The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1
by Charles Lamb · English · Gutenberg #40988 · 1,373,048 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1
Author: Charles Lamb
Mary Lamb
Editor: E. V. Lucas
Release date: October 8, 2012 [eBook #40988]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40988
Credits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB — VOLUME 1 ***
THE WORKS OF
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
I. MISCELLANEOUS PROSE (1798-1834)
BY THE SAME EDITOR
The Life of Charles Lamb
Mr. Ingleside
Over Bemerton's
Listener's Lure
One Day and Another
Fireside and Sunshine
Character and Comedy
Old Lamps for New
The Hambledon Men
The Open Road
The Friendly Town
Her Infinite Variety
Good Company
The Gentlest Art
The Second Post
A Swan and Her Friends
A Wanderer in London
A Wanderer in Holland
A Wanderer in Paris
Highways and Byways in Sussex
Anne's Terrible Good Nature
The Slowcoach
Sir Pulteney
and
The Pocket Edition of the Works of Charles Lamb: I. Miscellaneous Prose;
II. Elia; III. Children's Books; IV. Poems and Plays; V. and VI.
Letters.
[Illustration: _Charles Lamb (aged 30)_
_In the dress of a Venetian Senator._
_From a painting by William Hazlitt._]
MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
BY
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
EDITED BY
E. V. LUCAS
WITH A FRONTISPIECE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in this form (Fcap. 8vo) in 1912_
_This Work was first Published in Seven Volumes (Demy 8vo) in 1903-5_
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
This edition is the same as that in seven large volumes published
between 1903 and 1905, except that it has been revised and amended and
arranged in more companionable shape. Some new matter is included; some
doubtful matter has been removed; and the notes, although occasionally
enriched, have been reduced in number and often condensed. For completer
annotation as well as for portraits and accessory illustrations the old
edition must be consulted.
The present volume contains all Lamb's prose, with the exception of his
work for children, his full notes in the Dramatic Specimens and Garrick
Extracts, his prose plays and the Elia essays. The contents have been
arranged in their order of publication, the earliest dating from 1798,
when Lamb was twenty-three, and the latest belonging to 1834, the year
of his death--thus covering the whole of his literary life.
In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian
symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's
Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner
Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells
are those which once stood out from the façade of St. Dunstan's Church
in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's
Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the
candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of mine.
E. V. L.
CONTENTS
TEXT NOTE
PAGE PAGE
Rosamund Gray 1 438
Curious fragments, extracted from a commonplace-book
which belonged to Robert Burton, the famous Author
of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ 35 440
Early Journalism 41 442
I. G. F. Cooke in "Richard the Third" 41 442
II. Grand State Bed 44 442
III. Fable for Twelfth Day 44 444
IV. The Londoner 46 444
Characters of Dramatic Writers, Contemporary with
Shakspeare 48 445
On the Inconveniences Resulting from Being Hanged 65 445
On the Danger of Confounding Moral with Personal Deformity:
with a Hint to those who have the Framing
of Advertisements for Apprehending Offenders 74 448
On the Ambiguities Arising from Proper Names 80 448
On the Genius and Character of Hogarth; with some
Remarks on a Passage in the Writings of the Late
Mr. Barry 81 448
On the Custom of Hissing at the Theatres, with some
Account of a Club of Damned Authors 101 449
On Burial Societies; and the Character of an
Undertaker 107 451
On the Tragedies of Shakspeare, Considered with Reference
to their Fitness for Stage Representation 112 451
Specimens from the Writings of Fuller, the Church
Historian 130 453
Edax on Appetite 138 454
_Hospita_ on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Pleasures of
the Palate 145 454
The Good Clerk, a Character; with some Account of "The
Complete English Tradesman" 148 455
Memoir of Robert Lloyd 153 455
Confessions of a Drunkard 154 456
Recollections of Christ's Hospital 162 460
Table-Talk in _The Examiner_ 174 464
I. Reynolds and Leonardo Da Vinci 174 464
II. The New Acting 176 465
III. Books with one Idea in them 178 466
IV. A Sylvan Surprise 179 467
V. Street Conversation 179 467
VI. A Town Residence 180 467
VII. Gray's _Bard_ 181 468
VIII. An American War for Helen 182 468
IX. Dryden and Collier 183 468
X. Play-house Memoranda 184 468
Review of _The Excursion_ 187 469
On the Melancholy of Tailors 200 473
On Needle-work 204 477
On the Poetical Works of George Wither 210 477
Five Dramatic Criticisms 215 484
I. Mrs. Gould (Miss Burrell) in "Don Giovanni" 215 484
II. Miss Kelly at Bath 217 485
III. Richard Brome's "Jovial Crew" 219 486
IV. Isaac Bickerstaff's "Hypocrite" 221 489
V. New Pieces at the Lyceum 222 490
Four Reviews 225 491
I. _Falstaff's Letters_ 225 491
II. Charles Lloyd's Poems 229 493
III. Barron Field's Poems 232 493
IV. Keats' "Lamia" 235 494
Sir Thomas More 239 495
The Confessions of H. F. V. H. Delamore, Esq. 246 496
The Gentle Giantess 248 497
Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been
Neglected 251 497
Ritson _versus_ John Scott the Quaker 257 498
Letter of Elia to Robert Southey 265 498
Guy Faux 278 509
Nugæ Criticæ: On a Passage in "The Tempest" 285 511
Original Letter of James Thomson 288 512
Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston 292 512
A Vision of Horns 299 513
The Illustrious Defunct 304 514
Unitarian Protests 310 514
Autobiography of Mr. Munden 314 515
The "Lepus" Papers 317 515
I. Many Friends 317 516
II. Readers against the Grain 319 516
III. Mortifications of an Author 322 516
IV. Tom Pry 324 516
V. Tom Pry's Wife 326 517
VI. A Character 327 517
Reflections in the Pillory 329 518
The Last Peach 333 519
"Odes and Addresses to Great People" 335 519
The Religion of Actors 337 521
A Popular Fallacy 340 523
Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of Birmingham 342 523
Contributions to Hone's _Every-Day Book_ and _Table Book_ 349 523
I. Remarkable Correspondent 349 527
II. Captain Starkey 351 528
III. Twelfth of August 354 528
IV. The Ass 356 529
V. _In re_ Squirrels 359 530
VI. An Appearance of the Season 360 531
VII. The Months 361 531
VIII. Reminiscence of Sir Jeffery Dunstan 366 532
IX. Mrs. Gilpin Riding to Edmonton 368 533
X. The Defeat of Time 369 534
An Autobiographical Sketch 375 535
Shakspeare's Improvers 376 535
Saturday Night 379 537
Estimate of De Foe's Secondary Novels 381 537
Clarence Songs 383 539
Recollections of a Late Royal Academician 385 540
The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne 391 544
The Death of Munden 397 545
Thoughts on Presents of Game, &c. 398 546
Table-Talk by the Late Elia 400 547
The Death of Coleridge 406 549
Cupid's Revenge 407 550
APPENDIX
ESSAYS AND NOTES NOT CERTAIN TO BE LAMB'S, BUT PROBABLY HIS
Scraps of Criticism 425 551
The Miscellany 427 552
Review of Dibdin's _Comic Tales_ 429 552
Dog Days 430 553
The Progress of Cant 431 554
Mr. Ephraim Wagstaff 432 554
Review of Moxon's Sonnets 435 554
NOTES 437
FRONTISPIECE
CHARLES LAMB (AGED 30) IN THE DRESS OF A VENETIAN SENATOR
From A Painting By William Hazlitt Now in the National Portrait
Gallery
ROSAMUND GRAY
(WRITTEN 1797-1798. FIRST EDITION 1798. TEXT OF 1818)
CHAPTER I
It was noontide. The sun was very hot. An old gentlewoman sat spinning
in a little arbour at the door of her cottage. She was blind; and her
grandaughter was reading the Bible to her. The old lady had just left
her work, to attend to the story of Ruth.
"Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto her." It was a
passage she could not let pass without a _comment_. The moral she drew
from it was not very _new_, to be sure. The girl had heard it a hundred
times before--and a hundred times more she could have heard it, without
suspecting it to be tedious. Rosamund loved her grandmother.
The old lady loved Rosamund too; and she had reason for so doing.
Rosamund was to her at once a child and a servant. She had only _her_
left in the world. They two lived together.
They had once known better days. The story of Rosamund's parents, their
failure, their folly, and distresses, may be told another time. Our tale
hath grief enough in it.
It was now about a year and a half since old Margaret Gray had sold off
all her effects, to pay the debts of Rosamund's father--just after the
mother had died of a broken heart; for her husband had fled his country
to hide his shame in a foreign land. At that period the old lady retired
to a small cottage, in the village of Widford, in Hertfordshire.
Rosamund, in her thirteenth year, was left destitute, without fortune or
friends: she went with her grandmother. In all this time she had served
her faithfully and lovingly.
Old Margaret Gray, when she first came into these parts, had eyes, and
could see. The neighbours said, they had been dimmed by weeping: be that
as it may, she was latterly grown quite blind. "God is very good to us,
child; I can _feel_ you yet." This she would sometimes say; and we need
not wonder to hear, that Rosamund clave unto her grandmother.
Margaret retained a spirit unbroken by calamity. There was a principle
_within_, which it seemed as if no outward circumstances could reach. It
was a _religious_ principle, and she had taught it to Rosamund; for the
girl had mostly resided with her grandmother from her earliest years.
Indeed she had taught her all that she knew herself; and the old lady's
knowledge did not extend a vast way.
Margaret had drawn her maxims from observation; and a pretty long
experience in life had contributed to make her, at times, a little
_positive_: but Rosamund never argued with her grandmother.
Their library consisted chiefly in a large family Bible, with notes and
expositions by various learned expositors from Bishop Jewell downwards.
This might never be suffered to lie about like other books--but was kept
constantly wrapt up in a handsome case of green velvet, with gold
tassels--the only relick of departed grandeur they had brought with them
to the cottage--every thing else of value had been sold off for the
purpose above mentioned.
This Bible Rosamund, when a child, had never dared to open without
permission; and even yet, from habit, continued the custom. Margaret had
parted with none of her _authority_; indeed it was never exerted with
much harshness; and happy was Rosamund, though a girl grown, when she
could obtain leave to read her Bible. It was a treasure too valuable for
an indiscriminate use; and Margaret still pointed out to her
grandaughter _where to read_.
Besides this, they had the "Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's
Recreation," with cuts--"Pilgrim's Progress," the first part--a Cookery
Book, with a few dry sprigs of rosemary and lavender stuck here and
there between the leaves, (I suppose, to point to some of the old lady's
most favorite receipts,) and there was "Wither's Emblems," an old book,
and quaint. The old fashioned pictures in this last book were among the
first exciters of the infant Rosamund's curiosity. Her contemplation
had fed upon them in rather older years.
Rosamund had not read many books besides these; or if any, they had been
only occasional companions: these were to Rosamund as old friends, that
she had long known. I know not whether the peculiar cast of her mind
might not be traced, in part, to a tincture she had received, early in
life, from Walton, and Wither, from John Bunyan, and her Bible.
Rosamund's mind was pensive and reflective, rather than what passes
usually for _clever_ or _acute_. From a child she was remarkably shy and
thoughtful--this was taken for stupidity and want of feeling; and the
child has been sometimes whipt for being a _stubborn thing_, when her
little heart was almost bursting with affection.
Even now her grandmother would often reprove her, when she found her too
grave or melancholy; give her sprightly lectures about good humour and
rational mirth; and not unfrequently fall a crying herself, to the great
discredit of her lecture. Those tears endeared her the more to Rosamund.
Margaret would say, "Child, I love you to cry, when I think you are only
remembering your poor dear father and mother--I would have you think
about them sometimes--it would be strange if you did not--but I fear,
Rosamund; I fear, girl, you sometimes think too deeply about your own
situation and poor prospects in life. When you do so, you do
wrong--remember the naughty rich man in the parable. He never had any
good thoughts about God, and his religion: and that might have been your
case."
Rosamund, at these times, could not reply to her; she was not in the
habit of _arguing_ with her grandmother; so she was quite silent on
these occasions--or else the girl knew well enough herself, that she had
only been sad to think of the desolate condition of her best friend, to
see her, in her old age, so infirm and blind. But she had never been
used to make excuses, when the old lady said she was doing wrong.
The neighbours were all very kind to them. The veriest rustics never
passed them without a bow, or a pulling off of the hat--some shew of
courtesy, aukward indeed, but affectionate--with a "good morrow, madam,"
or "young madam," as it might happen.
Rude and savage natures, who seem born with a propensity to express
contempt for any thing that looks like prosperity, yet felt respect for
its declining lustre.
The farmers, and better sort of people, (as they are called,) all
promised to provide for Rosamund, when her grandmother should die.
Margaret trusted in God, and believed them.
She used to say, "I have lived many years in the world, and have never
known people, _good people_, to be left without some friend; a relation,
a benefactor, a _something_. God knows our wants--that it is not good
for man or woman to be alone; and he always sends us a helpmate, a
leaning-place, a _somewhat_." Upon this sure ground of experience, did
Margaret build her trust in Providence.
CHAPTER II
Rosamund had just made an end of her story, (as I was about to relate,)
and was listening to the application of the moral, (which said
application she was old enough to have made herself, but her grandmother
still continued to treat her, in many respects, as a child, and Rosamund
was in no haste to lay claim to the title of womanhood,) when a young
gentleman made his appearance, and interrupted them.
It was young Allan Clare, who had brought a present of peaches, and some
roses, for Rosamund.
He laid his little basket down on a seat of the arbour; and in a
respectful tone of voice, as though he were addressing a parent,
enquired of Margaret "how she did."
The old lady seemed pleased with his attentions--answered his enquiries
by saying, that "her cough was less troublesome a-nights, but she had
not yet got rid of it, and probably she never might; but she did not
like to teaze young people with an account of her infirmities."
A few kind words passed on either side, when young Clare, glancing a
tender look at the girl, who had all this time been silent, took leave
of them with saying "I shall bring _Elinor_ to see you in the evening."
When he was gone, the old lady began to prattle.
"That is a sweet dispositioned youth, and I _do_ love him dearly, I must
say it--there is such a modesty in all he says or does--he should not
come here so often, to be sure, but I don't know how to help it; there
is so much goodness in him, I can't find in my heart to forbid him. But,
Rosamund, girl, I must tell you beforehand; when you grow older, Mr.
Clare must be no companion for _you_--while you were both so young, it
was all very well--but the time is coming, when folks will think harm of
it, if a rich young gentleman, like Mr. Clare, comes so often to our
poor cottage.--Dost hear, girl? why don't you answer? come, I did not
mean to say any thing to hurt you--speak to me, Rosamund--nay, I must
not have you be sullen--I don't love people that are sullen."
And in this manner was this poor soul running on, unheard and unheeded,
when it occurred to her, that possibly the girl might not be _within
hearing_.
And true it was, that Rosamund had slunk away at the first mention of
Mr. Clare's good qualities: and when she returned, which was not till a
few minutes after Margaret had made an end of her fine harangue, it is
certain her cheeks _did_ look very _rosy_. That might have been from the
heat of the day or from exercise, for she had been walking in the
garden.
Margaret, we know, was blind; and, in this case, it was lucky for
Rosamund that she was so, or she might have made some not unlikely
surmises.
I must not have my reader infer from this, that I at all think it
likely, a young maid of fourteen would fall in love without asking her
grandmother's leave--the thing itself is not to be conceived.
To obviate all suspicions, I am disposed to communicate a little
anecdote of Rosamund.
A month or two back her grandmother had been giving her the strictest
prohibitions, in her walks, not to go near a certain spot, which was
dangerous from the circumstance of a huge overgrown oak tree spreading
its prodigious arms across a deep chalk-pit, which they partly
concealed.
To this fatal place Rosamund came one day--female curiosity, we know, is
older than the flood--let us not think hardly of the girl, if she
partook of the sexual failing.
Rosamund ventured further and further--climbed along one of the
branches--approached the forbidden chasm--her foot slipped--she was not
killed--but it was by a mercy she escaped--other branches intercepted
her fall--and with a palpitating heart she made her way back to the
cottage.
It happened that evening, that her grandmother was in one of her best
humours, caressed Rosamund, talked of old times, and what a blessing it
was they two found a shelter in their little cottage, and in conclusion
told Rosamund, "she was a good girl, and God would one day reward her
for her kindness to her old blind grandmother."
This was more than Rosamund could bear. Her morning's disobedience came
fresh into her mind, she felt she did not deserve all this from
Margaret, and at last burst into a fit of crying, and made confession of
her fault. The old gentlewoman kissed and forgave her.
Rosamund never went near that naughty chasm again.
Margaret would never have heard of this, if Rosamund had not told of it
herself. But this young maid had a delicate moral sense, which would not
suffer her to take advantage of her grandmother, to deceive her, or
conceal any thing from her, though Margaret was old, and blind, and easy
to be imposed upon.
Another virtuous _trait_ I recollect of Rosamund, and, now I am in the
vein, will tell it.
Some, I know, will think these things trifles--and they are so--but if
these _minutiæ_ make my reader better acquainted with Rosamund, I am content
to abide the imputation.
These promises of character, hints, and early indications of a _sweet
nature_, are to me more dear, and choice in the selection, than any of
those pretty wild flowers, which this young maid, this virtuous
Rosamund, has ever gathered in a fine May morning, to make a posy to
place in the bosom of her old blind friend.
Rosamund had a very just notion of drawing, and would often employ her
talent in making sketches of the surrounding scenery.
On a landscape, a larger piece than she had ever yet attempted, she had
now been working for three or four months. She had taken great pains
with it, given much time to it, and it was nearly finished. For _whose_
particular inspection it was designed, I will not venture to conjecture.
We know it could not have been for her grandmother's.
One day she went out on a short errand, and left her landscape on the
table. When she returned she found it _gone_.
Rosamund from the first suspected some mischief, but held her tongue. At
length she made the fatal discovery. Margaret, in her absence, had laid
violent hands on it; not knowing what it was, but taking it for some
waste paper, had torn it in half, and with one half of this elaborate
composition had twisted herself up--a thread-paper!
Rosamund spread out her hands at sight of the disaster, gave her
grandmother a roguish smile, but said not a word. She knew the poor soul
would only fret, if she told her of it,--and when once Margaret was set
a fretting for other people's misfortunes, the fit held her pretty long.
So Rosamund that very afternoon began another piece of the same size and
subject; and Margaret, to her dying day, never dreamed of the mischief
she had unconsciously done.
CHAPTER III
Rosamund Gray was the most beautiful young creature that eyes ever
beheld. Her face had the sweetest expression in it--a gentleness--a
modesty--a timidity--a certain charm--a grace without a name.
There was a sort of melancholy mingled in her smile. It was not the
thoughtless levity of a girl--it was not the restrained simper of
premature womanhood--it was something which the poet Young might have
remembered, when he composed that perfect line,
"Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair."
She was a mild-eyed maid, and every body loved her. Young Allan Clare,
when but a boy, sighed for her.
Her yellow hair fell in bright and curling clusters, like
"those hanging locks
Of young Apollo."
Her voice was trembling and musical. A graceful diffidence pleaded for
her whenever she spake--and, if she said but little, that little found
its way to the heart.
Young, and artless, and innocent, meaning no harm, and thinking none;
affectionate as a smiling infant--playful, yet inobtrusive, as a weaned
lamb--every body loved her. Young Allan Clare, when but a boy, sighed
for her.
* * * * *
The moon is shining in so brightly at my window, where I write, that I
feel it a crime not to suspend my employment awhile to gaze at her.
See how she glideth, in maiden honor, through the clouds, who divide on
either side to do her homage.
Beautiful vision!--as I contemplate thee, an internal harmony is
communicated to my mind, a moral brightness, a tacit analogy of mental
purity; a calm like _that_ we ascribe in fancy to the favored
inhabitants of thy fairy regions, "argent fields."
I marvel not, O moon, that heathen people, in the "olden times," did
worship thy deity--Cynthia, Diana, Hecate. Christian Europe invokes thee
not by these names now--her idolatry is of a blacker stain: Belial is
her God--she worships Mammon.
False things are told concerning thee, fair planet--for I will ne'er
believe, that thou canst take a perverse pleasure in distorting the
brains of us poor mortals. Lunatics! moonstruck! Calumny invented, and
folly took up, these names. I would hope better things from thy mild
aspect and benign influences.
Lady of Heaven, thou lendest thy pure lamp to light the way to the
virgin mourner, when she goes to seek the tomb where her warrior lover
lies.
Friend of the distressed, thou speakest only _peace_ to the lonely
sufferer, who walks forth in the placid evening, beneath thy gentle
light, to chide at fortune, or to complain of changed friends, or
unhappy loves.
Do I dream, or doth not even now a heavenly calm descend from thee into
my bosom, as I meditate on the chaste loves of Rosamund and her Clare?
CHAPTER IV
Allan Clare was just two years elder than Rosamund. He was a boy of
fourteen, when he first became acquainted with her--it was soon after
she had come to reside with her grandmother at Widford.
He met her by chance one day, carrying a pitcher in her hand, which she
had been filling from a neighbouring well--the pitcher was heavy, and
she seemed to be bending with its weight.
Allan insisted on carrying it for her--for he thought it a sin, that a
delicate young maid, like her, should be so employed, and he stand idle
by.
Allan had a propensity to do little kind offices for every body--but at
the sight of Rosamund Gray his first fire was kindled--his young mind
seemed to have found an object, and his enthusiasm was from that time
forth awakened. His visits, from that day, were pretty frequent at the
cottage.
He was never happier than when he could get Rosamund to walk out with
him. He would make her admire the scenes he admired--fancy the wild
flowers he fancied--watch the clouds he was watching--and not
unfrequently repeat to her poetry, which he loved, and make her love it.
On their return, the old lady, who considered them yet as but children,
would bid Rosamund fetch Mr. Clare a glass of her currant wine, a bowl
of new milk, or some cheap dainty, which was more welcome to Allan than
the costliest delicacies of a prince's court.
The boy and girl, for they were no more at that age, grew fond of each
other--more fond than either of them suspected.
"They would sit, and sigh,
And look upon each other, and conceive
Not what they ail'd; yet something they did ail,
And yet were well--and yet they were not well;
And what was their disease, they could not tell.
And thus,
In this first garden of their simpleness
They spent their childhood."
A circumstance had lately happened, which in some sort altered the
nature of their attachment.
Rosamund was one day reading the tale of "Julia de Roubigné"--a book
which young Clare had lent her.
Allan was standing by, looking over her, with one hand thrown round her
neck, and a finger of the other pointing to a passage in Julia's third
letter.
"Maria! in my hours of visionary indulgence, I have sometimes painted to
myself a _husband_--no matter whom--comforting me amidst the distresses,
which fortune had laid upon us. I have smiled upon him through my tears;
tears, not of anguish, but of tenderness;--our children were playing
around us, unconscious of misfortune; we had taught them to be humble,
and to be happy; our little shed was reserved to us, and their smiles to
cheer it.--I have imagined the luxury of such a scene, and affliction
became a part of my dream of happiness."
The girl blushed as she read, and trembled--she had a sort of confused
sensation, that Allan was noticing her--yet she durst not lift her eyes
from the book, but continued reading, scarce knowing what she read.
Allan guessed the cause of her confusion. Allan trembled too--his colour
came and went--his feeling became impetuous--and, flinging both arms
round her neck, he kissed his young favourite.
Rosamund was vexed and pleased, soothed and frightened, all in a
moment--a fit of tears came to her relief.
Allan had indulged before in these little freedoms, and Rosamund had
thought no harm of them--but from this time the girl grew timid and
reserved--distant in her manner, and careful of her behaviour, in
Allan's presence--not seeking his society as before, but rather shunning
it--delighting more to feed upon his idea in absence.
Allan too, from this day, seemed changed: his manner became, though not
less tender, yet more respectful and diffident--his bosom felt a throb
it had till now not known, in the society of Rosamund--and, if he was
less familiar with her than in former times, that charm of delicacy had
superadded a grace to Rosamund, which, while he feared, he loved.
There is a _mysterious character_, heightened indeed by fancy and
passion, but not without foundation in reality and observation, which
true lovers have ever imputed to the object of their affections. This
character Rosamund had now acquired with Allan--something _angelic,
perfect, exceeding nature_.
Young Clare dwelt very near to the cottage. He had lost his parents, who
were rather wealthy, early in life; and was left to the care of a
sister, some ten years older than himself.
Elinor Clare was an excellent young lady--discreet, intelligent, and
affectionate. Allan revered her as a parent, while he loved her as his
own familiar friend. He told all the little secrets of his heart to
her--but there was _one_, which he had hitherto unaccountably concealed
from her--namely, the extent of his regard for Rosamund.
Elinor knew of his visits to the cottage, and was no stranger to the
persons of Margaret and her grandaughter. She had several times met
them, when she had been walking with her brother--a civility usually
passed on either side--but Elinor avoided troubling her brother with any
unseasonable questions.
Allan's heart often beat, and he has been going to tell his sister
_all_--but something like shame (false or true, I shall not stay to
enquire) had hitherto kept him back--still the secret, unrevealed, hung
upon his conscience like a crime--for his temper had a sweet and noble
frankness in it, which bespake him yet a virgin from the world.
There was a fine openness in his countenance--the character of it
somewhat resembled Rosamund's--except that more fire and enthusiasm were
discernible in Allan's--his eyes were of a darker blue than
Rosamund's--his hair was of a chesnut colour--his cheeks ruddy, and
tinged with brown. There was a cordial sweetness in Allan's smile, the
like to which I never saw in any other face.
Elinor had hitherto connived at her brother's attachment to Rosamund.
Elinor, I believe, was something of a physiognomist, and thought she
could trace in the countenance and manner of Rosamund qualities, which
no brother of her's need be ashamed to love.
The time was now come, when Elinor was desirous of knowing her brother's
favorite more intimately--an opportunity offered of breaking the matter
to Allan.
The morning of the day, in which he carried his present of fruit and
flowers to Rosamund, his sister had observed him more than usually busy
in the garden, culling fruit with a nicety of choice not common to him.
She came up to him, unobserved, and, taking him by the arm, enquired,
with a questioning smile--"What are you doing, Allan? and who are those
peaches designed for?"
"For Rosamund Gray"--he replied--and his heart seemed relieved of a
burthen, which had long oppressed it.
"I have a mind to become acquainted with your handsome friend--will you
introduce me, Allan? I think I should like to go and see her this
afternoon."
"Do go, do go, Elinor--you don't know what a good creature she is--and
old blind Margaret, you will like _her_ very much."
His sister promised to accompany him after dinner; and they parted.
Allan gathered no more peaches, but hastily cropping a few roses to
fling into his basket, went away with it half filled, being impatient to
announce to Rosamund the coming of her promised visitor.
CHAPTER V
When Allan returned home, he found an invitation had been left for him,
in his absence, to spend that evening with a young friend, who had just
quitted a public school in London, and was come to pass one night in his
father's house at Widford, previous to his departure the next morning
for Edinburgh University.
It was Allan's bosom friend--they had not met for some months--and it
was probable, a much longer time must intervene, before they should meet
again.
Yet Allan could not help looking a little blank, when he first heard of
the invitation. This was to have been an important evening. But Elinor
soon relieved her brother, by expressing her readiness to go alone to
the cottage.
"I will not lose the pleasure I promised myself, whatever you may
determine upon, Allan--I will go by myself rather than be disappointed."
"Will you, will you, Elinor?"
Elinor promised to go--and I believe, Allan, on a second thought, was
not very sorry to be spared the aukwardness of introducing two persons
to each other, both so dear to him, but either of whom might happen not
much to fancy the other.
At times, indeed, he was confident that Elinor _must_ love Rosamund, and
Rosamund _must_ love Elinor--but there were also times in which he felt
misgivings--it was an event he could scarce hope for very joy!
Allan's _real presence_ that evening was more at the cottage than at the
house, where his _bodily semblance_ was visiting--his friend could not
help complaining of a certain absence of mind, a _coldness_ he called
it.
It might have been expected, and in the course of things predicted, that
Allan would have asked his friend some questions of what had happened
since their last meeting, what his feelings were on leaving school, the
probable time when they should meet again, and a hundred natural
questions which friendship is most lavish of at such times; but nothing
of all this ever occurred to Allan--they did not even settle the method
of their future correspondence.
The consequence was, as might have been expected, Allan's friend thought
him much altered, and, after his departure, sat down to compose a
doleful sonnet about a "faithless friend."--I do not find that he ever
finished it--indignation, or a dearth of rhymes, causing him to break
off in the middle.
CHAPTER VI
In my catalogue of the little library at the cottage, I forgot to
mention a book of Common Prayer. My reader's fancy might easily have
supplied the omission--old ladies of Margaret's stamp (God bless them)
may as well be without their spectacles, or their elbow chair, as their
prayer book--I love them for it.
Margaret's was a handsome octavo, printed by Baskerville, the binding
red, and fortified with silver at the edges. Out of this book it was
their custom every afternoon to read the proper psalms appointed for the
day.
The way they managed was this: they took verse by verse--Rosamund _read_
her little portion, and Margaret repeated hers, in turn, from
memory--for Margaret could say all the Psalter by heart, and a good part
of the Bible besides. She would not unfrequently put the girl right when
she stumbled or skipped. This Margaret imputed to giddiness--a quality
which Rosamund was by no means remarkable for--but old ladies, like
Margaret, are not in all instances alike discriminative.
They had been employed in this manner just before Miss Clare arrived at
the cottage. The psalm they had been reading was the hundred and
fourth--Margaret was naturally led by it into a discussion of the works
of creation.
There had been _thunder_ in the course of the day--an occasion of
instruction which the old lady never let pass--she began--
"Thunder has a very awful sound--some say, God Almighty is angry
whenever it thunders--that it is the voice of God speaking to us--for my
part, I am not afraid of it"--
And in this manner the old lady was going on to particularise, as usual,
its beneficial effects, in clearing the air, destroying of vermin, &c.
when the entrance of Miss Clare put an end to her discourse.
Rosamund received her with respectful tenderness--and, taking her
grandmother by the hand, said, with great sweetness, "Miss Clare is come
to see you, grandmother."
"I beg pardon, lady--I cannot _see_ you--but you are heartily
welcome--is your brother with you, Miss Clare? I don't hear him."--
"He could not come, madam, but he sends his love by me."
"You have an excellent brother, Miss Clare--but pray do us the honor to
take some refreshment--Rosamund"----
And the old lady was going to give directions for a bottle of her
currant wine--when Elinor, smiling, said "she was come to take a cup of
tea with her, and expected to find no ceremony."
"After tea, I promise myself a walk with _you_, Rosamund, if your
grandmother can spare you."--Rosamund looked at her grandmother.
"O, for that matter, I should be sorry to debar the girl from any
pleasure--I am sure it's lonesome enough for her to be with _me_
always--and if Miss Clare will take you out, child, I shall do very well
by myself till you return--it will not be the first time, you know, that
I have been left here alone--some of the neighbours will be dropping in
bye and bye--or, if _not_, I shall take no harm."
Rosamund had all the simple manners of a child--she kissed her
grandmother, and looked happy.
All tea-time the old lady's discourse was little more than a panegyric
on young Clare's good qualities. Elinor looked at her young friend, and
smiled. Rosamund was beginning to look grave--but there was a cordial
sunshine in the face of Elinor, before which any clouds of reserve, that
had been gathering on Rosamund's soon brake away.
"Does your grandmother ever go out, Rosamund?"
Margaret prevented the girl's reply, by saying--"my dear young lady, I
am an old woman, and very infirm--Rosamund takes me a few paces beyond
the door sometimes--but I walk very badly--I love best to sit in our
little arbour, when the sun shines--I can yet feel it warm and
cheerful--and, if I lose the beauties of the season, I shall be very
happy if you and Rosamund can take delight in this fine summer evening."
"I shall want to rob you of Rosamund's company now and then, if we like
one another. I had hoped to have seen _you_, madam, at our house. I
don't know whether we could not make room for you to come and live with
us--what say you to it?--Allan would be proud to tend you, I am sure;
and Rosamund and I should be nice company."
Margaret was all unused to such kindnesses, and wept--Margaret had a
great spirit--yet she was not above accepting an obligation from a
worthy person--there was a delicacy in Miss Clare's manner--she could
have no interest, but pure goodness, to induce her to make the offer--at
length the old lady spake from a full heart.
"Miss Clare, this little cottage received us in our distress--it gave us
shelter when we had _no home_--we have praised God in it--and, while
life remains, I think I shall never part from it--Rosamund does every
thing for me--"
"And will do, grandmother, as long as I live;"--and then Rosamund fell a
crying.
"You are a good girl, Rosamund, and if you do but find friends when I am
dead and gone, I shall want no better accommodation while I live--but,
God bless you, lady, a thousand times, for your kind offer."
Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund
prepare for her walk. The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor
thought she had never beheld so lovely a creature.
They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together--they rambled over
all Rosamund's favourite haunts--through many a sunny field--by secret
glade or woodwalk, where the girl had wandered so often with her beloved
Clare.
Who now so happy as Rosamund? She had oft-times heard Allan speak with
great tenderness of his sister--she was now rambling, arm in arm, with
that very sister, the "vaunted sister" of her friend, her beloved Clare.
Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but revived
in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps, or some
chaste endearment. Life, and a new scene of things, were now opening
before her--she was got into a fairy land of uncertain existence.
Rosamund was too happy to talk much--but Elinor was delighted with her
when she _did_ talk:--the girl's remarks were suggested, most of them,
by the passing scene--and they betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of
present impulse:--her conversation did not consist in a comparison of
vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep--it had all the
freshness of young sensation in it.
Sometimes they talked of Allan.
"Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good _indeed_ to my
grandmother--he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to
her, and try to divert her a hundred ways. I wonder sometimes he is not
tired. She talks him to death!"
"Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady _does_ tire _you_
sometimes."
"Oh no, I did not mean _that_--it's very different--I am used to all her
ways, and I can humour her, and please her, and I ought to do it, for
she is the only friend I ever had in the world."
The new friends did not conclude their walk till it was late, and
Rosamund began to be apprehensive about the old lady, who had been all
this time alone.
On their return to the cottage, they found that Margaret had been
somewhat impatient--old ladies, _good old ladies_, will be so at
times--age is timorous and suspicious of danger, where no danger is.
Besides, it was Margaret's bed-time, for she kept very good
hours--indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundry other
particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than
might well beseem a creature of this.
So the new friends parted for that night--Elinor having made Margaret
promise to give Rosamund leave to come and see her the next day.
CHAPTER VII
Miss Clare, we may be sure, made her brother very happy, when she told
him of the engagement she had made for the morrow, and how delighted she
had been with his handsome friend.
Allan, I believe, got little sleep that night. I know not, whether joy
be not a more troublesome bed-fellow than grief--hope keeps a body very
wakeful, I know.
Elinor Clare was the best good creature--the least selfish human being I
ever knew--always at work for other people's good, planning other
people's happiness--continually forgetful to consult for her own
personal gratifications, except indirectly, in the welfare of
another--while her parents lived, the most attentive of daughters--since
they died, the kindest of sisters--I never knew but _one_ like her.
It happens that I have some of this young lady's _letters_ in my
possession--I shall present my reader with one of them. It was written
a short time after the death of her mother, and addressed to a cousin, a
dear friend of Elinor's, who was then on the point of being married to
Mr. Beaumont, of Staffordshire, and had invited Elinor to assist at her
nuptials. I will transcribe it with minute fidelity.
* * * * *
_Elinor Clare to Maria Leslie_
Widford, July the --, 17--.
Health, Innocence, and Beauty, shall be thy bridemaids, my sweet cousin.
I have no heart to undertake the office. Alas! what have I to do in the
house of feasting?
Maria! I fear lest my griefs should prove obtrusive. Yet bear with me a
little--I have recovered already a share of my former spirits.
I fear more for Allan than myself. The loss of two such parents, with so
short an interval, bears very heavy on him. The boy _hangs_ about me
from morning till night. He is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor
pale cheeks--you know the sweetness of his smile, Maria.
To-day, after dinner, when he took his glass of wine in his hand, he
burst into tears, and would not, or could not then, tell me the
reason--afterwards he told me--"he had been used to drink Mamma's health
after dinner, and _that_ came in his head and made him cry." I feel the
claims the boy has upon me--I perceive that I am living to _some
end_--and the thought supports me.
Already I have attained to a state of complacent feelings--my mother's
lessons were not thrown away upon her Elinor.
In the visions of last night her spirit seemed to stand at my
bed-side--a light, as of noon day, shone upon the room--she opened my
curtains--she smiled upon me with the same placid smile as in her
life-time. I felt no fear. "Elinor," she said, "for my sake take care of
young Allan,"--and I awoke with calm feelings.
Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be something
like this?--I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread--I
would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the
little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle
spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from me.
Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me--I
see her sit in her old elbow chair--her arms folded upon her lap--a tear
upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some
inattention--I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips.
Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his
poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the
vision in a moment.
I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the
heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these
things but you--you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion,
and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little--I mourn the
"cherishers of my infancy."
I sometimes count it a blessing, that my father did not prove the
_survivor_. You know something of his story. You know there was a foul
tale current--it was the busy malice of that bad man, S----, which
helped to spread it abroad--you will recollect the active good nature of
our friends W---- and T----; what pains they took to undeceive
people--with the better sort their kind labours prevailed; but there was
still a party who shut their ears. You know the issue of it. My father's
great spirit bore up against it for some time--my father never was a
_bad_ man--but that spirit was broken at the last--and the
greatly-injured man was forced to leave his old paternal dwelling in
Staffordshire--for the neighbours had begun to point at him.--Maria! I
have _seen_ them _point_ at him, and have been ready to drop.
In this part of the country, where the slander had not reached, he
sought a retreat--and he found a still more grateful asylum in the daily
solicitudes of the best of wives.
"An enemy hath done this," I have heard him say--and at such times my
mother would speak to him so soothingly of forgiveness, and
long-suffering, and the bearing of injuries with patience; would heal
all his wounds with so gentle a touch;--I have seen the old man weep
like a child.
The gloom that beset his mind, at times betrayed him into scepticism--he
has doubted if there be a Providence! I have heard him say, "GOD has
built a brave world, but methinks he has left his creatures to bustle in
it _how they may_."
At such times he could not endure to hear my mother talk in a religious
strain. He would say, "Woman, have done--you confound, you perplex me,
when you talk of these matters, and for one day at least unfit me for
the business of life."
I have seen her look at him--O GOD, Maria! such a _look_! it plainly
spake that she was willing to have shared her precious hope with the
partner of her earthly cares--but she found a repulse--
Deprived of such a wife, think you, the old man could have long endured
his existence? or what consolation would his wretched daughter have had
to offer him, but silent and imbecile tears?
My sweet cousin, you will think me tedious--and I am so--but it does me
good to talk these matters over. And do not you be alarmed for me--my
sorrows are subsiding into a deep and sweet resignation. I shall soon be
sufficiently composed, I know it, to participate in my friend's
happiness.
Let me call her, while yet I may, my own Maria Leslie! Methinks, I shall
not like you by any other name. Beaumont! Maria Beaumont! it hath a
strange sound with it--I shall never be reconciled to this name--but do
not you fear--Maria Leslie shall plead with me for Maria Beaumont.
And now, my sweet Friend,
God love you, and your
ELINOR CLARE.
* * * * *
I find in my collection several letters, written soon after the date of
the preceding, and addressed all of them to Maria Beaumont.--I am
tempted to make some short extracts from these--my tale will suffer
interruption by them--but I was willing to preserve whatever memorials I
could of Elinor Clare.
* * * * *
_From Elinor Clare to Maria Beaumont_
(AN EXTRACT)
----"I have been strolling out for half an hour in the fields; and my
mind has been occupied by thoughts, which Maria has a right to
participate. I have been bringing my _mother_ to my recollection. My
heart ached with the remembrance of infirmities, that made her closing
years of life so sore a trial to her.
I was concerned to think, that our family differences have been one
source of disquiet to her. I am sensible that _this last_ we are apt to
exaggerate after a person's death--and surely, in the main, there was
considerable harmony among the members of our little family--still I was
concerned to think, that we ever gave her gentle spirit disquiet.
I thought on years back--on all my parents' friends--the H----s, the
F----s, on D---- S----, and on many a merry evening, in the fire-side
circle, in that comfortable back parlour--it is never used now.--
O ye _Matravises_[1] of the age, ye know not what ye lose, in despising
these petty topics of endeared remembrance, associated circumstances of
past times;--ye know not the throbbings of the heart, tender yet
affectionately familiar, which accompany the dear and honored names of
_father_ or of _mother_.
Maria! I thought on all these things; my heart ached at the review of
them--it yet aches, while I write this--but I am never so satisfied with
my train of thoughts, as when they run upon these subjects--the tears,
they draw from us, meliorate and soften the heart, and keep fresh within
us that memory of dear friends dead, which alone can fit us for a
re-admission to their society hereafter."
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"I had a bad dream this morning--that Allan was dead--and who, of
all persons in the world, do you think, put on mourning for him? Why,
_Matravis_.--This alone might cure me of superstitious thoughts, if I
were inclined to them; for why should Matravis _mourn_ for us, or our
family?--_Still_ it was pleasant to awake, and find it but a
dream.--Methinks something like an awaking from an ill dream shall the
Resurrection from the Dead be.--Materially different from our accustomed
scenes, and ways of life, the _World to come_ may possibly not be--still
it is represented to us under the notion of a _Rest_, a _Sabbath_, a
state of bliss."
* * * * *
[1] This name will be explained presently.
(_From another Letter_)
----"Methinks, you and I should have been born under the same roof,
sucked the same milk, conned the same hornbook, thumbed the same
Testament, together:--for we have been more than sisters, Maria!
Something will still be whispering to me, that I shall one day be inmate
of the same dwelling with my cousin, partaker with her in all the
delights, which spring from mutual good offices, kind words, attentions
in sickness and in health,--conversation, sometimes innocently trivial,
and at others profitably serious;--books read and commented on,
together; meals ate, and walks taken, together,--and conferences, how we
may best do good to this poor person or that, and wean our spirits from
the world's _cares_, without divesting ourselves of its _charities_.
What a picture I have drawn, Maria!--and none of all these things may
ever come to pass."
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"Continue to write to me, my sweet cousin. Many good thoughts,
resolutions, and proper views of things, pass through the mind in the
course of the day, but are lost for want of committing them to paper.
Seize them, Maria, as they pass, these Birds of Paradise, that show
themselves and are gone,--and make a grateful present of the precious
fugitives to your friend.
To use a homely illustration, just rising in my fancy,--shall the good
housewife take such pains in pickling and preserving her worthless
fruits, her walnuts, her apricots, and quinces--and is there not much
_spiritual housewifery_ in treasuring up our mind's best fruits,--our
heart's meditations in its most favored moments?
This said simile is much in the fashion of the old Moralizers, such as I
conceive honest Baxter to have been, such as Quarles and Wither were,
with their curious, serio-comic, quaint emblems. But they sometimes
reach the heart, when a more elegant simile rests in the fancy.
Not low and mean, like these, but beautifully familiarized to our
conceptions, and condescending to human thoughts and notions, are all
the discourses of our LORD--conveyed in parable, or similitude, what
easy access do they win to the heart, through the medium of the
delighted imagination! speaking of heavenly things in fable, or in
simile, drawn from earth, from objects _common, accustomed_.
Life's business, with such delicious little interruptions as our
correspondence affords, how pleasant it is!--why can we not paint on the
dull paper our whole feelings, exquisite as they rise up?"
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"I had meant to have left off at this place; but, looking back, I am
sorry to find too gloomy a cast tincturing my last page--a
representation of life false and unthankful. Life is _not_ all vanity
and disappointment--it hath much of evil in it, no doubt; but to those
who do not misuse it, it affords comfort, _temporary_ comfort,
much--much that endears us to it, and dignifies it--many true and good
feelings, I trust, of which we need not be ashamed--hours of
tranquillity and hope.--But the morning was dull and overcast, and my
spirits were under a cloud. I feel my error.
Is it no blessing, that we two love one another so dearly--that Allan is
left me--that you are settled in life--that worldly affairs go smooth
with us both--above all, that our lot hath fallen to us in a Christian
country? Maria! these things are not little. I will consider life as a
long feast, and not forget to say grace."
* * * * *
(_From another Letter_)
----"Allan has written to me--you know, he is on a visit at his old
tutor's in Gloucestershire--he is to return home on Thursday--Allan is a
dear boy--he concludes his letter, which is very affectionate
throughout, in this manner--
'Elinor, I charge you to learn the following stanza by heart--
The monarch may forget his crown,
That on his head an hour hath been;
The bridegroom may forget his bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The mother may forget her child,
That smiles so sweetly on her knee:
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And all that thou hast done for me.
'The lines are in Burns--you know, we read him for the first time
together at Margate--and I have been used to refer them to you, and to
call you, in my mind, _Glencairn_--for you were always very, very good
to me. I had a thousand failings, but you would love me in spite of them
all. I am going to drink your health.'"
* * * * *
I shall detain my reader no longer from the narrative.
CHAPTER VIII
They had but four rooms in the cottage. Margaret slept in the biggest
room up stairs, and her grandaughter in a kind of closet adjoining,
where she could be within hearing, if her grandmother should call her in
the night.
The girl was often disturbed in that manner--two or three times in a
night she has been forced to leave her bed, to fetch her grandmother's
cordials, or do some little service for her--but she knew that
Margaret's ailings were _real_ and pressing, and Rosamund never
complained--never suspected, that her grandmother's requisitions had any
thing unreasonable in them.
The night she parted with Miss Clare, she had helped Margaret to bed, as
usual--and, after saying her prayers, as the custom was, kneeling by the
old lady's bed-side, kissed her grandmother, and wished her a good
night--Margaret blessed her, and charged her to go to bed directly. It
was her customary injunction, and Rosamund had never dreamed of
disobeying.
So she retired to her little room. The night was warm and clear--the
moon very bright--her window commanded a view of _scenes_ she had been
tracing in the day-time with Miss Clare.
All the events of the day past, the occurrences of their walk, arose in
her mind. She fancied she should like to retrace those scenes--but it
was now nine o'clock, a late hour in the village.
Still she fancied it would be very charming--and then her grandmother's
injunction came powerfully to her recollection--she sighed, and turned
from the window--and walked up and down her little room.
Ever, when she looked at the window, the wish returned. It was not so
_very late_. The neighbours were yet about, passing under the window to
their homes--she thought, and thought again, till her sensations became
vivid, even to painfulness--her bosom was aching to give them vent.
The village clock struck ten!--the neighbours ceased to pass under the
window. Rosamund, stealing down stairs, fastened the latch behind her,
and left the cottage.
One, that knew her, met her, and observed her with some surprize.
Another recollects having wished her a good night. Rosamund never
returned to the cottage!
An old man, that lay sick in a small house adjoining to Margaret's,
testified the next morning, that he had plainly heard the old creature
calling for her grandaughter. All the night long she made her moan, and
ceased not to call upon the name of Rosamund. But no Rosamund was
there--the voice died away, but not till near day-break.
When the neighbours came to search in the morning, Margaret was missing!
She had _straggled_ out of bed, and made her way into Rosamund's
room--worn out with fatigue and fright, when she found the girl not
there, she had laid herself down to die--and, it is thought, she died
_praying_--for she was discovered in a kneeling posture, her arms and
face extended on the pillow, where Rosamund had slept the night
before--a smile was on her face in death.
CHAPTER IX
Fain would I draw a veil over the transactions of that night--but I
cannot--grief, and burning shame, forbid me to be silent--black deeds
are about to be made public, which reflect a stain upon our common
nature.
Rosamund, enthusiastic and improvident, wandered unprotected to a
distance from her guardian doors--through lonely glens, and wood walks,
where she had rambled many a _day_ in safety--till she arrived at a
shady copse, out of the hearing of any human habitation.
_Matravis_ met her.--"Flown with insolence and wine," returning home
late at night, he passed that way!
Matravis was a very ugly man. Sallow-complexioned! and, if hearts can
wear that colour, his heart was sallow-complexioned also.
A young man with _gray_ deliberation! cold and systematic in all his
plans; and all his plans were evil. His very lust was systematic.
He would brood over his bad purposes for such a dreary length of time,
that it might have been expected, some solitary check of conscience must
have intervened to save him from commission. But that _Light from
Heaven_ was extinct in his dark bosom.
Nothing that is great, nothing that is amiable, existed for this unhappy
man. He feared, he envied, he suspected; but he never loved. The sublime
and beautiful in nature, the excellent and becoming in morals, were
things placed beyond the capacity of his sensations. He loved not
poetry--nor ever took a lonely walk to meditate--never beheld virtue,
which he did not try to disbelieve, or female beauty and innocence,
which he did not lust to contaminate.
A sneer was perpetually upon his face, and malice _grinning_ at his
heart. He would say the most ill-natured things, with the least remorse,
of any man I ever knew. This gained him the reputation of a wit--other
_traits_ got him the reputation of a villain.
And this man formerly paid his court to Elinor Clare!--with what success
I leave my readers to determine.--It was not in Elinor's nature to
despise any living thing--but in the estimation of this man, to be
rejected was to be _despised_--and Matravis _never forgave_.
He had long turned his eyes upon Rosamund Gray. To steal from the bosom
of her friends the jewel they prized so much, the little ewe lamb they
held so dear, was a scheme of delicate revenge, and Matravis had a
two-fold motive for accomplishing this young maid's ruin.
Often had he met her in her favorite solitudes, but found her ever cold
and inaccessible. Of late the girl had avoided straying far from her own
home, in the fear of meeting him--but she had never told her fears to
Allan.
Matravis had, till now, been content to be a villain within the limits
of the law--but, on the present occasion, hot fumes of wine,
co-operating with his deep desire of revenge, and the insolence of an
unhoped for meeting, overcame his customary prudence, and Matravis rose,
at once, to an audacity of glorious mischief.
Late at night he met her, a lonely, unprotected virgin--no friend at
hand--no place near of refuge.
Rosamund Gray, my soul is exceeding sorrowful for thee--I loath to tell
the hateful circumstances of thy wrongs. Night and silence were the only
witnesses of this young maid's disgrace--Matravis fled.
Rosamund, polluted and disgraced, wandered, an abandoned thing, about
the fields and meadows till day-break. Not caring to return to the
cottage, she sat herself down before the gate of Miss Clare's house--in
a stupor of grief.
Elinor was just rising, and had opened the windows of her chamber, when
she perceived her desolate young friend.--She ran to embrace her--she
brought her into the house--she took her to her bosom--she kissed
her--she spake to her; but Rosamund could not speak.
Tidings came from the cottage. Margaret's death was an event, which
could not be kept concealed from Rosamund. When the sweet maid heard of
it, she languished, and fell sick--she never held up her head after that
time.
If Rosamund had been a _sister_, she could not have been kindlier
treated, than by her two friends.
Allan had prospects in life--might, in time, have married into any of
the first families in Hertfordshire--but Rosamund Gray, humbled though
she was, and put to shame, had yet a charm for _him_--and he would have
been content to share his fortunes with her yet, if Rosamund would have
lived to be his companion.
But this was not to be--and the girl soon after died. She expired in the
arms of Elinor--quiet, gentle, as she lived--thankful, that she died not
among strangers--and expressing by signs, rather than words, a gratitude
for the most trifling services, the common offices of humanity. She died
uncomplaining; and this young maid, this untaught Rosamund, might have
given a lesson to the grave philosopher in death.
CHAPTER X
I was but a boy when these events took place. All the village remember
the story, and tell of Rosamund Gray, and old blind Margaret.
I parted from Allan Clare on that disastrous night, and set out for
Edinburgh the next morning, before the facts were commonly known--I
heard not of them--and it was four months before I received a letter
from Allan.
"His heart" he told me "was gone from him--for his sister had died of a
phrensy fever!"--not a word of Rosamund in the letter--I was left to
collect her story from sources which may one day be explained.
I soon after quitted Scotland, on the death of my father, and returned
to my native village. Allan had left the place, and I could gain no
information, whether he were dead or living.
I passed the _cottage_. I did not dare to look that way, or to enquire
_who_ lived there.--A little dog, that had been Rosamund's, was yelping
in my path. I laughed aloud like one mad, whose mind had suddenly gone
from him--I stared vacantly around me, like one alienated from common
perceptions.
But I was young at that time, and the impression became gradually
weakened, as I mingled in the business of life. It is now _ten years_
since these events took place, and I sometimes think of them as unreal.
Allan Clare was a dear friend to me--but there are times, when Allan and
his sister, Margaret and her grandaughter, appear like personages of a
dream--an idle dream.
CHAPTER XI
Strange things have happened unto me--I seem scarce awake--but I will
recollect my thoughts, and try to give an account of what has befallen
me in the few last weeks.
Since my father's death our family have resided in London. I am in
practice as a surgeon there. My mother died two years after we left
Widford.
A month or two ago I had been busying myself in drawing up the above
narrative, intending to make it public. The employment had forced my
mind to dwell upon _facts_, which had begun to fade from it--the memory
of old times became vivid, and more vivid--I felt a strong desire to
revisit the scenes of my native village--of the young loves of Rosamund
and her Clare.
A kind of dread had hitherto kept me back; but I was restless now, till
I had accomplished my wish. I set out one morning to walk--I reached
Widford about eleven in the forenoon--after a slight breakfast at my
inn--where I was mortified to perceive, the old landlord did not know me
again--(old Thomas Billet--he has often made angle rods for me when a
child)--I rambled over all my accustomed haunts.
Our old house was vacant, and to be sold. I entered, unmolested, into
the room that had been my bed-chamber. I kneeled down on the spot where
my little bed had stood--I felt like a child--I prayed like one--it
seemed as though old times were to return again--I looked round
involuntarily, expecting to see some face I knew--but all was naked and
mute. The bed was gone. My little pane of painted window, through which
I loved to look at the sun, when I awoke in a fine summer's morning, was
taken out, and had been replaced by one of common glass.
I visited, by turns, every chamber--they were all desolate and
unfurnished, one excepted, in which the owner had left a harpsichord,
probably to be sold--I touched the keys--I played some old Scottish
tunes, which had delighted me when a child. Past associations revived
with the music-blended with a sense of _unreality_, which at last became
too powerful--I rushed out of the room to give vent to my feelings.
I wandered, scarce knowing where, into an old wood, that stands at the
back of the house--we called it the _Wilderness_. A well-known _form_
was missing, that used to meet me in this place--it was thine, Ben
Moxam--the kindest, gentlest, politest, of human beings, yet was he
nothing higher than a gardener in the family. Honest creature, thou
didst never pass me in my childish rambles, without a soft speech, and a
smile. I remember thy good-natured face. But there is one thing, for
which I can never forgive thee, Ben Moxam--that thou didst join with an
old maiden aunt of mine in a cruel plot, to lop away the hanging
branches of the old fir trees.--I remember them sweeping to the ground.
I have often left my childish sports to ramble in this place--its glooms
and its solitude had a mysterious charm for my young mind, nurturing
within me that love of quietness and lonely thinking, which have
accompanied me to maturer years.
In this _Wilderness_ I found myself after a ten years' absence. Its
stately fir trees were yet standing, with all their luxuriant company of
underwood--the squirrel was there, and the melancholy cooings of the
wood-pigeon--all was as I had left it--my heart softened at the
sight--it seemed, as though my character had been suffering a _change_,
since I forsook these shades.
My parents were both dead--I had no counsellor left, no experience of
age to direct me, no sweet voice of reproof. The LORD had taken away my
_friends_, and I knew not where he had laid them. I paced round the
wilderness, seeking a comforter. I prayed, that I might be restored to
that _state of innocence_, in which I had wandered in those shades.
Methought, my request was heard--for it seemed as though the stains of
manhood were passing from me, and I were relapsing into the purity and
simplicity of childhood. I was content to have been moulded into a
perfect child. I stood still, as in a trance. I dreamed that I was
enjoying a personal intercourse with my heavenly Father--and,
extravagantly, put off the shoes from my feet--for the place where I
stood, I thought, was holy ground.
This state of mind could not last long--and I returned, with languid
feelings to my Inn. I ordered my dinner--green peas and a sweetbread--it
had been a favorite dish with me in my childhood--I was allowed to have
it on my birth days. I was impatient to see it come upon table--but,
when it came, I could scarce eat a mouthful--my tears choaked me. I
called for wine--I drank a pint and a half of red wine--and not till
then had I dared to visit the church-yard, where my parents were
interred.
The _cottage_ lay in my way--Margaret had chosen it for that very
reason, to be near the church--for the old lady was regular in her
attendance on public worship--I passed on--and in a moment found myself
among the tombs.
I had been present at my father's burial, and knew the spot again--my
mother's funeral I was prevented by illness from attending--a plain
stone was placed over the grave, with their initials carved upon it--for
they both occupied one grave.
I prostrated myself before the spot--I kissed the earth that covered
them--I contemplated, with gloomy delight, the time when I should mingle
my dust with their's--and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on the
grave-stone, in a kind of mental prayer--for I could not speak.
Having performed these duties, I arose with quieter feelings, and felt
leisure to attend to indifferent objects.--Still I continued in the
church-yard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing on them
with that kind of levity, which will not unfrequently spring up in the
mind, in the midst of deep melancholy.
I read of nothing but careful parents, loving husbands, and dutiful
children. I said jestingly, where be all the _bad_ people buried? Bad
parents, bad husbands, bad children--what cemeteries are appointed for
these? do they not sleep in consecrated ground? or is it but a pious
fiction, a generous oversight, in the survivors, which thus tricks out
men's epitaphs when dead, who, in their life-time, discharged the
offices of life, perhaps, but lamely?--Their failings, with their
reproaches, now sleep with them in the grave. _Man wars not with the
dead._ It is a _trait_ of human nature, for which I love it.
I had not observed, till now, a little group assembled at the other end
of the church-yard; it was a company of children, who were gathered
round a young man, dressed in black, sitting on a grave-stone.
He seemed to be asking them questions--probably, about their
learning--and one little dirty ragged-headed fellow was clambering up
his knees to kiss him.--The children had been eating black cherries--for
some of the stones were scattered about, and their mouths were smeared
with them.
As I drew near them, I thought I discerned in the stranger a mild
benignity of countenance, which I had somewhere seen before--I gazed at
him more attentively--
It was Allan Clare! sitting on the grave of his sister.
I threw my arms about his neck. I exclaimed "Allan"--he turned his eyes
upon me--he knew me--we both wept aloud--it seemed, as though the
interval, since we parted, had been as nothing--I cried out, "come, and
tell me about these things."
I drew him away from his little friends--he parted with a show of
reluctance from the church-yard--Margaret and her grandaughter lay
buried there, as well as his sister--I took him to my Inn--secured a
room, where we might be private--ordered fresh wine--scarce knowing what
I did, I danced for joy.
Allan was quite overcome, and taking me by the hand he said, "this
repays me for all."
It was a proud day for me--I had found the friend I thought dead--earth
seemed to me no longer valuable, than as it contained _him_; and
existence a blessing no longer than while I should live to be his
comforter.
I began, at leisure, to survey him with more attention. Time and grief
had left few traces of that fine _enthusiasm_, which once burned in his
countenance--his eyes had lost their original fire, but they retained an
uncommon sweetness and, whenever they were turned upon me, their smile
pierced to my heart.
"Allan, I fear you have been a sufferer." He replied not, and I could
not press him further. I could not call the dead to life again.
So we drank, and told old stories--and repeated old poetry--and sang old
songs--as if nothing had happened.--We sat till very late--I forgot that
I had purposed returning to town that evening--to Allan all places were
alike--I grew noisy, he grew cheerful--Allan's old manners, old
enthusiasm, were returning upon him--we laughed, we wept, we mingled our
tears, and talked extravagantly.
Allan was my chamber-fellow that night--and lay awake, planning schemes
of living together under the same roof, entering upon similar
pursuits;--and praising GOD, that we had met.
I was obliged to return to town the next morning, and Allan proposed to
accompany me.--"Since the death of his sister," he told me, "he had been
a wanderer."
In the course of our walk he unbosomed himself without reserve--told me
many particulars of his way of life for the last nine or ten years,
which I do not feel myself at liberty to divulge.
Once, on my attempting to cheer him, when I perceived him over
thoughtful, he replied to me in these words:--
"Do not regard me as unhappy, when you catch me in these moods. I am
never more happy than at times, when, by the cast of my countenance, men
judge me most miserable.
"My friend, the events, which have left this sadness behind them, are of
no recent date. The melancholy, which comes over me with the
recollection of them, is not hurtful, but only tends to soften and
tranquillize my mind, to detach me from the restlessness of human
pursuits.
"The stronger I feel this detachment, the more I find myself drawn
heavenward to the contemplation of spiritual objects.
"I love to keep old friendships alive and warm within me, because I
expect a renewal of them in the _World of Spirits_.
"I am a wandering and unconnected thing on the earth. I have made no new
friendships, that can compensate me for the loss of the old--and the
more I know mankind, the more does it become necessary for me to supply
their loss by little images, recollections, and circumstances, of past
pleasures.
"I am sensible that I am surrounded by a multitude of very worthy
people, plain-hearted souls, sincere, and kind.--But they have hitherto
eluded my pursuit, and will continue to bless the little circle of their
families and friends, while I must remain a stranger to them.
"Kept at a distance by mankind, I have not ceased to love them--and
could I find the cruel persecutor, the malignant instrument of GOD'S
judgments on me and mine, I think I would forgive, and try to love him
too.
"I have been a quiet sufferer. From the beginning of my calamities it
was given to me, not to see the hand of man in them. I perceived a
mighty arm, which none but myself could see, extended over me. I gave my
heart to the Purifier, and my will to the Sovereign Will of the
Universe. The irresistible wheels of destiny passed on in their
everlasting rotation,--and I suffered myself to be carried along with
them without complaining."
CHAPTER XII
Allan told me, that for some years past, feeling himself disengaged from
every personal tye, but not alienated from human sympathies, it had been
his taste, his _humour_ he called it, to spend a great portion of his
time in _hospitals_ and _lazar houses_.
He had found a _wayward pleasure_, he refused to name it a virtue, in
tending a description of people, who had long ceased to expect kindness
or friendliness from mankind, but were content to accept the reluctant
services, which the often-times unfeeling instruments and servants of
these well-meant institutions deal out to the poor sick people under
their care.
It is not medicine, it is not broths and coarse meats, served up at a
stated hour with all the hard formalities of a prison,--it is not the
scanty dole of a bed to die on--which dying man requires from his
species.
Looks, attentions, consolations,--in a word, _sympathies_, are what a
man most needs in this awful close of mortal sufferings. A kind look, a
smile, a drop of cold water to the parched lip--for these things a man
shall bless you in death.
And these better things than cordials did Allan love to administer--to
stay by a bed-side the whole day, when something disgusting in a
patient's distemper has kept the very nurses at a distance--to sit by,
while the poor wretch got a little sleep--and be there to smile upon him
when he awoke--to slip a guinea, now and then, into the hands of a nurse
or attendant--these things have been to Allan as _privileges_, for which
he was content to live, choice marks, and circumstances, of his Maker's
goodness to him.
And I do not know whether occupations of this kind be not a spring of
purer and nobler delight (certainly instances of a more disinterested
virtue) than arises from what are called Friendships of Sentiment.
Between two persons of liberal education, like opinions, and common
feelings, oftentimes subsists a Vanity of Sentiment, which disposes each
to look upon the other as the only being in the universe worthy of
friendship, or capable of understanding it,--themselves they consider as
the solitary receptacles of all that is delicate in feeling, or stable
in attachment:--when the odds are, that under every green hill, and in
every crowded street, people of equal worth are to be found, who do more
good in their generation, and make less noise in the doing of it.
It was in consequence of these benevolent propensities, I have been
describing, that Allan oftentimes discovered considerable inclinations
in favor of my way of life, which I have before mentioned as being that
of a surgeon. He would frequently attend me on my visits to patients;
and I began to think, that he had serious intentions of making my
profession his study.
He was present with me at a scene--a _death-bed scene_--I shudder when I
do but think of it.
CHAPTER XIII
I was sent for the other morning to the assistance of a gentleman, who
had been wounded in a duel,--and his wounds by unskilful treatment had
been brought to a dangerous crisis.
The uncommonness of the name, which was _Matravis_ suggested to me,
that this might possibly be no other than Allan's old enemy. Under this
apprehension, I did what I could to dissuade Allan from accompanying
me--but he seemed bent upon going, and even pleased himself with the
notion, that it might lie within his ability to do the unhappy man some
service. So he went with me.
When we came to the house, which was in Soho-Square, we discovered that
it was indeed the man--the identical Matravis, who had done all that
mischief in times past--but not in a condition to excite any other
sensation than pity in a heart more hard than Allan's.
Intense pain had brought on a delirium--we perceived this on first
entering the room--for the wretched man was raving to himself--talking
idly in mad unconnected sentences,--that yet seemed, at times, to have a
reference to _past facts_.
One while he told us his dream. "He had lost his way on a great heath,
to which there seemed no end--it was cold, cold, cold--and dark, very
dark--an old woman in leading-strings, _blind_, was groping about for a
guide"--and then he frightened me,--for he seemed disposed to be
_jocular_, and sang a song about "an old woman clothed in grey," and
said "he did not believe in a devil."
Presently he bid us "not tell Allan Clare"--Allan was hanging over him
at that very moment, sobbing.--I could not resist the impulse, but cried
out, "_this_ is Allan Clare--Allan Clare is come to see you, my dear
Sir."--The wretched man did not hear me, I believe, for he turned his
head away, and began talking of _charnel houses_, and _dead men_, and
"whether they knew anything that passed in their coffins."
Matravis died that night.
* * * * *
CURIOUS FRAGMENTS,
_Extracted from a common-place book, which belonged to Robert Burton,
the famous Author of The Anatomy of Melancholy_
(1800. FIRST PUBLISHED 1802. TEXT OF 1818)
EXTRACT I
I Democritus Junior have put my finishing pen to a tractate _De
Melancholia_, this day December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the Trinity,
which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse studies thus far,
and make supplication, with a _Laus Deo_, if in any case these my poor
labours may be found instrumental to weede out black melancholy, carking
cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man. _Sed hoc magis volo quam
expecto._
I turn now to my book, _i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatomy, child
of my brain-sweat_, and yee, _candidi lectores_, lo! here I give him up
to you, even do with him what you please, my masters. Some, I suppose
will applaud, commend, cry him up (these are my friends) hee is a _flos
rarus_, forsooth, a none-such, a Phœnix, (concerning whom see _Plinius_
and _Mandeuille_, though _Fienus de monstris_ doubteth at large of such
a bird, whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have been a man _malæ
scrupulositatis_, of a weak and cowardlie faith: _Christopherus a Vega_
is with him in this.) Others again will blame, hiss, reprehende in many
things, cry down altogether, my collections, for crude, inept, putid,
_post cœnam scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal_,
verbose, inerudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities,
_dogmata_, sentences of learneder writers which have been before me,
when as that first named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee
nothing else but a _messe of opinions_, a vortex attracting
indiscriminate, gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an exchange,
tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders,
Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations, languages, all
which _Wolfius_ behelde with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, as
he describes diffusedly in his book the world's Epitome, which
_Sannazar_ so bepraiseth, _e contra_ our Polydore can see nothing in
it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in
this age, which is all too neoteric and light for my humour.
One cometh to me sighing, complaining. He expected universal remedies in
my Anatomy; so many cures as there are distemperatures among men. I have
not put his affection in my cases. Hear you his case. My fine Sir is a
lover, an _inamorato_, Pyramus, a Romeo; he walks seven years
disconsolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy his miss, _insanus amor_
is his melancholy, the man is mad; _delirat_, he dotes; all this while
his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be entreated, churlish, spits at
him, yet exceeding fair, gentle eyes, (which is a beauty,) hair lustrous
and _smiling_, the trope is none of mine, _Æneas Sylvius_ hath _crines
ridentes_--in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a boore, a
_Corydon_, a rustic, _omnino ignarus, he can scarce construe Corderius_,
yet haughty, fantastic, _opiniatre_. The lover travels, goes into
foreign parts, peregrinates, _amoris ergo_, sees manners, customs, not
English, converses with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, hermits,
those cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, _Egyptians_, natural wonders,
unicorns (though _Aldobrandus_ will have them to be figments) satyrs,
semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, curiosities artificial, _pyramides_,
Virgilius his tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but ivory as
_Melancthon_ judges, though _Cornutus_ leaneth to think them bones of
dogs, cats, (why not men?) which subtill priests vouch to have been
saints, martyrs, _heu Pietas_! By that time he has ended his course,
_fugit hora_, seven other years are expired, gone by, time is he should
return, he taketh ship for Britaine, much desired of his friends,
_favebant venti, Neptune is curteis_, after some weekes at sea he
landeth, rides post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, _compotores,
those jokers his friends that were wont to tipple with him at
alehouses_; these wonder now to see the change, _quantum mutatus, the
man is quite another thing_, he is disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders
what so bewitched him, he can now both see, hear, smell, handle,
converse with his mistress, single by reason of the death of his rival,
a widow having children, grown willing, prompt, amorous, shewing no such
great dislike to second nuptials, he might have her for asking, no such
thing, his mind is changed, he loathes his former meat, had liever eat
ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to die a bachelour; marke the
conclusion. In this humour of celibate seven other years are consumed
in idleness, sloth, world's pleasures, which fatigate, satiate, induce
wearinesse, vapours, _tædium vitæ_: When upon a day, behold a wonder,
_redit Amor_, the man is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover upon the
old stock, walks with his hand thrust in his bosom for negligence,
moping he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing and incomposite,
eyes sunken, _anhelus, breath wheezy and asthmatical, by reason of
overmuch sighing_: society he abhors, solitude is but a hell, what shall
he doe? all this while his mistresse is forward, coming, _amantissima,
ready to jump at once into his mouth_, her he hateth, feels disgust when
she is but mentioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesabeel, Alecto,
Megara, and Tisiphone all at once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only
not handsome; that which he affecteth so much, that which drives him
mad, distracted, phrenetic, beside himself, is no beauty which lives,
nothing in _rerum naturâ_, (so he might entertain a hope of a cure) but
something which is not, can never be, a certain _fantastic opinion_ or
_notional image_ of his mistresse, _that which she was_, and that which
hee thought her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him,
frets him, follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.
This Caprichio, _Sir Humourous_, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel
marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method,
together with milk diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good in such
cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, teals,
widgeons, becca ficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in a
passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, lunatic,
moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be
patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages, I think this man must
fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c.
EXTRACT II
* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in
logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either
side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as
_Bodinus de Periodis_ saith of such an one, _arrident amici ridet
mundus_, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they
flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwile the world thinks
him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. * * * * * Philosophy
running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned enquiries, what
truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are
written, and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitting in the Doctor's
chair, we marvel how they got there, being _homines intellectûs
pulverulenti_, as _Trincauellius_ notes; they care not so they may raise
a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; _homines parvulissimi_ as
_Lemnius_, whom _Alcuin_ herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs,
minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and it is odds but
they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chacing of nimble
and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they worship,
_libant_, they make libations, spilling the wine, as those old Romans in
their sacrificials, _Cerealia, May-games_: Truth is the game all these
hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures,
_humidum radicale exsiccant_, as _Galen_, in his counsels to one oft
these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * * * * and for all this
_nunquam metam attingunt_, and how should they? they bowle awry,
shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that _Truth
absolute_ on this planet of ours is scarcely to be found, but in her
stede _Queene Opinion_ predominates, governs, whose shifting and ever
mutable _Lampas_, me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she
præcurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh her
tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time his
sight be strong to endure the vision of _Very Truth_, which is in the
heavens, the vision beatifical, as _Anianus_ expounds in his argument
against certain mad wits which helde God to be corporeous; these were
dizzards, fools, _gothamites_. * * * * but and if _Very Truth_ be extant
indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which actuates men's deeds,
purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the learned universities,
halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris
or Oxford, amongst great clerks, disputants, subtile Aristotles, men
_nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the chin_, but oftentimes to
such an one as myself, an _Idiota_ or common person, _no great things_,
melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers,
fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh
only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with
_Natura_ her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or _Art_ her
statelie gardens, parks, terraces, _Belvideres_, on a sudden the
goddesse herself _Truth_ has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a
sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her
* * * * *
EXTRACT III
This morning, May 2, 1662, having first broken my fast upon eggs and
cooling salades, mellows, water-cresses, those herbes, according to
_Villanovus_ his prescription, who disallows the use of meat in a
morning as gross, fat, hebetant, _feral_, altogether fitter for wild
beasts than men, _e contra_ commendeth this herb-diete for gentle,
humane, active, conducing to contemplation in most men, I betook myselfe
to the nearest fields. (Being in London I commonly dwell in the
_suburbes_, as airiest, quietest, _loci musis propriores_, free from
noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick, and base workes, workshoppes,
also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandlish birds, fishes,
crocodiles, _Indians_, mermaids, adde quarrels, fightings, wranglings of
the common sort, _plebs_, the rabble, duelloes with fists, _proper to
this island_, at which the stiletto'd and secrete _Italian_ laughs.)
Withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and illiterate vanities, with a
_bezo las manos_ to the city, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as
horses _dilatis naribus_ snort the fresh aires, with exceeding great
delight, when suddenly there crosses me a procession sad, heavy,
dolourous, tristfull, melancholick, able to change mirth into dolour,
and overcast a clearer atmosphere than possibly the neighbourhoods of so
great a citty can afford. An old man, a poore man, deceased, is borne on
men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without solemnities of hearse,
mourners, plumes, _mutæ personæ, those personate actors that will weep
if yee skew them a piece of silver_; none of those customed civilities
of children, kinsfolk, _dependants_, following the coffin; he died a
poore man, his friends _assessores opum, those cronies of his that stuck
by him so long as he had a penny_, now leave him, forsake him, shun him,
desert him; they think it much to follow his putrid and stinking carcase
to the grave; his children, if he had any, for commonly the case stands
thus, this poore man his son dies before him, he survives, poore,
indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c. or if he have any which survive
him, _sua negotia agunt_, they mind their own business, forsooth,
cannot, will not, find time, leisure, _inclination, extremum munus
perficere_, to follow to the pit their old indulgent father, which loved
them, stroked them, caressed them, cockering them up, _quantum potuit_,
as farre as his means extended, while they were babes, chits, _minims_,
hee may rot in his grave, lie stinking in the sun _for them_, have no
buriall at all, they care not. _O nefas!_ Chiefly I noted the coffin to
have been _without a pall_, nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood
that could be had, _naked_, having none of the ordinary _symptomata_ of
a funerall, those _locularii_ which bare the body having on diversely
coloured coats, _and none black_: (one of these reported the deceased to
have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the
workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he
was now going for interment). All which when I behelde, hardly I
refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man
had been rich, a _Crœsus_, a _Crassus, or as rich as Whittington_, what
pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall,
_ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies_, had been thought too
good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral
orations, &c. some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill
rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite,
learned, _a Mæcenas_, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse: what
weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends,
relatives, fortieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased;
hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, striking their breasts, (they care not if
he had died a year ago); so many clients, dependants, flatterers,
_parasites, cunning Gnathoes_, tramping on foot after the hearse, all
their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he mean time
(like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his
foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle. I think him in the
right: _Hæc sunt majora gravitate Heracliti. The follies are enough to
give crying Heraclitus a fit of the spleene._
* * * * *
EARLY JOURNALISM
I.--G. F. COOKE IN "RICHARD THE THIRD"
(1802)
Some few of us remember to have _seen_, and all of us have heard our
fathers tell of Quin, and Garrick, and Barry, and some faint traditional
notices are left us of their manner in particular scenes, and their
stile of delivering certain emphatic sentences. Hence our curiosity is
excited, when a _new Hamlet_ or a _new Richard_ makes his appearance, in
the first place, to inquire, how he acted in the _Closet scene_, in the
_Tent scene_; how he looked, and how he started, when the _Ghost_ came
on, and how he cried
Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.
We do not reprehend this minute spirit of comparison. On the contrary,
we consider it as a delightful artifice, by which we connect the
recreations of the past with those of the present generation, what
pleased our fathers with what pleases us. We love to witness the
obstinate attachments, the unconquerable prejudices (as they seem to
us), of the old men, our seniors, the whimsical gratification they
appear to derive from the very refusal to be gratified; to hear them
talk of the good _old_ actors, whose race is for ever extinct.
With these impressions, we attended the first appearance of Mr. Cooke,
in the character of _Richard the Third_, last winter. We thought that he
"bustled" through the scenes with at least as much spirit and effect as
any of his predecessors whom we remember in the part, and was not
deficient in the delivery of any of those rememberable speeches and
exclamations, which old prescription hath set up as _criteria_ of
comparison. Now that the grace of freshness is worn off, and Mr. Cooke
is no longer a novitiate candidate for public favour, we propose to
enter into the question--whether that popular actor is right or wrong in
his conception of the great outlines of the character; those strong
essential differences which separate _Richard_ from all the other
creations of Shakespeare. We say _of Shakespeare_; for though the Play,
which passes for _his_ upon the _Stage_, materially differs from _that_
which _he_ wrote under the same title, being in fact little better than
a compilation or a cento of passages extracted from other of his Plays,
and applied with gross violations of propriety (as we are ready at any
time to point out), besides some miserable additions, which _he_ never
could have written; all together producing an inevitable inconsistency
of character, sufficient to puzzle and confound the _best Actor; yet_,
in this chaos and perplexity, we are of opinion, that it becomes an
Actor to shew his taste, by adhering, as much as possible, to the spirit
and intention of the original Author, and to consult his _safety_ in
_steering_ by the _Light_, which Shakespeare holds out to him, as by a
great _Leading Star_. Upon these principles, we presume to censure Mr.
Cooke, while we are ready to acknowledge, that this Actor presents us
with a very original and very forcible portrait (if not of the _man
Richard_, whom Shakespeare drew, yet) of the _monster Richard_, as he
exists in the _popular idea_, in _his own exaggerated_ and _witty
self-abuse_, in the overstrained representations of the parties who were
_sufferers_ by his _ambition_; and, above all, in the impertinent and
wretched _scenes_, so absurdly foisted in by some, who have thought
themselves capable of adding to what _Shakespeare wrote_.
But of Mr. Cooke's _Richard_:
1st. _His predominant and masterly simulation._
He has a tongue can wheedle with the DEVIL.
It has been the policy of that antient and grey simulator, in all ages,
to hide his _horns_ and _claws_. The _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke perpetually
obtrudes _his_. We see the effect of his deceit uniformly _successful_,
but we do not comprehend _how_ it _succeeds_. We can put ourselves, by a
very common fiction, into the place of the individuals upon whom it
acts, and say, that, in the like case, we should not have been alike
credulous. The hypocrisy is too glaring and visible. It resembles more
the shallow cunning of a mind which is its own dupe, than the profound
and practised art of so powerful an intellect as _Richard's_. It is too
obstreperous and loud, breaking out into _triumphs_ and _plaudits_ at
its own success, like an unexercised _noviciate_ in _tricks_. It has
none of the silent confidence, and steady self-command of the
_experienced politician_; it possesses none of that _fine address_,
which was necessary to have betrayed the heart of _Lady Anne_, or even
to have imposed upon the duller wits of the _Lord Mayor_ and _Citizens_.
2dly. _His habitual jocularity_, the effect of buoyant spirits, and an
elastic mind, rejoicing in its own powers, and in the success of its
machinations. This quality of unstrained mirth accompanies _Richard_,
and is a prime feature in his character. It never leaves him; in plots,
in stratagems, and in the midst of his bloody devices, it is perpetually
driving him upon wit, and jests, and personal satire, fanciful
allusions, and quaint felicities of phrase. It is one of the chief
artifices by which the consummate master of dramatic effect has
contrived to soften the horrors of the scene, and to make us contemplate
a bloody and vicious character with delight. No where, in any of his
plays, is to be found so much of sprightly colloquial dialogue, and
soliloquies of genuine humour, as in _Richard_. This character of
unlaboured mirth Mr. Cooke seems entirely to pass over, and substitutes
in its stead the coarse, taunting humour, and clumsy merriment, of a
low-minded assassin.
3dly. _His personal deformity._--When the _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke makes
allusions to his own _form_, they seem accompanied with _unmixed
distaste_ and _pain_, like some obtrusive and _haunting_ idea--But
surely the _Richard_ of Shakespeare mingles in these allusions a
perpetual reference to his own powers and capacities, by which he is
enabled to surmount these petty objections; and the joy of a defect
_conquered_, or _turned_ into an advantage, is one cause of these very
allusions, and of the satisfaction, with which his mind recurs to them.
These allusions themselves are made in an ironical and good humoured
spirit of exaggeration--the most bitter of them are to be found in his
self-congratulating soliloquy spoken in the very moment and crisis of
joyful exultation on the success of his unheard of courtship.--No
_partial excellence_ can satisfy for this absence of a _just general
conception_--otherwise we are inclined to admit, that, in the delivery
of _single sentences_, in a _new_ and often _felicitous_ light thrown
upon _old_ and _hitherto misconstrued_ passages, no actor that we have
seen has gone beyond Mr. Cooke. He is always _alive_ to the scene before
him; and by the _fire_ and _novelty_ of his manner, he seems likely to
infuse some _warm blood_ into the _frozen declamatory stile_, into
which our theatres have for some time past been degenerating.
II.--GRAND STATE BED
Ever since an account of the Marquis of Exeter's Grand State Bed
appeared in the fashionable world, grandeur in this article of furniture
has become quite the rage. Among others the Lord Mayor feeling for the
dignity of the city of London, has petitioned the Corporation for one of
great splendour to be placed in the Mansion-house, _at the City's
expence_.
We have been favoured with a description of this magnificent state bed,
the choice of his Lordship. The body is formed by the callipee, or under
shell of a large turtle, carved in mahogany, and sufficiently capacious
to receive two well-fed people. The callipash, or upper shell, forms the
canopy. The posts are four gigantic figures richly gilt: two of them
accurate copies of Gog and Magog; the other two represent Sir William
Walworth and the last man in armour. Cupids with custards are the
supporters. The curtains are of mazarine purple, and curiously wrought
with the series of the idle and industrious apprentice from Hogarth, in
gold embroidery: but the vallens exceed description; _there_, the
various incidents in the life of Whittington are painted. The mice in
one of the compartments are done so much to the life, that his
Lordship's cat, who is an accurate judge of mice, was deceived. The
quilt is of fashionable patchwork figures, the description of which we
shall not anticipate, as, we understand, Mr. Birch has obtained a sketch
of it for his large Twelfth Cake. The whole is worthy of the taste of
the first Magistrate of the first City in the world.
III.--FABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY
Once upon a high and solemn occasion all the great _fasts_ and
_festivals_ in the year presented themselves before the throne of
_Apollo, God of Days_.--Each brought an offering in his hand, as is the
custom all over the _East_, that no man shall appear before the presence
of the King empty-handed. _Shrove-Tuesday_ was there with his
_pan-cakes_, and _Ash-Wednesday_ with his oblation of _fish_.
_Good-Friday_ brought the mystical _bun_. _Christmas-Day_ came bending
underneath an intolerable load of _turkeys_ and _mince-pies_, his
snow-white temples shaded with _holly_ and the sacred _misletoe_, and
_singing_ a _carol_ as he advanced. Next came the _Thirtieth_ of
_January_, bearing a _calf's-head_ in a charger; but _Apollo_ no sooner
understood the emblematical meaning of the offering, than the stomach of
the _God_ turned sick, and with visible indignation and abhorrence he
ordered the unfortunate _Day_ out of his presence--the contrite _Day_
returned in a little time, bearing in his hands a _Whig_ (a sort of cake
well-tempered and delicious)--the _God_ with smiles accepted the
atonement, and the happy _Day_ understood that his peace was made, he
promising never to bring such a dish into the presence of a _God_ again.
Then came the august _Fourth_ of _June_, crowned with such a crown as
British Monarchs commonly wear, leading into the presence the venerable
_Nineteenth_ of _May_--_Apollo_ welcomed the royal pair, and placed them
nearest to himself, and welcomed their noble progeny, their eldest-born
and heir, the accomplished _Twelfth_ of _August_, with all his brave
brothers and handsome sisters. Only the merry _First_ of _April_ who is
retained in the Court of _Apollo_ as _King's Jester_, made some mirth by
his reverent inquiries after the health of the _Eighteenth_ of
_January_, who, being a _kept_ mistress, had not been deemed a proper
personage to be introduced into such an assembly. _Apollo_, laughing,
rebuked the petulance of his wit; so all was mirth and good humour in
the palace--only the sorrowful _Epiphany_ stood silent and abashed--he
was _poor_, and had come before the King without an oblation. The _God_
of _Days_ perceived his confusion, and turning to the _Muses_ (who are
_nine_), and to the _Graces_, his hand-maids (who are _three_ in
number), he beckoned to them, and gave to them in charge to prepare a
_Cake_ of the richest and preciousest ingredients: they obeyed,
tempering with their fine and delicate fingers the spices of the _East_,
the bread-flour of the _West_, with the fruits of the _South_, pouring
over all the _Ices_ of the _North_. The God himself crowned the whole
with _talismanic figures_, which contained this wondrous virtue--that
whosoever ate of the _Cake_ should forthwith become _Kings_ and
_Queens_. Lastly, by his heralds, he invested the trembling and thankful
_Epiphany_ with the privilege of presenting this Cake before the King
upon an annual festival for ever. Now this Cake is called _Twelfth
Cake_ upon earth, after the _number_ of the virgins who fashioned the
same, being nine and three.
IV.--THE LONDONER
(1802. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Mr. Reflector,--I was born under the shadow of St. Dunstan's steeple,
just where the conflux of the eastern and western inhabitants of this
twofold city meet and justle in friendly opposition at Temple-bar. The
same day which gave me to the world, saw London happy in the celebration
of her great annual feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a lively
omen of the future great good will which I was destined to bear toward
the city, resembling in kind that solicitude which every Chief
Magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interests and
well being. Indeed I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord
Mayor of London: for though circumstances unhappily preclude me from the
hope of ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and Spital Sermon,
yet thus much will I say of myself in truth, that Whittington with his
Cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred gown) never went beyond me in
affection, which I bear to the citizens.
I was born, as you have heard, in a crowd. This has begot in me an
entire affection for that way of life, amounting to an almost
insurmountable aversion from solitude and rural scenes. This aversion
was never interrupted or suspended, except for a few years in the
younger part of my life, during a period in which I had set my
affections upon a charming young woman. Every man while the passion is
upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows and
purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted
just familiarity enough with rural objects to understand tolerably well
ever after the _poets_, when they declaim in such passionate terms in
favor of a country life.
For my own part, now the fit is past, I have no hesitation in declaring,
that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit door of Drury-lane
Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand sincerer
pleasures, than I could ever receive from all the flocks of silly sheep
that ever whitened the plains of Arcadia or Epsom Downs.
This passion for crowds is no where feasted so full as in London. The
man must have a rare _recipe_ for melancholy, who can be dull in
Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London it
vanishes, like all other ills. Often, when I have felt a weariness or
distaste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my
humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for unutterable sympathies with
the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present at
all hours, like the scenes of a shifting pantomime.
The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from
habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops where _Fancy
miscalled Folly_ is supplied with perpetual gauds and toys, excite in me
no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with
its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged
tradesman--things which live by bowing, and things which exist but for
homage--do not affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive nothing but
urbanity, where other men, more refined, discover meaness: I love the
very smoke of London, because it has been the medium most familiar to my
vision. I see grand principles of honor at work in the dirty ring which
encompasses two combatants with fists, and principles of no less eternal
justice in the detection of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with
which an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than a
hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man
in all ages has leaned to order and good government.
Thus an art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a
town life, is attained by the same well-natured alchymy, with which the
Foresters of Arden, in a beautiful country,
Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Where has spleen her food but in London? Humour, Interest, Curiosity,
suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated.
Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been
doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such
scenes!
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
A LONDONER.
* * * * *
CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS, CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE.
(1808. TEXT OF 1818)
When I selected for publication, in 1808, Specimens of English Dramatic
Poets who lived about the time of Shakspeare, the kind of extracts which
I was anxious to give were, not so much passages of wit and humour,
though the old plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes
of the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descriptions,
that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic
rather than to comic poetry. The plays which I made choice of were, with
few exceptions, such as treat of human life and manners, rather than
masques and Arcadian pastorals, with their train of abstractions,
unimpassioned deities, passionate mortals--Claius, and Medorus, and
Amintas, and Amarillis. My leading design was, to illustrate what may be
called the moral sense of our ancestors. To shew in what manner they
felt, when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying
circumstances, in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the strife of
contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how
their griefs were tempered, and their full-swoln joys abated: how much
of Shakspeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far in
his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all mankind. I was
also desirous to bring together some of the most admired scenes of
Fletcher and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic
poets of that age entitled to be considered after Shakspeare, and, by
exhibiting them in the same volume with the more impressive scenes of
old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, and others, to shew what
we had slighted, while beyond all proportion we had been crying up one
or two favourite names. From the desultory criticisms which accompanied
that publication, I have selected a few which I thought would best stand
by themselves, as requiring least immediate reference to the play or
passage by which they were suggested.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
_Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen._--This tragedy is in King
Cambyses' vein; rape, and murder, and superlatives; "huffing braggart
puft lines," such as the play-writers anterior to Shakspeare are full
of, and Pistol but coldly imitates.
_Tamburlaine the Great, or the Scythian Shepherd._--The lunes of
Tamburlaine are perfect midsummer madness. Nebuchadnazar's are mere
modest pretensions compared with the thundering vaunts of this Scythian
Shepherd. He comes in, drawn by conquered kings, and reproaches these
_pampered jades of Asia_ that they can _draw but twenty miles a day_.
Till I saw this passage with my own eyes, I never believed that it was
any thing more than a pleasant burlesque of mine ancient's. But I can
assure my readers that it is soberly set down in a play, which their
ancestors took to be serious.
_Edward the Second._--In a very different style from mighty Tamburlaine
is the tragedy of Edward the Second. The reluctant pangs of abdicating
royalty in Edward furnished hints, which Shakspeare scarcely improved in
his Richard the Second; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity
and terror beyond any scene antient or modern with which I am
acquainted.
_The Rich Jew of Malta._--Marlowe's Jew does not approach so near to
Shakspeare's, as his Edward the Second does to Richard the Second.
Barabas is a mere monster brought in with a large painted nose to please
the rabble. He kills in sport, poisons whole nunneries, invents infernal
machines. He is just such an exhibition as a century or two earlier
might have been played before the Londoners "by the royal command," when
a general pillage and massacre of the Hebrews had been previously
resolved on in the cabinet. It is curious to see a superstition wearing
out. The idea of a Jew, which our pious ancestors contemplated with so
much horror, has nothing in it now revolting. We have tamed the claws of
the beast, and pared its nails, and now we take it to our arms, fondle
it, write plays to flatter it; it is visited by princes, affects a
taste, patronizes the arts, and is the only liberal and gentlemanlike
thing in Christendom.
_Doctor Faustus._--The growing horrors of Faustus's last scene are
awfully marked by the hours and half hours as they expire, and bring him
nearer and nearer to the exactment of his dire compact. It is indeed an
agony and a fearful colluctation. Marlowe is said to have been tainted
with atheistical positions, to have denied God and the Trinity. To such
a genius the history of Faustus must have been delectable food: to
wander in fields where curiosity is forbidden to go, to approach the
dark gulf near enough to look in, to be busied in speculations which are
the rottenest part of the core of the fruit that fell from the tree of
knowledge.[2] Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the conjurer, are offsprings
of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects.
They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of
putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the
holiest minds have sometimes not thought it reprehensible to counterfeit
impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice upon the stage speaking
her own dialect; and, themselves being armed with an unction of
self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that
familiarly, which would be death to others. Milton in the person of
Satan has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armoury
of the atheist ever furnished; and the precise, strait-laced Richardson
has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling
sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue, which
Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester, wanted depth of libertinism enough to
have invented.
[2] Error, entering into the world with Sin among us poor Adamites
may be said to spring from the tree of knowledge itself, and from
the rotten kernels of that fatal apple.--_Howell's Letters._
THOMAS DECKER
_Old Fortunatus._--The humour of a frantic lover, in the scene where
Orleans to his friend Galloway defends the passion with which himself,
being a prisoner in the English king's court, is enamoured to frenzy of
the king's daughter Agripyna, is done to the life. Orleans is as
passionate an inamorato as any which Shakspeare ever drew. He is just
such another adept in Love's reasons. The sober people of the world are
with him
----A swarm of fools
Crowding together to be counted wise.
He talks "pure Biron and Romeo," he is almost as poetical as they, quite
as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, Love's sectaries are
a reason unto themselves. We have gone retrograde to the noble heresy,
since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health
and disease; the kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the
ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful
wits; the mother of twin births, wisdom and folly, valour and weakness;
the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind's religion; the liberal
superstition.
_The Honest Whore._--There is in the second part of this play, where
Bellafront, a reclaimed harlot, recounts some of the miseries of her
profession, a simple picture of honour and shame, contrasted without
violence, and expressed without immodesty, which is worth all the
_strong lines_ against the harlot's profession, with which both parts of
this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected,
who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest
circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so
near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out
sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The
same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served
but to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will
serve him, a little turned, to expose the enormity of those appetites in
other men. When Cervantes with such proficiency of fondness dwells upon
the Don's library, who sees not that he has been a great reader of books
of knight-errantry--perhaps was at some time of his life in danger of
falling into those very extravagancies which he ridiculed so happily in
his hero?
JOHN MARSTON
_Antonio and Mellida._--The situation of Andrugio and Lucio, in the
first part of this tragedy, where Andrugio Duke of Genoa banished his
country, with the loss of a son supposed drowned, is cast upon the
territory of his mortal enemy the Duke of Venice, with no attendants but
Lucio an old nobleman, and a page--resembles that of Lear and Kent in
that king's distresses. Andrugio, like Lear, manifests a kinglike
impatience, a turbulent greatness, an affected resignation. The enemies
which he enters lists to combat, "Despair and mighty Grief and sharp
Impatience," and the forces which he brings to vanquish them, "cornets
of horse," &c. are in the boldest style of allegory. They are such a
"race of mourners" as the "infection of sorrows loud" in the intellect
might beget on some "pregnant cloud" in the imagination. The prologue
to the second part, for its passionate earnestness, and for the tragic
note of preparation which it sounds, might have preceded one of those
old tales of Thebes or Pelops' line, which Milton has so highly
commended, as free from the common error of the poets in his day, of
"intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, brought in
without discretion corruptly to gratify the people." It is as solemn a
preparative as the "warning voice which he who saw the Apocalypse heard
cry."
_What you Will.--O I shall ne'er forget how he went cloath'd._ Act I.
Scene 1.--To judge of the liberality of these notions of dress, we must
advert to the days of Gresham, and the consternation which a phenomenon
habited like the merchant here described would have excited among the
flat round caps and cloth stockings upon 'Change, when those "original
arguments or tokens of a citizen's vocation were in fashion, not more
for thrift and usefulness than for distinction and grace." The blank
uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been
long hastening, is one instance of the decay of symbols among us, which,
whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has
certainly made us a less imaginative people. Shakspeare knew the force
of signs: a "malignant and a turban'd Turk." This "meal-cap miller,"
says the author of God's Revenge against Murder, to express his
indignation at an atrocious outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon
the person of the fair Marieta.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
_The Merry Devil of Edmonton._--The scene in this delightful comedy, in
which Jerningham, "with the true feeling of a zealous friend," touches
the griefs of Mounchensey, seems written to make the reader happy. Few
of our dramatists or novelists have attended enough to this. They
torture and wound us abundantly. They are economists only in delight.
Nothing can be finer, more gentlemanlike, and nobler, than the
conversation and compliments of these young men. How delicious is
Raymond Mounchensey's forgetting, in his fears, that Jerningham has a
"Saint in Essex;" and how sweetly his friend reminds him! I wish it
could be ascertained, which there is some grounds for believing, that
Michael Drayton was the author of this piece. It would add a worthy
appendage to the renown of that Panegyrist of my native Earth; who has
gone over her soil, in his Polyolbion, with the fidelity of a herald,
and the painful love of a son; who has not left a rivulet, so narrow
that it may be stept over, without honorable mention; and has animated
hills and streams with life and passion beyond the dreams of old
mythology.
THOMAS HEYWOOD
_A Woman Killed with Kindness._--Heywood is a sort of _prose_
Shakspeare. His scenes are to the full as natural and affecting. But we
miss _the poet_, that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above
the surface of _the nature_. Heywood's characters in this play, for
instance, his country gentlemen, &c. are exactly what we see, but of the
best kind of what we see, in life. Shakspeare makes us believe, while we
are among his lovely creations, that they are nothing but what we are
familiar with, as in dreams new things seem old; but we awake, and sigh
for the difference.
_The English Traveller._--Heywood's preface to this play is interesting,
as it shews the heroic indifference about the opinion of posterity,
which some of these great writers seem to have felt. There is
magnanimity in authorship as in every thing else. His ambition seems to
have been confined to the pleasure of hearing the players speak his
lines while he lived. It does not appear that he ever contemplated the
possibility of being read by after ages. What a slender pittance of fame
was motive sufficient to the production of such plays as the English
Traveller, the Challenge for Beauty, and the Woman Killed with Kindness!
Posterity is bound to take care that a writer loses nothing by such a
noble modesty.
THOMAS MIDDLETON AND WILLIAM ROWLEY
_A Fair Quarrel._--The insipid levelling morality to which the modern
stage is tied down, would not admit of such admirable passions as these
scenes are filled with. A puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid
infantile goodness, is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous
passions, and virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old
dramatists present us. Those noble and liberal casuists could discern in
the differences, the quarrels, the animosities of men, a beauty and
truth of moral feeling, no less than in the everlastingly inculcated
duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us, all is hypocritical
meekness. A reconciliation-scene, be the occasion never so absurd, never
fails of applause. Our audiences come to the theatre to be complimented
on their goodness. They compare notes with the amiable characters in the
play, and find a wonderful sympathy of disposition between them. We have
a common stock of dramatic morality, out of which a writer may be
supplied without the trouble of copying it from originals within his own
breast. To know the boundaries of honour, to be judiciously valiant, to
have a temperance which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings
of youth, to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a
parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious
cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be frail and
tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace blunting that sword
which the imaginary strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so
keen an edge upon but lately: to do, or to imagine this done in a
feigned story, asks something more of a moral sense, somewhat a greater
delicacy of perception in questions of right and wrong, than goes to the
writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as
opposed to the laws of the land, or a common-place against duelling. Yet
such things would stand a writer now-a-days in far better stead than
Captain Agar and his conscientious honour; and he would be considered as
a far better teacher of morality than old Rowley or Middleton, if they
were living.
WILLIAM ROWLEY
_A New Wonder; a Woman Never Vext._--The old play-writers are
distinguished by an honest boldness of exhibition, they shew every thing
without being ashamed. If a reverse in fortune is to be exhibited, they
fairly bring us to the prison-grate and the almsbasket. A poor man on
our stage is always a gentleman, he may be known by a peculiar neatness
of apparel, and by wearing black. Our delicacy in fact forbids the
dramatizing of distress at all. It is never shewn in its essential
properties; it appears but as the adjunct of some virtue, as something
which is to be relieved, from the approbation of which relief the
spectators are to derive a certain soothing of self-referred
satisfaction. We turn away from the real essences of things to hunt
after their relative shadows, moral duties; whereas, if the truth of
things were fairly represented, the relative duties might be safely
trusted to themselves, and moral philosophy lose the name of a science.
THOMAS MIDDLETON
_The Witch._--Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms
in Macbeth, and the incantations in this play, which is supposed to have
preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much from the originality
of Shakspeare. His witches are distinguished from the witches of
Middleton by essential differences. These are creatures to whom man or
woman, plotting some dire mischief, might resort for occasional
consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad impulses to
men. From the moment that their eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is
spell-bound. That meeting sways his destiny. He can never break the
fascination. These witches can hurt the body, those have power over the
soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low buffoon: the hags of
Shakspeare have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended
from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of whom we know not whence
they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning or ending. As they are
without human passions, so they seem to be without human relations. They
come with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all
we know of them. Except Hecate, they have no _names_; which heightens
their mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties, which the
other author has given to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are
serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But, in a
lesser degree, the witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power
too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies,
strifes, "like a thick scurf" over life.
WILLIAM ROWLEY,--THOMAS DECKER,--JOHN FORD, &c.
_The Witch of Edmonton._--Mother Sawyer, in this wild play, differs from
the hags of both Middleton and Shakspeare. She is the plain traditional
old woman witch of our ancestors; poor, deformed, and ignorant; the
terror of villages, herself amenable to a justice. That should be a
hardy sheriff, with the power of the county at his heels, that would
lay hands upon the Weird Sisters. They are of another jurisdiction. But
upon the common and received opinion, the author (or authors) have
engrafted strong fancy. There is something frightfully earnest in her
invocations to the Familiar.
CYRIL TOURNEUR
_The Revenger's Tragedy._--The reality and life of the dialogue, in
which Vindici and Hippolito first tempt their mother, and then threaten
her with death for consenting to the dishonour of their sister, passes
any scenical illusion I ever felt. I never read it but my ears tingle,
and I feel a hot blush overspread my cheeks, as if I were presently
about to proclaim such malefactions of myself as the brothers here
rebuke in their unnatural parent, in words more keen and dagger-like
than those which Hamlet speaks to his mother. Such power has the passion
of shame truly personated, not only to strike guilty creatures unto the
soul, but to "appal" even those that are "free."
JOHN WEBSTER
_The Duchess of Malfy._--All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus
with which the death of the Duchess is ushered in, the waxen images
which counterfeit death, the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the
bellman, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees,--are
not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance, than the
strange character of suffering which they seem to bring upon their
victim is out of the imagination of ordinary poets. As they are not like
inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She
has lived among horrors till she is become "native and endowed [indued]
unto that element." She speaks the dialect of despair; her tongue has a
smatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale. To move a horror skilfully, to
touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to
wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with
mortal instruments to take its last forfeit: this only a Webster can do.
Inferior geniuses may "upon horror's head horrors accumulate," but they
cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality; they terrify babes
with painted devils; but they know not how a soul is to be moved. Their
terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum.
_The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona._--This White Devil of Italy
sets off a bad cause so speciously, and pleads with such an
innocence-resembling boldness, that we seem to see that matchless beauty
of her face which inspires such gay confidence into her, and are ready
to expect, when she has done her pleadings, that her very judges, her
accusers, the grave ambassadors who sit as spectators, and all the
court, will rise and make proffer to defend her in spite of the utmost
conviction of her guilt; as the Shepherds in Don Quixote make proffer to
follow the beautiful Shepherdess Marcela, "without making any profit of
her manifest resolution made there in their hearing."
So sweet and lovely does she make the shame,
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Does spot the beauty of her budding name!
I never saw any thing like the funeral dirge in this play, for the death
of Marcello, except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned
father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of
the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to
resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.
In a note on the Spanish Tragedy in the Specimens, I have said that
there is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would authorize
us to suppose that he could have supplied the additions to Hieronymo. I
suspected the agency of some more potent spirit. I thought that Webster
might have furnished them. They seemed full of that wild, solemn,
preternatural cast of grief which bewilders us in the Duchess of Malfy.
On second consideration, I think this a hasty criticism. They are more
like the overflowing griefs and talking distraction of Titus Andronicus.
The sorrows of the Duchess set inward; if she talks, it is little more
than soliloquy imitating conversation in a kind of bravery.
JOHN FORD
_The Broken Heart._--I do not know where to find, in any play, a
catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as in this. This is
indeed, according to Milton, to describe high passions and high actions.
The fortitude of the Spartan boy, who let a beast gnaw out his bowels
till he died without expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this
dilaceration of the spirit, and exenteration of the inmost mind, which
Calantha, with a holy violence against her nature, keeps closely
covered, till the last duties of a wife and a queen are fulfilled.
Stories of martyrdom are but of chains and the stake; a little bodily
suffering. These torments
On the purest spirits prey,
As on entrails, joints, and limbs,
With answerable pains, but more intense.
What a noble thing is the soul in its strengths and in its weaknesses!
Who would be less weak than Calantha? Who can be so strong? The
expression of this transcendent scene almost bears us in imagination to
Calvary and the Cross; and we seem to perceive some analogy between the
scenical sufferings which we are here contemplating, and the real
agonies of that final completion to which we dare no more than hint a
reference. Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought for
sublimity, not by parcels, in metaphors or visible images, but directly
where she has her full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and
sufferings of the greatest minds. There is a grandeur of the soul above
mountains, seas, and the elements. Even in the poor perverted reason of
Giovanni and Annabella, in the play[3] which stands at the head of the
modern collection of the works of this author, we discern traces of that
fiery particle, which, in the irregular starting from out the road of
beaten action, discovers something of a right line even in obliquity,
and shews hints of an improveable greatness in the lowest descents and
degradations of our nature.
[3] 'Tis Pity she is a Whore.
FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE
_Alaham, Mustapha._--The two tragedies of Lord Brooke, printed among his
poems, might with more propriety have been termed political treatises
than plays. Their author has strangely contrived to make passion,
character, and interest, of the highest order, subservient to the
expression of state dogmas and mysteries. He is nine parts Machiavel and
Tacitus, for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this writer's estimate of
the powers of the mind, the understanding must have held a most
tyrannical pre-eminence. Whether we look into his plays, or his most
passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with
intellect. The finest movements of the human heart, the utmost grandeur
of which the soul is capable, are essentially comprised in the actions
and speeches of Cælica and Camena. Shakspeare, who seems to have had a
peculiar delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom for his many
sweet images of female excellence all women are in an especial manner
bound to love, has not raised the ideal of the female character higher
than Lord Brooke, in these two women, has done. But it requires a study
equivalent to the learning of a new language to understand their meaning
when they speak. It is indeed hard to hit:
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day
Or seven though one should musing sit.
It is as if a being of pure intellect should take upon him to express
the emotions of our sensitive natures. There would be all knowledge, but
sympathetic expressions would be wanting.
BEN JONSON
_The Case is Altered._--The passion for wealth has worn out much of its
grossness in tract of time. Our ancestors certainly conceived of money
as able to confer a distinct gratification in itself, not considered
simply as a symbol of wealth. The old poets, when they introduce a
miser, make him address his gold as his mistress; as something to be
seen, felt, and hugged; as capable of satisfying two of the senses at
least. The substitution of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place of
the good old tangible metal, has made avarice quite a Platonic affection
in comparison with the seeing, touching, and handling-pleasures of the
old Chrysophilites. A bank-note can no more satisfy the touch of a true
sensualist in this passion, than Creusa could return her husband's
embrace in the shades. See the Cave of Mammon in Spenser; Barabas's
contemplation of his wealth in the Rich Jew of Malta; Luke's raptures in
the City Madam; the idolatry and absolute gold-worship of the miser
Jaques in this early comic production of Ben Jonson's. Above all hear
Guzman, in that excellent old translation of the Spanish Rogue,
expatiate on the "ruddy cheeks of your golden ruddocks, your Spanish
pistolets, your plump and full-faced Portuguese, and your clear-skinned
pieces of eight of Castile," which he and his fellows the beggars kept
secret to themselves, and did privately enjoy in a plentiful manner.
"For to have them, to pay them away, is not to enjoy them; to enjoy
them, is to have them lying by us; having no other need of them than to
use them for the clearing of the eye-sight, and the comforting of our
senses. These we did carry about with us, sewing them in some patches of
our doublets near unto the heart, and as close to the skin as we could
handsomely quilt them in, holding them to be restorative."
_Poetaster._--This Roman play seems written to confute those enemies of
Ben in his own days and ours, who have said that he made a pedantical
use of his learning. He has here revived the whole Court of Augustus, by
a learned spell. We are admitted to the society of the illustrious dead.
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, converse in our own tongue more finely
and poetically than they were used to express themselves in their native
Latin. Nothing can be imagined more elegant, refined, and court-like,
than the scenes between this Louis the Fourteenth of antiquity and his
literati. The whole essence and secret of that kind of intercourse is
contained therein. The economical liberality by which greatness, seeming
to waive some part of its prerogative, takes care to lose none of the
essentials; the prudential liberties of an inferior, which flatter by
commanded boldness and soothe with complimentary sincerity. These, and a
thousand beautiful passages from his New Inn, his Cynthia's Revels, and
from those numerous court-masques and entertainments which he was in the
daily habit of furnishing, might be adduced to shew the poetical fancy
and elegance of mind of the supposed rugged old bard.
_Alchemist._--The judgment is perfectly overwhelmed by the torrent of
images, words, and book-knowledge, with which Epicure Mammon (Act 2,
Scene 2) confounds and stuns his incredulous hearer. They come pouring
out like the successive falls of Nilus. They "doubly redouble strokes
upon the foe." Description outstrides proof. We are made to believe
effects before we have testimony for their causes. If there is no one
image which attains the height of the sublime, yet the confluence and
assemblage of them all produces a result equal to the grandest poetry.
The huge Zerxean army countervails against single Achilles. Epicure
Mammon is the most determined offspring of its author. It has the whole
"matter and copy of the father--eye, nose, lip, the trick of his frown."
It is just such a swaggerer as contemporaries have described old Ben to
be. Meercraft, Bobadil, the Host of the New Inn, have all his image and
superscription. But Mammon is arrogant pretension personified. Sir
Samson Legend, in Love for Love, is such another lying, overbearing
character, but he does not come up to Epicure Mammon. What a "towering
bravery" there is in his sensuality! he affects no pleasure under a
Sultan. It is as if "Egypt with Assyria strove in luxury."
GEORGE CHAPMAN
_Bussy D'Ambois, Byron's Conspiracy, Byron's Tragedy, &c. &c._--Webster
has happily characterised the "full and heightened style" of Chapman,
who, of all the English play-writers, perhaps approaches nearest to
Shakspeare in the descriptive and didactic, in passages which are less
purely dramatic. He could not go out of himself, as Shakspeare could
shift at pleasure, to inform and animate other existences, but in
himself he had an eye to perceive and a soul to embrace all forms and
modes of being. He would have made a great epic poet, if indeed he has
not abundantly shewn himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly
a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulysses re-written. The
earnestness and passion which he has put into every part of these poems,
would be incredible to a reader of mere modern translations. His almost
Greek zeal for the glory of his heroes can only be paralleled by that
fierce spirit of Hebrew bigotry, with which Milton, as if personating
one of the zealots of the old law, clothed himself when he sat down to
paint the acts of Samson against the uncircumcised. The great obstacle
to Chapman's translations being read, is their unconquerable quaintness.
He pours out in the same breath the most just and natural, and the most
violent and crude expressions. He seems to grasp at whatever words come
first to hand while the enthusiasm is upon him, as if all other must be
inadequate to the divine meaning. But passion (the all in all in
poetry) is every where present, raising the low, dignifying the mean,
and putting sense into the absurd. He makes his readers glow, weep,
tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be moved by words, or in
spite of them, be disgusted and overcome their disgust.
FRANCIS BEAUMONT.--JOHN FLETCHER
_Maid's Tragedy._-One characteristic of the excellent old poets is,
their being able to bestow grace upon subjects which naturally do not
seem susceptible of any. I will mention two instances. Zelmane in the
Arcadia of Sidney, and Helena in the All's Well that Ends Well of
Shakspeare. What can be more unpromising at first sight, than the idea
of a young man disguising himself in woman's attire, and passing himself
off for a woman among women; and that for a long space of time? Yet Sir
Philip has preserved so matchless a decorum, that neither does Pryocles'
manhood suffer any stain for the effeminacy of Zelmane, nor is the
respect due to the princesses at all diminished when the deception comes
to be known. In the sweetly constituted mind of Sir Philip Sidney, it
seems as if no ugly thought or unhandsome meditation could find a
harbour. He turned all that he touched into images of honour and virtue.
Helena in Shakspeare is a young woman seeking a man in marriage. The
ordinary rules of courtship are reversed, the habitual feelings are
crossed. Yet with such exquisite address this dangerous subject is
handled, that Helena's forwardness loses her no honour; delicacy
dispenses with its laws in her favour, and nature, in her single case,
seems content to suffer a sweet violation. Aspatia, in the Maid's
Tragedy, is a character equally difficult, with Helena, of being managed
with grace. She too is a slighted woman, refused by the man who had once
engaged to marry her. Yet it is artfully contrived, that while we pity
we respect her, and she descends without degradation. Such wonders true
poetry and passion can do, to confer dignity upon subjects which do not
seem capable of it. But Aspatia must not be compared at all points with
Helena; she does not so absolutely predominate over her situation but
she suffers some diminution, some abatement of the full lustre of the
female character, which Helena never does. Her character has many
degrees of sweetness, some of delicacy; but it has weakness, which, if
we do not despise, we are sorry for. After all, Beaumont and Fletcher
were but an inferior sort of Shakspeares and Sidneys.
_Philaster._--The character of Bellario must have been extremely popular
in its day. For many years after the date of Philaster's first
exhibition on the stage, scarce a play can be found without one of these
women pages in it, following in the train of some pre-engaged lover,
calling on the gods to bless her happy rival (his mistress), whom no
doubt she secretly curses in her heart, giving rise to many pretty
_equivoques_ by the way on the confusion of sex, and either made happy
at last by some surprising turn of fate, or dismissed with the joint
pity of the lovers and the audience. Donne has a copy of verses to his
mistress, dissuading her from a resolution which she seems to have taken
up from some of these scenical representations, of following him abroad
as a page. It is so earnest, so weighty, so rich in poetry, in sense, in
wit, and pathos, that it deserves to be read as a solemn close in future
to all such sickly fancies as he there deprecates.
JOHN FLETCHER
_Thierry and Theodoret._--The scene where Ordella offers her life a
sacrifice, that the king of France may not be childless, I have always
considered as the finest in all Fletcher, and Ordella to be the most
perfect notion of the female heroic character, next to Calantha in the
Broken Heart. She is a piece of sainted nature. Yet noble as the whole
passage is, it must be confessed that the manner of it, compared with
Shakspeare's finest scenes, is faint and languid. Its motion is
circular, not progressive. Each line revolves on itself in a sort of
separate orbid. They do not join into one another like a running-hand.
Fletcher's ideas moved slow; his versification, though sweet, is
tedious, it stops at every turn; he lays line upon line, making up one
after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we see
their junctures. Shakspeare mingles every thing, runs line into line,
embarrasses sentences and metaphors; before one idea has burst its
shell, another is hatched and clamorous for disclosure. Another striking
difference between Fletcher and Shakspeare, is the fondness of the
former for unnatural and violent situations. He seems to have thought
that nothing great could be produced in an ordinary way. The chief
incidents in some of his most admired tragedies shew this.[4] Shakspeare
had nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that craving after
violent situations, and flights of strained and improbable virtue, which
I think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibility. The wit of
Fletcher is excellent[5] like his serious scenes, but there is something
strained and far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of Nature, he
always goes a little on one side of her. Shakspeare chose her without a
reserve: and had riches, power, understanding, and length of days, with
her, for a dowry.
[4] Wife for a Month, Cupid's Revenge, Double Marriage, &c.
[5] Wit without Money, and his comedies generally.
_Faithful Shepherdess._--If all the parts of this delightful pastoral
had been in unison with its many innocent scenes and sweet lyric
intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie with Comus or the Arcadia,
to have been put into the hands of boys and virgins, to have made matter
for young dreams, like the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a spot is
on the face of this Diana. Nothing short of infatuation could have
driven Fletcher upon mixing with this "blessedness" such an ugly
deformity as Cloe, the wanton shepherdess! If Cloe was meant to set off
Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have known that such weeds by
juxta-position do not set off, but kill sweet flowers.
PHILIP MASSINGER.--THOMAS DECKER
_The Virgin Martyr._--This play has some beauties of so very high an
order, that with all my respect for Massinger, I do not think he had
poetical enthusiasm capable of rising up to them. His associate Decker,
who wrote Old Fortunatus, had poetry enough for any thing. The very
impurities which obtrude themselves among the sweet pieties of this
play, like Satan among the Sons of Heaven, have a strength of contrast,
a raciness, and a glow, in them, which are beyond Massinger. They are to
the religion of the rest what Caliban is to Miranda.
PHILIP MASSINGER.--THOMAS MIDDLETON.--WILLIAM ROWLEY
_Old Law._--There is an exquisiteness of moral sensibility, making one's
eyes to gush out tears of delight, and a poetical strangeness in the
circumstances of this sweet tragi-comedy, which are unlike any thing in
the dramas which Massinger wrote alone. The pathos is of a subtler edge.
Middleton and Rowley, who assisted in it, had both of them finer
geniuses than their associate.
JAMES SHIRLEY
Claims a place amongst the worthies of this period, not so much for any
transcendant talent in himself, as that he was the last of a great race,
all of whom spoke nearly the same language, and had a set of moral
feelings and notions in common. A new language, and quite a new turn of
tragic and comic interest, came in with the Restoration.
ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM BEING HANGED
(1810. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Sir,--I am one of those unhappy persons whose misfortunes, it seems, do
not entitle them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is bestowed upon
me of that kindest alleviator of human miseries, comes dashed with a
double portion of contempt. My griefs have nothing in them that is felt
as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my affliction in truth of the
deepest grain. The heaviest task that was ever given to mortal patience
to sustain. Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can never modify or
soften mine. Here they must continue to gnaw, as long as that fatal
mark----
Why was I ever born? Why was innocence in my person suffered to be
branded with a stain which was appointed only for the blackest guilt?
What had I done, or my parents, that a disgrace of mine should involve a
whole posterity in infamy? I am almost tempted to believe, that, in some
pre-existent state, crimes to which this sublunary life of mine hath
been as much a stranger as the babe that is newly born into it, have
drawn down upon me this vengeance, so disproportionate to my actions on
this globe.
My brain sickens, and my bosom labours to be delivered of the weight
that presses upon it, yet my conscious pen shrinks from the avowal. But
out it must----
O, Mr. Reflector! guess at the wretch's misery who now writes this to
you, when, with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged to confess,
that he has been---- HANGED----
Methinks I hear an involuntary exclamation burst from you, as your
imagination presents to you fearful images of your correspondent
unknown,--_hanged!_
Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied spirit has the honour of addressing
you. I am flesh and blood, an unfortunate system of bones, muscles,
sinews, arteries, like yourself.
_Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant--That expression of yours, Mr.
Correspondent, must be taken somehow in a metaphorical sense----_
In the plainest sense, without trope or figure--Yes, Mr. Editor! this
neck of mine has felt the fatal noose,--these hands have tremblingly
held up the corroborative prayer-book,--these lips have sucked the
moisture of the last consolatory orange,--this tongue has chaunted the
doleful cantata which no performer was ever called upon to repeat,--this
face has had the veiling nightcap drawn over it----
But for no crime of mine.--Far be it from me to arraign the justice of
my country, which, though tardy, did at length recognise my innocence.
It is not for me to reflect upon judge or jury, now that eleven years
have elapsed since the erroneous sentence was pronounced. Men will
always be fallible, and perhaps circumstances did appear at the time a
little strong----
Suffice it to say, that after hanging four minutes, (as the spectators
were pleased to compute it,--a man that is being strangled, I know from
experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his friends
who are breathing leisurely about him,--I suppose the minutes lengthen
as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles get longer
as you travel northward--), after hanging four minutes, according to the
best calculation of the bystanders, a reprieve came, and I was cut
DOWN----
Really I am ashamed of deforming your pages with these technical
phrases--if I knew how to express my meaning shorter----
But to proceed.--My first care after I had been brought to myself by the
usual methods, (those methods that are so interesting to the operator
and his assistants, who are pretty numerous on such occasions,--but
which no patient was ever desirous of undergoing a second time for the
benefit of science), my first care was to provide myself with an
enormous stock or cravat to hide the place--you understand me;--my next
care was to procure a residence as distant as possible from that part of
the country where I had suffered. For that reason I chose the
metropolis, as the place where wounded honour (I had been told) could
lurk with the least danger of exciting enquiry, and stigmatised
innocence had the best chance of hiding her disgrace in a crowd. I
sought out a new circle of acquaintance, and my circumstances happily
enabling me to pursue my fancy in that respect, I endeavoured, by
mingling in all the pleasures which the town affords, to efface the
memory of what I had undergone.
But alas! such is the portentous and all-pervading chain of connection
which links together the head and members of this great community, my
scheme of lying perdu was defeated almost at the outset. A countryman of
mine, whom a foolish law-suit had brought to town, by chance met me, and
the secret was soon blazoned about.
In a short time, I found myself deserted by most of those who had been
my intimate friends. Not that any guilt was supposed to attach to my
character. My officious countryman, to do him justice, had been candid
enough to explain my perfect innocence. But, somehow or other, there is
a want of strong virtue in mankind. We have plenty of the softer
instincts, but the heroic character is gone. How else can I account for
it, that of all my numerous acquaintance, among whom I had the honour of
ranking sundry persons of education, talents, and worth, scarcely here
and there one or two could be found, who had the courage to associate
with a man that had been hanged.
Those few who did not desert me altogether, were persons of strong but
coarse minds; and from the absence of all delicacy in them I suffered
almost as much as from the superabundance of a false species of it in
the others. Those who stuck by me were the jokers, who thought
themselves entitled by the fidelity which they had shewn towards me to
use me with what familiarity they pleased. Many and unfeeling are the
jests that I have suffered from these rude (because faithful) Achateses.
As they past me in the streets, one would nod significantly to his
companion and say, pointing to me, smoke his cravat, and ask me if I had
got a wen, that I was so solicitous to cover my neck. Another would
enquire, What news from * * * Assizes? (which you may guess, Mr. Editor,
was the scene of my shame), and whether the sessions was like to prove a
maiden one? A third would offer to ensure me from drowning. A fourth
would teaze me with enquiries how I felt when I was swinging, whether I
had not something like a blue flame dancing before my eyes? A fifth took
a fancy never to call me anything but _Lazarus_. And an eminent
bookseller and publisher,--who, in his zeal to present the public with
new facts, had he lived in those days, I am confident, would not have
scrupled waiting upon the person himself last mentioned, at the most
critical period of his existence, to solicit a _few facts relative to
resuscitation_,--had the modesty to offer me ---- guineas per sheet, if
I would write, in his Magazine, a physiological account of my feelings
upon coming to myself.
But these were evils which a moderate fortitude might have enabled me to
struggle with. Alas! Mr. Editor, the women,--whose good graces I had
always most assiduously cultivated, from whose softer minds I had hoped
a more delicate and generous sympathy than I found in the men,--the
women begun to shun me--this was the unkindest blow of all.
But is it to be wondered at? How couldst thou imagine, wretchedest of
beings, that that tender creature Seraphina would fling her pretty arms
about that neck which previous circumstances had rendered infamous? That
she would put up with the refuse of the rope, the leavings of the cord?
Or that any analogy could subsist between the knot which binds true
lovers, and the knot which ties malefactors?
I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, who, when I complimented her
one day on the execution which her eyes had done, replied, that, to be
sure, Mr. * * was a judge of those things. But from thy more exalted
mind, Celestina, I expected a more unprejudiced decision.
The person whose true name I conceal under this appellation, of all the
women that I was ever acquainted with, had the most manly turn of mind,
which she had improved by reading and the best conversation. Her
understanding was not more masculine than her manners and whole
disposition were delicately and truly feminine. She was the daughter of
an officer who had fallen in the service of his country, leaving his
widow and Celestina, an only child, with a fortune sufficient to set
them above want, but not to enable them to live in splendour. I had the
mother's permission to pay my addresses to the young lady, and Celestina
seemed to approve of my suit.
Often and often have I poured out my overcharged soul in the presence of
Celestina, complaining of the hard and unfeeling prejudices of the
world, and the sweet maid has again and again declared, that no
irrational prejudice should hinder her from esteeming every man
according to his intrinsic worth. Often has she repeated the consolatory
assurance, that she could never consider as essentially ignominious an
_accident_, which was indeed to be deprecated, but which might have
happened to the most innocent of mankind. Then would she set forth some
illustrious example, which her reading easily furnished, of a Phocion or
a Socrates unjustly condemned; of a Raleigh or a Sir Thomas More, to
whom late posterity had done justice; and by soothing my fancy with some
such agreeable parallel, she would make me almost to triumph in my
disgrace, and convert my shame into glory.
In such entertaining and instructive conversations the time passed on,
till I importunately urged the mistress of my affections to name a day
for our union. To this she obligingly consented, and I thought myself
the happiest of mankind. But how was I surprised one morning on the
receipt of the following billet from my charmer:--
Sir,--You must not impute it to levity, or to a worse failing,
ingratitude, if, with anguish of heart, I feel myself compelled by
irresistible arguments to recall a vow which I fear I made with too
little consideration. I never can be yours. The reasons of my decision,
which is final, are in my own breast, and you must everlastingly remain
a stranger to them. Assure yourself that I can never cease to esteem you
as I ought.
CELESTINA.
At the sight of this paper, I ran in frantic haste to Celestina's
lodgings, where I learned, to my infinite mortification, that the mother
and daughter were set off on a journey to a distant part of the country,
to visit a relation, and were not expected to return in less than four
months.
Stunned by this blow, which left me without the courage to solicit an
explanation by letter, even if I had known where they were, (for the
particular address was industriously concealed from me), I waited with
impatience the termination of the period, in the vain hope that I might
be permitted to have a chance of softening the harsh decision by a
personal interview with Celestina after her return. But before three
months were at an end, I learned from the newspapers, that my beloved
had--given her hand to another!
Heart-broken as I was, I was totally at a loss to account for the
strange step which she had taken; and it was not till some years after
that I learned the true reason from a female relation of hers, to whom
it seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, that it was no demerit
of mine that had caused her to break off the match so abruptly, nor any
preference which she might feel for any other person, for she preferred
me (she was pleased to say) to all mankind; but when she came to lay the
matter closer to her heart, she found that she never should be able to
bear the sight (I give you her very words as they were detailed to me by
her relation) the sight of a man in a nightcap, who had appeared on a
public platform, it would lead to such a disagreeable association of
ideas! And to this punctilio I was sacrificed.
To pass over an infinite series of minor mortifications, to which this
last and heaviest might well render me callous, behold me here, Mr.
Editor! in the thirty-seventh year of my existence, (the twelfth,
reckoning from my re-animation), cut off from all respectable
connections, rejected by the fairer half of the community,--who in my
case alone seem to have laid aside the characteristic pity of their sex;
punished because I was once punished unjustly; suffering for no other
reason than because I once had the misfortune to suffer without any
cause at all. In no other country, I think, but this, could a man have
been subject to such a life-long persecution, when once his innocence
had been clearly established.
Had I crawled forth a rescued victim from the rack in the horrible
dungeons of the Inquisition,--had I heaved myself up from a half
bastinado in China, or been torn from the just-entering, ghastly
impaling stake in Barbary,--had I dropt alive from the knout in
Russia, or come off with a gashed neck from the half-mortal,
scarce-in-time-retracted scymeter of an executioneering slave in
Turkey,--I might have borne about the remnant of this frame (the mangled
trophy of reprieved innocence) with credit to myself, in any of those
barbarous countries. No scorn, at least, would have mingled with the
pity (small as it might be) with which what was left of me would have
been surveyed.
The singularity of my case has often led me to enquire into the reasons
of the general levity with which the subject of hanging is treated as a
topic in this country. I say as a topic: for let the very persons who
speak so lightly of the thing at a distance be brought to view the real
scene,--let the platform be bona fide exhibited, and the trembling
culprit brought forth,--the case is changed; but as a topic of
conversation, I appeal to the vulgar jokes which pass current in every
street. But why mention them, when the politest authors have agreed in
making use of this subject as a source of the ridiculous? Swift, and
Pope, and Prior, are fond of recurring to it. Gay has built an entire
drama upon this single foundation. The whole interest of the _Beggar's
Opera_ may be said to hang upon it. To such writers as Fielding and
Smollet it is a perfect _bon[ne]bouche_.--Hear the facetious Tom Brown,
in his _Comical View of London and Westminster_, describe the _Order of
the Show at one of the Tyburn Executions_ in his time:--"Mr. Ordinary
visits his melancholy flock in Newgate by eight. Doleful procession up
Holborn-hill about eleven. Men handsome and proper that were never
thought so before, which is some comfort however. Arrive at the fatal
place by twelve. Burnt brandy, women, and sabbath-breaking, repented of.
Some few penitential drops fall under the gallows. Sheriffs men, parson,
pickpockets, criminals, all very busy. The last concluding peremptory
psalm struck up. Show over by one."--In this sportive strain does this
misguided wit think proper to play with a subject so serious, which yet
he would hardly have done, if he had not known that there existed a
predisposition in the habits of his unaccountable countrymen to consider
the subject as a jest. But what shall we say to Shakspeare, who, (not
to mention the solution which the _Gravedigger_ in _Hamlet_ gives of his
fellow workman's problem), in that scene in _Measure for Measure_, where
the _Clown_ calls upon _Master Barnardine_ to get up and be hanged,
which he declines on the score of being sleepy, has actually gone out of
his way to gratify this amiable propensity in his countrymen; for it is
plain, from the use that was to be made of his head, and from
_Abhorson's_ asking, "is the axe upon the block, sirrah?" that
beheading, and not hanging, was the punishment to which _Barnardine_ was
destined. But Shakspeare knew that the axe and block were pregnant with
no ludicrous images, and therefore falsified the historic truth of his
own drama (if I may so speak) rather than he would leave out such
excellent matter for a jest as the suspending of a fellow-creature in
mid air has been ever esteemed to be by Englishmen.
One reason why the ludicrous never fails to intrude itself into our
contemplations upon this mode of death, I suppose to be, the absurd
posture into which a man is thrown who is condemned to dance, as the
vulgar delight to express it, upon nothing. To see him whisking and
wavering in the air,
As the wind you know will wave a man;[6]
[6] Hieronimo in the Spanish tragedy.
to behold the vacant carcase, from which the life is newly dislodged,
shifting between earth and heaven, the sport of every gust; like a
weather-cock, serving to shew from which point the wind blows; like a
maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon a
bough when the bird is flown: these are uses to which we cannot without
a mixture of spleen and contempt behold the human carcase reduced. We
string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man surely deserves a
steadier death.
Another reason why the ludicrous associates more forcibly with this than
with any other mode of punishment, I cannot help thinking to be, the
senseless costume with which old prescription has thought fit to clothe
the exit of malefactors in this country. Let a man do what he will to
abstract from his imagination all idea of the whimsical, something of it
will come across him when he contemplates the figure of a
fellow-creature in the day-time (in however distressing a situation) in
a night cap. Whether it be that this nocturnal addition has something
discordant with day-light, or that it is the dress which we are seen in
at those times when we are "seen," as the Angel in Milton expresses it,
"least wise;" this I am afraid will always be the case; unless indeed,
as in my instance, some strong personal feeling overpower the ludicrous
altogether. To me, when I reflect upon the train of misfortunes which
have pursued me through life, owing to that accursed drapery, the cap
presents as purely frightful an object as the sleeveless yellow coat and
devil-painted mitre of the San Benitos.--An ancestor of mine, who
suffered for his loyalty in the time of the civil wars, was so sensible
of the truth of what I am here advancing, that on the morning of
execution, no intreaties could prevail upon him to submit to the odious
dishabille, as he called it, but he insisted upon wearing, and actually
suffered in, the identical flowing periwig which he is painted in, in
the gallery belonging to my uncle's seat in ----shire.
Suffer me, Mr. Editor, before I quit the subject, to say a word or two
respecting the minister of justice in this country; in plain words, I
mean the hangman. It has always appeared to me that, in the mode of
inflicting capital punishments with us, there is too much of the
ministry of the human hand. The guillotine, as performing its functions
more of itself and sparing human agency, though a cruel and disgusting
exhibition, in my mind, has many ways the advantage over _our way_. In
beheading, indeed, as it was formerly practised in England, and in
whipping to death, as is sometimes practised now, the hand of man is no
doubt sufficiently busy; but there is something less repugnant in these
downright blows than in the officious barber-like ministerings of _the
other_. To have a fellow with his hangman's hands fumbling about your
collar, adjusting the thing as your valet would regulate your cravat,
valuing himself on his menial dexterity----
I never shall forget meeting my rascal,--I mean the fellow who
officiated for me,--in London last winter. I think I see him now,--in a
waistcoat that had been mine,--smirking along as if he knew me----
In some parts of Germany, that fellow's office is by law declared
infamous, and his posterity incapable of being ennobled. They have
hereditary hangmen, or had at least, in the same manner as they had
hereditary other great officers of state; and the hangmen's families of
two adjoining parishes intermarried with each other, to keep the breed
entire. I wish something of the same kind were established in England.
But it is time to quit a subject which teems with disagreeable images--
Permit me to subscribe myself, Mr. Editor,
Your unfortunate friend,
PENSILIS.
ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY; WITH A HINT
TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE FRAMING OF ADVERTISEMENTS FOR APPREHENDING
OFFENDERS
(1810. TEXT OF 1818)
_To the Editor of the Reflector_
Mr. Reflector,--There is no science in their pretensions to which
mankind are more apt to commit grievous mistakes, than in the supposed
very obvious one of physiognomy. I quarrel not with the principles of
this science, as they are laid down by learned professors; much less am
I disposed, with some people, to deny its existence altogether as any
inlet of knowledge that can be depended upon. I believe that there is,
or may be, an art to "read the mind's construction in the face." But,
then, in every species of _reading_, so much depends upon the eyes of
the reader; if they are blear, or apt to dazzle, or inattentive, or
strained with too much attention, the optic power will infallibly bring
home false reports of what it reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory
glance at a stranger, what a fine open countenance he has, who, upon
second inspection, proves to have the exact features of a knave. Nay, in
much more intimate acquaintances, how a delusion of this kind shall
continue for months, years, and then break up all at once.
Ask the married man, who has been so but for a short space of time, if
those blue eyes where, during so many years of anxious courtship, truth,
sweetness, serenity, seemed to be written in characters which could not
be misunderstood--ask him if the characters which they now convey be
exactly the same?--if for truth he does not _read_ a dull virtue (the
mimic of constancy) which changes not, only because it wants the
judgment to make a preference?--if for sweetness he does not _read_ a
stupid habit of looking pleased at every thing;--if for serenity he does
not _read_ animal tranquillity, the dead pool of the heart, which no
breeze of passion can stir into health? Alas! what is this book of the
countenance good for, which when we have read so long, and thought that
we understood its contents, there comes a countless list of
heart-breaking errata at the end!
But these are the pitiable mistakes to which love alone is subject. I
have inadvertently wandered from my purpose, which was to expose quite
an opposite blunder, into which we are no less apt to fall, through
hate. How ugly a person looks upon whose reputation some awkward
aspersion hangs, and how suddenly his countenance clears up with his
character. I remember being persuaded of a man whom I had conceived an
ill opinion of, that he had a very bad set of teeth; which, since I have
had better opportunities of being acquainted with his face and facts, I
find to have been the very reverse of the truth. _That crooked old
woman_, I once said, speaking of an ancient gentlewoman, whose actions
did not square altogether with my notions of the rule of right. The
unanimous surprise of the company before whom I uttered these words,
soon convinced me that I had confounded mental with bodily obliquity,
and that there was nothing tortuous about the old lady but her deeds.
This humour of mankind to deny personal comeliness to those with whose
moral attributes they are dissatisfied, is very strongly shewn in those
advertisements, which stare us in the face from the walls of every
street, and, with the tempting bait which they hang forth, stimulate at
once cupidity and an abstract love of justice in the breast of every
passing peruser; I mean, the advertisements offering rewards for the
apprehension of absconded culprits, strayed apprentices, bankrupts who
have conveyed away their effects, debtors that have run away from their
bail. I observe, that in exact proportion to the indignity with which
the prosecutor, who is commonly the framer of the advertisement,
conceives he has been treated, the personal pretensions of the fugitive
are denied, and his defects exaggerated.
A fellow, whose misdeeds have been directed against the public in
general, and in whose delinquency no individual shall feel himself
particularly interested, generally meets with fair usage. A coiner or a
smuggler shall get off tolerably well. His beauty, if he has any, is not
much underrated, his deformities are not much magnified. A run-away
apprentice, who excites perhaps the next least degree of spleen in his
prosecutor, generally escapes with a pair of bandy legs; if he has taken
any thing with him in his flight, a hitch in his gait is generally
superadded. A bankrupt, who has been guilty of withdrawing his effects,
if his case be not very atrocious, commonly meets with mild usage. But a
debtor who has left his bail in jeopardy, is sure to be described in
characters of unmingled deformity. Here the personal feelings of the
bail, which may be allowed to be somewhat poignant, are admitted to
interfere; and, as wrath and revenge commonly strike in the dark, the
colours are laid on with a grossness which I am convinced must often
defeat its own purpose. The fish that casts an inky cloud about him that
his enemies may not find him, cannot more obscure himself by that device
than the blackening representations of these angry advertisers must
inevitably serve to cloak and screen the persons of those who have
injured them from detection. I have before me at this moment one of
these bills, which runs thus:--
"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD.
"Run away from his bail, John Tomkins, formerly resident in
Princes-street, Soho, but lately of Clerkenwell. Whoever shall
apprehend, or cause to be apprehended and lodged in one of his
Majesty's jails, the said John Tomkins, shall receive the above
reward. He is a thickset, sturdy man, about five foot six inches
high, halts in his left leg, with a stoop in his gait, with coarse
red hair, nose short and cocked up, with little grey eyes, one of
them bears the effect of a blow which he has lately received, with
a pot belly, speaks with a thick and disagreeable voice, goes
shabbily drest, had on when he went away a greasy shag great coat
with rusty yellow buttons."
Now, although it is not out of the compass of possibility that John
Tomkins aforesaid may comprehend in his agreeable person all the
above-mentioned aggregate of charms; yet, from my observation of the
manner in which these advertisements are usually drawn up, though I have
not the pleasure of knowing the gentleman, yet would I lay a wager, that
an advertisement to the following effect would have a much better chance
of apprehending and laying by the heels this John Tomkins than the above
description, although penned by one who, from the good services which he
appears to have done for him, has not improbably been blessed with some
years of previous intercourse with the said John. Taking, then, the
above advertisement to be true, or nearly so, down to the words "left
leg" inclusive (though I have some doubt if the blemish there implied
amount to a positive lameness, or be perceivable by any but the nearest
friends of John) I would proceed thus:--
--"Leans a little forward in his walk, his hair thick and inclining to
auburn, his nose of the middle size, a little turned up at the end,
lively hazel eyes (the contusion, as its effects are probably gone off
by this time, I judge better omitted) inclines to be corpulent, his
voice thick but pleasing, especially when he sings, had on a decent shag
great coat with yellow buttons."
Now, I would stake a considerable wager (though by no means a positive
man) that some such mitigated description would lead the beagles of the
law into a much surer track for finding this ungracious varlet, than to
set them upon a false scent after fictitious ugliness and fictitious
shabbiness; though, to do those gentlemen justice, I have no doubt their
experience has taught them in all such cases to abate a great deal of
the deformity which they are instructed to expect; and has discovered to
them, that the Devil's agents upon this earth, like their master, are
far less ugly in reality than they are painted.
I am afraid, Mr. Reflector, that I shall be thought to have gone wide of
my subject, which was to detect the practical errors of physiognomy,
properly so called; whereas I have introduced physical defects, such as
lameness, the effects of accidents upon a man's person, his wearing
apparel, &c. as circumstances on which the eye of dislike, looking
ascance, may report erroneous conclusions to the understanding. But if
we are liable, through a kind, or an unkind passion, to mistake so
grossly concerning things so exterior and palpable, how much more are
we likely to err respecting those nicer and less perceptible hints of
character in a face, whose detection constitutes the triumph of the
physiognomist.
To revert to those bestowers of unmerited deformity, the framers of
advertisements for the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere desire of
promoting the ends of public justice induces me to address a word to
them on the best means of attaining those ends. I will endeavour to lay
down a few practical, or rather negative, rules for their use, for my
ambition extends no further than to arm them with cautions against the
self-defeating of their own purposes:--
1. Imprimis, then, Mr. Advertiser! If the culprit whom you are willing
to recover be one to whom in times past you have shewn kindness, and
been disposed to think kindly of him yourself, but he has deceived your
trust, and has run away, and left you with a load of debt to answer for
him,--sit down calmly, and endeavour to behold him through the
spectacles of memory rather than of present conceit. Image to yourself,
before you pen a tittle of his description, the same plausible,
good-looking man who took you in; and try to put away from your mind
every intrusion of that deceitful spectre which perpetually obtrudes
itself in the room of your former friend's known visage. It will do you
more credit to have been deceived by such a one; and depend upon it, the
traitor will convey to the eyes of the world in general much more of
that first idea which you formed (perhaps in part erroneous) of his
physiognomy, than of that frightful substitute which you have suffered
to creep in upon your mind and usurp upon it; a creature which has no
archetype except in your own brain.
2. If you be a master that have to advertise a runaway apprentice,
though the young dog's faults are known only to you, and no doubt his
conduct has been aggravating enough, do not presently set him down as
having crooked ancles. He may have a good pair of legs, and run away
notwithstanding. Indeed, the latter does rather seem to imply the
former.
3. If the unhappy person against whom your laudable vengeance is
directed be a thief, think that a thief may have a good nose, good eyes,
good ears. It is indispensable to his profession that he be possessed of
sagacity, foresight, vigilance; it is more than probable, then, that he
is endued with the bodily types or instruments of these qualities to
some tolerable degree of perfectness.
4. If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort you, do not confound
meanness of crime with diminutiveness of stature. These things have no
connection. I have known a tall man stoop to the basest action, a short
man aspire to the height of crime, a fair man be guilty of the foulest
actions, &c.
5. Perhaps the offender has been guilty of some atrocious and aggravated
murder. Here is the most difficult case of all. It is above all
requisite, that such a daring violator of the peace and safety of
society should meet with his reward, a violent and ignominious death.
But how shall we get at him? Who is there among us, that has known him
before he committed the offence, that shall take upon him to say he can
sit down coolly and pen a dispassionate description of a murderer? The
tales of our nursery,--the reading of our youth,--the ill-looking man
that was hired by the Uncle to dispatch the Children in the Wood,--the
grim ruffians who smothered the babes in the Tower,--the black and
beetle-browed assassin of Mrs. Ratcliffe,--the shag-haired villain of
Mr. Monk Lewis,--the Tarquin tread, and mill-stone dropping eyes, of
Murder in Shakspeare,--the exaggerations of picture and of poetry,--what
we have read and what we have dreamed of,--rise up and crowd in upon us
such eye-scaring portraits of the man of blood, that our pen is
absolutely forestalled; we commence poets when we should play the part
of strictest historians, and the very blackness of horror which the deed
calls up, serves as a cloud to screen the doer. The fiction is
blameless, it is accordant with those wise prejudices with which nature
has guarded our innocence, as with impassable barriers, against the
commission of such appalling crimes; but meantime, the criminal escapes;
or if,--owing to that wise abatement in their expectation of deformity,
which, as I hinted at before, the officers of pursuit never fail to
make, and no doubt in cases of this sort they make a more than ordinary
allowance,--if, owing to this or any accident, the offender is caught
and brought to his trial, who that has been led out of curiosity to
witness such a scene, has not with astonishment reflected on the
difference between a real committer of a murder, and the idea of one
which he has been collecting and heightening all his life out of books,
dreams, &c. The fellow, perhaps, is a sleek, smug-looking man, with
light hair and eye-brows,--the latter by no means jutting out or like a
crag,--and with none of those marks which our fancy had pre-bestowed
upon him.
I find I am getting unawares too serious; the best way on such occasions
is, to leave off, which I shall do by generally recommending to all
prosecuting advertisers not to confound crimes with ugliness; or rather,
to distinguish between that physiognomical deformity, which I am willing
to grant always accompanies crime, and mere _physical ugliness_,--which
signifies nothing, is the exponent of nothing, and may exist in a good
or bad person indifferently.
CRITO.
ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES
(1811)
Mr. Reflector,--How oddly it happens that the same sound shall suggest
to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the most opposite! I was
conversing a few years since with a young friend upon the subject of
poetry, and particularly that species of it which is known by the name
of the Epithalamium. I ventured to assert, that the most perfect
specimen of it in our language was the Epithalamium of Spenser upon his
own marriage.
My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste, and would not
willingly be thought ignorant of any thing remotely connected with the
belles lettres, expressed a degree of surprise, mixed with
mortification, that he should never have heard of this poem, Spenser
being an author with whose writings he thought himself peculiarly
conversant.
I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy of the poet's
works, which I have at home. He seemed pleased with the offer, though
the mention of the folio seemed again to puzzle him. But presently
after, assuming a grave look, he compassionately muttered to himself
"poor Spencer."
There was something in the tone with which he spoke these words that
struck me not a little. It was more like the accent with which a man
bemoans some recent calamity that has happened to a friend, than that
tone of sober grief with which we lament the sorrows of a person,
however excellent, and however grievous his afflictions may have been,
who has been dead more than two centuries. I had the curiosity to
enquire into the reasons of so uncommon an ejaculation. My young
gentleman, with a more solemn tone of pathos than before, repeated "poor
Spencer," and added, "he has lost his wife."
My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a height, that I began to
think the brain of my young friend must be cracked, or some
unaccountable reverie had gotten possession of it. But upon further
explanation it appeared that the word "Spenser,"--which to you or me,
Reader, in a conversation upon poetry too, would naturally have called
up the idea of an old poet in a ruff, one Edmund Spenser, that
flourished in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called the
_Fairy Queen_, with the _Shepherd's Calender_, and many more verses
besides,--did in the mind of my young friend excite a very different and
quite modern idea, namely, that of the Honourable William Spencer, one
of the living ornaments, if I am not misinformed, of this present
poetical era, A.D. 1811.
X. Y. Z.
ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH; WITH SOME REMARKS ON A PASSAGE
IN THE WRITINGS OF THE LATE MR. BARRY
(1811. TEXT OF 1818)
One of the earliest and noblest enjoyments I had when a boy was in the
contemplation of those capital prints by Hogarth, the _Harlot's_ and
_Rake's Progresses_, which, along with some others, hung upon the walls
of a great hall in an old-fashioned house in ----shire, and seemed the
solitary tenants (with myself) of that antiquated and life-deserted
apartment.
Recollection of the manner in which those prints used to affect me, has
often made me wonder, when I have heard Hogarth described as a mere
comic painter, as one whose chief ambition was to _raise a laugh_. To
deny that there are throughout the prints which I have mentioned
circumstances introduced of a laughable tendency, would be to run
counter to the common notions of mankind; but to suppose that in their
_ruling character_ they appeal chiefly to the risible faculty, and not
first and foremost to the very heart of man, its best and most serious
feelings, would be to mistake no less grossly their aim and purpose. A
set of severer Satires (for they are not so much Comedies, which they
have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine Satires) less
mingled with any thing of mere fun, were never written upon paper, or
graven upon copper. They resemble Juvenal, or the satiric touches in
Timon of Athens.
I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being asked which book
he esteemed most in his library, answered,--"Shakspeare:" being asked
which he esteemed next best, replied,--"Hogarth." His graphic
representations are indeed books: they have the teeming, fruitful,
suggestive meaning of _words_. Other pictures we look at,--his prints we
read.
In pursuance of this parallel, I have sometimes entertained myself with
comparing the _Timon of Athens_ of Shakspeare (which I have just
mentioned) and Hogarth's _Rake's Progress_ together. The story, the
moral, in both is nearly the same. The wild course of riot and
extravagance, ending in the one with driving the Prodigal from the
society of men into the solitude of the deserts, and in the other with
conducting the Rake through his several stages of dissipation into the
still more complete desolations of the mad-house, in the play and in the
picture are described with almost equal force and nature. The levee of
the Rake, which forms the subject of the second plate in the series, is
almost a transcript of Timon's levee in the opening scene of that play.
We find a dedicating poet, and other similar characters, in both.
The concluding scene in the _Rake's Progress_ is perhaps superior to the
last scenes of _Timon_. If we seek for something of kindred excellence
in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning madness, where
the King and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a
medley of mirth checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where
the society of those "strange bed-fellows" which misfortunes have
brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute state
of the monarch, while the lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed
sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of the other, so wonderfully
sympathize with that confusion, which they seem to assist in the
production of, in the senses of that "child-changed father."
In the scene in Bedlam, which terminates the _Rake's Progress_, we find
the same assortment of the ludicrous with the terrible. Here is
desperate madness, the overturning of originally strong thinking
faculties, at which we shudder, as we contemplate the duration and
pressure of affliction which it must have asked to destroy such a
building;--and here is the gradual hurtless lapse into idiocy, of
faculties, which at their best of times never having been strong, we
look upon the consummation of their decay with no more of pity than is
consistent with a smile. The mad taylor, the poor driveller that has
gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have had no great journey
to go to get past their confines) for the love of _Charming Betty
Careless_,--these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable objects take off from
the horror which the principal figure would of itself raise, at the same
time that they assist the feeling of the scene by contributing to the
general notion of its subject:--
Madness, thou chaos of the brain,
What art, that pleasure giv'st, and pain?
Tyranny of Fancy's reign!
Mechanic Fancy, that can build
Vast labyrinths and mazes wild,
With rule disjointed, shapeless measure,
Fill'd with horror, fill'd with pleasure!
Shapes of horror, that would even
Cast doubts of mercy upon heaven.
Shapes of pleasure, that, but seen,
Would split the shaking sides of spleen.[7]
[7] Lines inscribed under the plate.
Is it carrying the spirit of comparison to excess to remark, that in the
poor kneeling weeping female, who accompanies her seducer in his sad
decay, there is something analogous to Kent, or Caius, as he delights
rather to be called, in _Lear_,--the noblest pattern of virtue which
even Shakspeare has conceived,--who follows his royal master in
banishment, that had pronounced _his_ banishment, and forgetful at once
of his wrongs and dignities, taking on himself the disguise of a menial,
retains his fidelity to the figure, his loyalty to the carcass, the
shadow, the shell and empty husk of Lear?
In the perusal of a book, or of a picture, much of the impression which
we receive depends upon the habit of mind which we bring with us to such
perusal. The same circumstance may make one person laugh, which shall
render another very serious; or in the same person the first impression
may be corrected by after-thought. The misemployed incongruous
characters at the _Harlot's Funeral_, on a superficial inspection,
provoke to laughter; but when we have sacrificed the first emotion to
levity, a very different frame of mind succeeds, or the painter has lost
half his purpose. I never look at that wonderful assemblage of depraved
beings, who, without a grain of reverence or pity in their perverted
minds, are performing the sacred exteriors of duty to the relics of
their departed partner in folly, but I am as much moved to sympathy from
the very want of it in them, as I should be by the finest representation
of a virtuous death-bed surrounded by real mourners, pious children,
weeping friends,--perhaps more by the very contrast. What reflexions
does it not awake, of the dreadful heartless state in which the creature
(a female too) must have lived, who in death wants the accompaniment of
one genuine tear. That wretch who is removing the lid of the coffin to
gaze upon the corpse with a face which indicates a perfect negation of
all goodness or womanhood--the hypocrite parson and his demure
partner--all the fiendish group--to a thoughtful mind present a moral
emblem more affecting than if the poor friendless carcass had been
depicted as thrown out to the woods, where wolves had assisted at its
obsequies, itself furnishing forth its own funeral banquet.
It is easy to laugh at such incongruities as are met together in this
picture,--incongruous objects being of the very essence of
laughter,--but surely the laugh is far different in its kind from that
thoughtless species to which we are moved by mere farce and grotesque.
We laugh when Ferdinand Count Fathom, at the first sight of the white
cliffs of Britain, feels his heart yearn with filial fondness towards
the land of his progenitors, which he is coming to fleece and
plunder,--we smile at the exquisite irony of the passage,--but if we are
not led on by such passages to some more salutary feeling than laughter,
we are very negligent perusers of them in book or picture.
It is the fashion with those who cry up the great Historical School in
this country, at the head of which Sir Joshua Reynolds is placed, to
exclude Hogarth from that school, as an artist of an inferior and vulgar
class. Those persons seem to me to confound the painting of subjects in
common or vulgar life with the being a vulgar artist. The quantity of
thought which Hogarth crowds into every picture, would alone
_unvulgarize_ every subject which he might choose. Let us take the
lowest of his subjects, the print called _Gin Lane_. Here is plenty of
poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
accordingly, a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.
The same persons would perhaps have looked with great complacency upon
Poussin's celebrated picture of the _Plague of Athens_.[8] Disease and
Death and bewildering Terror in _Athenian garments_ are endurable, and
come, as the delicate critics express it, within the "limits of
pleasurable sensation." But the scenes of their own St. Giles's,
delineated by their own countryman, are too shocking to think of. Yet if
we could abstract our minds from the fascinating colours of the picture,
and forget the coarse execution (in some respects) of the print,
intended as it was to be a cheap plate, accessible to the poorer sort of
people, for whose instruction it was done, I think we could have no
hes
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/40988