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Title: The Bed-Book of Happiness

Author: Harold Begbie

Release date: September 14, 2004 [eBook #13457]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13457

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BED-BOOK
OF HAPPINESS ***

"A GATHERING OF HAPPINESS, A CONCENTRATION AND COMBINATION OF PLEASANT

DETAILS, A THRONG OF GLAD FACES, A MUSTER OF ELATED HEARTS."

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

THE BED-BOOK OF HAPPINESS

Being a Colligation or Assemblage of Cheerful Writings brought together
from many quarters into this one compass for the diversion, distraction, and
delight of those who lie abed,—a friend to the invalid, a companion to the
sleepless, an excuse to the tired, by

HAROLD BEGBIE

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK
TORONTO

PRINTED IN 1914 BY HAZELL, WATSON AND
VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

to

SIR JESSE BOOT

If, in my pages, those who suffer find
Such cheer as warms your heart and lights your mind,
Glad shall I be, but gladder, prouder too,
If this my book become a friend like you.

RONDEL

_BESIDE YOUR BED I COME TO STAY WITH MAGIC MORE THAN HUMAN SKILL,
MY PAGES RUN TO DO YOUR WILL, MY COVERS KEEP YOUR CARES AWAY.

THE NURSE ARRIVES WITH LADEN TRAY, THE DOCTOR CANCELS DRAUGHT AND
PILL; BESIDE YOUR BED I COME TO STAY WITH MAGIC MORE THAN HUMAN
SKILL.

AND YOU THRO' FAERY LANDS WILL STRAY, AT LAUGHTER'S FOUNTAIN DRINK
YOUR FILL, FOR THO' YOUR BODY CRY "I'M ILL!" YOUR MIND WILL DANCE
FROM NIGHT TO DAY. BESIDE YOUR BED I COME TO STAY WITH MAGIC MORE
THAN HUMAN SKILL_.

THE RENDERING OF THANKS

To Mr. Austin Dobson and his publishers, Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trübner & Co., Ltd.

To Mr. R.A. Streatfeild, Mr. Henry Festing Jones, and Mr. A.C. Fifield,
the publisher, for permission to make use of "The Note Books of Samuel
Butler."

To Mr. W. Aldis Wright and Messrs. Macmillan for my quotations from
"The
Letters of Edward FitzGerald."

To Mr. E.I. Carlyle, author of "The Life of William Cobbett."

To Sir Herbert Stephen and Messrs. Bowes & Bowes of Cambridge for
permission to include verses from the "Lapsus Calami" of J.K. Stephen.

To Mrs. Hole, Mr. G.A.B. Dewar, and Messrs. George Allen & Co., for
my quotations from Mr. Dewar's "The Letters of Samuel Reynolds Hole."

To Messrs. Chatto & Windus for my extracts from the Works of Mark
Twain.

To Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons for permission to make a quotation from
"Mrs.

Brookfield and her Circle."

To Messrs. Constable & Co. for my raid on the "Letters of T.E. Brown."

To Messrs. George Bell & Son for the verses taken from C.S. Calverley's
"Fly Leaves."

To Mr. E.V. Lucas, prince of anthologists, for the liberal use I have made
of his "Life of Charles Lamb."

To Mr. G.K. Chesterton, and his publishers, Messrs. Methuen, Mr.
Duckworth, Mr. J.M. Dent, and Mr. John Lane.

To Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. (the owners of the copyright) for
permission to include letters of Thackeray to Mrs. Brookfield.

To Messrs. Gibbings & Co. for my extracts from the admirable
translation of Sainte-Beuve.

And to all authors, living and dead, who have assembled in this place to
entertain the sick and the weary.

H.B.

FOREWORD

"It is worth," said Dr. Johnson, "a thousand pounds a year to have the habit
of looking on the bright side of things."

It is worth more than all money to have the capacity, the power, the will
to see the bright side of things, to possess the assurance that there is a
veritable and persisting bright side of things, when the mind is gloomed by
physical weakness and the heart is conscious only of languor and distress.
At such a dull time even a long-established habit may desert us; with our
faculties clouded and obscured we are tempted to doubt the entire
philosophy of our former life; we sink down into the sheets of discomfort,
and roll our heads restlessly on the pillow of discontent; we almost extract a
morbid satisfaction from the fuliginous surrenderings of pessimism. Mrs.
Gummidge at our bedside might be as unwelcome as Eliphaz the Temanite,
Bildad the Shuhite, or Zophar the Naamathite; but there is a Widow in the
soul of all men as mournful and lugubrious as the tearful sister of Mr.
Peggotty, and in our weakness it is often this dismal self-comforter we are
disposed to summon to our aid. "My soul is weary of my life," cried Job; "I
will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my
soul."

Now, there is not a wise doctor in the world, nor any man who truly
knows himself, but will acknowledge and confess the enormous importance
to physical recovery of mental well-being. The thing has become

platitudinous, but remains as difficult as ever. If Christian Science on its
physiological side had been an easy matter it would long ago have
converted the world. The trouble is that obvious things are not always easy.
It is obvious to the victim of alcoholic or nicotine poisoning that he would
be infinitely better in health could he abjure alcohol or tobacco; he does not
need to be philosophised or theologised into this conviction; he knows it
better than his teachers. His necessity is a superadded force to the will
within his soul which has lost the power of action. And so with the will of
the sick person, who knows very well that if he could rid himself of
dejection and heaviness his health would come back to him on swallows'
wings. Obvious, palpable, more certain than to-morrow's sun; but how
difficult, how hard, nay, sometimes how impossible! An honest man like
Father Tyrrell confesses that in certain bouts with the flesh faith may desert
us, even the religious faith of a life-time may fall in ruins round our naked
soul.

I was once speaking on this subject to Sir Jesse Boot, telling him how
hard I had found it to amuse and distract the mind of one of my children in
the extreme weakness which fell upon her after an operation. I told him that
I had searched my book-shelves for stories, histories, anthologies, and
journeyings; that I had carried to the bedside piles of books which I thought
the most suitable; and that I had read from these books day after day,
succeeding for some few minutes at a time to interest the sick child, but
ending almost in every case with failure and defeat. I found that humour
could bore, that narrative could irritate, that essays could worry and
perplex, that poetry could depress, and that wit could tease with its
cleverness. Moreover, I found that one could not go straight to any
anthology in existence without coming unexpectedly, and before one was
aware of it, upon some passage so mournful or sad or pathetic that it undid
at a sentence all the good which had been done by luckier reading. My
friend, who is himself a great reader, and who has borne for some years a

heavy burden of infirmity, agreed that cheerful reading is of immense help
in sickness and also confessed that it is difficult to find any one book which
ministers to a mind weakened by illness or tortured by insomnia.

The present volume is the outcome of that conversation. I determined to
compile a book which from the first page to the last should be a happy
book, a book which would come to be a friend of all those who share in any
way the sickness of the world, a book to which everybody could go with the
sure knowledge that they would find there nothing to depress, nothing to
exacerbate irritable nerves, nothing to confirm the mind in dejection. And
on its positive side I said that this book should be diverse and changeful in
its happiness. I planned that while cheerfulness should be its soul, the
expression of that cheerfulness should avoid monotony with as great an
energy as the book itself avoided depression. My theory was a book whose
pages should resemble rather an olla podrida of variety than a tautological
joint of monotonous nutriment. And I sought to fill my wallet rather from
the crumbs let fall by the happy feasters than from the too familiar table of
the great masters.

"To muse, to dream, to conceive of fine works, is a delightful
occupation." But one must go from conception to execution, crossing the
gulf that separates "these two hemispheres of Art." "The man," says Balzac,
"who can but sketch his purpose beforehand in words is regarded as a
wonder, and every artist and writer possesses that faculty. But gestation,
fruition, the laborious rearing of the offspring, putting it to bed every night
full fed with milk, embracing it anew every morning with the inexhaustible
affection of a mother's heart, licking it clean, dressing it a hundred times in
the richest garb only to be instantly destroyed; then never to be cast down at
the convulsions of this headlong life till the living masterpiece is perfected
which in sculpture speaks to every eye, in literature to every intellect, in

painting to every memory, in music to every heart!—this is the task of
execution."

Even the compiler knows something of this passion of the artist,
experiences some at least of the convulsions of this headlong life, makes
acquaintance certainly with this task of execution. To conceive such a
volume as a Bed-Book of Happiness is one matter, to make it in very fact a
Bed-Book of Happiness is another and a much harder matter. For, to begin
with, one's judgment is not nearly so free and one's field of selection not
nearly so wide as the anthologist's whose book is for all sorts and
conditions of men, who may be as merry as he wishes on one page, as
solemn as he chooses on the next, and as pathetic or sentimental as he likes
on the page beyond. One has had to reject, for instance, humour that is too
boisterous or noisy, wit that is too stinging and acrimonious, anecdotes that
are touched with cruelty, essays that, otherwise cheerful, deviate into the
shadows of a too sombre reflection. One has sought to compile a book of
cheerfulness that is kind and of happiness that is quiet and composed. One
has had always in mind the invalid just able to bear the effort of listening to
a melodious voice. To amuse, to distract, to divert, and above all to charm
—to bring a smile to the mind rather than laughter to the lips—has been the
guiding principle of this book, and the task has not been easy. It is really
extraordinary, to give but one instance of my difficulties, how frequently
the most amusing work of comic writers is ruined by some chuckling jests
about coffins, undertakers, or graves. If any reader in full health miss from
this throng of glad faces, this muster of elated hearts, the most amusing and
delightful of his familiar friends, let him ask himself, before he pass
judgment on the anthologist, before he mistake a deliberate omission for a
careless forgetfulness, whether those good friends of his, amiable and
welcome enough at the dinner-table, are the companions he would choose
for his most wearisome hours or for the bedside of his sick child. And if in
these pages another should find that which neither amuses nor diverts his

mind, that which seems to him to miss the magic and to lack the charm of
happiness, let him pass on, with as much charity as he can spare for the
anthologist, remembering the proverb of Terence and counting himself an
infinitely happier man for this clear proof of his superior judgment.

I wished to include in this book, from the literature of other countries,
such gentle, whimsical humour as one finds in the letters of FitzGerald or
the Essays of Lamb. But, with all my searching I could find nothing of that
kind, and judges whom I can trust assure me that no other literature has the
exquisite note of happiness which sounds through English letters so quietly,
so cheerfully, and so contentedly. Therefore my Bed-Book is almost entirely
an English Bed-Book, for I liked not the biting acid of Voltaire's epigrams
any more than the rollicking and disgustful coarseness of Boccaccio or
Rabelais. It is an interesting reflection, if it be true, that English literature is
par excellence the literature of Happiness.

"He who puts forth one depressing thought," says Lady Rachel Howard,
"aids Satan in his work of torment. He who puts forth one cheering thought
aids God in His work of beneficence." I have acted in the faith that life is
essentially good, that the universe presents to the natural intuition of man a
bright and glorious expression of Divine happiness, that to be fruitful, as
George Sand has it, life must be felt as a blessing. One of the characters in a
novel by Dostöevsky says, "Men are made for happiness, and any one who
is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on
earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy."

Happiness, in its truest and only lasting sense, is the condition of a soul at
unity with itself and in harmony with existence. To bring the sick and the
sad and the unhappy at least some way on the road to this blissful state, is
the purpose of my book; and it leaves me on its travel round the world with
the wish that to whatever bedside of sickness, suffering, and lethargy it may

come, it may bring with it the magic and contagious joy of those rare and
gracious people whose longed-for visits to an invalid are like draughts of
rejoicing health. I hope that my fine covers may soon be worn to the
comfort of an old garment, that my new pages may be quickly shabbied to
the endearment of a familiar face, and that the book will live at bedsides
deepening and sweetening the reader's affection for its faded leaves till it
come to seem an old, faithful, and never-failing friend, one who is never at
fault and never a deserter, and without whom life would lose one of its
fondest companionships.

CONTENTS

ALLSTON, WASHINGTON:
The Lost Ornament 191

ANONYMOUS:
The Gentle Reader 14
King David and the Gardener 198
Sabbath Bells 275
From the Greek Anthology 313
Letter from an Indian Gentleman to an
English Friend 324
A Babu Letter 327
Mary Powell 341
A Tur'ble Chap 374
After Mr. Masefield 384
Hits and Misses 443
The Broken Window 443

BAGEHOT, WALTER:
Letters 212

BALMANNO, MRS.:
Charles and his Sister 193

BETHAM, M.M.:
Miss Pate 190

BOSWELL:
Dr. Johnson at Court 346

BROOKFIELD, W.H.:
Mr. Brookfield in his Youth 376

BROWN, T.E.:
Letters of T.E. Brown 85

BUTLER, SAMUEL:
Clergyman and Chickens 15
Melchisedec 15
Eating and Proselytising 15
Sea-sickness 17
Assimilation and Persecution 17
Night-shirts and Babies 17
Does Mamma Know? 18
Croesus and his Kitchen-maid 19
Adam and Eve 24
Fire 24
The Electric Light in its Infancy 25
New-laid Eggs 25
Snapshotting a Bishop 26

BYRON:
Apples 359

CALVERLEY, CHARLES:
Visions 99

The Schoolmaster Abroad with his Son 174
Motherhood 257
"Forever" 337

CARLYLE:
Richter 1

CARROLL, LEWIS:
The Author of "Alice" 378

CHESTERTON, G.K.:
The Wisdom of G.K.C. 140

COBBETT, WILLIAM:
His Marriage 230
Life at Botley 233
His Children 237

DAUDET, ALPHONSE:

Tartarin de Tarascon 176

DICKENS, CHARLES:
Shy Neighbourhoods 70
The Calais Night-boat 200
Mr. Testator 329

DOBSON, AUSTIN:
The Secrets of the Heart 34
To "Lydia Languish" 137
The Cap that Fits 240
A Garden Idyll 286

Love in Winter 353
From the Ballad à-la-Mode 417

FITZGERALD, EDWARD:
Letters of Fitz 127

GASKELL, MRS.:
Cranford 291

GRONOW, CAPTAIN:
Sir John Waters 47
Lord Westmoreland 51
Colonel Kelly and his Blacking 52
John Kemble 53
Rogers and Luttrell 54
The Pig-faced Lady 57
Hoby, the Bootmaker, of St. James's Street 58
Harrington House and Lord Petersham 60
Lord Alvanley 61
Sally Lunn 66
"Monk" Lewis 67

HAYDON, B.R.:
Haydon's Immortal Night 181

H.B.:
Miss Stipp of Plover's Court 385
Two Old Gentlemen 424

HAZLITT:
Persons one would wish to have seen 180

Hobson's Choice 279
Wit and Laughter 351

HOLE, DEAN:
"The Vulgar Tongue" 146
The Happy Dean 249

HOOD:
The Carelesse Nurse Mayd 69
"Please to Ring the Belle" 248
Sally Simpkin's Lament; or John Jones's
Kit-cat-astrophe 307
"Love, with a Witness!" 328
Ode to Peace 404

INGOLDSBY:
Hints for an Historical Play; to be called
William Rufus; or, the Red Rover 122
The Tragedy 214
New-made Honour 312

J.B.:
Elia's Tail 192

JOHNSON, SAMUEL:
Music 402
Neatness in Excess 402
A Young Lady's "Needs" 403
"Irene" 403

JONSON, BEN:
The Woodcraft of Jonson 253

KEATS:
To his Brother 186

LAMB, CHARLES:
"Sixpenny Jokes" 185
Lamb's Task 186
In a Coach 197

LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE:
Landorisms 350

LEIGH, HENRY S.:
Where—and oh! Where? 33
The Answer of Lady Clara Vere de Vere 252

LEWES, G.H.:
Goethe's Mother 28

MACAULAY, LORD:
"Boswell and Johnson" 102
Macaulay's Wit 290

MERIVALE, CHARLES:
From the Greek Anthology 313

MONTAIGNE:
Odours and Moustaches 415

PERCY ANECDOTES:
The Great Condé 2
A Classical Ass 3
Memory 4
"Come in Here" 4

A Pope Innocent 5
A Good Paraphrase 5
Irish Priest 6
A Digression 7
Fortune-teller 7
Gasconades 8
Tribute to Beauty 8
Begging Quarter 9
Gascon Reproved 9
Absent Man 11
Pride 12
Witty Coward 12
Valuing Beauty 12
Pro Aris et Focis 14

PRIOR, MATTHEW:
Epigrams 345

RELIGIO MEDICI:
The Happiness of Sir Thomas Browne 244

RICHTER:
Theisse 1
Broken Studies 1

ROBINSON, CRABB:
Your Hat, Sir 191

SAINTE-BEUVE:
The Charming Frenchman: Bossuet, Rousseau,
Joubert, Mme D'Houdetot, Mme de
Rémusat, Diderot, La Bruyère 269

SELDEN, JOHN:
Table-talk of John Selden 309

SMITH, ALEXANDER:
Dreamthorp 418

SMITH, SYDNEY:
A Little Moral Advice 360
Mrs. Partington 363

STEPHEN, J.K.:
In a Visitor's Book 126
A Sonnet 345

STERNE:
The Supper 118
The Grace 120
Uncle Toby and the Fly 277

STOW:
Old London Sports 314

THACKERAY:
Letters from Thackeray 406

THOMSON, MISS E.G.:
Lewis Carroll 380

THOREAU:
Open Air 339

TWAIN, MARK:
British Festivities 38

Mark's Baby 139
Enigma 243
The Jumping Frog 259
How Mark was Sold 310
A Newspaper Paragraph 335
Mental Photographs 354
How Mark edited an Agricultural Paper 365

WALPOLE, HORACE:
Chatter of a Dilettante 221

WALTON, IZAAK:
Angling Cheer 356

WELLESLEY:
From the Greek Anthology (altered) 313

WIT ON OCCASION 444

THE BED-BOOK OF HAPPINESS
THEISSE
[Sidenote: Richter]

In his seventy-second year his face is a thanksgiving for his former life,
and a love-letter to all mankind.

RICHTER
[Sidenote: Carlyle]

We have heard that he was a man universally loved, as well as honoured
… a friendly, true, and high-minded man; copious in speech, which was full
of grave, genuine humour; contented with simple people and simple
pleasures; and himself of the simplest habits and wishes.

BROKEN STUDIES
[Sidenote: Richter]

I deny myself my evening meal in my eagerness to work; but the
interruptions by my children I cannot deny myself.

THE GREAT CONDÉ
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

The Great Condé passing through the city of Sens, which belonged to
Burgundy, and of which he was the governor, took great pleasure in
disconcerting the different companies who came to compliment him. The
Abbé Boileau, brother of the poet, was commissioned to make a speech to
the Prince at the head of the chapter. Condé wishing to disconcert the orator,
advanced his head and large nose towards the Abbé, as if with the intention
of hearing him more distinctly, but in reality to make him blunder if
possible. The Abbé, who perceived his design, pretended to be greatly
embarrassed, and thus began his speech: "My lord, your highness ought not
to be surprised to see me tremble, when I appear before you at the head of a
company of ecclesiastics; were I at the head of an army of thirty thousand
men, I should tremble much more." The Prince was so charmed with this
sally that he embraced the orator without suffering him to proceed. He
asked his name; and when he found that he was brother to M. Despreaux,
he redoubled his attentions, and invited him to dinner.

The Prince on another occasion thought himself offended by the Abbé de
Voisenon; Voisenon, hearing of this, went to Court to exculpate himself. As
soon as the Prince saw him he turned away from him. "Thank God!" said
Voisenon, "I have been misinformed, sir; your highness does not treat me as
if I were an enemy." "How do you see that, M. Abbé?" said his highness
coldly over his shoulder. "Because, sir," answered the Abbé, "your highness
never turns your back upon an enemy." "My dear Abbé," exclaimed the
Prince and Field-Marshal, turning round and taking him by the hand, "it is
quite impossible for any man to be angry with you."

A CLASSICAL ASS
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

The ass, though the dullest of all unlaughing animals, is reported to have
once accomplished a great feat in the way of exciting laughter. Marcus
Crassus, the grandfather of the hero of that name, who fell in the Parthian
War, was a person of such immovable gravity of countenance that, in the
whole course of his life, he was never known to laugh but once, and hence
was surnamed Agelastus. Not all that the wittiest men of his time could say,
nor aught that comedy or farce could produce on the stage, was ever known
to call up more than a smile on his iron-bound countenance. Happening one
day, however, to stray into the fields, he espied an ass browsing on thistles;
and in this there appears to have been something so eminently ridiculous in
those days that the man who never laughed before could not help laughing
at it outright. It was but the burst of a moment; Agelastus immediately
recovered himself, and never laughed again.

MEMORY
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A player being reproached by Rich for having forgot some of the words
in "The Beggar's Opera," on the fifty-third night of its performance, cried
out, "What! do you think one can remember a thing for ever?"

"COME IN HERE"
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

Burton, in his "Melancholy," quoting from Poggius, the Florentine, tells
us of a physician in Milan who kept a house for the reception of lunatics,
and, by way of cure, used to make his patients stand for a length of time in a
pit of water, some up to the knees, some to the girdle, and others as high as
the chin, pro modo insaniæ, according as they were more or less affected.
An inmate of this establishment, who happened, "by chance," to be pretty

well recovered, was standing at the door of the house, and, seeing a gallant
cavalier ride past with a hawk on his fist, and his spaniels after him, he must
needs ask what all these preparations meant. The cavalier answered, "To kill
game." "What may the game be worth which you kill in the course of a
year?" rejoined the patient. "About five or ten crowns." "And what may
your horse, dogs, and hawks stand you in?" "Four hundred crowns more."
On hearing this, the patient with great earnestness of manner, bade the
cavalier instantly begone, as he valued his life and welfare; "For," said he,
"if our master come and find you here, he will put you into his pit up to the
very chin."

A POPE INNOCENT
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

When King James I. visited Sir Thomas Pope, knt., in Oxfordshire, his
lady had lately brought him a daughter, and the babe was presented to the
King with a paper of verses in her hand; "Which," quoth Fuller, "as they
pleased the King, I hope they will please the reader."

See, this little mistress here,
Did never sit in Peter's chair,
Or a triple crown did wear,
And yet she is a Pope.

No benefice she ever sold,
Nor did dispense with sins for gold,
She hardly is a se'nnight old,
And yet she is a Pope.

No king her feet did ever kiss,
Or had from her worse look than this;

Nor did she ever hope
To saint one with a rope,
And yet she is a Pope.

A female Pope you'll say, a second Joan!
No, sure she is Pope Innocent, or none!

A GOOD PARAPHRASE
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

On the eve of a battle an officer came to ask permission of the Maréchal
de Toiras to go and see his father, who was on his death-bed. "Go," said the
general, "you honour your father and your mother, that your days may be
long in the land."

IRISH PRIEST
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

An Irish peasant complained to the Catholic priest of his parish that some
person had stolen his best pig, and supplicated his reverence to help him to
the discovery of the thief. The priest promised his best endeavours; and, his
inquiries soon leading him to a correct enough guess as to the offender, he
took the following amusing method of bringing the matter home to him.
Next Sunday, after the service of the day, he called out with a loud voice,
fixing his eyes on the suspected individual, "Who stole Pat Doolan's pig?"
There was a long pause, and no answer; he did not expect that there would
be any; and descended from the pulpit without saying a word more. A
second Sunday arriving without the pig being restored in the interval, his
reverence, again looking steadfastly at the stubborn purloiner and throwing
a deep note of anger into the tone of his voice, repeated the question. "Who

stole Pat Doolan's pig? I say, who stole poor Pat Doolan's pig?" Still there
was no answer, and the question was left as before, to work its effect in
secret on the conscience of the guilty individual. The hardihood of the
offender, however, exceeded all the honest priest's calculations. A third
Sunday arrived, and Pat Doolan was still without his pig. Some stronger
measure now became necessary. After service was performed his reverence,
dropping the question of "Who stole Pat Doolan's pig?" but still without
directly accusing any one of the theft, reproachfully exclaimed, "Jimmie
Doran! Jimmie Doran! you trate me with contimpt." Jimmie Doran hung
down his head, and next morning the pig was found at the door of Pat
Doolan's cabin.

A DIGRESSION
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

The celebrated Henderson, the actor, was seldom known to be in a
passion. When at Oxford, he was one day debating with a fellow student,
who, not keeping his temper, threw a glass of wine in his face. Mr.
Henderson took out his handkerchief, wiped his face, and coolly said,
"That, sir, was a digression; now for the argument."

FORTUNE-TELLER
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A fortune-teller was arrested at his theatre of divination, al fresco, at the
corner of the rue de Bussy in Paris, and carried before the tribunal of
correctional police. "You know to read the future?" said the president, a
man of great wit, but too fond of a joke for a magistrate. "In this case," said
the judge, "you know the judgment we intend to pronounce." "Certainly."
"Well, what will happen to you?" "Nothing." "You are sure of it?" "You will

acquit me." "Acquit you!" "There is no doubt of it." "Why?" "Because, sir,
if it had been your intention to condemn me, you would not have added
irony to misfortune." The president, disconcerted, turned to his brother
judges, and the sorcerer was acquitted.

GASCONADES
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A Gascon, passing one night through a churchyard, thought he saw a
spectre drawing forth his sword. He called out aloud, "Aha! do you want to
be killed a second time? I am your man."

Another hero of the same country used to say that he could not look into
a mirror without being afraid of himself.

When Robespierre had been guillotined at Paris, a Gascon officer in the
French army thus expressed the dread he had entertained of that tyrant:
"As often as the name of Robespierre was mentioned to me, I used to take
off my hat, in order to see if my head was in it."

TRIBUTE TO BEAUTY
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

As the late beautiful Duchess of Devonshire was one day stepping out of
her carriage, a dustman, who was accidentally standing by, and was about to
regale himself with his accustomed whiff of tobacco, caught a glance of her
countenance, and instantly exclaimed, "Love and bless you, my lady, let me
light my pipe in your eyes!" It is said the duchess was so delighted with this
compliment that she frequently afterwards checked the strain of adulation,
which was so constantly offered to her charms, by saying, "Oh! after the
dustman's compliment, all others are insipid."

BEGGING QUARTER
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A French regiment at the battle of Spires had orders to give no quarter.
A German officer, being taken, begged his life. The Frenchman replied,
"Sir, you may ask me for any other favour; but, as for your life, it is
impossible for me to grant it."

GASCON REPROVED
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A descendant of a family in Gascony, celebrated for its flow of language
and love of talking, and not for any deeds of glory, descanted before a
numerous company upon the well-known bravery of his ancestors and
relations. He then, to show that the race had not degenerated, modestly
launched into a faithful description of his own battles, duels, and successes.
He was once, he said, a passenger on board a French frigate during the war,
and, falling in with an English squadron composed of three seventy-fours,
fought with them for five hours, when luckily, the ship taking fire, he was
blown up, with ten of his countrymen, and dropped into one of the seventy-
fours, the crew of which laid down their arms and surrendered; while the
two remaining men-of-war, struck with dismay at the sight of one of their
ships in the possession of the enemy, crowded sails and ran away!

Such were his faithful accounts, with which he would still have continued
to annoy the company, had not one of his countrymen, more enlightened,
frankly acknowledged the natural propensity which leads the inhabitants of
Gascony to revel in imaginary scenes, resolved to awe him into silence, and
thus addressed him: "All your exploits are mere commonplace, in
comparison to those which I have achieved; and I will relate a single one
that surpasses all yours."

The babbler opened his ears, no doubt secretly intending to appropriate
this story to himself in future time, when none of the hearers should be
present, and modestly owned, that all those he had mentioned were mere
children's tricks, performed without any exertion, but that he had some in
store which might shine unobscured by the side of the most brilliant deeds
of ancient ages.

"One evening," said the other, "as I was returning to town from the
country, I had to pass through a narrow lane, well known for being infested
with highwaymen. My horse was in good order, my pistols loaded, and my
broadsword hung at my side; I entered the lane without any apprehension.
Scarcely had I reached the middle when a loud shout behind me made me
turn my head, and I saw a man with a short gun running fast towards me. I
was going to face him with my horse, when two men with large cudgels in
their hands, rushing from the hedge, seized the reins, and threatened me
with instant death. Undaunted, I took my two pistols; but, before I had time
to fire, one was knocked out of my hand, the other went off, and one of the
robbers fell. I then drew my sword, and, though bruised by the blows I had
received, struck with all my might, and split the head of the other in two.
Freed from my danger on their side, I attempted a second time to turn my
horse." Here he paused a while; and our babbler, longing to know the end of
this adventure, exclaimed, "And the third!" "Oh, the third!" answered the
other; "he shot me dead."

ABSENT MAN
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A celebrated living poet, occasionally a little absent in mind, was invited
by a friend, whom he met in the street, to dine with him the next Sunday at
a country lodging, which he had taken for the summer months. The address
was, "near the Green Man at Dulwich"; which, not to put his inviter to the

trouble of pencilling down, the absent man promised faithfully to
remember. But when Sunday came, he, fully late enough, made his way to
Greenwich, and began inquiring for the sign of the Dull Man! No such sign
was to be found; and, after losing an hour, a person guessed that though
there was no Dull Man at Greenwich, there was a Green Man at Dulwich,
which the absent man might possibly mean! This remark connected the
broken chain, and the poet was under the necessity of taking his chop by
himself.

PRIDE
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A Spaniard rising from a fall, whereby his nose had suffered
considerably, exclaimed, "Voto, a tal, esto es caminar por la turru!" (This
comes of walking upon earth!)

WITTY COWARD
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

A French marquis having received several blows with a stick, which he
never thought of resenting, a friend asked him, "How he could reconcile it
with his honour to suffer them to pass without notice?" "Poh!" replied the
marquis, "I never trouble my head with anything that passes behind my
back."

VALUING BEAUTY
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

The Persian Ambassador, Mirza Aboul Hassan, while he resided in Paris
was an object of so much curiosity that he could not go out without being

surrounded by a multitude of gazers, and the ladies even ventured so far as
to penetrate his hotel.

On returning one day from a ride, he found his apartments crowded with
ladies, all elegantly dressed, but not all equally beautiful. Astonished at this
unexpected assemblage, he inquired what these European odalisques could
possibly want with him. The interpreter replied that they had come to look
at his Excellency. The Ambassador was surprised to find himself an object
of curiosity among a people who boast of having attained the acme of
civilisation; and was not a little offended at conduct which, in Asia, would
have been considered an unwarrantable breach of good-breeding; he
accordingly revenged himself by the following little scheme.

The illustrious foreigner affected to be charmed with the ladies; he
looked at them attentively alternately, pointing to them with his finger, and
speaking with great earnestness to his interpreter, who, he was well aware,
would be questioned by his fair visitants; and whom he therefore instructed
in the part he was to act. Accordingly, the eldest of the ladies, who, in spite
of her age, probably thought herself the prettiest of the whole party, and
whose curiosity was particularly excited, after his Excellency had passed
through the suite of rooms, coolly inquired what had been the object of his
examination? "Madam," replied the interpreter, "I dare not inform you."
"But I wish particularly to know, sir." "Indeed, madam, it is impossible!"
"Nay, sir, this reserve is vexatious; I desire to know." "Oh! since you desire,
madam, know then that his Excellency has been valuing you!" "Valuing us!
how, sir?" "Yes, ladies, his Excellency, after the custom of his country, has
been setting a price upon each of you!" "Well, that's whimsical enough; and
how much may that lady be worth, according to his estimation?" "A
thousand crowns." "And the other?" "Five hundred crowns." "And that
young lady with fair hair?" "The same price." "And that lady who is
painted?" "Fifty crowns." "And pray, sir, what may I be worth in the tariff

of his Excellency's good graces?" "Oh, madam, you really must excuse me,
I beg." "Come, come, no concealments." "The Prince merely said as he
passed you—" "Well, what did he say?" inquired the lady with great
eagerness. "He said, madam, that he did not know the small coin of this
country."

PRO ARIS ET FOCIS
[Sidenote: Percy Anecdotes]

At the establishment of volunteer corps, a certain corporation agreed to
form a body, on condition that they should not be obliged to quit the
country. The proposal was submitted to Mr. Pitt; who said he had no
objection to the terms, if they would permit him to add, "except, in case of
invasion."

THE GENTLE READER
[Sidenote: Anon.]

No British Museum the fisherman needs:
He simply goes down to the river and reeds.

CLERGYMEN AND CHICKENS
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

Why, let me ask, should a hen lay an egg, which egg can become a
chicken in about three weeks and a full-grown hen in less than a
twelvemonth, while a clergyman and his wife lay no eggs, but give birth to
a baby which will take three-and-twenty years before it can become another
clergyman? Why should not chickens be born and clergymen be laid and

hatched? Or why, at any rate, should not the clergyman be born full-grown
and in Holy Orders, not to say already beneficed?

MELCHISEDEC
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

He was a really happy man. He was without father, without mother, and
without descent. He was an incarnate bachelor. He was a born orphan.

EATING AND PROSELYTISING
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

All eating is a kind of proselytising—a kind of dogmatising—a
maintaining that the eater's way of looking at things is better than the
eatee's. We convert the food, or try to do so, to our own way of thinking,
and, when it sticks to its own opinion and refuses to be converted, we say it
disagrees with us. An animal that refuses to let another eat it has the
courage of its convictions, and, if it gets eaten, dies a martyr to them….

It is good for the man that he should not be thwarted—that he should
have his own way as far, and with as little difficulty, as possible. Cooking is
good because it makes matters easier by unsettling the meat's mind and
preparing it for new ideas. All food must first be prepared for us by animals
and plants, or we cannot assimilate it; and so thoughts are more easily
assimilated that have been already digested by other minds. A man should
avoid converse with things that have been stunted or starved, and should not
eat such meat as has been overdriven or underfed or afflicted with disease,
nor should he touch fruit or vegetables that have not been well grown.

Sitting quiet after eating is akin to sitting still during divine service so as
not to disturb the congregation. We are catechising and converting our

proselytes, and there should be no row. As we get older we must digest
more quietly still; our appetite is less, our gastric juices are no longer so
eloquent, they have lost that cogent fluency which carried away all that
came in contact with it. They have become sluggish and unconciliatory.
This is what happens to any man when he suffers from an attack of
indigestion.

Or, indeed, any other sickness, is the inarticulate expression of the pain
we feel on seeing a proselyte escape us just as we were on the point of
converting it.

ASSIMILATION AND PERSECUTION
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

We cannot get rid of persecution; if we feel at all we must persecute
something; the mere acts of feeding and growing are acts of persecution.
Our aim should be to persecute nothing but such things as are absolutely
incapable of resisting us. Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly
terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

NIGHT-SHIRTS AND BABIES
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

On Hindhead, last Easter, we saw a family wash hung out to dry. There
were papa's two great night-shirts and mamma's two lesser night-gowns,
and then the children's smaller articles of clothing and mamma's drawers
and the girls' drawers, all full swollen with a strong north-east wind. But
mamma's night-gown was not so well pinned on, and, instead of being full
of steady wind like the others, kept blowing up and down as though she
were preaching wildly. We stood and laughed for ten minutes. The

housewife came to the window and wondered at us, but we could not resist
the pleasure of watching the absurdly life-like gestures which the night-
gowns made. I should like a Santa Famiglia with clothes drying in the
background.

A love-story might be told in a series of sketches of the clothes of two
families hanging out to dry in adjacent gardens. Then a gentleman's night-
shirt from one garden and a lady's night-gown from the other should be
shown hanging in a third garden by themselves. By and by there should be
added a little night-shirt.

A philosopher might be tempted, on seeing the little night-shirt, to
suppose that the big night-shirts had made it. What we do is much the same,
for the body of a baby is not much more made by the two old babies, after
whose pattern it has cut itself out, than the little night-shirt is made by the
big ones. The thing that makes either the little night-shirt or the little baby is
something about which we know nothing whatever at all.

DOES MAMMA KNOW?
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

A father was telling his eldest daughter, aged about six, that she had a
little sister, and was explaining to her how nice it all was. The child said it
was delightful, and added:

"Does mamma know? Let's go and tell her."

CROESUS AND HIS KITCHEN-MAID
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

I want people to see either their cells as less parts of themselves than they
do, or their servants as more.

Croesus's kitchen-maid is part of him, bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh, for she eats what comes from his table, and, being fed of one flesh,
are they not brother and sister to one another in virtue of community of
nutriment, which is but a thinly veiled travesty of descent? When she eats
peas with her knife, he does so too; there is not a bit of bread and butter she
puts into her mouth, nor a lump of sugar she drops into her tea, but he
knoweth it altogether, though he knows nothing whatever about it. She is
en-Croesused and he en-scullery-maided so long as she remains linked to
him by the golden chain which passes from his pocket to hers, and which is
greatest of all unifiers.

True, neither party is aware of the connection at all as long as things go
smoothly. Croesus no more knows the name of, or feels the existence of, his
kitchen-maid than a peasant in health knows about his liver; nevertheless,
he is awakened to a dim sense of an undefined something when he pays his
grocer or his baker. She is more definitely aware of him than he of her, but
it is by way of an overshadowing presence rather than a clear and intelligent
comprehension. And though Croesus does not eat his kitchen-maid's meals
otherwise than vicariously, still to eat vicariously is to eat: the meals so
eaten by his kitchen-maid nourish the better ordering of the dinner which
nourishes and engenders the better ordering of Croesus himself. He is fed,
therefore, by the feeding of his kitchen-maid.

And so with sleep. When she goes to bed he, in part, does so too. When
she gets up and lays the fire in the back kitchen he, in part, does so. He lays
it through her and in her, though knowing no more what he is doing than we
know when we digest, but still doing it as by what we call a reflex action.
Qui facit per alium facit per se, and when the back-kitchen fire is lighted on

Croesus's behalf it is Croesus who lights it, though he is all the time fast
asleep in bed.

Sometimes things do not go smoothly. Suppose the kitchen-maid to be
taken with fits just before dinner-time; there will be a reverberating echo of
disturbance throughout the whole organisation of the palace. But the oftener
she has fits, the more easily will the household know what it is all about
when she is taken with them. On the first occasion Lady Croesus will send
some one rushing down into the kitchen; there will, in fact, be a general
flow of blood (i.e. household) to the part affected (that is to say, to the
scullery-maid); the doctor will be sent for and all the rest of it. On each
repetition of the fits the neighbouring organs, reverting to a more primary
undifferentiated condition, will discharge duties for which they were not
engaged, in a manner for which no one would have given them credit; and
the disturbance will be less and less each time, till by and by, at the sound
of the crockery smashing below, Lady Croesus will just look up to papa and
say:

"My dear, I am afraid Sarah has got another fit."

And papa will say she will probably be better again soon, and will go on
reading his newspaper.

In course of time the whole thing will come to be managed automatically
downstairs without any references either to papa, the cerebrum, or to
mamma, the cerebellum, or even to the medulla oblongata, the
housekeeper. A precedent or routine will be established, after which
everything will work quite smoothly.

But though papa and mamma are unconscious of the reflex action which
has been going on within their organisation, the kitchen-maid and the cells
in her immediate vicinity (that is to say, her fellow-servants) will know all

about it. Perhaps the neighbours will think that nobody in the house knows,
and that, because the master and mistress show no sign of disturbance,
therefore there is no consciousness. They forget that the scullery-maid
becomes more and more conscious of the fits if they grow upon her, as they
probably will, and that Croesus and his lady do show more signs of
consciousness, if they are watched closely, than can be detected on first
inspection. There is not the same violent perturbation that there was on the
previous occasions, but the tone of the palace is lowered. A dinner-party has
to be put off; the cooking is more homogeneous and uncertain, it is less
highly differentiated than when the scullery-maid was well; and there is a
grumble when the doctor has to be paid, and also when the smashed
crockery has to be replaced.

If Croesus discharges his kitchen-maid and gets another, it is as though
he cut out a small piece of his finger and replaced it in due course by
growth. But even the slightest cut may lead to blood-poisoning, and so even
the dismissal of a kitchen-maid may be big with the fate of empires. Thus
the cook—a valued servant—may take the kitchen-maid's part and go too.
The next cook may spoil the dinner and upset Croesus's temper, and from
this all manner of consequences may be evolved, even to the dethronement
and death of the King himself. Nevertheless, as a general rule, an injury to
such a low part of a great monarch's organism as a kitchen-maid has no
important results. It is only when we are attacked in such vital organs as the
solicitor or the banker that we need be uneasy. A wound in the solicitor is a
very serious thing, and many a man has died from failure of his bank's
action.

It is certain, as we have seen, that when the kitchen-maid lights the fire it
is really Croesus who is lighting it, but it is less obvious that when Croesus
goes to a ball the scullery-maid goes also. Still, this should be held in the
same way as it should be also held that she eats vicariously when Croesus

dines. For he must return from the ball and the dinner-parties, and this
comes out in his requiring to keep a large establishment whereby the
scullery-maid retains her place as part of his organism and is nourished and
amused also.

On the other hand, when Croesus dies it does not follow that the scullery-
maid should die at the same time. She may grow a new Croesus, as
Croesus, if the maid dies, will probably grow a new kitchen-maid;
Croesus's son or successor may take over the kingdom and palace, and the
kitchen-maid, beyond having to wash up a few extra plates and dishes at
coronation time, will know little about the change. It is as though the
establishment had had its hair cut and its beard trimmed; it is smartened up
a little, but there is no other change. If, on the other hand, he goes bankrupt,
or his kingdom is taken from him and his whole establishment is broken
and dissipated at the auction-mart, then, even though not one of its
component cells actually dies, the organism as a whole does so, and it is
interesting to see that the lowest, least specialised, and least highly
differentiated parts of the organism, such as the scullery-maid and the
stable-boys, most readily find an entry into the life of some new system,
while the more specialised and highly differentiated parts, such as the
steward, the old housekeeper, and, still more so, the librarian or the
chaplain, may never be able to attach themselves to any new combination,
and may die in consequence. I heard once of a large builder who retired
unexpectedly from business and broke up his establishment, to the actual
death of several of his older employés.

So a bit of flesh, or even a finger, may be taken from one body and
grafted on to another, but a leg cannot be grafted; if a leg is cut off it must
die. It may, however, be maintained that the owner dies, too, even though he
recovers, for a man who has lost a leg is not the man he was.

ADAM AND EVE
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of Adam and
Eve.

"Which is Adam and which is Eve?" said one.

"I do not know," said the other, "but I could tell if they had their clothes
on."

FIRE
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

I was at one the other night, and heard a man say: "That corner stack is
alight now quite nicely." People's sympathies seem generally to be with the
fire so long as no one is in danger of being burned.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT IN ITS INFANCY
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

I heard a woman in a 'bus boring her lover about the electric light. She
wanted to know this and that, and the poor lover was helpless. Then she
said she wanted to know how it was regulated. At last she settled down by
saying that she knew it was in its infancy. The word "infancy" seemed to
have a soothing effect upon her, for she said no more, but, leaning her head
against her lover's shoulder, composed herself to slumber.

NEW-LAID EGGS
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

When I take my Sunday walks in the country, I try to buy a few really
new-laid eggs warm from the nest. At this time of the year (January) they
are very hard to come by, and I have long since invented a sick wife who
has implored me to get a few eggs laid not earlier than the self-same
morning. Of late, as I am getting older, it has become my daughter, who has
just had a little baby. This will generally draw a new-laid egg, if there is one
about the place at all.

At Harrow Weald it has always been my wife who for years has been a
great sufferer and finds a really new-laid egg the one thing she can digest in
the way of solid food. So I turned her on as movingly as I could not long
since, and was at last sold some eggs that were no better than common
shop-eggs, if so good. Next time I went I said my poor wife had been made
seriously ill by them; it was no good trying to deceive her; she could tell a
new-laid egg from a bad one as well as any woman in London, and she had
such a high temper that it was very unpleasant for me when she found
herself disappointed.

"Ah! sir," said the landlady, "but you would not like to lose her."

"Ma'am," I replied, "I must not allow my thoughts to wander in that
direction. But it's no use bringing her stale eggs, anyhow."

SNAPSHOTTING A BISHOP
[Sidenote: Samuel Butler]

I must some day write about how I hunted the late Bishop of Carlisle
with my camera, hoping to shoot him when he was sea-sick crossing from
Calais to Dover, and how St. Somebody protected him and said I might
shoot him when he was well, but not when he was sea-sick. I should like to
do it in the manner of the "Odyssey":

… And the steward went round and laid them all on the sofas and
benches, and he set a beautiful basin by each, variegated and adorned with
flowers; but it contained no water for washing the hands, and Neptune sent
great waves that washed over the eyelet-holes of the cabin. But when it was
now the middle of the passage and a great roaring arose as of beasts in the
Zoological Gardens, and they promised hecatombs to Neptune if he would
still the raging of the waves….

At any rate I shot him and have him in my snap-shot book; but he was
not sea-sick.

From the Note-Books of Samuel Butler.

GOETHE'S MOTHER
[Sidenote: G.H. Lewes]

That he was the loveliest baby ever seen, exciting admiration wherever
nurse or mother carried him, and exhibiting, in swaddling clothes, the most
wonderful intelligence, we need no biographer to tell us. Is it not said of
every baby? But that he was in truth a wonderful child we have undeniable
evidence, and of a kind less questionable than the statement of mothers and
relatives. At three years old he could seldom be brought to play with little
children, and only on the condition of their being pretty. One day, in a
neighbour's house, he suddenly began to cry and exclaim, "That black child
must go away! I can't bear him!" And he howled till he was carried home,
where he was slowly pacified; the whole cause of his grief being the
ugliness of the child.

A quick, merry little girl grew up by the boy's side. Four other children
also came, but soon vanished. Cornelia was the only companion who
survived, and for her his affection dated from the cradle. He brought his

toys to her, wanted to feed her and attend on her, and was very jealous of all
who approached her. "When she was taken from the cradle, over which he
watched, his anger was scarcely to be quieted. He was altogether much
more easily moved to anger than to tears." To the last his love for Cornelia
was passionate.

In old German towns, Frankfurt among them, the ground-floor consists
of a great hall where the vehicles were housed. This floor opens in folding
trap-doors, for the passage of wine-casks into the cellars below. In one
corner of the hall there is a sort of lattice, opening by an iron or wooden
grating upon the street. This is called the Geräms. Here the crockery in
daily use was kept; here the servants peel their potatoes, and cut their
carrots and turnips, preparatory to cooking; here also the housewife would
sit with her sewing, or her knitting, giving an eye to what passed in the
street (when anything did pass there) and an ear to a little neighbourly
gossip. Such a place was, of course, a favourite with the children.

One fine afternoon, when the house was quiet, Master Wolfgang, with his
cup in his hand, and nothing to do, finds himself in this Geräms, looking out
into the silent street, and telegraphing to the young Ochsensteins who dwelt
opposite. By way of doing something, he begins to fling the crockery into
the street, delighted at the smashing music which it makes, and stimulated
by the approbation of the brothers Ochsenstein, who chuckle at him from
over the way. The plates and dishes are flying in this way, when his mother
returns: she sees the mischief with a housewifely horror, melting into girlish
sympathy, as she hears how heartily the little fellow laughs at his escapade,
and how the neighbours laugh at him.

This genial, indulgent mother employed her faculty for story-telling to
his and her own delight. "Air, fire, earth, and water I represented under the
forms of princesses; and to all natural phenomena I gave a meaning, in

which I almost believed more fervently than my little hearers. As we
thought of paths which led from star to star, and that we should one day
inhabit the stars, and thought of the great spirits we should meet there, I was
as eager for the hours of story-telling as the children themselves; I was quite
curious about the future course of my own improvisation, and any invitation
which interrupted these evenings was disagreeable. There I sat, and there
Wolfgang held me with his large black eyes; and when the fate of one of his
favourites was not according to his fancy, I saw the angry veins swell on his
temples, I saw him repress his tears. He often burst in with 'But, mother, the
princess won't marry the nasty tailor, even if he does kill the giant.' And
when I made a pause for the night, promising to continue it on the morrow,
I was certain that he would in the meanwhile think it out for himself, and so
he often stimulated my imagination. When I turned the story according to
his plan, and told him that he had found out the dénouement, then was he all
fire and flame, and one could see his little heart beating underneath his
dress! His grandmother, who made a great pet of him, was the confidante of
all his ideas as to how the story would turn out, and as she repeated these to
me, and I turned the story according to these hints, there was a little
diplomatic secrecy between us, which we never disclosed. I had the
pleasure of continuing my story to the delight and astonishment of my
hearers, and Wolfgang saw, with glowing eyes, the fulfilment of his own
conceptions, and listened with enthusiastic applause." What a charming
glimpse of mother and son!

She is one of the pleasantest figures in German literature, and one
standing out with greater vividness than almost any other. Her simple,
hearty, joyous, and affectionate nature endeared her to all. She was the
delight of children, the favourite of poets and princes. To the last retaining
her enthusiasm and simplicity, mingled with great shrewdness and
knowledge of character, "Frau Aja," as they christened her, was at once
grave and hearty, dignified and simple. She had read most of the best

German and Italian authors, had picked up considerable desultory
information, and had that "mother wit" which so often in women and poets
seems to render culture superfluous, their rapid intuitions anticipating the
tardy conclusions of experience. Her letters are full of spirit: not always
strictly grammatical; not irreproachable in orthography; but vigorous and
vivacious. After a lengthened interview with her, an enthusiast exclaimed,
"Now do I understand how Goethe has become the man he is!" Wieland,
Merck, Bürger, Madame de Staël, Karl August, and other great people
sought her acquaintance. The Duchess Amalia corresponded with her as
with an intimate friend; and her letters were welcomed eagerly at the
Weimar Court. She was married at seventeen to a man for whom she had no
love, and was only eighteen when the poet was born. This, instead of
making her prematurely old, seems to have perpetuated her girlhood. "I and
my Wolfgang," she said, "have always held fast to each other, because we
were both young together." To him she transmitted her love of story-telling,
her animal spirits, her love of everything which bore the stamp of
distinctive individuality, and her love of seeing happy faces around her.
"Order and quiet," she says in one of her charming letters to Freiherr von
Stein, "are my principal characteristics. Hence I despatch at once whatever I
have to do, the most disagreeable always first, and I gulp down the devil
without looking at him. When all has returned to its proper state, then I defy
any one to surpass me in good humour." Her heartiness and tolerance are
the causes, she thinks, why every one likes her. "I am fond of people, and
that every one feels directly—young and old. I pass without pretension
through the world, and that gratifies men. I never bemoralise any one—
always seek out the good that is in them, and leave what is bad to Him who
made mankind, and knows how to round off the angles. In this way I make
myself happy and comfortable." Who does not recognise the son in those
accents? The kindliest of men inherited his loving, happy nature from the
heartiest of women.

WHERE—AND OH! WHERE?
[Sidenote: Henry S. Leigh]

Where are the times when—miles away
From the din and the dust of cities—
Alexis left his lambs to play,
And wooed some shepherdess half the day
With pretty and plaintive ditties?

Where are the pastures daisy-strewn
And the flocks that lived in clover;
The Zephyrs that caught the pastoral tune
And carried away the notes as soon
As ever the notes were over?

Where are the echoes that bore the strains
Each to his nearest neighbour;
And all the valleys and all the plains
Where all the nymphs and their love-sick swains
Made merry to pipe and tabor?

Where are they gone? They are gone to sleep
Where Fancy alone can find them;
But Arcady's times are like the sheep
That quitted the care of Little Bo-peep,
For they've left their tales behind them!

THE SECRETS OF THE HEART
[Sidenote: Austin Dobson]

"Le coeur mène où il va"

SCENE—A Chalet covered with honeysuckle

NINETTE NINON

NINETTE
This way—

NINON
No, this way—

NINETTE
This way, then.

(They enter the Chalet)
You are as changing, child,—as men.

NINON
But are they? Is it true, I mean?
Who said it?

NINETTE
Sister Séraphine.
She was so pious and so good,
With such sad eyes beneath her hood,
And such poor little feet,—all bare!
Her name was Eugénie la Fère.
She used to tell us,—moonlight nights,—
When I was at the Carmelites.

NINON
Ah, then it must be right. And yet,
Suppose for once—suppose, Ninette—

NINETTE
But what?

NINON
Suppose it were not so?
Suppose there were true men, you know!

NINETTE
And then?

NINON
Why, if that could occur,
What kind of men should you prefer?

NINETTE
What looks, you mean?

NINON
Looks, voice and all.

NINETTE
Well, as to that, he must be tall,
Or say, not "tall"—of middle size;
And next, he must have laughing eyes;
And a hook-nose,—with, underneath,
Oh! what a row of sparkling teeth!

NINON (touching her cheek suspiciously)
Has he a scar on this side?

NINETTE
Hush!

Some one is coming. No; a thrush:
I see it swinging there.

NINON
Go on.

NINETTE
Then he must fence (ah, look, 'tis gone!)
And dance like Monseigneur, and sing
"Love was a Shepherd,"—everything
That men do. Tell me yours, Ninon.

NINON
Shall I? Then mine has black, black hair …
I mean, he should have; then an air
Half sad, half noble; features thin;
A little royale on the chin;
And such a pale, high brow. And then,
He is a prince of gentlemen;—
He, too, can ride and fence and write
Sonnets and madrigals, yet fight
No worse for that—

NINETTE
I know your man.

NINON
And I know yours. But you'll not tell,—
Swear it!

NINETTE
I swear upon this fan,—

My grandmother's!

NINON
And I, I swear
On this old turquoise reliquaire,—
My great-great-grandmother's!—
(After a pause)

Ninette!
I feel so sad.

NINETTE
I too. But why?

NINON
Alas, I know not!

NINETTE (with a sigh)
Nor do I.

BRITISH FESTIVITIES
[Sidenote: Mark Twain]

Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are excellent,
and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for fishing are not
surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even equalled elsewhere.
Because, in other localities, certain places in the streams are much better
than others; but at Niagara one place is just as good as another, for the
reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and so there is no use in your
walking five miles to fish, when you can depend of being just as
unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of this state of things have never
heretofore been properly placed before the public.

The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant,
and none of them fatiguing. When you start out to "do" the Falls you first
drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking
down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara river. A
railway "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had an angry river
tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend a staircase here
a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of the water. After you
have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but you will then be too late.

The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the
little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids—how first one
paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows, and then the other,
and at what point it was that her smoke-stack toppled overboard, and where
her planking began to break and part asunder—and how she did finally live
through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of travelling
seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen minutes, I have
really forgotten which. But it was very extraordinary, anyhow. It is worth
the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine times in
succession to different parties, and never miss a word or alter a sentence or
a gesture.

Then you drive over the Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery
between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river
below and the chances of having the railway train overhead smashing down
on to you. Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed
together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.

On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of
photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an
ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your
solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the light

of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime
Niagara; and a great many people have the ineffable effrontery or the native
depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime.

Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately
pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of
country cousins, all smiling hideously, and all disposed in studied and
uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their grand
and awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished
presentment of that majestic presence, whose ministering spirits are the
rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds,
who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this hackful of small
reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's
unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages
after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood relations, the other
worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust.

There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to
display one's marvellous insignificance in a good strong light, but it
requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.

When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are
satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new
Suspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave
of the Winds.

Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing and
put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque, but not
beautiful. A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight of winding
stairs, which wound and wound and still kept on winding long after the
thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before it had begun

to be a pleasure. We were then well down under the precipice, but still
considerably above the level of the river.

We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our
persons shielded from perdition by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung
with both hands—not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to.
Presently the descent became steeper, and the bridge flimsier, and sprays
from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast-increasing sheets
that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the
nature of groping. Now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the
waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and
scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I
wanted to go home; but it was too late. We were almost under the
monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in
vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound.

In another moment the guide disappeared behind the grand deluge, and,
bewildered by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by
the arrowy tempest of rain, I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad,
storming, roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed
my ears before. I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my
back. The world seemed going to destruction. I could not see anything, the
flood poured down so savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the
most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak
now, I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had
ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous
rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at
last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the
laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, and look at it.
When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully in earnest it was, I
was sorry I had gone behind it.

I said to the guide, "Son, did you know what kind of an infernal place
this was before you brought me down here?"

"Yes."

This was sufficient. He had known all the horror of the place, and yet he
brought me there! I regarded it as deliberate arson. I then destroyed him.

I managed to find my way back alone to the place from whence I had
started on this foolish enterprise, and then hurried over to Canada, to avoid
having to pay for the guide.

At the principal hotel I fell in with the Major of the 42nd Fusiliers, and a
dozen other hearty and hospitable Englishmen, and they invited me to join
them in celebrating the Queen's birthday. I said I would be delighted to do
it. I said I liked all the Englishmen I had ever happened to be acquainted
with, and that I, like all my countrymen, admired and honoured the Queen.
But I said there was one insuperable drawback—I never drank anything
strong upon any occasion whatever, and I did not see how I was going to do
proper and ample justice to anybody's birthday with the thin and
ungenerous beverages I was accustomed to.

The Major scratched his head, and thought over the matter at
considerable length; but there seemed to be no way of mastering the
difficulty, and he was too much of a gentleman to suggest even a temporary
abandonment of my principles. But by-and-by he said:

"I have it. Drink soda-water. As long as you never do drink anything
more nutritious, there isn't any impropriety in it."

And so it was settled. We met in a large parlour, handsomely decorated
with flags and evergreens, and seated ourselves at a board well laden with

creature comforts, both solid and liquid. The toasts were happy, and the
speeches were good, and we kept it up until long after midnight. I never
enjoyed myself more in my life. I drank thirty-eight bottles of soda-water.
But do you know that that is not a reliable article for a steady drink? It is
too gassy. When I got up in the morning I was full of gas, and as tight as a
balloon. I hadn't an article of clothing that I could wear, except my
umbrella.

After breakfast I found the Major making grand preparations again. I
asked what it was for, and he said this was the Prince of Wales's birthday. It
had to be celebrated that evening. We celebrated it. Much against my
expectations, we had another splendid time. We kept it up till some time
after midnight again. I was tired of soda, and so I changed off for lemonade.
I drank several quarts. You may consider lemonade better for a steady drink
than soda-water; but it isn't so. In the morning it had soured on my stomach.
Biting anything was out of the question—it was equivalent to lockjaw. I
was beginning to feel worn and sad too.

Shortly after luncheon, I found the Major in the midst of some more
preparations. He said this was the Princess Alice's birthday. I concealed my
grief.

"Who is the Princess Alice?" I asked.

"Daughter of her Majesty the Queen," the Major said.

I succumbed. That night we celebrated the Princess Alice's birthday. We
kept it up as late as usual, and really I enjoyed it a good deal. But I could
not stand lemonade. I drank a couple of kegs of ice-water.

In the morning I had toothache, and cramps, and chilblains, and my teeth
were on edge from the lemonade, and I was still pretty gassy, I found the

inexorable Major at it again.

"Who is this for?" I asked.

"His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh," he said.

"Son of the Queen?"

"Yes."

"And this is his birthday—you haven't made any mistake?"

"No; the celebration comes off to-night."

I bowed before the new calamity. We celebrated the day. I drank part of a
barrel of cider. Among the first objects that met my weary and jaundiced
eye the next day was the Major at his interminable preparations again. My
heart was broken, and I wept.

"Whom do we mourn this time?" I said.

"The Princess Beatrice, daughter of the Queen."

"Here, now," I said; "it is time to inquire into this thing. How long is the
Queen's family likely to hold out? Who comes next on the list?"

"Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Cambridge, the Princess Royal,
Prince Arthur, Princess Mary of Teck, Prince Leopold, the Grand-duke of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the Grand-duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Prince
…"

"Hold! There's a limit to human endurance. I am only mortal. What man
dare do, I dare; but he who can celebrate this family in detail, and live to
tell it, is less or more than man. If you have to go through this every year, it

is a mercy I was born in America, for I haven't constitution enough to be an
Englishman. I shall have to withdraw from this enterprise. I am out of
drinks. Out of drinks, and so many more to celebrate! Out of drinks, and
only just on the outskirts of the family yet, as you may say! I am sorry
enough to have to withdraw, but it is plain enough that it has to be done. I
am full of gas, and my teeth are loose, and I am wrenched with cramps, and
afflicted with scurvy, and toothache, measles, mumps, and lockjaw, and the
cider last night has given me the cholera. Gentlemen, I mean well; but
really I am not in a condition to celebrate the other birthdays. Give us a
rest."

SIR JOHN WATERS
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

Amongst the distinguished men in the Peninsular War whom my memory
brings occasionally before me, is the well-known and highly popular
Quartermaster-General Sir John Waters, who was born at Margam, a Welsh
village in Glamorganshire. He was one of those extraordinary persons that
seem created by kind nature for particular purposes; and, without using the
word in an offensive sense, he was the most admirable spy that was ever
attached to an army. One would almost have thought that the Spanish War
was entered upon and carried on in order to display his remarkable
qualities. He could assume the character of Spaniards of every degree and
station, so as to deceive the most acute of those whom he delighted to
imitate. In the posada of the village he was hailed by the contrabandist or
the muleteer as one of their own race; in the gay assemblies he was an
accomplished hidalgo; at the bullfight the toreador received his
congratulations as from one who had encountered the toro in the arena; in
the church he would converse with the friar upon the number of Ave Marias
and Paternosters which could lay a ghost, or tell him the history of every

one who had perished by the flame of the Inquisition, relating his crime,
whether carnal or anti-Catholic; and he could join in the seguadilla or in the
guaracha.

But what rendered him more efficient than all was his wonderful power
of observation and acute description, which made the information he gave
so reliable and valuable to the Duke of Wellington. Nothing escaped him.
When amidst a group of persons, he would minutely watch the movement,
attitude, and expression of every individual that composed it; in the scenery
by which he was surrounded he would carefully mark every object: not a
tree, not a bush, not a large stone, escaped his observation; and it was said
that in a cottage he noted every piece of crockery on the shelf, every
domestic utensil, and even the number of knives and forks that were got
ready for use at dinner.

His acquaintance with the Spanish language was marvellous; from the
finest works of Calderon to the ballads in the patois of every province, he
could quote, to the infinite delight of those with whom he associated. He
could assume any character that he pleased: he could be the Castilian,
haughty and reserved; the Asturian, stupid and plodding; the Catalonian,
intriguing and cunning; the Andalusian, laughing and merry,—in short, he
was all things to all men. Nor was he incapable of passing off, when
occasion required, for a Frenchman; but, as he spoke the language with a
strong German accent, he called himself an Alsatian. He maintained that
character with the utmost nicety; and as there is a strong feeling of
friendship, almost equal to that which exists in Scotland, amongst all those
who are born in the departments of France bordering on the Rhine, and who
maintain their Teutonic originality, he always found friends and supporters
in every regiment in the French service.

He was on one occasion entrusted with a very difficult mission by the
Duke of Wellington, which he undertook effectually to perform, and to
return on a particular day with the information that was required.

Great was the disappointment when it was ascertained beyond a doubt
that, just after leaving the camp, he had been taken prisoner before he had
time to exchange his uniform. Such, however, was the case; a troop of
dragoons had intercepted him, and carried him off; and the commanding
officer desired two soldiers to keep a strict watch over him and carry him to
headquarters. He was, of course, disarmed, and, being placed on a horse,
was, after a short time, galloped off by his guards. He slept one night under
durance vile at a small inn, where he was allowed to remain in the kitchen;
conversation flowed on very glibly, and, as he appeared a stupid
Englishman, who could not understand a word of French or Spanish, he was
allowed to listen, and thus obtained precisely the intelligence that he was in
search of. The following morning, being again mounted, he overheard a
conversation between his guards, who deliberately agreed to rob him, and to
shoot him at a mill where they were to stop, and to report to their officer
that they had been compelled to fire at him in consequence of his attempt to
escape.

Shortly before they arrived at the mill, for fear that they might meet with
some one who would insist on having a portion of the spoil, the dragoons
took from their prisoner his watch and his purse, which he surrendered with
a good grace. On their arrival at the mill they dismounted, and, in order to
give some appearance of truth to their story, they went into the house,
leaving their prisoner outside, in the hope that he would make some attempt
to escape. In an instant Waters threw his cloak upon a neighbouring olive-
bush, and mounted his cocked hat on the top. Some empty flour-sacks lay
upon the ground, and a horse laden with well-filled flour-sacks stood at the
door. Sir John contrived to enter one of the empty sacks and throw himself

across the horse. When the soldiers came out of the house they fired their
carbines at the supposed prisoner, and galloped off at the utmost speed.

A short time after the miller came out and mounted his steed; the general
contrived to rid himself of the encumbrance of the sack, and sat up, riding
behind the man, who, suddenly turning round, saw a ghost, as he believed,
for the flour that still remained in the sack had completely whitened his
fellow-traveller and given him a most unearthly appearance. The frightened
miller was "putrified," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, at the sight, and a push
from the white spectre brought the unfortunate man to the ground, when
away rode the gallant quartermaster with his sacks of flour, which, at length
bursting, made a ludicrous spectacle of man and horse.

On reaching the English camp, where Lord Wellington was anxiously
deploring his fate, a sudden shout from the soldiers made his lordship turn
round, when a figure, resembling the statue in "Don Juan," galloped up to
him. The duke, affectionately shaking him by the hand, said:

"Waters, you never yet deceived me; and, though you have come in a
most questionable shape, I must congratulate you and myself."

When this story was told at the Club, one of those listeners who always
want something more called out, "Well, and what did Waters say?" to which
Alvanley replied:

"Oh, Waters made a very flowery speech, like a well-bred man."

LORD WESTMORELAND
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

When I was presented at the Court of Louis XVIII. Lord Westmoreland,
the grandfather of the present lord, accompanied Sir Charles Stewart to the

Tuileries. On our arrival in the room where the King was we formed
ourselves into a circle, when the King good-naturedly inquired after Lady
Westmoreland, from whom his lordship was divorced, and whether she was
in Paris. Upon this the noble lord looked sullen, and refused to reply to the
question put by the King. His Majesty, however, repeated it, when Lord
Westmoreland hallooed out, in bad French, "Je ne sais pas, je ne sais pas, je
ne sais pas." Louis, rising, said, "Assez, milord; assez, milord."

On one occasion, Lord Westmoreland, who was Lord Privy Seal, being
asked what office he held, replied, "Le Chancellier est le grand sceau (sot);
moi je suis le petit sceau d'Angle-terre." On another occasion, he wished to
say "I would if I could, but I can't," and rendered it, "Je voudrais si je
coudrais, mais je ne cannais pas."

COLONEL KELLY AND HIS BLACKING
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

Among the odd characters I have met with, I do not recollect any one
more eccentric than the late Lieutenant-Colonel Kelly, of the First Foot
Guards, who was the vainest man I ever encountered. He was a thin,
emaciated-looking dandy, but had all the bearing of a gentleman. He was
haughty in the extreme, and very fond of dress; his boots were so well
varnished that the polish now in use could not surpass Kelly's blacking in
brilliancy; his pantaloons were made of the finest leather, and his coats were
inimitable; in short, his dress was considered perfect.

His sister held the place of housekeeper to the Custom-house, and when
it was burnt down, Kelly was burnt with it, in endeavouring to save his
favourite boots. When the news of his horrible death became known, all the
dandies were anxious to secure the service of his valet, who possessed the
mystery of the inimitable blacking. Brummell lost no time in discovering

his place of residence, and asked what wages he required; the servant
answered, his late master gave him £150 a year, but it was not enough for
his talents, and he should require £200; upon which Brummell said, "Well,
if you will make it guineas, I shall be happy to attend upon you." The late
Lord Plymouth eventually secured this phoenix of valets at £200 a year, and
bore away the sovereignty of boots.

JOHN KEMBLE
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

John Kemble had the honour of giving the Prince of Wales some lessons
in
elocution. According to the vitiated pronunciation of the day, the
Prince, instead of saying "oblige," would say "obleege," upon which
Kemble, with much disgust depicted upon his countenance, said:

"Sir, may I beseech your Royal Highness to open your royal jaws, and
say 'oblige'?"

ROGERS AND LUTTRELL
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

I saw a good deal of the poet Rogers during his frequent visits to Paris;
and often visited him in his apartments, which were always on the fourth or
fifth story of the hotel or private house in which he lived. He was rich, and
by no means avaricious, and chose those lofty chambers partly from a
poetic wish to see the sun rise with greater brilliancy, and partly from a
fancy that the exercise he was obliged to take in going up and down stairs
would prove beneficial to his liver.

I could relate many unpublished anecdotes of Rogers, but they lose their
piquancy when one attempts to narrate them. There was so much in his
appearance, in that cadaverous, unchanging countenance, in the peculiar
low, drawling voice, and rather tremulous accents in which he spoke. His
intonations were very much those one fancies a ghost would use if forced
by some magic spell to give utterance to sounds. The mild venom of every
word was a remarkable trait in his conversation. One might have compared
the old poet to one of those velvety caterpillars that crawl gently and quietly
over the skin, but leave an irritating blister behind. To those, like myself,
who were sans consequence, and with whom he feared no rivalry, he was
very good-natured and amiable, and a most pleasant companion, with a
fund of curious anecdote about everything and everybody. But woe betide
those in great prosperity and renown; they had, like the Roman emperor, in
Rogers the personification of the slave who bade them "remember they
were mortal."

At an evening party many years since at Lady Jersey's every one was
praising the Duke of B——, who had just come in, and who had lately
attained his majority. There was a perfect chorus of admiration to this
effect: "Everything is in his favour—he has good looks, considerable
abilities, and a hundred thousand a year." Rogers, who had been carefully
examining the "young ruler," listened to these encomiums for some time in
silence, and at last remarked, with an air of great exultation, and in his most
venomous manner, "Thank God, he has got bad teeth!"

His well-known epigram on Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley—

They say that Ward's no heart, but I deny it;
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it—

was provoked by a remark made at table by Mr. Ward. On Rogers
observing that his carriage had broken down, and that he had been obliged

to come in a hackney-coach, Mr. Ward grumbled out in a very audible
whisper, "In a hearse, I should think," alluding to the poet's corpse-like
appearance. This remark Rogers never forgave, and, I have no doubt, pored
over his retaliatory impromptu, for he had no facility in composition.
Sydney Smith used to say that, if Rogers was writing a dozen verses, the
street was strewn with straw, the knocker tied up, and the answer to the
tender inquiries of his anxious friends was, that Mr. Rogers was as well as
could be expected.

It used to be very amusing in London to see Rogers with his fidus
Achates, Luttrell. They were inseparable, though rival wits, and constantly
saying bitter things to each other. Luttrell was the natural son of Lord
Carhampton, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and in his youth known as
the famous Colonel Luttrell of Junius. I consider him to have been the most
agreeable man I ever met. He was far more brilliant in conversation than
Rogers; and his animated, bustling manner formed an agreeable contrast
with the spiteful calmness of his corpse-like companion. He was extremely
irritable, and even passionate; and in his moments of anger he would
splutter and stutter like a maniac in his anxiety to give utterance to the flow
of thoughts which crowded his mind, and, I might almost say, his mouth.

On one occasion the late Lady Holland took him a drive in her carriage
over a rough road, and, as she was very nervous, she insisted on being
driven at a foot's pace. This ordeal lasted some hours, and when he was at
last released, poor Luttrell, perfectly exasperated, rushed into the nearest
club-house, and exclaimed, clenching his teeth and hands, "The very
funerals passed us!"

THE PIG-FACED LADY
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

Among the many absurd reports and ridiculous stories current in former
days, I know of none more absurd or more ridiculous than the general belief
of everybody in London, during the winter of 1814, in the existence of a
lady with a pig's face. This interesting specimen of porcine physiognomy
was said to be the daughter of a great lady residing in Grosvenor Square.

It was rumoured that during the illuminations which took place to
celebrate the peace, when a great crowd had assembled in Piccadilly and St.
James's Street, and when carriages could not move on very rapidly,
horresco referens! an enormous pig's snout had been seen protruding from a
fashionable-looking bonnet in one of the landaus which were passing. The
mob cried out, "The pig-faced lady! Stop the carriage—stop the carriage!"
The coachman, wishing to save his bacon, whipped his horses, and drove
through the crowd at a tremendous pace; but it was said that the coach had
been seen to set down its monstrous load in Grosvenor Square.

Another report was also current. Sir William Elliot, a youthful baronet,
calling one day to pay his respects to the great lady in Grosvenor Square,
was ushered into a drawing-room, where he found a person fashionably
dressed, who, on turning towards him, displayed a hideous pig's face. Sir
William, a timid young gentleman, could not refrain from uttering a shout
of horror, and rushed to the door in a manner the reverse of polite; when the
infuriated lady or animal, uttering a series of grunts, rushed at the
unfortunate baronet as he was retreating, and inflicted a severe wound on
the back of his neck. This highly improbable story concluded by stating that
Sir William's wound was a severe one, and had been dressed by Hawkins,
the surgeon, in St. Audley Street.

I am really almost ashamed to repeat this absurd story; but many persons
now alive can remember the strong belief in the existence of the pig-faced
lady which prevailed in the public mind at the time of which I speak. The

shops were full of caricatures of the pig-faced lady, in a poke bonnet and
large veil, with "A pig in a poke" written underneath the print. Another
sketch represented Sir William Elliot's misadventure, and was entitled,
"Beware the pig-sty!"

HOBY, THE BOOTMAKER, OF ST. JAMES'S STREET
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

Hoby was not only the greatest and most fashionable bootmaker in
London, but, in spite of the old adage, ne sutor ultra crepidam, he
employed his spare time with considerable success as a Methodist preacher
at Islington. He was said to have in his employment three hundred
workmen; and he was so great a man in his own estimation that he was apt
to take rather an insolent tone with his customers. He was, however,
tolerated as a sort of privileged person, and his impertinence was not only
overlooked but was considered as rather a good joke. He was a pompous
fellow, with a considerable vein of sarcastic humour.

I remember Horace Churchill (afterwards killed in India with the rank of
major-general), who was then an ensign in the Guards, entering Hoby's
shop in a great passion, saying that his boots were so ill made that he should
never employ Hoby for the future. Hoby, putting on a pathetic cast of
countenance, called to his shopman:

"John, close the shutters. It is all over with us. I must shut up shop;
Ensign Churchill withdraws his custom from me."

Churchill's fury can be better imagined than described.

On another occasion the late Sir John Shelley came into Hoby's shop to
complain that his top-boots had split in several places. Hoby quietly said:

"How did that happen, Sir John?"

"Why, in walking to my stables."

"Walking to your stables!" said Hoby, with a sneer. "I made the boots for
riding, not walking."

Hoby was bootmaker to the Duke of Kent; and, as he was calling on
H.R.H. to try on some boots, the news arrived that Lord Wellington had
gained a great victory over the French army at Vittoria. The duke was kind
enough to mention the glorious news to Hoby, who coolly said:

"If Lord Wellington had had any other bootmaker than myself he never
would have had his great and constant successes; for my boots and prayers
bring his lordship out of all his difficulties."

One may well say that there is nothing like leather; for Hoby died worth
a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.

Hoby was bootmaker to George III., the Prince of Wales, the royal dukes,
and many officers in the Army and Navy. His shop was situated at the top of
St. James's Street, at the corner of Piccadilly, next to the Old Guards Club.
He was bootmaker to the Duke of Wellington from his boyhood, and
received innumerable orders in the duke's handwriting, both from the
Peninsula and France, which he always religiously preserved. Hoby was the
first man who drove about London in a tilbury. It was painted black, and
drawn by a beautiful black cob. This vehicle was built by the inventor, Mr.
Tilbury, whose manufactory was, fifty years back, in a street leading from
South Audley Street into Park Street.

HARRINGTON HOUSE AND LORD PETERSHAM
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

When our army returned to England in 1814 my young friend, Augustus
Stanhope, took me one afternoon to Harrington House, in Stable-yard, St.
James's, where I was introduced to Lord and Lady Harrington, and all the
Stanhopes. On entering a long gallery, I found the whole family engaged in
their sempiternal occupation of tea-drinking. Neither in Nankin, Pekin, nor
Canton was the teapot more assiduously and constantly replenished than at
this hospitable mansion. I was made free of the corporation, if I may use the
phrase, by a cup being handed to me; and I must say that I never tasted any
tea so good before or since.

As an example of the undeviating tea-table habits of the house of
Harrington, General Lincoln Stanhope once told me that, after an absence
of several years in India, he made his reappearance at Harrington House,
and found the family, as he had left them on his departure, drinking tea in
the long gallery. On his presenting himself, his father's only observation and
speech of welcome to him was, "Hallo, Linky, my dear boy! delighted to
see you. Have a cup of tea?"

LORD ALVANLEY
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

From the time of good Queen Bess, when the English language first
began to assume somewhat of its present form, idiom, and mode of
expression, to the day of our most gracious sovereign Queen Victoria, every
age has had its punsters, humorists, and eloquent conversationalists; but I
much doubt whether the year 1789 did not produce the greatest wit of
modern times, in the person of William Lord Alvanley.

After receiving a very excellent and careful education, Alvanley entered
the Coldstream Guards at an early age, and served with distinction at
Copenhagen and in the Peninsula; but, being in possession of a large

fortune, he left the Army, gave himself up entirely to the pursuit of pleasure,
and became one of the principal dandies of the day. With the brilliant talents
which he possessed, he might have attained to the highest eminence in any
line of life he had embraced.

Not only was Alvanley considered the wittiest man of his day in England,
but, during his residence in France, and tours through Russia and other
countries, he was universally admitted to possess, not only great wit and
humour, but l'esprit français in its highest perfection; and no greater
compliment could be paid him by foreigners than this. He was one of the
rare examples (particularly rare in the days of the dandies, who were
generally sour and spiteful) of a man combining brilliant wit and repartee
with the most perfect good-nature. His manner, above all, was irresistible;
and the slight lisp, which might have been considered as a blemish, only
added piquancy and zest to his sayings.

In appearance he was about the middle height, and well and strongly
built, though he latterly became somewhat corpulent. He excelled in all
manly exercises, was a hard rider to hounds, and was what those who do
not belong to the upper ten thousand call "a good-plucked one." His face
had somewhat of the rotund form and smiling expression which
characterises the jolly friars one meets with in Italy. His hair and eyes were
dark, and he had a very small nose, to which, after deep potations, his
copious pinches of snuff had some difficulty in finding their way, and were
in consequence rather lavishly bestowed upon his florid cheek. He resided
in Park Street, St. James's, and his dinners there and at Melton were
considered to be the best in England. He never invited more than eight
people, and insisted upon having the somewhat expensive luxury of an
apricot-tart on the sideboard the whole year round.

Alvanley was a good speaker; and, having made some allusion to
O'Connell in rather strong terms in the House of Lords, the latter very
coarsely and unjustly denounced him, in a speech he made in the House of
Commons, as a bloated buffoon. Alvanley thereupon called out the
Liberator, who would not meet him, but excused himself by saying, "There
is blood already on this hand"—alluding to his fatal duel with D'Esterre.

Alvanley then threatened O'Connell with personal chastisement. Upon
this, Morgan O'Connell, a very agreeable, gentlemanlike man, who had
been in the Austrian service, and whom I knew well, said he would take his
father's place. A meeting was accordingly agreed upon at Wimbledon
Common, Alvanley's second was Colonel George Dawson Damer, and our
late consul at Hamburgh, Colonel Hodges, acted for Morgan O'Connell.
Several shots were fired without effect, and the seconds then interfered and
put a stop to any further hostilities.

On their way home in a hackney-coach, Alvanley said, "What a clumsy
fellow O'Connell must be, to miss such a fat fellow as I am! He ought to
practise at a haystack to get his hand in." When the carriage drove up to
Alvanley's door, he gave the coachman a sovereign. Jarvey was profuse in
his thanks and said, "It's a great deal for only having taken your lordship to
Wimbledon."

"No, my good man," said Alvanley; "I give it you, not for taking me, but
for bringing me back."

Everybody knows the story of Gunter, the pastrycook. He was mounted
on a runaway horse with the King's hounds, and excused himself for riding
against Alvanley by saying, "Oh my lord, I can't hold him, he's so hot!" "Ice
him, Gunter—ice him!" was the consoling rejoinder.

In the hunting-field in a northern county, Sir Charles S——, whose
married life was not a very happy one, wore one morning at the meet a
wonderful greatcoat, with enormous horn buttons. Alvanley, riding up to
him, and apparently looking at the buttons with great admiration, said, "A
little attention of Lady S——'s, I presume, Sir Charles?"

Alvanley had a delightful recklessness and laisser aller in everything.
His manner of putting out his light at night was not a very pleasant one for
his host for the time being. He always read in bed, and when he wanted to
go to sleep he either extinguished his candle by throwing it on the floor in
the middle of the room, and taking a shot at it with the pillow, or else
quietly placed it, when still lighted, under the bolster. At Badminton, and
other country houses, his habits in this respect were so well known that a
servant was ordered to sit up in the passage to keep watch over him.

Alvanley's recklessness in money matters was almost incredible. His
creditors having become at last very clamorous, that able and astute man of
the world, Mr. Charles Greville, with the energetic and bustling kindness in
mixing himself up in all his friends' affairs which still distinguishes him,
had undertaken to settle those of Alvanley. After going through every item
of the debts, matters looked more promising than Mr. Greville expected,
and he took his leave. In the morning he received a note from Alvanley, to
say that he had quite forgotten to take into account a debt of fifty-five
thousand pounds.

SALLY LUNN
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

Some fifty years back, or thereabouts, Albinia, Countess of
Buckinghamshire, lived in her charming villa in Pimlico, surrounded by a
large and beautiful garden. It was here she used to entertain the élite of

London society with magnificent fêtes, bal champêtres, and public
breakfasts. After one of those fêtes, I called one morning to pay my
respects; and, on ringing the bell, the servant ushered me into the
conservatory, where I found Lady Harrington, the celebrated cantatrice Mrs.
Billington, and the Duke of Sussex, who was said to be very much épris
with the English "Catalani," as she was called.

Mrs. Billington was extremely beautiful, though it was absurd to
compare her to Catalani as a singer; but she was the favourite of the Duke
of Sussex, which made her many friends. During my visit, chocolate and
tea-cakes were served to our party, when Lady Harrington related a curious
anecdote about those cakes. She said her friend Madame de Narbonne,
during the emigration, determined not to live upon the bounty of foreigners,
found means to amass money enough to enable her to open a shop in
Chelsea, not far from the then fashionable balls of Ranelagh.

It had been the custom in France, before the Revolution, for young ladies
in some noble families to learn the art of making preserves and pastry;
accordingly, Madame de Narbonne commenced her operations under the
auspices of some of her acquaintances; and all those who went to Ranelagh
made a point of stopping and buying some of her cakes. Their fame spread
like lightning throughout the West End, and orders were given to have them
sent for breakfast and tea in many great houses in the neighbourhood of St.
James's. Madame de Narbonne employed a Scotch maid-servant to execute
her orders. The name of this woman was "Sally Lunn," and ever since a
particular kind of tea-cake has gone by that name.

Madame de Narbonne, not speaking English, replied to her customers
(when they inquired the name of the brioches), "bon." Hence the etymology
of "bun," according to Lady Harrington; but I confess that I do not feel
quite satisfied with her derivation.

"MONK" LEWIS
[Sidenote: Captain Gronow]

"Monk" Lewis had a black servant, affectionately attached to his master;
but so ridiculously did this servant repeat his master's expressions, that he
became the laughing-stock of all his master's friends. Brummell used often
to raise a hearty laugh at Carlton House by repeating witticisms which he
pretended to have heard from Lewis's servant; some of these were very
stale; yet they were considered so good as to be repeated at the clubs, and
greatly added to the reputation of the Beau as a teller of good things. "On
one occasion," said Brummell, "I called to inquire after a young lady who
had sprained her ankle. Lewis, on being asked how she was, had said, in the
black's presence, 'The doctor has seen her, put her legs straight, and the poor
chicken is doing well.' The servant, therefore, told me, with a mysterious
and knowing look, 'Oh, sir, the doctor has been here, she has laid eggs, and
she and the chickens are doing well.'"

THE CARELESSE NURSE MAYD
[Sidenote: Hood]

I sawe a Mayd sitte on a Bank,
Beguiled by Wooer fayne and fond;
And whiles His flatterynge Vowes she drank,
Her Nurselynge slipt within a Pond!

All Even Tide they Talkde and Kist,
For She was fayre and He was Kinde;
The Sunne went down before She wist
Another Sonne had sett behinde!

With angrie Hands and frownynge Browe,
That deemd Her owne the Urchine's Sinne,
She pluckt Him out, but he was nowe
Past being Whipt for fallynge in.

She then beginnes to wayle the Ladde
With Shrikes that Echo answered round—
O! foolishe Mayd to be soe sadde
The Momente that her Care was drownd!

SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS
[Sidenote: Charles Dickens]

One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond course
of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small shops, is the fancy of a
humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr. Thomas
Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United States of
America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting trim and
fighting attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative nature of their
peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, with
primroses and other modest flowers springing up under the heels of his
half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the administration of his
favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence of a village church.
The humble homes of England, with their domestic virtues and honeysuckle
porches, urge both heroes to go in and win; and the lark and other singing
birds are observable in the upper air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to
Heaven for a fight. On the whole, the associations entwined with the
pugilistic art by this artist are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.

But it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that my
present purpose rests. For human notes we may return to such

neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.

Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more than the bad
company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good society, but British
birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole street of them in
St. Giles's; and I always find them in poor and immoral neighbourhoods,
convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead
people into drinking, and even the man who makes their cages usually gets
into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this? Also, they will do things for
people in short-skirted velveteen coats with bone buttons, or in sleeved
waistcoats and fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the respectable
orders of society to undertake. In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found
a goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were
in a consuming fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered, in
writing, to barter himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen
stuff. Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch! I bought that
goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung upon a nail over against
my table. He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I
argued) to be a dyer's; otherwise it would have been impossible to account
for his perch sticking out of the garret window. From the time of his
appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty—which was not in
the bond—or he could not make up his mind to hear his little bucket drop
back into his well when he let it go; a shock which in the best of times had
made him tremble. He drew no water but by stealth and under the cloak of
night. After an interval of futile and at length hopeless expectation, the
merchant who had educated him was appealed to. The merchant was a bow-
legged character, with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new strawberry.
He wore a fur cap and shorts, and was of the velveteen race, velveteeny. He
sent word that he would "look round." He looked round, appeared in the
doorway of the room, and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the goldfinch.
Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird; when it was appeased, he still drew

several unnecessary buckets of water; and finally, leaped about his perch
and sharpened his bill as if he had been to the nearest wine-vaults and got
drunk.

Donkeys, again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the donkey goes in at
the street-door, and appears to live upstairs, for I have examined the back-
yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out.
Gentility, nobility, royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do what
he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an
infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his back, adjust his
delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Windsor, and
try what pace you can get out of him. Then starve him, harness him anyhow
to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from Whitechapel to
Bayswater. There appears to be no particular private understanding between
birds and donkeys, in a state of nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state
you shall see them always in the same hands and always developing their
very best energies for the very worst company. I have known a donkey—by
sight; we were not on speaking terms—who lived over on the Surrey side of
London Bridge, among the fastnesses of Jacob's Island and Dockhead. It
was the habit of that animal, when his services were not in immediate
requisition, to go out alone idling. I have met him a mile from his place of
residence, loitering about the streets; and the expression of his countenance
at such times was most degraded. He was attached to the establishment of
an elderly lady who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday
nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up his
ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving
satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure. His mistress
was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever saw him (about
five years ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused by this failing.
Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and forgotten, he went
off idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for some time, gratifying

his depraved tastes, until, not taking the cart into his calculations, he
endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley, and became greatly involved. He
was taken into custody by the police, and, the Green Yard of the district
being near at hand, was backed into that place of durance. At that crisis I
encountered him; the stubborn sense he evinced of being—not to
compromise the expression—a blackguard, I never saw exceeded in the
human subject. A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck in among his
periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged harness broken and his cart
extensively shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head, a
picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have seen boys being taken to station-
houses, who were as like him as his own brother.

The dogs of shy neighbourhoods I observe to avoid play, and to be
conscious of poverty. They avoid work, too, if they can, of course; that is in
the nature of all animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a back street
in the neighbourhood of Walworth who has greatly distinguished himself in
the minor drama, and who takes his portrait with him when he makes an
engagement, for the illustration of the playbill. His portrait (which is not at
all like him) represents him in the act of dragging to the earth a recreant
Indian, who is supposed to have tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a
British officer. The design is pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the
piece, and no such incident. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for
whose honesty I would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual
qualities in association with dramatic fiction I cannot rate high. Indeed, he
is too honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire
last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended the
performance. His first scene was eminently successful; but, as it occupied a
second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it scarcely afforded
ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his powers. He had merely to
bark, run on, and jump through an inn window, after a comic fugitive. The
next scene of importance to the fable was a little marred in its interest by his

over-anxiety; forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier in a den of
robbers on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the absence of his
faithful dog, and laying great stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues
away, the faithful dog was barking furiously in the prompter's box, and
clearly choking himself against his collar. But it was in his greatest scene of
all that his honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense and
trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the murderer
when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his victim bound ready
for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into the forest from an
altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate
trot, not in the least excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue out;
and there sat down, panting, and amiably surveying the audience, with his
tail beating the boards, like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile the murderer,
impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him "Co-o-ome here!"
while the victim, struggling with his bonds, assailed him with the most
injurious expressions. It happened, through these means, that when he was
in course of time persuaded to trot up and rend the murderer limb from
limb, he made it (for dramatic purposes) a little too obvious that he worked
out that awful retribution by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.

In a shy street behind Long Acre, two honest dogs live who perform in
Punch's shows. I may venture to say that I am on terms of intimacy with
both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to look
down at the man inside the show, during the whole performance. The
difficulty other dogs have in satisfying their minds about these dogs appears
to be never overcome by time. The same dogs must encounter them over
and over again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the legs of
the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their frills and
jackets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those articles of personal
adornment an eruption—a something in the nature of mange, perhaps. From
this Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a country dog only the other

day, who had come up to Covent Garden Market under a cart, and had
broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed along with him. He loitered
about the corners of the four streets commanded by my window; and bad
London dogs came up and told him lies that he didn't believe; and worse
London dogs came up and made proposals to him to go end steal in the
market, which his principles rejected; and the ways of the town confused
him, and he crept aside and lay down in a doorway. He had scarcely got a
wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby. He was darting to Toby for
consolation and advice, when he saw the frill, and stopped, in the middle of
the street, appalled. The show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery,
the audience formed, the drum and pipes struck up. My country dog
remained immovable, intently staring at these strange appearances, until
Toby opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered
Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby's mouth. At this spectacle the
country dog threw up his head, gave one terrible howl, and fled due west.

We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively
of dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith
who keeps a man. He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to the public-
houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against posts and
look at him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under
rigid coercion. I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman—a
gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog kept the
gentleman entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman never talked
about anything but the terrier. This, however, was not in a shy
neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently.

There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods who keep boys. I
have my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys. He feigns
that he can bring down sparrows and unburrow rats (he can do neither), and
he takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all sorts of suburban fields.

He has likewise made them believe that he possesses some mysterious
knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider themselves incompletely
equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and wide-mouthed
bottle, unless he is with them and barking tremendously. There is a dog
residing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind man. He may be
seen most days, in Oxford Street, haling the blind man away on expeditions
wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the man; wholly of the
dog's conception and execution. Contrariwise, when the man has projects,
the dog will sit down in a crowded thoroughfare and meditate. I saw him
yesterday, wearing the money-tray like an easy collar, instead of offering it
to the public, taking the man against his will, on the invitation of a
disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at Harrow—he was so intent on
that direction. The north wall of Burlington House Gardens, between the
Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy spot for appointments among blind men
at about two or three o'clock in the afternoon. They sit (very uncomfortably)
on a sloping stone there, and compare notes. Their dogs may always be
observed, at the same time, openly disparaging the men they keep, to one
another, and settling where they shall respectively take their men when they
begin to move again. At a small butcher's in a shy neighbourhood (there is
no reason for suppressing the name; it is by Notting Hill, and gives upon the
district called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black-and-white dog who
keeps a drover. He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently allows
this drover to get drunk. On these occasions it is the dog's custom to sit
outside the public-house, keeping his eye on a few sheep, plainly casting up
in his mind how many he began with when he left the market, and at what
places he has left the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not being able to
account to himself for certain particular sheep. A light has gradually broken
on him, he has remembered at what butcher's he left them, and in a burst of
grave satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself much
relieved. If I could at any time have doubted the fact that it was he who kept

the drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have been abundantly
proved by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep, when the
drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him wrong
directions, which he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep entirely
into his own hands, has merely remarked with respectful firmness, "That
instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had better confine
your attention to yourself—you will want it all"; and has driven his charge
away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business,
that has left his lout of a man very, very far behind.

As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking
consciousness of being in poor circumstances—for the most part manifested
in an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play, and a misgiving that
somebody is going to harness them to something, to pick up a living—so
the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into
barbarism. Not only are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the
surplus population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the
avenues to cats'-meat; not only is there a moral and politico-economical
haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but they evince a
physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is wretchedly got up;
their black turns rusty, like old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur;
and take to the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms
of recognition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in Saint
George's Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell Green, and also in
the back settlements of Drury Lane. In appearance, they are very like the
women among whom they live. They seem to turn out of their
unwholesome beds into the street, without any preparation. They leave their
young families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily
quarrel and swear and scratch and spit at street corners. In particular, I
remark that when they are about to increase their families (an event of
frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain

dusty dowdiness down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of things.
I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a feline matron of this class
washing her face when in an interesting condition.

Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower
animals of shy neighbourhoods by dwelling at length upon the exasperated
moodiness of the tom-cats and their resemblance in many respects to a man
and a brother, I will come to a close with a word on the fowls of the same
localities.

That anything born of an egg and invested with wings should have got to
the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls that
going home, is a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in
this connexion to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness
with which these fowls have become separated from all the birds of the air
—have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud—have forgotten
all about live trees and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows,
oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning
them, and take them as they are. I accept as products of nature and things of
course a reduced Bantam family of my acquaintance in the Hackney Road,
who are incessantly at the pawnbroker's. I cannot say that they enjoy
themselves, for they are of a melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment
they are capable of they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's
side-entry. Here, they are always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they
were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of being identified. I
know a low fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his
whole establishment of wives, in single file, in at the door of the jug
department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them
among the company's legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and
so passes his life. Over Waterloo Bridge there is a shabby old speckled
couple (they belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washingstand, and

towel-horse-making trade) who are always trying to get in at the door of a
chapel. Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs.
Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular denomination,
or merely understands that she has no business in the building and is
consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly
endeavouring to undermine the principal door; while her partner, who is
infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the
Universe. But the family I have been best acquainted with, since the
removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in
the densest part of Bethnal Green. Their abstraction from the objects among
which they live, or rather their conviction that those objects have all come
into existence in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me that I
have made them the subject of many journeys at divers hours. After careful
observation of the two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family consists,
I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the
leading lord and leading lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged personage,
afflicted with a paucity of feathers and visibility of quill, that gives her the
appearance of a bundle of office-pens. When a railway goods van that
would crush an elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these fowls,
they emerge unharmed from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the
whole rush was a passing property in the air, which may have left
something to eat behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and
saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for
fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account, I think, as a sort of hail;
shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any
other light; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the two
lords, the early public-house at the corner has superseded the sun.

DRINKING SONG
[Sidenote: J.K. Stephen]

There are people, I know, to be found,
Who say and apparently think
That sorrow and care may be drowned
By a timely consumption of drink.

Does not man, these enthusiasts ask,
Most nearly approach the divine
When engaged in the soul-stirring task
Of filling his body with wine?

Have not beggars been frequently known,
When satisfied, soaked and replete,
To imagine their bench was a throne
And the civilised world at their feet?

Lord Byron has finely described
The remarkably soothing effect
Of liquor, profusely imbibed,
On a soul that is shattered and wrecked.

In short, if your body or mind
Or your soul or your purse come to grief,
You need only get drunk, and you'll find,
Complete and immediate relief.

For myself, I have managed to do
Without having recourse to this plan,
So I can't write a poem for you,
And you'd better get some one who can.

LETTERS OF T.E. BROWN
[Sidenote: T.E. Brown]

Thank you very much for the satire. Satire is an undoubted branch of
poetry; but I do not affect it much. There is a strong, healthy, noble satire,
the _sæva indignatio_of the Latin classics. But, short of that, satire seems
only an element of discontent and unhappiness.

I know the "pip," the "black pigs" too, know them well; but they are quite
beneath contempt; and nothing on earth would induce me to cross the bright
blue of my serenity. I have a great notion of being the master of my own
happiness, and not suffering it to be contingent on the manners and conduct
of other people.

If a man slights me, he does me no harm; but if his conduct is detrimental
to the general good, if he is unjust, a villain in high place, a seducer, a
poison, a snare to the innocent, then have at him! though, constitutionally I
had rather leave him alone.

The sum of happiness in the world is not too large. I would like, if
possible, to increase it by the modest contribution of my own store. If so, I
must guard it from all disturbance; and poetry enables me to do this, gives
me a thousand springs of joy, in none of which there is one drop of
bitterness—and thank God for that!

We are here in the I. of Wight, busy comparing it with the I. of Man, of
course. It is really a beautiful island, not merely as regards richness of
vegetation, an ornament that just now is not available, but also for its
configuration. The "lay of the land," the attitude, and gesture of the lines are
admirable. The coast is dismally inferior to ours; glens are not to be seen,
and streams are puny, but very clean. On the whole we give the preference
to Mona, and that upon purely æsthetic, not patriotic, grounds.

I hope you are all well and thriving. Accept my best wishes for the New
Year. Your satire discloses perhaps a slight biliary secretion—all satire, I
fear, is bile. I hope I may impute it to Christmas festivities rather than to
any permanent disorder!

P.S.—I return the verses, as I think you would like to keep them….

*****

I did very well in the Isle of Man; had two good solitary walks, drank
deep draughts of—don't know how to describe it—that social brewage
which I get nowhere else. Very likely other people get it in their own
habitats. But it really does seem to me as if the whole island was quivering
and trembling all over with stories—they are like leaves on a tree. The
people are always telling them to one another, and any morning or evening
you hear, whether you like it or not, innumerable anecdotes, sayings,
tragedies, comedies—I wonder whether they lie fearfully. They are a
marvellously narrational community. And you've not been there a day
before all this closes round you with a quiet familiarity of "use and custom"
which is most fascinating. Nothing else in the universe seems of any
consequence.

And warly cares, and warly men,
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O!

A week more and I should have become reabsorbed into this medium
past recovery and past recognition….

I have been musing a good deal over my "Dooiney-molla"[1]: he is now
taking shape, and looms rather large. I believe you will like him, and his
fiery little groom. These good souls do well to visit my dreams: they are
such a comfort; and, do you know, they positively do "go on" in my dreams.

Here are two lines which came tripping at the window of my slumbers last
night:

1. "When the sun was jus' puttin' on his shoes" (morning),

for which I instantly seemed to discover a parallel—to wit:

"Sthreelin' oft his golden stockings" (the sun again, evening).

2. "Jus' rags tore off the Divil's ould shirt" (=witches' charms, or
spells).

There will be a very good witch in this poem, I promise you: look out!
——[2] are sounding me about "The Doctor";… They would try to make it
a popular book. The others tried to make it a drawing-room book, with the
result that the few purchasers thereof hid it somewhere behind their book-
shelves, and even there trembled for the morals of the housemaids….

*****

We went into the church, and sat at a long service. The curate preached
on Judas Iscariot; the vicar conducted a service in the churchyard. "Judas
did this, Judas thought that"; then from the churchyard, in stentorian chorus,
"Crown Him! crown Him! crown Him! crown Him Lord of all." Thus, you
see, there was an element of the comic; but how, how sad it was to me, how
incomprehensible! Verily, I am left behind; I can't, after all these years,
adjust myself to the dimensions of such a change. The people behaved
better than they used to do in our time; but the numbers! the
systematisation! the total absence of the native population! the show
atmosphere! the "Walk up, gentlemen" style of thing! Over all this Vanity
Fair the dear old bells rang out precisely as of old….

*****

Yesterday, at the Kerroo-Kiel, I met a delightfully bright and witty man.
He soon got to know who I was, and we had the most glorious talk. The
mischief of it is that these worthies are only too glad to get into a coosh
with you, and they would talk all day, leaving a spade, or forsaking plough
and horses to lean over a hedge, leaning on something at any rate, and
talking away. Their talk is bright, aimless, rambling, not without dives into
the depths, and pokes into your personality, above all, engouement the most
absolute, and desire of intercommunication the most insatiable. And you are
up on the mountain-side at the farther limit of plough-range, and the wind
whistles just the right sort of accompaniment to such talk.

I think I must have a sail here. But, do you know? the Manx seamen and
fishermen tend to become self-conscious: the "strangers" are spoiling them.
Not so the farmer; of course no one can make him understand that the
visitors do him any good by raising the prices of his produce, so he cares
very little about them, and in no way guides himself according to them or
their fashions. So far as the outer world comes to him, it is by the channel
of the newspapers. He has all the boundless curiosity, the thirst for
knowledge miscellaneous, pulpy, and piquant, which characterise those that
dwell remote. When he gets hold of you he flies at you, hugs you, gets
every blessed thing he can out of you. "Favourable specimen," you will say.
That is true; but, as regards the independence and primitive state of mind,
what I say applies to almost all. You see, you must get down beneath the
gentleman or would-be gentleman-farmer, down to the man who never
conceived the idea of ruffling it with gentlefolk. Also, you must not go
down to the mere labourer. But they are desperate gossips—gossips not so
much in matters local and insular, as in matters universal. The gossiping
tone does proceed into the universal, does it not? The hilarity with which
they will range the far horizons of thought is so childlike (you know how
children are about that); a chatter that sparkles on the surface like their own

divers, and then, with an "Aw bless me sowl," or "Aye, man, aye," down
into the deepest soundings of the spirit….

*****

A charming Hibernian called on me the other day. Portentous! alarming!
He had been sent from Douglas by some evil-disposed friends of mine
there, to consult me as the supreme authority on matters Manx. Now of this
language I am, if not wholly, yet at least grammatically ignorant. He was a
tall, stalwart fellow; black-bearded, not handsome, but with a tremendously
Irish face, eyes of fire, nose of peremptory interrogation. Flourishing a
wretched grammar in one hand, he proceeded rapidly to demonstrate its
ineptness, and sternly to demand my explanation. As my weak-kneedness
grew more painfully evident—

So scented the grim feature, and upturned
His nostril wide into the murky air,
Sagacious of his quarry—

he almost shouted with exultation. All the Manx scholars had completely
failed—here was another. "Glory be to God! I'll smite him hip and thigh."
He was a splendid Irishman, and, of course, kind and generous. He didn't
spare me, destructed me utterly; but speedily constructed me upon new
lines, and told me a lot about Celtic difficulties and how to overcome them.
He spoke Irish like a bird, and, after about three-quarters of an hour, he
rushed forth to catch the train, hairy, immense, with some wild wirrasthru of
farewell. Imagine a very learned and linguistic Mulligan of
Ballymulligan!…

*****

O Wallaston, the delight of this leisure! I read, I write, I play. Good
gracious! I shouldn't wonder if my music came to something yet. I have
actually gone back to singing, a vice of my youth. Don't mention it at
Clifton! I always think the sea the great challenger and promoter of song.
Even the mountain is not the same thing. There may always be some d——
d fool or another behind a rock. But the sea is open, and you can tell when
you are alone, and the dear old chap is so confidential: I will trust him with
my secret.

How about Devon! was it good? Did you all bathe and "rux" yourselves
well about in the brine? I have not done much in that way: the storms have
been so furious—unkind of them, eh? Well, I fancy it is like the boisterous
welcome of some great dog—at least I take it in that sense. And the old boy
is so strong, and he doesn't know, he thinks I am what I used to be. But I'm
not: and every now and then he remembers that, and creeps to my feet so
fawningly….

[Sidenote: T.E. Brown]

At a great prayer-meeting requests were being made that divers souls,
supposed to be in evil case, should be interceded for. One arose and asked
the prayers of the meeting for a little town on the east coast of Scotland,
which was "wholly given to idolatry." Such was the expression. A little city,
with many schools, also the seat of a University. Having thus mysteriously
indicated the place, the excellent individual plainly felt that no mortal could
possibly guess what place he meant; and, putting his hand over his mouth,
he said to his friends on the platform, in a hoarse whisper distinctly heard
over the entire hall, "St. Andrews!" Isn't that consummate? Isn't it
Scotland?…

[Sidenote: T.E. Brown]

Walters did an extremely kind thing the other day. Two old things going
about with an entertainment (!) of Recitations (really old, for I heard them
"at it" thirty-five years ago), took a letter with them from me to Walters. It
was the merest chance, I thought, but I suggested that just possibly Walters
might give them an evening at the College. By Jove! sir, he did give them
an evening, and gave them a substantial fee, and filled their poor trembling
cup of Auld lang syne with joy and thanksgiving, and dismissed them with
honour, almost reeling with the intoxication of so unwonted a success, the
boys giving them a mighty three-times-three which shook the welkin, and
stirred amazingly the pulsation of two hearts that have long desisted from
the exercise of hope….

[Sidenote: T.E. Brown]

I heard one or two good stories at Braddan when I preached there (last
Sunday). One was of a child at the Sunday-school. "What ought you to do
on Sunday?" "Go to church." "What ought you to do next?" "Go to chapel."
Was it not precisely the story for a vicar to tell? You feel the atmosphere—
what?…

[Sidenote: T.E. Brown]

We sat down in some cottages. Some of the people were magnificent,
throwing themselves upon you with such vigour of accent, such warmth and
fun, and endless receptivity, bright, well pulled together, sonorous, that I
nearly staggered under it—not chaff—good heavens! no—but would have
been chaff, only it wasn't, for they can't chaff.

Kitty Kermode, alias Kinvig, was the best. She said a very sweet and
profound thing (but I can't phrase it as I ought) about the value of
friendship, as compared with that of love. A little happy creature of some
seventeen giggled in a dark corner, but I let her giggle; the old woman
pierced me through and through. Oh fortunati—Oh indeed! And these dear
things seemed to know that their lot was a happy one. Quod faustum!
Unutterably precious to me is the woman, the native of the hills, almost my
own age, or a little younger, whose spirit is set upon the finest springs, and
her sympathies have an almost masculine depth, and a length of reflection
that wins your confidence and stays your sinking heart.

The lady can't do it. This class, of what I suppose you would call peasant
women (I won't have the word), seems made for the purpose of rectifying
everything, and redressing the balance, inspiring us with that awe which the
immediate presence of absolute womanhood creates in us. The plain,
practical woman, with the outspoken throat and the eternal eyes. Oh, mince
me, madam, mince me your pretty mincings! Deliberate your dainty
reticences! Balbutient loveliness, avaunt! Here is a woman that talks like a
bugle, and, in everything, sees God.

[Sidenote: T.E. Brown]

… The wreck of the Drummond Castle is much in my mind. What lovely
creatures those French are! The women and children, carrying their poor
drowned sisters! that little baby in its coffin decked with roses! Don't you
yearn towards those dear souls? What are Agincourt and Waterloo in the
presence of such sweetness? Well, I love them anyway, and shall brood over
them and pray for them while I live….

[Sidenote: T.E. Brown]

I am generally rather a happy "sort" of man, but your letter makes me
very happy. How kind you are! Up in the morning betimes to catch people
still in their beds warm with a generous enthusiasm, to surprise their
sympathies before they had "faded into the light of common day," and to
collect all their "loving" words for me. That was a good and faithful act;
and I am deeply grateful.

Yes, the man was right. I do love the poor wastrels, and you are right, I
have it from my father. He had a way of taking for granted, not only the
innate virtue of these outcasts, but their unquestioned respectability. He, at
least, never questioned it. The effect was twofold.

Some of the "weak brethren" felt uncomfortable at being met on those
terms of equality. My father might have been practising on them the most
dreadful irony; and they were "that shy" and confused. But it was not irony,
not a bit of it; just a sense of respect, fine consideration for the poor
"sowls," well—respect, that's it, respect for all human beings; his respect
made them respectable. Wasn't it grand? To others my father was a perfect
Port-y-shee.[3] To be in the same room with him was enough. To be
conscious that he was there, that he didn't fight strange of them, that he
never dreamt of "scowlin'" them, that they were treated as gentlemen. Oh
the comfort, the gerjugh,[4] the interval of repose! Extraordinary, though,
was it not? To think of a Pazon respecting men's vices even; not as vices,
God forbid! but as parts of them, very likely all but inseparable from them;
at any rate, theirs. Pitying with an eternal pity, but not exposing, not
rebuking. My father would have considered he was "taking a liberty" if he
had confronted the sinner with his sin. Doubtless he carried this too far. But
don't suppose for a moment that the "weak brethren" thought he was
conniving at their weakness. Not they—they saw the delicacy of his
conduct. You don't think, do you, that these poor souls are incapable of
appreciating delicacy? God only knows how far down into their depths of

misery and degradation the sweetness of that delicacy descends. It haunts
the drunkard's dreams, and breathes a breath of purity into the bosom of the
abandoned. That is the power of a noble innocence, a respect for our fellow
creatures—glib phrases, but how little understood and acted on! With my
father it was quite natural…. He was a hot hater, though, I can tell you. He
hated hypocrisy, he hated lying, and he hated presumption and
pretentiousness. He loved sincerity, truth, and modesty. It seemed as if he
felt sure that, with these virtues, the others could not fail to be present. Was
he far wrong? Yet how many people would have thought him stern!

One dear old cousin of his comes to my mind. We called him U.T., that is
Uncle Tom. He was not our uncle—we never had one—but the uncle of our
predecessors at Kirk Braddan. And almost every Sunday evening he spent
at the Vicarage—poor old thing! He was quite silent. One thing, though, he
would say, as "regglar as clockwork." My mother occasionally apologised
for the evening being so exclusively musical (we were great singers).
Whenever she did so, the reply was prompt from U.T.: "I'm passionately
fond of music." This, to us children, was highly ludicrous. Indeed, my
mother was amused—she had no Manx blood in her—but my father
accepted U.T.'s assurance with the utmost confidence. His chivalrous
nature, more deeply tinged than hers with Celtic tenderness, or the very
finest kind of Celtic make-believe (Anglicè—humbug; oh those English!),
had no difficulty in accepting U.T.'s "passionately." Passion in U.T.! Well,
to us it was a splendid joke. I sometimes wonder whether the vicar, too, at
times, had lucid intervals of the bare, naked reality. He had a fine sense of
humour, and he would have considered it a baseness to laugh at the poor
thing, with its pretence of passion, trying to screen its forlornness. What
U.T. felt was not the passion for music, but just the soothing, comforting
sense of being at home with us, of being accepted as one of ourselves, of
not being "scoulded," of indisputable respectability, of being thought
capable of "passion," even so ethereal a passion as that of music. How

blessed those hours must have been to U.T.! He sometimes missed them.
But it never was my father's fault. Was it U.T.'s? Well, we children had no
idea that he drank. But now, of course, I know that when U.T. did not
appear on a Sunday, he must have been "hard at it" on Saturday; and into
the kingdom of heaven he must have taken the Sundays, not the Saturdays.

Forgive all this. But I have been so much touched with your taking up my
reference to the dear old Vicar of Braddan that I could not help extending
the portrait a little.

And for the backsliders, the "weak brethren, the outcasts—aw! let's feel
for the lek, and 'keep a houl' o' their ban.'"

Do write again. You will do me so much good.

VISIONS
[Sidenote: Calverley]

In lone Glenartney's thickets lies crouched the lordly stag,
The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag;
And plodding ploughman's weary steps insensibly grow quicker,
As broadening casements light them on toward home, or home-brewed
liquor.

It is, in brief, the evening—that pure and pleasant time
When stars break into splendour, and poets into rhyme;
When in the glass of Memory the forms of loved ones shine—
And when, of course, Miss Goodchild's is prominent in mine.

Miss Goodchild!—Julia Goodchild!—how graciously you smiled
Upon my childish passion once, yourself a fair-haired child:

When I was (no doubt) profiting by Dr. Crabb's instruction,
And sent those streaky lollipops home for your fairy suction!

"She wore" her natural "roses, the night when first we met"—
Her golden hair was gleaming 'neath the coercive net:
"Her brow was like the snawdrift," her step was like Queen Mab's,
And gone was instantly the heart of every boy at Crabb's.

The parlour boarder chasséed tow'rds her on graceful limb;
The onyx deck'd his bosom—but her smiles were not for him:
With me she danced—till drowsily her eyes "began to blink,"
And I brought raisin wine, and said, "Drink, pretty creature,
drink!"

And evermore, when winter comes in his garb of snows,
And the returning schoolboy is told how fast he grows;
Shall I—with that soft hand in mine—enact ideal Lancers,
And dream I hear demure remarks, and make impassioned answers:—

I know that never, never may her love for me return—
At night I muse upon the fact with undisguised concern—
But ever shall I bless that day: I don't bless as a rule,
The days I spent at "Dr. Crabb's Preparatory School."

And yet we two may meet again—(be still, my throbbing heart!)—
Now rolling years have weaned us from jam and raspberry-tart.
One night I saw a vision—'twas when musk-roses bloom,
I stood—we stood—upon a rug, in a sumptuous dining-room:

One hand clasped hers—one easily reposed upon my hip—
And "Bless ye!" burst abruptly from Mr. Goodchild's lip:

I raised my brimming eye, and saw in hers an answering gleam—
My heart beat wildly—and I woke, and lo! it was a dream.

"BOSWELL AND JOHNSON"
[Sidenote: Macaulay]

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not
more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly
the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of
orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has
distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place
them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.

We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so
strange a phenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever
lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever
lived, and he has beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his
own account or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a man of the
meanest and feeblest intellect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had
missed his only chance of immortality by not having been alive when "The
Dunciad" was written. Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial expression
for a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant society
which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was always laying
himself at the feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon and
trampled upon. He was always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then
"binding it as a crown unto him," not merely in metaphor, but literally. He
exhibited himself at the Shakespeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which filled
Stratford-on-Avon, with a placard round his hat bearing the inscription of
"Corsican Boswell." In his Tour, he proclaimed to all the world that at
Edinburgh he was known by the appellation of Paoli Boswell. Servile and
impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family

pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet
stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns
of London; so curious to know everybody who was talked about that, Tory
and High Churchman as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for an
introduction to Tom Paine; so vain of the most childish distinctions that,
when he had been to Court, he drove to the office where his book was
printing without changing his clothes, and summoned all the printer's devils
to admire his new ruffles and sword,—such was this man, and such he was
content and proud to be. Everything which another man would have hidden,
everything the publication of which would have made another man hang
himself, was matter of gay and clamorous exultation to his weak and
diseased mind. What silly things he said, what bitter retorts he provoked,
how at one place he was troubled with evil presentiments which came to
nothing, how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the
prayer-book and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, how he went to
see men hanged and came away maudlin, how he added five hundred
pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because she was not scared at
Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how
the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he
was at Lady Cork's one evening and how much his merriment annoyed the
ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle and with what
stately contempt she put down his impertinence, how Colonel Macleod
sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness, how his father and the
very wife of his bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries—all these things
he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and
ostentatious rejoicings. All the caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his
vanity, all his hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, he
displayed with a cool self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he
was making a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in

the whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill; but assuredly
he has used nobody so ill as himself.

That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world is
strange enough. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted
themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has indicated no
superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very
justly described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot, and by
another as a being

"Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll."

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders would not
come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained
literary eminence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason
of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have
been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and
the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the
inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all
reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave,
proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and
garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay
the most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of confidence, a man
without delicacy, without shame, without sense enough to know when he
was hurting the feelings of others, or when he was exposing himself to
derision; and because he was all this, he has, in an important department of
literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon,
Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson.

Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writers Boswell
had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own
on literature, politics, religion, or society which is not either commonplace

or absurd. His dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, and
on the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. To say that these
passages are sophistical would be to pay them an extravagant compliment.
They have no pretence to argument, or even to meaning. He has reported
innumerable observations made by himself in the course of conversation.
Of those observations we do not remember one which is above the
intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own
letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic,
eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as
making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a
quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a
man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to
make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a
coxcomb, they have made him immortal.

Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of his fame and in the
enjoyment of a competent fortune, is better known to us than any other man
in history. Everything about him, his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his
scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the
outward signs which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his
insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his
inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked,
his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morning
slumbers, his midnight disputations, his contortions, his mutterings, his
gruntings, his puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his
sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his
queer inmates, old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and
the negro Frank, all are as familiar to us as the objects by which we have
been surrounded from childhood….

From nature, he had received an uncouth figure, a diseased constitution,
and an irritable temper. The manner in which the earlier years of his
manhood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his
moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised beings who
were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours,
the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by
long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally
strange voracity, his active benevolence contrasted with the constant
rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in
the opinion of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of his
life, a complete original. An original he was, undoubtedly, in some respects.
But if we possessed full information concerning those who shared his early
hardships, we should probably find that what we call his singularities of
manner were, for the most part, failings which he had in common with the
class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham Park as he had been used to
eat behind the screen at St. John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his
ragged clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat who, during a
great part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt whether he should
have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accustomed him
to bear privation with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation.
He could fast; but, when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished
wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead and the perspiration running
down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine; but, when he drank it, he
drank it greedily and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated
symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with such deadly
malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and violence
which he showed in society were to be expected from a man whose temper,
not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calamities, by the
want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the
insolence of booksellers, by the derision of fools, by the insincerity of

patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs
which are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes
the heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly
pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and command. It was natural
that, in the exercise of his power, he should be eo immitior, quia
toleraverat; that, though his heart was undoubtedly generous and humane,
his demeanour in society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress
he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief; but for the
suffering which a harsh world inflicts upon a delicate mind he had no pity,
for it was a kind of suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He would
carry home on his shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets. He
turned his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old
creatures who could find no other asylum; nor could all their peevishness
and ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the pangs of wounded
vanity seemed to him ridiculous; and he scarcely felt sufficient compassion
even for the pangs of wounded affection. He had seen and felt so much of
sharp misery that he was not affected by paltry vexations; and he seemed to
think that everybody ought to be as much hardened to those vexations as
himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a headache, with
Mrs. Thrale for grumbling about the dust on the road, or the smell of the
kitchen. These were, in his phrase, "foppish lamentations," which people
ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith
crying because The Good-natured Man had failed, inspired him with no
pity. Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised
valetudinarians. Pecuniary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely
to beggary, moved him very little. People whose hearts had been softened
by prosperity might weep, he said, for such events; but all that could be
expected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was not much moved even by
the spectacle of Lady Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of her
lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle and the

wealthy. A washerwoman, left a widow with nine small children, would not
have sobbed herself to death.

A person who troubled himself so little about small or sentimental
grievances was not likely to be very attentive to the feelings of others in the
ordinary intercourse of society. He could not understand how a sarcasm or a
reprimand could make any man really unhappy. "My dear doctor," said he
to Goldsmith, "what harm does it do to a man to call him Holofernes?"
"Pooh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. Carter, "who is the worse for being
talked of uncharitably?" Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in
small things. Johnson was impolite, not because he wanted benevolence,
but because small things appeared smaller to him than to people who had
never known what it was to live for fourpence halfpenny a day….

Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are worthy of a liberal and
enlarged mind. He could discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of
all bigotry except his own. When he spoke of the scruples of the Puritans,
he spoke like a person who had really obtained an insight into the divine
philosophy of the New Testament, and who considered Christianity as a
noble scheme of government, tending to promote the happiness and to
elevate the moral nature of man. The horror which the sectaries felt for
cards, Christmas ale, plum-porridge, mince-pies, and dancing bears excited
his contempt. To the arguments urged by some very worthy people against
showy dress he replied with admirable sense and spirit, "Let us not be
found, when our Master calls us, stripping the lace off our waistcoats, but
the spirit of contention from our souls and tongues. Alas! sir, a man who
cannot get to heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner
in a grey one." Yet he was himself under the tyranny of scruples as
unreasonable as those of Hudibras or Ralpho, and carried his zeal for
ceremonies and for ecclesiastical dignities to lengths altogether inconsistent
with reason or with Christian charity. He has gravely noted down in his

diary that he once committed the sin of drinking coffee on Good Friday. In
Scotland, he thought it was his duty to pass several months without joining
in public worship, solely because the ministers of the kirk had not been
ordained by bishops. His mode of estimating the piety of his neighbours
was somewhat singular. "Campbell," said he, "is a good man, a pious man. I
am afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years, but he
never passes a church without pulling off his hat: this shows he has good
principles." Spain and Sicily must surely contain many pious robbers and
well-principled assassins. Johnson could easily see that a Roundhead who
named all his children after Solomon's singers, and talked in the House of
Commons about seeking the Lord, might be an unprincipled villain whose
religious mummeries only aggravated his guilt; but a man who took off his
hat when he passed a church episcopally consecrated must be a good man, a
pious man, a man of good principles. Johnson could easily see that those
persons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as sinful deemed most
ignobly of the attributes of God and of the ends of revelation; but with what
a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed any man who had blamed
him for celebrating the redemption of mankind with sugarless tea and
butterless buns!…

Johnson, as Mr. Burke most justly observed, appears far greater in
Boswell's books than in his own. His conversation appears to have been
quite equal to his writings in matter, and far superior to them in manner.
When he talked, he clothed his wit and his sense in forcible and natural
expressions. As soon as he took his pen in his hand to write for the public,
his style became systematically vicious. All his books are written in a
learned language; in a language which nobody hears from his mother or his
nurse; in a language in which nobody ever quarrels, or drives bargains, or
makes love; in a language in which nobody ever thinks. It is clear that
Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The
expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and

picturesque. When he wrote for publication he did his sentences out of
English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are
the original of that work of which the "Journey to the Hebrides" is the
translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions. "When we were
taken upstairs," says he in one of his letters, "a dirty fellow bounced out of
the bed on which one of us was to lie." This incident is recorded in the
Journal as follows: "Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose
started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge."
Sometimes Johnson translated aloud. "The Rehearsal" he said, very
unjustly, "has not wit enough to keep it sweet"; then, after a pause, "it has
not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

Mannerism is pardonable, and is sometimes even agreeable, when the
manner, though vicious, is natural. Few readers, for example, would be
willing to part with the mannerism of Milton or of Burke. But a mannerism
which does not sit easy on the mannerist, which has been adopted on
principle, and which can be sustained only by constant effort, is always
offensive. And such is the mannerism of Johnson.

The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all our readers, and
have been so often burlesqued, that it is almost superfluous to point them
out. It is well known that he made less use than any other eminent writer of
those strong, plain words, Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, of which the
roots lie in the inmost depths of our language; and that he felt a vicious
partiality for terms which, long after our own speech had been fixed, were
borrowed from the Greek and Latin, and which, therefore, even when
lawfully naturalised, must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank
with the King's English. His constant practice of padding out a sentence
with useless epithets, till it became as stiff as the bust of an exquisite, his
antithetical forms of expression, constantly employed even where there is
no opposition in the ideas expressed, his big words wasted on little things,

his hard inversions, so widely different from those graceful and easy
inversions which give variety, spirit, and sweetness to the expression of our
great old writers—all these peculiarities have been imitated by his admirers
and parodied by his assailants till the public has become sick of the subject.

Goldsmith said to him, very wittily and very justly, "If you were to write
a fable about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like
whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson.
Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an
empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the
same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's
Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and
Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia.
The gay Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house of her
relations in such terms as these: "I was surprised, after the civilities of my
first reception, to find, instead of the leisure and tranquillity which a rural
life always promises, and, if well conducted, might always afford, a
confused wilderness of care, and a tumultuous hurry of diligence, by which
every face was clouded, and every motion agitated." The gentle Tranquilla
informs us that she "had not passed the earlier part of life without the
flattery of courtship and the joys of triumph; but had danced the round of
gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy and the congratulations of applause, had
been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the
vain, and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of gallantry,
the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself
did not wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well cry out,
with honest Sir Hugh Evans, "I like not when a 'oman has a great peard: I
spy a great peard under her muffler."

We had something more to say; but our article is already too long, and we
must close it. We would fain part in good-humour from the hero, from the

biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his task,
has at least this claim to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read
Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the
table on which stands the omelet for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson.
There are assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of
Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke and the tall, thin form of
Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick;
Gibbon tapping his snuff-box and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In
the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures
of those among whom we have been brought up—the gigantic body, the
huge, massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the
black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty
hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth
moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it
puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the
"No, sir!" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir!"

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be
regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive
from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in
general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to
posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries! That kind of
fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his case, the most durable.
The reputation of those writings which he probably expected to be immortal
is every day fading, while those peculiarities of manner and that careless
table-talk the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him,
are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in
any quarter of the globe.

THE SUPPER
[Sidenote: Sterne]

A shoe coming loose from the fore-foot of the thill-horse, at the
beginning of the ascent of Mount Taurira, the postillion dismounted, twisted
the shoe off, and put it in his pocket. As the ascent was of five or six miles,
and that horse our main dependence, I made a point of having the shoe
fastened on again as well as we could; but the postillion had thrown away
the nails, and the hammer in the chaise box being of no great use without
them, I submitted to go on.

He had not mounted half a mile higher when, coming to a flinty piece of
road, the poor devil lost a second shoe, and from off his other fore-foot; I
then got out of the chaise in good earnest, and, seeing a house about a
quarter of a mile to the left hand, with a great deal to do, I prevailed upon
the postillion to turn up to it. The look of the house, and of everything about
it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster. It was a little farm-
house, surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, about as much corn,
and close to the house, on one side, was a potagerie of an acre and a half,
full of everything which could make plenty in a French peasant's house;
and, on the other side, was a little wood, which furnished wherewithal to
dress it. It was about eight in the evening when I got to the house, so I left
the postillion to manage his point as he could; and, for mine, I walked
directly into the house.

The family consisted of an old grey-bearded man and his wife, with five
or six sons and sons-in-law, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy
out of them.

They were all sitting down together to their lentil-soup, a large wheaten
loaf was in the middle of the table, and a flagon of wine at each end of it
promised joy through the stages of the repast; 'twas a feast of love.

The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality would
have me sit down at the table; my heart was set down the moment I entered
the room; so I sat down at once, like a son of the family; and, to invest
myself in the character as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old
man's knife, and, taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon; and, as I
did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest welcome, but of
a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed to doubt it.

Was it this? or tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so
sweet; and to what magic I owe it, that the draught I took of their flagon
was so delicious with it, that they remain upon my palate to this hour.

If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it was much more
so.

THE GRACE
[Sidenote: Sterne]

When supper was over the old man gave a knock upon the table with the
haft of his knife, to bid them prepare for the dance. The moment the signal
was given, the women and girls ran off together into a back apartment to tie
up their hair, and the young men to the door to wash their faces and change
their sabots; and in three minutes every soul was ready upon a little
esplanade before the house to begin. The old man and his wife came out
last, and, placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by the door.

The old man had, some fifty years ago, been no mean performer upon the
vielle; and at the age he was then of, touched it well enough for the purpose.
His wife sang now and then a little to the tune, then intermitted and joined
her old man again, as their children and grandchildren danced before them.

It was not till the middle of the second dance, when, for some pauses in
the movements wherein they all seemed to look up, I fancied I could
distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which is the cause of
the effect of simple jollity. In a word, I thought I beheld religion mixing in
the dance; but, as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked
upon it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally
misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said that
this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule,
after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice;
"believing," he said, "that a cheerful and contented mind was the best sort
of thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay"—

"Or a learned prelate either," said I.

HINTS FOR AN HISTORICAL PLAY; TO BE CALLED WILLIAM
RUFUS; OR, THE RED
ROVER
[Sidenote: Ingoldsby]

Act 1

Walter Tyrrel, the son of a Norman papa,
Has, somehow or other, a Saxon mama:
Though humble, yet far above mere vulgar loons,
He's a sort of a sub in the Rufus dragoons;
Has travelled, but comes home abruptly, the rather
That some unknown rascal has murder'd his father;
And scarce has he picked out, and stuck in his quiver,
The arrow that pierced the old gentleman's liver,
When he finds, as misfortunes come rarely alone,
That his sweetheart has bolted—with whom is not known.

But, as murder will out, he at last finds the lady
At court with her character grown rather shady:
This gives him the "blues," and impairs the delight
He'd have otherwise felt when they dub him a Knight
For giving a runaway stallion a check,
And preventing his breaking King Rufus's neck.

Act 2

Sir Walter has dress'd himself up like a Ghost,
And frightens a soldier away from his post;
Then, discarding his helmet, he pulls his cloak higher,
Draws it over his ears and pretends he's a Friar.
This gains him access to his sweetheart, Miss Faucit;
But, the King coming in, he hides up in her closet;
Where, oddly enough, among some of her things,
He discovers some arrows he's sure are the King's,
Of the very same pattern with that which he found
Sticking into his father when dead on the ground!
Forgetting his funk, he bursts open the door,
Bounces into the drawing-room, stamps on the floor,
With an oath on his tongue, and revenge in his eye,
And blows up King William the Second sky-high;
Swears, storms, shakes his fist, and exhibits such airs,
That his Majesty bids his men kick him downstairs.

Act 3

King Rufus is cross when he comes to reflect,
That, as King, he's been treated with gross disrespect;
So he pens a short note to a holy physician,
And gives him a rather unholy commission,

Viz., to mix up some arsenic and ale in a cup,
Which the chances are Tyrrel may find and drink up.
Sure enough, on the very next morning, Sir Walter
Perceives, in his walks, this same cup on the altar.
As he feels rather thirsty, he's just about drinking,
When Miss Faucit, in tears, comes in running like winking;
He pauses, of course, and, as she's thirsty too,
Says, very politely, "Miss, I after you!"
The young lady curtsies, and, being so dry,
Raises somehow her fair little finger so high,
That there's not a drop left him to "wet t'other eye";
While the dose is so strong, to his grief and surprise,
She merely says, "Thankee, Sir Walter," and dies.
At that moment the King, who is riding to cover,
Pops in en passant on the desperate lover,
Who has vow'd, not five minutes before, to transfix him—
So he does—he just pulls out his arrow and sticks him.
From the strength of his arm, and the force of his blows,
The Red-bearded Rover falls flat on his nose;
And Sir Walter, thus having concluded the quarrel,
Walks down to the footlights, and draws this fine moral:
"Ladies and gentlemen, lead sober lives:
Don't meddle with other folks' sweethearts or wives!—
When you go out a-sporting take care of your gun,
And—never shoot elderly people in fun!"

IN A VISITOR'S BOOK
[Sidenote: J.K. Stephen.]

Within the bounds of this Hotel,
Which bears the name of Pen-y-Gwryd,
A black and yellow hound doth dwell,
By which my friend and I were worried.

Our object is not to imply
That he assaulted, bit, or tore us;
In fact he never ventured nigh
Except when food was set before us.

But when the scent of ham and eggs
Announced the breakage of our fast,
He came and twined about our legs,
And interrupted our repast.

We drove him from us through the door;
He reappeared; we tried the casement;
He seemed to rise out of the floor,
And importuned us as before,
To our unspeakable amazement.

But timely succour Fortune brought us;
One word of Welsh we chanced to know,
And that a fellow-guest had taught us;
It meant "Unpleasant creature, go!"

Stranger! If you should chance to meet him,
Oh do not pull, or kick, or push,
Or execrate, or bribe, or beat him,
But make a sound resembling "Cwsh"!

LETTERS OF FITZ
[Sidenote: Edward FitzGerald]

Mazzinghi tells me that November weather breeds blue devils—so that
there is a French proverb, "In October de Englishman shoot de pheasant; in
November he shoot himself." This, I suppose, is the case with me: so away
with November, as soon as may be….

Have you got in your "Christian Poet" a poem by Sir H. Wotton—"How
happy is he born or taught, that serveth not another's will"? It is very
beautiful, and fit for a Paradise of any kind. Here are some lines from old
Lily, which your ear will put in the proper metre. It gives a fine description
of a fellow walking in spring, and looking here and there, and pricking up
his ears, as different birds sing: "What bird so sings, but doth so wail? Oh!
'tis the ravished nightingale: 'Jug, jug, jug, jug, terue,' she cries, and still her
woes at midnight rise. Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear? It is the lark
so shrill and clear: against heaven's gate he claps his wings, the morn not
waking till he sings. Hark, too, with what a pretty note poor Robin
Redbreast tunes his throat: Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing, 'Cuckoo' to
welcome in the spring: 'Cuckoo' to welcome in the spring.'" This is very
English, and pleasant, I think: and so I hope you will. I could have sent you
many a more sentimental thing, but nothing better. I admit nothing into my
Paradise, but such as breathe content, and virtue….

The Church, like the Ark of Noah, is worth saving: not for the sake of the
unclean beasts that almost filled it, and probably made most noise and
clamour in it, but for the little corner of rationality, that was as much
distressed by the stink within as by the tempest without….

[Sidenote: Edward FitzGerald]

Some one from this house is going to London: and I will try and write
you some lines now in half an hour before dinner. 'I am going out for the
evening to my old lady, who teaches me the names of the stars, and other
chaste information. You see, Master John Allen, that if I do not come to
London (and I have no thought of going yet) and you will not write, there is
likely to be an end of our communication: not, by the way, that I am never
to go to London again; but not just yet. Here I live with tolerable content:
perhaps with as much as most people arrive at, and what if one were
properly grateful one would perhaps call perfect happiness. Here is a
glorious sunshiny day: all the morning I read about Nero in Tacitus, lying at
full length on a bench in the garden, a nightingale singing, and some red
anemones eyeing the sun manfully not far off. A funny mixture all this,
Nero, and the delicacy of spring, all very human however. Then at half-past
one lunch on Cambridge cream cheese: then a ride over hill and dale: then
spudding up some weeds from the grass: and then, coming in, I sit down to
write to you, my sister winding red worsted from the back of a chair, and
the most delightful little girl in the world chattering incessantly. So runs the
world away. You think I live in Epicurean ease; but this happens to be a
jolly day: one isn't always well, or tolerably good, the weather is not always
clear, nor nightingales singing, nor Tacitus full of pleasant atrocity. But such
as life is, I believe I have got hold of a good end of it….

Give my love to Thackeray from your upper window across the street.

… I am living (did I tell you this before?) at a little cottage close by the
lawn gates, where I have my books, a barrel of beer, which I tap myself
(can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me. I have also
just concocted two gallons of tar-water under the directions of Bishop
Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a careful skimming, and
then drunk by those who can and will. It is to be tried first on my old
woman; if she survives, I am to begin; and it will then gradually spread into

the parish, through England, Europe, etc., "as the small pebble stirs the
peaceful lake."

… Does the thought ever strike you, when looking at pictures in a house,
that you are to run and jump at one, and go right through it into some scene-
behind-scene world on the other side, as harlequins do? A steady portrait
especially invites one to do so: the quietude of it ironically tempts one to
outrage it. One feels it would close again over the panel, like water, as if
nothing had happened. That portrait of Spedding, for instance, which
Laurence has given me: not swords, nor cannon, nor all the bulls of Bashan
butting at it could, I feel sure, discompose that venerable forehead. No
wonder that no hair can grow at such an altitude; no wonder his view of
Bacon's virtue is so rarefied that the common consciences of men cannot
endure it. Thackeray and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea of
Spedding's forehead. We find it somehow or other in all things, just peering
out of all things: you see it in a milestone, Thackeray says. He also draws
the forehead rising with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the
Lake of Geneva. We have great laughing over this. The forehead is at
present in Pembrokeshire, I believe; or Glamorganshire; or Monmouthshire:
it is hard to say which. It has gone to spend its Christmas there….

[Sidenote: Edward FitzGerald]

I wish you would write me ten lines to say how you are. You are, I
suppose, at Cambridge, and I am buried (with all my fine parts, what a
shame!) here; so that I hear of nobody—except that Spedding and I abuse
each other about Shakespeare occasionally, a subject on which you must
know that he has lost his conscience, if he ever had any. For what did Dr.
Allen … say when he felt Spedding's head? Why, that all his bumps were so
tempered that there was no merit in his sobriety—then what would have
been the use of a Conscience to him? Q.E.D.

Since I saw you, I have entered into a decidedly agricultural course of
conduct: read books about composts, etc. I walk about in the fields also
where the people are at work, and the more dirt accumulates on my shoes,
the more I think I know. Is not this all funny? Gibbon might elegantly
compare my retirement from the cares and splendours of the world to that
of Diocletian. Have you read Thackeray's little book—"The Second Funeral
of Napoleon"? If not, pray do; and buy it, and ask others to buy it, as each
copy sold puts 7-1/2d. in T.'s pocket, which is very empty just now, I take it.
I think this book is the best thing he has done. What an account there is of
the Emperor Nicholas in Kemble's last Review! The last sentence of it
(which can be by no other man in Europe but Jack himself) has been meat
and drink to me for a fortnight. The electric eel at the Adelaide Gallery is
nothing to it. Then Edgeworth fires away about the Odes of Pindar, and
Donne is very æsthetic about Mr. Hallam's book. What is the meaning of
"exegetical"? Till I know that, how can I understand the Review?

Pray remember me kindly to Blakesley, Heath, and such other potentates
as I knew in the days before they "assumed the purple." I am reading
Gibbon, and see nothing but this d——d colour before my eyes. It changes
occasionally to bright yellow, which is (is it?) the Imperial colour in China,
and also the antithesis to purple (vide Coleridge and Eastlake's "Goethe")—
even as the Eastern and Western Dynasties are antithetical, and yet, by the
law of extremes, potentially the same (vide Coleridge, etc.). Is this æsthetic?
Is this exegetical? How glad I shall be if you can assure me that it is! But,
nonsense apart and begged pardon for, pray write me a line to say how you
are, directing to this pretty place. "The soil is in general a moist and
retentive clay, with a subsoil or pan of an adhesive silicious brick
formation; adapted to the growth of wheat, beans, and clover—requiring,
however, a summer fallow (as is generally stipulated in the lease) every
fourth year, etc." This is not an unpleasing style on agricultural subjects—
nor an uncommon one….

*****

You know my way of life so well that I need not describe it to you, as it
has undergone no change since I saw you. I read of mornings—the same old
books over and over again, having no command of new ones; walk with my
great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows, up
to which China-roses climb, with my pipe, while the blackbirds and
thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale to have
the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such a spring (bating the last ten
days) as would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such verdure!
white clouds moving over the new-fledged tops of oak-trees, and acres of
grass striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to see! I believe
that Leslie's "Life of Constable" (a very charming book) has given me a
fresh love of spring. Constable loved it above all seasons: he hated autumn.
When Sir G. Beaumont, who was of the old classical taste, asked him if he
did not find it difficult to place his brown tree in his pictures, "Not at all,"
said C, "I never put one in at all." And when Sir George was crying up the
tone of the old masters' landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper
tone of colour for a picture, Constable got up, took an old Cremona, and
laid it down on the sunshiny grass. You would like the book. In defiance of
all this, I have hung my room with pictures, like very old fiddles indeed; but
I agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pictures that are not like
nature. I can have nature better than any picture by looking out of my
window. Yet I respect the man who tries to paint up to the freshness of earth
and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what he tried at: and perhaps the
old masters chose a soberer scale of things as more within the compass of
lead paint. To paint dew with lead!…

*****

It is now the 8th of December; it has blown a most desperate east wind,
all razors; a wind like one of those knives one sees at shops in London, with
365 blades all drawn and pointed. The wheat is all sown; the fallows cannot
be ploughed. What are all the poor folks to do during the winter? And they
persist in having the same enormous families they used to do; a woman
came to me two days ago who had seventeen children! What farmers are to
employ all these? What landlord can find room for them? The law of
Generation must be repealed….

DEAR CARLYLE,
[Sidenote: Edward FitzGerald]

I should sometimes write to you if I had anything worth telling, or worth
putting you to the trouble of answering me. About twice in a year, however,
I do not mind asking you one thing which is easily answered, how you and
Mrs. Carlyle are? And yet, perhaps, it is not so easy for you to tell me so
much about yourself: for your "well-being" comprises a good deal! That
you are not carried off by the cholera I take for granted, since else I should
have seen in the papers some controversy with Doctor Wordsworth as to
whether you were to be buried in Westminster Abbey, by the side of
Wilberforce perhaps! Besides, a short note from Thackeray a few weeks
ago told me you had been to see him. I conclude also from this that you
have not been a summer excursion of any distance.

I address from the Rectory (_Vicarage_it ought to be) of Crabbe, the
"Radiator," whose mind is now greatly exercised with Dr. Whewell's
"Plurality of Worlds." Crabbe, who is a good deal in the secrets of
Providence, admires the work beyond measure, but most indignantly rejects
the doctrine as unworthy of God. I have not read the book, contented to
hear Crabbe's commentaries. I have been staying with him off and on for
two months, and, as I say, give his address because any letter thither

directed will find me sooner or later in my little wanderings. I am at present
staying with a farmer in a very pleasant house near Woodbridge, inhabiting
such a room as even you, I think, would sleep composedly in; my host a
taciturn, cautious, honest, active man whom I have known all my life. He
and his wife, a capital housewife, and his son, who would carry me on his
shoulders to Ipswich, and a maid-servant, who, as she curtsies of a morning,
lets fall the teapot, etc., constitute the household. Farming greatly prospers,
farming materials fetching an exorbitant price at the Michaelmas auctions—
all in defiance of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who got returned for Suffolk on the
strength of denouncing Corn Law Repeal as the ruin of the country. He has
bought a fine house near Ipswich, with great gilded gates before it, and, by
dint of good dinners and soft sawder, finally draws the country gentry to
him….

Please to look at the September Number of Fraser's Magazine, where
there are some prose translations of Hafiz by Cowell which may interest
you a little. I think Cowell (as he is apt to do) gives Hafiz rather too much
credit for a mystical wine-cup, and cup-bearer; I mean, taking him on the
whole. The few odes he quotes have certainly a deep and pious feeling,
such as the Man of Mirth will feel at times: none perhaps more strongly.

Some one by chance read out to me the other day at the seaside your
account of poor old Naseby village from "Cromwell," quoted in Knight's
"Half-Hours," etc. It is now twelve years ago, at this very season, I was
ransacking for you; you promising to come down, and never coming. I hope
very much you are soon going to give us something: else Jerrold and
Tupper carry all before them.

TO "LYDIA LANGUISH"
[Sidenote: Austin Dobson]

"Il me faut des emotions"—Blanche Amory

You ask me, Lydia, "whether I,
If you refuse my suit, shall die."
(Now pray don't let this hurt you!)
Although the time be out of joint,
I should not think a bodkin's point
The sole resource of virtue;
Nor shall I, though your mood endure,
Attempt a final Water-cure
Except against my wishes;
For I respectfully decline
To dignify the Serpentine,
And make hors-d'oeuvres for fishes;
But if you ask me whether I
Composedly can go,
Without a look, without a sigh,
Why, then I answer—No.

"You are assured," you sadly say
(If in this most considerate way
To treat my suit your will is),
That I shall "quickly find as fair
Some new Neæra's tangled hair—
Some easier Amaryllis."
I cannot promise to be cold
If smiles are kind as yours of old
On lips of later beauties;
Nor can I, if I would, forget
The homage that is Nature's debt,
While man has social duties;

But if you ask shall I prefer
To you I honour so,
A somewhat visionary Her,
I answer truly—No.

You fear, you frankly add, "to find
In me too late the altered mind
That altering Time estranges."
To this I make response that we
(As physiologists agree)
Must have septennial changes;
This is a thing beyond control,
And it were best upon the whole
To try and find out whether
We could not, by some means, arrange
This not-to-be-avoided change
So as to change together:
But had you asked me to allow
That you could ever grow
Less amiable than you are now,—
Emphatically—No.

But—to be serious—if you care
To know how I shall really bear
This much-discussed rejection,
I answer you. As feeling men
Behave, in best romances, when
You outrage their affection;—
With that gesticulatory woe,
By which, as melodramas show,
Despair is indicated;

Enforced by all the liquid grief
Which hugest pocket-handkerchief
Has ever simulated;
And when, arrived so far, you say
In tragic accents, "Go,"
Then, Lydia, then … I still shall stay,
And firmly answer—No.

MARK'S BABY
[Sidenote: Mark Twain]

"Mark, one day, was found at home, in his library, dandling upon his
knee, with every appearance of fond 'parientness,' the young Twain—so
young as not yet to be able to 'walk upright and make bargains.' Mrs. Twain,
on showing the visitor into the sanctum, and finding her spouse thus
engaged, said:

"'Now, Mark, you know you love that baby—don't you?'

"'Well,' replied Mark, in his slow, drawling kind of way,
'I—can't—exactly—say—I—love it,—but—I—respect—it!'"

THE WISDOM OF G.K.C.
[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

Jesus Christ made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar
makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts because life is not
joyful; he revels because he is not glad. "Drink," he says, "for you know not
whence you come nor why. Drink, for you know not when you go nor
where. Drink, because the stars are cruel and the world as idle as a
humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth

fighting for. Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and an
evil peace." So he stands offering us the cup in his hands. And in the high
altar of Christianity stands another figure in whose hand also is the cup of
the vine. "Drink," he says, "for the whole world is as red as this wine with
the crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are
blowing for battle, and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this is My blood of
the New Testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know whence you
come and why. Drink, for I know when you go and where."—"Heretics."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

Everything is military in the sense that everything depends upon
obedience. There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly
irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat
and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine
carelessness; but we are glad that the net-maker did not make the net in a fit
of divine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a
joke; but we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued
for a joke.—"Heretics."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the
train before.—"Tremendous Trifles."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

In a hollow of the grey-green hills of rainy Ireland lived an old, old
woman, whose uncle was always Cambridge at the Boat-race. But in her
grey-green hollows, she knew nothing of this; she didn't know that there

was a Boat-race. Also she did not know that she had an uncle. She had
heard of nobody at all, except of George the First, of whom she had heard (I
know not why), and in whose historical memory she put her simple trust.
And by and by, in God's good time, it was discovered that this uncle of hers
was really not her uncle, and they came and told her so. She smiled through
her tears, and said only, "Virtue is its own reward."—"The Napoleon of
Notting Hill."

In a world without humour, the only thing to do is to eat. And how
perfect an exception! How can these people strike dignified attitudes, and
pretend that things matter, when the total ludicrousness of life is proved by
the very method by which it is supported? A man strikes the lyre, and says,
"Life is real, life is earnest," and then goes into a room and stuffs alien
substances into a hole in his head.—"The Napoleon of Notting Hill."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have
time to preach his own heresy.—"George Bernard Shaw."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

Only in our romantic country do you have the romantic thing called
weather—beautiful and changeable as a woman. The great English
landscape painters (neglected now, like everything that is English) have this
salient distinction, that the weather is not the atmosphere of their pictures; it
is the subject of their pictures. They paint portraits of the weather. The
weather sat to Constable; the weather posed for Turner—and the deuce of a
pose it was. In the English painters the climate is the hero; in the case of
Turner a swaggering and fighting hero, melodramatic but magnificent. The

tall and terrible protagonist robed in rain, thunder, and sunlight fills the
whole canvas and the whole foreground. Rich colours actually look more
luminous on a grey day, because they are seen aganst a dark background,
and seem to be burning with a lustre of their own. Against a dim sky all
flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them at once
vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the grim garden of a witch. A
bright blue sky is necessarily the high-light in the picture, and its brightness
kills all the bright blue flowers. But on a grey day the larkspur looks like
fallen heaven; the red daisies are really the lost red eyes of day, and the
sunflower is the vice-regent of the sun. Lastly, there is this value about the
colour that men call colourless: that it suggests in some way the mixed and
troubled average of existence, especially in its quality of strife and
expectation and promise. Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of
changing to some other colour; of brightening into blue, or blanching into
white, or breaking into green or gold. So we may be perpetually reminded
of the indefinite hope that is in doubt itself; and when there is grey weather
on our hills or grey hair on our heads perhaps they may still remind us of
the morning.—"Daily News."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesteron]

Silence is the unbearable repartee.—"Charles Dickens."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic
caution to be added. Even for those who cannot do their work in bed (as, for
example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that the
indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution I mean. The
caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or

justification at all. I do not speak, of course, of the seriously sick. But if a
healthy man lies in bed, let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will
get up a healthy man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he
has some scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.
—"Tremendous Trifles."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise enough
to be made a fool of. He will make himself happy in the traps that have
been laid for him; he will roll in their nets and sleep. All doors will fly open
to him who has a mildness more defiant than mere courage. The whole is
unerringly expressed in one fortunate phrase—he will be always "taken in."
To be taken in everywhere is to see the inside of everything. It is the
hospitality of circumstance. With torches and trumpets, like a guest, the
greenhorn is taken in by Life. And the sceptic is cast out by it.—"Charles
Dickens."

[Sidenote: G.K. Chesterton]

I have often been haunted with a fancy that the creeds of men might be
paralleled and represented in their beverages. Wine might stand for genuine
Catholicism, and ale for genuine Protestantism; for these at least are real
religions, with comfort and strength in them. Clean cold Agnosticism would
be clean cold water—an excellent thing if you can get it. Most modern
ethical and idealistic movements might be well represented by soda-water
—which is a fuss about nothing. Mr. Bernard Shaw's philosophy is exactly
like black coffee—it awakens, but it does not really inspire. Modern
hygienic materialism is very like cocoa; it would be impossible to express
one's contempt for it in stronger terms than that.—"William Blake."

*****

To the quietest human being, seated in the quietest house, there will
sometimes come a sudden and unmeaning hunger for the possibilities or
impossibilities of things; he will abruptly wonder whether the teapot may

not suddenly begin to pour out honey or sea-water, the clock to point to all
hours of the day at once, the candle to burn green or crimson, the door to
open upon a lake or a potato-field instead of a London street. Upon any one
who feels this nameless anarchism there rests for the time being the spirit of
pantomime. Of the clown who cuts the policeman in two it may be said
(with no darker meaning) that he realises one of our visions.—"The
Defendant."

"THE VULGAR TONGUE"
[Sidenote: Dean Hole]

First, of abuses. I protest against those sensational adjectives, which are
so commonly misapplied—against the union of grand and noble words with
subjects of a minute and trivial nature. It is as though a huge locomotive
engine were brought out to draw a child's perambulator, or as though an
Armstrong gun were loaded and levelled to exterminate a tom-tit.

I heard a tourist say the other day that, when he was at Black Gang
Chine, in the Isle of Wight, he had seen the most magnificent—what do
you think? A sunset, a man-of-war, a thunderstorm? Nothing of the kind.
He had seen the most magnificent prawns he ever ate in his life.

And when I asked another young gentleman, who was speaking of "the
most tremendous screw ever made in the world," to which of our great
ironclads he referred, he smiled upon me with a benign and courteous pity,
as he said that he "was alluding to a screw into the middle pocket, which he
had recently seen during a game at billiards between Cook and the younger
Roberts."

When you hear one lady informing another that she had just seen simply
the most exquisite, the most lovely, the most perfect thing in existence, is

she referring to something wonderful in nature, or to something beautiful in
art, or can it be only a bonnet? Has she just come home from the glaciers of
Switzerland, the lakes of Italy, the mountains of Connemara, or the castles
of the Rhine, or can it be that she has been no farther than Marshall and
Snelgrove's shop?

Then there's that awful "awful!" Why, if a thousandth part of things
which are commonly affirmed to be aweful were aweful, we should go
about with our faces blanched, like his who drew Priam's curtain in the dead
of night, our teeth chattering, and our hair on end. Everything is aweful—
awefully good or awefully bad.

Only last week I handed a plate to a young lady at luncheon, and, looking
sweetly upon me, as though I had brought a reprieve from the gallows, she
sighed, "Oh thanks! how awfully kind!"

And years ago, I went with John Leech to admire Robson in The Porter's
Knot, and when that pathetic little drama was over, and the actor had stirred
our souls with pity, an undergraduate in the stalls before us turned to his
companion, as the curtain fell, and said, tremulously, with an emotion
which did him honour, although his diction was queer, "Awefully jolly!
awefully jolly!"

Yes, it amuses, but it pains us more, this reckless abuse and confusion of
words, because it tends to lower the dignity and to pervert the meaning of
our language; it dishonours the best member that we have. If we use the
most startling and impressive words which we can find, when we do not
really require them, when the crisis comes in which they are appropriate,
they seem feeble and commonplace. We are as persons who, wearing their
best clothes daily, are but dingy guests at a feast.

Then comes retribution. They who cry "Wolf!" whenever they see a
leveret are not believed when Lupus comes. They who suffer "excruciating
agony" whenever a thorn pricks, can say no more under exquisite pain, and
their familiar words are powerless to evoke the sympathy which they have
repelled so long. They are more likely to receive the severe rebuke
administered by a gruff old gentleman to his maudlin, moribund neighbour,
who was ever exaggerating his ailments, and who, upon his doleful
declaration that "between three and four o'clock that morning he had been at
Death's door!" was abruptly but anxiously asked—"Oh, why didn't you go
in?"

I protest, in the next place, against the use of long, large words for the
gratification of that conceit or covetousness which seeks to obtain, from
mere grandiloquence, reputations and rewards to which it is not entitled.
Being a gardener, I like to call a spade as spelt; and if any one terms it an
horticultural implement, or a mattock, I do not expect him to dig much. I
have used the monosyllable "shop," and I will not recall it, though a
thousand pairs of gleaming scissors were pointed at my breast, and I was
told by an angry army of apprentices to talk shop no more—the word was
vulgar, or rather obsolete, superseded by the more graceful terms of mart,
emporium, warehouse, repository, bazaar, and lounge.

Plain folk, who sold drugs when I was a boy, were not ashamed to be
called druggists, but now they are pharmaceutical chymists, and analytical
Homoeopathists; and one is tempted to quote Canning's paraphrase, which
he made when Dr. Addington had been complimenting the country party, "I
do remember an apothecary, gulling of simples." Persons who cut hair were
known as hair-cutters, and they who attended to the feet were called corn-
cutters; but now the former are artists in hair, and the latter are chiropodists.

No long time ago I consulted with an intelligent tradesman as to the best
way of protecting from frost a long line of standard rose-trees, growing near
a wall in my garden, and shortly afterwards I received from him the
drawing of a clever design, with a letter informing me that he had now the
pleasure of submitting to my inspection his idea of a Cheimoboethus. When
I rallied from my swoon, and was staggering towards my lexicon, I
remembered that, as [Greek: cheimon] was the Greek for winter, and
[Greek: boaethos] for a friend in need, the word was not without
appropriate meaning; but I never took heart to order the invention, because I
felt convinced that, if I were to inform my gardener that we were going to
have a Cheimoboethus, he would say that he would rather leave.

A bird-stuffer is now a plumassier and taxidermist; and when I asked a
waiter the meaning of "Phusitechnicon," which I read over a shop opposite
his hotel, he told me it meant old china. And he bowed respectfully, as one
who knew how to treat a great scholar, when he met him, as I remarked
gravely, "Ah yes, I see: no doubt from phusi—the ancients, and technicon—
cups and saucers."

Nor can I leave these long Greek words without noticing another
objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in the
captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a distinction
is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and that which in the
latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by the police, becomes in
the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible impulse to be gently nursed
by the physician. If a poor man steals, he is a desperate thief; but if a rich
man fancies that which does not belong to him he is a Kleptomaniac, and
"the spoons will be returned." If a poor man is addicted to alcohol he is a
drunken sot; but if a rich man is oft intoxicated, he is afflicted with
Dipsomania! Interesting patient! I should like to prescribe for him. I feel
sure I could do him good with my medicines—the crank and water-gruel!

Leaving him at it, I pass on to another mania, which rather provokes
amusement than anger—the mania to be called "Esquire." Forty years ago,
the title was restricted to those who carried arms. The armiger, no longer
toiling after his knight with heavy helmet and shield, bore his own arms, as
he drove along, proudly and pleasantly upon his carriage door. People who
became rich, and found themselves shut out from "genteel society" because
they had only letters upon their spoons, instead of birds and beasts, arms
with daggers, and legs with spurs, were delighted to discover, on
application at the Heralds' Office, that one of their ancestors had
undoubtedly exercised the functions of a groom in the establishment of
William the Conqueror, and that they were consequently entitled to bear
upon their arms a stable-bucket azure, between two horses current, and to
wear as their crest a curry-comb in base argent, between two wisps of hay
proper, they and their descendants, according to the law of arms. But the
luxury was expensive: a lump sum to the Heralds, and two pound two to the
King's taxes; and so, as time went on, men of large ambition, but of limited
means, began to crave for some more economical process by which they
might become esquires. They met together, and they solved the difficulty.
They conferred the title upon each other, and they charged no fee. And now
the postal authorities will tell you that the number of the "esquires" not
carrying arms, not having so much as a leg to stand on (in the matter of
legal claims), is something "awful!" But the process is so charmingly cheap
and easy that we may expect a further development. Why should we not all
be baronets? Why should we not raise ourselves, every man of us, on his
own private hoist, to the Peerage?

We have all been ladies and gentlemen so long that a little nobility, with
its attendant titles, cannot fail to make a pleasant change. Bessie Black, who
cleans the fire-irons, has for some years been Miss Cinderella, with a
chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds in the garden, is Mr.
Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A quotation from the

newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms "ladies
and gentlemen," which had once such definite and narrow restrictions. A
witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When I see that gentleman in the
hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady with the black eye, I says to
my missus, 'Them's ways,' I says, 'as I don't hold to'; and she makes answer
to me, 'You better hadn't.'"

Let me not be misunderstood to mean that none are ladies and gentlemen
who do not eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in
carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling
themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited to
swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any
anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as all who go
amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in
cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen illustrious snobs in satin, and
sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman!
There's no title shouted at a reception so grand in my idea as this; and yet,
methinks, that any man may win and wear it who is brave, and truthful, and
generous, and pure, and kind—who is, in one word, a Christian!

Some people think to make themselves gentlemen by tampering with
their patronymics, and by altering their family name. Brown has added an e
to his; and greedy Green, though he had two already, has followed his
example; and White spells his with a y; and Bob Smith calls his son and
heir Augustus Charlemagne Sacheverel Smythe; and Tailor calls himself
Tayleure. And one day Tailor went out a-hunting, and he worried a whipper-
in, who had plenty of work on his hands, with a series of silly questions,
until, upon his asking the name of a hound, he received an answer which
put an end to the discourse: "Well, sir," said the Whip, "we used to call him
Towler; but things has got so fine and fashionable we calls him Tow-leure."

Passing from abuse to disuse, I would not refer to words which are
gradually becoming obsolete, but which some of us, partly from admiration
of the words themselves, and partly from old associations, would not
willingly let die. Beginning alphabetically, the adjective ask is one of those
grand old English monosyllables which convey the sense in the sound, It
speaks to you of a day in March, when the wind is in the east, and all the
clouds are of a dull slate colour, and the roads are white, and the hedges
black, and the fallows are dry and hard as bricks, and a bitter, searching,
piercing wind whistles at your sealskins and Ulsters, your Lindseys and
Jerseys, your foot-warmers and muffatees, and you feel, with Miggs, "as
though water were flowing aperiently down your back," and sit shuddering
—dithering (there's another word rarely used, but with a sufficient amount
of chilliness in it to ice a bottle of champagne) "dithering in the ask,
ungenial day."

Then I like abear (the penultimate a pronounced as e)—"I can't abeer
him"; addled—"Bill's addled noat a three week"; agate—"I see you've
agate on't"; among-hands—"Tom schemed to do it among-hands"; all along
of—"It was all along of them 'osses"; etc.

Of B's there is a swarm: beleddy (a corruption, as most men know, of "by
our lady"), and I can only notice a few of the Queens. Botch is a word
which, though found in Shakespeare and Dryden, and other authors, is
rarely used by us; and yet, methinks, in these days, when the great object
seems to be to get quantity in place of quality, and to make as much display
as we can at the price—when so much is done by contract, and there is, in
consequence, strong temptation to daub with untempered mortar, to use
green timber, to put in bad material where it will not be seen, the verb to
botch is only too appropriate to all such scampish proceedings.

And what do you think of bofen-yed? I once heard a farmer, shouting
from the garden fence, with the vocal powers of a Boanerges, to a labourer
at work about a quarter of a mile away, "Yer gret bofen-yed, can ter ear
noat?" (Anglicè, "You ox-headed lout, are you stone deaf?"); and more
frequently the terms, pudding-yed and noggen-yed have been addressed in
my hearing to obtuse and stupid folk. The former requires no comment, and
an explanation of the latter—noggen, hard, rough, coarse—may be found in
Johnson. "Nay, I did na say thee wor a noggen-yed; I said Lawyer said thee
were a noggen-yed," was a poor apology, once spoken in Lancashire. And
there also, in time-honoured Lancaster, was made the following illustrative
speech. A conceited young barrister, with a nez retroussé and a new wig,
had been bullying for some time a rough, honest Lancashire lad, who was
giving evidence in a trial, and at last the lawyer, thinking that he saw his
opportunity, turned sharply upon the witness and said, "Why, fellow, only a
short time ago you stated so and so." To which came the indignant answer,
"Why, yer powder-yedded monkey, I never said noat o' sort; I appeal to th'
company!"

I have a loving faith in children. Mixing with them daily—in church, in
school, and at their play—I think that I know something about them; and I
maintain that a disagreeable child is a sorrowful exception to the rule, and
the result of mismanagement and foolish indulgences on the part of parents
and teachers. But when this abnormal nuisance is found, a peevish, fretful
child—a child who is always wanting to taste, a child who ignores the
admirable purposes for which pocket-handkerchiefs were designed, such an
enfant terrible as he who told the kindly mother, offering to bring her
'Gustus to join him in his play, that "if you bring your 'Gustus here I shall
make a slit in him with my new knife, and let out his sawdust"—when, I
repeat, we come in contact with such an obnoxious precocity as this, what
word can describe him so satisfactorily as the monosyllable—brat?

More detestable, because more powerful to do hurt, and with less excuse
for doing it, is the Blab; the unctuous, tattling Blab, who creeps to your side
with words softer than butter, but having war in his heart; he "always
thought that Sam Smith was such a friend of yours, and" (hardly waiting for
your "So he is") "was surprised and rather disgusted by his remarks at the
Club last Thursday." And then he tells you something which, for a moment,
and until principle prevails over passion, suggests the removal by violence
of several of Sam's teeth, and he leaves you distressed and distrustful, until
you discover, as you most probably will, that there has been cruel
misrepresentation. Ah, if poor Jeannette's desire were realised, and they
who make the quarrels were the only men to fight, how nice it would be to
sit upon an eminence and watch the Battle of the Blabs!

There was a battle once on a small scale, the only rational duel ever
fought, in which a brace of Blabs were sweetly discomfited. They had
succeeded in separating "very friends," and had arranged a hostile meeting;
but, through the intervention of better men, and without their cognisance,
the principals entered into explanation, and, finding that they had been
misled, mutually agreed to fire at the seconds, who had made the mischief.
One Blab received a bullet in the calf of his leg, and the other a ping close
to his whiskers; and then the combatants said that their honour was
satisfied, and the party broke up.

Some years ago there lived in our village an individual who was known
to us as Brawnging Bill. Does not the epithet describe the man? As you
pronounce it, does not William's photograph present itself to your mental
eye? A large, obese, idle hulk of a man (fine old Saxon word, that hulc!)
lounging about with his hands in his pockets and a pipe in his mouth; a man
who talks at the top of his voice, and laughs the loud laugh which tells the
vacant mind, and lies with such volubility that you would think truth was a
fool. Eloquent, didactic, imperious was he in the taproom and by the

blacksmith's forge, in the quoit-yard and in the alley of skittles, and yet,
whene'er his tongue led him into trouble, and there was whisper of peril to
that fat form of his, at the first utterance of a threat, the first sign of
aggressive anger, there was a dissolving view of our Brawnging Bill.

From B to C.—Whenever the fairer sex enter Parliament (breathes there
a man with ears so deaf as to doubt their powers of parlance?) and we have
a House of Ladies as well as a House of Lords, I anticipate that among the
first measures introduced will be a coercive Bill for Regulating in the Clay
Districts the scraping, wiping, and cleaning of men's boots on their return
from the garden or the field. A sore provocation it must surely be to those
who love order and brightness to find slabs of dirt upon their new oil-cloth,
Indian mats, and bright encaustic tiles. Justly may the gentlest spirit chunter
and complain while the guilty husband, from his dressing-room hard by,
vainly essays to evade his shame by a quotation—"Would my darling have
me come bootless home—home without boots, and in wet weather, too?"
Better to give the real, the only excuse, and say that the soil is so—no, not
adhesive, not sticky, not tenacious, but, to use a word ten thousand times
more expressive than these, so clarty.

And do you not remember (on we go, voyaging among the C's,) a time, a
happy time, before you knew what digestion meant, when you delighted to
cranch the unripe gooseberry, until you heard the clomp of the paternal
tread on the causey, and crouched lest you should catch it, hid to escape a
hiding; and how, nevertheless, swift retribution followed upon the track of
crime, and you suffered those internal pains, which were vulgarly known as
colly-wobbles, and were coddled, in consequence, upon your mother's
knee?

Going on to D—Dickens, in a description of a street row, represents one
of the lady disputants as saying to her adversary, "You go home, and, when

you are quite sober, mend your stockings"; and he adds that these allusions,
not only to her intemperate habits but to the state of her wardrobe, were so
exasperating to the accused party that she proceeded to comply, not with the
suggestion of her accuser, but with the request of the bystanders, and to
"pitch in" with considerable alacrity. Assuming that her hose was as
reported, let us hope that she had the worst of the combat, for there is
something in the idea of a dowdy which is hateful to the manly mind. How
life-like the portrait which the word paints for us! a coarse, fat female, her
dingy cap, with its faded ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes
hookless, holes buttonless, upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on
the ground. When we clergy visit Mrs. Dowdy's home, or the residence of
her sister, Mrs. Slattern, and find that, though it is towards evening, they
have not tidied either self or house, we know why the children are
unhealthy and untaught, and why the husband prefers the warmth and
cleanliness of "The Manor Arms" to his own miserable hut. As a house-
keeper, Mrs. Dowdy could only "please the pigs"; and this reminds me what
an apt word we have in dunky for a rotund, obese, little porket. I do not find
the latter in Johnson, but dowdy in Shakespeare, and slattern is from the
Swedish.

No word suggests itself as I stand at E's, and I therefore proceed with a
sonata in F, composed, not by Beethoven, but by a horse-breaker, with
certain amplifications of my own: "The young horse was in famous fettle,
and framed splendidly over the flakes; but he seemed all of a flabber-gaster
when he caught sight of the water, put himself into a regular fandango, and
the more I flanked him the more he funked, till in he went with a flop."

I come now to a gem of purest ray serene. To me the monosyllable gorp
is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Take a youth, who has passed his life
as an underling on some secluded farm, to an exhibition of wax figures,
gorgeously attired, rolling their eyes and lifting up their arms to slow music,

and you shall see him gorp. Or go with that young man to a display of
fireworks, and when the first asteroid rocket sends out its glowing stars you
shall see that wide-mouthed, wobbling agriculturist so gorp as to make it
almost impossible for the descending stick to go anywhere save down his
throat.

But we are all of us naturally fond of gorping. We abstain in our sensitive
days, because somebody said it was vulgar; but, as we grow older and
wiser, and that bell-wether Fashion tinkles vainly in our ears, we flatten our
happy noses upon the shop-windows once again, and thoroughly enjoy our
gorp.

At Oxford, I remember, it was considered very low indeed to gorp. In
fact, we did not allow ourselves to be astonished at anything, unless it was
the audacity of trades-people with reference to the payment of their little
bills. Wherefore I the more honour the conduct and courage of a college
friend who, honest himself, and as free from humbug as any man I know,
was bored, especially in London, by the society of an affected coxcomb,
who persisted in attaching himself whenever they met, giving himself all
sorts of silly airs, enlarging upon his intimacy with titled folks, and
asserting himself to be, like Mrs. Jarley's show, the delight of the nobility
and gentry of the day. "Gradually," said my friend to me, "I discovered a
process by which I might execute a deed of separation. First, I rattled my
stick against the area railings, and I saw him wince; then I whistled an
Ethiopian serenade, and 'o'er his face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was
traced'; but when I set my hat well on the back of my head, and gorped with
open mouth at six legs of pork in a butcher's shop, he fled, and I saw him no
more."

Thus did my friend successfully assume the lineaments of a gawk, and
the deportment of a gorby, that he might evade the oppressive attentions of

a companion given to gawster. The enemy whom he so adroitly dispersed
bore a strong family likeness to a fraternal nuisance, whom we recently
inspected, being, in fact, a new edition, on toned paper and elegantly bound,
of the braggart, "Brawnging Bill," and exhibiting the same feeble powers of
resistance when his silly conceits were thwarted. Honest men, hoping
reformation, rejoice to see him slink away, rejoice to see the gawsterer
subdued, as when Theodore Hook rushed across Fleet Street to one, who
was walking as proudly down it as though the Bank of England was his
counting-house and St. Paul's his private Chapel, and, almost breathless
with admiring awe, gasped his anxious question—"O sir, O pray sir, may I
ask, sir—are you anybody in particular?" Certainly it is either a great
amusement or a great irritation (as the weather, or disposition, or digestion
may influence), to meet with persons in parks, promenades, esplanades, and
spas who ostensibly expect you to look at them in an ecstasy of wonder, as
though they were a sunset on Mont Blanc or the Balaklava Charge.

Only in three exceptional cases is it permissible, as I think, to gawster. I
like to see a drum-major, with my grandmother's carriage-muff on his head,
and a baton in his hand as long as a bean-rod, swaggering at the head of his
regiment, as though he had only to knock at the gates of a besieged city and
the governor would instantly send the keys. Secondly, I was disappointed
the other day at the stolid behaviour of a sheep, who went on grazing with a
sublime indifference when a peacock, having marched some distance for
the purpose, wheeled round within a yard of his nose, displaying his
brilliant charms in vain; and all the eyes of Argus seemed to pale their
ineffectual fire, as when Mercury, with his delightful music, in accordance
with the command of Jupiter, and with Lemprière's dictionary, made them
wink in a delicious drowse. And, thirdly, in the case of a game bantam, once
my property, who flew up every morning to the top of a tall pump, and
challenged Nottinghamshire to fight, I could not but admire the gawstering
spirit, because he so thoroughly meant all that he said, and would have

gladly matched himself against a mad elephant, or would have crowed
defiance, midway between the rails, as the express rushed on at speed.

But in other animals I would pitilessly suppress proclivities to gawster. I
would ask power from Parliament to whip, when mild persuasion failed, the
precocious prig, "neither man nor boy," who struts about on Sundays,
scoffing at religion, and polluting the air with bad tobacco and worse talk;
and I would authorise the police to supervise, and to send home at their
discretion, those small giggling girls who, having lost the shame which is a
glory and a grace, and coveting every adornment but one, the ornament of a
meek and quiet spirit, are seen in our streets, with nearly half a year's wage
upon their backs, and the change on their faces—in brass.

To gawster, in fine, is a sure indication of moral and physical debility. He
who gawsters is like a show, which has enormous pictures and clanging
cymbals, and gongs, and drums, and an obese showman, in his shirt-
sleeves, lying through a speaking-trumpet at the top of his voice, outside,
and little more than a three-headed puppy, or a seven-legged lamb (not in
vigorous life, as shown upon the canvas, but in glass and spirits of wine)
within. When, for example, you hear a man gawster about his
horsemanship, you may be sure that he will never be first over a fence,
unless it be some wee obstacle, which you could almost arrange on a
rocking-horse, and then he will rush wildly at it, as though he had made up
his mind to die; or, if his boasting be of cricket, you may expect next
morning to see him miss the first easy catch which comes.

I need hardly ask whether you have known, my reader, what it is to feel
yourself gloppened, as when in boyhood (if feminine, please ask your
brother), you had just finished your first pipe of the herb called shag, and on
your face a tablet of unutterable thoughts was traced, as represented in that
marvellous sketch by John Leech, "Old Bagshawe under the influence of

tobacco"; when you went forth with your mother for an innings, as you
hoped, at the confectioner's, and a second ditto at the toyshop, and saw her
ringing the dentist's bell; when you had carefully adjusted that cracker to
Mr. Nabal's knocker, and were lighting the lucifer within the quiet seclusion
of your cap, and suddenly the knuckles of Mr. Nabal's left pressed rudely on
your nape, and the thumb and finger of his right essayed to meet each other
through the lobe of your ear; when your dearest friend, in the strictest
confidence, and having sworn you to secrecy, showed you a lock of
gleaming hair, given to him by the girl whom you adored.

And it was you, my Thomas, you,
The friend in whom my soul confided,
Who dared to gaze on her—to do,
I may say, much the same as I did.

Or when, in after-years, unequally mated, you groaned, with Parolles,
under the subjection of a stronger will, "a man that's married is a man that's
marred"; and it might be said of you, as once it was said by a labourer of
one of his neighbours (so have I read in a book about roses, a charming
volume, which should be on every table), "Bill has been and married his
mestur, and she has gloppened him a goodish bit."

I remember an occasion when a gawsterer was gloppened sorely. There
was an ancient mansion, wainscoted and floored with shining oak, glib—I
have not heard that apposite, terse little monosyllable since I went slurring
with the village boys—glib as glass; and in that ancient mansion there was a
banquet; and to that banquet came, with other guests, "a fop in a gay coat,"
a coxcomb wearing the bright vestment of the hunter, albeit in the hour of
chase he only hunted gates and gaps; and upon the white satin lining of his
"pink" there was a tiny button-hole bouquet, such as Mab might have held
with her fairy fingers at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in

nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was
broad and snowy as the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's
wing; and he was going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and
a complacent smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth
soles of these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution,
as though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the
winsome damsel in particular, and a large "Oh!" from the procession in
general, and a flash of horizontal scarlet, as when a soldier falls in battle;
and then the bruised and bewildered dandy picked himself up, as best he
could, to perform a part for which his qualifications were small—the
personification of a man who had a relish for pain; and I sympathised with,
though I did not love him—not so much because his feelings, as because his
raiment was torn, and he, who was generally the most lively and locomotive
of all, was now depressed and sedentary, like the lover of Constance,
brooding upon his silent grief, as on its nest the dove, while we remained at
the dinner-table, and finally backing out of the drawing-room at an early
hour, as though our hostess were the queen.

And his involuntary gymnastics remind me, as I pass on to that "terrible
thoroughbred" letter H (I have heard men speak of others who ignored it in
conversation as though they must be capable of any crime), of a stout old
lady in the manufacturing districts, whose husband had been very
successful in business, and had purchased a fine old country residence from
some dilapidated squire. She was complaining to a visitor of the difficulty
which she had in walking upon the polished floors. "First I sluther," she
said, "and then I hutch; and then I sluther, and then I hutch; and the more I
hutch the more I sluther."

Only one other specimen (for I must hurry on helter-skelter and harum-
scarum) from words beginning with H—to be, or cause others to be, on the
hig, that is, to go about, or cause others to go about, in a fume, angrily

excited, menacing revenge. "Betty," I asked one of my parishioners, "why
do you make these ill-natured, irritating speeches to your next-door
neighbour?" "Oh, bless yer," was the reply I received, "I only said 'em just
to set old Sally on the hig." She knew that not to many was it given to hear
resignedly the bitter word, that not to many was given in its reality the
resignation affected by another of my old women, who (one of those
wretched combinations of religion and rancour, "who think they're pious
when they're only bilious") accosted me with the startling intelligence
—"Oh, Mestur 'Ole, I've got another lift towards 'eaven. Bowcocks"
(tenants of the cottage adjoining her own), "Bowcocks has been telling
more lies; blessed are the parsecuted!" Better open war than this dismal
affectation of peace! Better to confess ourselves hity-tity, and to raise a
hullabaloo, than such humbug as this!

I, the egotist, has for once nothing to say; but J recalls to me an extract
from a conversation which took place during one of my parochial
visitations.

Pastor.—"Did I not see old Nanny Smith talking with you at your door
just now?"

Parishioner.—"Oh yes, she wor' here not three minutes sin', and
jabbering, as usual, like a clamm'd [famished] jay in a wood; but when she
see your reverence coming up th' lane, th' old lass wor' gone in a jiffey."

K makes no suggestions, and L but few. "I'll lay," has no reference to
eggs or to a recumbent posture, but implies a wager. Some years ago, I was
riding to the meet, and came up inaudibly, upon the wayside grass, with two
grooms on their masters' hunters, peering over their pummels at a mounted
horse in the distance before them and anxiously discussing his identity. Just
as I was passing the disputants, the one turned to the other and said, "I shall
lay yer three threepenny gins to one as it's Colonel's rat-tailed 'oss."

Lig is still commonly used for "lie." "Our Bob has ligabed sin' Monday."
"The moon wor ligging behind a cloud, so they couldn't see keepers
coming." To lorp is to move awkwardly or idly, and the word suggests a
noble line for the alliterative poet:

Lo, lazy lubbers loutish, lorp and loll.

In the days of my boyhood I was perplexed conjecturing by what process
of the rustic mind moles had changed their names into Mouldi-warps; but I
have since discovered that in this instance, as in countless others, the
bucolic brain was not so mollified by beans and bacon as some would have
us believe. The mould—and very fine mould it is—is warped, turned up by
the mole; and this reminds me of a mole-catcher, whose principles were
warped also, and whose occupation was gone awhile in our parts, when it
was discovered that he carried a collection of dead moles about with him,
with which, the morning after his traps had been set, he made a grand
display on some contiguous hedge, inducing his employer fondly to
imagine that his enemies (as he thought of them) had been all destroyed in a
night.

Flying onwards—for this is a very fugitive piece—I would ask
admiration for the adjective muggy, as exquisitely descriptive of weather,
not uncommon in this climate, where a fog gives one the idea, suggested by
Dickens, that nature is brewing on an extensive scale outside, and there's
dampness everywhere, taking the curl from ringlet and whisker, and causing
our adhesive envelopes to fasten themselves on our writing-table, as though
practising the duties of their post.

No sun, no moon,
No morn, no noon,
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day—
No sky, no earthly view,

No distance looking blue.
No road, no street, no t'other side the way—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member,
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No … vember!

I love, though not as licensed victuallers love, the little monosyllable nip.
What a nimble agility, what a motive power, in that curt, imperative word!
—the pistol-shot which starts the boat-race, the brief, shrill whistle which
starts the train. "Just nip off your horse and pull out that stake." "You
nipped out o' the army," said a snob to a friend of mine, who had retired
some years before the Crimean invasion, and who, in his magisterial
capacity, had offended the snob; "you know'd t' war wor' a-coming; you
nipped out, you didn't relish them Rooshan baggonets a-prodding and a-
pricking. You nipped out o' th' army; you know'd t' war wor' coming. Good
morning. I think you were right."

When the wind bloweth in from the Orient, or when our discretion has
collapsed before a lobster salad (that claw looked so innocently pink, and
that lettuce so crisp and green!) then is poor human nature but too prone to
be querulous; we disagree, like the lobster, with our fellow creatures; we are
peevishly disposed to nag. "My mestur has been a good husband to me,"
said one of the matrons of my flock, "but he can chime in nasty when he
wants to nag."

Times of refinement are probably at hand when, under the sacred
influence of School Boards, the rural tongue shall cease to substitute the
word no-at for nought, or nothing. I am not sorry that when that epoch
comes I shall no longer be attached to this machine. I cling to those
expressions, which I have heard from childhood: "He's like a _no-at."

"_He's up to no-at." One day, years ago, we waited for the train at, not
Coventry, but Ratcliffe-on-Trent, and while we waited a weary workman,
with his bag of tools on his back, came and sat on the bench beside.
Presently we were joined by a third person in the garrulous phase of
inebriety, and he pestered the tired artisan with his _bosh_and gibberish
(two words which should have been introduced at an earlier period of my
history) until he provoked the righteous expostulation, "Oh, don't bother
me; you're drunk." Then, with an air of outraged dignity, and with a stern
solemnity, which, if he had not wobbled in his gait and stammered in his
utterance, might have suggested the idea that he had just been appointed
Professor of Philosophy for the Midland Districts, he delivered an oration:
"Now just you listen to me. Do you suppose as a Mighty Power 'ud mak the
barley to grow, and the 'ops to grow, and then put it into the minds of other
parties to mak' 'em foment, and me not meant to drink 'em? why, you know
no-at!" Whereupon the apt rejoinder: "I know this—that a Mighty Power
never meant the barley to grow, nor the hops to grow, for you to take and
turn yoursen into a be-ast."

Nobbut is still common in these parts, in abbreviation of "nothing but." I
congratulated an invalid parishioner on the presence of the doctor, and he
said dolefully, "Oh yes, sir; thank yer, sir—but it's nobbut th' 'prentice."

My limits do not allow me to mind my L's and Q's and R's, or I might
have enlarged upon such words as palaver, and pawling, and peart, and
prod, and_romper_, and ramshackle, and rawm; and I can only dwell upon
one selection from the S's, of which there is a long Sigmatismus, such as
snag ("Billy and Sally's always at snags"), and scuft, and scrawl ("he wor'
just a glass over the scrawl," i.e. the line of sobriety), and scrawm, and
slape, and snigger, and slive ("I see that _shack a-sliving and a_-skulking
about"), and slare, and_slawmy_, and sneck, and snoozle, and spank, and
stodge, and stunt, and swish.

The word which I would illustrate is skimpy. It signifies something mean
and defective; and in the following history, told to me by a clerical friend, it
refers to an attenuated and bony female. When a curate in a remote country
parish, he took a raw village lad into his service, to train him for some
better place; and, when his education was sufficiently advanced, and he had
made some progress in the art of writing, he was permitted to accompany
his master to a large dinner-party given by a neighbouring squire. Next
morning he communicated his experiences to the housekeeper, and she
treacherously repeated them to my friend. "'Oh,' he said, 'it just wor' grand.
Me and t'other gentlemen in livery we stood i' th' 'all, and they flung open
folding-doors, and out comes the quality tu and tu, harm i' harm, all a-
talking and a-grinning, and as smart as ninepence. I wor' quite surprised at
mestur. He come out last of all, with a _skimpy_old woman. I should say
she wor' sisty off, and there were squire's daughter, looking as bewtifle as
bewtifle, and dressed up as gay as waxwork. I never made no mistake,
except giving one gentleman mustard wrong side, and just a drop or so o'
gravy down a hunbeknown young lady's back.'" I have reached the length of
my tether, and will go no longer a-tweing after words, lest I put my readers
in a tiff, and leave them in a tantrum. I will yark off. Said an underkeeper
who had just shot at a snipe: "It yarked up and screeted, and I nipped round
and blazed; but I catched my toe on a bit of a tussock, and so, consarn it, I
missed." Let me hope that I have not so completely failed in my aim, while
firing my small shot against certain abuses and disuses connected with The
Vulgar Tongue.

THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD WITH HIS SON
[Sidenote: Calverley]

O what harper could worthily harp it,
Mine Edward! this wide-stretching wold

(Look out wold) with its wonderful carpet
Of emerald, purple, and gold?
Look well at it—also look sharp, it
Is getting so cold.

The purple is heather (erica);
The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin."
Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a
Green beetle as if on a pin,
You may roll in it, if you would like a
Few holes in your skin.

You wouldn't? Then think of how kind you
Should be to the insects who crave
Your compassion—and then, look behind you
At yon barley-ears! Don't they look brave
As they undulate (undulate, mind you,
From unda, a wave).

The noise of those sheep-bells, how faint it
Sounds here—(on account of our height)!
And this hillock itself—who could paint it,
With its changes of shadow and light?
Is it not—-(never, Eddy, say "ain't it")—
A marvellous sight?

Then yon desolate eerie morasses,
The haunts of the snipe and the hern—
(I shall question the two upper classes
On aquatiles when we return)—
Why, I see on them absolute masses
Of felix, or fern.

How it interests e'en a beginner
(Or tiro) like dear little Ned!
Is he listening? As I am a sinner,
He's asleep—he is wagging his head.
Wake up! I'll go home to my dinner,
And you to your bed.

The boundless ineffable prairie;
The splendour of mountain and lake,
With their hues that seem ever to vary;
The mighty pine-forests which shake
In the wind, and in which the unwary
May tread on a snake;

And this wold, with its heathery garment,
Are themes undeniably great.
But—although there is not any harm in't—
It's perhaps little good to dilate
On their charms to a dull little varmint
Of seven or eight.

TARTARIN DE TARASCON
[Sidenote: Daudet]

At the time of which I am speaking, Tartarin of Tarascon was not the
Tartarin that he is to-day, the great Tartarin of Tarascon, so popular
throughout the South of France. However—even then—he was already king
of Tarascon.

Let me tell you whence this kingship.

You must know, first, that every one there is a huntsman, from the
greatest to the smallest.

So, every Sunday morning, Tarascon takes arms and leaves the walls,
game-bag on the back, gun on the shoulder, with a commotion of dogs,
ferrets, trumpets, and hunting-horns. It is a superb sight. Unfortunately,
game is wanting, absolutely wanting.

However stupid animals may be, in the end they had become wary.

For five leagues round Tarascon warrens are empty, nests deserted. Not a
thrush, not a quail, not the least little rabbit, not the smallest leveret.

And yet these pretty Tarascon hillocks are very tempting, perfumed with
myrtle, lavender, and rosemary; and these fine muscat grapes, swollen with
sweetness, which grow by the side of the Rhone, extremely appetising too
—yes, but there is Tarascon behind, and in the little world of fur and feather
Tarascon has an evil fame. The birds of passage themselves have marked it
with a big cross on their maps of the route, and when the wild-ducks,
descending towards Camargue in long triangles, see the steeples of the town
in the distance, the leader screams at the top of his lungs, "There is
Tarascon!—There is Tarascon!" and the whole flight turns.

In short, as far as game is concerned, only one old rogue of a hare
remains, who has escaped by some miracle from the September massacres
of the Tarasconners, and who insists on living there. In Tarascon this hare is
well known. They have given him a name. He is called "The Express." It is
known that his form is in M. Bompard's ground—which, by the way, has
doubled and even trebled its price—but so far no one has been able to get at
it.

At the present moment there are one or two desperate fellows who have
set their hearts upon him.

The others have made up their minds that it is hopeless, and "The
Express" has become a sort of local superstition, although the
Tarasconners are not very superstitious and eat swallows in a salmi when
they can get them.

"But," you object, "if game is so rare in Tarascon, what do the Tarascon
sportsmen do every Sunday?"

What do they do?

Well, bless me! they go out into the open country two or three leagues
from the town. They gather into little groups of six or seven, stretch
themselves tranquilly in the shadow of an old wall, an olive-tree, take out of
their game-bags a great piece of beef seasoned with daube, some uncooked
onions, a large sausage, some anchovies, and begin an interminable
luncheon, moistened by one of those nice little Rhone wines which make a
man laugh and sing.

After that, when one has laid in a good stock of provisions, one rises,
whistles the dogs, loads the guns, and the chase begins. That is to say, each
gentleman takes his cap, flings it into the air with all his might, and fires at
it.

He who puts most shots into his cap is proclaimed king of the hunt, and
returns in the evening to Tarascon in triumph, with his peppered cap on the
end of his gun, amidst yappings and fanfares.

Needless to say, there is a great trade of caps in the town. There are even
hatters who sell caps torn and full of holes for the use of the clumsy. But

hardly any one but Bézuquet, the chemist, buys them. It is dishonouring!

As a cap-hunter, Tartarin of Tarascon has no equal. Every Sunday
morning he starts with a new cap; every Sunday evening he returns with a
rag. At the little house with the baobab-tree the greenhouses were full of the
glorious trophies. For this reason all the Tarasconners recognised him as
their master, and as Tartarin knew the code of a sportsman through and
through, had read all the treatises, all the manuals of every conceivable
hunt, from the pursuit of caps to the pursuit of Bengal tigers, these
gentlemen made him their great sporting justicier, and appointed him
arbitrator in all their discussions.

Every day, from three to four, at Costecalde's the gunsmith, a fat man was
to be seen, very grave, with a pipe between his teeth, sitting in a chair
covered with green leather, in the middle of a shop full of cap-hunters, all
standing and wrangling. It was Tartarin of Tarascon administering justice,
Nimrod added to Solomon.

CONCERNING CHARLES LAMB

PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN
[Sidenote: William Hazlitt]

… "There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, "I would rather
see than all these—Don Quixote!"

"Come, come!" said Hunt; "I thought we should have no heroes, real or
fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb? Are you for eking out your shadowy
list with such names as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Genghis
Khan?"

"Excuse me," said Lamb; "on the subject of characters in active life,
plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I
beg leave to reserve."

"No, no! come out with your worthies!"

"What do you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas Iscariot?"

Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of
smothered glee. "Your most exquisite reason!" was echoed on all sides; and
all thought that Lamb had now fairly entangled himself.

"Why, I cannot but think," retorted he of the wistful countenance, "that
Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering, annual scarecrow of straw and rags, is an
ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and
emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and
expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic
self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow Godwin will make
something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would
fain see the face of him who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with
the Son of Man, could afterwards betray Him. I have no conception of such
a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's very fine
one) that gave me the least idea of it."

"You have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify your choice."

"Oh! ever right, Menenius—ever right!"

"There is only one person I can ever think of after this," continued Lamb;
but without mentioning a name that once put on a semblance of mortality.
"If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet

him; but if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try
to kiss the hem of his garment."

HAYDON'S IMMORTAL NIGHT
[Sidenote: B.R. Haydon]

On December 28th the immortal dinner came off in my painting-room,
with Jerusalem towering up behind us as a background. Wordsworth was in
fine cue, and we had a glorious set-to—on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton,
and Virgil. Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty; and his fun
in the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory was like the
sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's passion. He made a
speech and voted me absent, and made them drink my health. "Now," said
Lamb, "you old lake poet, you rascally poet, why do you call Voltaire dull?"
We all defended Wordsworth, and affirmed there was a state of mind when
Voltaire would be dull. "Well," said Lamb, "here's Voltaire—the Messiah of
the French nation, and a very proper one too."

He then, in a strain of humour beyond description, abused me for putting
Newton's head into my picture—"a fellow," said he, "who believed nothing
unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats
agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the
prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank
"Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics." It was delightful to see
the good-humour of Wordsworth in giving in to all our frolics without
affectation, and laughing as heartily as the best of us.

By this time other friends joined, amongst them poor Ritchie, who was
going to penetrate by Fezzan to Timbuctoo. I introduced him to all as "a
gentleman going to Africa." Lamb seemed to take no notice; but all of a

sudden he roared out, "Which is the gentleman we are going to lose?" We
then drank the victim's health, in which Ritchie joined.

In the morning of this delightful day, a gentleman, a perfect stranger, had
called on me. He said he knew my friends, had an enthusiasm for
Wordsworth, and begged I would procure him the happiness of an
introduction. He told me he was a comptroller of stamps, and often had
correspondence with the poet. I thought it a liberty; but still, as he seemed a
gentleman, I told him he might come.

When we retired to tea we found the comptroller. Introducing him to
Wordsworth, I forgot to say who he was. After a little time the comptroller
looked down, looked up and said to Wordsworth, "Don't you think, sir,
Milton was a great genius?" Keats looked at me, Wordsworth looked at the
comptroller. Lamb, who was dozing by the fire, turned round and said,
"Pray, sir, did you say Milton was a great genius?" "No, sir; I asked Mr.
Wordsworth if he were not." "Oh," said Lamb, "then you are a silly fellow."
"Charles! my dear Charles!" said Wordsworth; but Lamb, perfectly innocent
of the confusion he had created, was off again by the fire.

After an awful pause the comptroller said, "Don't you think Newton a
great genius?" I could not stand it any longer. Keats put his head into my
books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh. Wordsworth seemed asking himself,
"Who is this?" Lamb got up, and, taking a candle, said, "Sir, will you allow
me to look at your phrenological development?" He then turned his back on
the poor man, and at every question of the comptroller he chaunted:

"Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,
Went to bed with his breeches on."

The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he was, said in
a spasmodic and half-chuckling anticipation of assured victory, "I have had

the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr. Wordsworth." "With me,
sir?" said Wordsworth, "not that I remember." "Don't you, sir? I am a
comptroller of stamps." There was a dead silence—the comptroller
evidently thinking that was enough. While we were waiting for
Wordsworth's reply, Lamb sung out:

"Hey diddle fiddle,
The cat and the fiddle."

"My dear Charles!" said Wordsworth—

"Diddle, diddle dumpling, my son John"—

chaunted Lamb, and then, rising, exclaimed, "Do let me have another
look at that gentleman's organs." Keats and I hurried Lamb into the
painting-room, shut the door, and gave way to inextinguishable laughter.
Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away. We went back, but the
comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled and asked him to
supper. He stayed, though his dignity was sorely affected. However, being a
good-natured man, we parted all in good-humour, and no ill effects
followed.

All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, we could hear Lamb
struggling in the painting-room and calling at intervals, "Who is that
fellow? Allow me to see his organs once more."

It was indeed an immortal evening. Wordsworth's fine intonation as he
quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats's eager, inspired look, Lamb's quaint
sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the stream of conversation that in
my life I never passed a more delightful time. All our fun was within
bounds. Not a word passed that an apostle might not have listened to. It was
a night worthy of the Elizabethan age.

"SIXPENNY JOKES"
[Sidenote: Charles Lamb]

There is no virtue like necessity, says the proverb. If that be true, what a
quantity of virtue there must be among the lower orders of people in this
country!

*****

A bench of Justices certainly gives us an idea of something wooden.
Shakespeare, in his Seven Ages, represents a Justice as made up with saws.

*****

Locke compares the mind of a new-born infant to a sheet of white paper
not yet written on. It must be confessed that, whoever wrote upon Mr. A
——n's mind has left large margins.

TO HIS BROTHER
[Sidenote: Keats]

The thought of your little girl puts me in mind of a thing I heard Mr.
Lamb say. A child in arms was passing by his chair towards the mother in
the nurse's arms. Lamb took hold of the long-clothes, saying, "Where,
God bless me, where does it leave off?"

LAMB'S TASK
[Sidenote: Charles Lamb]

In those days every morning paper, as an essential retainer to its
establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of
witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke—and it was thought pretty high too—

was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day,
scandal, but, above all, dress, furnished the material. The length of no
paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must
be poignant.

A fashion of flesh-, or rather pink-coloured hose for the ladies, luckily
coming in at this juncture, when we were on our probation for the place of
Chief Jester to S——'s paper, established our reputation in that line. We
were pronounced a "capital hand." Oh the conceits which we varied upon
red in all its prismatic differences! from the trite and obvious flower of
Cytherea to the flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting upon "many
waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion to a
truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never
tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite
proper," while, like a skilful posture-maker, balancing betwixt decorums
and their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation
is destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where
"both seem either"; a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the play,
still putting off his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good
man!" But, above all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still
tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astræ—
ultima Coelestum terras reliquit—we pronounced—in reference to the
stockings still—that Modesty taking her final leave of Mortals, her last
blush was visible in her ascent to the Heavens by the tract of the glowing
instep. This might be called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed
tolerable writing in those days.

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away; as did the
transient mode which had so favoured us. The ankles of our fair friends in a
few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to

stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought, so
pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single meanings.

Somebody has said that, to swallow six cross-buns daily consecutively
for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as
many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth,
as we were constrained to do, was a little harder execution. "Man goeth
forth to his work until the evening"—from a reasonable hour in the
morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us
up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at
that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it
follows that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes—
our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere
bread and cheese—was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard
of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no
time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly,
it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man
whose occasions call him up so preposterously has to wait for his breakfast.

Oh those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past five in
summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise,
having been perhaps not above four hours in bed—(for we were no go-to-
beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising—
we liked a parting up at midnight, as all young men did before these
effeminate times, and to have our friends about us—we were not
constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of
Bacchus, cold washy, bloodless—we were none of your Basilian water-
sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague—we were right toping
Capulets, jolly companions, we and they),—but to have to get up, as we
said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of
refreshing Bohea in the distance—to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at

the detestable rap of an hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical
pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise"; and whose chappy
knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our
chamber-door, to be a terror to all such unreasonable rest-breakers in future
—

"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-
night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow; but to get
up, as he goes on to say—

Revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras

—and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice prepended—there
was the "labour," there the "work."

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery.
No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this
necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day (bating Sundays
too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our
lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then
they come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them—when
the mountain must go to Mahomet—

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but
mostly, instead of it, some rugged, untractable subject; some topic
impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no
smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could
procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-
making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as
it happened. The craving Dragon—the Public—like him in Bel's temple—

must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us
justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.

MISS PATE
[Sidenote: M.M. Betham]

A Miss Pate (when he heard of her, he asked if she was any relation to
Mr. John Head, of Ipswich) was at a party, and he said, on hearing her
name, "Miss Pate I hate." "You are the first person who ever told me so,
however," said she. "Oh! I mean nothing by it. If it had been Miss Dove, I
should have said, Miss Dove I love, or Miss Pike I like." … Another, who
was very much marked with the small-pox, looked as if the devil had ridden
roughshod over her face. I saw him talking to her afterwards with great
apparent interest, and noticed it, saying, "I thought he had not liked her."
His reply was, "I like her internals very well."

THE LOST ORNAMENT
[Sidenote: Washington Allston]

Lamb was present when a naval officer was giving an account of an
action which he had been in, and, to illustrate the carelessness and disregard
of life at such times, said that a sailor had both his legs shot off, and as his
shipmates were carrying him below, another shot came and took off his
arms; they, thinking he was pretty much used up, though life was still in
him, threw him out of a port. "Shame, d——d shame," stuttered our Lamb,
"he m-m-might have l-lived to have been an a-a-ornament to Society!"

YOUR HAT, SIR
[Sidenote: Crabb Robinson]

I dined at Lamb's, and then walked with him to Highgate, self-invited.
There we found a large party. Mr. and Mrs. Green, the Aderses, Irving,
Collins, R.A., a Mr. Taylor, a young man of talents in the Colonial Office,
Basil Montagu, a Mr. Chance, and one or two others. It was a rich evening.
Coleridge talked his best, and it appeared better because he and Irving
supported the same doctrines. His superiority was striking. The idea dwelt
on was the higher character of the internal evidence of Christianity, as
addressed to our immediate consciousness of our own wants and the
necessity of a religion and a revelation. In a style not to me clear or
intelligible, Irving and Coleridge both declaimed. The advocatus diaboli for
the evening was Mr. Taylor, who, in a way very creditable to his manners as
a gentleman, but with little more than verbal cleverness, and an ordinary
logic, and the confidence of a young man who has no suspicion of his own
deficiencies, affirmed that those evidences which the Christian thinks he
finds in his internal convictions, the Mahometan also thinks he has; and he
affirmed that Mahomet had improved the condition of mankind. Lamb
asked him whether he came in a turban or a hat.

ELIA'S TAIL
[Sidenote: J.B.]

When I first knew Charles Lamb, I ventured, one evening, to say
something that I intended should pass for wit. "Ha! very well; very well,
indeed!" said he. "Ben Jonson has said worse things" (I brightened up, but
he went stammering on to the end of the sentence)—"and—and—and
better!" A pinch of snuff concluded this compliment, which put a stop to my
wit for the evening. I related the thing to Hazlitt, afterwards, who laughed.
"Aye," said he, "you are never sure of him till he gets to the end. His jokes
would be the sharpest things in the world, but that they are blunted by his
good-nature. He wants malice—which is a pity." "But," said I, "his words at

first seemed so—" "Oh! as for that," replied Hazlitt, "his sayings are
generally like women's letters: all the pith is in the postscript."

CHARLES AND HIS SISTER
[Sidenote: Mrs. Balmanno]

Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means
looked so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout, and
comely maiden lady of middle age. Dressed with quaker-like simplicity in
dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin folded
across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her favour by an
aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and gentle, and
her voice low. She smiled frequently, but seldom laughed, partaking of the
courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and hostess with all the
cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly nature.

Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring disciple; her
eyes seldom absent from his face. Even when apparently engrossed in
conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word for which he
was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the room, show how
closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high spirits, sauntering
about the room, with his hands crossed behind his back, conversing by fits
and starts with those most familiarly known to him, but evidently mentally
acknowledging Miss Kelly to be the rara avis of his thoughts, by the great
attention he paid to every word she uttered. Truly pleasant it must have
been to her, even though accustomed to see people listen breathless with
admiration while she spoke, to find her words have so much charm for such
a man as Charles Lamb.

He appeared to enjoy himself greatly, much to the gratification of Mrs.
Hood, who often interchanged happy glances with Miss Lamb, who nodded

approvingly. He spoke much—with emphasis and hurry of words, sorely
impeded by the stammering utterance which in him was not unattractive.
Miss Kelly (charming, natural Miss Kelly, who has drawn from her
audiences more heart-felt tears and smiles than perhaps any other English
actress), with quiet good-humour listened and laughed at the witty sallies of
her host and his gifted friend, seeming as little an actress as it is possible to
conceive. Once, however, when some allusion was made to a comic scene
in a new play then just brought out, wherein she had performed to the life
the character of a low-bred lady's-maid passing herself off as her mistress,
Miss Kelly arose, and with a kind of resistless ardour repeated a few
sentences so inimitably that everybody laughed as much as if the real
lady's-maid, and not the actress, had been before them; while she who had
so well personated the part quietly resumed her seat without the least sign
of merriment, as grave as possible. Most striking had been the transition
from the calm, lady-like person, to the gay, loquacious soubrette; and not
less so the sudden extinction of vivacity and resumption of well-bred
decorum. This little scene for a few moments charmed everybody out of
themselves, and gave a new impetus to conversation….

Mr. Lamb oddly walked all round the table, looking closely at any dish
that struck his fancy before he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood
that he should by that means know how to select some dish that was
difficult to carve, and take the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having
jested in this manner, he placed himself with great deliberation before a
lobster-salad, observing that was the thing. On her asking him to take some
roast fowl, he assented. "What part shall I help you to, Mr. Lamb?" "Back,"
said he quickly; "I always prefer the back." My husband laid down his knife
and fork, and, looking upwards, exclaimed: "By heavens! I could not have
believed it, if anybody else had sworn it." "Believed what?" said kind Mrs.
Hood, anxiously, colouring to the temples, and fancying there was
something amiss in the piece he had been helped to. "Believe what? why,

madam, that Charles Lamb was a backbiter?" Hood gave one of his short,
quick laughs, gone almost ere it had come, whilst Lamb went off into a loud
fit of mirth, exclaiming: "Now, that's devilish good! I'll sup with you to-
morrow night." This eccentric flight made everybody very merry, and
amidst a most amusing mixture of wit and humour, sense and nonsense, we
feasted merrily, amidst jocose health-drinking, sentiments, speeches, and
songs.

Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and his
mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song, "If you go to
France, be sure you learn the lingo," his pensive manner and feeble voice
making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused
himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin
eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a
string of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood frequently
occurred, we ladies thought it was in praise of her. The delivery of his
speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman who sat
next to me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me that
it was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster-salad!

IN A COACH
[Sidenote: Charles Lamb]

The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell them. We
had, then, in the coach a rather talkative gentleman, but very civil, all the
way, and took up a servant-maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress….
The former engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles on the probable
advantages of Steam Carriages, which, being merely problematical, I bore
my part in with some credit, in spite of my totally un-engineer-like
faculties. But when, somewhere about Stanstead, he put an unfortunate
question tome as to the "probability of its turning out a good turnip season,"

and when I, who am still less of an agriculturist than a steam-philosopher,
not knowing a turnip from a potato-ground, innocently made answer that I
believed it depended very much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky
reply set Miss Isola a-laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquillity for
the only moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with
my other fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met with a well-informed
passenger, which is an accident so desirable in a stage coach. We were
rather less communicative, but still friendly, the rest of the way.

KING DAVID AND THE GARDENER
[Sidenote: Anon.]

Vrom readin' Scripture well Oi knows
Pzalmist 'e had na rest vrom voes;
Vor po-or ole Dave gre-at pits they'd delve,
An' then, dam loons, vail in theirselve.
This iz ma readin' ov the Book,
An' to ma self do mak' me look;
Wi' dew respeck, Oi veel loike him,
Tho' later born, and deal more slim.

Vor ev'ry day, wi' buzz an' hum,
Into ma garden voes do come;
The waspies starm ma gabled wall
An' into t' trenches t' grub do crawl.
The blackbird, sparrer, tit, an' thrush
Do commandeer each curran' bush,
While slugs off lettuce take their smack,
And maggots turn the celery black.

Wi' greenfly zlimin' roun' ma roses,
An' earwigs pokin' be-astly noses
In dahlias vit vor virst at Show,
Oi ha' ma troubles, as yew may know;
But Dave did circumwent the Devil,
An' wi' ma insecks Oi get level,
Lard! wi' what piety Oi tend 'em,
An' wi' ma boot rejoicin' end 'em!

Zo, maister gets his dish o' peas,
An' mum her roses, if yew please,
But, lawks, they little knaw, Oi 'speck,
What Oi've laid out in intelleck;
But Dave got little praise vrom man,
An' as Oi ta-ake ma wat'rin'-can,
Oi zays, zays Oi, next world wull show
Who wuz tip-tappers here below.

THE CALAIS NIGHT-BOAT
[Sidenote: Charles Dickens]

It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais something
handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction. I hate it so
much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of
constant indecision on this subject. When I first made acquaintance with
Calais it was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and
dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one
great extremity, sea-sickness—who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid
headache somewhere in its stomach—who had been put into a horrible
swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French
coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times have changed, and now I

enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a
look-out for it, I recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am
acquainted with its ways, and I know—and I can bear—its worst behaviour.

Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eye-sight and
discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now
anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming
frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and
stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to
despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock,
it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its
invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit and you think you are there—
roll, roar, wash!—Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out
to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be
specially commended to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-
town, when it dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or two to
the right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about for it!

Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly detest
Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed. It always goes to
bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and
candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of
the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much-esteemed friends, but they are too
conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is
starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't want the fact
insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I know the
Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and I object to its
big outline seeming to insist upon that circumstance, and, as it were, to
come over me with it, when I am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew
the Warden likewise for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so

angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough,
without the officious Warden's interference?

As I wait here on board the night-packet, for the South-Eastern train to
come down with the mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated for some
intensely aggravating festivity in my personal dishonour. All its noises
smack of taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and
of me for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I
know they would rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing
on this slippery deck. The many gas-eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in
an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of Dover bark at
me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third.

A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier
with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving of the
boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were
lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which they have no
control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated—
rumble, hum, scream, roar—and establish an immense family washing-day
at each paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of the
post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon
their backs begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it would seem
in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's Locker. The passengers come on
board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers
of gigantic case-bottles; a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and
boots; a few shadowy Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending
not to expect it. I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the
miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as
scant in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible delay;
that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the unwilling lamps
shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is to commit us to the deep and

abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in increasing distance, and then
the very train itself has gone to bed before we are off! What is the moral
support derived by some sea-going amateurs from an umbrella? Why do
certain voyagers across the Channel always put up that article, and hold it
up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A fellow-creature near me—whom I
only know to be a fellow-creature because of his umbrella: without which
he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or bulkhead—clutches that instrument
with a desperate grasp that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there an
analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up and
keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board with a flop replies, "Stand
by!" "Stand by, below!" "Half a turn ahead!" "Half a turn ahead!" "Half
speed!" "Half speed!" "Port!" "Port!" "Steady!" "Steady!" "Go on!" "Go
on!"

A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my left, a
floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression of the
bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers—these are the personal
sensations by which I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to
know it until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely
established themselves comfortably, when two or three skating shadows
that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or
three shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them up.
Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes no
good.

It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no bounds.
Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that hateful town. I have
done so before, many times, but that is past. Let me register a vow.
Implacable animosity to Calais everm—that was an awkward sea, and the
funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining roar.

The wind blows stiffly from the nor'-east, the sea runs high, we ship a
deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers lie
about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the laundress;
but, for my own uncommercial part, I cannot pretend that I am much
inconvenienced by any of these things. A general howling, whistling,
flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general knocking
about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet,
faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should
feel languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because I am under
a curious compulsion to occupy myself with Irish melodies. "Rich and rare
were the gems she wore," is the particular melody to which I find myself
devoted. I sing it to myself in the most charming manner and with the
greatest expression. Now and then I raise my head (I am sitting on the
hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes, but I don't
mind it) and notice that I am a whirling shuttle-cock between a fiery
battledore of a lighthouse on the French coast and a fiery battledore of a
lighthouse on the English coast; but I don't notice it particularly, except to
feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais. Then I go on again, "Rich and rare
were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she
bo-ore, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-r beyond"—I am particularly proud of
my execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from
the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature at the
paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be—"Her
sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r
beyond"—another awkward one here, and the fellow creature with the
umbrella down and picked up—"Her spa-a-arkling ge-ems, or her Port!
port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the paddle-box very
selfishly audible, bump roar wash white wand."

As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on around me

becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open the furnace-doors
below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter
Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light of the for-ever-extinguished
coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes is their gleam
on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines is the
steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel-roar of
protest at every violent roll becomes the regular blast of the high-pressure
engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I
ascended the Mississippi when the American Civil War was not, and when
only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern
falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so become suggestive of
Franconi's Circus in Paris, where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it
must be morning now), and they dance to the selfsame time and tune as the
trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these waves as
they come rushing on I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me
by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something
about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first
went a-seafaring and near foundering (what a terrific sound that word had
for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through all this, I
must ask her (who was she, I wonder!) for the fiftieth time, and without
ever stopping, Does she not fear to stray, so lone and lovely through this
bleak way, And are Erin's sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by
more fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight, I feel not the
least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they love fellow
creatures with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir Knight, they—
what a tremendous one!—love honour and virtue more: For though they
love stewards with a bull's-eye bright, they'll trouble you for your ticket, sir
—rough passage to-night!

I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and
inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words from

the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I have been
vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came out of their town
by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their
necks by which they have since been towed into so many cartoons, had all
been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard them as highly respectable
and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez
well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais
Harbour undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining. Sentiments
of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to Calais, begin to expand
my bosom. I have weak notions that I will stay there a day or two on my
way back. A faded and recumbent stranger, pausing in a profound reverie
over the rim of a basin, asked me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him
(Heaven forgive me!) a very agreeable place indeed—rather hilly than
otherwise.

So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly—though still I
seem to have been on board a week—that I am bumped, rolled, gurgled,
washed, and pitched into Calais Harbour before her maiden smile has
finally lighted her through the Green Isle. When blest for ever is she who
relied On entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we have not to land to-
night down among those slimy timbers—covered with green hair as if it
were the mermaid's favourite combing-place—where one crawls to the
surface of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp; but we go steaming up the
harbour to the Railway-station Quay. And, as we go, the sea washes in and
out among the piles and planks with dead, heavy beats and in quite a furious
manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the wind, and the
bells of Calais striking One seem to send their vibrations struggling against
troubled air, as we have come struggling against troubled water. And now,
in the sudden relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have
had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of the

dentist's hands. And now we all know for the first time how wet and cold
we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais with my heart of hearts!

"Hôtel Dessin!" (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is but a bright
lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of that best of inns). "Hôtel
Meurice!" "Hôtel de France!" "Hôtel de Calais!" "The Royal Hotel, sir,
Anglaishe 'ouse!" "You going to Parry, sir?" "Your baggage, registair free,
sir?" Bless ye, my Touters; bless ye, my commissionaires; bless ye, my
hungry-eyed mysteries in caps of military form, who are always here, day
or night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never see you
get! Bless ye, my Custom-house officers in green and grey; permit me to
grasp the welcome hands that descend into my travelling-bag, one on each
side, and meet at the bottom to give my change of linen a peculiar shake-up,
as if it were a measure of chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare,
Monsieur le Douanier, except that, when I cease to breathe, Calais will be
found written on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me,
Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast devoted
to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah! see at the
gangway by the twinkling lantern my dearest brother and friend, he once of
the Passport Office, he who collects the names! May he be for ever
changeless in his buttoned black boat-surtout, with his note-book in his
hand, and his tall black hat surmounting his round, smiling, patient face!
Let us embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours à tout jamais—for the
whole of ever.

Calais up and doing at the railway-station, and Calais down and
dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of "an ancient and fish-like
smell" about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais represented
at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux; and
Calais represented everywhere by flitting persons with a monomania for
changing money—though I never shall be able to understand, in my present

state of existence, how they live by it; but I suppose I should, if I
understood the currency question; Calais en gros and Calais en détail,
forgive one who has deeply wronged you,—I was not fully aware of it on
the other side, but I meant Dover.

Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers. Ascend then,
gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai, Bruxelles, Arras,
Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of the uncommercial interest,
ascend with the rest. The train is light to-night, and I share my compartment
with but two fellow-travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who
thinks it a quite unaccountable thing that they don't keep "London time" on
a French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the
possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a young priest,
with a very small bird in a very small cage, who feeds the small bird with a
quill, and then puts him up in the network above his head, where he
advances twittering to his front wires, and seems to address me in an
electioneering manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom
I judge to be some person of distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately
species of rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who
joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have it all to
ourselves….

LETTERS
[Sidenote: Walter Bagehot]

The complete letter-writer is now an unknown animal. In the last century,
when communications were difficult, and epistles rare, there were a great
many valuable people who devoted a good deal of time to writing elaborate
letters. You wrote letters to a man whom you knew nineteen years and a
half ago, and told him what you had for dinner, and what your second
cousin said, and how the crops got on. Every detail of life was described

and dwelt on, and improved. The art of writing, at least of writing easily,
was comparatively rare, which kept the number of such compositions
within narrow limits. Sir Walter Scott says he knew a man who remembered
that the London post-bag once came to Edinburgh with only one letter in it.
One can fancy the solemn, conscientious elaborateness with which a person
would write, with the notion that his letter would have a whole coach and a
whole bag to itself, and travel two hundred miles alone, the exclusive object
of a red guard's care. The only thing like it now—the deferential minuteness
with which one public office writes to another, conscious that the letter will
travel on her Majesty's service three doors down the passage—sinks by
comparison into cursory brevity.

No administrative reform will be able to bring even the official mind of
these days into the grave inch-an-hour conscientiousness with which a
confidential correspondent of a century ago related the growth of apples,
the manufacture of jams, the appearance of flirtations, and other such-like
things. All the ordinary incidents of an easy life were made the most of; a
party was epistolary capital, a race a mine of wealth. So deeply sentimental
was this intercourse that it was much argued whether the affections were
created for the sake of ink, or ink for the sake of the affections. Thus it
continued for many years, and the fruits thereof are written in the volumes
of family papers, which daily appear, are prized as "materials for the
historian," and consigned, as the case may be, to posterity or oblivion. All
this has now passed away. Mr. Rowland Hill is entitled to the credit, not
only of introducing stamps, but also of destroying letters.

THE TRAGEDY
[Sidenote: Ingoldsby]

Quæque ipse miserrima vidi.—Virgil

Catherine of Cleves was a Lady of rank,
She had lands and fine houses, and cash in the bank;
She had jewels and rings, And a thousand smart things;
Was lovely and young, With a rather sharp tongue,
And she wedded a Noble of high degree
With the star of the order of St. Esprit;
But the Duke de Guise Was, by many degrees,
Her senior, and not very easy to please;
He'd a sneer on his lip, and a scowl with his eye,
And a frown on his brow,—and he look'd like a Guy,—
So she took to intriguing With Monsieur St. Megrin,
A young man of fashion, and figure, and worth,
But with no great pretensions to fortune or birth;
He would sing, fence, and dance
With the best man in France,
And took his rappee with genteel nonchalance;
He smiled, and he flattered, and flirted with ease,
And was very superior to Monseigneur de Guise.
Now Monsieur St. Megrin was curious to know
If the lady approved of his passion or no;
So without more ado, He put on his surtout,
And went to a man with a beard like a Jew,
One Signor Ruggieri, A cunning man near, he
Could conjure, tell fortunes, and calculate tides,
Perform tricks on the cards, and Heaven knows what besides,
Bring back a stray'd cow, silver ladle, or spoon,
And was thought to be thick with the Man in the Moon.
The Sage took his stand With his wand in his hand,
Drew a circle, then gave the dread word of command,

Saying solemnly—"Presto!—Hey, quick!—Cock-a-lorum!"
When the Duchess immediately popp'd up before 'em.

Just then a conjunction of Venus and Mars,
Or something peculiar above in the stars,
Attracted the notice of Signor Ruggieri,
Who "bolted," and left him alone with his deary.—
Monsieur St. Megrin went down on his knees,
And the Duchess shed tears large as marrow-fat peas,
When,—fancy the shock,—a loud double-knock,
Made the lady cry, "Get up, you fool!—there's De Guise!"—
'Twas his Grace, sure enough; So Monsieur, looking bluff,
Strutted by, with his hat on, and fingering his ruff,
While, unseen by either, away flew the dame
Through the opposite key-hole, the same way she came;
But, alack! and alas! A mishap came to pass,
In her hurry she, somehow or other, let fall
A new silk bandana she'd worn as a shawl;
She used it for drying Her bright eyes while crying,
Ane blowing her nose, as her beau talk'd of dying!

Now the Duke, who had seen it so lately adorn her,
And he knew the great C with the Crown in the corner,
The instant he spied it, smoked something amiss,
And said, with some energy, "D—— it! what's this?"
He went home in a fume, And bounced into her room,
Crying, "So, Ma'am, I find I've some cause to be jealous!
Look here!—here's a proof you run after the fellows!
—Now take up that pen,—if it's bad choose a better,—
And write, as I dictate, this moment a letter
To Monsieur—you know who!" The lady look'd blue;

But replied with much firmness—"Hang me if I do!"
De Guise grasped her wrist With his great bony fist,
And pinched it, and gave it so painful a twist,
That his hard gauntlet the flesh went an inch in,—
She did not mind death, but she could not stand pinching;
So she sat down and wrote This polite little note:—

"Dear Mister St. Megrin, The Chiefs of the League in
Our house mean to dine This evening at nine;
I shall, soon after ten, Slip away from the men,
And you'll find me upstairs in the drawing-room then;
Come up the back way, or those impudent thieves
Of servants will see you; Yours
CATHERINE OF CLEVES."

She directed and sealed it, all pale as a ghost,
And De Guise put it into the Twopenny Post.
St. Megrin had almost jumped out of his skin
For joy that day when the post came in;
He read the note through Then began it anew,
And thought it almost too good news to be true.—
He clapp'd on his hat, And a hood over that,
With a cloak to disguise him, and make him look fat;
So great his impatience, from half after Four,
He was waiting till Ten at De Guise's backdoor.
When he heard the great clock of St. Genevieve chime,
He ran up the back staircase six steps at a time,
He had scarce made his bow, He hardly knew how,
When alas! and alack! There was no getting back,
For the drawing-room door was bang'd to with a whack;—

In vain he applied To the handle and tried,
Somebody or other had locked it outside!
And the Duchess in agony mourn'd her mishap:
"We are caught like a couple of rats in a trap."

Now the Duchess's page, About twelve years of age,
For so little a boy was remarkably sage;
And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement,
Popp'd the gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement.
But all would not do,—Though St. Megrin got through
The window,—below stood De Guise and his crew.
And though never man was more brave than St. Megrin,
Yet fighting a score is extremely fatiguing;
He thrust carte and tierce Uncommonly fierce,
But not Beelzebub's self could their cuirasses pierce:
While his doublet and hose, Being holiday clothes,
Were soon cut through and through from his knees to his nose.
Still an old crooked sixpence the Conjurer gave him,
From pistol and sword was sufficient to save him,
But, when beat on his knees, That confounded De Guise
Came behind with the "fogle" that caused all this breeze,
Whipp'd it tight round his neck, and, when backward he'd jerk'd him,
The rest of the rascals jump'd on him and Burked him.
The poor little page, too, himself got no quarter, but
Was served the same way, And was found the next day
With his heels in the air, and his head in the water-butt;

Catherine of Cleves Roar'd "Murder!" and "Thieves!"
From the window above While they murder'd her love;
Till, finding the rogues had accomplish'd his slaughter,

She drank Prussic acid without any water,
And died like a Duke-and-a-Duchess's daughter!

CHATTER OF A DILETTANTE
[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

The people are good-humoured here and easy; and, what makes me
pleased with them, they are pleased with me. One loves to find people who
care for one, when they can have no view in it.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

As to "Hosier's Ghost," I think it very easy, and consequently pretty; but,
from the ease, should never have guessed it Glover's. I delight in your, "the
patriots cry it up, and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up
and down."

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

There is a little book coming out that will amuse you. It is a new edition
of Isaac Walton's "Complete Angler," full of anecdotes and historic notes. It
is published by Mr. Hawkins, a very worthy gentleman in my
neighbourhood, but who, I could wish, did not think angling so very
innocent an amusement. We cannot live without destroying animals, but
shall we torture them for our sport—sport in their destruction? I met a
rough officer at his house t'other day, who said he knew such a person was
turning Methodist; for, in the middle of conversation, he rose and opened
the window to let out a moth. I told him I did not know that the Methodists
had any principle so good, and that I, who am certainly not on the point of
becoming one, always did so too. One of the bravest and best men I ever

knew, Sir Charles Wager, I have often heard declare he never killed a fly
willingly. It is a comfortable reflection to me, that all the victories of last
year have been gained since the suppression of the Bear Garden and prize-
fighting; as it is plain, and nothing else would have made it so, that our
valour did not singly and solely depend upon these two Universities. Adieu!

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

Can we easily leave the remains of such a year as this? It is still all gold.
I have not dined or gone to bed by a fire till the day before yesterday.
Instead of the glorious and ever-memorable year 1759, as the newspapers
call it, I call it this ever-warm and victorious year. We have not had more
conquest than fine weather; one would think we had plundered East and
West Indies of sunshine. Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for
victories. I believe it will require ten votes of the House of Commons
before people will believe it is the Duke of Newcastle that has done this,
and not Mr. Pitt. One thing is very fatiguing—all the world is made knights
or generals. Adieu! I don't know a word of news less than the conquest of
America. Adieu! yours ever.

P.S.—You shall hear from me again if we take Mexico or China before
Christmas.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

You are so thoughtless about your dress that I cannot help giving you a
little warning against your return. Remember, everybody that comes from
abroad is censé to come from France, and whatever they wear at their first
reappearance immediately grows the fashion. Now if, as is very likely, you
should through inadvertence change hats with a master of a Dutch smack,

Offley will be upon the watch, will conclude you took your pattern from M.
de Bareil, and in a week's time we shall all be equipped like Dutch skippers.
You see I speak very disinterestedly; for, as I never wear a hat myself, it is
indifferent to me what sort of hat I don't wear.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

Lord Frederick Cavendish is returned from France. He confirms and adds
to the amiable accounts we have received of the Duc d'Aiguillon's
behaviour to our prisoners. You yourself, the pattern of attentions and
tenderness, could not refine on what he has done both in good-nature and
good-breeding: he even forbad any ringing of bells or rejoicings wherever
they passed—but how your representative blood will curdle when you hear
of the absurdity of one of your countrymen: the night after the massacre at
St. Cas, the Duc d'Aiguillon gave a magnificent supper of eighty covers to
our prisoners—a Colonel Lambert got up at the bottom of the table, and,
asking for a bumper, called out to the Duc, "My Lord Duke, here's the Roy
de Franse!" You must put all the English you can crowd into the accent. My
Lord Duke was so confounded at this preposterous compliment, which it
was impossible for him to return, that he absolutely sank back into his chair
and could not utter a syllable: our own people did not seem to feel more.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

Well! and so you think we are undone!—not at all; if folly and
extravagance are symptoms of a nation's being at the height of their glory,
as after-observers pretend that they are forerunners of its ruin, we never
were in a more flourishing situation. My Lord Rockingham and my nephew
Lord Orford have made a match of five hundred pounds, between five
turkeys and five geese, to run from Norwich to London. Don't you believe

in the transmigration of souls? And are you not convinced that this race is
between Marquis Sardanapalus and Earl Heliogabalus? And don't you pity
the poor Asiatics and Italians who comforted themselves, on their
resurrection, with their being geese and turkeys?

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

Here's another symptom of our glory! The Irish Speaker, Mr. Ponsonby,
has been reposing himself at Newmarket. George Selwyn, seeing him toss
about bank-bills at the hazard-table, said, "How easily the Speaker passes
the money-bills!"

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose passion is
keeping an assembly, and inviting literally everybody to it. She goes to the
drawing-room to watch for sneezes; whips out a curtsy, and then sends next
morning to know how your cold does, and to desire your company next
Thursday.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

For my own part, I comfort myself with the humane reflection of the
Irishman in the ship that was on fire—I am but a passenger! If I were not so
indolent, I think I should rather put in practice the late Duchess of Bolton's
geographical resolution of going to China, when Whiston told her the world
would be burnt in three years. Have you any philosophy? Tell me what you
think.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

If it was not too long to transcribe, I would send you an entertaining
petition of the periwig-makers to the King, in which they complain that men
will wear their own hair. Should one almost wonder if carpenters were to
remonstrate that since the peace their trade decays, and that there is no
demand for wooden legs? Apropos my Lady Hertford's friend, Lady Harriot
Vernon, has quarrelled with me for smiling at the enormous head-gear of
her daughter, Lady Grosvenor. She came one night to Northumberland
House with such display of friz that it literally spread beyond her shoulders.
I happened to say it looked as if her parents had stinted her in hair before
marriage, and that she had determined to indulge her fancy now. This,
among ten thousand things said by all the world, was reported to Lady
Harriot, and has occasioned my disgrace. As she never found fault with
anybody herself, I excuse her. You will be less surprised to hear that the
Duchess of Queensberry has not yet done dressing herself marvellously: she
was at Court on Sunday in a gown and petticoat of red flannel.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

You perceive that I have been presented. The Queen took great notice of
me; none of the rest said a syllable. You are let into the King's bedchamber
just as he has put on his shirt; he dresses and talks good-humouredly to a
few, glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, and a-hunting. The good
old Queen, who is like Lady Primrose in the face, is at her dressing-table,
attended by two or three old ladies, who are languishing to be in Abraham's
bosom, as the only man's bosom to whom they can hope for admittance.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

Old age is no such uncomfortable thing, if one gives oneself up to it with
a good grace, and don't drag it about

To midnight dances and the public show.

If one stays quietly in one's own house in the country, and cares for
nothing but oneself, scolds one's servants, condemns everything that is new,
and recollects how charming a thousand things were formerly that were
very disagreeable, one gets over the winters very well, and the summers get
over themselves.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

As I was writing this, my servants called me away to see a balloon; I
suppose Blanchard's, that was to be let off from Chelsea this morning. I saw
it from the common field before the window of my round tower. It appeared
about a third of the size of the moon, or less, when setting, something above
the tops of the trees on the level horizon. It was then descending; and, after
rising and declining a little, it sunk slowly behind the trees, I should think
about or beyond Sunbury, at five minutes after one. But you know I am a
very inexact guesser at measures and distances, and may be mistaken in
many miles; and you know how little I have attended to these airgonauts:
only t'other night I diverted myself with a sort of meditation on future
airgonation, supposing that it will not only be perfected, but will depose
navigation. I did not finish it, because I am not skilled, like the gentleman
that used to write political ship-news, in that style which I wanted to perfect
my essay; but in the prelude I observed how ignorant the ancients were in
supposing Icarus melted the wax of his wings by too near access to the sun,
whereas he would have been frozen to death before he made the first post
on that road. Next, I discovered an alliance between Bishop Wilkin's art of
flying and his plan of universal language; the latter of which he no doubt
calculated to prevent the want of an interpreter when he should arrive at the
moon.

But I chiefly amused myself with ideas of the change that would be made
in the world by the substitution of balloons to ships. I supposed our seaports
to become deserted villages; and Salisbury Plain, Newmarket Heath
(another canvass for alteration of ideas), and all downs (but the Downs)
arising into dockyards for aerial vessels. Such a field would be ample in
furnishing new speculations. But to come to my ship-news:

"The good balloon Dædalus, Captain Wingate, will fly in a few days for
China; he will stop at the top of the Monument to take in passengers.

"Arrived on Brand-sands, the Vulture, Captain Nabob; the Tortoisesnow,
from Lapland; the Pet-en-l'air, from Versailles; the Dreadnought, from
Mount Etna, Sir W. Hamilton, commander; the Tympany, Montgolfier; and
the Mine-A-in-a-bandbox, from the Cape of Good Hope. Foundered in a
hurricane, the Bird of Paradise, from Mount Ararat. The Bubble, Sheldon,
took fire, and was burnt to her gallery; and the Phoenix is to be cut down to
a second-rate."

In those days Old Sarum will again be a town and have houses in it.
There will be fights in the air with wind-guns and bows and arrows; and
there will be prodigious increase of land for tillage, especially in
France, by breaking up all public roads as useless.

[Sidenote: Horace Walpole]

One of the Duke of Marlborough's generals, dining with the Lord Mayor,
an Alderman who sat next to him said, "Sir, yours must be a very laborious
profession." "No," replied the general, "we fight about four hours in the
morning, and two or three after dinner, and then we have all the rest of the
day to ourselves."

HIS MARRIAGE
[Sidenote: William Cobbett]

When I first saw my wife she was thirteen years old.[5] I was within a
month of twenty-one.[6] She was the daughter of a sergeant of artillery, and
I was the sergeant-major of a regiment of foot, both stationed in forts near
the city of St. John, in the province of New Brunswick. I sat in the same
room with her for about an hour, in the company of others, and I made up
my mind that she was the very girl for me. That I thought her beautiful is
certain, for that, I had always said, should be an indispensable qualification;
but I saw in her what I deemed marks of that sobriety of conduct … which
has been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It was now dead of winter,
and, of course, the snow several feet deep on the ground, and the weather
piercing cold. It was my habit, when I had done my morning's writing, to go
out at break of day to take a walk on a hill at the foot of which our barracks
lay. In about three mornings after I had first seen her, I had, by an invitation
to breakfast with me, got up two young men to join me in my walk; and our
road lay by the house of her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she
was out on the snow scrubbing out a washing-tub. "That's the girl for me,"
said I, when we had got out of hearing.

One of these young men came to England soon afterwards; and he, who
keeps an inn in Yorkshire, came over to Preston at the time of the election
(in 1826) to verify whether I were the same man. When he found that I was
he appeared surprised; but what was his surprise when I told him that those
tall young men whom he saw around me were the sons of that pretty little
girl that he and I saw scrubbing out the washing-tub on the snow in New
Brunswick at day-break in the morning!

From the day that I first spoke to her I never had a thought of her ever
being the wife of any other man, more than I had a thought of her being

transformed into a chest of drawers; and I formed my resolution at once, to
marry her as soon as we could get permission, and to get out of the army as
soon as I could. So that this matter was at once settled as firmly as if written
in the book of fate. At the end of about six months my regiment, and I along
with it, were removed to Fredericton, a distance of a hundred miles up the
river of St. John; and, which was worse, the artillery was expected to go off
to England a year or two before our regiment! The artillery went, and she
along with them; and now it was that I acted a part becoming a real and
sensible lover. I was aware that, when she got to that gay place Woolwich,
the house of her father and mother, necessarily visited by numerous people,
not the most select, might become unpleasant to her, and I did not like,
besides, that she should continue to work hard. I had saved a hundred and
fifty guineas, the earnings of my early hours, in writing for the paymaster,
the quartermaster, and others, in addition to the savings of my own pay. I
sent her all my money before she sailed, and wrote to her to beg of her, if
she found her home uncomfortable, to hire a lodging with respectable
people, and, at any rate, not to spare the money by any means, but to buy
herself good clothes, and to live without hard work, until I arrived in
England; and I, in order to induce her to lay out the money, told her that I
should get plenty more before I came home.

As the malignity of the devil would have it, we were kept abroad two
years longer than our time, Mr. Pitt (England not being so tame then as she
is now[7]) having knocked up a dust with Spain about Nootka Sound. Oh,
how I cursed Nootka Sound, and poor bawling Pitt too, I am afraid! At the
end of four years, however, home I came, landed at Portsmouth, and got my
discharge from the army by the great kindness of poor Lord Edward
FitzGerald, who was then the major of my regiment. I found my little girl a
servant of all work (and hard work it was) at five pounds a year, in the
house of a Captain Brisac; and, without hardly saying a word about the

matter, she put into my hands the whole of my hundred and fifty guineas
unbroken!

LIFE AT BOTLEY
[Sidenote: William Cobbett]

But, to do the things I did, you must love home yourself. To rear up
children, in this manner, you must live with them; you must make them, too,
feel by your conduct, that you prefer this to any other mode of passing your
time. All men cannot lead this sort of life, but many may; and all much
more than many do. My occupation, to be sure, was chiefly carried on at
home; but I had always enough to do. I never spent an idle week, or even
day, in my whole life. Yet I found time to talk with them, to walk, or ride,
about with them; and, when forced to go from home, always took one or
more with me. You must be good-tempered, too, with them; they must like
your company better than any other person's; they must not wish you away,
not fear your coming back, not look upon your departure as a holiday….

When I went from home, all followed me to the outer gate, and looked
after me, till the carriage, or horse, was out of sight. At the time appointed
for my return, all were prepared to meet me; and, if it were late at night,
they sat up as long as they were able to keep their eyes open. This love of
parents, and this constant pleasure at home made them not even think of
seeking pleasure abroad; and they, thus, were kept from vicious playmates
and early corruption.

This is the age, too, to teach children to be trustworthy, and to be
merciful and humane. We lived in a garden of about two acres, partly
kitchen-garden with walls, partly shrubbery and trees, and partly grass.
There were the peaches, as tempting as any that ever grew, and yet as safe
from fingers as if no child were ever in the garden. It was not necessary to

forbid. The blackbirds, the thrushes, the white-throats, and even that very
shy bird the goldfinch had their nests and bred up their young ones in great
abundance, all about this little spot, constantly the play-place of six
children; and one of the latter had its nest and brought up its young ones in
a raspberry-bush, within two yards of a walk, and at the time that we were
gathering the ripe raspberries. We give _dogs, _and justly, great credit for
sagacity and memory; but the following two most curious instances, which
I should not venture to state, if there were not so many witnesses to the
facts, in my neighbours at Botley, as well as in my own family, will show,
that birds are not, in this respect, inferior to the canine race. All country
people know that the skylark is a very shy bird; that its abode is the open
fields; that it settles on the ground only; that it seeks safety in the wideness
of space; that it avoids enclosures, and is never seen in gardens. A part of
our ground was a grass-plot of about forty rods, or a quarter of an acre,
which, one year, was left to be mowed for hay. A pair of larks, coming out
of the fields into the midst of a pretty populous village, chose to make their
nest in the middle of this little spot and at not more than about thirty-five
yards from one of the doors of the house, in which there were about twelve
persons living, and six of these children, who had constant access to all
parts of the ground. There we saw the cock rising up and singing, then
taking his turn upon the eggs; and by and by we observed him cease to sing,
and saw them both constantly engaged in bringing food to the young ones.
No unintelligible hint to fathers and mothers of the human race, who have,
before marriage, taken delight in music. But the time came for mowing the
grass! I waited a good many days for the brood to get away, but at last I
determined on the day; and if the larks were there still, to leave a patch of
grass standing around them. In order not to keep them in dread longer than
necessary, I brought three able mowers, who would cut the whole in about
an hour; and, as the plat was nearly circular, set them to mow round,
beginning at the outside. And now for sagacity indeed! The moment the

men began to whet their scythes, the two old larks began to flutter over the
nest, and to make a great clamour. When the men began to mow, they flew
round and round, stooping so low, when near the men, as almost to touch
their bodies, making a great chattering at the same time; but, before the men
had got round with the second swath, they flew to the nest, and away they
went, young ones and all, across the river, at the foot of the ground, and
settled in the long grass in my neighbour's orchard.

The other instance relates to a house-marten. It is well known that these
birds build their nests under the eaves of inhabited houses, and sometimes
under those of door-porches; but we had one that built its nest in the house,
and upon the top of a common door-case, the door of which opened into a
room out of the main passage into the house. Perceiving that the marten had
begun to build its nest here, we kept the front door open in the day-time, but
were obliged to fasten it at night. It went on, had eggs, young ones, and the
young ones flew. I used to open the door in the morning early, and then the
birds carried on their affairs till night. The next year the marten came again,
and had another brood in the same place. It found its old nest; and, having
repaired it, and put it in order, went on again in the former way; and it
would, I dare say, have continued to come to the end of its life, if we had
remained there so long, notwithstanding there were six healthy children in
the house making just as much noise as they pleased.

HIS CHILDREN
[Sidenote: William Cobbett]

We wanted no stimulants of this sort [he is referring to social dissipation,
romances, and playhouses] to keep up our spirits; our various pleasing
pursuits were quite sufficient for that; and the book-learning came amongst
the rest of the pleasures, to which it was, in some sort, necessary. I
remember that, one year, I raised a prodigious crop of fine melons, under

hand-glasses; and I learned how to do it from a gardening-book; or, at least,
that book was necessary to remind me of the details. Having passed part of
an evening in talking to the boys about getting this crop, "Come," said I,
"now let us read the book." Then the book came forth, and to work we
went, following very strictly the precepts of the book. I read the thing but
once, but the eldest boy read it, perhaps, twenty times over; and explained
all about the matter to the others. Why, here was a motive! Then he had to
tell the garden labourer what to do to the melons. Now, I will engage, that
more was really learned by this single lesson, than would have been learned
by spending, at this son's age, a year at school; and he happy and delighted
all the while. When any dispute arose among them about hunting or
shooting, or any other of their pursuits, they, by degrees, found out the way
of settling it by reference to some book; and, when any difficulty occurred
as to the meaning, they referred to me, who, if at home, always instantly
attended to them in these matters.

They began writing by taking words out of printed books: finding out
which letter was which, by asking me, or asking those who knew the letters
one from the other; and, by imitating bits of my writing, it is surprising how
soon they began to write a hand like mine, very small, very faint-stroked,
and nearly plain as print. The first use that any of them made of the pen,
was to write to me, though in the same house with them. They began doing
this in mere scratches, before they knew how to make any one letter; and,
as I was always folding up letters and directing them, so were they; and
they were sure to receive a prompt answer, with most encouraging
compliments. All the meddling and teasing of friends, and, what was more
serious, the pressing prayers of their anxious mother, about sending them to
school, I withstood without the slightest effect on my resolutions. As to
friends, preferring my own judgment to theirs, I did not care much; but an
expression of anxiety, implying a doubt of the soundness of my own
judgment, coming, perhaps twenty times a day, from her whose care they

were as well as mine, was not a matter to smile at, and very great trouble
did it give me. My answer at last was, as to the boys, I want them to be like
me; and as to the girls "in whose hands can they be so safe as in yours?
Therefore my resolution is taken; go to school they shall not."

Nothing is much more annoying than the intermeddling of friends in a
case like this. The wife appeals to them, and "good breeding," that is to say
nonsense, is sure to put them on her side. Then they, particularly the
women, when describing the surprising progress made by their own sons at
school, used, if one of mine were present, to turn to him, and ask to what
school he went, and what he was learning? I leave any one to judge of his
opinion of her; and whether he would like her the better for that! "Bless me,
so tall, and not learned anything yet!" "Oh, yes, he has," I used to say; "he
has learned to ride, and hunt, and shoot, and fish, and look after cattle and
sheep, and to work in the garden, and to feed his dogs, and to go from
village to village in the dark." This was the way I used to manage with
troublesome customers of this sort. And how glad the children used to be,
when they got clear of such criticising people! And how grateful they felt to
me for the protection which they saw that I gave them against that state of
restraint, of which other people's boys complained! Go whither they might,
they found no place so pleasant as home, and no soul that came near them
affording them so many means of gratification as they received from me.

THE CAP THAT FITS
[Sidenote: Austin Dobson]

"Qui sème épines n'aille déchaux"

SCENE—A Salon with blue and white panels. Outside, persons pass and
repass upon a terrace.

HORTENSE. ARMANDE. MONSIEUR LOYAL

HORTENSE (behind her fan)
Not young, I think.

ARMANDE (raising her eye-glass)
And faded, too!—
Quite faded! Monsieur, what say you?

M. LOYAL
Nay,—I defer to you. In truth,
To me she seems all grace and youth.

HORTENSE
Graceful? You think it? What, with hands
That hang like this? (with a gesture).

ARMANDE
And how she stands!

M. LOYAL
Nay,—I am wrong again. I thought
Her air delightfully untaught!

HORTENSE
But you amuse me—

M. LOYAL
Still her dress,—
Her dress at least, you must confess—

ARMANDE
Is odious simply! Jacotot

Did not supply that lace, I know;
And where, I ask, has mortal seen
A hat unfeathered?

HORTENSE
Edged with green!!

M. LOYAL
The words remind me. Let me say
A Fable that I heard to-day.
Have I permission?

BOTH (with enthusiasm)
Monsieur, pray!

M. LOYAL
"Myrtilla (lest a scandal rise
The lady's name I thus disguise),
Dying of ennui, once decided—
Much on resource herself she prided—
To choose a hat. Forthwith she flies
On that momentous enterprise.
Whether to Petit or Logros,
I know not: only this I know;—
Headdresses then, of any fashion,
Bore names of quality, or passion.
Myrtilla tried them, almost all:
'Prudence,' she felt, was somewhat small;
'Retirement' seemed the eyes to hide;
'Content,' at once, she cast aside.
'Simplicity,'—'twas out of place;
'Devotion' for an older face;

Briefly, selection smaller grew,
'Vexatious! odious!'—none would do!
Then, on a sudden, she espied
One that she thought she had not tried:
Becoming, rather,—'edged with green,'—
Roses in yellow, thorns between.
'Quick! Bring me that!' 'Tis brought. 'Complete,
Superb, enchanting, tasteful, neat,'
In all the tones. 'And this you call—?'
'"Ill-Nature," Madame. It fits all.'"

HORTENSE

A thousand thanks! So naively turned!

ARMANDE

So useful too … to those concerned!
'Tis yours?

M. LOYAL
Ah no,—some cynic wits;
And called (I think)—
(Placing his hat upon his breast),
"The Cap that Fits."

ENIGMA
[Sidenote: Mark Twain]

Not wishing to be outdone in literary enterprise by those magazines
which have attractions especially designed for the pleasing of the fancy and

the strengthening of the intellect of youth, we have contrived and builded
the following enigma, at great expense of time and labour:

I am a word of 13 letters.

My 7, 9, 4, 4 is a village in Europe.

My 7, 14, 5, 7 is a kind of dog.

My 11, 13, 13, 9, 2, 7, 2, 3, 6, 1, 13 is a peculiar kind of stuff.

My 2, 6, 12, 8, 9, 4 is the name of a great general of ancient times (have
spelt it to best of ability, though may have missed the bull's-eye on a letter
or two, but not enough to signify).

My 3, 11, 1, 9, 15, 2, 2, 6, 2, 9, 13, 2, 6, 15, 4, 11, 2, 3, 5, 1, 10, 4, 8 is the
middle name of a Russian philosopher, up whose full cognomen fame is
slowly but surely climbing.

My 7, 11, 4, 12, 3, 1, 1, 9 is an obscure but very proper kind of bug.

My whole is—but perhaps a reasonable amount of diligence and
ingenuity will reveal that.

We take a just pride in offering the customary gold pen or cheap sewing-
machine for correct solutions of the above.

THE HAPPINESS OF SIR THOMAS BROWNE
[Sidenote: Religio Medici]

In my solitary and retired imagination (Neque enim cum porticus, aut me
lectulus accepit, desum mihi) I remember I am not alone, and therefore
forget not to contemplate Him and His Attributes who is ever with me,

especially those two mighty ones, His Wisdom and Eternity; with the one I
recreate, with the other I confound, my understanding; for who can speak of
Eternity without a soloecism, or think thereof without an Extasie? Time we
may comprehend; 'tis but five days elder than ourselves, and hath the same
Horoscope with the World; but to retire so far back as to apprehend a
beginning, to give such an infinite start forwards as to conceive an end in an
essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my Reason
to St. Paul's Sanctuary: my Philosophy dares not say the angels can do it;
God hath not made a Creature that can comprehend Him; 'tis a privilege of
His own nature….

[Sidenote: Religio Medici]

Art is the perfection of Nature: were the World now as it was the sixth
day, there were yet a Chaos: Nature hath made one World, and Art another.
In brief, all things are artificial; for Nature is the Art of God.

[Sidenote: Religio Medici]

There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the
Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun. Nature tells me I am the
Image of God, as well as Scripture: he that understands not thus much, hath
not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the Alphabet of man.
Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any: Ruat
coelum, Fiat voluntas tua, salveth all; so that whatsoever happens, it is but
what our daily prayers desire. In brief, I am content, and what should
providence add more? Surely this is it we call Happiness, and this do I
enjoy; with this I am happy in a dream, and as content to enjoy a happiness
in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There is surely a
nearer apprehension of anything that delights us in our dreams, than in our

waked senses; without this I were unhappy: for my awaked judgment
discontents me, ever whispering unto me, that I am from my friend; but my
friendly dreams in night requite me, and make me think I am within his
arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest, for there
is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content
with a fit of happiness. And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we
are all asleep in this World, and that the conceits of this life are as near
dreams to those of the next, as the Phantasms of the night, to the conceits of
the day. There is an equal delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be
the emblem or picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in
our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the
soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason, and our waking
conceptions do not match the Fancies of our sleeps. At my Nativity, my
Ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was born in the Planetary
hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am
no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company;
yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action,
apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof: were
my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study
but in my dreams; and this time also would I chuse for my devotions: but
our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted
understandings that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked
souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed.

[Sidenote: Religio Medici]

He is rich, who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor
that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. He that
giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord; there is more Rhetorick in that one
sentence, than in a Library of Sermons; and indeed if those Sentences were

understood by the Reader, with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by
the Author, we needed not those Volumes of instructions, but might be
honest by an Epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar
without relieving his Necessities with my Purse, or his Soul with my
Prayers; those scenical and accidental differences between us, cannot make
me forget that common and untoucht part of us both; there is under these
Cantoes and miserable outsides, these mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of
the same alloy with our own, whose Genealogy is God as well as ours, and
in as fair a way to Salvation as our selves.

"PLEASE TO RING THE BELLE"
[Sidenote: Hood]

I'll tell you a story that's not in Tom Moore:—
Young Love likes to knock at a pretty girl's door:
So he call'd upon Lucy—'twas just ten o'clock—
Like a spruce single man, with a smart double knock.

Now, a handmaid, whatever her fingers be at,
Will run like a puss when she hears a rat-tat:
So Lucy ran up—and in two seconds more
Had questioned the stranger and answered the door.

The meeting was bliss; but the parting was woe;
For the moment will come when such comers must go:
So she kissed him, and whispered—poor innocent thing!—
"The next time you come, love, pray come with a ring."

THE HAPPY DEAN
[Sidenote: Dean Hole]

My dear Hall,—I don't like the writing of this letter. I feel as I felt in
childhood when they were measuring out the castor-oil in a spoon; or when,
in boyhood, it was suggested "that kind Mr. Crackjaw should just look at
my teeth."

But the gulp and the "scrawnsh" must come.

My Master, the Archbishop, wishes me to speak at the Annual Meeting of
the Church Defence Society in London, on the 9th of July, and as this is his
first invitation to duty since I became his Chaplain, I cannot plead pleasure
as an excuse.

Regarding the Fete des Roses at Larchwood, as the most joyful holiday of
my year, from my first entrance into that pleasant home until you chaperon
me to the Omnibus at the gate of the Show-ground, I need not enlarge on
my disappointment. The less said the better.

When Dido found Æneas did not come,
She mourned in silence, and was Di do dum.

Roses are improving here, but they will be very late. May you add to the
victories which your zeal and care have so well deserved. Shall you be at
Sheffield? If so, you might return with me and have a quiet day's talk and
ramble. With kindest regards and most obnoxious regrets, I remain yours
most sincerely,

*****

When the Church Conference was held at Newcastle, Hole told a story of
a young curate who was preaching in a strange church from which the
rector was away. He preached a very short sermon, and in the vestry
afterwards the churchwarden remarked upon its shortness, and the curate

told him that a pup at his lodgings got into his room and ate half his sermon,
whereupon the churchwarden said: "I should be much obliged if you could
get our rector one of the breed." Reading this story, Mr. Boultbee wrote to
ask Hole if he could say what happened to the dog after eating the sermon,
and the reply was:

Dear Sir,—You will be pleased to hear that when the dog had inwardly
digested the sermon which he had torn, he turned over a new leaf. He had
been sullen and morose; he became "a very jolly dog." He had been selfish
and exclusive in his manger; he generously gave it up to an aged poodle. He
had been noisy and vulgar; he became a quiet, gentlemanly dog; he never
growled again; and when he was bitten he always requested the cur who
had torn his flesh to be so good, as a particular favour, to bite him again. He
has established a Reformatory in the Isle of Dogs for perverse puppies, and
an Infirmary for Mangy Mastiffs in Houndsditch. He has won twenty-six
medals from the Humane Society for rescuing children who have fallen into
the canal. He spends six days of the week in conducting his brothers and
sisters, who have lost their ways, to the Dog's Home, and it is a most
touching sight to see him leading the blind to church from morning to night
on Sundays.

[Sidenote: Dean Hole]

My dear Lord Bishop,—I have a strong suspicion that the inundation of
the Nave at Rochester was a knavish conspiracy of the Tee-totallers to
submerge the Cathedral during the absence of the Dean. The vergers have
had Water-on-the-Brain, but Messrs. Bishop and Sons from London have
assured Mr. Luard Selby that there is no organic disease.

I have regarded it as my duty, in anticipation of your lordship's visit to
North Wales on Wednesday next, to see that all due preparations are made

to receive you. I have been to ——, and found that the new chancel is
making satisfactory progress. The new altar frontal is beautiful, the tea and
bread and butter at the Rectory are excellent, the roses in the garden are
making extra efforts, the school-mistress is in good health, the mountains
are drawn up in saluting order, the mines are smoking peacefully, there will
be cold lamb at the luncheon, weather permitting, and all frivolous persons
will be banished to England, including yours ever.

THE ANSWER OF LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE
[Sidenote: Henry S. Leigh]

The Lady Clara V. de V.
Presents her very best regards
To that misguided Alfred T.
(With one of her enamell'd cards).
Though uninclin'd to give offence,
The Lady Clara begs to hint
That Master Alfred's common sense
Deserts him utterly in print.

The Lady Clara can but say,
That always from the very first
She snubb'd in her decisive way
The hopes that silly Alfred nurs'd.
The fondest words that ever fell
From Lady Clara, when they met,
Were, "How d'ye do? I hope you're well!"
Or else, "The weather's very wet."

Her Ladyship needs no advice
How time and money should be spent,

And can't pursue at any price
The plan that Alfred T. has sent.
She does not in the least object
To let the "foolish yeoman" go,
But wishes—let him recollect—
That he should move to Jericho.

THE WOODCRAFT OF JONSON
[Sidenote: Ben Johnson]

Nothing is a courtesy unless it be meant us; and that friendly and
lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers, that they carry our boats; or winds,
that they be favouring and fill our sails; or meats, that they be nourishing;
for these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us, but
they know it not. It is true, some men may receive a courtesy and not know
it; but never any man received it from him that knew it not. Many men have
been cured of diseases by accident; but they were not remedies. I myself
have known one helped of an ague by falling into a water; another whipped
out of a fever; but no man would ever use these for medicines. It is the
mind, and not the event, that distinguisheth the courtesy from wrong. My
adversary may offend the judge with his pride and impertinences, and I win
my cause; but he meant it not to me as a courtesy. I 'scaped pirates by being
ship-wracked; was the wrack a benefit therefore? No; the doing of
courtesies aright is the mixing of the respects for his own sake and for mine.
He that doeth them merely for his own sake is like one that feeds his cattle
to sell them; he hath his horse well dressed for Smithfield.

[Sidenote: Ben Johnson]

Many might go to heaven with half the labour they go to hell, if they
would venture their industry the right way; but "The devil take all!" quoth
he that was choked i' the mill-dam, with his four last words in his mouth.

[Sidenote: Ben Johnson]

A good man will avoid the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is
grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life as he would in his
journey. The ill man rides through all confidently; he is coated and booted
for it. The oftener he offends, the more openly, and the fouler, the fitter in
fashion. His modesty, like a riding-coat, the more it is worn is the less cared
for. It is good enough for the dirt still, and the ways he travels in.

[Sidenote: Ben Johnson]

Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself
to the law of Nature is not only without the sense but the fear of poverty. O,
but to strike blind the people with our wealth and pomp is the thing! What a
wretchedness is this, to thrust all our riches outward, and be beggars within;
to contemplate nothing but the little, vile, and sordid things of the world;
not the great, noble, and precious! We serve our avarice, and, not content
with the good of the earth that is offered us, we search and dig for the evil
that is hidden. God offered us those things, and placed them at hand, and
near us, that He knew were profitable for us, but the hurtful He laid deep
and hid. Yet do we seek only the things whereby we may perish, and bring
them forth, when God and Nature hath buried them. We covet superfluous
things, when it were more honour for us if we could contemn necessary.
What need hath Nature of silver dishes, multitudes of waiters, delicate
pages, perfumed napkins? She requires meat only, and hunger is not
ambitious. Can we think no wealth enough but such a state for which a man

may be brought into a præmunire, begged, proscribed, or poisoned? O! if a
man could restrain the fury of his gullet and groin, and think how many
fires, how many kitchens, cooks, pastures, and ploughed lands; what
orchards, stews, ponds and parks, coops and garners, he could spare; what
velvets, tissues, embroideries, laces, he could lack; and then how short and
uncertain his life is; he were in a better way to happiness than to live the
emperor of these delights, and be the dictator of fashions. But we make
ourselves slaves to our pleasures, and we serve fame and ambition, which is
an equal slavery.

[Sidenote: Ben Johnson]

I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to
Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted
out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted out a thousand,"
which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for
their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by
wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the
man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He
was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent
phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with
that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.
"Sufflaminandus erat," as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own
power; would the rule of it had been so, too! Many times he fell into those
things could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar,
one speaking to him, "Caesar, thou dost me wrong." He replied, "Caesar did
never wrong but with just cause"; and such-like, which were ridiculous. But
he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be
praised than to be pardoned.

[Sidenote: Ben Johnson]

Wisdom without honesty is mere craft and cozenage. And therefore the
reputation of honesty must first be gotten; which cannot be but by living
well. A good life is a main argument.

MOTHERHOOD
[Sidenote: Calverley]

She laid it where the sunbeams fall
Unscann'd upon the broken wall,
Without a tear, without a groan,
She laid it near a mighty stone
Which some rude swain had haply cast
Thither in sport, long ages past,
And Time with mosses had o'erlaid,
And fenced with many a tall grass-blade,
And all about bid roses bloom
And violets shed their soft perfume.
There, in its cool and quiet bed,
She set her burden down and fled:
Nor flung, all eager to escape,
One glance upon the perfect shape
That lay, still warm and fresh and fair,
But motionless and soundless there.

No human eye had mark'd her pass
Across the linden-shadow'd grass
Ere yet the minster clock chimed seven:
Only the innocent birds of heaven—
The magpie, and the rook whose nest

Swings as the elm-tree waves his crest—
And the lithe cricket, and the hoar
And huge-limb'd hound that guards the door,
Look'd on when, as a summer wind
That, passing, leaves no trace behind,
All unapparell'd, barefoot all,
She ran to that old ruin'd wall,
To leave upon the chill dank earth
(For ah! she never knew its worth)
'Mid hemlock rank, and fern, and ling,
And dews of night, that precious thing!

And there it might have lain forlorn
From morn till eve, from eve to morn:
But that, by some wild impulse led,
The mother, ere she turn'd and fled,
One moment stood erect and high;
Then pour'd into the silent sky
A cry so jubilant, so strange,
That Alice—as she strove to range
Her rebel ringlets at her glass—
Sprang up and gazed across the grass;
Shook back those curls so fair to see,
Clapp'd her soft hands in childish glee;
And shriek'd—her sweet face all aglow,
Her very limbs with rapture shaking—
"My hen has laid an egg, I know;
And only hear the noise she's making!"

THE JUMPING FROG
[Sidenote: Mark Twain]

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from
the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and
inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do,
and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas
W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that
he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind
him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me
nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious
as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the
old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed
that he was fat, and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning
gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and
gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to
make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood, named
Leonidas W. Smiley—Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the
gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I
added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas
W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner, and blockaded me there with his
chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which
follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never
changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial
sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all
through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive
earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his

imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he
regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men
of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting
serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was
exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of
Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his
own way, and never interrupted him once:

There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley in the winter of
'49—or maybe it was the spring of '50—I don't recollect exactly, somehow,
though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember
the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but, anyway,
he was the curiosest man about, always betting on anything that turned up
you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he
couldn't, he'd change sides. Anyway that suited the other man would suit
him—anyway, just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky,
uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready
and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but
that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just
telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find
him busted at the end of it. If there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there
was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it;
why, if there was two birds sitting on a fence he would bet you which one
would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to
bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here—
and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to
go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take to get wherever he
was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to
Mexico, but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long
he was on the road. Lots of boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you
about him. Why, it never made no difference to him—he would bet on any

thing—the dangest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a
good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one
morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was
considerable better—thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy—and coming on
so smart that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, she'd get well yet; and
Smiley, before he thought, says, "Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she
don't, anyway."

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag,
but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than
that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and
always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something
of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start, and
then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get
excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and
scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out
to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-
o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose—and
always fetch up at the stand, just about a neck ahead, as near as you could
cypher it down.

And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he
wan't worth a cent, but to set around and look ornery, and lay for a chance
to steal something. But as soon as money was upon him, he was a different
dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat, and
his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog
might tackle him, and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him over his
shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson—which was the name of
the pup—Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was satisfied,
and hadn't expected nothing else—and the bets being doubled and doubled
on the other side all the time, till the money was all up; and then all of a

sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int of his hind leg and
freeze to it—not chaw, you understand, but only jest grip and hang on till
they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out
winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn't have no hind
legs, because they'd been saw'd off by a circular saw, and when the thing
had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make
a snatch for his pet holt, he saw in a minute how he'd been imposed on, and
how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he 'peared
surprised, and then he looked sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more
to win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He gave Smiley a look, as
much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog
that hadn't no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was his main
dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and laid down and
died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a
name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius—I
know it, because he hadn't had no opportunities to speak of, and it don't
stand to reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them
circumstances, if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when I
think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out.

Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken-cocks, and tom-cats,
and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch
nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day,
and took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and so he never
done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to
jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too? He'd give him a little punch
behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a
doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple, if he got a
good start, and came down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him
up so in the matter of catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant,
that he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a

frog wanted was education, and he could do most anything—and I believe
him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor—Dan'l
Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and
quicker'n you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and snake a fly off'n the
counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud,
and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as
if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any mor'n any frog might do. You never
see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted.
An' when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get
over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it
come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers
that had travelled and been everywhere, all said he laid over any frog that
ever they see.

Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him
down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller—a stranger in the
camp, he was—come across him with his box, and says:

"What might it be that you've got in that box?"

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, "It might be a parrot, or it might
be a canary, maybe, but it ain't—it's only just a frog."

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this
way and that, and says, "H'm—so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?"

"Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "he's good enough for one thing, I
should judge—he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and
gave it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints
about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

"Maybe you don't," Smiley says. "Maybe you understand frogs, and
maybe you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe
you ain't only a amateur, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll
risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."

And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog,
I'd bet you."

And then Smiley says, "That's all right—that's all right—if you'll hold
my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box
and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he
got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled
him full of quail shot—filled him pretty near up to the chin—and set him on
the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a
long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and gave him
to this feller, and says:

"Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his forepaws just
even with Dan'l, and I'll give the word." Then he says, "One—two—three—
jump!" and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the
new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders—
so—like a Frenchman, but it wan't no use—he couldn't budge; he was
planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was
anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too,
but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course.

The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out
at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder—this way—at
Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that
frog that's any better'n any other frog."

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long
time, and at last he says, "I do wonder what in the nation that frog throwed
off for—I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him—he 'pears to
look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of his
neck, and lifted him up and says, "Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh
five pounds!" and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double
handful of shot. And then he see how it was and he was the maddest man—
he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him.
And—

(Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got
up to see what was wanted.) And, turning to me as he moved away, he said:
"Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy—I ain't going to be gone a
second."

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the
enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much
information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.

At the door I met the social Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me
and recommenced:

"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no
tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and—"

"Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!" I muttered good-naturedly, and,
bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.

THE CHARMING FRENCHMAN

BOSSUET
[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve]

As for the happiness itself, of which he would give us a just idea, the
purely spiritual and internal happiness of the soul in the other life, he sums
it up in an expression which concludes a happy development of the subject,
and he defines it: Reason always attentive and always contented. Take
reason in its liveliest and most luminous sense, the pure flame disengaged
from the senses.

ROUSSEAU
[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve]

It is from him that the sentiment of nature is reckoned among us, in the
eighteenth century. It is from him also that is dated, in our literature, the
sentiment of domestic life; of that homely, poor, quiet, hidden life, in which
are accumulated so many treasures of virtue and affection. Amid certain
details, in bad taste, in which he speaks of robbery and of eatables, how one
pardons him on account of that old song of childhood, of which he knows
only the air and some words stitched together, but which he always wished
to recover, and which he never recalls, old as he is, without a soothing
charm!

JOUBERT
[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve]

Taste, for him, is the literary conscience of the soul….

M. Joubert was, in his day, the most delicate and the most original type of
that class of honest people which the old society alone produced,—
spectators, listeners who had neither ambition nor envy, who were curious,
at leisure, attentive, and disinterested, who took an interest in everything,
the true amateurs of beautiful things. "To converse and to know—it was in
this, above all things, that consisted, according to Plato, the happiness of
private life." This class of connoisseurs and of amateurs, so fitted to
enlighten and to restrain talent, has almost disappeared in France since
every one there has followed a profession. "We should always," said M.
Joubert, "have a corner of the head open and free, that we may have a place
for the opinions of our friends, where we may lodge them provisionally. It
is really insupportable to converse with men who have, in their brains, only
compartments which are wholly occupied, and into which nothing external
can enter. Let us have hospitable hearts and minds."

*****

Life is a duty; we must make a pleasure of it, so far as we can, as of all
other duties. If the care of cherishing it is the only one with which it pleases
Heaven to charge us, we must acquit ourselves gaily and with the best
possible grace, and poke that sacred fire, while warming ourselves by it all
we can, till the word comes to us: That will do.

MME D'HOUDETOT
[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve]

In the years to which we refer—that is, the years immediately preceding
1800—there were gathered in the salon of this charming old lady the
remnants both of fashionable and philosophical society—never, indeed,
entirely exiled thence. It may be said of Mme d'Houdetot that her ideal
existence was always bounded by that Montmorency valley where the

ardent devotion of Jean Jacques has engraved her memory, as it were, in
immortal characters. There, again and again, her idyllic spring-time
renewed its bloom, and the freshness of her impressions continued
unimpaired until her dying day. She even remained in the country during
the Reign of Terror, her retreat being respected, and her relatives flocking
about her; and "I can readily believe," writes Mme de Rémusat, in a
charming portrait of her venerable friend, "that she retains, of those
frightful days, merely the memory of the increased tenderness and
consideration which they procured for her."

MME DE RÉMUSAT
[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve]

O mothers, gather your children about you early. Dare to say, when they
come into the world, that your youth is passing into theirs. O mothers, be
mothers, and you will be wise and happy!

DIDEROT
[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve]

If the Encyclopedia was in Diderot's time considered his principal social
work, his principal glory in the eyes of the men of to-day consists in his
having been the first to create the emotional and eloquent style of criticism.
It is through this that he has become immortal, through this that he will be
for ever dear to us journalists of every sort and condition. Let us bow down
to him as our father, and as the founder of this style of criticism.

Before Diderot's time, the French style of criticism had been, firstly, as
offered by Bayle, of a precise, inquiring, and subtle tone. Fénelon
represented criticism as an elegant and delicate art, while Rollin exhibited

its most useful and honest side. From a due sense of decency, I refrain from
mentioning the names of Fréron and Des Fontaines. But nowhere yet had
criticism acquired anything like vividness, fertility, and penetration; it had
not yet found its soul. Diderot was the first to find it. Naturally inclined to
look over defects, and to admire good qualities, "I am more affected," he
remarked, "by the charms of virtue than the deformity of vice; I quietly turn
away from the wicked and fly forward to meet the good. If there happens to
be a beautiful spot in a book, a character, a picture, or a statue, it is there
that I let my eyes rest; I can only see this beautiful spot, I can only
remember it, while the rest I nearly forget. What do I become when
everything is beautiful!" This inclination to welcome everything with
enthusiasm—this sort of universal admiration—undoubtedly had its danger.
It is said of him that he was singularly happy "in never having encountered
a wicked man nor a bad book." For, even if the book were bad, he would
unconsciously impute to the author some of his own ideas. Like the
alchemist, he found gold in the melting-pot, from the fact he had placed it
there himself. However, it is to him that all honour is due for having
introduced among us the fertile criticism of beauties, which he substituted
for that of defects. Châteaubriand himself, in that portion of the Genius of
Christianity in which he eloquently discourses on literary criticism, only
follows the path opened by Diderot….

"A pleasure that I enjoy alone affects me but slightly, and is of short
duration. It is for my friends as well as myself that I read, that I reflect, that
I write, that I meditate, that I listen, that I look, that I feel. In their absence I
am still devoted to them; I am continually thinking of their happiness. If I
am struck with a beautiful line, they must know it. If I meet with a fine
passage, I promise myself to impart it to them. If I have before my eyes
some enchanting spectacle, I unconsciously plan a description of it for their
benefit. I have consecrated to them the use of all my senses and faculties;
and it is perhaps for this reason that everything becomes somewhat enriched

in my imagination and exaggerated in my discourse. Nevertheless, the
ungrateful creatures sometimes reproach me."

LA BRUYÈRE
[Sidenote: Sainte-Beuve]

That philosopher, always accessible, even in the deepest studies, who
tells you to come in, for you bring him something more precious than gold
or silver, if it is the opportunity of obliging you.

SABBATH BELLS
[Sidenote: Anon.]

Ding—ding-a-ding! Ding—ding-a-ding!
The church bells they du ring,
Ding—ding-a-ding! Ding—ding-a-ding!
An' seems they bells du zing:
"O merry be! O merry be!
The work it all be done,
Zee, peas and brocoli du graw
Tremenjus in the zun;
An' hot it is, an' calm it is,
Bees buzz an' cattle doze;
Zo, laze about, an' talk about,
All in your Zunday clo's."
Ding—ding-a-ding! Ding—ding-a-ding_!

Ding—ding-a-ding! Ding—ding-a-ding!
The church bells merry ring,
Ding—ding-a-ding! Ding—ding-a-ding!

An,' dang it! doan't they zing?—
"O rest awhile! O rest awhile!
Vor 'tis amazin' sweet
To watch the white-heart cabbages
All bustin' in the heat;
Zo, zit about, an' stand about,
Beside ov Early Rose,
An' puff a pipe, an' think ov things,
All in your Zunday clo's."
Ding—ding-a-ding! Ding—ding-a-ding_!

Dong! Dong! Dong!
There's a shadow on the marn,
Dong! Dong! Dong!
The one larst bell du warn:
"O fulish mun! O fulish mun!
Life be no more than grass,
It glitters in the shinin' zun—
Until the Reaper pass!
An', hark! I call 'ee up to prayer,
Wi' passen, clerk, an' schule,
Come up along, an' take thee seat
Thou ole pig-headed fule!"

Dong! Dong! Dong!

UNCLE TOBY AND THE FLY
[Sidenote: Sterne]

My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries;—not from want of courage,
—I have told you in a former chapter, "that he was a man of courage":—

And will add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it forth,—
know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter;—nor did
this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts;—for
he felt this insult of my father's as feelingly as a man could do;—but he was
of a peaceful, placid nature,—no jarring element in it,—all was mixed up so
kindly within him; my uncle Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

—Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had
buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and
which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—I'll
not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across
the room, with the fly in his hand,—I'll not hurt a hair of thy head;—Go,
says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it
escape;—go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?—This
world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

I was but ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, that the
action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which
instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable
sensation;—or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards it;
—or, in what degree, or by what secret magick,—a tone of voice and
harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage to my heart,
I know not;—this I know, that the lesson of universal good-will then taught
and imprinted by my uncle Toby has never since been worn out of my mind:
And tho' I would not depreciate what the study of the Literæ humaniores, at
the University, have done for me in that respect, or discredit the other helps
of an expensive education bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad
since;—yet I often think that I owe one half of my philanthropy to that one
accidental expression.

HOBSON'S CHOICE
[Sidenote: William Hazlitt]

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to
go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but, out of doors, nature is
company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone.

The fields his study, nature was his book.

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am
in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising
hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town
and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-
places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room and
fewer encumbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the
sake of solitude; nor do I ask for

A friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty to think, feel, do, just as
one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all
inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much more to get rid of others. It
is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters,
where Contemplation—

May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd—

that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss
the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a

Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over
again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear
blue sky over my head and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding
road[8] before me and a three hours' march to dinner—and then to thinking!
It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I
leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud I plunge into my
past being, and revel there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into
the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things, like
"sunken wrack and sumless treasuries," burst upon my eager sight, and I
begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence,
broken by attempts at wit or dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed
silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns,
alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but I
sometimes had rather be without them. "Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!"
I have just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is
with me "very stuff o' the conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet without a
comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald?
Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared it to
me, you would only smile. Had I not better, then, keep it to myself, and let
it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from
thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all
that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may,
when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself and indulge your
reveries. But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and
you are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party. "Out upon
such half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or
entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be
sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's that
he thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and
that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time. So I cannot talk

and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits
and starts. "Let me have a companion of my way," says Sterne, "were it but
to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It is beautifully
said; but, in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with
the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the
sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb-show, it is
insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You
cannot read the book of nature without being perpetually put to the trouble
of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for this synthetical method on
a journey in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of
ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my
vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to
have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like
to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in
such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to argue a point with
any one for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you
remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-
traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-
sighted, and has to take out his glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the
air, a tone in the colour of a cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of
which you are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an
uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way,
and in the end probably produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with
myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary
to defend them against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of
accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you
—these may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate
and refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to
cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the
throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company seems

extravagance or affectation; and, on the other hand, to have to unravel this
mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest
in it (otherwise the end is not answered), is a task to which few are
competent. We must "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old
friend Coleridge, however, could do both. He could go on in the most
delightful explanatory way over hill and dale a summer's day, and convert a
landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. "He talked far above
singing." If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I
might perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling
theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to hear his
echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had "that fine madness in
them which our first poets had"; and, if they could have been caught by
some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains as the following:

Here be woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled streams, with flowers as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells;
Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes to make many a ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eye
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,

Gilding the mountains with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest.

Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt to wake
the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds: but
at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves,
like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot: I must have time
to collect myself.

In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should be
reserved for table-talk. Lamb is for this reason, I take it, the worst company
in the world out of doors; because he is the best within. I grant there is one
subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey, and that is, what one
shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air
improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a
keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the
viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town,
walled and turreted, just at approach of night-fall, or to come to some
straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom;
and then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to
"take one's ease at one's inn"! These eventful moments in our lives' history
are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and
dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and
drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to write about
afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of
tea—

The cups that cheer, but not inebriate—

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we
shall have for supper—eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions, or
an excellent veal cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on cow-heel;

and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in
the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch the
preparation and the stir in the kitchen (getting ready for the gentlemen in
the parlour). Procul, O procul este profani! These hours are sacred to
silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the
source of smiling thoughts hereafter.

A GARDEN IDYLL
[Sidenote: Austin Dobson]

A LADY A POET

THE LADY

Sir Poet, ere you crossed the lawn
(If it was wrong to watch you, pardon),
Behind this weeping birch withdrawn,
I watched you saunter round the garden.
I saw you bend beside the phlox,
Pluck, as you passed, a sprig of myrtle,
Review my well-ranged hollyhocks
Smile at the fountain's slender spurtle;

You paused beneath the cherry-tree,
Where my marauder thrush was singing,
Peered at the bee-hives curiously,
And narrowly escaped a stinging;
And then—you see, I watched—you passed
Down the espalier walk that reaches
Out to the western wall, and last,
Dropped on the seat before the peaches.

What was your thought? You waited long.
Sublime or graceful,—grave,—satiric?
A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song?
A tender Tennysonian lyric?
Tell me. That garden-seat shall be,
So long as speech renown disperses,
Illustrious as the spot where he—
The gifted Blank—composed his verses.

THE POET
[Sidenote: Austin Dobson]

Madam,—whose uncensorious eye
Grows gracious over certain pages,
Wherein the Jester's maxims lie,
It may be, thicker than the Sage's—
I hear but to obey, and could
Mere wish of mine the pleasure do you,
Some verse as whimsical as Hood,—
As gay as Praed,—should answer to you.

But, though the common voice proclaims
Our only serious vocation
Confined to giving nothings names
And dreams a "local habitation";
Believe me, there are tuneless days,
When neither marble, brass, nor vellum,
Would profit much by any lays
That haunt the poet's cerebellum.

More empty things, I fear, than rhymes,
More idle things than songs, absorb it;
The "finely frenzied" eye, at times,
Reposes mildly in its orbit;
And—painful truth—at times, to him,
Whose jog-trot thought is nowise restive,
"A primrose by a river's brim"
Is absolutely unsuggestive.

The fickle Muse! As ladies will,
She sometimes wearies of her wooer;
A goddess, yet a woman still,
She flies the more that we pursue her;
In short, with worst as well as best,
Five months in six, your hapless poet
Is just as prosy as the rest,
But cannot comfortably show it.

You thought, no doubt, the garden scent
Brings back some brief-winged bright sensation
Of love that came and love that went,—
Some fragrance of a lost flirtation,
Born when the cuckoo changes song,
Dead ere the apple's red is on it,
That should have been an epic long,
Yet scarcely served to fill a sonnet.

Or else you thought,—the murmuring noon
He turns it to a lyric sweeter,
With birds that gossip in the tune,
And windy bough-swing in the metre;

Or else the zigzag fruit-tree arms
Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms,
Round singing mouths, and chanted charms,
And mediaeval orchard blossoms,—

Quite à la mode. Alas for prose!—
My vagrant fancies only rambled
Back to the red-walled Rectory close,
Where first my graceless boyhood gambolled,
Climbed on the dial, teased the fish,
And chased the kitten round the beeches,
Till widening instincts made me wish
For certain slowly ripening peaches.

Three peaches. Not the Graces three
Had more equality of beauty:
I would not look, yet went to see;
I wrestled with Desire and Duty;
I felt the pangs of those who feel
The laws of Property beset them;
The conflict made my reason reel,
And, half-abstractedly, I ate them;—

Or two of them. Forthwith Despair—
More keen that one of these was rotten—
Moved me to seek some forest lair
Where I might hide and dwell forgotten,
Attired in skins, by berries stained,
Absolved from brushes and ablution;—
But, ere my sylvan haunt was gained,
Fate gave me up to execution.

I saw it all but now. The grin
That gnarled old Gardener Sandy's features;
My father, scholar-like and thin,
Unroused, the tenderest of creatures;
I saw—ah me !—I saw again
My dear and deprecating mother;
And then, remembering the cane,
Regretted—that I'd left the other.

MACAULAY'S WIT
[Sidenote: Macaulay]

I have not the Chancellor's encyclopedic mind. He is indeed a kind of
semi-Solomon. He half knows everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed
to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II.
But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen.

His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run,
though not to soar.

… Lady Millar, who kept a vase wherein fools were wont to put bad
verses, and Jerningham, who wrote verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady
Millar.

From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded
of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great
commandments were to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's
wife.

CRANFORD
[Sidenote: Mrs. Gaskell]

In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the
holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women. If a married couple
come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either
fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening
parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or
closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring
commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In
short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford.
What could they do if they were there? The surgeon has his round of thirty
miles, and sleeps at Cranford; but every man cannot be a surgeon. For
keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck
them; for frightening away little boys who look wistfully at the said flowers
through the railings; for rushing at the geese that occasionally venture into
the gardens if the gates are left open; for deciding all questions of literature
and politics without troubling themselves with unnecessary reasons or
arguments; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody's affairs
in the parish; for keeping their neat maid-servants in admirable order; for
kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, and real tender good offices to
each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite
sufficient. "A man," as one of them observed to me once, "is so in the way
in the house!" Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other's
proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other's opinions.
Indeed, as each has her own individuality, not to say eccentricity, pretty
strongly developed, nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation; but, somehow,
good-will reigns among them to a considerable degree.

The Cranford ladies have only an occasional little quarrel, spirted out in a
few peppery words and angry jerks of the head; just enough to prevent the

even tenor of their lives from becoming too flat. Their dress is very
independent of fashion; as they observe, "What does it signify how we
dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us?" And if they go from
home, their reason is equally cogent, "What does it signify how we dress
here, where nobody knows us?" The materials of their clothes are, in
general, good and plain, and most of them are nearly as scrupulous as Miss
Tyler, of cleanly memory; but I will answer for it, the last gigot, the last
tight and scanty petticoat in wear in England, was seen at Cranford—and
seen without a smile.

I can testify to a magnificent family red silk umbrella, under which a
gentle little spinster, left alone of many brothers and sisters, used to patter
to church on rainy days. Have you any red silk umbrellas in London? We
had a tradition of the first that had ever been seen in Cranford; and the little
boys mobbed it, and called it "a stick in petticoats." It might have been the
very red silk one I have described, held by a strong father over a troop of
little ones; the poor little lady—the survivor of all—could scarcely carry it.

Then there were rules and regulations for visiting and calls; and they
were announced to any young people who might be staying in the town
with all the solemnity with which the old Manx laws were read once a year
on the Tinwald Mount:

"Our friends have sent to inquire how you are after your journey to-night,
my dear" (fifteen miles, in a gentleman's carriage); "they will give you
some rest to-morrow, but the next day, I have no doubt, they will call; so be
at liberty after twelve—from twelve to three are our calling-hours."

Then, after they had called:

"It is the third day; I dare say your mamma has told you, my dear, never
to let more than three days elapse between receiving a call and returning it;

and also, that you are never to stay longer than a quarter of an hour."

"But am I to look at my watch? How am I to find out when a quarter of
an hour has passed?"

"You must keep thinking about the time, my dear, and not allow yourself
to forget it in conversation."

As everybody had this rule in their minds, whether they received or paid
a call, of course no absorbing subject was ever spoken about. We kept
ourselves to short sentences of small talk, and were punctual to our time.

I imagine that a few of the gentlefolk of Cranford were poor, and had
some difficulty in making both ends meet; but they were like the Spartans,
and concealed their smart under a smiling face. We none of us spoke of
money, because that subject savoured of commerce and trade, and though
some might be poor, we were all aristocratic. The Cranfordians had that
kindly esprit de corps which made them overlook all deficiencies in success
when some among them tried to conceal their poverty. When Mrs. Forester,
for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little
maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the
tea-tray out from underneath, every one took this novel proceeding as the
most natural thing in the world, and talked on about household forms and
ceremonies as if we all believed that our hostess had a regular servants' hall,
second table, with housekeeper and steward, instead of the once little
charity-school maiden, whose short ruddy arms could never have been
strong enough to carry the tray upstairs if she had not been assisted in
private by her mistress, who now sat in state pretending not to know what
cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we
knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the
morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

There were one or two consequences arising from this general but
unacknowledged poverty, and this very much acknowledged gentility,
which were not amiss, and which might be introduced into many circles of
society to their great improvement. For instance, the inhabitants of Cranford
kept early hours, and clattered home in their pattens, under the guidance of
a lantern-bearer, about nine o'clock at night; and the whole town was abed
and asleep by half-past ten. Moreover, it was considered "vulgar" (a
tremendous word in Cranford) to give anything expensive, in the way of
eatable or drinkable, at the evening entertainments. Wafer bread-and-butter
and sponge-biscuits were all that the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson gave; and
she was sister-in-law to the late Earl of Glenmire, although she did practise
such "elegant economy."

"Elegant economy!" How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of
Cranford! There, economy was always "elegant," and money-spending
always "vulgar and ostentatious"; a sort of sour-grapeism which made us
very peaceful and satisfied. I never shall forget the dismay felt when a
certain Captain Brown came to live at Cranford and openly spoke about his
being poor—not in a whisper to an intimate friend, the doors and windows
being previously closed, but in the public street! in a loud military voice!
alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a particular house. The ladies
of Cranford were already rather moaning over the invasion of their
territories by a man and a gentleman. He was a half-pay captain, and had
obtained some situation on a neighbouring railroad, which had been
vehemently petitioned against by the little town; and if, in addition to his
masculine gender, and his connection with the obnoxious railroad, he was
so brazen as to talk of being poor—why then, indeed, he must be sent to
Coventry…. We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we
associated on terms of visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty
from doing anything that they wished. If we walked to or from a party, it
was because the night was so fine, or the air so refreshing, not because

sedan-chairs were expensive. If we wore prints instead of summer silks, it
was because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till we blinded
ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people of very moderate
means. Of course, then, we did not know what to make of a man who could
speak of poverty as if it was not a disgrace. Yet, somehow, Captain Brown
made himself respected in Cranford, and was called upon, in spite of all
resolutions to the contrary. I was surprised to hear his opinions quoted as
authority at a visit which I paid to Cranford about a year after he had settled
in the town. My old friends had been among the bitterest opponents of any
proposal to visit the captain and his daughters, only twelve months before;
and now he was even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve. True, it
was to discover the cause of a smoking chimney, before the fire was
lighted; but still Captain Brown walked upstairs, nothing daunted, spoke in
a voice too large for the room, and joked quite in the way of a tame man
about the house. He had been blind to all the small slights, and omissions of
trivial ceremonies, with which he had been received. He had been friendly,
though the Cranford ladies had been cool; he had answered small sarcastic
compliments in good faith; and, with his manly frankness, had overpowered
all the shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor.
And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense and his facility in
devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas had gained him an
extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself
went on in his course as unaware of his popularity as he had been of the
reverse; and I am sure he was startled one day when he found his advice so
highly esteemed as to make some counsel which he had given in jest to be
taken in sober, serious earnest.

It was on this subject: An old lady had an Alderney cow, which she
looked upon as a daughter. You could not pay the short quarter of an hour
call without being told of the wonderful milk or wonderful intelligence of
this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betsy Barker's

Alderney; therefore great was the sympathy and regret when, in an
unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a lime-pit. She moaned so
loudly that she was soon heard and rescued; but meanwhile the poor beast
had lost most of her hair and came out looking naked, cold, and miserable,
in a bare skin. Everybody pitied the animal, though a few could not restrain
their smiles at her droll appearance. Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried
with sorrow and dismay; and it was said she thought of trying a bath of oil.
This remedy, perhaps, was recommended by some one of the number whose
advice she asked; but the proposal, if ever it was made, was knocked on the
head by Captain Brown's decided "Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel
drawers, ma'am, if you wish to keep her alive. But my advice is, kill the
poor creature at once."

Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes, and thanked the captain heartily. She
set to work, and by and by all the town turned out to see the Alderney
meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark grey flannel. I have watched her
myself many a time. Do you ever see cows dressed in grey flannel in
London?

Captain Brown had taken a small house on the outskirts of the town,
where he had lived with his two daughters. He must have been upwards of
sixty at the time of the first visit I paid to Cranford after I had left it as a
residence. But he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic figure, a stiff military
throw-back of his head, and a springing step, which made him appear much
younger than he was. His eldest daughter looked almost as old as himself,
and betrayed the fact that his real was more than his apparent age. Miss
Brown must have been forty; she had a sickly, pained, careworn expression
on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of youth had long faded out of sight.
Even when young she must have been plain and hard-featured. Miss Jessie
Brown was ten years younger than her sister, and twenty shades prettier.
Her face was round and dimpled. Miss Jenkyns once said, in a passion

against Captain Brown (the cause of which I will tell you presently), that
"she thought it was time for Miss Jessie to leave off her dimples, and not
always to be trying to look like a child." It was true there was something
childlike in her face; and there will be, I think, till she dies, though she
should live to a hundred. Her eyes were large, blue, wondering eyes,
looking straight at you; her nose was unformed and snub, and her lips were
red and dewy; she wore her hair, too, in little rows of curls, which
heightened this appearance. I do not know whether she was pretty or not;
but I liked her face, and so did everybody, and I do not think she could help
her dimples. She had something of her father's jauntiness of gait and
manner; and any female observer might detect a slight difference in the
attire of the two sisters—that of Miss Jessie being about two pounds per
annum more expensive than Miss Brown's. Two pounds was a large sum in
Captain Brown's annual disbursements.

Such was the impression made upon me by the Brown family when I first
saw them all together in Cranford Church. The captain I had met before—
on the occasion of the smoky chimney, which he had cured by some simple
alteration in the flue. In church, he held his double eye-glass to his eyes
during the Morning Hymn, and then lifted up his head erect and sang out
loud and joyfully. He made the responses louder than the clerk—an old man
with a piping, feeble voice, who, I think, felt aggrieved at the captain's
sonorous bass, and quavered higher and higher in consequence.

On coming out of church the brisk captain paid the most gallant attention
to his two daughters. He nodded and smiled to his acquaintances; but he
shook hands with none until he had helped Miss Brown to unfurl her
umbrella, had relieved her of her prayer-book, and had waited patiently till
she, with trembling, nervous hands, had taken up her gown to walk through
the wet roads.

I wondered what the Cranford ladies did with Captain Brown at their
parties. We had often rejoiced, in former days, that there was no gentleman
to be attended to, and to find conversation for, at the card-parties. We had
congratulated ourselves upon the snugness of the evenings; and, in our love
for gentility, and distaste of mankind, we had almost persuaded ourselves
that to be a man was to be "vulgar"; so that when I found my friend and
hostess, Miss Jenkyns, was going to have a party in my honour, and that
Captain and the Miss Browns were invited, I wondered much what could be
the course of the evening. Card-tables, with green-baize tops were set out
by daylight, just as usual; it was the third week in November, so the evening
closed in about four. Candles, and clean packs of cards were arranged in
each table. The fire was made up; the neat maid-servant had received her
last directions; and there we stood, dressed in our best, each with a candle-
lighter in our hands, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock
came. Parties in Cranford were solemn festivities, making the ladies feel
gravely elated as they sat together in their best dresses. As soon as three had
arrived, we sat down to "Preference," I being the unlucky fourth. The next
four comers were put down immediately to another table; and presently the
tea-trays, which I had seen set out in the storeroom as I passed in the
morning, were placed each on the middle of a card-table. The china was
delicate eggshell; the old-fashioned silver glittered with polishing; but the
eatables were of the slightest description. While the trays were yet on the
tables, Captain and the Miss Browns came in; and I could see that,
somehow or other, the captain was a favourite with all the ladies present.
Ruffled brows were smoothed, sharp voices lowered at his approach. Miss
Brown looked ill, and depressed almost to gloom. Miss Jessie smiled as
usual, and seemed nearly as popular as her father. He immediately and
quietly assumed the man's place in the room; attended to every one's wants,
lessened the pretty maid-servant's labour by waiting on empty cups and
bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so dignified a manner, and

so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak,
that he was a true man throughout. He played for threepenny points with as
grave an interest as if they had been pounds; and yet, in all his attention to
strangers, he had an eye on his suffering daughter—for suffering I was sure
she was, though to many eyes she might only appear to be irritable. Miss
Jessie could not play cards; but she talked to the sitters-out, who, before her
coming, had been rather inclined to be cross. She sang, too, to an old
cracked piano, which I think had been a spinet in its youth. Miss Jessie sang
"Jock of Hazeldean" a little out of tune; but we were none of us musical,
though Miss Jenkyns beat time, out of time, by way of appearing to be so.

It was very good of Miss Jenkyns to do this; for I had seen that, a little
before, she had been a good deal annoyed by Miss Jessie Brown's
unguarded admission (apropos of Shetland wool) that she had an uncle, her
mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper in Edinburgh. Miss Jenkyns tried to
drown this confession by a terrible cough—for the Honourable Mrs.
Jamieson was sitting at the card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and what would
she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a
shopkeeper's niece! But Miss Jessie Brown (who had no tact, as we all
agreed the next morning) would repeat the information, and assure Miss
Pole she could easily get her identical Shetland wool required, "through my
uncle, who has the best assortment of Shetland goods of any one in
Edinboro'." It was to take the taste of this out of our mouths, and the sound
of this out of our ears, that Miss Jenkyns proposed music; so I say again, it
was very good of her to beat time to the song.

When the trays reappeared with biscuits and wine, punctually at a quarter
to nine, there was conversation, comparing of cards, talking over tricks; but
by and by Captain Brown sported a bit of literature.

"Have you seen any numbers of The Pickwick Papers?" said he. (They
were then publishing in parts.) "Capital thing!"

Now Miss Jenkyns was daughter of a deceased rector of Cranford; and,
on the strength of a number of manuscript sermons and a pretty good library
of divinity, considered herself literary, and looked upon any conversation
about books as a challenge to her. So she answered and said, "Yes, she had
seen them; indeed, she might say she had read them."

"And what do you think of them?" exclaimed Captain Brown. "Aren't
they famously good?"

So urged, Miss Jenkyns could not but speak.

"I must say, I don't think they are by any means equal to Dr. Johnson.
Still, perhaps, the author is young. Let him persevere, and who knows what
he may become if he will take the great Doctor for his model." This was
evidently too much for Captain Brown to take placidly; and I saw the words
on the tip of his tongue before Miss Jenkyns had finished her sentence.

"It is quite a different sort of thing, my dear madam," he began.

"I am quite aware of that," returned she. "And I make allowances,
Captain Brown."

"Just allow me to read you a scene out of this month's number," pleaded
he. "I had it only this morning, and I don't think the company can have read
it yet."

"As you please," said she, settling herself with an air of resignation. He
read the account of the "swarry" which Sam Weller gave at Bath. Some of
us laughed heartily. I did not dare, because I was staying in the house. Miss

Jenkyns sat in patient gravity. When it was ended, she turned to me, and
said, with mild dignity:

"Fetch me Rasselas, my dear, out of the book-room."

When I brought it to her, she turned to Captain Brown—

"Now allow me to read you a scene, and then the present company can
judge between your favourite, Mr. Boz, and Dr. Johnson."

She read one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac, in a high-
pitched, majestic voice; and when she had ended, she said, "I imagine I am
now justified in my preference of Dr. Johnson as a writer of fiction." The
captain screwed his lips out, and drummed on the table, but he did not
speak. She thought she would give a finishing blow or two.

"I consider it vulgar, and below the dignity of literature, to publish in
numbers."

"How was the Rambler published, ma'am?" asked Captain Brown, in a
low voice, which I think Miss Jenkyns could not have heard.

"Dr. Johnson's style is a model for young beginners. My father
recommended it to me when I began to write letters—I have formed my
own style upon it; I recommend it to your favourite."

"I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such
pompous writing," said Captain Brown.

Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront, in a way of which the
Captain had not dreamed. Epistolary writing she and her friends considered
as her forte. Many a copy of many a letter have I seen written and corrected
on the slate, before she "seized the half-hour just previous to post-time to

assure" her friends of this or of that; and Dr. Johnson was, as she said, her
model in these compositions. She drew herself up with dignity, and only
replied to Captain Brown's last remark by saying, with marked emphasis on
every syllable, "I prefer Dr. Johnson to Mr. Boz."

It is said—I won't vouch for the fact—that Captain Brown was heard to
say, sotto voce, "D——n Dr. Johnson!" If he did, he was penitent
afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkyns's arm-chair,
and endeavouring to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing
subject. But she was inexorable. The next day she made the remark I have
mentioned about Miss Jessie's dimples.

SALLY SIMPKIN'S LAMENT; OR JOHN JONES'S KIT-CAT-
ASTROPHE
[Sidenote: Hood]

"Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
And quite in middling haste?
It is the picture of my Jones,
And painted to the waist.

"It is not painted to the life,
For where's the trousers blue?
Oh, Jones, my dear!—Oh dear! my Jones,
What is become of you?"

"Oh! Sally dear, it is too true,—
The half that you remark
Is come to say my other half
Is bit off by a shark!

"Oh! Sally, sharks do things by halves,
Yet most completely do!
A bite in one place seems enough,
But I've been bit in two.

"You know I once was all your own,
But now a shark must share!
But let that pass—for now to you
I'm neither here nor there.

"Alas! death has a strange divorce
Effected in the sea,
It has divided me from you,
And even me from me.

"Don't fear my ghost will walk o' nights,
To haunt, as people say;
My ghost can't walk, for oh! my legs
Are many leagues away!

"Lord! think, when I am swimming round,
And looking where the boat is,
A shark just snaps away a half
Without a quarter's notice.

"One half is here, the other half
Is near Columbia placed:
Oh! Sally, I have got the whole
Atlantic for my waist.

"But now adieu—a long adieu!
I've solved death's awful riddle,