 read tedious homilies to distasting school-boys. — 
 Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only 
 rather worse off than before ; for commonly he has 
 some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such 
 times ; some cadet of a great family ; some neglected 
 lump of nobility, or gentry ; that he must drag 
 after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. 
 Bartley’s Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the 
 country, to a friend’s house, or his favourite water- 
 ing place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow 
 
120 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, 
 and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick 
 of perpetual boy. 
 
 Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among 
 their mates ; but they are unwholesome companions 
 for grown people. The restraint is felt no less on 
 the one side, than on the other. — Even a child, that 
 plaything for an hour/’ tires always. The noises 
 of children, playing their own fancies — as I now 
 hearken to them by fits, sporting on the green before 
 my window, while I am engaged in these grave 
 speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shackle- 
 well — by distance made more sweet — inexpressibly 
 take from the labour of my task. It is like writing 
 to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They 
 ought at least to do so — for in the voice of that 
 tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike 
 the harsh prose-accents of man’s conversation. — I 
 should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own 
 sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime. 
 
 I would not be domesticated all my days with a 
 person of very superior capacity to my own— -not, if 
 I know myself at all, from any considerations of 
 jealousy or self-comparison, for the occasional com- 
 munion with such minds has constituted the fortune 
 and felicity of my life — but the habit of too constant 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 121 
 
 intercourse with spirits above you, instead of rais- 
 ing you, keeps you down. Too frequent doses of 
 original thinking from others, restrain what lesser 
 portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. 
 You get entangled in another man’s mind, even 
 as you lose yourself in another man’s grounds. You 
 are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace 
 yours to lassitude. The constant operation of such 
 potent agency would reduce me, I am convinced, 
 to imbecility. You may derive thoughts from 
 others ; your way of thinking, the mould in which 
 your thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intel- 
 lect may be imparted, but not each man’s intel- 
 lectual frame. — 
 
 As little as I should wish to be always thus 
 dragged upward, as little (or rather still less) is it 
 desirable to be stunted downwards by your asso- 
 ciates. The trumpet does not more stun you by 
 its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its 
 provoking inaudibility. 
 
 Why are we never quite at our ease in the pre- 
 sence of a schoolmaster ? — because we are conscious 
 that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awk- 
 w^ard, and out of place, in the society of his equals. 
 He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, 
 and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding 
 
 G 
 
122 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 to yours. He cannot meet you on the square. He 
 wants a point given him, like an indifferent whist- 
 player. He is so used to teaching, that he wants to 
 be teaching you. One of these professors, upon 
 my complaining that these little sketches of mine 
 were any thing but methodical, and that I was un- 
 able to make them otherwise, kindly offered to in- 
 struct me in the method by which young gentlemen 
 in his seminary were taught to compose English 
 themes. — The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or 
 thin. They do not tell out of school. He is under 
 the restraint of a formal or didactive hypocrisy in 
 company, as a clergyman is under a moral one. He 
 can no more let his intellect loose in society, than 
 the other can his inclinations. — He is forlorn among 
 his co-evals ; his juniors cannot be his friends. 
 
 I take blame to myself,’’ said a sensible man of 
 this profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth 
 who had quitted his school abruptly, that your 
 nephew was not more attached to me. But persons 
 in my situation are more to be pitied, than can well 
 be imagined. We are surrounded by young, and, 
 consequently, ardently affectionate hearts, but we 
 can never hope to share an atom of their affections. 
 The relation of master and scholar forbids this. 
 How pleasing this must be to yoUy how I envy your 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 123 
 
 feelings, my friends will sometimes say to me, when 
 they see young men whom I have educated, return 
 after some years absence from school, their eyes 
 shining with pleasure, while they shake hands 
 with their old master, bringing a present of game to 
 me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the 
 warmest terms for my care of their education. A 
 holiday is begged for the boys ; the house is a scene 
 of happiness ; I, only, am sad at heart. — This fine- 
 spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he 
 repays his master with gratitude for the care of his 
 boyish years — this young man — in the eight long 
 years I watched over him with a parent’s anxiety, 
 never could repay me with one look of genuine feel- 
 ing. He was proud, when I praised ; he was sub- 
 missive, when I reproved him ; but he did never love 
 me — and what he now mistakes for gratitude and 
 kindness for me, is but the pleasant sensation, which 
 all persons feel at revisiting the scene of their boyish 
 hopes and fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the 
 man they were accustomed to look up to with re- 
 verence. My wife too,” this interesting correspondent 
 goes on to say, my once darling Anna, is the wife 
 of a schoolmaster. — When I married her — ^knowing 
 that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy 
 notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna 
 g2 
 
124 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 would ill supply the loss of my dear bustling mother, 
 just then dead, who never sat still, was in every part 
 of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged 
 sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to 
 save her from fatiguing herself to death— I expressed 
 my fears, that I was bringing her into a way of life 
 unsuital^le to her ; and she, who loved me tenderly, 
 promised for my sake to exert herself to perform 
 the duties of her new situation. She promised, and 
 she has kept her word. What wonders will not 
 woman’s love perform ? — My house is managed 
 with a propriety and decorum, unknown in other 
 schools ; my boys are well fed, look healthy, and 
 have every proper accommodation ; and all this per- 
 formed with a careful economy, that never descends 
 to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, helpless, 
 j^nna! — When we sit down to enjoy an hour of 
 repose after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled 
 to listen to what have been her useful (and they are 
 really useful) employments through the day, and 
 what she proposes for her to-morrow’s task. Her 
 heart and her features are changed by the duties of 
 her situation. To the boys, she never appears other 
 than the master's wife, and she looks up to me as 
 the hoys' master ; to whom all show of love and 
 affection would be highly improper, and unbecoming 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 125 
 
 the dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this my 
 gi’atitude forbids me to hint to her. For my sake 
 she submitted to be this altered creature, and 
 can I reproach her for it?’’ — For the communi- 
 cation of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin 
 Bridget. 
 
VALENTINE’S DAY. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valen- 
 tine ! Great is thy name in the rubric, thou vene- 
 rable Arch-flamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-be- 
 tween ! who and what manner of person art thou ? 
 Art thou but a name^ typifying the restless prin- 
 ciple which impels poor humans to seek perfection 
 in union ? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with 
 thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent 
 lawn sleeves ? Mysterious personage ! like unto 
 thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in 
 the calendar ; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; 
 nor the consigner of undipt infants to eternal tor- 
 ments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; nor he who 
 hated all mothers, Origen; nor Bishop Bull, nor 
 Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift Thou comest 
 attended with thousands and ten thousands of little 
 Loves, and the air is 
 
 Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings. 
 
valentine’s day. 
 
 127 
 
 Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy pre- 
 centors ; and instead of the crosier, the mystical 
 arrow is borne before thee. 
 
 In other words, this is the day on which those 
 charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross 
 and intercross each other at every street and turn- 
 ing. The weary and all for-spent twopenny post- 
 man sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, 
 not his own. It is scarcely credible to what an ex- 
 tent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this 
 loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and 
 detriment of knockers and bell-wires. In these little 
 visual interpretations, no emblem is so common 
 as the heart,— \h2ii little three-cornered exponent 
 of all our hopes and fears, — the bestuck and bleed- 
 ing heart; it is twisted and tortured into more 
 allegories and affectations than an opera hat. What 
 authority we have in history or mytholog}" for 
 placing the head-quarters and metropolis of God 
 Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any 
 other, is not very clear ; but we have got it, and 
 it will serve as well as any other. Else we might 
 easily imagine, upon some other system which might 
 have prevailed for any thing which our pathology 
 knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his 
 mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, Madam, 
 
128 
 
 valentine’s day. 
 
 my liver and fortune are entirely at your disposal ; ” 
 or putting a delicate question, Amanda, have 
 you a midriff to bestow ? ” But custom has settled 
 these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to 
 the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neigh- 
 bours wait at animal and anatomical distance. 
 
 Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban 
 and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at 
 the door. It gives a very echo to the throne where 
 Hope is seated.” But its issues seldom answer to 
 this oracle within. It is so seldom that just the 
 person we want to see comes. But of all the cla- 
 morous visitations the welcomest in expectation is 
 the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a 
 Valentine. As the raven himself was hoarse that 
 announced the fatal entrance* of Duncan, so the 
 knock of the postman on this day is light, airy, con- 
 fident, and befitting one that bringeth good tidings. 
 It is less mechanical than on other days ; you will 
 say, That is not the post I am sure.” Visions of 
 Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful eternal 
 common-places, which having been will always 
 be which no school-boy nor school-man can write 
 away ; having your irreversible throne in the fancy ^ 
 and affections — what are your transports, when 
 the happy maiden, opening with careful finger. 
 
valentine’s day. 
 
 129 
 
 careful not to break the emblematic seal, bursts 
 upon the sight of some well-designed allegory, some 
 type, some youthful fancy, not without verses — 
 
 Lovers all, 
 
 A madrigal, 
 
 or some such device, not over abundant in sense — 
 young Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — 
 something between wind and water, a chorus where 
 the sheep might almost join the shepherd, as they 
 did, or as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 
 
 All Valentines are not foolish; and I shall not 
 easily forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have 
 leave to call you so) E. B. — E. B. lived opposite a 
 young maiden, whom he had often seen, unseen, 
 from his parlour window in C — e-street. She was 
 all joyousness and innocence, and just of an age to 
 enjoy receiving a Valentine, and just of a temper 
 to bear the disappointment of missing one with good 
 humour. E. B. is an artist of no common powers ; 
 in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to 
 none ; his name is known at the bottom of many a 
 well executed vignette in the way of his profession, 
 but no further ; for, E. B. is modest, and the world 
 meets nobody half-way. E. B. meditated how he 
 could repay this young maiden for many a favour 
 which she had done him unknown; for when a 
 g3 
 
130 
 
 valentine’s day. 
 
 kindly face greets us, though but passing by, and 
 never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it 
 as an obligation : and E, B. did. This good artist 
 set himself at work to please the damsel. It was 
 just before Valentine’s day three years since. He 
 wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. 
 We need not say it was on the finest gilt paper 
 with borders— full, not of common hearts and 
 heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of 
 love from Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (for E. 
 B. is a scholar). There was Pyramus and Thisbe, 
 and besure Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and 
 Leander, and swans more than sang in Cayster, 
 with mottos and fanciful devices, such as beseemed, 
 — a work in short of magic. Iris dipt the woof. 
 This on Valentine’s eve he commended to the 
 all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice — (O ignoble 
 trust !) — of the common post ; but the humble me- 
 dium did its duty, and from his watchful stand, the 
 next morning, he saw the cheerful messenger knock, 
 and by and by the precious charge delivered. He 
 saw, unseen, the happy girl unfold the Valen- 
 tine, dance about, clap her hands, as one after one 
 the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. She 
 danced about, not with light love, or foolish expec- 
 tations, for she had no lover ; or, if she had, none 
 
valentine’s day. 
 
 131 
 
 she knew that could have created those bright 
 images which delighted her. It was more like 
 some fairy present; a God-send, as our familiarly 
 pious ancestors termed a benefit received, where 
 the benefactor was unknown. It would do her no 
 harm. It would do her good for ever after. It is 
 good to love the unknown. I only give this as a 
 specimen of E. B. and his modest way of doing a 
 concealed kindness. 
 
 Good-morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophe- 
 lia; and no better wish, but with better auspices, 
 we wish to all faithful lovers, who are not too wise 
 to despise old legends, but are content to rank 
 themselves humble diocesans of old Bishop Valen- 
 tine and his true church. 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathizeth 
 with all things, I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in any 
 thing. Those national repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I 
 behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — 
 Religio Medici, 
 
 That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted 
 upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about 
 notional and conjectural essences ; in whose cate- 
 gories of Being the possible took the upper hand of 
 the actual ; should have overlooked the impertinent 
 individualities of such poor concretions as mankind, 
 is not much to be admired. It is rather to be won- 
 dered at, that in the genus of animals he should 
 have condescended to distinguish that species at 
 all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the 
 scene of my activities, — 
 
 Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 
 
 I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind. 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 133 
 
 national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I 
 can look with no indifferent eye upon things or 
 persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste 
 or distaste ; or when once it becomes indifferent, it 
 begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, 
 a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and 
 dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apa- 
 thies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it 
 may be said of me that I am a lover of my species. 
 1 can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel 
 towards all equally. The more purely-English 
 word that expresses sympathy will better explain 
 my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, 
 who upon another account cannot be my mate or 
 fellow. I Cdiunoilike all people alike*. 
 
 I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, 
 
 * I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of im- 
 perfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no 
 direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so 
 opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot 
 hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe 
 the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before in 
 their lives) and instantly fighting. 
 
 W e by proof find there should be 
 
 ’ I'wixt man and man such an antipathy, 
 
 That though he can show no just reason why 
 For any former wrong or injury, 
 
134 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 and am obliged to desist from the experiment in 
 despair. They cannot like me — and in truth, I 
 never knew one of that nation who attempted to do 
 it. There is something more plain and ingenuous 
 in their mode of proceeding. We know one another 
 at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intel- 
 lects (under which mine must be content to rank) 
 which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledo- 
 dian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, 
 have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. 
 They have no pretences to much clearness or pre- 
 cision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing 
 them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) 
 has few whole pieces in it. They are content with 
 fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. She pre- 
 sents no full front to them — a feature or side-face at 
 
 Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
 
 Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
 
 Can challenge or accuse him of no evil. 
 
 Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 
 
 The lines are from old Hey wood’s Hierarchic of Angels,” and he 
 subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted 
 to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack 
 could give no other reason for the deed hut an inveterate antipathy 
 which he had taken to the first sight of the King. 
 
 The cause which to that act compelPd him 
 
 Was, he ne’er loved him since he first beheld him. 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 135 
 
 the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude 
 essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. 
 They beat up a little game peradventure — and leave 
 it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to 
 run it down. The light that lights them is not 
 steady and polar, but mutable and shifting : waxing, 
 and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. 
 They will throw out a random w^ord in or out of 
 season, and be content to let it pass for what it is 
 worth. They cannot speak always as if they were 
 upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking 
 or writing, with some abatement. They seldom 
 wait to mature a proposition, but e’en bring it to 
 market in the green ear. They delight to impart 
 their defective discoveries as they arise, without 
 waiting for their full developement. They are no 
 systematizers, and w^ould but err more by attempt- 
 ing it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive 
 merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am 
 not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different 
 plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You are 
 never admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if, 
 indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together 
 upon principles of clock-work. You never catch 
 his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests 
 any thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect 
 
136 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 order and completeness. He brings his total wealth 
 into company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches 
 are always about him. He never stoops to catch a 
 glittering something in your presence, to share it 
 with you, before he quite knows whether it be true 
 touch or not. You cannot cry halves to any thing 
 that he finds. He does not find, but bring. You 
 never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His 
 understanding is always at its meridian — you never 
 see the first dawn, the early streaks. — He has no 
 falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, mis- 
 givings, half-intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial 
 illuminations, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, 
 have no place in his brain, or vocabulary. The 
 twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he 
 orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he 
 has none either. Between the affirmative and the 
 negative there is no border-land with him. You 
 cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, 
 or wander in the maze of a probable argument. 
 He always keeps the path. You cannot make 
 excursions with him — for he sets you right. His 
 taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. 
 He cannot compromise, or understand middle actions. 
 There can be but a right and a wrong. His con- 
 versation is as a book. His affirmations have the 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 137 
 
 sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the 
 square with him. He stops a metaphor like a sus- 
 pected person in an enemy’s country. A healthy 
 book ! ” — said one of his countrymen to me, who 
 had ventured to give that appellation to John 
 Buncle, — did I catch rightly what you said ? I 
 have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state 
 of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be 
 properly applied to a book.” Above all, you must 
 beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. 
 Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are 
 unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you 
 are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful 
 female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was show- 
 ing off to Mr. ****. After he had examined it 
 minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my 
 BEAUTY (a foolish name it goes by among my 
 friends) — when he very gravely assured me, that 
 he had considerable respect for my character and 
 talents ” (so he was pleased to say), but had not 
 given himself much thought about the degree of 
 my personal pretensions.” The misconception 
 staggered me, but did not seem much to disconcert 
 him. — Persons of this nation are particularly fond 
 of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They 
 do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They 
 
138 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 do indeed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, 
 like virtue, it were valuable for itself ) that all truth 
 becomes equally valuable, whether the proposition 
 that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as 
 is impossible to become a subject of disputation. I 
 was present not long since at a party of North 
 Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and 
 happened to drop a silly expression (in my South 
 British way), that I wished it were the father instead 
 of the son — when four of them started up at once 
 to inform me, that that was impossible, because 
 he was dead.’’ An impracticable wish, it seems, 
 was more than they could conceive. Swift has hit 
 off this part of their character, namely their love 
 of truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberality 
 that necessarily confines the passage to the margin *. 
 The tediousness of these people is certainly pro- 
 voking. I wonder if they ever tire one another ; 
 — In my early life I had a passionate fondness for 
 
 * There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit them- 
 selves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no conse- 
 quence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen 
 every day ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots 
 than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest 
 circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not 
 a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and 
 gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable — Hints 
 towards an Essay on Conversation, 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 139 
 
 the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly 
 hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen by 
 expressing it. But I have always found that a 
 true Scot resents your admiration of his compa- 
 triot, even more than he would your contempt of 
 him. The latter he imputes to your imperfect ac- 
 quaintance with many of the words which he uses ; ” 
 and the same objection makes it a presumption in 
 you to suppose that you can admire him. — Thom- 
 son they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they 
 have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his deli- 
 neation of Rory and his companion, upon their 
 first introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of 
 Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort 
 upon you Hume’s History compared with his Con- 
 tinuation of it. What if the historian had con- 
 tinued Humphrey Clinker ? 
 
 I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. 
 They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared 
 with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They 
 date beyond the pyramids. But I should not care 
 to be in habits of familiar intercourse with any of 
 that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves 
 to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling 
 about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of 
 Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate. 
 
140 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, 
 and hate, on the other, between our and their 
 fathers, must, and ought, to affect the blood of the 
 children. I cannot believe it can run clear and 
 kindly yet ; or that a few line words, such as can- 
 dour, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, 
 can close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. 
 A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is least 
 distasteful on ’Change — for the mercantile spirit 
 levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. 
 I boldly confess that I do not relish the approxi- 
 mation of Jew and Christian, which has become so 
 fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to 
 me, something hypocritical and unnatural in them. 
 I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue 
 kissing and congeeing in awkward postures of an 
 affected civility. If they are converted, why do 
 they not come over to us altogether ? Why keep 
 up a form of separation, when the life of it is fled ? 
 If they can sit with us at table, why do they keck at 
 our cookery ? I do not understand these half con- 
 vertites. Jews christianizing — Christians judaizing 
 — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate 
 Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly than 
 a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is es- 
 sentially separative. B would have been more 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 141 
 
 in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his fore- 
 fathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which 
 
 nature meant to be of Christians. The 
 
 Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his pro- 
 selytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How 
 it breaks out, when he sings, The Children of 
 Israel passed through the Red Sea!” The au- 
 ditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, 
 and he rides over our necks in triumph. There is 
 
 no mistaking him. — B has a strong expression 
 
 of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by 
 his singing. The foundation of his vocal excellence 
 is sense. He sings with understanding, as Kemble 
 delivered dialogue. He would sing the Command- 
 ments, and give an appropriate character to each 
 prohibition. His nation, in general, have not over- 
 sensible countenances. How should they? — but 
 you seldom see a silly expression among them. 
 Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man’s 
 visage. I never heard of an idiot being born among 
 them. — Some admire the Jewish female-physio- 
 gnomy. I admire it — but with trembling. Jael 
 had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 
 
 In the Negro countenance you will often meet 
 with strong traits of benignity. 1 have felt yearn- 
 ings of tenderness towards some of these faces — or 
 
142 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 rather masks — that have looked out kindly upon one 
 in casual encounters in the streets and highways. 
 I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these “images 
 of God cut in ebony.’’ But I should not like to 
 associate with them, to share my meals and my 
 good-nights with them — because they are black. 
 
 1 love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I 
 venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good 
 for the rest of the day when I meet any of their 
 people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed 
 by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a 
 Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the 
 air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I 
 cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) 
 “ to live with them.” I am all over sophisticated — 
 with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. 
 I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, 
 scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim- 
 whams, which their simpler taste can do without. 
 I should starve at their primitive banquet. My 
 appetites are too high for the salads which ( accord- 
 ing to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto 
 too excited 
 
 To sit a guest ■with Daniel at his pulse. 
 
 The indirect answers which Quakers are often 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 14S 
 
 found to return to a question put to them may be 
 explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption, 
 that they are more given to evasion and equivo- 
 cating than other people. They naturally look to 
 their words more carefully, and are more cautious 
 of committing themselves. They have a peculiar 
 character to keep up on this head. They stand in 
 a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law 
 exempted from taking an oath. The custom of re- 
 sorting to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it 
 is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be con- 
 fessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the 
 notion of two kinds of truth — the one applicable to 
 the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the 
 common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth 
 bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but 
 truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop and 
 the market-place a latitude is expected, and con- 
 ceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. 
 Something less than truth satisfies. It is common 
 to hear a person say, You do not expect me to 
 speak as if I were upon my oath.’’ Hence a great 
 deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of 
 falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a 
 kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where 
 clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the cir- 
 
144 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 cumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none 
 of this distinction. His simple affirmation being 
 received, upon the most sacred occasions, without 
 any further test, stamps a value upon the words 
 which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics 
 of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more 
 severity. You can have of him no more than his 
 word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a 
 casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at least, 
 his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows 
 that his syllables are weighed — and how far a 
 consciousness of this particular watchfulness, ex- 
 erted against a person, has a tendency to produce 
 indirect answers, and a diverting of the question 
 by honest means, might be illustrated, and the 
 practice justified, by a more sacred example than 
 is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The 
 admirable presence of mind, which is notorious 
 in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced 
 to this imposed self-watchfulness — if it did not seem 
 rather an humble and secular scion of that old 
 stock of religious constancy, which never bent or 
 faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to 
 the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge 
 or accuser, under trials and racking examinations. 
 
 You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answer- 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 145 
 
 ing your questions till midnight,” said one of those 
 upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting 
 law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. Thereafter 
 as the answers may be,” retorted the Quaker. The 
 astonishing composure of this people is sometimes 
 ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. — I was 
 travelling in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, 
 buttoned up in the straitest non-conformity of their 
 sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a 
 meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set 
 before us. My friends confined themselves to the 
 tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the 
 landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my com- 
 panions discovered that she had charged for both 
 meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very 
 clamourous and positive. Some mild arguments were 
 used on the part of the Quakers, for which the 
 heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means 
 a fit recipient. The guard came in with his usual 
 peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their 
 money, and formally tendered it — so much for tea 
 — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine — for the 
 supper which I had taken. She would not relax in 
 her demand. So they all three quietly put up their 
 silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, 
 the eldest and gravest going first, with myself 
 
 H 
 
146 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 closing up the rear, who thought I could not do 
 better than follow the example of such grave and 
 warrantable personages. We got in. The steps 
 went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of 
 mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously 
 pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and 
 now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had 
 for a while suspended, beginning to give some 
 twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justifica- 
 tion would be offered by these serious persons for 
 the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my 
 great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the 
 subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. At 
 length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring 
 of his next neighbour, Hast thee heard how 
 indigos go at the India House ?” and the question 
 operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far 
 as Exeter. 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT 
 FEARS. 
 
 — ♦— 
 
 We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors 
 in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsisten- 
 cies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of 
 witchcraft. In the relations of this visible world we 
 find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to 
 detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when 
 once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, 
 and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what 
 measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or 
 proportion — of that which distinguishes the likely 
 from the palpable absurd — -could they have to guide 
 them in the rejection or admission of any particular 
 testimony ? — That maidens pined away, wasting 
 inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a 
 fire — that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed — that 
 whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the 
 H 2 
 
148 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 
 
 forest — or that spits and kettles only danced a fear- 
 ful-innocent vagary about some rustic’s kitchen 
 when no wind was stirring — were all equally pro- 
 bable where no law of agency was understood. 
 That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing 
 by the flower and pomp of the earth, should lay pre- 
 posterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld — 
 has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood d priori to 
 us, who have no measure to guess at his policy, or 
 standard to estimate what rate those anile souls 
 may fetch in the devil’s market. Nor, when the 
 wicked are expressly symbolized by a goat, was it 
 to be wondered at so much, that he should come 
 sometimes in that body, and assert his metaphor. — 
 That the intercourse was opened at all between both 
 worlds was perhaps the mistake — but that once as- 
 sumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one attested 
 story of this nature more than another on the 
 score of absurdity. There is no law to judge of the 
 lawless, or canon by which a dream may be cri- 
 ticised. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that I could not have 
 existed in the days of received witchcraft ; that I 
 could not have slept in a village where one of those 
 reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or 
 more obtuse. Amidst the universal belief that these 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 149 
 
 wretches were in league with the author of all evil, 
 holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple 
 Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled issuing, 
 or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them 
 — as if they should subpoena Satan ! — Prospero in 
 his boat, with his books and wand about him, suf- 
 fers himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of 
 his enemies to an unknown island. He might have 
 raised a storm or two, we think, on the passage. 
 His acquiescence is in exact analogy to the non-re- 
 sistance of witches to the constituted powers. — What 
 stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to 
 pieces — or who had made it a condition of his prey, 
 that Guyon must take assay of the glorious bait— 
 we have no guess. We do not know the laws of 
 that country. 
 
 From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive 
 about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and 
 more legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. 
 But I shall mention the accident which directed my 
 curiosity originally into this channel. In my father’s 
 book-closet, the History of the Bible, by Stackhouse, 
 occupied a distinguished station. The pictures with 
 which it abounds — one of the ark, in particular, and 
 another of Solomon’s temple, delineated with all the 
 fidelity of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had 
 
150 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 
 
 been upon the spot — attracted my childish attention^ 
 There was a picture, too, of the Witch raising up 
 Samuel, which I wish that I had never seen. We 
 shall come to that hereafter. Stackhouse is in 
 two huge tomes — and there was a pleasure in re- 
 moving folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite 
 straining, was as much as I could manage, from the 
 situation which they occupied upon an upper shelf. 
 I have not met with the work from that time to this, 
 but I remember it consisted of Old Testament sto^ 
 ries, orderly set down, with the objection appended 
 to each story, and the solution of the objection regu- 
 larly tacked to that. The objection was a summary 
 of whatever difficulties had been opposed to the cre- 
 dibility of the history, by the shrewdness of ancient 
 or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost com- 
 plimentary excess of candour. The solution was 
 brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and an- 
 tidote were both before you. To doubts so put, 
 and so quashed, there seemed to be an end for ever. 
 The dragon lay dead, for the foot of the veriest 
 babe to trample on. But — like as was rather feared 
 than realised from that slain monster in Spenser — 
 from the womb of those crushed errors young dra- 
 gonets would creep, exceeding the prowess of so 
 tender a Saint George as myself to vanquish. The 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 151 
 
 habit of expecting objections to every passage, set 
 me upon starting more objections, for the glory of 
 finding a solution of my own for them. I became 
 staggered and perplexed, a sceptic in long coats. 
 The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard 
 read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of im- 
 pression, and were turned into so many historic or 
 chronologic theses to be defended against whatever 
 impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but — the 
 next thing to that — I was to be quite sure that some 
 one or other would or had disbelieved them. Next 
 to making a child an infidel, is the letting him know 
 that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man’s 
 weakness, but the child’s strength. O, how ugly 
 sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe 
 and a suckling ! — I should have lost myself in these 
 mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such 
 unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a 
 fortunate piece of ill-fortune, which about this time 
 befel me. Turning over the picture of the ark with 
 too much haste, I unhappily made a breach in its 
 ingenious fabric — driving my inconsiderate fingers 
 right through the two larger quadrupeds — the ele- 
 phant, and the camel— that stare (as well they might) 
 out of the two last windows next the steerage in 
 that unique piece of naval architecture. Stackhouse 
 
152 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 
 
 was henceforth locked up, and became an inter- 
 dicted treasure. With the book, the objections and 
 solutions gradually cleared out of my head, and have 
 seldom returned since in any force to trouble me. — 
 But there was one impression which I had imbibed 
 from Stackhouse, which no lock or bar could shut 
 out, and which was destined to try my childish 
 nerves rather more seriously. — That detestable 
 picture ! 
 
 I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors. The 
 night-time solitude, and the dark, were my hell. 
 The sufferings I endured in this nature would jus- 
 tify the expression. 1 never laid my head on my 
 pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or 
 eighth year of my life — so far as memory serves in 
 things so long ago — without an assurance, which 
 realised its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful 
 spectre. Be old Stackhouse then acquitted in part, 
 if I say, that to his picture of the Witch raising up 
 Samuel — (O that old man covered with a mantle !) 
 I owe — not my midnight terrors, the hell of my in- 
 fancy — ^but the shape and manner of their visitation. 
 It was he who dressed up for me a hag that nightly 
 sate upon my pillow — a sure bed-fellow, when my 
 aunt or my maid v/as far from me. All day long, 
 while the book was permitted me, I dreamed waking 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 153 
 
 over his delineation, and at night (if I may use so 
 bold an expression) awoke into sleep, and found the 
 vision true. I durst not, even in the day-light, once 
 enter the chamber where I slept, without my face 
 turned to the window, aversely from the bed where 
 my witch-ridden pillow was. — Parents do not know 
 what they do when they leave tender babes alone 
 to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for 
 a friendly arm — the hoping for a familiar voice — 
 when they wake screaming — and find none to soothe 
 them — what a terrible shaking it is to their poor 
 nerves! The keeping them up till midnight, 
 through candle-light and the unwholesome hours, as 
 they are called, — would, I am satisfied, in a medical 
 point of view, prove the better caution. — That de- 
 testable picture, as I have said, gave the fashion to 
 my dreams — if dreams they were — for the scene of 
 them was invariably the room in which I lay. Had 
 I never met with the picture, the fears would have 
 come self-pictured in some shape or other — 
 
 Headless bear, black man, or ape — 
 
 but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. — 
 It is not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish 
 servants, which create these terrors in children. 
 They can at most but give them a direction. Dear 
 H 3 
 
154 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 
 
 little T. H. who of all children has been brought 
 up with the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint 
 of superstition — who was never allowed to hear of 
 goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad 
 men, or to read or hear of any distressing story — 
 finds all this world of fear, from which he has been 
 so rigidly excluded ab extra, in his own thick* 
 coming fancies and from his little midnight pillow, 
 this nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, 
 unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the re-- 
 veries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity. 
 
 Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire— 
 stories of Celaeno and the Harpies — may reproduce 
 themselves in the brain of superstition — but they 
 were there before. They are transcripts, types — 
 the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else 
 should the recital of that, which we know in a 
 waking sense to be false, come to affect us at 
 all ? — or 
 
 Names, wliose sense we see not, 
 
 Fray us with things that he not ? 
 
 Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such 
 objects, considered in their capacity of being able 
 to inflict upon us bodily injury ? — O, least of all ! 
 These terrors are of older standing. They date 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS, 165 
 
 beyond body — or, without the body, they would 
 have been the same. All the cruel, tormenting, 
 defined devils in Dante — tearing, mangling, chok- 
 ing, stifling, scorching demons — are they one half 
 so fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple idea 
 of a spirit unembodied following him — 
 
 Like one that on a lonesome road 
 Doth walk in fear and dread, 
 
 And having once turn’d round, walks on, 
 
 And turns no more his head ; 
 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 Doth close behind him tread*. 
 
 That the kind of fear here treated of is purely 
 spiritual — that it is strong in proportion as it is 
 objectless upon earth — that it predominates in the 
 period of sinless infancy — are difficulties, the solu- 
 tion of which might afford some probable insight 
 into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at 
 least into the shadow-land of pre-existence. 
 
 My night-fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. 
 
 I confess an occasional night-mare ; but I do not, 
 as in early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish 
 faces, with the extinguished taper, will come and 
 look at me ; but I know them for mockeries, even 
 while I cannot elude their presence, and I fight and 
 
 Mr. Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. 
 
156 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 
 
 grapple with them. For the credit of my ima- 
 gination, I am almost ashamed to say how tame 
 and prosaic my dreams are grown. They are never 
 romantic, seldom even rural. They are of architec- 
 ture and of buildings — cities abroad, which I have 
 never seen, and hardly have hope to see. I have 
 traversed, for the seeming length of a natural day, 
 Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their churches, 
 palaces, squares, market-places, shops, suburbs, 
 ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — a 
 map-like distinctness of trace — and a day-light vivid- 
 ness of vision, that was all but being awake. — I have 
 formerly travelled among the Westmoreland fells — 
 my highest Alps, — but they are objects too mighty 
 for the grasp of my dreaming recognition ; and I 
 have again and again awoke with ineffectual strug- 
 gles of the inner eye, to make out a shape in any 
 way whatever, of Helvellyn. Methought I was in 
 that country, but the mountains were gone. The 
 poverty of my dreams mortifies me. There is 
 Coleridge, at his will can conjure up icy domes, and 
 pleasure-houses for Kubla Khan, and Abyssinian 
 maids, and songs of Abara, and caverns. 
 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 
 
 to solace his night solitudes — when I cannot muster 
 
WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 157 
 
 a fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his 
 nereids gamboling before him in nocturnal visions, 
 and proclaiming sons born to Neptune — when my 
 stretch of imaginative activity can hardly, in the 
 night season, raise up the ghost of a fish -wife. To 
 set my failures in somewhat a mortifying light — it 
 was after reading the noble Dream of this poet, that 
 my fancy ran strong upon these marine spectra ; and 
 the poor plastic power, such as it is, within me set 
 to work, to humour my folly in a sort of dream that 
 very night. Methought I was upon the ocean bil- 
 lows at some sea nuptials, riding and mounted high, 
 with the customary train sounding their conchs be- 
 fore me, (I myself, you may be sure, the leading 
 god) and jollily we went careering over the main, 
 till just where Ino Leucothea should have greeted 
 me (I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, the 
 billows gradually subsiding, fell from a sea-rough- 
 ness to a sea-calm, and thence to a river-motion, 
 and that river (as happens in the familiarization of 
 dreams) was no other than the gentle Thames, which 
 landed me, in the wafture of a placid wave or two, 
 alone, safe and inglorious, somewhere at the foot of 
 Lambeth palace. 
 
 The degree of the soul’s creativeness in sleep 
 might furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum 
 
158 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS. 
 
 of poetical faculty resident in the same soul waking. 
 An old gentleman, a friend of mine, and a hu- 
 mourist, used to carry this notion so far, that when 
 he saw any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious 
 of becoming a poet, his first question would be, — 
 Young man, what sort of dreams have you?” I 
 have so much faith in my old friend’s theory, that 
 when I feel that idle vein returning upon me, I 
 presently subside into my proper element of prose, 
 remembering those eluding nereids, and that inau- 
 spicious inland landing. 
 
MY RELATIONS. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 I AM arrived at that point of life, at which a man 
 may account it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if 
 he have either of his parents surviving. I have not 
 that felicity- — and sometimes think feelingly of a 
 passage in Browne’s Christian Morals, where he 
 speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or seventy 
 years in the world. In such a compass of time,’’ 
 he says, a man may have a close apprehension 
 what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived 
 to find none who could remember his father, or 
 scarcely the friends of his youth, and may sensibly 
 see with what a face in no long time Oblivion 
 will look upon himself.” 
 
 I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one 
 whom single blessedness had soured to the world. 
 She often used to say, that I was the only thing in 
 it which she loved; and, when she thought I was 
 
160 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 quitting it, she grieved over me with mother’s tears. 
 A partiality quite so exclusive my reason cannot 
 altogether approve. She was from morning till 
 night poring over good books, and devotional 
 exercises. Her favourite volumes were Thomas a 
 Kempis, in Stanhope’s Translation ; and a Roman 
 Catholic Prayer Book, with the matins and com-- 
 plines regularly set down, — terms which I was at 
 that time too young to understand. She persisted 
 in reading them, although admonished daily con- 
 cerning their Papistical tendency ; and went to 
 church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should 
 do. These were the only books she studied ; 
 though, I think, at one period of her life, she told 
 me, she had read with great satisfaction the 
 Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman. 
 Finding the door of the chapel in Essex-street open 
 one day — it was in the infancy of that heresy — she 
 went in, liked the sermon, and the manner of wor- 
 ship, and frequented it at intervals for some time 
 after. She came not for doctrinal points, and never 
 missed them. With some little asperities in her 
 constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was 
 a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Christian. 
 She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind 
 — extraordinary at a repartee ; one of the few occa- 
 
MY RELATIONS. 
 
 161 
 
 sions of her breaking silence — else she did not much 
 value wit. The only secular employment I remem- 
 ber to have seen her engaged in, was, the splitting 
 of French beans, and dropping them into a China 
 basin of fair water. The odour of those tender 
 vegetables to this day comes back upon my sense, 
 redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly it is 
 the most delicate of culinary operations. 
 
 Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none 
 — to remember. By the uncle’s side I may be said 
 to have been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I 
 never had any — to know them. A sister, I think, 
 that should have been Elizabeth, died in both our 
 infancies. What a comfort, or what a care, may 
 I not have missed in her! — But I have cousins, 
 sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besides two^ with 
 whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest 
 intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par exceU 
 lence. These are James and Bridget Elia. They 
 are older than myself by twelve, and ten, years ; 
 and neither of them seems disposed, in matters of 
 advice and guidance, to waive any of the prero- 
 gatives which primogeniture confers. May they 
 continue still in the same mind ; and when they 
 shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old 
 (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treating me 
 
162 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling, or 
 younger brother ! 
 
 James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath 
 her unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; 
 or, if we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of 
 Yorick, and of none since his, could have drawn 
 J. E. entire — those fine Shandean lights and shades, 
 which make up his story. I must limp after in my 
 poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me 
 grace and talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common 
 observer at least— seemeth made up of contradictory 
 principles. The genuine child of impulse, the frigid 
 philosopher of prudence — the phlegm of my cousin’s 
 doctrine is invariably at war with his temperament, 
 which is high sanguine. With always some fire- 
 new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic 
 opponent of innovation, and crier down of every 
 thing that has not stood the test of age and experi- 
 ment. With a hundred fine notions chasing one 
 another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least 
 approach to the romantic in others ; and, determined 
 by his own sense in every thing, commends you to 
 the guidance of common sense on all occasions. — 
 With a touch of the eccentric in all which he does, 
 or says, he is only anxious that you should not com- 
 mit yourself by doing any thing absurd or singular. 
 
MY RELATIONS. 
 
 163 
 
 On my once letting slip at table, that I was not 
 fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any 
 rate not to say so — for the world would think me 
 mad. He disguises a passionate fondness for works 
 of high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice 
 collection), under the pretext of buying only to sell 
 again — that his enthusiasm may give no encourage- 
 ment to yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that 
 piece of tender, pastoral Domenichino hang still by 
 his wall ? — is the ball of his sight much more dear 
 to him ? — or what picture-dealer can talk like him ? 
 
 Whereas mankind in general are observed to 
 warp their speculative conclusions to the bent of 
 their individual humours, his theories are sure to be 
 in diametrical opposition to his constitution. He is 
 courageous as Charles of Sw^eden, upon instinct ; 
 chary of his person, upon principle, as a travelling 
 Quaker. — He has been preaching up to me, all my 
 life, the doctrine of bowing to the great — the ne- 
 cessity of forms, and manner, to a man’s getting on 
 in the world. He himself never aims at either, that 
 I can discover, — and has a spirit, that would stand 
 upright in the presence of the Cham of Tartary. 
 It is pleasant to hear him discourse of patience — 
 extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to see him 
 during the last seven minutes that his dinner is 
 
164 
 
 MY RELATIONS, 
 
 getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a 
 more restless piece of workmanship than when she 
 moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never 
 turned out a more elaborate orator than he can dis- 
 play himself to be, upon this favourite topic of the 
 advantages of quiet, and contentedness in the state, 
 whatever it be, that we are placed in. He is 
 triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe in 
 one of those short stages that ply for the western 
 road, in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of 
 John Murray ‘’s street — where you get in when it is 
 empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath 
 completed her just freight — a trying three quarters 
 of an hour to some people. He wonders at your 
 fidgetiness, — where could we be better than we 
 are, thus sitting ^ thus consulting ? ” — prefers, for 
 his part, a state of rest to locomotion,’’ — with an 
 eye all the while upon the coachman, — till at length, 
 waxing out of all patience, at your want of ity he 
 breaks out into a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow 
 for detaining us so long over the time which he 
 had professed, and declares peremptorily, that the 
 gentleman in the coach is determined to get out, if 
 he does not drive on that instant.” 
 
 Very quick at inventing an argument, or detect- 
 ing a sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in 
 
MY RELATIONS. 
 
 165 
 
 any chain of arguing. Indeed he makes wild work 
 with logic ; and seems to jump at most admirable 
 conclusions by some process, not at all akin to it. 
 Consonantly enough to this, he hath been heard to 
 deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists such 
 a faculty at all in man as reason ; and wondereth 
 how man came first to have a conceit of it — en- 
 forcing his negation with all the might of reasoning 
 he is master of. He has some speculative notions 
 against laughter, and will maintain that laughing is 
 not natural to him — when peradventure the next 
 moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He 
 says some of the best things in the world — and 
 declareth that wit is his aversion. It was he who 
 said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their 
 grounds — What a pity to thinks that these fine in^- 
 genuous lads in a few years will all be changed into 
 frivolous Members of Parliament / 
 
 His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and 
 in age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This 
 is that which I admire in him. I hate people who 
 meet Time half-way. I am for no compromise 
 with that inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J. E. 
 will take his swing. — It does me good, as I walk 
 towards the street of my daily avocation, on some 
 fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite 
 
166 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 opposite direction, with a jolly handsome presence, 
 and shining sanguine face, that indicates some pur- 
 chase in his eye — a Claude — or a Hobbima — for 
 much of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie’s, 
 and Phillips’s — or where not, to pick up pictures, 
 and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly 
 stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advan- 
 tage a person like me possesses above himself, in 
 having his time occupied with business which he 
 must do — assureth me that he often feels it hang 
 heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays 
 — and goes off— Westward Ho ! — chanting a tune, 
 to Pall Mall — perfectly convinced that he has con- 
 vinced me — while I proceed in my opposite direc- 
 tion tuneless. 
 
 It is pleasant again to see this Professor of In- 
 difference doing the honours of his new purchase, 
 when he has fairly housed it. You must view it in 
 every light, till he has found the best — placing it at 
 this distance, and at that, but always suiting the 
 focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at 
 it through your fingers, to catch the aerial per- 
 spective — though you assure him that to you the 
 landscape shows much more agreeable without that 
 artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight, who does 
 not only not respond to his rapture, but who should 
 
MY RELATIONS. 
 
 167 
 
 drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one 
 of his anterior bargains to the present ! — The last is 
 always his best hit — his Cynthia of the minute.’’ 
 — Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I known 
 to come in — a Raphael ! — keep its ascendancy for a 
 few brief moons — then, after certain intermedia! 
 degradations, from the front drawing-room to the 
 back gallery, thence to the dark parlour, — adopted in 
 turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lower- 
 ing ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall 
 — consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out 
 at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! 
 — which things when I beheld — musing upon the 
 chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made 
 me to reflect upon the altered condition of great 
 personages, or that woeful Queen of Richard the 
 Second — 
 
 set forth in pomp, 
 
 She came adorned hither like sweet May. 
 
 Sent hack like Hollo wmass or shortest day. 
 
 With great love for you^ J. E. hath but a limited 
 sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a 
 world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what 
 passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow 
 of your habits. He will tell an old established play- 
 goer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming 
 
168 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian — as 
 a piece of news ! He advertised me but the other 
 day of some pleasant green lanes which he had 
 found out for me, knowing me to he great walker ^ 
 in my own immediate vicinity — who have haunted 
 the identical spot any time these twenty years ! — 
 He has not much respect for that class of feelings 
 which goes by the name of sentimental. He applies 
 the definition of real evil to bodily sufferings 
 exclusively — and rejecteth all others as imaginary. 
 He is affected by the sight, or the bare supposition, 
 of a creature in pain, to a degree which I have 
 never witnessed out of womankind. A constitu- 
 tional acuteness to this class of sufferinga may in 
 part account for this. The animal tribe in par- 
 ticular he taketh under his especial protection. A 
 broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find 
 an advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his client 
 for ever. He is the apostle to the brute kind — the 
 never-failing friend of those who have none to care 
 for them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, 
 or eels skinned alive^ will wring him so, that all 
 for pity he could die.” It will take the savour from 
 his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for days 
 and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas 
 Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, 
 
MY RELATIONS. 
 
 169 
 
 and unity of purpose, of that true yoke-fellow 
 with Time,’’ to have effected as much for the 
 mal, as he hath done for the Negro Creation. But 
 my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed 
 for purposes which demand co-operation. He 
 cannot wait. His amelioration-plans must be 
 ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but 
 an equivocal figure in benevolent societies, and 
 combinations for the alleviation of human sufferings. 
 His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put 
 out, his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, — while 
 they think of debating. He was black-balled out 
 of a society for the Relief 
 
 because the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond 
 the formal apprehension, and creeping processes, 
 of his associates. I shall always consider this dis- 
 tinction as a patent of nobility in the Elia family ! 
 
 Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to 
 smile at, or upbraid, my unique cousin ? Marry, 
 heaven, and all good manners, and the under- 
 standing that should be between kinsfolk, forbid ! 
 — With all the strangenesses of this strangest of 
 the Elias — I would not have him in one jot or 
 tittle other than he is ; neither would I barter or 
 exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regu- 
 lar, and everyway consistent kinsman breathing, 
 
 I 
 
170 
 
 MY RELATIONS. 
 
 In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you 
 some account of my cousin Bridget — if you are not 
 already surfeited with cousins — and take you by 
 the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an 
 excursion which we made a summer or two since, 
 in search of more cousins — 
 
 Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 
 
MACKERY END, 
 
 IN 
 
 HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 
 — 4 — 
 
 Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for 
 many a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, 
 extending beyond the period of memory. We house 
 together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double 
 singleness ; with such tolerable comfort, upon the 
 whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of 
 disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the 
 rash king’s offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We 
 agree pretty well in our tastes and habits — yet so, as 
 with a difference.” We are generally in harmony, 
 with occasional bickerings — as it should be among 
 near relations. Our sympathies are rather under- 
 stood, than expressed ; and once, upon my dissem- 
 bling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, 
 my cousin burst into tears, and complained that 
 I 2 
 
172 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 
 I was altered. We are both great readers in 
 different directions. While I am hanging over 
 (for the thousandth time) some passage in old 
 Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she 
 is abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, 
 whereof our common reading-table is daily fed 
 with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases 
 me. I have little concern in the progress of 
 events. She must have a story — well, ill, or 
 indifferently told — so there be life stirring in it, 
 and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluc- 
 tuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in real 
 life — have ceased to interest, or operate but dully 
 upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opinions — 
 heads with some diverting twist in them — the oddi- 
 ties of authorship please me most. My cousin has 
 a native disrelish of any thing that sounds odd 
 or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her, that is 
 quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common 
 sympathy. She holds Nature more clever.” I can 
 pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities 
 of the Religio Medici ; but she must apologise to 
 me for certain disrespectful insinuations, which she 
 has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching 
 the intellectuals of a dear favourite of mine, of the 
 last century but one — the thrice noble, chaste, and 
 
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 173 
 
 virtuous, — but again somewhat fantastical, and 
 original-brain’d, generous Margaret Newcastle. 
 
 It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener per- 
 haps than I could have wished, to have had for 
 her associates and mine, free-thinkers — leaders, and 
 disciples, of novel philosophies and systems ; but she 
 neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions. 
 That which was good and venerable to her, when 
 a child, retains its authority over her mind still. 
 She never juggles or plays tricks with her under- 
 standing. 
 
 We are both of us inclined to be a little too 
 positive ; and I have observed the result of our dis- 
 putes to be almost uniformly this — that in matters 
 of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that 
 I was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. 
 But where we have differed upon moral points; 
 upon something proper to be done, or let alone ; 
 whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of convic- 
 tion, I set out with, I am sure always, in the long 
 run, to be brought over to her way of thinking. 
 
 I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman 
 with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be 
 told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick (to 
 say no worse of it) of reading in company : at which 
 femes she will answer yes or no to a question, 
 
174 MACKERY END^ IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 
 without fully understanding its purport — which is 
 provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree 
 to the dignity of the putter of the said question. 
 Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing 
 trials of life, but will sometimes desert her upon 
 trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, 
 and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it 
 greatly ; but in matters which are not stuff of the 
 conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let 
 slip a word less seasonably. 
 
 Her education in youth was not much attended 
 to ; and she happily missed all that train of female 
 garniture, which passeth by the name of accom- 
 plishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or 
 design, into a spacious closet of good old English 
 reading, without much selection or prohibition, 
 and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome 
 pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be 
 brought up exactly in this fashion, I know not 
 whether their chance in wedlock might not be 
 diminished by it; but I can answer for it, that 
 it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most 
 incomparable old maids. 
 
 In a season of distress, she is the truest com- 
 forter; but in the teasing accidents, and minor 
 perplexities, which do not call out the will to meet 
 
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 
 175 
 
 them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an 
 excess of participation. If she does not always 
 divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions 
 of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. 
 She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit ; 
 but best, when she goes a journey with you. 
 
 We made an excursion together a few summers 
 since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters 
 of some of our less-known relations in that fine 
 corn country. 
 
 The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; 
 or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more 
 properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a 
 farm-house, — delightfully situated within a gentle 
 walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember 
 having been there, on a visit to a great aunt, when 
 I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as 
 I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. 
 I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder 
 of our joint existences ; that we might share them in 
 equal division. But that is impossible. The house 
 was at that time in the occupation of a substantial 
 yeoman, who had married my grandmother’s sister. 
 His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a 
 Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and 
 the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the 
 county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More 
 
176 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 
 
 than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak 
 of ; and, for the greater portion of that period, we 
 had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who 
 or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End — 
 kindred or strange folk — we were afraid almost to 
 conjecture, but determined some day to explore. 
 
 By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble 
 park at Luton in our way from Saint Alban'^s, we 
 arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about 
 noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though 
 every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, 
 affected me with a pleasure which I had not ex- 
 perienced for many a year. For though I had 
 forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there 
 together, and we had been talking about Mackery 
 End all our lives, till memory on my part became 
 mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought 
 I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, 
 O how unlike it was to that^ which I had conjured 
 up so many times instead of it ! 
 
 Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the sea- 
 son was in the heart of June,’’ and I could say 
 with the poet. 
 
 But thou, that didst appear so fair 
 To fond imagination, 
 
 Dost rival in the light of day 
 Her delicate creation ! 
 
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 177 
 
 Bridget’s was more a waking bliss than mine, for 
 she easily remembered her old acquaintance again — 
 some "altered features, of course, a little grudged at. 
 At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy ; 
 but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her affec- 
 tions — and she traversed every out-post of the old 
 mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place 
 where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds 
 were alike flown) — with a breathless impatience of 
 recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps 
 than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget 
 in some things is behind her years. 
 
 The only thing left was to get into the house — 
 and that was a difficulty which to me singly would 
 have been insurmountable ; for I am terribly shy in 
 making myself known to strangers and out-of-date 
 kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my 
 cousin in without me ; but she soon returned with 
 a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the 
 image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the 
 Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had 
 become mistress of the old mansion. A comely 
 brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were 
 noted as the handsomest young women in the 
 county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, 
 was better than they all— more comely. She was 
 
 I 3 
 
178 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE* 
 
 born too late to have remembered me. She just 
 recollected in early life to have had her cousin 
 Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a 
 stile. But the name of kindred, and of cousin- 
 ship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove 
 slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of 
 a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, 
 homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we 
 were as thoroughly acquainted as if we had been 
 born and bred up together; were familiar, even 
 to the calling each other by our Christian names. 
 So Christians should call one another. To have 
 seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of 
 the two scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and 
 dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, answer- 
 ing to her mind, in this farmer’s wife, which would 
 have shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We 
 were made welcome by husband and wife equally — 
 we, and our friend that was with us. — I had almost 
 forgotten him — but B. F. will not so soon forget 
 that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on 
 the far distant shores where the kangaroo haunts. 
 The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was 
 already so, as if in anticipation of our coming ; 
 and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, 
 never let me forget with what honest pride this 
 
MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 179 
 
 hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheat- 
 hampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found 
 rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did 
 indeed know something more of us, at a time when 
 she almost knew nothing. — With what correspond- 
 ing kindness we were received by them also — how 
 Bridget’s memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed 
 into a thousand half-obliterated recollections of 
 things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and 
 her own — and to the astoundmentof B.F. who sat by, 
 almost the only thing that was not a cousin there, — 
 old effaced images of more than half-forgotten names 
 and circumstances still crowding back upon her, as 
 words written in lemon come out upon exposure to 
 a friendly warmth, — when I forget all this, then 
 may my country cousins forget me ; and Bridget 
 no more remember, that in the days of weakling 
 infancy I was her tender charge — as I have been 
 her care in foolish manhood since — in those pretty 
 pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in 
 Hertfordshire. 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 ♦— 
 
 In comparing modern with ancient manners, 
 we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the 
 point of gallantry ; a certain obsequiousness, or 
 deferential respect, which we are supposed to 
 pay to females, as females. 
 
 I shall believe that this principle actuates our 
 conduct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth 
 century of the era from which we date our civility, 
 we are but just beginning to leave off the very fre- 
 quent practice of whipping females in public, in 
 common with the coarsest male offenders. 
 
 I shall believe it to be influential, when I can 
 shut my eyes to the fact, that in England women 
 are still occasionally — hanged. 
 
 I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer 
 subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. 
 
 I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a 
 fish-wife across the kennel ; or assists the apple- 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY, 
 
 181 
 
 woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some 
 unlucky dray has just dissipated. 
 
 I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in 
 humbler life, who would be thought in their way 
 notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it 
 in places where they are not known, or think them- 
 selves not observed — when I shall see the traveller 
 for some rich tradesman part with his admired box- 
 coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of 
 the poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the 
 roof of the same stage-coach with him, drenched in 
 the rain — when I shall no longer see a woman stand- 
 ing up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is 
 sick and faint with the exertion, with men about 
 her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress ; 
 till one, that seems to have more manners or con- 
 science than the rest, significantly declares she 
 should be welcome to his seat, if she were a little 
 younger and handsomer.” Place this dapper ware- 
 houseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own 
 female acquaintance, and you shall confess you 
 have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury. 
 
 liastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some 
 such principle influencing our conduct, when more 
 than one-half of the drudgery and coarse servitude 
 of the world shall cease to be performed by women. 
 
182 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 Until that day comes, I shall never believe this 
 boasted point to be any thing more than a conven- 
 tional fiction ; a pageant got up between the sexes, 
 in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in 
 which both find their account equally. 
 
 I shall be even disposed to rank it among the 
 salutary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall 
 see the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to 
 homely features as to handsome, to coarse com- 
 plexions as to clear — to the woman, as she is a 
 woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. 
 
 I shall believe it to be something more than a 
 name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well- 
 dressed company can advert to the topic of female 
 old age without exciting, and intending to excite, a 
 sneer: — when the phrases antiquated virginity,” 
 and such a one has overstood her market,” pro- 
 nounced in good company, shall raise immediate 
 offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them 
 spoken. 
 
 Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and 
 one of the Directors of the South-Sea company — 
 the same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare com- 
 mentator, has addressed a fine sonnet — was the 
 only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. 
 He took me under his shelter at an early age, and 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 183 
 
 bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his pre- 
 cepts and example whatever there is of the man of 
 business (and that is not much) in my composition. 
 It was not his fault that I did not profit more. 
 Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a 
 merchant, he was the finest gentleman of his time. 
 He had not one system of attention to females in 
 the drawing-room, and another in the shop, or at 
 the stall. I do not mean that he made no dis- 
 tinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or over- 
 looked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous 
 situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed — 
 smile if you please — to a poor servant girl, while 
 she has been inquiring of him the way to some 
 street — in such a posture of unforced civility, as 
 neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor him- 
 self in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the 
 common acceptation of the word, after women : but 
 he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which 
 it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him 
 — nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a market- 
 woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, 
 exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, 
 that it might receive no damage, with as much 
 carefulness as if she had been a Countess. To the 
 
184 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the 
 wall (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) 
 with more ceremony than we can afford to show our 
 grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age ; 
 the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have 
 no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, 
 that had long faded thence, still bloomed for him 
 in those withered and yellow cheeks. 
 
 « 
 
 He was never married, but in his youth he paid 
 his addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — 
 old Winstanley’s daughter of Clapton — who dying 
 in the early days of their courtship, confirmed in 
 him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It 
 was during their short courtship, he told me, that 
 he had been one day treating his mistress with a 
 profusion of civil speeches — the common gallantries 
 — to which kind of thing she had hitherto mani- 
 fested no repugnance — but in this instance with 
 no effect. He could not obtain from her a decent 
 acknowledgment in return. She rather seemed to 
 resent his compliments. He could not set it down 
 to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself 
 above that littleness. When he ventured on the 
 following day, finding her a little better humoured, 
 to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 185 
 
 she confessed, with her usual frankness, that she 
 had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she 
 could even endure some high-flown compliments ; 
 that a young woman placed in her situation had a 
 right to expect all sort of civil things said to her ; 
 that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, 
 short of insincerity, with as little injury to her 
 humility as most young women ; but that — a little 
 before he had commenced his compliments — she 
 had overheard him by accident, in rather rough 
 language, rating a young woman, who had not 
 brought home his cravats quite to the appointed 
 time, and she thought to herself, As I am Miss 
 Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed 
 beauty, and known to be a fortune, — I can have my 
 choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of 
 this very fine gentleman who is courting me — but 
 if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one {naming the 
 milliner) y — and had failed of bringing home the 
 cravats to the appointed hour — though perhaps I 
 had sat up half the night to forward them — what 
 sort of compliments should I have received then ? — 
 And my woman’s pride came to my assistance ; and 
 I thought, that if it were only to do me honour, a 
 female, like myself, might have received handsomer 
 usage : and I was determined not to accept any fine 
 
186 
 
 MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the belong- 
 ing to which was after all my strongest claim and 
 title to them.” 
 
 I think the lady discovered both generosity, and 
 a just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she 
 gave her lover ; and I have sometimes imagined, 
 that the uncommon strain of courtesy, which 
 through life regulated the actions and behaviour of 
 my friend towards all of womankind indiscri- 
 minately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable 
 lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress. 
 
 I wish the whole female world would entertain 
 the same notion of these things that Miss Win- 
 stanley showed. Then we should see something of 
 the spirit of consistent gallantry; and no longer 
 witness the anomaly of the same man — a pattern 
 of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or 
 rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his female 
 mistress — the disparager and despiser of his no less 
 female aunt, or unfortunate — still female — maiden 
 cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates 
 from her own sex, in whatever condition placed — 
 her handmaid, or dependent — she deserves to have 
 diminished from herself on that score ; and probably 
 will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, 
 and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose 
 
MODERN GALLANTRY. 
 
 187 
 
 of their attraction. What a woman should demand 
 of a man in courtship, or after it, is first — respect 
 for her as she is a woman ; — and next to that — to 
 be respected by him above all other women. But 
 let her stand upon her female character as upon a 
 foundation ; and let the attentions, incident to indi- 
 vidual preference, be so many pretty additaments 
 and ornaments — as many, and as fanciful, as you 
 please — to that main structure. Let her first lesson 
 be — with sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence 
 her sex. 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE 
 INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of 
 my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its 
 gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said — 
 for in those young years, what was this king of 
 rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant 
 places these are of my oldest recollections. I 
 repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more 
 frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of 
 Spenser, where he speaks of this spot. 
 
 There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
 
 The which on Themmes hrode aged back doth ride. 
 
 Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers. 
 
 There whylome wont the Templer knights to hide, 
 
 Till they decayed through pride. 
 
 Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metro- 
 polis. What a transition for a countryman visiting 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS. 
 
 189 
 
 London for the first time — the passing from the 
 crowded Strand or Fleet-street, by unexpected 
 avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its 
 classic green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal 
 look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, 
 overlooks the greater garden : that goodly pile 
 
 Of building strong, albeit of Paper bight. 
 
 confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, 
 more fantastically shrouded one, named of Har- 
 court, with the cheerful Crown-office Row (place 
 of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately 
 stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet 
 scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just 
 weaned from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man 
 would give something to have been born in such 
 places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine 
 Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which 
 I have made to rise and fall, how many times ! to 
 the astoundment of the young urchins, my contem- 
 poraries, who, not being able to guess at its recon- 
 dite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the 
 wondrous work as magic ! What an antique air 
 had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their 
 moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time 
 which they measured, and to take their .revelations 
 
190 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 of its flight immediately from heaven, holding cor- 
 respondence with the fountain of light ! How would 
 the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the 
 eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, 
 never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the 
 first arrests of sleep ! 
 
 Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand 
 
 Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 
 
 What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous 
 embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn 
 dulness of communication, compared with the simple 
 altar-like structure, and silent heart-language of the 
 old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian 
 gardens. Why is it almost every where vanished? 
 If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate 
 inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have 
 pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate 
 labours, of pleasures not protracted after sun-set, of 
 temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive 
 clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could 
 scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the mea- 
 sure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to 
 spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver 
 warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to 
 fold by. The shepherd carved it out quaintly in 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 191 
 
 the sun ; ” and, turning philosopher by the very 
 occupation, provided it with mottos more touching 
 than tombstones. It was a pretty device of the 
 gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days 
 of artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and 
 flowers. I must quote his verses a little higher up, 
 for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a 
 witty delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly, 
 I hope, in a talk of fountains, and sun-dials. He is 
 speaking of sweet garden scenes : — 
 
 What wondrous life is this I lead ! 
 
 Ripe apples drop about my head. 
 
 The luscious clusters of the vine 
 Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
 The nectarine, and curious peach, 
 
 Into my hands themselves do reach. 
 Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 
 Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 
 Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 
 Withdraws into its happiness. 
 
 The mind, that ocean, where ea,ch kind 
 Does straight its own resemblance find* 
 Yet it creates, transcending these. 
 
 Far other worlds, and other seas ; 
 Annihilating all that ’s made 
 To a green thought in a green shade. 
 Here at the fountain’s sliding foot. 
 
 Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root, 
 Casting the body’s vest aside, 
 
 My soul into the boughs does glide ; 
 There, like a bird, it sits and sings. 
 Then wets and claps its silver wings 
 
192 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 And, till prepared for longer flight, 
 
 Waves in its plumes the various light. 
 
 How well the skilful gardener drew. 
 
 Of flowers and herbs, this dial new! 
 
 Where, from above, the milder sun 
 Does through a fragrant zodiac run : 
 
 And, as it works, the industrious bee 
 Computes its time as well as we. 
 
 How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
 Be reckon’d, hut with herbs and flowers * ? 
 
 The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in 
 like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried 
 up, or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in 
 that little green nook behind the South-Sea House, 
 what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four 
 little winged marble boys used to play their virgin 
 fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from their 
 innocent-wanton lips, in the square of Lincoln’s-inn, 
 when I was no bigger than they were figured. They 
 are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, 
 they tell me, is gone by, and these things are 
 esteemed childish. Why not then gratify children, 
 by letting them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, were 
 children once. They are awakening images to them 
 at least. Why must every thing smack of man, 
 and mannish ? Is the world all grown up ? Is 
 childhood dead ? Or is there not in the bosoms of 
 
 From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 193 
 
 the wisest and the best some of the child’s heart 
 left, to respond to its earliest enchantments ? The 
 figures were grotesque. Are the stifF-wigged living 
 figures, that still flitter and chatter about that area, 
 less Gothic in appearance ? or is the splutter of their 
 hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent 
 as the little cool playful streams those exploded 
 cherubs uttered ? 
 
 They have lately gothicised the entrance to the 
 Inner Temple-hall, and the library front, to assimi- 
 late them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which 
 they do not at all resemble. What is become of the 
 winged horse that stood over the former ? a stately 
 arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the 
 Virtues, which Italianized the end of the Paper- 
 buildings? — my first hint of allegory! They must 
 account to me for these things, which I miss so 
 greatly. 
 
 The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call 
 the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the 
 footsteps which made its pavement awful! It is 
 become common and profane. The old benchers 
 had it almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart 
 of the day at least. They might not be sided or 
 jostled. Their air and dress asserted the parade. 
 You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you passed 
 
 K 
 
194 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 them. We walk on even terms with their successors. 
 The roguish eye of J 11, ever ready to be deli- 
 
 vered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a 
 repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst 
 have mated Thomas Coventry ? — whose person was 
 a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face 
 square as the lion’s, his gait peremptory and path- 
 keeping, indivertible from his way as a moving 
 column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow- 
 beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude 
 of children wherever he came, for they fled his in- 
 sufferable presence, as they would have shunned an 
 Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, 
 whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his 
 invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repul- 
 sive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the 
 natural terrors of his speech, broke from each ma- 
 jestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by 
 pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it under 
 the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat 
 pocket ; his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark 
 rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by adjuncts, 
 with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced 
 the terrace. 
 
 By his side a milder form was sometimes to be 
 seen ; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 195 
 
 were coevals, and had nothing but that and their 
 benchership in common. In politics Salt was a 
 whig, and Coventry a staunch tory. Many a sar- 
 castic growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry 
 had a rough spinous humour — at the political con- 
 federates of his associate, which rebounded from the 
 gentle bosom of the latter like cannon-balls from 
 wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. 
 
 S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, 
 and of excellent discernment in the chamber prac- 
 tice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not 
 amount to much. When a case of difflcult dis- 
 position of money, testamentary or otherwise, came 
 before him, he ordinarily handed it over with a few 
 instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick 
 little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by 
 the light of natural understanding, of which he had 
 an uncommon share. It was incredible what repute 
 for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. 
 He was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a 
 minute — indolent and procrastinating to the last 
 degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast 
 application in spite of himself. He was not to be 
 trusted with himself with impunity. He never 
 dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his sword — 
 they wore swords then — or some other necessary part 
 K 2 
 
196 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on 
 all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. 
 If there was any thing which he could speak unsea- 
 sonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to dine at a 
 relative’s of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day 
 of her execution ; — and L. who had a wary foresight 
 of his probable hallucinations, before he set out, 
 schooled him with great anxiety not in any possible 
 manner to allude to her story that day. S. promised 
 faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not 
 been seated in the parlour, where the company was 
 expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, 
 a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, 
 looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles 
 — an ordinary motion with him — observed, it was 
 a gloomy day,” and added, Miss Blandy must be 
 hanged by this time, I suppose.” Instances of this 
 sort were perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some 
 of the greatest men of his time a fit person to be 
 consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the 
 law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments 
 of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He 
 never laughed. He had the same good fortune 
 among the female world, — was a known toast with 
 the ladies, and one or two are said to have died for 
 love of him — I suppose, because he never trifled or 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 197 
 
 talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, 
 hardly common attentions. He had a fine face 
 and person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that 
 should have shown them off with advantage to the 
 women. His eye lacked lustre. — Not so, thought 
 
 Susan P ; who, at the advanced age of sixty, 
 
 was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccompanied, 
 
 wetting the pavement of B d Row, with tears 
 
 that fell in drops which might be heard, because 
 her friend had died that day — he, whom she had 
 pursued with a hopeless passion for the last forty 
 years — -a passion, which years could not extinguish 
 or abate ; nor the long resolved, yet gently 
 enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood 
 dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan 
 P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven ! 
 
 Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family 
 of that name. He passed his youth in contracted 
 circumstances, which gave him early those parsimo- 
 nious habits which in after-life never forsook him ; 
 so that, with one windfall or another, about the time 
 I knew him he was master of four or five hundred 
 thousand pounds ; nor did he look, or walk, worth 
 a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house oppo- 
 site the pump in Serjeant’s-inn, Fleet-street. J., 
 the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for 
 
198 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 what reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an 
 agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom 
 spent above a day or two at a time in the summer; 
 but preferred, during the hot months, standing at 
 his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, 
 to watch, as he said, the maids drawing water all 
 day long.” I suspect he had his within-door rea- 
 sons for the preference. Hie currus et arma fuere. 
 He might think his treasures more safe. His house 
 had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a close 
 hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a 
 miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have 
 brought discredit upon a character, which cannot 
 exist without certain admirable points of steadiness 
 and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser, 
 but cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By 
 taking care of the pence, he is often enabled to part 
 with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us care- 
 less generous fellows halting at an immeasurable 
 distance behind. C. gave away 30,000/. at once in 
 his life-time to a blind charity. His house-keeping 
 was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a 
 gentleman. He would know who came in and who 
 went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was 
 never suffered to freeze. 
 
 Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 199 
 
 knew what he was worth in the world ; and having 
 but a competency for his rank, which his indolent 
 habits were little calculated to improve, might have 
 suffered severely if he had not had honest people 
 about him. Lovel took care of every thing. He 
 was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, 
 his friend, his flapper,’' his guide, stop-watch, 
 auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without con- 
 sulting Lovel, or failed in any thing without ex- 
 pecting and fearing his admonishing. He put him- 
 self almost too much in his hands, had they not 
 been the purest in the world. He resigned his title 
 almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have 
 forgotten for a moment that he was a servant. 
 
 I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incor- 
 rigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, 
 and would strike.” In the cause of the oppressed 
 he never considered inequalities, or calculated the 
 number of his opponents. He once wrested a sword 
 out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn 
 upon him ; and pommelled him severely with the 
 hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a 
 female — an occasion upon which no odds against 
 him could have prevented the interference of Lovel. 
 He would stand next day bare-headed to the same 
 person, modestly to excuse his interference — for L. 
 
200 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 never forgot rank, where something better was not 
 concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breath- 
 ing, had a face as gay as Garrick’s, whom he was 
 said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him 
 which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for hu- 
 morous poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded 
 heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by 
 the dint of natural genius merely ; turned cribbage 
 boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfection ; 
 took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal 
 facility ; made punch better than any man of his 
 degree in England; had the merriest quips and 
 conceits, and was altogether as brimful of rogueries 
 and inventions as you could desire. He was a 
 brother of the angle, moreover, and just such a 
 free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton 
 would have chosen to go a fishing with. I saw him 
 in his old age and tlie decay of his faculties, palsy- 
 smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness — 
 a remnant most forlorn of what he was,” — yet 
 even then his eye v/ould light up upon the mention 
 of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he 
 would say, in Bayes — was upon the stage nearly 
 throughout the whole performance, and as busy as 
 a bee.” At intervals, too, he would speak of his 
 former life, and how he came up a little boy from 
 
OP THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 201 
 
 Lincoln to go to service, and how his mother cried 
 at parting with him, and how he returned, after some 
 few years’ absence, in his smart new livery, to see 
 her, and she blessed herself at the change, and could 
 hardly be brought to believe that it was her own 
 bairn.’’ And then, the excitement subsiding, he 
 would weep, till I have wished that sad second- 
 childhood might have a mother still to lay its head 
 upon her lap. But the common mother of us all in 
 no long time after received him gently into hers. 
 
 With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks 
 upon the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson 
 would join, to make up a third. They did not walk 
 linked arm in arm in those days — as now our 
 stout triumvirs sweep the streets,” — but generally 
 with both hands folded behind them for state, or 
 with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. 
 P. was a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man. 
 He had that in his face which you could not term 
 unhappiness ; it rather implied an incapacity of 
 being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to 
 whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling 
 (but without his sourness) that of our great philan- 
 thropist. I know that he did good acts, but I could 
 never make out what he was, Contemporaiy with 
 these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington — 
 K 3 
 
202 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 another oddity — he walked burly and square — irl 
 imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained 
 not to the dignity of his prototype. Nevertheless, 
 he did pretty well, upon the strength of being a 
 tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a 
 bishop. When the account of his year's treasurership 
 came to be audited, the following singular charge 
 was unanimously disallowed by the bench : Item, 
 disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, twenty shillings, 
 for stuff to poison the sparrows, by my orders.” 
 Next to him was old Barton — a jolly negation, who 
 took upon him the ordering of the bills of fare for 
 the parliament chamber, where the benchers dine — 
 answering to the combination rooms at college — 
 much to the easement of his less epicurean brethren. 
 I know nothing more of him. — Then Read, and 
 Twopeny — Read, good-humoured and personable 
 — Twopeny, good-humoured, but thin, and feli- 
 citous in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, 
 Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many must 
 remember him (for he was rather of later date) and 
 his singular gait, which was performed by three 
 steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps 
 were little efforts, like that of a child beginning to 
 walk ; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot 
 to an inch. Where he learned this figure, or what 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE, 
 
 203 
 
 occasioned it, I could never discover. It was neither 
 graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose 
 any better than common walking. The extreme 
 tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It 
 was atrial of poising. Twopeny would often rally 
 him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother 
 Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His 
 features were spiteful. I have heard that he would 
 pinch his caf s ears extremely, when any thing had 
 offended him, Jackson — the omniscient Jackson 
 he was called — w^as of this period. He had the 
 reputation of possessing more multifarious know- 
 ledge than any man of his time. He was the Friar 
 Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. 
 I remember a pleasant passage, of the cook applying 
 to him, with much formality of apology, for instruc- 
 tions how to write down edge bone of beef in his bill 
 of commons. He was supposed to know, if any 
 man in the world did. He decided the orthography 
 to be — as I have given it — fortifying his authority 
 with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the man- 
 ciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some do 
 spell it yet, perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful 
 resemblance between its shape and that of the 
 aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten 
 Mingay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat 
 
204 
 
 THE OLD BE^GHERI^ 
 
 later. He had lost his right hand by some accident, 
 and supplied it with a grappling hook, which he 
 wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the 
 substitute, before I was old enough to reason 
 whether it were artificial or not. I remember the 
 astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering, 
 loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the pheno- 
 menon to my ideas as an emblem of power — 
 somewhat like the horns in the forehead of Michael 
 Angelo’s Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or 
 did till very lately) in the costume of the reign of 
 George the Second, closes my imperfect recollec- 
 tions of the old benchers of the Inner Temple. 
 
 Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the 
 like of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? 
 Ye inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why 
 comes in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, 
 bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why 
 make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made 
 up to me — to my childish eyes— -the mythology 
 of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as 
 old men covered with a mantle,” walking upon 
 the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry 
 perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of 
 legendary fabling, — in the heart of childhood, there 
 will, for ever, spring up a w’ell of innocent or 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 205 
 
 wholesome superstition — the seeds of exaggeration 
 will be busy there, and vital — from every-day forms 
 educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that 
 little Goshen there will be light, when the grown 
 world flounders about in the darkness of sense 
 and materiality. Vv^hile childhood, and while 
 dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, imagi- 
 nation shall not have spread her holy wings totally 
 to fly the earth. 
 
 P. S. I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
 Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect 
 memory, and the erring notices of childhood! Yet 
 I protest I always thought that he had been a 
 bachelor ! This gentleman, R. N. informs me, 
 married young, and losing his lady in child-bed, 
 within the first year of their union, fell into a deep 
 melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he 
 never thoroughly recovered. In what a new light 
 does this place his rejection (O call it by a gentler 
 name!) of mild Susan P — — , unravelling into 
 beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy and 
 retiring character ! — Henceforth let no one receive 
 the narratives of Elia for true records ! They are. 
 
206 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS 
 
 in truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not 
 verities — or sitting but upon the remote edges and 
 outskirts of history. He is no such honest chronicler 
 as R. N., and would have done better perhaps to 
 have consulted that gentleman, before he sent these 
 incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy 
 sub-treasurer — who respects his old and his new 
 masters — would but have been puzzled at the in- 
 decorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, 
 peradvejiture, of the licence which Magazines have 
 arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly 
 dreams of their existence beyond the Gentleman! s^ 
 his furthest monthly excursions in this nature having 
 been long confined to the holy ground of honest 
 Urban's obituary. May it be long before his own 
 name shall help to swell those columns of unenvied 
 flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New Benchers of the 
 Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself 
 the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities 
 overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous 
 senility — make allowances for them, remembering 
 that ye yourselves are old.’’ So may the Winged 
 Horse, your ancient badge and cognisance, still 
 flourish! so may future Hookers and Seldens 
 illustrate your church and chambers ! so may the 
 sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, 
 
OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 207 
 
 unpoisoned hop about your walks! so may the 
 fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery maid, who, by 
 leave, airs her playful charge in your stately 
 gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye 
 pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may the 
 younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your 
 stately terrace, with the same superstitious vene- 
 ration, with which the child Elia gazed on the Old 
 Worthies that solemnised the parade before ye ! 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, 
 its origin in the early times of the world, and the 
 hunter-state of man, when dinners were precarious 
 things, and a full meal was something more than a 
 common blessing ; when a belly-full was a wind-fall, 
 and looked like a special providence. In the shouts 
 and triumphal songs with which, after a season of 
 sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer’s or goat’s 
 flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, 
 perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not 
 otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing 
 of food — the act of eating — should have had a par- 
 ticular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, 
 distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with 
 which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment 
 of the many other various gifts and good things of 
 existence. 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 209 
 
 I own that I am disposed to say grace upon 
 twenty other occasions in the course of the day 
 besides my dinner. 1 want a form for setting out 
 upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a 
 friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have 
 we none for books, those spiritual repasts — a grace 
 before Milton — a grace before Shakspeare — a de- 
 votional exercise proper to be said before reading 
 the Fairy Queen? — but, the received ritual having 
 prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of 
 manducation, I shall confine my observations to the 
 experience which I have had of the grace, properly 
 so called ; commending my new scheme for extension 
 to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and 
 perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling 
 by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a 
 certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelaesian 
 Christians, no matter where assembled. 
 
 The form then of the benediction before eating 
 has its beauty at a poor man’s table, or at the simple 
 and unprovocative repasts of children. It is here 
 that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The 
 indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall 
 have a meal the next day or not, sits down to his 
 fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can 
 be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds 
 
210 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 the conception of wanting a dinner could never, 
 but by some extreme theory, have entered. The 
 proper end of food — the animal sustenance — is 
 barely contemplated by them. The poor man's 
 bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the 
 day. Their courses are perennial. 
 
 Again, the plainest diet seems the fittest to be 
 preceded by the grace. That which is least stimu- 
 lative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for 
 foreign considerations. A man may feel thankful, 
 heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with 
 turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordi- 
 nance and institution of eating; when he shall 
 confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the 
 purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or 
 turtle. When I have sate (a rarus hospes) at rich 
 men's tables, with the savoury soup and messes 
 steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of 
 the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I 
 have felt the introduction of that ceremony to be 
 unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon 
 you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious 
 sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter 
 out praises from a mouth that waters. The heats 
 of epicurism put out the gentle flame of devotion. 
 The incense which rises round is pagan, and the 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 211 
 
 belly-god intercepts it for his own. The very ex- 
 cess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away 
 all sense of proportion between the end and means. 
 The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled 
 at the injustice of returning thanks — for what? — 
 — for having too much, while so many starve. It 
 is to praise the Gods amiss. 
 
 I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce 
 consciously perhaps, by the good man who says the 
 grace. I have seen it in clergymen and others — a 
 sort of shame — a sense of the co-presence of cir- 
 cumstances which unhallow the blessing. After a 
 devotional tone put on for a few seconds, how rapidly 
 the speaker will fall into his common voice, helping 
 himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some 
 uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good 
 man was a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious 
 in the discharge of the duty ; but he felt in his 
 inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and 
 the viands before him with the exercise of a calm 
 and rational gratitude. 
 
 I hear somebody exclaim, — Would you have 
 Christians sit down at table, like hogs to their 
 troughs, without remembering the Giver? —no — I 
 would have them sit down as Christians, remem- 
 bering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their 
 
212 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 appetites must run riot, and they must pamper 
 themselves with delicacies for which east and west 
 are ransacked, I would have them postpone their 
 benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid ; 
 when the still small voice can be heard, and the 
 reason of the grace returns — with temperate diet 
 and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are 
 no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When 
 Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil 
 knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into the 
 mouth of Celaeno any thing but a blessing. We 
 may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of 
 some kinds of food beyond others, though that is 
 a meaner and inferior gratitude: but the proper 
 object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes ; daily 
 bread, not delicacies; the means of life, and not 
 the means of pampering the carcass. With what 
 frame or composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain 
 pronounce his benediction at some great Hall-feast, 
 when he knows that his last concluding pious word 
 — and that, in all probability, the sacred name 
 which he preaches — is but the signal for so many 
 impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, 
 with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is 
 temperance) as those Virgilian fowl ! It is well if 
 the good man himself does not feel his devotions a 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 218 
 
 little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling 
 with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice. 
 
 The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits 
 is the banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Re- 
 gained, provides for a temptation in the wilderness : 
 
 A table richly spread in regal mode, 
 
 With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
 And savour ; beasts of chase, or fowl of game. 
 
 In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
 
 Gris-amber-steamed ; all fish from sea or shore, 
 
 Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained 
 Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. 
 
 The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates 
 would go down without the recommendatory pre- 
 face of a benediction. They are like to be short 
 graces where the devil plays the host. — I am afraid 
 the poet wants his usual decorum in this place. 
 Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a 
 gaudy day at Cambridge ? This was a temptation 
 fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet is 
 too civic and culinary, and the accompaniments 
 altogether a profanation of that deep, abstracted 
 holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which 
 the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to 
 the simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. He 
 that disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams 
 might have been taught better. To the temperate 
 
214 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort of 
 feasts presented themselves ? — He dreamed indeed, 
 
 As appetite is wont to dream, 
 
 Of meats and drinks, nature’s refreshment sweet. 
 
 But what meats ? — 
 
 Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 
 
 And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
 Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn; 
 
 Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought : 
 
 He saw the prophet also how he fled 
 Into the desert, and how there he slept 
 Under a juniper ; then how awaked 
 He found his supper on the coals prepared. 
 
 And by the angel was bid rise and eat. 
 
 And ate the second time after repose. 
 
 The strength whereof suflBced him forty days : 
 
 Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook, 
 
 Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 
 
 Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these 
 temperate dreams of the divine Hungerer. To 
 which of these two visionary banquets, think you, 
 would the introduction of what is called the grace 
 have been the most fitting and pertinent ? 
 
 Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but 
 practically I own that (before meat especially) they 
 seem to involve something awkward and unseason- 
 able. Our appetites, of one or another kind, are 
 excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise 
 but feebly set about the great ends of preserving 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 215 
 
 and continuing the species. They are fit blessings 
 to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming 
 gratitude ; but the moment of appetite (the judicious 
 reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit 
 season for that exercise. The Quakers who go about 
 their business, of every description, with more 
 calmness than we, have more title to the use of these 
 benedictory prefaces. I have always admired their 
 silent grace, and the more because I have observed 
 their applications to the meat and drink following 
 to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They 
 are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. 
 They eat, as a horse bolts his chopt hay, with 
 indifference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. 
 They neither grease nor slop themselves. When I 
 see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine 
 it a surplice. 
 
 I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not 
 indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous 
 morsels of deer’s flesh were not made to be received 
 with dispassionate services. I hate a man who 
 swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. 
 I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink 
 instinctively from one who professes to like minced 
 veal. There is a physiognomical character in the 
 tastes for food. C holds that a man cannot 
 
216 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 have a pure mind who refuses apple-dumplings. I 
 am not certain but he is right. With the decay of 
 my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish 
 daily for those innocuous cates. The whole vege- 
 table tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I 
 stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire gentle 
 thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under 
 culinary disappointments, as to come home at the 
 dinner hour, for instance, expecting some savoury 
 mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. 
 Butter ill melted — that commonest of kitchen 
 failures — puts me beside my tenour. — The author 
 of the Rambler used to make inarticulate animal 
 noises over a favourite food. Was this the music 
 quite proper to be preceded by the grace? or 
 would the pious man have done better to postpone 
 his devotions to a season when the blessing might be 
 contemplated with less perturbation ? I quarrel with 
 no man’s tastes, nor would set my thin face against 
 those excellent things, in their way, jollity and 
 feasting. But as these exercises, however laudable, 
 have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man 
 should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, 
 that while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, 
 he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish 
 — his Dagon — with a special consecration of no ark 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 217 
 
 but the fat tureen before him. Graces are the 
 sweet preluding strains to the banquets of angels 
 and children; to the roots and severer repasts of 
 the Chartreuse ; to the slender, but not slenderly 
 acknowledged, refection of the poor and humble 
 man : but at the heaped-up boards of the pampered 
 and the luxurious they become of dissonant mood, 
 less timed and tuned to the occasion, methinks, than 
 the noise of those better befitting organs would be, 
 which children hear tales of, at Hog’s Norton. We 
 sit too long at our meals, or are too curious in the 
 study of them, or too disordered in our application 
 to them, or engross too great a portion of those 
 good things (which should be common) to our 
 share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To 
 be thankful for w^hat w^e grasp exceeding our pro- 
 portion is to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking 
 sense of this truth is what makes the performance 
 of this duty so cold and spiritless a service at most 
 tables. In houses where the grace is as indispen- 
 sable as the napkin, who has not seen that never 
 settled question arise, as to v:ho shall say it i while 
 the good man of the house and the visiter clergy- 
 man, or some other guest belike of next authority 
 from years or gravity, shall be bandying about the 
 office between them as a matter of compliment, each 
 
 L 
 
218 
 
 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 of them not unwilling to shift the awkward burthen 
 of an equivocal duty from his own shoulders ? 
 
 I once drank tea in company with two Methodist 
 divines of different persuasions, whom it was my for- 
 tune to introduce to each other for the first time that 
 evening. Before the first cup was handed round, 
 one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the 
 other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to 
 say any thing. It seems it is the custom with some 
 sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal 
 also. His reverend brother did not at first quite 
 apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little 
 less importance he made answer, that it was not a 
 custom known in his church : in which courteous 
 evasion the other acquiescing for good manner^s 
 sake, or in compliance with a weak brother, the 
 supplementary or tea-grace was waived altogether. 
 With what spirit might not Lucian have painted 
 two priests, of Ms religion, playing into each other’s 
 hands the compliment of performing or omitting a 
 sacrifice, — the hungry God meantime, doubtful of 
 his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over 
 the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going 
 away in the end without his supper. 
 
 A short form upon these occasions is felt to want 
 reverence ; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape 
 
GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 
 
 219 
 
 the charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve 
 of the epigrammatic conciseness with which that 
 equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) 
 C. V. L., when importuned for a grace, used to in- 
 quire, first slyly leering down the table, Is there 
 no clergyman here ? ’’ — significantly adding, thank 
 G — Nor do I think our old form at school quite 
 pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald 
 bread and cheese suppers with a preamble, con- 
 necting with that humble blessing a recognition of 
 benefits the most awful and overwhelming to the 
 imagination which religion has to offer. Non tunc 
 illis erat locus. I remember we were put to it to 
 reconcile the phrase good creatures,” upon which 
 the blessing rested, with the fare set before us, 
 wilfully understanding that expression in a low and 
 animal sense, — till some one recalled a legend, which 
 told how in the golden days of Christ’s, the young 
 Hospitallers were wont to have smoking joints of 
 roast meat upon their nightly boards, till some pious 
 benefactor, commiserating the decencies, rather than 
 the palates, of the children, commuted our flesh for 
 garments, and gave us — horresco referens — trowsers 
 instead of mutton. 
 
MY FIRST PLAY- 
 
 At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands 
 a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though 
 reduced to humble use, serving at present for an 
 entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if 
 you are young, reader, you may not know was the 
 identical pit entrance to Old Drury — Garrick’s 
 Drury — all of it that is left. I never pass it with- 
 out shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, 
 recurring to the evening when I passed through it 
 to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, 
 and the condition of our going (the elder folks and 
 myself) was, that the rain should cease* With what 
 a beating heart did I watch from the window the 
 puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to 
 prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem to 
 remember the last spurt, and the glee with which 
 I ran to announce it. 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 221 
 
 We went with orders, which my godfather F. 
 had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies’s) 
 at the corner of Feathers tone-building, in Holborn. 
 F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had 
 pretensions above his rank. He associated in those 
 days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait 
 and bearing he seemed to copy ; if J ohn (which is 
 quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of 
 his manner from my godfather. He was also known 
 to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was to his house in 
 Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife 
 on her elopement with him from a boarding-school 
 at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents 
 were present (over a quadrille table) when he 
 arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. 
 From either of these connexions it may be inferred 
 that my godfather could command an order for the 
 then Drury-lane theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, 
 a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in Brins- 
 ley^s easy autograph, I have heard him say was the 
 sole remuneration which he had received for many 
 year’s nightly illumination of the orchestra and 
 various avenues of that theatre — and he was content 
 it should be so. The honour of Sheridan’s fami- 
 liarity — or supposed familiarity — was better to ray 
 godfather than money. 
 
222 
 
 MY FIRST PLAT. 
 
 F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; gTandi- 
 loquent, yet courteous. His delivery of the com- 
 monest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had 
 two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth 
 (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman’s lips!), 
 which my better knowledge since has enabled me to 
 correct. In strict pronunciation they should have 
 been sounded vice versa— hut in those young years 
 they impressed me with more awe than they would 
 now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro— in his 
 own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elabo- 
 rated, or Anglicized, into something like verse verse* 
 By an imposing manner, and the help of these dis- 
 torted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to 
 the highest parochial honours which St, Andrew’s 
 has to bestow. 
 
 He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his 
 memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous 
 talismans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward 
 sight, but opening to me more than Arabian para- 
 dises!) and moreover, that by his testamentary 
 beneficence I came into possession of the only landed 
 property which I could ever call my own — situate 
 near the road- way village of pleasant Puckeridge, 
 in Hertfordshire. When I journeyed down to take 
 possession, and planted foot on my own ground, the 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 223 
 
 Stately habits of the donor descended upon me, and 
 I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger 
 paces over my allotment of three quarters of an 
 acre, with its commodious mansion in the midst, 
 with .the feeling of an English freeholder that all 
 betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate 
 has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing 
 but an agrarian can restore it. 
 
 In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the 
 uncomfortable manager who abolished them ! — with 
 one of these we went. I remember the waiting at 
 the door — not that which is left — but between that 
 and an inner door in shelter — O when shall I be 
 such an expectant again ! — with the cry of nonpa- 
 reils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in 
 those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashion- 
 able pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then 
 was, Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, 
 chase a bill of the play — chase pro chuse. But 
 when w^e got in, and I beheld the green curtain that 
 veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon 
 
 to be disclosed the breathless anticipations I 
 
 endured ! I had seen something like it in the plate 
 prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe’s Shaks- 
 speare — the tent scene with Diomede — and a sight 
 of that plate can always bring back in a measure the 
 
224 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 feeling of that evening. — The boxes at that time^ 
 full of well-dressed women of quality, projected 
 over the pit ; and the pilasters reaching down 
 were adorned with a glistering substance (I know 
 not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling 
 — a homely fancy— but I judged it to be sugar- 
 candy — yet, to my raised imagination, divested 
 of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified 
 candy ! — The orchestra lights at length arose, 
 those fair Auroras !” Once the bell sounded. It 
 was to ring out yet once again — and, incapable 
 of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a 
 sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It 
 rang the second time. The curtain drew up — I 
 was not past six years old — and the play was 
 Artaxerxes ! 
 
 I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — 
 the ancient part of it — and here was the court of 
 Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the 
 past I took no proper interest in the action going 
 on, for I understood not its import — but I heard 
 the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. 
 All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, 
 gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I 
 knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, 
 and the burning idol of their devotion almost con- 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 225 
 
 verted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and 
 believed those significations to be something more 
 than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a 
 dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but 
 in dreams. — Harlequin’s invasion followed ; where, 
 I remember, the transformation of the magistrates 
 into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of 
 grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his 
 own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of 
 St. Denys. 
 
 The next play to which I was taken was the Lady 
 of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some 
 scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. 
 It was followed by a pantomime, called Lun’s 
 Ghost — a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, 
 not long since dead — but to my apprehension (too 
 sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of an- 
 tiquity as Lud — the father of a line of Harlequins 
 — transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden scep- 
 tre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval 
 Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest 
 of white patch-work, like the apparition of a dead 
 rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) look when 
 they are dead. 
 
 My third play followed in quick succession. It 
 was the Way of the World, I think I must have 
 
226 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY* 
 
 sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I remember, the 
 hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected 
 me like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson 
 Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and 
 the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the 
 story. — The clownery and pantaloonery of these 
 pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I 
 believe, I no more laughed at them, than at the 
 same age I should have been disposed to laugh at 
 the grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then 
 replete with devout meaning) that gape, and grin, 
 in stone around the inside of the old Round Church 
 (my church) of the Templars. 
 
 I saw these plays in the season 1781 - 2 , when I 
 was from six to seven years old. After the inter- 
 vention of six or seven other years (for at school all 
 play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors 
 of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had 
 never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the 
 same feelings to come again with the same occasion. 
 But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and six- 
 teen, than the latter does from six. In that inter- 
 val what had I not lost ! At the first period I 
 knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated 
 nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all — 
 
 Was nourished, I could not tell how — 
 
MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 227 
 
 I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a 
 rationalist. The same things were there materially ; 
 but the emblem, the reference, was gone ! — The 
 green curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between 
 two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring 
 back past ages, to present a royal ghost,’^ — but a 
 certain quantity of green baize, which was to sepa- 
 rate the audience for a given time from certain of 
 their fellow-men who were to come forward and 
 pretend those parts. The lights — the orchestra 
 lights — came up a clumsy machinery. The first 
 ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of 
 the prompter’s bell — which had been, like the note 
 of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen 
 or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The 
 actors were men and women painted. I thought 
 the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and 
 the alteration which those many centuries, — of six 
 short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. — Per- 
 haps it was fortunate for me that the play of the 
 evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave 
 me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, 
 which might have interfered with the genuine emo- 
 tions with which I was soon after enabled to enter 
 upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons 
 
228 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon 
 yielded to the present attraction of the scene ; and 
 the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the 
 most delightful of recreations. 
 
DREAM-CHILDREN ; 
 
 A REVERIE* 
 
 — # — 
 
 Children love to listen to stories about their 
 elders, when they were children; to stretch their 
 imagination to the conception of a traditionary 
 great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It 
 was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me 
 the other evening to hear about their great-grand- 
 mother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk 
 (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and 
 papa lived) which had been the scene — so at least 
 it was generally believed in that part of the country 
 — of the tragic incidents which they had lately be- 
 come familiar with from the ballad of the Children 
 in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of 
 the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen 
 fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece 
 
230 
 
 DREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 
 
 of the great hallj the whole story down to the Robin 
 Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down 
 to set up a marble one of modern invention in its 
 stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out 
 one of her dear mother^s looks, too tender to be 
 called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how 
 religious and how good their great-grandmother 
 Field was, how beloved and respected by every 
 body, though she was not indeed the mistress of 
 this great house, but had only the charge of it (and 
 yet in some respects she might be said to be the 
 mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, 
 who preferred living in a newer and more fashion- 
 able mansion which he had purchased somewhere 
 in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it 
 in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept 
 up the dignity of the great house in a sort while 
 she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and 
 was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments 
 stripped and carried away to the owner’s other house, 
 where they were set up, and looked as awkward as 
 if some one were to carry away the old tombs they 
 had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in 
 Lady C.’s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here J ohn 
 smiled, as much as to say, that would be foolish 
 indeed.” And then I told how, when she came to 
 
DREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 231 
 
 die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all 
 the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neigh- 
 bourhood for many miles round, to show their 
 respect for her memory, because she had been such 
 a good and religious woman ; so good indeed that 
 she knew, all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great 
 part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice 
 spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, 
 graceful person their great-grandmother Field once 
 was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the 
 best dancer — here Alice’s little right foot played 
 an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking 
 grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, 
 in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, 
 came, and bowed her down with pain ; but it could 
 never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, 
 but they were still upright, because she was so 
 good and religious. Then I told how she was used 
 to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great 
 lone house ; and how she believed that an apparition 
 of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding 
 up and down the great staircase near where she 
 slept, but she said those innocents would do her 
 no harm and how frightened I used to be, though 
 in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, 
 because I was never half so good or religious as she 
 
232 
 
 DREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 
 
 — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John 
 expanded all his eye-brows and tried to look cou- 
 rageous. Then I told how good she was to all her 
 grand-children, having us to the great-house in the 
 holydays, where I in particular used to spend many 
 hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of 
 the Twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of 
 Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live 
 again, or I to be turned into marble with them ; how 
 I never could be tired with roaming about that 
 huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their 
 worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved 
 oaken pannels, wdth the gilding almost rubbed out 
 — sometimes in the spacious old fashioned gardens, 
 which I had almost to myself, unless when now and 
 then a solitary gardening man would cross me — 
 and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the 
 walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, 
 because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and 
 then, — and because I had more pleasure in strolling 
 about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees, 
 or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the 
 fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look 
 at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with 
 all the fine garden smells around me — or basking 
 in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself 
 
DREAM“CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 
 
 233 
 
 ripening too along with the oranges and the limes 
 in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace 
 that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom 
 of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike 
 hanging midway down the water in silent state, as 
 if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — I had 
 niore pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than 
 in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, 
 oranges, and such like common baits of children. 
 Hei^e John slyly deposited back upon the plate a 
 bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, 
 he had meditated dividing with her, and both 
 seemed willing to relinquish them for the present 
 as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened 
 tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother 
 Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial 
 manner she might be said to love their uncle, John 
 
 L , because he was so handsome and spirited a 
 
 youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead 
 of moping about in solitary corners, like some of 
 us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he 
 could get, when but an imp no bigger than them- 
 selves, and make it carry him half over the county 
 in a morning, and join the hunters w^hen there were 
 any out — and yet he loved the old great house and 
 gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always 
 
234 
 
 DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERIE, 
 
 pent up within their boundaries — and how their 
 uncle grew up to man’s estate as brave as he was 
 handsome, to the admiration of every body, but of 
 their great grand-mother Field most especially ; 
 and how he used to carry me upon his back when 
 1 was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit 
 older than me— many a mile when I could not walk 
 for pain ; — and how in after life he became lame- 
 footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make 
 allowances enough for him when he was impatient, 
 and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how con- 
 siderate he had been to me wffien I was lame- 
 footed; and how when he died, though he had not 
 been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a 
 great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt 
 life and death ; and how I bore his death as I thought 
 pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and 
 haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to 
 heart as some do, and as I think he would have done 
 if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and 
 knew not till then how much I had loved him. I 
 missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and 
 wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with 
 him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not 
 have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as 
 he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor 
 
PREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 
 
 235 
 
 took off his limb. Here the children fell a crying, 
 and asked if their little mourning which they had 
 on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, 
 and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but 
 to tell them some stories about their pretty dead 
 mother. Then I told how for seven long years^ 
 in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet per- 
 sisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W — n ; and, 
 as much as children could understand, I explained 
 to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial 
 meant in maidens — when suddenly, turning to 
 Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her 
 eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I 
 became in doubt which of them stood there before 
 me, or whose that bright hair was ; and while I 
 stood gazing, both the children gradually grew 
 fainter to my view, receding, and still receding 
 till nothing at last but two mournful features w^ere 
 seen in the uttermost distance, which, without 
 speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of 
 speech ; We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are 
 we children at all. The children of Alice call Bar- 
 trum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, 
 and dreams. We are only what might have been, 
 and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe 
 
236 "^REAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERIE. 
 
 millions of ages before we have existence, and a 
 
 name’’ and immediately awaking, I found 
 
 myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, 
 where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget 
 unchanged by my side — but John L. (or James 
 Elia) was gone for ever. 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 IN 
 
 A LETTER TO B. F. ESQ., AT SYDNEY, 
 
 NEW SOUTH WALES. 
 
 ■ 
 
 My dear F. — when I think how welcome the 
 sight of a letter from the world where you were 
 born must be to you in that strange one to which 
 you have been transplanted, I feel some compunc- 
 tious visitings at my long silence. But, indeed, it 
 is no easy effort to set about a correspondence at 
 our distance. The weary world of waters between 
 us oppresses the imagination. It is difficult to con- 
 ceive how a scrawl of mine should ever stretch 
 across it. It is a sort of presumption to expect that 
 one’s thoughts should live so far. It is like writing 
 for posterity ; and reminds me of one of Mrs. 
 Rowe’s superscriptions, Alcander to Strephon, in 
 the shades.” Cowley’s Post-Angel is no more than 
 would be expedient in such an intercourse. One 
 
238 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 drops a packet at Lombard-street, and in twenty- 
 four hours a friend in Cumberland gets it as fresh 
 as if it came in ice. It is only like whispering 
 through a long trumpet. But suppose a tube let 
 down from the moon, with yourself at one end, and 
 the man at the other ; it would be some balk to 
 the spirit of conversation, if you knew that the dia- 
 logue exchanged with that interesting theosophist 
 would take two or three revolutions of a higher 
 luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I know, 
 you may be some parasangs nigher that primitive 
 idea — Platon’s man — than we in England here have 
 the honour to reckon ourselves. 
 
 Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics ; 
 news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include 
 all non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious in them- 
 selves, but treated after my fashion, non-seriously. 
 — And first, for news. In them the most desirable 
 circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true. 
 But what security can I have that what I now send 
 you for truth shall not before you get it unaccount- 
 ably turn into a lie? For instance, our mutual 
 friend P. is at this present writing— //zy 'Noxo — in 
 good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly 
 reputation. You are glad to hear it. This is natural 
 and friendly. But at this present reading — your 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 239 
 
 Norn — he may possibly be in the Bench, or going 
 to be hanged, which in reason ought to abate some- 
 thing of your transport (z. e. at hearing he was well, 
 &c.), or at least considerably to modify it. I am 
 going to the play this evening, to have a laugh 
 with Munden. You have no theatre, I think you 
 
 told me, in your land of d ^^d realities. You 
 
 naturally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity. 
 Think but a moment, and you will correct the hate- 
 ful emotion. Why, it is Sunday morning with you, 
 and 1823. This confusion of tenses, this grand 
 solecism of two presents^ is in a degree common to 
 all postage. But if I sent you word to Bath or the 
 Devizes, that I w^as expecting the aforesaid treat 
 this evening, though at the moment you received the 
 intelligence my full feast of fun would be over, yet 
 there would be for a day or two after, as you would 
 well know, a smack, a relish left upon my mental 
 palate, which would give rational encouragement for 
 you to foster a portion at least of the disagreeable 
 passion, which it was in part my intention to pro- 
 duce. But ten months hence your envy or your 
 sympathy would be as useless as a passion spent 
 upon the dead. Not only does truth, in these long 
 intervals, un-essence herself, but (w’hat is harder) 
 one cannot venture a crude fiction for the fear that 
 
240 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What 
 a wild improbable banter I put upon you some 
 
 three years since of Will Weatherall having 
 
 married a servant maid ! I remember gravely con- 
 sulting you how we were to receive her — for Will’s 
 wife was in no case to be rejected ; and your no less 
 serious replication in the matter ; how tenderly you 
 advised an abstemious introductipn of literary topics 
 before the lady, with a caution not to be too forward 
 in bringing on the carpet matters more within the 
 sphere of her intelligence ; your deliberate judg- 
 ment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how 
 far jacks, and spits, and mops, could with propriety 
 be introduced as subjects; whether the conscious 
 avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not 
 have a worse look than the taking of them casually 
 in our way ; in what manner we should carry our- 
 selves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall 
 being by ; whether we should show more delicacy, 
 and a truer sense of respect for Will’s wife, by treat- 
 ing Becky with our customary chiding before her, 
 or by an unusual deferential civility paid to Becky 
 as to a person of great worth, but thrown by the 
 caprice of fate into a humble station. There were 
 difficulties, I remember, on both sides, which you 
 did me the favour to state with the precision of a 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 241 
 
 lawyer, united to the tenderness of a friend. I 
 laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when 
 lo ! while I was valuing myself upon this flam put 
 upon you in New South Wales, the devil in Eng- 
 land, jealous possibly of any lie-children not his own, 
 or working after my copy, has actually instigated 
 our friend (not three days since) to the commission 
 of a matrimony, which I had only conjured up for 
 your diversion. William Weatherall has married 
 Mrs. Cotterel’s maid. But to take it in its truest 
 sense, you will see, my dear F., that news from 
 me must become history to you ; which I neither 
 profess to write, nor indeed care much for reading. 
 No person, under a diviner, can with any prospect 
 of veracity conduct a correspondence at such an 
 arm’s length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus 
 interchange intelligence with effect; the epoch of 
 the writer (Habbakuk) falling in with the true 
 present time of the receiver (Daniel) ; but then we 
 are no prophets. 
 
 Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with 
 that. This kind of dish, above all, requires to be 
 served up hot ; or sent off in water-plates, that your 
 friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If 
 it have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all 
 cold meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the 
 
 M 
 
242 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 late Lord C. It seems that travelling somewhere 
 about Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, 
 or nook, where a willow, or something, hung so 
 fantastically and invitingly over a stream — was it? — 
 or a rock ? — no matter — but the stillness and the 
 repose, after a weary journey ’tis likely, in a languid 
 moment of his lordship’s hot restless life, so took 
 his fancy, that he could imagine no place so proper, 
 in the event of his death, to lay his bones in. This 
 was all very natural and excusable as a sentiment, 
 and shows his character in a very pleasing light. 
 But when from a passing sentiment it came to be 
 an act ; and when, by a positive testamentary dis- 
 posal, his remains were actually carried all that way 
 from England ; who was there, some desperate sen- 
 timentalists excepted, that did not ask the question. 
 Why could not his lordship have found a spot as 
 solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and 
 pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, 
 in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon ? Conceive the 
 sentiment boarded up, freighted, entered at the 
 Custom House (startling the tide-waiters with the 
 novelty), hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed 
 about and handled between the rude jests of tar- 
 paulin ruffians — a thing of its delicate texture — the 
 salt bilge wetting it till it became as vapid as a 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 243 
 
 damaged lustring. Suppose it in material danger 
 (mariners have some superstition about sentiments) 
 of being tossed over in a fresh gale to some pro- 
 pitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Gothard, save us 
 from a quietus so foreign to the deviser’s purpose !) 
 but it has happily evaded a fishy consummation. 
 Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons shall 
 we say? — I have not the map before me — ^jostled 
 upon four men’s shoulders — baiting at this town — 
 stopping to refresh at t’other village — waiting a 
 passport here, a licence there ; the sanction of the 
 magistracy in this district, the concurrence of the 
 ecclesiastics in that canton ; till at length it arrives 
 at its destination, tired out and jaded, from a brisk 
 sentiment, into a feature of silly pride or tawdry 
 senseless affectation. How few sentiments, my dear 
 F., I am afraid we can set down, in the sailor’s 
 phrase, as quite sea-worthy. 
 
 Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though 
 contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula 
 which should irradiate a right friendly epistle — 
 your puns and small jests are, I apprehend, ex- 
 tremely circumscribed in their sphere of action. 
 They are so far from a capacity of being packed 
 up and sent beyond sea, they will scarce endure to 
 be transported by hand from this room to the next. 
 
 M 2 
 
244 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 Their vigour is as the instant of their birth. 
 Their nutriment for their brief existence is the 
 intellectual atmosphere of the by-standers : or this 
 last is the fine slime of Nilus — the melior lutus ^ — 
 whose maternal recipiency is as necessary as the 
 sol pater to their equivocal generation. A pun hath 
 a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack with it; 
 you can no more transmit it in its pristine flavour, 
 than you can send a kiss. — Have you not tried in 
 some instances to palm off a yesterday'^s pun upon 
 a gentleman, and has it answered ? Not but it was 
 new to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new 
 from you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking 
 up at a village ale-house a two days old newspaper. 
 You have not seen it before, but you resent the 
 stale thing as an affront. This sort of merchandise 
 above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its 
 recognitory laugh, must be co-ins tantaneous. The 
 one is the brisk lightning, the other the fierce 
 thunder. A moment’s interval, and the link is 
 snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend’s face 
 as from a mirror. Who would consult his sweet 
 visnomy, if the polished surface were two or three 
 minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear 
 F.) in giving back its copy? 
 
 I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 245 
 
 When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins’s island comes 
 across me. Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades 
 of Thieves, I see Diogenes prying among you with 
 his perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be 
 willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest 
 man! You must almost have forgotten how ive 
 look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites do ? are 
 they th**v%g all day long? Merciful heaven! 
 what property can stand against such a depredation 1 
 The kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep 
 their primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with 
 those little short fore-puds, looking like a lesson 
 framed by nature to the pickpocket 1 Marry, for 
 diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided 
 a priori I but if the hue and cry were once up, they 
 would show as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the 
 expertest loco-motor in the colony. — We hear the 
 most improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it 
 true that the young Spartans among you are born 
 with six fingers, which spoils their scanning? — It 
 must look very odd ; but use reconciles. For their 
 scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take it 
 into their heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn 
 out, the greater part of them, vile plagiarists. — Is 
 there much difference to see too between the son of 
 a th**f, and the grandson ? or where does the taint 
 
246 
 
 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 stop ? Do you bleach in three or in four genera- 
 tions? — I have many questions to put, but ten 
 Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time 
 than it will take to satisfy my scruples. — Do you 
 grow your own hemp? — What is your staple 
 trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean ? 
 Your lock-smiths, I take it, are some of your great 
 capitalists. 
 
 I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as 
 when we used to exchange good-morrows out of 
 our old contiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare- 
 court in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that 
 quiet corner? — Why did I? — with its complement 
 of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, 
 the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first 
 lady-birds ! My heart is as dry as that spring 
 sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I 
 revert to the space that is between us ; a length of 
 passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of 
 our English letters before they can reach you. But 
 while I talk, I think you hear me, — thoughts dally- 
 ing with vain surmise — 
 
 Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
 
 Hold far away. 
 
 Come back, before I am grown into a very old 
 man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, 
 
DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 
 
 247 
 
 before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you 
 left children have become sage matrons, while you 
 are tarrying there. The blooming Miss W — r(you 
 remember Sally W — r) called upon us yesterday, 
 an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off 
 every year. Formerly, I thought that death was 
 wearing out, — I stood ramparted about with so 
 many healthy friends. The departure of J. W., 
 two springs back, corrected my delusion. Since 
 then the old divorcer has been busy. If you do 
 not make haste to return, there will be little left 
 to greet you, of me, or mine. 
 
THE PRAISE 
 
 OF 
 
 CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a 
 grown sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no 
 means attractive — but one of those tender novices, 
 blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal 
 washings not quite effaced from the cheek — such as 
 come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, 
 with their little professional notes sounding like the 
 peep peep of a young sparrow ; or liker to the matin 
 lark should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents 
 not seldom anticipating the sun-rise ? 
 
 I have a kindly yearning toward these dim 
 specks — poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 
 
 I reverence these young Africans of our own 
 growth — these almost clergy imps, who sport their 
 cloth without assumption ; and from their little 
 pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS, 249 
 
 air of a December morning, preach a lesson of 
 patience to mankind. 
 
 When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was 
 to witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger 
 than one’s-self enter, one knew not by what process, 
 into what seemed the fauces Averni — to pursue him 
 in imagination, as he went sounding on through so 
 many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades ! — to shud- 
 der with the idea that now, surely, he must be lost 
 for ever ! ” — to revive at hearing his feeble shout 
 of discovered day-light — and then (O fulness of 
 delight) running out of doors, to come just in time 
 to see the sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the 
 brandished weapon of his art victorious like some 
 flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I seem to 
 remember having been told, that a bad sweep was 
 once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate 
 which way the wind blew. It was an awful 
 spectacle certainly ; not much unlike the old stage 
 direction in Macbeth, where the Apparition of a 
 child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises.” 
 
 Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry 
 in thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. 
 It is better to give him two-pence. If it be starv- 
 ing weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard 
 occupation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual ac- 
 M 3 
 
250 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 companiment) be superadded, the demand on thy 
 humanity will surely rise to a tester. 
 
 There is a composition, the ground-work of which 
 I have understood to be the sweet wood ’yclept sas- 
 safras. This wood boiled down to a kind of tea, 
 and tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar, 
 hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the China 
 luxury, I know not how thy palate may relish it ; 
 for myself, with every deference to the judicious 
 Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept open 
 a shop (the only one he avers in London) for the 
 vending of this wholesome and pleasant beverage,” 
 on the south side of Fleet-street, as thou approach- 
 est Bridge-street — only Salopian house ^ — I have 
 never yet adventured to dip my own particular lip 
 in a basin of his commended ingredients — a cautious 
 premonition to the olfactories constantly whispering 
 to me, that my stomach must infallibly, with all due 
 courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen palates, other- 
 wise not uninstructed in dietetical elegances, sup it 
 up with avidity. 
 
 I know not by what particular conformation of 
 the organ it happens, but I have always found 
 that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to 
 the palate of a young chimney-sweeper — whether 
 the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 251 
 
 do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, 
 which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere 
 to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practi- 
 tioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had 
 mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these 
 raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her 
 sassafras for a sweet lenitive — but so it is, that 
 no possible taste or odour to the senses of a young 
 chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement 
 comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, they 
 will yet hang their black heads over the ascending 
 steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly 
 no less pleased than those domestic animals — cats — > 
 wdien they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. 
 There is something more in these sympathies than 
 philosophy can inculcate. 
 
 Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without rea- 
 son, that his is the only Salopian house ; yet be it 
 known to thee, reader — if thou art one who keepest 
 what are called good hours, thou art haply ignorant 
 of the fact — he hath a race of industrious imitators, 
 who from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the 
 same savoury mess to humbler customers, at that 
 dead time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) 
 the rake, reeling home from his midnight cups, and 
 the hard-handed artisan leaving his bed to resume 
 
252 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 the premature labours of the day, jostle, not unfre-^ 
 quently to the manifest disconcerting of the former, 
 for the honours of the pavement. It is the time 
 w^hen, in summer, between the expired and the not 
 yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of our fair 
 metropolis give forth their least satisfactory odours. 
 The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his o’er-night 
 vapours in more grateful coffee, curses the ungenial 
 fume, as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, 
 and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 
 
 This is Saloop — the precocious herb-woman’s 
 darling — the delight of the early gardener, who 
 transports his smoking cabbages by break of day 
 from Hammersmith to Covent-garden’s famed piaz- 
 zas — the delight, and, oh I fear, too often the envy, 
 of the unpennied sweep. Him shouldest thou haply 
 encounter, with his dim visage pendent over the 
 grateful steam, regale him with a sumptuous basin 
 (it will cost thee but three-half-pennies) and a slice 
 of delicate bread and butter (an added halfpenny) 
 — so may thy culinary fires, eased of the o’er-charged 
 secretions from thy worse-placed hospitalities, curl 
 up a lighter volume to the welkin — so may the 
 descending soot never taint thy costly well-ingre- 
 dienced soups — nor the odious cry, quick-reaching 
 from street to street, of the fired chimney ^ invite the 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 253 
 
 rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, to dis- 
 turb for a casual scintillation thy peace and pocket ! 
 
 I am by nature extremely susceptible of street 
 affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the 
 low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, 
 or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I 
 endure the jocularity of a young sweep with some- 
 thing more than forgiveness. — In the last winter 
 but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accus- 
 tomed precipitation when I walk westward, a 
 treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an 
 instant. I scrambled up with pain and shame 
 enough — yet outwardly trying to face it down, as 
 if nothing had happened — when the roguish grin of 
 one of these young wits encountered me. There he 
 stood, pointing me out with his dusky finger to the 
 mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his mother) in 
 particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness of the 
 fun (so he thought it) worked themselves out at the 
 corners of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous 
 weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through 
 all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that 
 
 Hogarth But Hogarth has got him already 
 
 (how could he miss him ?) in the March to Finch- 
 ley, grinning at the pye-man -there he stood, as 
 
 he stands in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest 
 
254 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 was to last for ever — with such a maximum of glee, 
 and minimum of mischief, in his mirth — for the 
 grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice 
 in it — that I could have been content, if the honour 
 of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained 
 his butt and his mockery till midnight. 
 
 I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of 
 what are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of 
 rosy lips (the ladies must pardon me) is a casket, 
 presumably holding such jewels ; but, methinks, 
 they should take leave to air ’’ them as frugally 
 as possible. The fine lady, or fine gentleman, who 
 show me their teeth, show me bones. Yet must I 
 confess, that from the mouth of a true sweep a 
 display (even to ostentation) of those white and 
 shining ossifications, strikes me as an agreeable 
 anomaly in manners, and an allowable piece of 
 foppery. It is, as when 
 
 A sable cloud 
 
 Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 
 
 It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; 
 a badge of better days ; a hint of nobility : — and, 
 doubtless, under the obscuring darkness and double 
 night of their forlorn disguisement, oftentimes 
 lurketh good blood, and gentle conditions, derived 
 from lost ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree. The 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 255 
 
 premature apprenticements of these tender victims 
 give but too much encouragement, I fear, to clan- 
 destine and almost infantile abductions ; the seeds 
 of civility and true courtesy, so often discernible in 
 these young grafts (not otherwise to be accounted 
 for) plainly hint at some forced adoptions ; many 
 noble Rachels mourning for their children, even in 
 our days, countenance the fact ; the tales of fairy- 
 spiriting may shadow a lamentable verity, and the 
 recovery of the young Montagu be but a solitary 
 instance of good fortune out of many irreparable 
 and hopeless dejiliations. 
 
 In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few 
 years since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of 
 the Howards is an object of curiosity to visiters, 
 chiefly for its beds, in which the late duke was 
 especially a connoisseur) — encircled with curtains 
 of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets inwoven 
 — folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer 
 than the lap where Venus lulled Ascanius — was 
 discovered by chance, after all methods of search 
 had failed, at noon-day, fast asleep, a lost chimney- 
 sweeper. The little creature, having somehow 
 confounded his passage among the intricacies of 
 those lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture 
 had alighted upon this magnificent chamber ; and, 
 
256 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to 
 resist the delicious invitement to repose, which he 
 there saw exhibited; so, creeping between the 
 sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon the 
 pillow, and slept like a young Howard. 
 
 Such is the account given to the visiters at the 
 Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to perceive a 
 confirmation of what I have just hinted at in this 
 story. A high instinct was at work in the case, or 
 I am mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child 
 of that description, with whatever weariness he 
 might be visited, would have ventured, under such 
 a penalty, as he would be taught to expect, to 
 uncover the sheets of a Duke’s bed, and deliberately 
 to lay himself down between them, when the rug, 
 or the carpet, presented an obvious couch, still far 
 above his pretensions — is this probable, I would 
 ask, if the great power of nature, which I contend 
 for, had not been manifested within him, prompting 
 to the adventure ? Doubtless this young nobleman 
 (for such my mind misgives me that he must be) 
 was allured by some memory, not amounting to 
 full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when 
 he was used to be lapt by his mother, or his nurse, 
 in just such sheets as he there found, into which 
 he was now but creeping back as into his proper 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 257 
 
 incunabula^ and resting-place. — By no other theory, 
 than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state (as 
 I may call it), can I explain a deed so venturous, 
 and, indeed, upon any other system, so indecorous, 
 in this tender, but unseasonable, sleeper. 
 
 My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed 
 with a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently 
 taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs 
 of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted 
 an annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it 
 was his pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It 
 was a solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the 
 yearly return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards 
 were issued a week before to the master-sweeps in 
 and about the metropolis, confining the invitation 
 to their younger fry. Now and then an elderly 
 stripling would get in among us, and be good- 
 naturedly winked at; but our main body were 
 infantry. One unfortunate wight, indeed, who, 
 relying upon his dusky suit, had intruded himself 
 into our party, but by tokens was providentially 
 discovered in time to be no chimney-sweeper (all 
 is not soot which looks so), was quoited out of the 
 presence with universal indignation, as not having 
 on the wedding garment ; but in general the 
 greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was 
 
258 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 a convenient spot among the pens, at the north 
 side of the fair, not so far distant as to be impervious 
 to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity ; but remote 
 enough not to be obvious to the interruption of 
 every gaping spectator in it. The guests assembled 
 about seven. In those little temporary parlours 
 three tables were spread with napery, not so fine 
 as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess 
 presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The 
 nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the savour. 
 James White, as head waiter, had charge of the 
 first table ; and myself, with our trusty companion 
 Bigod, ordinarily ministered to the other two. 
 There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, 
 who should get at the first table — for Rochester 
 in his maddest days could not have done the 
 humours of the scene with more spirit than my 
 friend. After some general expression of thanks 
 for the honour the company had done him, his 
 inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist 
 of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the three), that 
 stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing 
 *Hhe gentleman,’' and imprint upon her chaste 
 lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host 
 would set up a shout that tore the concave, while 
 hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night with 
 
THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 259 
 
 their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the 
 sable younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with 
 Azs more unctuous sayings — how he would fit the 
 tit bits to the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier 
 links for the seniors — how he would intercept a 
 morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, 
 declaring it must to the pan again to be browned, 
 for it was not fit for a gentleman’s eating” — how he 
 would recommend this slice of white bread, or that 
 piece of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising 
 them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, 
 which were their best patrimony, — how genteelly 
 he would deal about the small ale, as if it were wine, 
 naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were not 
 good, he should lose their custom ; with a special 
 recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. 
 Then we had our toasts — The King,” — the 
 Cloth,” — which, whether they understood or not, 
 was equally diverting and flattering; — and for a 
 crowning sentiment, which never failed, May the 
 Brush supersede the Laurel !” All these, and fifty 
 other fancies, which were rather felt than compre- 
 hended by his guests, would he utter, standing upon 
 tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a Gen- 
 tlemen, give me leave to propose so and so,” which 
 was a prodigious comfort to those young orphans ; 
 
260 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 
 
 every now and then stuffing into his mouth (for it 
 did not do to be squeamish on these occasions) in- 
 discriminate pieces of those reeking sausages, which 
 pleased them mightily, and was the savouriest part 
 you may believe, of the entertainment. 
 
 Golden lads and lasses must, 
 
 As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — 
 
 James White is extinct, and with him these 
 suppers have long ceased. He carried away with 
 him half the fun of the world when he died — of 
 my world at least. His old clients look for him 
 among the pens; and, missing him, reproach the 
 altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of 
 Smithfield departed for ever. 
 
A COMPLAINT 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 
 
 IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 The all-sweeping besom of societarian reform- 
 ation — your only modern Alcides’ club to rid the 
 time of its abuses — is uplift with many-handed 
 sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the 
 bugbear Mendicity from the metropolis. Scrips, 
 wallets, bags — staves, dogs, and crutches — the whole 
 mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are 
 fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh 
 persecution. From the crowded crossing, from the 
 corners of streets and turnings of alleys, the parting 
 Genius of Beggary is ‘^with sighing sent.’’ 
 
 I do not approve of this wholesale going to 
 work, this impertinent crusado, or helium ad exter- 
 
262 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY 
 
 minationem^ proclaimed against a species. Much 
 good might be sucked from these Beggars. 
 
 They were the oldest and the honourablest form 
 of pauperism. Their appeals were to our common 
 nature ; less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to 
 be a suppliant to the particular humours or caprice 
 of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, 
 parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only 
 rates uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the 
 assessment. 
 
 There was a dignity springing from the very 
 depth of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be 
 so much nearer to the being a man, than to go in 
 livery. 
 
 The greatest spirits have felt this in their re- 
 verses; and when Dionysius from king turned 
 schoolmaster, do we feel any thing towards him but 
 contempt? Could Vandyke have made a picture of 
 him, swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would 
 have affected our minds with the same heroic pity, 
 the same compassionate admiration, with which we 
 regard his Belisarius begging for an obolum? Would 
 the moral have been more graceful, more pathetic ? 
 
 The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of 
 pretty Bessy — whose story doggrel rhymes and 
 ale-house signs cannot so degrade or attenuate, but 
 
OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS. 263 
 
 that some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine 
 through the disguisements — this noble Earl of 
 Cornwall (as indeed he was) and memorable sport 
 of fortune, fleeing from the unjust sentence of his 
 liege lord, stript of all, and seated on the flowering 
 green of Bethnal, with his more fresh and springing 
 daughter by his side, illumining his rags and his 
 beggary — would the child and parent have cut a 
 better figure, doing the honours of a counter, or 
 expiating their fallen condition upon the three-foot 
 eminence of some sempstering shop-board? 
 
 In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just 
 antipode to your King. The poets and romancical 
 writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call 
 them) when they would most sharply and feelingly 
 paint a reverse of fortune, never stop till they have 
 brought down their hero in good earnest to rags and 
 the wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates 
 the height he falls from. There is no medium which 
 can be presented to the imagination without offence. 
 There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from 
 his palace, must divest him of his garments, till he 
 answer “ mere nature and Cresseid, fallen from 
 a prince’s love, must extend her pale arms, pale 
 with other whiteness than of beauty, supplicating 
 lazar alms with bell and clap-dish. 
 
264 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY 
 
 The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with 
 a converse policy, when they would express scorn 
 of greatness without the pity, they show us an 
 Alexander in the shades cobbling shoes, or a 
 Semiramis getting up foul linen. 
 
 How would it sound in song, that a great monarch 
 had declined his affections upon the daughter of a 
 baker ! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated 
 when we read the true ballad,’’ where King 
 Cophetua wooes the beggar maid ? 
 
 Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions 
 of pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one 
 properly contemns a beggar. Poverty is a compara- 
 tive thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its 
 neighbour grice.” Its poor rents and comings-in 
 are soon summed up and told. Its pretences to 
 property are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts 
 to save excite a smile. Every scornful companion 
 can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor 
 man reproaches poor man in the streets with impo- 
 litic mention of his condition, his own being a shade 
 better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No 
 rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of 
 weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale 
 of comparison. He is not under the measure of 
 property. He confessedly hath none, any mor^ 
 
OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS. 265 
 
 than a dog or a sheep. No one twitteth him with 
 ostentation above his means. No one accuses him 
 of pride, or upbraideth him with mock humility. 
 None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quarrels 
 for precedency. No wealthy neighbour seeketh to 
 eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. 
 No man goes to law with him. If I were not the 
 independent gentleman that I am, rather than I 
 w^ould be a retainer to the great, a led captain, 
 or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the 
 delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a 
 Beggar. 
 
 Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the 
 Beggar’s robes, and graceful insignia of his pro- 
 fession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which 
 he is expected to show himself in public. He is 
 never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly 
 behind it. He is not required to put on court 
 mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. 
 His costume hath undergone less change than the 
 Quaker’s. He is the only man in the universe who 
 is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and 
 downs of the world concern him no longer. He 
 alone continueth in one stay. The price of stock or 
 land affecteth him not. The fluctuations of aofri- 
 cultural or commercial prosperity touch him not, 
 N 
 
A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY 
 
 or at worst but change his customers. He is not 
 expected to become bail or surety for any one. 
 No man troubleth him with questioning his reli- 
 gion or polities. He is the only free man in the 
 universe. 
 
 The Mendicants of this great city were so many 
 of her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them 
 than I could the Cries of London. No corner of 
 a street is complete without them. They are as 
 indispensable as the Ballad Singer; and in their 
 picturesque attire as ornamental as the Signs of old 
 London. They were the standing morals, emblems, 
 mementos, dial-mottos, the spital sermons, the books 
 for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the 
 high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry — 
 
 Look 
 
 Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. 
 
 Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line 
 the wall of Lincoln’s Inn Garden, before modern 
 fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their 
 ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) 
 oi light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, 
 — whither are they fled ? or into what corners, blind 
 as themselves, have they been driven, out of the 
 wholesome air and sun-warmth ? immersed between 
 four walls, in what withering poor-house do they 
 
OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS. 267 
 
 endure the penalty of double darkness, where the 
 chink of the dropt half-penny no more consoles their 
 forlorn bereavement, far from the sound of the 
 cheerful and hope-stirring tread of the passenger ? 
 Where hang their useless staves ? and who will farm 
 
 their dogs ? — Have the overseers of St. L 
 
 caused them to be shot ? or were they tied up in 
 sacks, and dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion 
 of B , the mild rector of ? 
 
 Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, 
 most classical, and at the same time, most Ekiglkh, 
 of the Latinists ! — who has treated of this human 
 and quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friend- 
 ship, in the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphium 
 in Canem, or. Dog s Epitaph, Reader, peruse it ; 
 and say, if customary sights, which could call up 
 such gentle poetry as this, were of a nature to do 
 more harm or good to the moral sense of the 
 passengers through the daily thoroughfares of a 
 vast and busy metropolis. 
 
 Pauperis hie Tri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 
 
 Dum vixi, tntela vigil columenque senects 0 . 
 
 Dux cseco fidus : nec, me ducente, solebat, 
 
 Prfetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum 
 Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutiis, 
 
 Qu 80 dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 
 Fixit inofFeuso gressu ; gelidumqiie sedile 
 In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium 
 
 N 2 
 
268 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY 
 
 Unda frequens conflnxit, ibi miseiisque tenebras 
 Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 
 
 Ploravit nec frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, 
 
 Qiieis corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam^ 
 
 Ad latus interea jaciii sopitus herile, 
 
 Vel niediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa 
 Auresqne atqae atiimum arreetus, sen frustiila amice 
 Porrexit sociasque dapes, sen langa diei 
 Taedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 
 
 Hi mores, hsec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
 
 Dum neque langnebam morbis, nec inerte senect^ ; 
 
 Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite caecum 
 Orbavit dominum : prisci sed gratia facti 
 Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per aniios, 
 
 Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
 
 Etsi inopis, non ingratse, munuscula dextrae; 
 
 Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque 
 Quod memuret, fidumque canem dominumque benignum. 
 
 Poor Irus’ faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 
 
 That wont to tend my old blind master’s steps, 
 
 His guide and guard : nor, while my service lasted. 
 Had he occasion for that staff, with which 
 He now goes picking out his path in fear 
 Over the highways and crossings; but would plant. 
 Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 
 
 A firm foot forward still, till he had reach’d 
 His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 
 Of passers by in thickest confluence flow’d : 
 
 To whom with loud and passionate laments 
 From morn to eve his dark estate he wail’d. 
 
 Nor wail’d to all in vain : some here and there. 
 The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 
 
 I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; 
 
 Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 
 Prick’d up at his least motion ; to receive 
 At his kind hand my customary crumbs. 
 
OF BEGGARS IN THE METROFOLIS. 
 
 269 
 
 And common portion in liis feast of scraps ; 
 
 Or when night warn’d us homeward, tired and spent 
 With our long day and tedious beggary. 
 
 These were my manners, this my way of life, 
 
 Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
 
 And sever’d from my sightless master’s side. 
 
 But lest the grace of so good deeds should die. 
 Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, 
 
 This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
 
 Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 
 
 And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
 
 In long and lasting union to attest. 
 
 The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 
 
 These dim eyes have in vain explored for some 
 months past a well-known figure, or part of the 
 figure, of a man, who used to glide his comely upper 
 half over the pavements of London, wheeling along 
 with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of 
 wood ; a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to 
 children. He was of a robust make, with a florid 
 sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the 
 storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a 
 speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. 
 The infant would stare at the mighty man brought 
 down to his own level. The common ciipple would 
 despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale 
 stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed 
 giant. Few but must have noticed him ; for the 
 accident, which brought him low, took place during 
 
270 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY 
 
 the riots of 1780, and he has been a f^roundlin^ so 
 long. He seemed earth-born, an Antaeus, and to 
 suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neigh- 
 boured, He was a grand fragment ; as good as an 
 Elgin marble. The nature, which should have 
 recruited his reft legs and thighs, was not lost, but 
 only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a 
 Hercules. 1 heard a tremendous voice thundering 
 and growling, as before an earthquake, and casting- 
 down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a 
 steed that had started at his portentous appear- 
 ance. He seemed to want but his just stature to 
 have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He 
 was as the man-part of a Centaur, from which the 
 horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan 
 controversy. He moved on, as if he could have 
 made shift with yet half of the body-portion which 
 was left him. The os suhlime was not wanting ; 
 and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the 
 heavens. Forty -and-two years had he driven this 
 out of door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled 
 in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, 
 because he is not content to exchange his free air 
 and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he 
 is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses 
 (ironically christened) of Correction. 
 
OF BEQGARS IN THE METROPOLIS’. 271 
 
 Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a 
 nuisance, which called for legal interference to 
 remove ? or not rather a salutary and a touching 
 object, to the passers-by in a great city ? Among 
 her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever- 
 gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumula- 
 tion of sights— endless sights — is a great city; or 
 for what else is it desirable ?) was there not room 
 for one Lusus (not Naturce, indeed, but) Acci- 
 dentium? What if in forty-and-two years’ going 
 about, the man had scraped together enough to 
 give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of a 
 few hundreds — whom had he injured? — v/hom had 
 he imposed upon? The contributors had enjoyed 
 their siffht for their pennies. What if after being 
 exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the 
 frosts of heaven— shuffling his ungainly trunk along 
 in an elaborate and painful motion — he was enabled 
 to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his 
 fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vege- 
 tables, as the charge was gravely brought against 
 him by a clergyman deposing before a House of 
 Commons’ Committee — was this, or was his truly 
 paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved 
 a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is incon- 
 sistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal 
 
272 
 
 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY 
 
 orgies which he has been slandered with — a reason 
 that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, 
 nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in 
 hoary age for a sturdy vagabond? — 
 
 There was a Yorick once, whom it would not 
 have shamed to have sate down at the cripples’ 
 feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, 
 and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. 
 Age, thou hast lost thy breed.” — 
 
 Half of these stories about the prodigious for- 
 tunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers’ 
 calumnies. One was much talked of in the public 
 papers some time since, and the usual charitable 
 inferences deduced. A clerk in the Bank was sur- 
 prised with the announcement of a five hundred 
 pound legacy left him by a person whose name he 
 was a stranger to. It seems that in his daily 
 morning walks from Peckham (or some village 
 thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had 
 been his practice for the last twenty years to drop 
 his halfpenny duly into the hat of some blind 
 Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way-side 
 in the Borough. The good old beggar recognised 
 his daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, when 
 he died, left all the amassings of his alms (that had 
 been half a century perhaps in the accumulating) 
 
OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 273 
 
 to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse 
 up people’s hearts, and pennies, against giving an 
 alms to the blind ? — or not rather a beautiful moral 
 of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble 
 gratitude upon the other? 
 
 I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. 
 
 I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of 
 creature, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes 
 in the sun — 
 
 Is it possible I could have steeled my purse 
 against him? 
 
 Perhaps I had no small change. 
 
 Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, 
 imposition, imposture — ffive, and ask no questions. 
 Cast thy bread upon the waters. Some have un- 
 awares (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels 
 
 Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted 
 distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor 
 creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before 
 thee, do not stay to inquire whether the “ seven 
 small children,” in whose name he implores thy 
 assistance, have a veritable existence. Rake not 
 into the bowels of unwelcome truth, to save a half- 
 penny. It is good to believe him. If he be not 
 all that he pretendeth, give^ and under a personate 
 father of a family, think (if thou pleasest) that thou 
 N 3 
 
274 DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 hast relieved an indigent bachelor. When they 
 come with their counterfeit looks, and mumping 
 tones, think them players. You pay your money 
 to see a comedian feign these things, which, con- 
 cerning these poor people, thou canst not certainly 
 tell whether they are feigned or not 
 
A DISSERTATION 
 
 UPON 
 
 ROAST PIG. 
 
 Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my 
 friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain 
 to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their 
 meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living ani- 
 mal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This 
 period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Con- 
 fucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Muta- 
 tions, where he designates a kind of golden age by 
 the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks’ holiday. The 
 manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, 
 or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder 
 brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner 
 following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out 
 into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to 
 
276 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care 
 of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who 
 being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his 
 age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a 
 bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the 
 conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, 
 till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the 
 cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a build- 
 ing, you may think it) what was of much more 
 importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no 
 less than nine in number, perished. China pigs 
 have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from 
 the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was 
 in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not 
 so much for the sake of the tenement, which his 
 father and he could easily build up again with a 
 few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two, 
 at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he 
 was thinking what he should say to his father, and 
 wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of 
 one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assailed 
 his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before 
 experienced. What could it proceed from ? — not 
 ^rom the burnt cottage — he had smelt that smell 
 before — indeed this was by no means the first acci- 
 dent of the kind which had occurred through the 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 277 
 
 negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much 
 less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, 
 or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same 
 time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what 
 to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, 
 if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his 
 fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his 
 booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of 
 the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, 
 and for the first time in his life (in the world’s 
 life indeed, for before him no man had known it) 
 he tasted — crackling ! Again he felt and fumbled at 
 the pig. It did not burn him so much now", still he 
 licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth 
 at length broke into his slow understanding, that it 
 w^as the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted 
 so delicious ; and, surrendering himself up to the 
 new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole 
 handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, 
 and w^as cramming it down his throat in his beastly 
 fashion, w^hen his sire entered amid the smoking 
 rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding 
 how" affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the 
 young rogue’s shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, 
 which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they 
 had been flies. The tickling pleasure, wdiich he 
 
278 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him 
 quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel 
 in those remote quarters. His father might lay 
 on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he 
 had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a 
 little more sensible of his situation, something like 
 the following dialogue ensued. 
 
 You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
 devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt 
 me down three houses with your dog’s tricks, and be 
 hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I 
 know not what — what have you got there, I say ?” 
 
 “ O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste 
 how nice the burnt pig eats.” 
 
 The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
 his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should 
 beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 
 
 Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened 
 since morning, soon raked out another pig, and 
 fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by 
 main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out 
 ‘*Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — 
 O Lord,” — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, 
 cramming all the while as if he would choke. 
 
 Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
 abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 279 
 
 put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, 
 when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had 
 done his son’s, and applying the same remedy to 
 them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, 
 which, make what sour mouths he would for a 
 pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. 
 In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little 
 tedious) both father and son fairly sat down to the 
 mess, and never left off till they had despatched all 
 that remained of the litter. 
 
 Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
 escape, for the neighbours would certainly have 
 stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, 
 who could think of improving upon the good meat 
 which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange 
 stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti’s 
 cottage was burnt down now more frequently than 
 ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. 
 Some would break out in broad day, others in the 
 night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure 
 was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti 
 himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of 
 chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent 
 to him than ever. At length they were watched, 
 the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son 
 summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an 
 
280 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, 
 the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and ver- 
 dict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of 
 the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which 
 the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the 
 box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and 
 burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had 
 done before them, and nature prompting to each of 
 them the same remedy, against the face of all the 
 facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever 
 given, — to the surprise of the whole court, towns- 
 folk, strangers, reporters, and all present — without 
 leaving the box, or any manner of consultation 
 whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict 
 of Not Guilty. 
 
 The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at 
 the manifest iniquity of the decision : and, when 
 the court was dismissed, went privily, and bought 
 up all the pigs that could be had for love or 
 money. In a few days his Lordship’s town house 
 was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, 
 and now there was nothing to be seen but fire in 
 every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously 
 dear all over the district. The insurance offices 
 one and all shut up shop. People built slighter 
 and slighter every day, until it was feared that the 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 281 
 
 very science of architecture would in no long time 
 be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing 
 houses continued, till in process of time, says my 
 manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made 
 a discovery, that the flesh of swine, or indeed of 
 any other animal, might be cooked {burnt, as they 
 called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole 
 house to dress it. Then first began the rude form 
 of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came 
 in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 
 By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do 
 the most useful, and seemingly the most obvious 
 arts, make their way among mankind. 
 
 Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
 above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy 
 pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting 
 houses on fire (especially in these days) could be 
 assigned in favour of any culinary object, that pre- 
 text and excuse might be found in roast pig. 
 
 Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, 
 I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
 obsoniorum, 
 
 I speak not of your grown porkers — ^things 
 between pig and pork — those hobbydehoys — but 
 a young and tender suckling — under a moon old — 
 guiltless as yet of the sty — with no original speck 
 
282 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 of the amor immunditicB, the hereditary failing of 
 the first parent, yet manifest — his voice as yet not 
 broken, but something between a childish treble, 
 and a grumble — the mild forerunner, or prcdudium, 
 of a grunt. 
 
 He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
 ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a 
 sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! 
 
 There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, 
 to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over- 
 roasted, crackling, as it is well called — the very 
 teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at 
 this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resist- 
 ance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it not 
 fat — but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it 
 — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the 
 bud — taken in the shoot— in the first innocence — 
 the cream and quintessence of the child-pig’s yet 
 
 pure food the lean, no lean, but a kind of 
 
 animal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it must 
 be so) so blended and running into each other, 
 that both together make but one ambrosian result, 
 or common substance. 
 
 Behold him, while he is doing — it seemeth rather 
 a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he 
 is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 283 
 
 the string ! — Now he is just done. To see the 
 extreme sensibility of that tender age, he hath 
 wept out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting 
 stars. — 
 
 See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek 
 he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent 
 grow up to the grossness and indocility which too 
 often accompany maturer swinehood ? Ten to one 
 he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an 
 obstinate, disagreeable animal — wallowing in all 
 manner of filthy conversation — from these sins he 
 is happily snatched away — 
 
 Ere sin could blight, or sorrow fade, 
 
 Death came with timely care — 
 
 his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while 
 his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no 
 coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he 
 hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of 
 the judicious epicure — and for such a tomb might 
 be content to die. 
 
 He is the best of Sapors. Pine-apple is great. 
 She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, 
 if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a 
 tender-conscienced person would do well to pause — 
 too ravishing for ' mortal taste, she woundeth and 
 excoriateth the lips that approach her — like lovers’ 
 
284 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on 
 pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish — 
 but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth not 
 with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might 
 barter her consistently for a mutton chop. 
 
 Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provo- 
 cative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the 
 criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong 
 man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth 
 not his mild juices. 
 
 Unlike to mankind’s mixed characters, a bundle 
 of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and 
 not to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good 
 throughout. No part of him is better or worse than 
 another. He helpeth, as far as his little means 
 extend, all at’ound. He is the least envious of 
 banquets. He is all neighbours’ fare. 
 
 I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly 
 impart a share of the good things of this life which 
 fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a 
 friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my 
 friend’s pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfac- 
 tions, as in mine own. Presents,’’ I often say, 
 
 endear Absents.” Hares, pheasants, partridges, 
 snipes, barn-door chickens (those tame villatic 
 fowl”), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIO. 285 
 
 dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
 them^ as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. 
 But a stop must be put somewhere. One would 
 not, like Lear, ‘^give every thing.’' I make my 
 stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to 
 the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, 
 or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pre- 
 text of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing 
 so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to 
 my individual palate — It argues an insensibility. 
 
 I remember a touch of conscience in this kind 
 at school. My good old aunt, who never parted 
 from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a 
 sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had 
 dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum- 
 cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it 
 was over London bridge) a grey-headed old beggar 
 saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day 
 that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to 
 console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, 
 and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, 
 I made him a present of — the whole cake ! I walked 
 on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, 
 with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; but before 
 I had got to the end of the bridge, my better 
 feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking 
 
286 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go 
 and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I 
 had never seen before, and who might be a bad 
 man for aught I knew ; and then I thought of the 
 pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that 
 I — I myself, and not another — would eat her nice 
 cake — and what should I say to her the next time 
 I saw her — how naughty I was to part with her 
 pretty present — and the odour of that spicy cake 
 came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure 
 and the curiosity 1 had taken in seeing her make 
 it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and 
 how disappointed she would feel that 1 had never 
 had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed 
 my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of- 
 place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished 
 never to see the face again of that insidious, good- 
 for-nothing, old grey impostor. 
 
 Our ancestors were nice in their method of 
 sacrificing these tender victims. VVe read of pigs 
 whipt to death with something of a shock, as we 
 hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of 
 discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to 
 inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect 
 this process might have towards intenerating and 
 dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet 
 
A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 287 
 
 as tlie flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining 
 a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we 
 condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the 
 wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto. — - 
 
 I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the 
 young students, when I was at St. Omer’s, and 
 maintained with much learning and pleasantry on 
 both sides, Whether, supposing that the flavour 
 of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (j)er 
 flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure 
 upon the palate of a man more intense than any 
 possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is 
 man justified in using that method of putting the 
 animal to death ? I forget the decision. 
 
 His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a 
 few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and 
 brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear 
 Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. 
 Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep 
 them in shalots, stuflf them out with plantations 
 of the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison 
 them, or make them stronger than they are— but 
 consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 
 
A BACHELOR’S COMPLAINT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 — ^ — 
 
 As a single man, I have spent a good deal of 
 my time in noting down the infirmities of Married 
 People, to console myself for those superior plea- 
 sures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining 
 as I am. 
 
 I cannot say that the quarrels of men and their 
 wives ever made any great impression upon me, or 
 had much tendency to strengthen me in those anti- 
 social resolutions, which I took up long ago upon 
 more substantial considerations. What oftenest 
 offends me at the houses of married persons where 
 I visit, is an error of quite a different description ; 
 — it is that they are too loving. 
 
 Not too loving neither: that does not explain 
 my meaning. Besides, why should that offend me ? 
 The very act of separating themselves from the 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 289 
 
 rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment of 
 each other’s society, implies that they prefer one 
 another to all the world. 
 
 But what I complain of is, that they carry this 
 preference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the 
 faces of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot 
 be in their company a moment without being made 
 to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that 
 you are not the object of this preference. Now 
 there are some things which give no offence, while 
 implied or taken for granted merely ; but expressed, 
 there is much offence in them. If a man were to 
 accost the first homely-featured or plain-dressed 
 young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her 
 bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enough 
 for him, and he could not marry her, he would 
 deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet no less 
 is implied in the fact, that having access and oppor- 
 tunity of putting the question to her, he has never 
 yet thought fit to do it. The young woman under- 
 stands this as clearly as if it were put into words ; 
 but no reasonable young woman would think of 
 making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little 
 right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, 
 and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, 
 that I am not the happy man, — the lady’s choice. 
 
 o 
 
290 A bachelor’s complaint of the 
 
 It is enough that I know I am not: I do not want 
 this perpetual reminding. 
 
 The display of superior knowledge or riches may 
 be made sufficiently mortifying ; but these admit of 
 a palliative. The knowledge which is brought out 
 to insult me, may accidentally improve me ; and in 
 the rich man’s houses and pictures, — his parks and 
 gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But 
 the display of married happiness has none of these 
 palliatives : it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, 
 unqualified insult. 
 
 Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not 
 of the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of 
 most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep 
 their advantage as much out of sight as possible, 
 that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of 
 the benefit, may the less be disposed to question 
 the right. But these married monopolists thrust the 
 most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces. 
 
 Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire 
 complacency and satisfaction which beam in the 
 countenances of a new-married couple, — in that of 
 the lady particularly: it tells you, that her lot is 
 disposed of in this world: that you can have no 
 hopes of her. It is true, I have none ; nor wishes 
 either, perhaps : but this is one of those truths 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE, 291 
 
 which ought, as I said before, to be taken for 
 granted, not expressed. 
 
 The excessive airs which those people give them- 
 selves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried 
 people, would be more offensive if they were less 
 irrational. We will allow them to understand the 
 mysteries belonging to their own craft better than 
 we who have not had the happiness to be made free 
 of the company : but their arrogance is not content 
 within these limits. If a single person presume to 
 offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the 
 most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced 
 as an incompetent person. Nay, a young married 
 lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest 
 was, had not changed her condition above a fort- 
 night before, in a question on which I had the mis- 
 fortune to differ from her, respecting the properest 
 mode of breeding oysters for the London market, 
 had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an 
 old Bachelor as I could pretend to know any thing 
 about such matters. 
 
 But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to 
 the airs which these creatures give themselves when 
 they come, as they generally do, to have children. 
 When I consider how little of a rarity children are, 
 — that every street and blind alley swarms with 
 o 2 
 
292 A bachelor’s complaint of the 
 
 them, — that the poorest people commonly have 
 them in most abundance, — that there are few mar- 
 riages that are not blest with at least one of these 
 bargains, — bow often they turn out ill, and defeat 
 the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious 
 courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, 
 &c, — I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride 
 there can possibly be in having them. If they w’ere 
 young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in 
 a year, there might be a pretext. But when they 
 are so common 
 
 I do not advert to the insolent merit which they 
 assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let 
 them look to that. But why we^ who are not their 
 natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring 
 our spices, myrrh, and incense, — our tribute and 
 homage of admiration, — I do not see. 
 
 Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, 
 even so are the young children:” so says the excel- 
 lent office in our Prayer-book appointed for the 
 churching of women. Happy is the man that 
 hath his quiver full of them:” So say I ; but then 
 don’t let him discharge his quiver upon us that are 
 weaponless ; — let them be arrows, but not to gall 
 and stick us. I have generally observed that these 
 arrows are double-headed : they have two forks, to 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 293 
 
 be sure to hit with one or the other. As for 
 instance, where you come into a house which is full 
 of children, if you happen to take no notice of them 
 (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and 
 turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are 
 set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. 
 On the other hand, if you find them more than 
 usually engaging, — if you are taken with their 
 pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp 
 and play with them, some pretext or other is sure 
 to be found for sending them out of the room : they 
 
 are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not 
 
 like children. With one or other of these forks the 
 arrow is sure to hit you. 
 
 I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with 
 toying with their brats, if it gives them any pain ; 
 but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to 
 love them, where I see no occasion, — to love a 
 whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indis- 
 criminately, — to love all the pretty dears, because 
 children are so engaging. 
 
 I know there is a proverb, Love me, love my 
 dog : ” that is not always so very practicable, par- 
 ticularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or 
 snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing, 
 — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch 
 
294 A BACHELOR^S COMPLAINT OF THE 
 
 or a ring, a tree, or the place, where we last parted 
 when my friend went away upon a long absence, I 
 can make shift to love, because I love him, and any 
 thing that reminds me of him ; provided it be in its 
 nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue 
 fancy can give it. But children have a real cha- 
 racter, and an essential being of themselves : they 
 are amiable or unamiable per se ; I must love or 
 hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. 
 A child’s nature is too serious a thing to admit of 
 its being regarded as a mere appendage to another 
 being, and to be loved or hated accordingly : they 
 stand with me upon their own stock, as much as 
 men and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it 
 is an attractive age, — there is something in the ten- 
 der years of infancy that of itself charms us. That 
 is the very reason why I am more nice about them. 
 I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in 
 nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures 
 which bear them ; but the prettier the kind of a 
 thing is, the more desirable it is that it should 
 be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much 
 from another in glory ; but a violet should look and 
 smell the daintiest. — I was always rather squeamish 
 in my women and children. 
 
 But this is not the worst: one must be admitted 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 295 
 
 into their familiarity at least, before they can com- 
 plain of inattention. It implies visits, and some 
 kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man 
 with whom you have lived on a friendly footing 
 before marriage, — if you did not come in on the 
 wife’s side, — if you did not sneak into the house in 
 her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of 
 intimacy before their courtship was so much as 
 thought on, — look about you — your tenure is pre- 
 carious — before a twelvemonth &hall roll over your 
 head, you shall find your old friend gradually 
 grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek 
 opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce 
 a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose 
 firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not 
 commence after the period of his marriage. With 
 some limitations they can endure that : but that 
 the good man should have dared to enter into a 
 solemn league of friendship in which they were not 
 consulted, though it happened before they knew 
 him, — before they that ai^e now man and wife ever 
 met, — this is intolerable to them. Every long 
 friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be 
 brought into their office to be new stamped with 
 their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the 
 good old money that was coined in some reign 
 
296 A bachelor’^s complaint of the 
 
 before he was born or thought of, to be new marked 
 and minted with the stamp of his authority, before 
 he will let it pass current in the world. You may 
 guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece 
 of metal as I am in these new mintings- 
 
 Innumerable are the ways which they take to in- 
 sult and worm you out of their husband’s confidence. 
 Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as 
 if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good 
 things, but an oddity^ is one of the ways ; — they 
 have a particular kind of stare for the purpose ; — 
 till at last the husband, who used to defer to your 
 judgment, and would pass over some excrescences 
 of understanding and manner for the sake of a gene- 
 ral vein of observation (not quite vulgar) which he 
 perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are 
 not altogether a humorist,— a fellow well enough 
 to have consorted with in his bachelor days, but not 
 quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This 
 may be called the staring way ; and is that which 
 has oftenest been put in practice against me. 
 
 Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way 
 of irony : that is, where they find you an object of 
 especial regard with their husband, who is not so 
 easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment 
 founded on esteem which he has conceived towards 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 297 
 
 you ; by never qualified exaggerations to cry up all 
 that you say or do, till the good man, who under- 
 stands well enough that it is all done in compliment 
 to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which 
 is due to so much candour, and by relaxing a little 
 on his part, and taking down a peg or two in his 
 enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly level of 
 moderate esteem, — that decent affection and com- 
 placent kindness ” towards you, where she herself 
 can join in sympathy with him without much 
 stretch and violence to her sincerity. 
 
 Another way (for the ways they have to accom- 
 plish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a 
 kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake 
 what it was which first made their husband fond of 
 you. If an esteem for something excellent in your 
 moral character was that which riveted the chain 
 which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery 
 of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she 
 will cry, I thought, my dear, you described your 
 
 friend, Mr. , as a great wit.’’ If, on the 
 
 other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your 
 conversation that he first grew to like you, and was 
 content for this to overlook some trifling irregulari- 
 ties in your moral deportment, upon the first notice 
 of any of these she as readily exclaims, This, my 
 o 3 
 
298 A bachelor’s complaint of the 
 
 dear, is your good Mr. One good lady 
 
 whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for 
 not showing me quite so much respect as I thought 
 due to her husband’s old friend, had the candour to 
 
 confess to me that she had often heard Mr. 
 
 speak of me before marriage, and that she had con- 
 ceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but 
 that the sight of me had very much disappointed 
 her expectations; for from her husband’s repre- 
 sentations of me, she had formed a notion that she 
 was to see a fine, tall, officer-like looking man (I 
 use her very words), the very reverse of which 
 proved to be the truth. This was candid ; and I 
 had the civility not to ask her in return, how she 
 came to pitch upon a standard of personal accom- 
 plishments for her husband’s friends which differed 
 so much from his own ; for my friend’s dimensions 
 as near as possible approximate to mine ; he stand- 
 ing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the 
 advantage of him by about half an inch ; and he no 
 more than myself exhibiting any indications of a 
 martial character in his air or countenance. 
 
 These are some of the mortifications which I have 
 encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their 
 houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain 
 endeavour ; I shall therefore just glance at the very 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 299 
 
 common impropriety of which married ladies are 
 guilty, — of treating us as if we were their hus- 
 bands, and vice versa. I mean, w^hen they use us 
 with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. 
 Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two 
 or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, 
 
 while she was fretting because Mr. did not 
 
 come home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather 
 than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of 
 touching one in his absence. This was reversing 
 the point of good manners : for ceremony is an 
 invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we 
 derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object 
 of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some 
 other person is. It endeavours to make up, by 
 superior attentions in little points, for that invidious 
 preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. 
 Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and 
 withstood her husband’s importunities to go to 
 supper, she would have acted according to the strict 
 rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies 
 are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the 
 point of a modest behaviour and decorum ; therefore 
 I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of 
 Cerasia^ who at her own table sent away a dish of 
 Morellas, which I was applying to with great good 
 
800 BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 will, to her husband at the other end of the table, 
 and recommended a plate of less extraordinary 
 gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. 
 
 Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of 
 
 But I am weary of stringing up all my married 
 acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them 
 amend and change their manners, or I promise to 
 record the full-length English of their names, to 
 the terror of all such desperate offenders in future. 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 The casual sight of an old Play Bill, which I 
 picked up the other day — I know not by what chance 
 it was preserved so long — tempts me to call to mind 
 a few of the Players, who make the principal figure 
 in it. It presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth 
 Night, at the old Drury-lane Theatre two-and- 
 thirty years ago. There is something very touch- 
 ing in these old remembrances. They make us 
 think how we once used to read a Play Bill — not, 
 as now peradventure, singling out a favourite per- 
 former, and casting a negligent eye over the rest ; 
 but spelling out every name, down to the very 
 mutes and servants of the scene ; — when it was a 
 matter of no small moment to us whether Whitfield, 
 or Packer, took the part of Fabian; when Benson, 
 
302 
 
 OK SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 and Burton, and Phillimore — names of small account 
 —had an importance, beyond what we can be con- 
 tent to attribute now to the time’s best actors. — 
 
 Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore.” — What a full Shak- 
 spearian sound it carries! how fresh to memory 
 arise the image, and the manner, of the gentle 
 actor ! 
 
 Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within 
 the last ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate 
 notion of her performance of such parts as Ophelia ; 
 Helena, in All’s Well that Ends Well ; and Viola in 
 this play. Her voice had latterly acquired a coarse- 
 ness, which suited well enough with her Nells and 
 Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with her steady 
 melting eye, into the heart. Her joyous parts — in 
 which her memory now chiefly lives — in her youth 
 were outdone by her plaintive ones. There is no 
 giving an account how she delivered the disguised 
 story of her love for Orsino. It was no set speech, 
 that she had foreseen, so as to weave it into an 
 harmonious period, line necessarily following line, 
 to make up the music — yet I have heard it so 
 "spoken, or rather read^ not without its grace and 
 beauty — ^but, when she had declared her sister’s 
 history to be a blank ” and that she never told 
 her love,” there was a pause, as if the story had 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 803 
 
 ended — and then the image of the worm in the 
 bud ” came up as a new suggestion — and the height- 
 ened image of Patience ” still followed after that, 
 as by some growing (and not mechanical) process, 
 thought springing up after thought, I would almost 
 say, as they were watered by her tears. So in those 
 fine lines — 
 
 Write loyal cantos of contemned love — 
 
 Hollow your name to the reverberate hills — 
 
 there was no preparation made in the foregoing 
 image for that which was to follow. She used no 
 rhetoric in her passion ; or it was nature’s own 
 rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it seemed 
 altogether without rule or law. 
 
 Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride 
 of her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was 
 particularly excellent in her unbending scenes in 
 conversation with the Clown. I have seen some 
 Olivias — and those very sensible actresses too — 
 who in these interlocutions have seemed to set 
 their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with 
 him in downright emulation. But she used him 
 for her sport, like what he was, to trifle a leisure 
 sentence or two with, and then to be dismissed, 
 and she to be the Great Lady still. She touched 
 the imperious fantastic humour of the character 
 
304 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 with nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the 
 scene. 
 
 The part of Malvolio has in my judgment been 
 so often misunderstood, and the general merits of 
 the actor, who then played it, so unduly appre- 
 ciated, that I shall hope for pardon, if I am a little 
 prolix upon these points. 
 
 Of all the actors who flourished in my time — a 
 melancholy phrase if taken aright, reader — Bensley 
 had most of the swell of soul, was greatest in the 
 delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions conse- 
 quent upon the presentment of a great idea to the 
 fancy. He had the true poetical enthusiasm — the 
 rarest faculty among players. None that I remem- 
 ber possessed even a portion of that fine madness 
 which he threw out in Hotspur's famous rant about 
 glory, or the transports of the Venetian incendiary 
 at the vision of the fired city. His voice had the 
 dissonance, and at times the inspiriting effect of the 
 trumpet. His gait was uncouth and stiff, but no 
 way embarrassed by affectation ; and the thorough- 
 bred gentleman was uppermost in every movement. 
 He seized the moment of passion with greatest 
 truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking before 
 the time; never anticipating or leading you to 
 anticipate. He was totally destitute of trick and 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 305 
 
 artifice. He seemed come upon the stage to do the 
 poet’s message simply, and he did it with as genuine 
 fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands 
 of the gods. He let the passion or the, sentiment 
 do its own work without prop or bolstering. He 
 would have scorned to mountebank it ; and betrayed 
 none of that cleverness which is the bane of serious 
 acting. For this reason, his lago was the only 
 endurable one which I remember to have seen. 
 No spectator from his action could divine more of 
 his artifice than Othello was supposed to do. His 
 confessions in soliloquy alone put you in possession 
 of the mystery. There were .no by-intimations to 
 make the audience fancy their own discernment so 
 much greater than that of the Moor — who com- 
 monly stands like a great helpless mark set up for 
 mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren spectators, 
 to shoot their bolts at. The lago of Bensley did not 
 go to work so grossly. There was a triumphant 
 tone about the character, natural to a general con- 
 ciousness of power ; but none of that petty vanity 
 which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon 
 any little successful stroke of its knavery — as is 
 common with your small villains, and green pro- 
 bationers in mischief. It did not clap or crow 
 before its time. It was not a man setting his wits at 
 
306 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 a child, and winking all the while at other children 
 who are mightily pleased at being let into the secret; 
 but a consummate villain entrapping a noble nature 
 into toils, against which no discernment was avail- 
 able, where the manner* was as fathomless as the 
 purpose seemed dark, and without motive. The 
 part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was per- 
 formed by Bensley, with a richness and a dignity, of 
 which (to judge from some recent castings of that 
 character) the very tradition must be worn out from 
 the stage. No manager in those days would have 
 dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. 
 Parsons : when Bensley was occasionally absent from 
 the theatre, John Kemble thought it no derogation 
 to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essentially 
 ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. He 
 is cold, austere, repelling ; but dignified, consistent, 
 and, for what appears, rather of an over-stretched 
 morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan ; 
 and he might have worn his gold chain with honour 
 in one of our old round-head families, in the service 
 of a Lambert, or a Lady Fairfax. But his mo- 
 rality and his manners are misplaced in Illyria. He 
 is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and 
 falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his 
 gravity, (call it which you will) is inherent, and 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 307 
 
 native to the man, not mock or affected, which 
 latter only are the fit objects to excite laughter. 
 His quality is at the best unlovely, but neither 
 buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a 
 little above his station, but probably not much above 
 his deserts. We see no reason why he should not 
 have been brave, honourable, accomplished. His 
 careless committal of the ring to the ground (which 
 he was commissioned to restore to Cesario), be- 
 speaks a generosity of birth and feeling. His 
 dialect on all occasions is that of a gentleman, and 
 a man of education. We must not confound him 
 with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He 
 is master of the household to a great princess ; a 
 dignity probably conferred upon him for other 
 respects than age or length of service. Olivia, at 
 the first indication of his supposed madness, declares 
 that she would not have him miscarry for half of 
 her dowry.” Does this look as if the character was 
 meant to appear little or insignificant ? Once, 
 indeed, she accuses him to his face — of what ? — of 
 being sick of self-love,” — but with a gentleness 
 and considerateness which could not have been, if 
 she had not thought that this particular infirmity 
 shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight, 
 and his sottish revellers, is sensible and spirited ; 
 
308 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 and when we take into consideration the unprotected 
 condition of his mistress, and strict regard with 
 which her state of real or dissembled mourning 
 would draw the eyes of the world upon her house- 
 affairs, Malvolio might feel the honour of the family 
 in some sort in his keeping ; as it appears not that 
 Olivia had any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look 
 to it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice 
 respects at the buttery hatch. That Malvolio was 
 meant to be represented as possessing estimable 
 qualities, the expression of the Duke in his anxiety 
 to have him reconciled, almost infers. Pursue 
 him, and entreat him to a peace.” Even in his 
 abused state of chains and darkness, a sort of 
 greatness seems never to desert him. He argues 
 highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and 
 philosophises gallantly upon his straw*. There 
 must have been some shadow of worth about the 
 man; he must have been something more than a 
 mere vapour — a thing of straw, or Jack in office — 
 before Fabian and Maria could have ventured 
 sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia. 
 There was some consonancy (as he would say) in 
 
 * Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 
 
 Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
 
 Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 
 
 Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 
 
ON SOME ON THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 809 
 
 the undertaking, or the jest would have been too 
 bold even for that house of misrule. 
 
 Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air 
 of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved 
 like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, 
 opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed 
 bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was some- 
 thing in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and 
 swelling, but you could not be sure that it was 
 hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, 
 but you felt that it was upon an elevation. He was 
 magnificent from the outset ; but when the decent 
 sobrieties of the character began to give way, and 
 the poison of self-love, in his conceit of the 
 Countess’s affection, gradually to work, you would 
 have thought that the hero of La Mancha in person 
 stood before you. How he w^ent smiling to him- 
 self! with what ineffable carelessness would he 
 twirl his gold chain ! what a dream it was ! you 
 were infected with the illusion, and did not wish 
 that it should be removed ! you had no room for 
 laughter ! if an unseasonable refiection of morality 
 obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable 
 infirmity of man’s nature, that can lay him open to 
 such frenzies — but in truth you rather admired than 
 pitied the lunacy while it lasted — you felt that an 
 
310 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 hour of such mistake was worth an age with the 
 eyes open. Who would not wish to live but for a 
 day in the conceit of such a lady’s love as Olivia ? 
 Why, the Duke would have given his principality 
 but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, 
 to have been so deluded. The man seemed to 
 tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his 
 head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. O ! shake 
 not the castles of his pride — endure yet for a season 
 bright moments of confidence — stand still, ye 
 watches of the element,’^ that Malvolio may be 
 still in fancy fair Olivia’s lord — but fate and retri- 
 bution say no — I hear the mischievous titter of 
 Maria — the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the still 
 more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight — 
 the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked — and thus 
 
 the whirligig of time,” as the true clown hath it, 
 brings in his revenges.” I confess that I never 
 saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley 
 played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There 
 was good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. 
 What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him ! Love- 
 grove, who came nearest to the old actors, revived 
 the character some few seasons ago, and made it 
 sufficiently grotesque ; but Dodd was zY, as it came 
 out of nature’s hands. It might be said to remain 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 311 
 
 in puris naturalihus* In expressing slowness of 
 apprehension this actor surpassed all others. You 
 could see the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly 
 over his countenance, climbing up by little and 
 little, with a painful process, till it cleared up at 
 last to the fulness of a twilight conception — its 
 highest meridian. He seemed to keep back his 
 intellect, as some have had the power to retard their 
 pulsation. The balloon takes less time in filling, 
 than it took to cover the expansion of his broad 
 moony face over all its quarters with expression. 
 A glimmer of understanding would appear in a 
 corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. 
 A part of his forehead would catch a little intelli- 
 gence, and be a long time in communicating it to 
 the remainder. 
 
 I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than 
 five and twenty years ago that walking in the 
 gardens of Gray’s Inn — they were then far finer 
 they than are now — the accursed Verulam Buildings 
 had not encroached upon all the east side of them, 
 cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering 
 away one of two of the stately alcoves of the terrace 
 — the survivor stands gaping and relationless as if 
 it remembered its brother — they are still the best 
 gardens of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved 
 
312 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 Temple not forgotten — have the gravest character, 
 their aspect being altogether reverend and law- 
 breathing — Bacon has left the impress of his foot 
 
 upon their gravel walks taking my afternoon 
 
 solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, 
 a comely sad personage came towards me, whom, 
 from his grave air and deportment, I judged to be 
 one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a 
 serious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be in 
 meditations of mortality. As I have an instinctive 
 awe of old Benchers, I was passing him with that 
 sort of subindicative token of respect which one is 
 apt to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, 
 and which rather denotes an inclination to greet 
 him, than any positive motion of the body to that 
 effect — a species of humility and will-worship which 
 I observe, nine times out of ten, rather puzzles than 
 pleases the person it is offered to — when the face 
 turning full upon me strangely identified itself with 
 that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not mis- 
 taken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance 
 be the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed 
 so often under circumstances of gaiety ; which I had 
 never seen without a smile, or recognized but as the 
 usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally flat in 
 Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so impotently 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 313 
 
 busy in Backbite ; so blankly divested of all mean- 
 ing, or resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in 
 Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences ? 
 Was this the face — full of thought and carefulness 
 — that had so often divested itself at will of every 
 trace of either to give me diversion, to clear my 
 cloudy face for two or three hours at least of its 
 furrows? Was this the face — manly, sober, intel- 
 ligent — which I had so often despised, made mocks 
 at, made merry with ? The remembrance of the 
 freedoms which I had taken with it came upon me 
 with a reproach of insult. I could have asked it 
 pardon. I thought it looked upon me with a sense 
 of injury. There is something strange as well as sad 
 in seeing actors — your pleasant fellows particularly 
 — subjected to and suffering the common lot ; — their 
 fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to 
 belong to the scene, their actions to be amenable to 
 poetic justice only. We can hardly connect them 
 with more awful responsibilities. The death of 
 this fine actor took place shortly after this meeting. 
 He had quitted the stage some months ; and, 
 as I learned afterwards, had been in the habit of 
 resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day 
 of his decease. In these serious walks probably 
 he was divesting himself of many scenic and some 
 real vanities — weani?"g himself from the frivolities 
 
 p 
 
314 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 of the lesser and the greater theatre —doing gentle 
 penance for a life of no very reprehensible fooleries 
 — taking off by degrees the buffoon mask which he 
 might feel he had worn too long — and rehearsing 
 for a more solemn cast of part. Dying he put 
 on the weeds of Dominic*/’ 
 
 If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will 
 not easily forget the pleasant creature, who in those 
 days enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd’s Sir 
 Andrew. — Richard, or rather Dicky Suett — for so 
 in his life-time he delighted to be called, and time 
 hath ratified the appellation — lieth buried on the 
 north side of the cemetery of Holy Paul, to whose 
 service his nonage and tender years were dedicated. 
 There are who do yet remember him at that period 
 — his pipe clear and harmonious. He would often 
 speak of his chorister days, when he was ‘^cherub 
 Dicky.” 
 
 What clipped his wdngs, or made it expedient that 
 
 * Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice col- 
 lection of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a 
 man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length 
 of study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen 
 him one evening in Aguecheek, and recognising Dodd the next day in 
 Fleet Street, was irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute 
 him as the identical Knight of the preceding evening with a “ Save 
 you, Sir Andrew^"' Dodd, not at all disconcerted at this unusual 
 address from a stranger, with a courteous half-rebuking wave of the 
 hand, put him off with an “ Away, Fool'* 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 315 
 
 he should exchange the holy for the profane state ; 
 whether he had lost his good voice (his best recom- 
 mendation to that office), like Sir John, with 
 hallooing and singing of anthems ; ” or whether he 
 was adjudged to lack something, even in those early 
 years, of the gravity indispensable to an occupation 
 which professeth to commerce with the skies ” — 
 I could never rightly learn ; but we find him, after 
 the probation of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to 
 a secular condition, and become one of us. 
 
 I think he was not altogether of that timber, out 
 of which cathedral seats and sounding boarjs are 
 hewed. But if a glad heart — kind, and therefore 
 glad — be any part of sanctity, then might the robe 
 of Motley, with which he invested himself with so 
 much humility after his deprivation, and which he 
 wore so long with so much blameless satisfaction to 
 himself and to the public, be accepted for a surplice 
 — his white stole, and olbe. 
 
 The first fruits of his secularization was an en- 
 gagement upon the boards of Old Drury, at which 
 theatre he commenced, as I have been told, with 
 adopting the manner of Parsons in old men’s cha- 
 racters. At the period in which most of us knew 
 him, he was no more an imitator than he was in 
 any true sense himself imitable. 
 
 p 2 
 
316 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 He was the Robin Good-fellow of the stage. 
 He came in to trouble all things with a welcome 
 perplexity, himself no whit troubled for the matter. 
 He was known, like Puck, by his note — Ha! Ha! 
 Ha ! — sometimes deepening to Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! with 
 an irresistible accession, derived perhaps remotely 
 from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his 
 prototype of, — O La! Thousands of hearts yet 
 respond to the chuckling O La! of Dicky Suett, 
 brought back to their remembrance by the faithful 
 transcript of his friend Matthews’s mimicry. The 
 force of nature could no further go.’’ He drolled 
 upon the stock of these two syllables richer than the 
 cuckoo. 
 
 Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten 
 in his composition. Had he had but two grains 
 (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never have sup- 
 ported himself upon those two spider’s strings, 
 which served him (in the latter part of his unmixed 
 existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have 
 made him totter, a sigh have puffed him down ; the 
 weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle 
 made him lose his balance. But on he went, 
 scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin 
 Good-fellow, thorough brake, thorough briar,” 
 reckless of a scratched face or a torn doublet. 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 317 
 
 Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his 
 fools and jesters. They have all the true Suett 
 stamp, a loose and shambling gait, a slippery 
 tongue, this last the ready midwife to a without- 
 pain-delivered jest ; in words, light as air, venting 
 truths deep as the centre ; with idlest rhymes tag- 
 ging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the 
 tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery-hatch. 
 
 Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be 
 more of personal favourites with the town than any 
 actors before or after. The difference, 1 take it, 
 was this : — Jack was more beloved for his sweet, 
 good-natured, moral pretensions. Dicky was more 
 liked for his sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at 
 alL Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister’s 
 performance of Walter in the Children in the Wood 
 — but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare 
 says of Love, too young to know what conscience is. 
 He put us into Vesta’s days. Evil fled before him 
 — not as from Jack, as from an antagonist, — but 
 because it could not touch him, any more than a 
 cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered from the bur- 
 then of that death ; and, when Death came himself, 
 not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded of 
 him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, 
 that he received the last stroke, neither varying his 
 
318 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple 
 exclamation, worthy to have been recorded in his 
 epitaph — O La! O La! Bobby! 
 
 The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) 
 commonly played Sir Toby in those days ; but 
 there is a solidity of wit in the jests of that half- 
 Falstaff which he did not quite fill out. He was as 
 much too showy as Moody (who sometimes took 
 the part) was dry and sottish. In sock or buskin 
 there was an air of swaggering gentility about J ack 
 Palmer. He was a gentleman with a slight infu- 
 sion of the footman. His brother Bob (of recenter 
 memory), who was his shadow in every thing while 
 he lived, and dwindled into less than a shadow 
 afterwards — was a gentleman with a little stronger 
 infusion of the latter ingredient; that was all. It 
 is amazing how a little of the more or less makes a 
 difference in these things. When you saw Bobby in 
 the Duke’s Servant *, you said What a pity such 
 a pretty fellow was only a servant !” When you saw 
 Jack figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought you 
 could trace his promotion to some lady of quality 
 who fancied the handsome fellow in his topknot, 
 and had bought him a commission. Therefore Jack 
 in Dick Amlet was insuperable. 
 
 * High Life Below Stairs. 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 319 
 
 Jack had two voices, — both plausible, hypocri- 
 tical, and insinuating ; but his secondary or supple- 
 mental voice still more decisively histrionic than 
 his common one. It was reserved for the spec- 
 tator ; and the dramatis personae were supposed to 
 know nothing at all about it. The lies of young 
 Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, 
 were thus marked out in a sort of italics to the 
 audience. This secret correspondence with the 
 company before the curtain (which is the bane and 
 death of tragedy) has an extremely happy effect in 
 some kinds of comedy, in the more highly artificial 
 comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan especially, 
 where the absolute sense of reality (so indispensable 
 to scenes of interest) is not required, or would 
 rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. The 
 fact is, you do not believe in such characters as 
 Surface — the villain of artificial comedy — even while 
 you read or see them. If you did, they would 
 shock and not divert you. When Ben, in Love 
 for Love, returns from sea, the following exqui- 
 site dialogue occurs at his first meeting with his 
 father : — 
 
 Sir Sampson, Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since 
 I saw thee. 
 
 Ben. Ey, ey, been ! Been far enough, an that be all. — Well, father, 
 and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val ? 
 
320 
 
 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 
 
 Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o’ me, Dick has been dead these two 
 years. 1 writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 
 
 Ben, Mess, that’s true ; Marry, I had forgot. Dick’s dead, as you 
 say — Well, and how.^ — I have a many questions to ask you — 
 
 Here is an instance of insensibility which in real 
 life would be revolting, or rather in real life could 
 not have co-existed with the warm-hearted tem- 
 perament of the character. But when you read it 
 in the spirit with which such playful selections and 
 specious combinations rather than strict metaphrases 
 of nature should be taken, or when you saw Ban- 
 nister play it, it neither did, nor does, wound the 
 moral sense at all. For what is Ben — the pleasant 
 sailor which Bannister gives us — but a piece of 
 satire — a creation of Congreve’s fancy — a dreamy 
 combination of all the accidents of a sailor’s cha- 
 racter — his contempt of money — his credulity to 
 women — with that necessary estrangement from 
 home which it is just within the verge of credibility 
 to suppose might produce such an hallucination as 
 is here described. We never think the worse of 
 Ben for it, or feel it as a stain upon his character. 
 But when an actor comes, and instead of the 
 delightful phantom — the creature dear to half- 
 belief — which Bannister exhibited — displays before 
 our eyes a downright concretion of a Wapping 
 
ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS* 
 
 321 
 
 sailor — a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar — and nothing 
 else — when instead of investing it with a delicious 
 confusedness of the head, and a veering undirected 
 goodness of purpose — he gives to it a downright 
 daylight understanding, and a full consciousness of 
 its actions ; thrusting forward the sensibilities of 
 the character with a pretence as if it stood upon 
 nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone 
 — we feel the discord of the thing ; the scene is 
 disturbed ; a real man has got in among the dramatis 
 personae, and puts them out. We want the sailor 
 turned out* We feel that his true place is not 
 behind the curtain, but in the first or second 
 gallery. 
 
 p 3 
 
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LAST CENTURY. 
 
 • 
 
 The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is 
 quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar 
 show their heads once in seven years only, to be 
 exploded and put down instantly. The times 
 cannot bear them. Is it for a few wild speeches, 
 an occasional licence of dialogue ? I think not 
 altogether. The business of their dramatic charac- 
 ters will not stand the moral test. We screw every 
 thing up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a 
 dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles 
 us in the same way as the alarming indications of 
 profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle 
 a parent or guardian. We have no such middle 
 emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage 
 libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours’ 
 
ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY, ETC. 323 
 
 duration, and of no after consequence, with the 
 severe eyes which inspect real vices with their bear, 
 ings upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot 
 or intrigue (not reducible in life to the point 
 of strict morality), and take it all for truth. We 
 substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge 
 him accordingly. We try him in our courts, from 
 which there is no appeal to the dramatis per sonce^ 
 his peers. We have been spoiled with — not senti- 
 mental comedy — but a tyrant far more pernicious 
 to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the ex- 
 clusive and all-devouring drama of common life ; 
 where the moral point is every thing; where, instead 
 of the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage 
 (the phantoms of old comedy), we recognise our- 
 selves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, 
 enemies, — the same as in life, — with an interest in 
 what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we 
 cannot afford our moral judgment, in its deepest 
 and most vital results, to compromise or slumber 
 for a moment. What is there transacting, by no 
 modification is made to affect us in any other 
 manner than the same events or characters would 
 do in our relationships of life. We carry our fire- 
 side concerns to the theatre with us. We do not 
 go thither, like our ancestors, to escape from the 
 
324 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our 
 experience of it; to make assurance double, and 
 take a bond of fate. We must live our toilsome 
 lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege of 
 Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that 
 neutral ground of character, which stood between 
 vice and virtue ; or which m fact was indifferent to 
 neither, where neither properly was called in ques- 
 tion ; that happy breathing-place from the burthen 
 of a perpetual moral questioning — the sanctuary 
 and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry — is broken up 
 and disfranchised, as injurious to the interests of 
 society. The privileges of the place are taken away 
 by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, 
 of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. 
 We dread infection from the scenic representation 
 of disorder, and fear a painted pustule. In our 
 anxiety that our morality should not take cold, we 
 wrap it up in a great blanket surtout of precaution 
 against the breeze and sunshine. 
 
 I confess for myself that (with no great delin- 
 quencies to answer for) I am glad for a season to 
 take an airing beyond the diocese of the strict 
 conscience, — not to live always in the precincts of 
 the law-courts, — but now and then, for a dream- 
 while or so, to imagii e a world with no meddling 
 
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 325 
 
 restrictions — to get into recesses, whither the hunter 
 cannot follow me — 
 
 Secret shades 
 
 Of woody Ida’s inmost grove, 
 
 While yet there was no fear of Jove — 
 
 I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher 
 and more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more 
 contentedly for having respired the breath of an 
 imaginary freedom. I do not know how it is with 
 Others, but I feel the better always for the perusal 
 of one of Congreve’s — nay, why should I not add 
 even of Wycherley’s — comedies. I am the gayer at 
 least for it ; and I could never connect those sports 
 of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be 
 drawn from them to imitation in real life. They 
 are a world of themselves almost as much as fairy- 
 land. Take one of their characters, male or female 
 (with few exceptions they are alike), and place it in 
 a modern play, and my virtuous indignation shall 
 rise against the profligate wretch as warmly as the 
 Catos of the pit could desire ; because in a modern 
 play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. 
 The standard of police is the measure of political 
 justice. The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot 
 live here. It has got into a moral world, where it 
 has no business, from which it must needs fall head- 
 
326 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 long ; as dizzy, and incapable of making a stand, 
 as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wandered 
 unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men, 
 or Angels. But in its own world do we feel the 
 creature is so very bad? — The Fainalls and the 
 Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, 
 in their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense ; 
 in fact they do not appeal to it at all. They seem 
 engaged in their proper element. They break 
 through no laws, or conscientious restraints. They 
 know of none. They have got out of Christendom 
 into the land — what shall I call it ? — of cuckoldry 
 — the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, 
 and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether 
 a speculative scene of things, which has no reference 
 whatever to the world that is. No good person can 
 be justly offended as a spectator, because no good 
 person suffers on the stage. J udged morally, every 
 character in these plays — the few exceptions only 
 are mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worthless. 
 The great art of Congreve is especially shown in 
 this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes, 
 — some little generosities in the part of Angelica 
 perhaps excepted, — not only any thing like a 
 faultless character, but any pretensions to goodness 
 or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this 
 
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 327 
 
 designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy, 
 as the design (if design) was bold. I used to wonder 
 at the strange power which his Way of the World 
 in particular possesses of interesting you all along in 
 the pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely 
 care nothing — for you neither hate nor love his 
 personages — and I think it is owing to this very 
 indifference for any, that you endure the whole. He 
 has spread a privation of moral light, I will call it, 
 rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, 
 over his creations ; and his shadows flit before you 
 without distinction or preference. Had he introduced 
 a good character, a single gush of moral feeling, a 
 revulsion of the judgment to actual life and actual 
 duties, the impertinent Goshen would have only 
 lighted to the discovery of deformities, which now 
 are none, because we think them none. 
 
 Translated into real life, the characters of his, 
 and his friend Wycherley’s dramas, are profligates 
 and strumpets,— the business of their brief exist- 
 ence, the undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. 
 No other spring of action, or possible motive of 
 conduct, is recognised ; principles which, universally 
 acted upon, must reduce this frame of things to a 
 chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating 
 them. No such effects are produced in their world. 
 
328 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 When we are among them, we are amongst a 
 chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our 
 usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by 
 their proceedings, — for they have none among them. 
 No peace of families is violated, — for no family ties 
 exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed 
 is stained, — for none is supposed to have a being. 
 No deep affections are disquieted, — no holy wedlock 
 bands are snapped asunder, — for affection’s depth 
 and wedded faith are not of the growth of that 
 soil. There is neither right nor wrong, — grati- 
 tude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — paternity or 
 sonship. Of what consequence is it to Virtue, or 
 how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir 
 Simon, or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha ; or 
 who is the father of Lord Froth’s, or Sir Paul 
 Pliant’s children ? 
 
 The whole is a passing pageant, where we should 
 sit as unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, 
 as at a battle of the frogs and mice. But, like Don 
 Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and 
 quite as impertinently. We dare not contemplate 
 an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our coxcombical 
 moral sense is for a little transitory ease excluded. 
 We have not the courage to imagine a state of things 
 for which there is neither reward nor punishment. 
 
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 329 
 
 We cling to the painful necessities of shame and 
 blame. We would indict our very dreams. 
 
 Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant 
 upon growing old, it is something to have seen the 
 School for Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew 
 out of Congreve and Wycherley, but gathered some 
 allays of the sentimental comedy which followed 
 theirs. It is impossible that it should be now 
 acted, though it continues, at long intervals, to be 
 announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer 
 played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I 
 remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn 
 plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice 
 — to express it in a word — the downright acted vil- 
 lanyof the part, so different from the pressure of con- 
 scious actual wickedness, — the hypocritical assump- 
 tion of hypocrisy, — which made Jack so deservedly 
 a favourite in that character, I must needs conclude 
 the present generation of play-goers more virtuous 
 than myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he 
 divided the palm with me with his better brother ; 
 that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but 
 there are passages, — like that, for instance, where 
 Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor rela- 
 tion, — incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon 
 by the attempt to join the artificial with the senti- 
 
830 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 mental comedy, either of which must destroy the 
 other — ^but over these obstructions Jack’s manner 
 floated him so lightly, that a refusal from him no 
 more shocked you, than the easy compliance of 
 Charles gave you in reality any pleasure ; you got 
 over the paltry question as quickly as you could, to 
 get back into the regions of pure comedy, where no 
 cold moral reigns. The highly artificial manner of 
 Palmer in this character counteracted every dis- 
 agreeable impression which you might have received 
 from the contrast, supposing them real, between the 
 two brothers. You did not believe in Joseph with 
 the same faith with which you believed in Charles. 
 The latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no 
 less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have 
 said, is incongruous ; a mixture of Congreve with 
 sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon the 
 whole is buoyant ; but it required the consummate 
 art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. 
 
 A player with Jack’s talents, if we had one now, 
 would not dare to do the part in the same manner. 
 He would instinctively avoid every turn which 
 might tend to unrealise, and so to make the charac- 
 ter fascinating. He must take his cue from his 
 spectators, who would expect a bad man and a good 
 man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death- 
 
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 331 
 
 beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, 
 which I am sorry to say have disappeared from the 
 windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. 
 Paul’s Church-yard memory — (an exhibition as 
 venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost 
 coeval) of the bad and good man at the hour of 
 death ; where the ghastly apprehensions of the 
 former, — and truly the grim phantom with his 
 reality of a toasting fork is not to be despised, — so 
 finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of 
 the rod, — taking it in like honey and butter, — with 
 which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle 
 bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the 
 apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies’ sur- 
 geon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not 
 covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate 
 mower? — John Palmer was twice an actor in this 
 exquisite part. He was playing to you all the while 
 that he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. 
 You had the first intimation of a sentiment before 
 it was on his lips. His altered voice was meant 
 to you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious 
 co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all 
 of it. What was it to you if that half-reality, the 
 husband, was over-reached by the puppetry — or 
 the thin thing (Lady Teazle’s reputation) was per- 
 
332 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 suaded it was dying of a plethory? The fortunes 
 of Othello and Desdemona were not concerned in 
 it. P oor J ack has past from the stage in good time, 
 that he did not live to this our age of seriousness. 
 The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good 
 time. His manner would scarce have past current 
 in our day. We must love or hate — acquit or 
 condemn — censure or pity — exert our detestable 
 coxcombry of moral judgment upon every thing. 
 Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a down- 
 right revolting villain — no compromise — his first 
 appearance must shock and give horror — his spe- 
 cious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties 
 of our fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, 
 knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could 
 come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire 
 a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real 
 canting person of the scene — for the hypocrisy of 
 Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his 
 brother’s professions of a good heart centre in 
 downright self-satisfaction) must be loved^ and 
 Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality 
 with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer 
 the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bride-groom, 
 whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently 
 as much played off at you, as they were meant to 
 
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 333 
 
 concern any body on the stage, — he must be a real 
 person, capable in law of sustaining an injury — a 
 person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged 
 — the genuine crim-con antagonist of the villanous 
 seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his suffer- 
 ings under his unfortunate match must have the 
 downright pungency of life — must (or should) make 
 you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the 
 same predicament would move you in a neighbour 
 or old friend. The delicious scenes which give the 
 play its name and zest, must affect you in the same 
 serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a 
 dear female friend attacked in your real presence. 
 Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin — those poor snakes 
 that live but in the sunshine of your mirth — must 
 be ripened by this hot-bed process of realisation 
 into asps or amphisbaenas ; and Mrs. Candour — O ! 
 frightful ! — become a hooded serpent. Oh who that 
 remembers Parsons and Dodd — the wasp and 
 butterfly of the School for Scandal— in those two 
 characters ; and charming natural Miss Pope, the 
 perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine 
 lady of comedy, in this latter part — would forego 
 the true scenic delight — the escape from life — the 
 oblivion of consequences — the holiday barring out 
 of the pedant Reflection — those Saturnalia of two 
 
334 
 
 ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY 
 
 or three brief hours, well won from the world — to 
 sit instead at one of our modern plays — to have his 
 coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left 
 for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals — 
 dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without 
 repose must be — and his moral vanity pampered 
 with images of notional justice, notional benefi- 
 cence, lives saved without the spectators’ risk, and 
 fortunes given away that cost the author nothing ? 
 
 No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast 
 in all its parts as this manager's comedy. Miss 
 Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady 
 Teazle ; and Smith, the original Charles, had 
 retired, when I first saw it. The rest of the cha- 
 racters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I 
 remember it was then the fashion to cry down 
 John Kemble, who took the part of Charles after 
 Smith ; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I 
 fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a 
 certain gaiety of person. He brought with him no 
 sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to 
 expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand in 
 lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or 
 of Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts 
 was a passport to success in one of so opposite a 
 tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty .» 
 
OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 335 
 
 sense of Kemble made up for more personal inca- 
 pacity than he had to answer for. His harshest 
 tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in 
 good humour. He made his defects a grace. His 
 exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only 
 served to convey the points of his dialogue with 
 more precision. It seemed to head the shafts to 
 carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling 
 sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he 
 delivered each in succession, and cannot by any 
 eSbrt imagine how any of them could be altered for 
 the better. No man could deliver brilliant dialogue 
 — the dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley — 
 because none understood it — half so well as John 
 Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was, to 
 my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in 
 the intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber 
 over the level parts of an heroic character. His 
 Macbeth has been knowm to nod. But he always 
 seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and 
 witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy 
 have not been touched by any since him — the 
 playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended 
 to the players in Hamlet — the sportive relief which 
 he threw into the darker shades of Richard — dis- 
 appeared with him. He had his sluggish moods. 
 
336 THE COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 
 
 his torpors — but they were the halting-stones and 
 resting-place of his tragedy — politic savings, and 
 fetches of the breath — husbandry of the lungs, 
 where nature pointed him to be an economist — 
 rather, I think, than errors of the judgment. They 
 w^ere, at worst, less painful than the eternal tor- 
 menting unappeasable vigilance, — the lidless 
 dragon eyes,’’ of present fashionable tragedy. 
 
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 
 
 Not many nights ago I had come home from 
 seeing this extraordinany performer in Cockletop ; 
 and when I retired to my pillow, his whimsical 
 image still stuck by me, in a manner as to threaten 
 sleep. In vain 1 tried to divest myself of it, by 
 conjuring up the most opposite associations. 1 
 resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest 
 topics of life ; private misery, public calamity. 
 All would not do : 
 
 There the antic sate 
 
 Mocking our state — 
 
 his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all 
 the strange things which he had raked together — 
 his serpentine rod, swagging about in his pocket — 
 Cleopatra’s tear, and the rest of his relics — O’Keefe’s 
 wild farce, and his wilder commentary — till the 
 passion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved 
 Q 
 
338 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 
 
 itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which 
 in the first instance it had driven away. 
 
 But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner 
 did I fall into slumbers, than the same image, 
 only more perplexing, assailed me in the shape of 
 dreams. Not one M unden, but five hundred, were 
 dancing before me, like the faces which, whether 
 you will or no, come when you have been taking 
 opium — all the strange combinations, which this 
 strangest of all strange mortals ever shot his proper 
 countenance into, from the day he came commis- 
 sioned to dry up the tears of the town for the loss 
 of the now almost forgotten Edwin. O for the 
 power of the pencil to have fixed them when I 
 awoke ! A season- or two since there was exhi- 
 bited a Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there 
 should not be a Munden gallery. In richness 
 and variety the latter would not fall far short of 
 the former. 
 
 There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, 
 one (but what a one it is !) of Liston ; but Munden 
 has none that you can properly pin down, and call 
 his. When you think he has exhausted his battery 
 of looks, in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, 
 suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of 
 features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion. 
 
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 
 
 339 
 
 Not so much a comedian, as a company. If his 
 name could be multiplied like his countenance, it 
 might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally 
 makes faces : applied to any other person, the phrase 
 is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of 
 the human countenance. Out of some invisible 
 wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend Suett used 
 for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. I should 
 not be surprised to see him some day put out the 
 head of a river horse ; or come forth a pewitt, or 
 lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis. 
 
 I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher 
 Curry — in Old Dornton — diffuse a glow of senti- 
 ment which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre 
 beat like that of one man ; when he has come in 
 aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of 
 a people. I have seen some faint approaches to 
 this sort of excellence in other players. But in the 
 grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as 
 single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, 
 strange to tell, had no followers. The school of 
 Munden began, and must end with, himself. 
 
 Can any man wonder^ like him ? can any man 
 see ghosts, like him ? or fight with his own shadow — 
 
 SESSA ” — as he does in that strangely-neglected 
 thing, the Cobbler of Preston — w^here his alter- 
 
340 
 
 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 
 
 nations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and 
 from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain 
 of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some 
 Arabian Night were being acted before him. Who 
 like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a 
 preternatural interest over the commonest daily- 
 life objects ? A table or a joint-stool, in his con- 
 ception, rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassio- 
 peia’s chair. It is invested with constellatory 
 importance. You could not speak of it with more 
 deference, if it were mounted into the firmament, 
 A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says 
 Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the 
 gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it 
 touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and 
 primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old 
 prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by 
 him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a 
 leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wonder- 
 ing, amid the common-place materials of life, like 
 primaeval man with the sun and stars about him. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 lUDBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 
 

 
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