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Paul Clifford — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton · English · Gutenberg #7735 · 1,065,762 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Paul Clifford — Complete

Author: Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton


        
Release date: November 26, 2004 [eBook #7735]
                Most recently updated: March 21, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7735

Credits: Produced by Bryan Sherman and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL CLIFFORD — COMPLETE ***




Produced by Bryan Sherman and David Widger





PAUL CLIFFORD

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton




PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.

This novel so far differs from the other fictions by the same author
that it seeks to draw its interest rather from practical than ideal
sources. Out of some twelve Novels or Romances, embracing, however
inadequately, a great variety of scene and character,--from “Pelham”
 to the “Pilgrims of the Rhine,” from “Rienzi” to the “Last Days of
Pompeii,”--“Paul Clifford” is the only one in which a robber has been
made the hero, or the peculiar phases of life which he illustrates have
been brought into any prominent description.

Without pausing to inquire what realm of manners or what order of crime
and sorrow is open to art, and capable of administering to the proper
ends of fiction, I may be permitted to observe that the present subject
was selected, and the Novel written, with a twofold object: First,
to draw attention to two errors in our penal institutions; namely, a
vicious prison-discipline, and a sanguinary criminal code,--the habit of
corrupting the boy by the very punishment that ought to redeem him,
and then hanging the man at the first occasion, as the easiest way of
getting rid of our own blunders. Between the example of crime which the
tyro learns from the felons in the prison-yard, and the horrible
levity with which the mob gather round the drop at Newgate, there is a
connection which a writer may be pardoned for quitting loftier regions
of imagination to trace and to detect. So far this book is less
a picture of the king's highway than the law's royal road to the
gallows,--a satire on the short cut established between the House of
Correction and the Condemned Cell. A second and a lighter object in the
novel of “Paul Clifford” (and hence the introduction of a semi-burlesque
or travesty in the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing
essentially different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that
the slang of the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant of the
other.

The Supplementary Essays, entitled “Tomlinsoniana,” which contain
the corollaries to various problems suggested in the Novel, have been
restored to the present edition.

CLIFTON, July 25, 1840.




PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1848.

Most men who with some earnestness of mind examine into the mysteries of
our social state will perhaps pass through that stage of self-education
in which this Novel was composed. The contrast between conventional
frauds, received as component parts of the great system of civilization,
and the less deceptive invasions of the laws which discriminate the meum
from the tuum, is tempting to a satire that is not without its justice.
The tragic truths which lie hid in what I may call the Philosophy of
Circumstance strike through our philanthropy upon our imagination. We
see masses of our fellow-creatures the victims of circumstances over
which they had no control,--contaminated in infancy by the example of
parents, their intelligence either extinguished or turned against them,
according as the conscience is stifled in ignorance or perverted
to apologies for vice. A child who is cradled in ignominy,
whose schoolmaster is the felon, whose academy is the House of
Correction,--who breathes an atmosphere in which virtue is poisoned,
to which religion does not pierce,--becomes less a responsible and
reasoning human being than a wild beast which we suffer to range in
the wilderness, till it prowls near our homes, and we kill it in
self-defence.

In this respect the Novel of “Paul Clifford” is a loud cry to society
to amend the circumstance,--to redeem the victim. It is an appeal from
Humanity to Law. And in this, if it could not pretend to influence or
guide the temper of the times, it was at least a foresign of a coming
change. Between the literature of imagination, and the practical
interests of a people, there is a harmony as complete as it is
mysterious. The heart of an author is the mirror of his age. The shadow
of the sun is cast on the still surface of literature long before the
light penetrates to law; but it is ever from the sun that the shadow
falls, and the moment we see the shadow we may be certain of the light.

Since this work was written, society has been busy with the evils in
which it was then silently acquiescent. The true movement of the last
fifteen years has been the progress of one idea,--Social Reform. There
it advances with steady and noiseless march behind every louder question
of constitutional change. Let us do justice to our time. There have been
periods of more brilliant action on the destinies of States, but there
is no time visible in History in which there was so earnest and general
a desire to improve the condition of the great body of the people. In
every circle of the community that healthful desire is astir. It unites
in one object men of parties the most opposed; it affords the most
attractive nucleus for public meetings; it has cleansed the statute-book
from blood; it is ridding the world of the hangman. It animates the
clergy of all sects in the remotest districts; it sets the squire on
improving cottages and parcelling out allotments. Schools rise in every
village; in books the lightest, the Grand Idea colours the page, and
bequeaths the moral. The Government alone (despite the professions on
which the present Ministry was founded) remains unpenetrated by the
common genius of the age; but on that question, with all the subtleties
it involves, and the experiments it demands,--not indeed according to
the dreams of an insane philosophy, but according to the immutable laws
which proportion the rewards of labour to the respect for property,--a
Government must be formed at last.

There is in this work a subtler question suggested, but not
solved,--that question which perplexes us in the generous ardour of our
early youth,--which, unsatisfactory as all metaphysics, we rather escape
from than decide as we advance in years; namely, make what laws we
please, the man who lives within the pale can be as bad as the man
without. Compare the Paul Clifford of the fiction with the William
Brandon,--the hunted son with the honoured father, the outcast of the
law with the dispenser of the law, the felon with the judge; and as at
the last they front each other,--one on the seat of justice, the other
at the convict's bar,--who can lay his hand on his heart and say that
the Paul Clifford is a worse man than the William Brandon.

There is no immorality in a truth that enforces this question; for it
is precisely those offences which society cannot interfere with that
society requires fiction to expose. Society is right, though youth is
reluctant to acknowledge it. Society can form only certain regulations
necessary for its self-defence,--the fewer the better,--punish those who
invade, leave unquestioned those who respect them. But fiction follows
truth into all the strongholds of convention; strikes through the
disguise, lifts the mask, bares the heart, and leaves a moral wherever
it brands a falsehood.

Out of this range of ideas the mind of the Author has, perhaps, emerged
into an atmosphere which he believes to be more congenial to Art. But he
can no more regret that he has passed through it than he can regret that
while he dwelt there his heart, like his years, was young. Sympathy with
the suffering that seems most actual, indignation at the frauds which
seem most received as virtues, are the natural emotions of youth,
if earnest. More sensible afterwards of the prerogatives, as of the
elements, of Art, the Author, at least, seeks to escape where the man
may not, and look on the practical world through the serener one of the
ideal.

With the completion of this work closed an era in the writer's
self-education. From “Pelham” to “Paul Clifford” (four fictions, all
written at a very early age), the Author rather observes than imagines;
rather deals with the ordinary surface of human life than attempts,
however humbly, to soar above it or to dive beneath. From depicting
in “Paul Clifford” the errors of society, it was almost the natural
progress of reflection to pass to those which swell to crime in the
solitary human heart,--from the bold and open evils that spring
from ignorance and example, to track those that lie coiled in the
entanglements of refining knowledge and speculative pride. Looking back
at this distance of years, I can see as clearly as if mapped before
me, the paths which led across the boundary of invention from “Paul
Clifford” to “Eugene Aram.” And, that last work done, no less clearly
can I see where the first gleams from a fairer fancy broke upon my way,
and rested on those more ideal images which I sought with a feeble
hand to transfer to the “Pilgrims of the Rhine” and the “Last Days of
Pompeii.” We authors, like the Children in the Fable, track our journey
through the maze by the pebbles which we strew along the path. From
others who wander after us, they may attract no notice, or, if noticed,
seem to them but scattered by the caprice of chance; but we, when
our memory would retrace our steps, review in the humble stones the
witnesses of our progress, the landmarks of our way.

Kenelworth, 1848.




PAUL CLIFFORD.




CHAPTER I.


        Say, ye oppressed by some fantastic woes,
        Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose,
        Who press the downy couch while slaves advance
        With timid eye to read the distant glance,
        Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease
        To name the nameless, ever-new disease,
        Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
        Which real pain and that alone can cure,
        How would you bear in real pain to lie
        Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
        How would you bear to draw your latest breath
        Where all that’s wretched paves the way to death?--Crabbe.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at
occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind
which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies),
rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame
of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the
obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the
gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was
wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops
and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the
quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some
article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the
answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from
each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his
disappointment and discontent. At length, at one house, the landlord, a
sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto
received, added, “But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at
your sarvice!” Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that
he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into
his ample pocket, he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and
the rain would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings,
at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written
“Thames Court.” Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an
inn or alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in
ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at
the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a
comely rotundity of face and person.

“Hast got it, Dummie?” said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the
guest.

“Noa, noa! not exactly; but I thinks as 'ow--”

“Pish, you fool!” cried the woman, interrupting him peevishly. “Vy,
it is no use desaving me. You knows you has only stepped from my
boosing-ken to another, and you has not been arter the book at all. So
there's the poor cretur a raving and a dying, and you--”

“Let I speak!” interrupted Dummie in his turn. “I tells you I vent
first to Mother Bussblone's, who, I knows, chops the whiners morning and
evening to the young ladies, and I axes there for a Bible; and she says,
says she, 'I' as only a “Companion to the Halter,” but you'll get a
Bible, I think, at Master Talkins', the cobbler as preaches.' So I
goes to Master Talkins, and he says, says he, 'I 'as no call for the
Bible,--'cause vy? I 'as a call vithout; but mayhap you'll be a getting
it at the butcher's hover the vay,--'cause vy? The butcher 'll be
damned!' So I goes hover the vay, and the butcher says, says he, 'I 'as
not a Bible, but I 'as a book of plays bound for all the vorld just like
'un, and mayhap the poor cretur may n't see the difference.' So I takes
the plays, Mrs. Margery, and here they be surely! And how's poor Judy?”

“Fearsome! she'll not be over the night, I'm a thinking.”

“Vell, I'll track up the dancers!”

So saying, Dummie ascended a doorless staircase, across the entrance
of which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney,
afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber which
the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray.
The walls were whitewashed, and at sundry places strange figures and
grotesque characters had been traced by some mirthful inmate, in such
sable outline as the end of a smoked stick or the edge of a piece of
charcoal is wont to produce. The wan and flickering light afforded by a
farthing candle gave a sort of grimness and menace to these achievements
of pictorial art, especially as they more than once received
embellishments from portraits of Satan such as he is accustomed to be
drawn. A low fire burned gloomily in the sooty grate, and on the hob
hissed “the still small voice” of an iron kettle. On a round deal table
were two vials, a cracked cup, a broken spoon of some dull metal, and
upon two or three mutilated chairs were scattered various articles
of female attire. On another table, placed below a high, narrow,
shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked
apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the
gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny),
were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse
rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value, and a watch, the regular
and calm click of which produced that indescribably painful feeling
which, we fear, many of our readers who have heard the sound in a
sick-chamber can easily recall. A large tester-bed stood opposite to
this table, and the looking-glass partially reflected curtains of
a faded stripe, and ever and anon (as the position of the sufferer
followed the restless emotion of a disordered mind) glimpses of the face
of one on whom Death was rapidly hastening. Beside this bed now stood
Dummie, a small, thin man dressed in a tattered plush jerkin, from
which the rain-drops slowly dripped, and with a thin, yellow, cunning
physiognomy grotesquely hideous in feature, but not positively villanous
in expression. On the other side of the bed stood a little boy of about
three years old, dressed as if belonging to the better classes, although
the garb was somewhat tattered and discoloured. The poor child trembled
violently, and evidently looked with a feeling of relief on the entrance
of Dummie. And now there slowly, and with many a phthisical sigh,
heaved towards the foot of the bed the heavy frame of the woman who had
accosted Dummie below, and had followed him, haud passibus aequis, to
the room of the sufferer; she stood with a bottle of medicine in her
hand, shaking its contents up and down, and with a kindly yet timid
compassion spread over a countenance crimsoned with habitual libations.
This made the scene,--save that on a chair by the bedside lay a
profusion of long, glossy, golden ringlets, which had been cut from
the head of the sufferer when the fever had begun to mount upwards, but
which, with a jealousy that portrayed the darling littleness of a vain
heart, she had seized and insisted on retaining near her; and save that,
by the fire, perfectly inattentive to the event about to take place
within the chamber, and to which we of the biped race attach so awful
an importance, lay a large gray cat, curled in a ball, and dozing
with half-shut eyes, and ears that now and then denoted, by a gentle
inflection, the jar of a louder or nearer sound than usual upon her
lethargic senses. The dying woman did not at first attend to the
entrance either of Dummie or the female at the foot of the bed, but she
turned herself round towards the child, and grasping his arm fiercely,
she drew him towards her, and gazed on his terrified features with a
look in which exhaustion and an exceeding wanness of complexion were
even horribly contrasted by the glare and energy of delirium.

“If you are like him,” she muttered, “I will strangle you,--I will! Ay,
tremble, you ought to tremble when your mother touches you, or when
he is mentioned. You have his eyes, you have! Out with them, out,--the
devil sits laughing in them! Oh, you weep, do you, little one? Well,
now, be still, my love; be hushed! I would not harm thee! Harm--O
God, he is my child after all!” And at these words she clasped the boy
passionately to her breast, and burst into tears.

“Coom, now, coom,” said Dummie, soothingly; “take the stuff, Judith, and
then ve'll talk over the hurchin!”

The mother relaxed her grasp of the boy, and turning towards the
speaker, gazed at him for some moments with a bewildered stare; at
length she appeared slowly to remember him, and said, as she raised
herself on one hand, and pointed the other towards him with an inquiring
gesture,--“Thou hast brought the book?”

Dummie answered by lifting up the book he had brought from the honest
butcher's.

“Clear the room, then,” said the sufferer, with that air of mock command
so common to the insane. “We would be alone!”

Dummie winked at the good woman at the foot of the bed; and she
(though generally no easy person to order or to persuade) left, without
reluctance, the sick chamber.

“If she be a going to pray,” murmured our landlady (for that office did
the good matron hold), “I may indeed as well take myself off, for it's
not werry comfortable like to those who be old to hear all that 'ere!”

With this pious reflection, the hostess of the Mug,--so was the hostelry
called,--heavily descended the creaking stairs. “Now, man,” said the
sufferer, sternly, “swear that you will never reveal,--swear, I say! And
by the great God whose angels are about this night, if ever you break
the oath, I will come back and haunt you to your dying day!”

Dummie's face grew pale, for he was superstitiously affected by the
vehemence and the language of the dying woman, and he answered, as he
kissed the pretended Bible, that he swore to keep the secret, as much as
he knew of it, which, she must be sensible, he said, was very little. As
he spoke, the wind swept with a loud and sudden gust down the chimney,
and shook the roof above them so violently as to loosen many of the
crumbling tiles, which fell one after the other, with a crashing noise,
on the pavement below. Dummie started in affright; and perhaps his
conscience smote him for the trick he had played with regard to the
false Bible. But the woman, whose excited and unstrung nerves led her
astray from one subject to another with preternatural celerity, said,
with an hysterical laugh, “See, Dummie, they come in state for me; give
me the cap--yonder--and bring the looking-glass!”

Dummie obeyed; and the woman, as she in a low tone uttered something
about the unbecoming colour of the ribbons, adjusted the cap on her
head, and then, saying in a regretful and petulant voice, “Why should
they have cut off my hair? Such a disfigurement!” bade Dummie desire
Mrs. Margery once more to ascend to her.

Left alone with her child, the face of the wretched mother softened as
she regarded him, and all the levities and all the vehemences--if we
may use the word--which, in the turbulent commotion of her delirium, had
been stirred upward to the surface of her mind, gradually now sank as
death increased upon her, and a mother's anxiety rose to the natural
level from which it had been disturbed and abased. She took the child
to her bosom, and clasping him in her arms, which grew weaker with every
instant, she soothed him with the sort of chant which nurses sing over
their untoward infants; but her voice was cracked and hollow, and as she
felt it was so, the mother's eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Margery now
reentered; and turning towards the hostess with an impressive calmness
of manner which astonished and awed the person she addressed, the dying
woman pointed to the child and said,--

“You have been kind to me, very kind, and may God bless you for it! I
have found that those whom the world calls the worst are often the most
human. But I am not going to thank you as I ought to do, but to ask of
you a last and exceeding favour. Protect my child till he grows up.
You have often said you loved him,--you are childless yourself,--and a
morsel of bread and a shelter for the night, which is all I ask of you
to give him, will not impoverish more legitimate claimants.”

Poor Mrs. Margery, fairly sobbing, vowed she would be a mother to the
child, and that she would endeavour to rear him honestly; though a
public-house was not, she confessed, the best place for good examples.

“Take him,” cried the mother, hoarsely, as her voice, failing her
strength, rattled indistinctly, and almost died within her. “Take him,
rear him as you will, as you can; any example, any roof, better than--”
 Here the words were inaudible. “And oh, may it be a curse and a--Give me
the medicine; I am dying.”

The hostess, alarmed, hastened to comply; but before she returned to the
bedside, the sufferer was insensible,--nor did she again recover speech
or motion. A low and rare moan only testified continued life, and within
two hours that ceased, and the spirit was gone. At that time our good
hostess was herself beyond the things of this outer world, having
supported her spirits during the vigils of the night with so many
little liquid stimulants that they finally sank into that torpor
which generally succeeds excitement. Taking, perhaps, advantage of the
opportunity which the insensibility of the hostess afforded him, Dummie,
by the expiring ray of the candle that burned in the death-chamber,
hastily opened a huge box (which was generally concealed under the bed,
and contained the wardrobe of the deceased), and turned with irreverent
hand over the linens and the silks, until quite at the bottom of the
trunk he discovered some packets of letters; these he seized, and buried
in the conveniences of his dress. He then, rising and replacing the box,
cast a longing eye towards the watch on the toilet-table, which was of
gold; but he withdrew his gaze, and with a querulous sigh observed to
himself: “The old blowen kens of that, 'od rat her! but, howsomever,
I'll take this: who knows but it may be of sarvice. Tannies to-day may
be smash to-morrow!” [Meaning, what is of no value now may be precious
hereafter.] and he laid his coarse hand on the golden and silky tresses
we have described. “'T is a rum business, and puzzles I; but mum's the
word for my own little colquarren [neck].”

With this brief soliloquy Dummie descended the stairs and let himself
out of the house.




CHAPTER II.

     Imagination fondly stoops to trace
     The parlor splendours of that festive place.
               Deserted Village.

There is little to interest in a narrative of early childhood, unless,
indeed, one were writing on education. We shall not, therefore, linger
over the infancy of the motherless boy left to the protection of Mrs.
Margery Lobkins, or, as she was sometimes familiarly called, Peggy, or
Piggy, Lob. The good dame, drawing a more than sufficient income from
the profits of a house which, if situated in an obscure locality,
enjoyed very general and lucrative repute, and being a lone widow
without kith or kin, had no temptation to break her word to the
deceased, and she suffered the orphan to wax in strength and
understanding until the age of twelve,--a period at which we are now
about to reintroduce him to our readers.

The boy evinced great hardihood of temper, and no inconsiderable
quickness of intellect. In whatever he attempted, his success was rapid,
and a remarkable strength of limb and muscle seconded well the dictates
of an ambition turned, it must be confessed, rather to physical than
mental exertion. It is not to be supposed, however, that his boyish life
passed in unbroken tranquillity. Although Mrs. Lobkins was a good woman
on the whole, and greatly attached to her protegee, she was violent and
rude in temper, or, as she herself more flatteringly expressed it,
“her feelings were unkimmonly strong;” and alternate quarrel and
reconciliation constituted the chief occupations of the protegee's
domestic life. As, previous to his becoming the ward of Mrs. Lobkins, he
had never received any other appellation than “the child,” so the duty
of christening him devolved upon our hostess of the Mug; and after some
deliberation, she blessed him with the name of Paul. It was a name of
happy omen, for it had belonged to Mrs. Lobkins's grandfather, who had
been three times transported and twice hanged (at the first occurrence
of the latter description, he had been restored by the surgeons, much
to the chagrin of a young anatomist who was to have had the honour of
cutting him up). The boy did not seem likely to merit the distinguished
appellation he bore, for he testified no remarkable predisposition to
the property of other people. Nay, although he sometimes emptied the
pockets of any stray visitor to the coffee-room of Mrs. Lobkins, it
appeared an act originating rather in a love of the frolic than a desire
of the profit; for after the plundered person had been sufficiently
tormented by the loss, haply, of such utilities as a tobacco-box or
a handkerchief; after he had, to the secret delight of Paul, searched
every corner of the apartment, stamped, and fretted, and exposed himself
by his petulance to the bitter objurgation of Mrs. Lobkins, our young
friend would quietly and suddenly contrive that the article missed
should return of its own accord to the pocket from which it had
disappeared. And thus, as our readers have doubtless experienced when
they have disturbed the peace of a whole household for the loss of some
portable treasure which they themselves are afterwards discovered to
have mislaid, the unfortunate victim of Paul's honest ingenuity, exposed
to the collected indignation of the spectators, and sinking from the
accuser into the convicted, secretly cursed the unhappy lot which not
only vexed him with the loss of his property, but made it still more
annoying to recover it.

Whether it was that, on discovering these pranks, Mrs. Lobkins trembled
for the future bias of the address they displayed, or whether she
thought that the folly of thieving without gain required speedy and
permanent correction, we cannot decide; but the good lady became at
last extremely anxious to secure for Paul the blessings of a liberal
education. The key of knowledge (the art of reading) she had, indeed,
two years prior to the present date, obtained for him; but this far
from satisfied her conscience,--nay, she felt that if she could not also
obtain for him the discretion to use it, it would have been wise even
to have withheld a key which the boy seemed perversely to apply to all
locks but the right one. In a word, she was desirous that he should
receive an education far superior to those whom he saw around him;
and attributing, like most ignorant persons, too great advantages to
learning, she conceived that in order to live as decorously as the
parson of the parish, it was only necessary to know as much Latin.

One evening in particular, as the dame sat by her cheerful fire, this
source of anxiety was unusually active in her mind, and ever and anon
she directed unquiet and restless glances towards Paul, who sat on
a form at the opposite corner of the hearth, diligently employed in
reading the life and adventures of the celebrated Richard Turpin. The
form on which the boy sat was worn to a glassy smoothness, save only in
certain places, where some ingenious idler or another had amused
himself by carving sundry names, epithets, and epigrammatic niceties of
language. It is said that the organ of carving upon wood is prominently
developed on all English skulls; and the sagacious Mr. Combe has
placed this organ at the back of the head, in juxtaposition to that
of destructiveness, which is equally large among our countrymen, as
is notably evinced upon all railings, seats, temples, and other
things-belonging to other people.

Opposite to the fireplace was a large deal table, at which Dummie,
surnamed Dunnaker, seated near the dame, was quietly ruminating over a
glass of hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner
of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen
which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe,
apart, silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman
was no other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent
periodical entitled “The Asiaeum,” which was written to prove that
whatever is popular is necessarily bad,--a valuable and recondite truth,
which “The Asinaeum” had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining
three printers and demolishing a publisher. We need not add that Mr.
MacGrawler was Scotch by birth, since we believe it is pretty well known
that all periodicals of this country have, from time immemorial, been
monopolized by the gentlemen of the Land of Cakes. We know not how it
may be the fashion to eat the said cakes in Scotland, but here the good
emigrators seem to like them carefully buttered on both sides. By the
side of the editor stood a large pewter tankard; above him hung an
engraving of the “wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of
Mr. Fattem, grazier.” To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright
clock in an oaken case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were
fastened in parallels to the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and
cookery were four shelves, containing plates of pewter and delf, and
terminating, centaur-like, in a sort of dresser. At the other side of
these domestic conveniences was a picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet
body and a hat and plume. At the back of the fair hostess stretched the
blanket we have before mentioned. As a relief to the monotonous surface
of this simple screen, various ballads and learned legends were pinned
to the blanket. There might you read in verses, pathetic and unadorned,
how--

     “Sally loved a sailor lad
     As fought with famous Shovel!”

There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before
unconscious, that--

“Ben the toper loved his bottle,--Charley only loved the lasses!”

When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat
wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal
edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to
the “Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington, being a most full and
true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by
an Evil Spirit on Wednesday, 15th of April last, about Midnight.”
 There, too, no less interesting and no less veracious, was that uncommon
anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled “The Divell
of Mascon; or, the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean
Spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy, in the house of one
Mr. Francis Pereaud: now made English by one that hath a Particular
Knowledge of the Truth of the Story.”

Nor were these materials for Satanic history the only prosaic and
faithful chronicles which the bibliothecal blanket afforded. Equally
wonderful, and equally indisputable, was the account of “a young lady,
the daughter of a duke, with three legs and the face of a porcupine.”
 Nor less so “The Awful Judgment of God upon Swearers, as exemplified in
the case of John Stiles, who Dropped down dead after swearing a Great
Oath; and on stripping the unhappy man they found 'Swear not at all'
written on the tail of his shirt!”

Twice had Mrs. Lobkins heaved a long sigh, as her eyes turned from Paul
to the tranquil countenance of Dummie Dunnaker, and now, re-settling
herself in her chair, as a motherly anxiety gathered over her visage,--

“Paul, my ben cull,” said she, “what gibberish hast got there?”

“Turpin, the great highwayman!” answered the young student, without
lifting his eyes from the page, through which he was spelling his
instructive way.

“Oh! he be's a chip of the right block, dame!” said Mr. Dunnaker, as
he applied his pipe to an illumined piece of paper. “He'll ride a 'oss
foaled by a hacorn yet, I varrants!”

To this prophecy the dame replied only with a look of indignation; and
rocking herself to and fro in her huge chair, she remained for some
moments in silent thought. At last she again wistfully eyed the hopeful
boy, and calling him to her side, communicated some order, in a dejected
whisper. Paul, on receiving it, disappeared behind the blanket, and
presently returned with a bottle and a wineglass. With an abstracted
gesture, and an air that betokened continued meditation, the good dame
took the inspiring cordial from the hand of her youthful cupbearer,--

“And ere a man had power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of Lobkins had
devoured it up: So quick bright things come to confusion!”

The nectarean beverage seemed to operate cheerily on the matron's
system; and placing her hand on the boy's curly head, she said (like
Andromache, dakruon gelasasa, or, as Scott hath it, “With a smile on her
cheek, but a tear in her eye”),--

“Paul, thy heart be good, thy heart be good; thou didst not spill a drop
of the tape! Tell me, my honey, why didst thou lick Tom Tobyson?”

“Because,” answered Paul, “he said as how you ought to have been hanged
long ago.”

“Tom Tobyson is a good-for-nought,” returned the dame, “and deserves to
shove the tumbler [Be whipped at the cart's tail]; I but oh, my child,
be not too venturesome in taking up the sticks for a blowen,--it has
been the ruin of many a man afore you; and when two men goes to quarrel
for a 'oman, they doesn't know the natur' of the thing they quarrels
about. Mind thy latter end, Paul, and reverence the old, without axing
what they has been before they passed into the wale of years. Thou mayst
get me my pipe, Paul,--it is upstairs, under the pillow.”

While Paul was accomplishing this errand, the lady of the Mug, fixing
her eyes upon Mr. Dunnaker, said, “Dummie, Dummie, if little Paul should
come to be scragged!”

“Whish!” muttered Dummie, glancing over his shoulder at MacGrawler;
“mayhap that gemman--” Here his voice became scarcely audible even to
Mrs. Lobkins; but his whisper seemed to imply an insinuation that the
illustrious editor of “The Asinaeum” might be either an informer, or one
of those heroes on whom an informer subsists.

Mrs. Lobkins's answer, couched in the same key, appeared to satisfy
Dunnaker, for with a look of great contempt he chucked up his head and
said, “Oho! that be all, be it!”

Paul here reappeared with the pipe; and the dame, having filled the
tube, leaned forward, and lighted the Virginian weed from the blower of
Mr. Dunnaker. As in this interesting occupation the heads of the hostess
and the guest approached each other, the glowing light playing cheerily
on the countenance of each, there was an honest simplicity in the
picture that would have merited the racy and vigorous genius of a
Cruikshank. As soon as the Promethean spark had been fully communicated
to the lady's tube, Mrs. Lobkins, still possessed by the gloomy idea she
had conjured up, repeated,--

“Ah, Dummie, if little Paul should be scragged!”

Dummie, withdrawing the pipe from his mouth, heaved a sympathizing puff,
but remained silent; and Mrs. Lobkins, turning to Paul, who stood with
mouth open and ears erect at this boding ejaculation, said,--

“Dost think, Paul, they'd have the heart to hang thee?”

“I think they'd have the rope, dame!” returned the youth.

“But you need not go for to run your neck into the noose!” said the
matron; and then, inspired by the spirit of moralizing, she turned round
to the youth, and gazing upon his attentive countenance, accosted him
with the following admonitions:--

“Mind thy kittychism, child, and reverence old age. Never steal,
'specially when any one be in the way. Never go snacks with them as be
older than you,--'cause why? The older a cove be, the more he cares for
hisself, and the less for his partner. At twenty, we diddles the public;
at forty, we diddles our cronies! Be modest, Paul, and stick to your
sitivation in life. Go not with fine tobymen, who burn out like a candle
wot has a thief in it,--all flare, and gone in a whiffy! Leave liquor to
the aged, who can't do without it. Tape often proves a halter, and there
be's no ruin like blue ruin! Read your Bible, and talk like a pious 'un.
People goes more by your words than your actions. If you wants what is
not your own, try and do without it; and if you cannot do without it,
take it away by insinivation, not bluster. They as swindles does more
and risks less than they as robs; and if you cheats toppingly, you may
laugh at the topping cheat [Gallows]. And now go play.”

Paul seized his hat, but lingered; and the dame, guessing at the
signification of the pause, drew forth and placed in the boy's hand the
sum of five halfpence and one farthing.

“There, boy,” quoth she, and she stroked his head fondly when she spoke,
“you does right not to play for nothing,--it's loss of time; but play
with those as be less than yoursel', and then you can go for to beat 'em
if they says you go for to cheat!”

Paul vanished; and the dame, laying her hand on Dummie's shoulder,
said,--

“There be nothing like a friend in need, Dummie; and somehow or other, I
thinks as how you knows more of the horigin of that 'ere lad than any of
us!”

“Me, dame!” exclaimed Dummie, with a broad gaze of astonishment.

“Ah, you! you knows as how the mother saw more of you just afore she
died than she did of 'ere one of us. Noar, now, noar, now! Tell us all
about 'un. Did she steal 'un, think ye?”

“Lauk, Mother Margery, dost think I knows? Vot put such a crotchet in
your 'ead?”

“Well!” said the dame, with a disappointed sigh, “I always thought as
how you were more knowing about it than you owns. Dear, dear, I shall
never forgit the night when Judith brought the poor cretur here,--you
knows she had been some months in my house afore ever I see'd the
urchin; and when she brought it, she looked so pale and ghostly that
I had not the heart to say a word, so I stared at the brat, and it
stretched out its wee little hands to me. And the mother frowned at it,
and throwed it into my lap.”

“Ah! she was a hawful voman, that 'ere!” said Dummie, shaking his head.
“But howsomever, the hurchin fell into good 'ands; for I be's sure you
'as been a better mother to 'un than the raal 'un!”

“I was always a fool about childer,” rejoined Mrs. Lobkins; “and I
thinks as how little Paul was sent to be a comfort to my latter end!
Fill the glass, Dummie.”

“I 'as heard as 'ow Judith was once blowen to a great lord!” said
Dummie.

“Like enough!” returned Mrs. Lobkins,--“like enough! She was always a
favourite of mine, for she had a spuret [spirit] as big as my own; and
she paid her rint like a decent body, for all she was out of her sinses,
or 'nation like it.”

“Ay, I knows as how you liked her,--'cause vy? 'T is not your vay to let
a room to a voman! You says as how 't is not respectable, and you only
likes men to wisit the Mug!”

“And I doesn't like all of them as comes here!” answered the
dame,--“'specially for Paul's sake; but what can a lone 'oman do? Many's
the gentleman highwayman wot comes here, whose money is as good as the
clerk's of the parish. And when a bob [shilling] is in my hand, what
does it sinnify whose hand it was in afore?”

“That's what I call being sinsible and practical,” said Dummie,
approvingly. “And after all, though you 'as a mixture like, I does not
know a halehouse where a cove is better entertained, nor meets of a
Sunday more illegant company, than the Mug!”

Here the conversation, which the reader must know had been sustained
in a key inaudible to a third person, received a check from Mr. Peter
MacGrawler, who, having finished his revery and his tankard, now rose
to depart. First, however, approaching Mrs. Lobkins, he observed that he
had gone on credit for some days, and demanded the amount of his bill.
Glancing towards certain chalk hieroglyphics inscribed on the wall at
the other side of the fireplace, the dame answered that Mr. MacGrawler
was indebted to her for the sum of one shilling and ninepence three
farthings.

After a short preparatory search in his waistcoat pockets, the critic
hunted into one corner a solitary half-crown, and having caught it
between his finger and thumb, he gave it to Mrs. Lobkins and requested
change.

As soon as the matron felt her hand anointed with what has been called
by some ingenious Johnson of St. Giles's “the oil of palms,” her
countenance softened into a complacent smile; and when she gave the
required change to Mr. MacGrawler, she graciously hoped as how he would
recommend the Mug to the public.

“That you may be sure of,” said the editor of “The Asinaeum.” “There is
not a place where I am so much at home.”

With that the learned Scotsman buttoned his coat and went his way.

“How spiteful the world be!” said Mrs. Lobkins, after a pause,
“'specially if a 'oman keeps a fashionable sort of a public! When Judith
died, Joe, the dog's-meat man, said I war all the better for it, and
that she left I a treasure to bring up the urchin. One would think a
thumper makes a man richer,--'cause why? Every man thumps! I got nothing
more than a watch and ten guineas when Judy died, and sure that scarce
paid for the burrel [burial].”

“You forgits the two quids [Guineas] I giv' you for the hold box of
rags,--much of a treasure I found there!” said Dummie, with sycophantic
archness.

“Ay,” cried the dame, laughing, “I fancies you war not pleased with the
bargain. I thought you war too old a ragmerchant to be so free with the
blunt; howsomever, I supposes it war the tinsel petticoat as took you
in!”

“As it has mony a viser man than the like of I,” rejoined Dummie, who
to his various secret professions added the ostensible one of a
rag-merchant and dealer in broken glass.

The recollection of her good bargain in the box of rags opened our
landlady's heart.

“Drink, Dummie,” said she, good-humouredly,--“drink; I scorns to score
lush to a friend.”

Dummie expressed his gratitude, refilled his glass, and the hospitable
matron, knocking out from her pipe the dying ashes, thus proceeded:

“You sees, Dummie, though I often beats the boy, I loves him as much as
if I war his raal mother,--I wants to make him an honour to his country,
and an ixciption to my family!”

“Who all flashed their ivories at Surgeons' Hall!” added the
metaphorical Dummie.

“True!” said the lady; “they died game, and I be n't ashamed of 'em. But
I owes a duty to Paul's mother, and I wants Paul to have a long life. I
would send him to school, but you knows as how the boys only corrupt one
another. And so, I should like to meet with some decent man, as a tutor,
to teach the lad Latin and vartue!”

“My eyes!” cried Dummie; aghast at the grandeur of this desire.

“The boy is 'cute enough, and he loves reading,” continued the dame;
“but I does not think the books he gets hold of will teach him the way
to grow old.”

“And 'ow came he to read, anyhows?”

“Ranting Rob, the strolling player, taught him his letters, and said
he'd a deal of janius.”

“And why should not Ranting Rob tache the boy Latin and vartue?”

“'Cause Ranting Rob, poor fellow, was lagged [Transported for burglary]
for doing a panny!” answered the dame, despondently.

There was a long silence; it was broken by Mr. Dummie. Slapping his
thigh with the gesticulatory vehemence of a Ugo Foscolo, that gentleman
exclaimed,--

“I 'as it,--I 'as thought of a tutor for leetle Paul!”

“Who's that? You quite frightens me; you 'as no marcy on my narves,”
 said the dame, fretfully.

“Vy, it be the gemman vot writes,” said Dummie, putting his finger to
his nose,--“the gemman vot paid you so flashly!”

“What! the Scotch gemman?”

“The werry same!” returned Dummie.

The dame turned in her chair and refilled her pipe. It was evident from
her manner that Mr. Dunnaker's suggestion had made an impression on her.
But she recognized two doubts as to its feasibility: one, whether the
gentleman proposed would be adequate to the task; the other, whether he
would be willing to undertake it.

In the midst of her meditations on this matter, the dame was interrupted
by the entrance of certain claimants on her hospitality; and Dummie soon
after taking his leave, the suspense of Mrs. Lobkins's mind touching
the education of little Paul remained the whole of that day and night
utterly unrelieved.




CHAPTER III.

  I own that I am envious of the pleasure you will have in finding yourself
  more learned than other boys,--even those who are older than yourself.
  What honour this will do you!  What distinctions, what applauses will
  follow wherever you go!
  --LORD CHESTERFIELD: Letters to his Son.

  Example, my boy,--example is worth a thousand precepts.
  --MAXIMILIAN SOLEMN.

Tarpeia was crushed beneath the weight of ornaments. The language of the
vulgar is a sort of Tarpeia. We have therefore relieved it of as many
gems as we were able, and in the foregoing scene presented it to the
gaze of our readers simplex munditiis. Nevertheless, we could timidly
imagine some gentler beings of the softer sex rather displeased with the
tone of the dialogue we have given, did we not recollect how delighted
they are with the provincial barbarities of the sister kingdom, whenever
they meet them poured over the pages of some Scottish story-teller. As,
unhappily for mankind, broad Scotch is not yet the universal language of
Europe, we suppose our countrywomen will not be much more unacquainted
with the dialect of their own lower orders than with that which breathes
nasal melodies over the paradise of the North.

It was the next day, at the hour of twilight, when Mrs. Margery Lobkins,
after a satisfactory tete-a-tete with Mr. MacGrawler, had the happiness
of thinking that she had provided a tutor for little Paul. The critic
having recited to her a considerable portion of Propria qum Maribus, the
good lady had no longer a doubt of his capacities for teaching; and
on the other hand, when Mrs. Lobkins entered on the subject of
remuneration, the Scotsman professed himself perfectly willing to teach
any and every thing that the most exacting guardian could require. It
was finally settled that Paul should attend Mr. MacGrawler two hours a
day; that Mr. MacGrawler should be entitled to such animal comforts of
meat and drink as the Mug afforded, and, moreover, to the weekly stipend
of two shillings and sixpence,--the shillings for instruction in the
classics, and the sixpence for all other humanities; or, as Mrs. Lobkins
expressed it, “two bobs for the Latin, and a site for the vartue.”

Let not thy mind, gentle reader, censure us for a deviation from
probability in making so excellent and learned a gentleman as Mr. Peter
MacGrawler the familiar guest of the lady of the Mug. First, thou must
know that our story is cast in a period antecedent to the present, and
one in which the old jokes against the circumstances of author and of
critic had their foundation in truth; secondly, thou must know that
by some curious concatenation of circumstances neither bailiff nor
bailiff's man was ever seen within the four walls continent of Mrs.
Margery Lobkins; thirdly, the Mug was nearer than any other house
of public resort to the abode of the critic; fourthly, it afforded
excellent porter; and fifthly, O reader, thou dost Mrs. Margery Lobkins
a grievous wrong if thou supposest that her door was only open to those
mercurial gentry who are afflicted with the morbid curiosity to pry into
the mysteries of their neighbours' pockets,--other visitors, of fair
repute, were not unoften partakers of the good matron's hospitality;
although it must be owned that they generally occupied the private room
in preference to the public one. And sixthly, sweet reader (we grieve to
be so prolix), we would just hint to thee that Mr. MacGrawler was one
of those vast-minded sages who, occupied in contemplating morals in the
great scale, do not fritter down their intellects by a base attention
to minute details. So that if a descendant of Langfanger did sometimes
cross the venerable Scot in his visit to the Mug, the apparition did not
revolt that benevolent moralist so much as, were it not for the above
hint, thy ignorance might lead thee to imagine.

It is said that Athenodorus the Stoic contributed greatly by his
conversation to amend the faults of Augustus, and to effect the change
visible in that fortunate man after his accession to the Roman empire.
If this be true, it may throw a new light on the character of Augustus,
and instead of being the hypocrite, he was possibly the convert. Certain
it is that there are few vices which cannot be conquered by wisdom; and
yet, melancholy to relate, the instructions of Peter MacGrawler produced
but slender amelioration in the habits of the youthful Paul. That
ingenious stripling had, we have already seen, under the tuition of
Ranting Bob, mastered the art of reading,--nay, he could even construct
and link together certain curious pot-hooks, which himself and Mrs.
Lobkins were wont graciously to term “writing.” So far, then, the way of
MacGrawler was smoothed and prepared.

But, unhappily, all experienced teachers allow that the main difficulty
is not to learn, but to unlearn; and the mind of Paul was already
occupied by a vast number of heterogeneous miscellanies which stoutly
resisted the ingress either of Latin or of virtue. Nothing could wean
him from an ominous affection for the history of Richard Turpin; it
was to him what, it has been said, the Greek authors should be to the
Academician,--a study by day, and a dream by night. He was docile enough
during lessons, and sometimes even too quick in conception for the
stately march of Mr. MacGrawler's intellect. But it not unfrequently
happened that when that gentleman attempted to rise, he found himself,
like the Lady in “Comus,” adhering to--

        “A venomed seat Smeared with gums of glutinous heat;”

or his legs had been secretly united under the table, and the tie was
not to be broken without overthrow to the superior powers. These, and
various other little sportive machinations wherewith Paul was wont to
relieve the monotony of literature, went far to disgust the learned
critic with his undertaking. But “the tape” and the treasury of Mrs.
Lobkins re-smoothed, as it were, the irritated bristles of his mind, and
he continued his labours with this philosophical reflection: “Why fret
myself? If a pupil turns out well, it is clearly to the credit of his
master; if not, to the disadvantage of himself.” Of course, a similar
suggestion never forced itself into the mind of Dr. Keate [A celebrated
principal of Eton]. At Eton the very soul of the honest headmaster is
consumed by his zeal for the welfare of the little gentlemen in stiff
cravats.

But to Paul, who was predestined to enjoy a certain quantum of
knowledge, circumstances happened, in the commencement of the second
year of his pupilage, which prodigiously accelerated the progress of his
scholastic career.

At the apartment of MacGrawler, Paul one morning encountered Mr.
Augustus Tomlinson, a young man of great promise, who pursued the
peaceful occupation of chronicling in a leading newspaper “Horrid
Murders,” “Enormous Melons,” and “Remarkable Circumstances.” This
gentleman, having the advantage of some years' seniority over Paul,
was slow in unbending his dignity; but observing at last the eager
and respectful attention with which the stripling listened to a most
veracious detail of five men being inhumanly murdered in Canterbury
Cathedral by the Reverend Zedekiah Fooks Barnacle, he was touched by the
impression he had created, and shaking Paul graciously by the hand, he
told him there was a deal of natural shrewdness in his countenance, and
that Mr. Augustus Tomlinson did not doubt but that he (Paul) might have
the honour to be murdered himself one of these days. “You understand
me,” continued Mr. Augustus,--“I mean murdered in effigy,--assassinated
in type,--while you yourself, unconscious of the circumstance, are
quietly enjoying what you imagine to be your existence. We never kill
common persons,--to say truth, our chief spite is against the Church; we
destroy bishops by wholesale. Sometimes, indeed, we knock off a leading
barrister or so, and express the anguish of the junior counsel at a loss
so destructive to their interests. But that is only a stray hit, and the
slain barrister often lives to become Attorney-General, renounce Whig
principles, and prosecute the very Press that destroyed him. Bishops are
our proper food; we send them to heaven on a sort of flying griffin,
of which the back is an apoplexy, and the wings are puffs. The Bishop
of---, whom we despatched in this manner the other day, being rather
a facetious personage, wrote to remonstrate with us thereon, observing
that though heaven was a very good translation for a bishop, yet that in
such cases he preferred 'the original to the translation.' As we murder
bishop, so is there another class of persons whom we only afflict with
lethiferous diseases. This latter tribe consists of his Majesty and his
Majesty's ministers. Whenever we cannot abuse their measures, we always
fall foul on their health. Does the king pass any popular law, we
immediately insinuate that his constitution is on its last legs. Does
the minister act like a man of sense, we instantly observe, with great
regret, that his complexion is remarkably pale. There is one manifest
advantage in diseasing people, instead of absolutely destroying them:
the public may flatly contradict us in one case, but it never can in the
other; it is easy to prove that a man is alive, but utterly impossible
to prove that he is in health. What if some opposing newspaper take up
the cudgels in his behalf, and assert that the victim of all Pandora's
complaints, whom we send tottering to the grave, passes one half the day
in knocking up a 'distinguished company' at a shooting-party, and the
other half in outdoing the same 'distinguished company' after dinner?
What if the afflicted individual himself write us word that he never
was better in his life? We have only mysteriously to shake our heads
and observe that to contradict is not to prove, that it is little likely
that our authority should have been mistaken, and (we are very fond
of an historical comparison), beg our readers to remember that when
Cardinal Richelieu was dying, nothing enraged him so much as hinting
that he was ill. In short, if Horace is right, we are the very princes
of poets; for I dare say, Mr. MacGrawler, that you--and you, too, my
little gentleman, perfectly remember the words of the wise old Roman,--

     “'Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur
     Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit,
     Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet.'”

     [“He appears to me to be, to the fullest extent, a poet who
     airily torments my breast, irritates, soothes, fills it with
     unreal terrors.”]

Having uttered this quotation with considerable self-complacency,
and thereby entirely completed his conquest over Paul, Mr. Augustus
Tomlinson, turning to MacGrawler, concluded his business with that
gentleman,--which was of a literary nature, namely, a joint composition
against a man who, being under five-and-twenty, and too poor to give
dinners, had had the impudence to write a sacred poem. The critics were
exceedingly bitter at this; and having very little to say against the
poem, the Court journals called the author a “coxcomb,” and the liberal
ones “the son of a pantaloon!”

There was an ease, a spirit, a life about Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, which
captivated the senses of our young hero; then, too, he was exceedingly
smartly attired,--wore red heels and a bag,--had what seemed to Paul
quite the air of a “man of fashion;” and, above all, he spouted the
Latin with a remarkable grace!

Some days afterwards, MacGrawler sent our hero to Mr. Tomlinson's
lodgings, with his share of the joint abuse upon the poet.

Doubly was Paul's reverence for Mr. Augustus Tomlinson increased by a
sight of his abode. He found him settled in a polite part of the town,
in a very spruce parlour, the contents of which manifested the universal
genius of the inhabitant. It hath been objected unto us, by a most
discerning critic, that we are addicted to the drawing of “universal
geniuses.” We plead Not Guilty in former instances; we allow the
soft impeachment in the instance of Mr. Augustus Tomlinson. Over his
fireplace were arranged boxing-gloves and fencing foils; on his table
lay a cremona and a flageolet. On one side of the wall were shelves
containing the Covent Garden Magazine, Burn's Justice, a pocket Horace,
a Prayer-Book, Excerpta ex Tacito, a volume of plays, Philosophy made
Easy, and a Key to all Knowledge. Furthermore, there were on another
table a riding-whip and a driving-whip and a pair of spurs, and three
guineas, with a little mountain of loose silver. Mr. Augustus was a
tall, fair young man, with a freckled complexion, green eyes and red
eyelids, a smiling mouth, rather under-jawed, a sharp nose, and
a prodigiously large pair of ears. He was robed in a green damask
dressing-gown; and he received the tender Paul most graciously.

There was something very engaging about our hero. He was not only
good-looking, and frank in aspect, but he had that appearance of
briskness and intellect which belongs to an embryo rogue. Mr. Augustus
Tomlinson professed the greatest regard for him,--asked him if he could
box, made him put on a pair of gloves, and very condescendingly knocked
him down three times successively. Next he played him, both upon his
flageolet and his cremona, some of the most modish airs. Moreover, he
sang him a little song of his own composing. He then, taking up the
driving-whip, flanked a fly from the opposite wall, and throwing himself
(naturally fatigued with his numerous exertions) on his sofa, observed,
in a careless tone, that he and his friend Lord Dunshunner were
universally esteemed the best whips in the metropolis. “I,” quoth Mr.
Augustus, “am the best on the road; but my lord is a devil at turning a
corner.”

Paul, who had hitherto lived too unsophisticated a life to be aware of
the importance of which a lord would naturally be in the eyes of Mr.
Augustus Tomlinson, was not so much struck with the grandeur of the
connection as the murderer of the journals had expected. He merely
observed, by way of compliment, that Mr. Augustus and his companion
seemed to be “rolling kiddies.”

A little displeased with this metaphorical remark,--for it may be
observed that “rolling kiddy” is, among the learned in such lore, the
customary expression for “a smart thief,”--the universal Augustus took
that liberty to which by his age and station, so much superior to those
of Paul, he imagined himself entitled, and gently reproved our hero for
his indiscriminate use of flash phrases.

“A lad of your parts,” said he,--“for I see you are clever, by your
eye,--ought to be ashamed of using such vulgar expressions. Have a
nobler spirit, a loftier emulation, Paul, than that which distinguishes
the little ragamuffins of the street. Know that in this country genius
and learning carry everything before them; and if you behave yourself
properly, you may, one day or another, be as high in the world as
myself.”

At this speech Paul looked wistfully round the spruce parlour, and
thought what a fine thing it would be to be lord of such a domain,
together with the appliances of flageolet and cremona, boxing-gloves,
books, fly-flanking flagellum, three guineas, with the little mountain
of silver, and the reputation--shared only with Lord Dunshunner--of
being the best whip in London.

“Yes,” continued Tomlinson, with conscious pride, “I owe my rise to
myself. Learning is better than house and land. 'Doctrina sed vim,' etc.
You know what old Horace says? Why, sir, you would not believe it; but
I was the man who killed his Majesty the King of Sardinia in our
yesterday's paper. Nothing is too arduous for genius. Fag hard, my
boy, and you may rival (for the thing, though difficult, may not be
impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!”

At the conclusion of this harangue, a knock at the door being heard,
Paul took his departure, and met in the hall a fine-looking person
dressed in the height of the fashion, and wearing a pair of prodigiously
large buckles in his shoes. Paul looked, and his heart swelled. “I may
rival,” thought he,--“those were his very words,--I may rival (for
the thing, though difficult, is not impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!”
 Absorbed in meditation, he went silently home. The next day the memoirs
of the great Turpin were committed to the flames, and it was noticeable
that henceforth Paul observed a choicer propriety of words, that he
assumed a more refined air of dignity, and that he paid considerably
more attention than heretofore to the lessons of Mr. Peter MacGrawler.
Although it must be allowed that our young hero's progress in the
learned languages was not astonishing, yet an early passion for reading,
growing stronger and stronger by application, repaid him at last with a
tolerable knowledge of the mother-tongue. We must, however, add that his
more favourite and cherished studies were scarcely of that nature which
a prudent preceptor would have greatly commended. They lay chiefly among
novels, plays, and poetry,--which last he affected to that degree
that he became somewhat of a poet himself. Nevertheless these literary
avocations, profitless as they seemed, gave a certain refinement to his
tastes which they were not likely otherwise to have acquired at the Mug;
and while they aroused his ambition to see something of the gay life
they depicted, they imparted to his temper a tone of enterprise and of
thoughtless generosity which perhaps contributed greatly to counteract
those evil influences towards petty vice to which the examples
around him must have exposed his tender youth. But, alas! a great
disappointment to Paul's hope of assistance and companionship in his
literary labours befell him. Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, one bright morning,
disappeared, leaving word with his numerous friends that he was going
to accept a lucrative situation in the North of England. Notwithstanding
the shock this occasioned to the affectionate heart and aspiring temper
of our friend Paul, it abated not his ardour in that field of science
which it seemed that the distinguished absentee had so successfully
cultivated. By little and little, he possessed himself (in addition to
the literary stores we have alluded to) of all it was in the power of
the wise and profound Peter MacGrawler to impart unto him; and at the
age of sixteen he began (oh the presumption of youth!) to fancy himself
more learned than his master.




CHAPTER IV.

He had now become a young man of extreme fashion, and as much repandu in
society as the utmost and most exigent coveter of London celebrity could
desire. He was, of course, a member of the clubs, etc. He was, in
short, of that oft-described set before whom all minor beaux sink into
insignificance, or among whom they eventually obtain a subaltern grade,
by a sacrifice of a due portion of their fortune.--Almack's Revisited.

By the soul of the great Malebranche, who made “A Search after Truth,”
 and discovered everything beautiful except that which he searched
for,--by the soul of the great Malebranche, whom Bishop Berkeley found
suffering under an inflammation in the lungs, and very obligingly
talked to death (an instance of conversational powers worthy the envious
emulation of all great metaphysicians and arguers),--by the soul of that
illustrious man, it is amazing to us what a number of truths there are
broken up into little fragments, and scattered here and there through
the world. What a magnificent museum a man might make of the precious
minerals, if he would but go out with his basket under his arm, and his
eyes about him! We ourselves picked up this very day a certain small
piece of truth, with which we propose to explain to thee, fair reader, a
sinister turn in the fortunes of Paul.

“Wherever,” says a living sage, “you see dignity, you may be sure
there is expense requisite to support it.” So was it with Paul. A
young gentleman who was heir-presumptive to the Mug, and who enjoyed
a handsome person with a cultivated mind, was necessarily of a certain
station of society, and an object of respect in the eyes of the
manoeuvring mammas of the vicinity of Thames Court. Many were the
parties of pleasure to Deptford and Greenwich which Paul found himself
compelled to attend; and we need not refer our readers to novels upon
fashionable life to inform them that in good society the gentlemen
always pay for the ladies! Nor was this all the expense to which his
expectations exposed him. A gentleman could scarcely attend these
elegant festivities without devoting some little attention to his dress;
and a fashionable tailor plays the deuce with one's yearly allowance.

We who reside, be it known to you, reader, in Little Brittany are not
very well acquainted with the manners of the better classes in St.
James's. But there was one great vice among the fine people about Thames
Court which we make no doubt does not exist anywhere else,--namely,
these fine people were always in an agony to seem finer than they were;
and the more airs a gentleman or a lady gave him or her self, the more
important they became. Joe, the dog's-meat man, had indeed got into
society entirely from a knack of saying impertinent things to everybody;
and the smartest exclusives of the place, who seldom visited any one
where there was not a silver teapot, used to think Joe had a great deal
in him because he trundled his cart with his head in the air, and one
day gave the very beadle of the parish “the cut direct.”

Now this desire to be so exceedingly fine not only made the society
about Thames Court unpleasant, but expensive. Every one vied with
his neighbour; and as the spirit of rivalry is particularly strong
in youthful bosoms, we can scarcely wonder that it led Paul into many
extravagances. The evil of all circles that profess to be select is high
play; and the reason is obvious: persons who have the power to bestow
on another an advantage he covets would rather sell it than give it;
and Paul, gradually increasing in popularity and ton, found himself, in
spite of his classical education, no match for the finished, or,
rather, finishing gentlemen with whom he began to associate. His first
admittance into the select coterie of these men of the world was formed
at the house of Bachelor Bill, a person of great notoriety among
that portion of the elite which emphatically entitles itself “Flash.”
 However, as it is our rigid intention in this work to portray at length
no episodical characters whatsoever, we can afford our readers but a
slight and rapid sketch of Bachelor Bill.

This personage was of Devonshire extraction. His mother had kept the
pleasantest public-house in town, and at her death Bill succeeded to her
property and popularity. All the young ladies in the neighbourhood of
Fiddler's Row, where he resided, set their caps at him: all the most
fashionable prigs, or tobymen, sought to get him into their set; and the
most crack blowen in London would have given her ears at any time for
a loving word from Bachelor Bill. But Bill was a longheaded, prudent
fellow, and of a remarkably cautious temperament. He avoided marriage
and friendship; namely, he was neither plundered nor cornuted. He was a
tall, aristocratic cove, of a devilish neat address, and very gallant,
in an honest way, to the blowens. Like most single men, being very much
the gentleman so far as money was concerned, he gave them plenty of
“feeds,” and from time to time a very agreeable hop. His bingo [Brandy]
was unexceptionable; and as for his stark-naked [Gin], it was voted the
most brilliant thing in nature. In a very short time, by his blows-out
and his bachelorship,--for single men always arrive at the apex of haut
ton more easily than married,--he became the very glass of fashion; and
many were the tight apprentices, even at the west end of the town,
who used to turn back in admiration of Bachelor Bill, when of a Sunday
afternoon he drove down his varment gig to his snug little box on the
borders of Turnham Green. Bill's happiness was not, however, wholly
without alloy. The ladies of pleasure are always so excessively angry
when a man does not make love to them, that there is nothing they will
not say against him; and the fair matrons in the vicinity of Fiddler's
Row spread all manner of unfounded reports against poor Bachelor
Bill. By degrees, however,--for, as Tacitus has said, doubtless with
a prophetic eye to Bachelor Bill, “the truth gains by delay,”--these
reports began to die insensibly away; and Bill now waxing near to the
confines of middle age, his friends comfortably settled for him that he
would be Bachelor Bill all his life. For the rest, he was an excellent
fellow,--gave his broken victuals to the poor, professed a liberal
turn of thinking, and in all the quarrels among the blowens (your crack
blowens are a quarrelsome set!) always took part with the weakest.
Although Bill affected to be very select in his company, he was never
forgetful of his old friends; and Mrs. Margery Lobkins having been very
good to him when he was a little boy in a skeleton jacket, he invariably
sent her a card to his soirees. The good lady, however, had not of late
years deserted her chimney-corner. Indeed, the racket of fashionable
life was too much for her nerves; and the invitation had become a
customary form not expected to be acted upon, but not a whit the less
regularly used for that reason. As Paul had now attained his sixteenth
year, and was a fine, handsome lad, the dame thought he would make
an excellent representative of the Mug's mistress; and that, for her
protege, a ball at Bill's house would be no bad commencement of “Life
in London.” Accordingly, she intimated to the Bachelor a wish to that
effect; and Paul received the following invitation from Bill:--

“Mr. William Duke gives a hop and feed in a quiet way on Monday next,
and hops Mr. Paul Lobkins will be of the party. N. B. Gentlemen is
expected to come in pumps.”

When Paul entered, he found Bachelor Bill leading off the ball to the
tune of “Drops of Brandy,” with a young lady to whom, because she had
been a strolling player, the Ladies Patronesses of Fiddler's Row
had thought proper to behave with a very cavalier civility. The good
Bachelor had no notion, as he expressed it, of such tantrums, and he
caused it to be circulated among the finest of the blowens, that he
expected all who kicked their heels at his house would behave decent and
polite to young Mrs. Dot. This intimation, conveyed to the ladies with
all that insinuating polish for which Bachelor Bill was so remarkable,
produced a notable effect; and Mrs. Dot, being now led off by the flash
Bachelor, was overpowered with civilities the rest of the evening.

When the dance was ended, Bill very politely shook hands with Paul, and
took an early opportunity of introducing him to some of the most “noted
characters” of the town. Among these were the smart Mr. Allfair, the
insinuating Henry Finish, the merry Jack Hookey, the knowing Charles
Trywit, and various others equally noted for their skill in living
handsomely upon their own brains, and the personals of other people. To
say truth, Paul, who at that time was an honest lad, was less charmed
than he had anticipated by the conversation of these chevaliers of
industry. He was more pleased with the clever though self-sufficient
remarks of a gentleman with a remarkably fine head of hair, and whom we
would more impressively than the rest introduce to our reader under the
appellation of Mr. Edward Pepper, generally termed Long Ned. As this
worthy was destined afterwards to be an intimate associate of Paul, our
main reason for attending the hop at Bachelor Bill's is to note, as the
importance of the event deserves, the epoch of the commencement of their
acquaintance.

Long Ned and Paul happened to sit next to each other at supper, and
they conversed together so amicably that Paul, in the hospitality of his
heart, expressed a hope that he should see Mr. Pepper at the Mug!

“Mug,--Mug!” repeated Pepper, half shutting his eyes, with the air of
a dandy about to be impertinent; “ah, the name of a chapel, is it not?
There's a sect called Muggletonians, I think?”

“As to that,” said Paul, colouring at this insinuation against the Mug,
“Mrs. Lobkins has no more religion than her betters; but the Mug is a
very excellent house, and frequented by the best possible company.”

“Don't doubt it!” said Ned. “Remember now that I was once there, and saw
one Dummie Dunnaker,--is not that the name? I recollect some years ago,
when I first came out, that Dummie and I had an adventure together;
to tell you the truth, it was not the sort of thing I would do now.
But--would you believe it, Mr. Paul?--this pitiful fellow was quite rude
to me the only time I ever met him since; that is to say, the only time
I ever entered the Mug. I have no notion of such airs in a merchant,--a
merchant of rags! Those commercial fellows are getting quite
insufferable.”

“You surprise me,” said Paul. “Poor Dummie is the last man to be rude;
he is as civil a creature as ever lived.”

“Or sold a rag,” said Ned. “Possibly! Don't doubt his amiable qualities
in the least. Pass the bingo, my good fellow. Stupid stuff, this
dancing!”

“Devilish stupid!” echoed Harry Finish, across the table. “Suppose
we adjourn to Fish Lane, and rattle the ivories! What say you, Mr.
Lobkins?”

Afraid of the “ton's stern laugh, which scarce the proud philosopher
can scorn,” and not being very partial to dancing, Paul assented to the
proposition; and a little party, consisting of Harry Finish, Allfair,
Long Ned, and Mr. Hookey, adjourned to Fish Lane, where there was a
club, celebrated among men who live by their wits, at which “lush” and
“baccy” were gratuitously sported in the most magnificent manner. Here
the evening passed away very delightfully, and Paul went home without a
“brad” in his pocket.

From that time Paul's visits to Fish Lane became unfortunately
regular; and in a very short period, we grieve to say, Paul became that
distinguished character, a gentleman of three outs,--“out of pocket,
out of elbows, and out of credit.” The only two persons whom he found
willing to accommodate him with a slight loan, as the advertisements
signed X. Y. have it, were Mr. Dummie Dunnaker and Mr. Pepper, surnamed
the Long. The latter, however, while he obliged the heir to the Mug,
never condescended to enter that noted place of resort; and the former,
whenever he good-naturedly opened his purse-strings, did it with a
hearty caution to shun the acquaintance of Long Ned,--“a parson,” said
Dummie, “of wery dangerous morals, and not by no manner of means a fit
'sociate for a young gemman of cracter like leetle Paul!” So earnest
was this caution, and so especially pointed at Long Ned,--although
the company of Mr. Allfair or Mr. Finish might be said to be no less
prejudicial,--that it is probable that stately fastidiousness of manner
which Lord Normanby rightly observes, in one of his excellent novels,
makes so many enemies in the world, and which sometimes characterized
the behaviour of Long Ned, especially towards the men of commerce, was
a main reason why Dummie was so acutely and peculiarly alive to the
immoralities of that lengthy gentleman. At the same time we must observe
that when Paul, remembering what Pepper had said respecting his early
adventure with Mr. Dunnaker, repeated it to the merchant, Dummie could
not conceal a certain confusion, though he merely remarked, with a sort
of laugh, that it was not worth speaking about; and it appeared evident
to Paul that something unpleasant to the man of rags, which was not
shared by the unconscious Pepper, lurked in the reminiscence of their
past acquaintance. How beit, the circumstance glided from Paul's
attention the moment afterwards; and he paid, we are concerned to
say, equally little heed to the cautions against Ned with which Dummie
regaled him.

Perhaps (for we must now direct a glance towards his domestic concerns)
one great cause which drove Paul to Fish Lane was the uncomfortable
life he led at home. For though Mrs. Lobkins was extremely fond of her
protege, yet she was possessed, as her customers emphatically remarked,
“of the devil's own temper;” and her native coarseness never having been
softened by those pictures of gay society which had, in many a novel and
comic farce, refined the temperament of the romantic Paul, her manner of
venting her maternal reproaches was certainly not a little revolting to
a lad of some delicacy of feeling. Indeed, it often occurred to him
to leave her house altogether, and seek his fortunes alone, after the
manner of the ingenious Gil Blas or the enterprising Roderick Random;
and this idea, though conquered and reconquered, gradually swelled and
increased at his heart, even as swelleth that hairy ball found in the
stomach of some suffering heifer after its decease. Among these projects
of enterprise the reader will hereafter notice that an early vision of
the Green Forest Cave, in which Turpin was accustomed, with a friend,
a ham, and a wife, to conceal himself, flitted across his mind. At this
time he did not, perhaps, incline to the mode of life practised by the
hero of the roads; but he certainly clung not the less fondly to the
notion of the cave.

The melancholy flow of our hero's life was now, however, about to be
diverted by an unexpected turn, and the crude thoughts of boyhood to
burst, “like Ghilan's giant palm,” into the fruit of a manly resolution.

Among the prominent features of Mrs. Lobkins's mind was a sovereign
contempt for the unsuccessful. The imprudence and ill-luck of Paul
occasioned her as much scorn as compassion; and when for the third time
within a week he stood, with a rueful visage and with vacant pockets,
by the dame's great chair, requesting an additional supply, the tides of
her wrath swelled into overflow.

“Look you, my kinchin cove,” said she,--and in order to give peculiar
dignity to her aspect, she put on while she spoke a huge pair of tin
spectacles,--“if so be as how you goes for to think as how I shall go
for to supply your wicious necessities, you will find yourself planted
in Queer Street. Blow me tight, if I gives you another mag.”

“But I owe Long Ned a guinea,” said Paul; “and Dummie Dunnaker lent me
three crowns. It ill becomes your heir apparent, my dear dame, to fight
shy of his debts of honour.”

“Taradididdle, don't think for to wheedle me with your debts and your
honour,” said the dame, in a passion. “Long Ned is as long in the forks
[fingers] as he is in the back; may Old Harry fly off with him! And as
for Durnmie Dunnaker, I wonders how you, brought up such a swell, and
blest with the wery best of hedications, can think of putting up with
such wulgar 'sociates. I tells you what, Paul, you'll please to break
with them, smack and at once, or devil a brad you'll ever get from Peg
Lobkins.” So saying, the old lady turned round in her chair, and helped
herself to a pipe of tobacco.

Paul walked twice up and down the apartment, and at last stopped
opposite the dame's chair. He was a youth of high spirit; and though he
was warm-hearted, and had a love for Mrs. Lobkins, which her care and
affection for hire well deserved, yet he was rough in temper, and
not constantly smooth in speech. It is true that his heart smote him
afterwards, whenever he had said anything to annoy Mrs. Lobkins, and he
was always the first to seek a reconciliation; but warm words produce
cold respect, and sorrow for the past is not always efficacious in
amending the future. Paul then, puffed up with the vanity of his genteel
education, and the friendship of Long Ned (who went to Ranelagh, and
wore silver clocked stockings), stopped opposite to Mrs. Lobkins's
chair, and said with great solemnity,--

“Mr. Pepper, madam, says very properly that I must have money to support
myself like a gentleman; and as you won't give it me, I am determined,
with many thanks for your past favours, to throw myself on the world,
and seek my fortune.”

If Paul was of no oily and bland temper, Dame Margaret Lobkins, it has
been seen, had no advantage on that score. (We dare say the reader has
observed that nothing so enrages persons on whom one depends as any
expressed determination of seeking independence.) Gazing therefore for
one moment at the open but resolute countenance of Paul, while all the
blood of her veins seemed gathering in fire and scarlet to her enlarging
cheeks, Dame Lobkins said,--

“Ifeaks, Master Pride-in-duds! seek your fortune yourself, will you?
This comes of my bringing you up, and letting you eat the bread of
idleness and charity, you toad of a thousand! Take that and be d--d
to you!” and, suiting the action to the word, the tube which she had
withdrawn from her mouth in order to utter her gentle rebuke whizzed
through the air, grazed Paul's cheek, and finished its earthly career by
coming in violent contact with the right eye of Duinmie Dunnaker, who at
that exact moment entered the room.

Paul had winced for a moment to avoid the missive; in the next he
stood perfectly upright. His cheeks glowed, his chest swelled; and the
entrance of Dummie Dunuaker, who was thus made the spectator of the
affront he had received, stirred his blood into a deeper anger and a
more bitter self-humiliation. All his former resolutions of departure,
all the hard words, the coarse allusions, the practical insults he had
at any time received, rushed upon him at once. He merely cast one look
at the old woman, whose rage was now half subsided, and turned slowly
and in silence to the door.

There is often something alarming in an occurrence merely because it
is that which we least expect. The astute Mrs. Lobkins, remembering
the hardy temper and fiery passions of Paul, had expected some burst of
rage, some vehement reply; and when she caught with one wandering eye
his parting look, and saw him turn so passively and mutely to the door,
her heart misgave her, she raised herself from her chair, and made
towards him. Unhappily for her chance of reconciliation, she had that
day quaffed more copiously of the bowl than usual; and the signs of
intoxication visible in her uncertain gait, her meaningless eye, her
vacant leer, her ruby cheek, all inspired Paul with feelings which at
the moment converted resentment into something very much like aversion.
He sprang from her grasp to the threshold.

“Where be you going, you imp of the world?” cried the dame. “Get in with
you, and say no more on the matter; be a bob-cull,--drop the bullies,
and you shall have the blunt!”

But Paul heeded not this invitation.

“I will eat the bread of idleness and charity no longer,” said he,
sullenly. “Good-by; and if ever I can pay you what I have cost you, I
will.”

He turned away as he spoke; and the dame, kindling with resentment at
his unseemly return to her proffered kindness, hallooed after him, and
bade that dark-coloured gentleman who keeps the fire-office below go
along with him.

Swelling with anger, pride, shame, and a half-joyous feeling of
emancipated independence, Paul walked on, he knew not whither, with his
head in the air, and his legs marshalling themselves into a military
gait of defiance. He had not proceeded far before he heard his name
uttered behind him; he turned, and saw the rueful face of Dummie
Dunnaker.

Very inoffensively had that respectable person been employed during the
last part of the scene we have described in caressing his afflicted eye,
and muttering philosophical observations on the danger incurred by all
those who are acquainted with ladies of a choleric temperament; when
Mrs. Lobkins, turning round after Paul's departure, and seeing the
pitiful person of that Dummie Dunnaker, whose name she remembered
Paul had mentioned in his opening speech, and whom, therefore, with
an illogical confusion of ideas, she considered a party in the late
dispute, exhausted upon him all that rage which it was necessary for her
comfort that she should unburden somewhere.

She seized the little man by the collar,--the tenderest of all places in
gentlemen similarly circumstanced with regard to the ways of life,--and
giving him a blow, which took effect on his other and hitherto undamaged
eye, cried out,--

“I'll teach you, you blood-sucker [that is, parasite], to sponge upon
those as has expectations! I'll teach you to cozen the heir of the Mug,
you snivelling, whey-faced ghost of a farthing rushlight! What! you'll
lend my Paul three crowns, will you, when you knows as how you told
me you could not pay me a pitiful tizzy? Oh, you're a queer one, I
warrants; but you won't queer Margery Lobkins. Out of my ken, you cur of
the mange!--out of my ken; and if ever I claps my sees on you again, or
if ever I knows as how you makes a flat of my Paul, blow me tight but
I'll weave you a hempen collar,--I'll hang you, you dog, I will. What!
you will answer me, will you? Oh, you viper, budge and begone!”

It was in vain that Dummie protested his innocence. A violent
coup-de-pied broke off all further parlance. He made a clear house of
the Mug; and the landlady thereof, tottering back to her elbow-chair,
sought out another pipe, and, like all imaginative persons when
the world goes wrong with them, consoled herself for the absence of
realities by the creations of smoke.

Meanwhile Dummie Dunnaker, muttering and murmuring bitter fancies,
overtook Paul, and accused that youth of having been the occasion of
the injuries he had just undergone. Paul was not at that moment in the
humour best adapted for the patient bearing of accusations. He answered
Mr. Dunnaker very shortly; and that respectable individual, still
smarting under his bruises, replied with equal tartness. Words grew
high, and at length Paul, desirous of concluding the conference,
clenched his fist, and told the redoubted Dummie that he would “knock
him down.” There is something peculiarly harsh and stunning in those
three hard, wiry, sturdy, stubborn monosyllables. Their very sound
makes you double your fist if you are a hero, or your pace if you are
a peaceable man. They produced an instant effect upon Dummie Dunnaker,
aided as they were by the effect of an athletic and youthful figure,
already fast approaching to the height of six feet, a flushed cheek,
and an eye that bespoke both passion and resolution. The rag-merchant's
voice sank at once, and with the countenance of a wronged Cassius he
whimpered forth,--

“Knock me down? O leetle Paul, vot wicked vhids are those! Vot! Dummie
Dunnaker, as has dandled you on his knee mony's a time and oft! Vy, the
cove's 'art is as 'ard as junk, and as proud as a gardener's dog vith
a nosegay tied to his tail.” This pathetic remonstrance softened Paul's
anger.

“Well, Dummie,” said he, laughing, “I did not mean to hurt you, and
there's an end of it; and I am very sorry for the dame's ill-conduct;
and so I wish you a good-morning.”

“Vy, vere be you trotting to, leetle Paul?” said Dummie, grasping him by
the tail of the coat.

“The deuce a bit I know,” answered our hero; “but I think I shall drop a
call on Long Ned.”

“Avast there!” said Dummie, speaking under his breath; “if so be as you
von't blab, I'll tell you a bit of a secret. I heered as 'ow Long Ned
started for Hampshire this werry morning on a toby [Highway expedition]
consarn!”

“Ha!” said Paul, “then hang me if I know what to do!”

As he uttered these words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if
he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed
upon him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the
hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that friend
was absent from London and on so dangerous an expedition, he was a
little puzzled what to do with that treasure of intellect and wisdom
which he carried about upon his legs. Already he had acquired sufficient
penetration (for Charles Trywit and Harry Finish were excellent masters
for initiating a man into the knowledge of the world) to perceive that a
person, however admirable may be his qualities, does not readily find
a welcome without a penny in his pocket. In the neighbourhood of Thames
Court he had, indeed, many acquaintances; but the fineness of his
language, acquired from his education, and the elegance of his air, in
which he attempted to blend in happy association the gallant effrontery
of Mr. Long Ned with the graceful negligence of Mr. Augustus Tomlinson,
had made him many enemies among those acquaintances; and he was not
willing--so great was our hero's pride--to throw himself on the chance
of their welcome, or to publish, as it were, his exiled and crestfallen
state. As for those boon companions who had assisted him in making a
wilderness of his pockets, he had already found that that was the only
species of assistance which they were willing to render him. In a word,
he could not for the life of him conjecture in what quarter he should
find the benefits of bed and board. While he stood with his finger
to his lip, undecided and musing, but fully resolved at least on one
thing,--not to return to the Mug,--little Dummie, who was a good-natured
fellow at the bottom, peered up in his face, and said,--

“Vy, Paul, my kid, you looks down in the chops; cheer up,--care killed a
cat!”

Observing that this appropriate and encouraging fact of natural history
did not lessen the cloud upon Paul's brow, the acute Dummie Dunnaker
proceeded at once to the grand panacea for all evils, in his own
profound estimation.

“Paul, my ben cull,” said he, with a knowing wink, and nudging the young
gentleman in the left side, “vot do you say to a drop o' blue ruin? or,
as you likes to be conish [genteel], I does n't care if I sports you a
glass of port!” While Dunnaker was uttering this invitation, a
sudden reminiscence flashed across Paul: he bethought him at once of
MacGrawler; and he resolved forthwith to repair to the abode of that
illustrious sage, and petition at least for accommodation for the
approaching night. So soon as he had come to this determination, he
shook off the grasp of the amiable Dummie, and refusing with many thanks
his hospitable invitation, requested him to abstract from the dame's
house, and lodge within his own until called for, such articles of
linen and clothing as belonged to Paul and could easily be laid hold of,
during one of the matron's evening siestas, by the shrewd Dunnaker. The
merchant promised that the commission should be speedily executed; and
Paul, shaking hands with him, proceeded to the mansion of MacGrawler.

We must now go back somewhat in the natural course of our narrative, and
observe that among the minor causes which had conspired with the great
one of gambling to bring our excellent Paul to his present situation,
was his intimacy with MacGrawler; for when Paul's increasing years
and roving habits had put an end to the sage's instructions, there was
thereby lopped off from the preceptor's finances the weekly sum of two
shillings and sixpence, as well as the freedom of the dame's cellar and
larder; and as, in the reaction of feeling, and the perverse course of
human affairs, people generally repent the most of those actions once
the most ardently incurred, so poor Mrs. Lobkins, imagining that Paul's
irregularities were entirely owing to the knowledge he had acquired from
MacGrawler's instructions, grievously upbraided herself for her former
folly in seeking for a superior education for her protege; nay, she even
vented upon the sacred head of MacGrawler himself her dissatisfaction
at the results of his instructions. In like manner, when a man who
can spell comes to be hanged, the anti-educationists accuse the
spelling-book of his murder. High words between the admirer of ignorant
innocence and the propagator of intellectual science ensued, which ended
in MacGrawler's final expulsion from the Mug.

There are some young gentlemen of the present day addicted to the
adoption of Lord Byron's poetry, with the alteration of new rhymes, who
are pleased graciously to inform us that they are born to be the ruin of
all those who love them,--an interesting fact, doubtless, but which they
might as well keep to themselves. It would seem by the contents of this
chapter as if the same misfortune were destined to Paul. The exile of
MacGrawler, the insults offered to Dummie Dunnaker,--alike occasioned by
him,--appear to sanction that opinion. Unfortunately, though Paul was a
poet, he was not much of a sentimentalist; and he has never given us the
edifying ravings of his remorse on those subjects. But MacGrawler, like
Dunnaker, was resolved that our hero should perceive the curse of his
fatality; and as he still retained some influence over the mind of
his quondam pupil, his accusations against Paul, as the origin of
his banishment, were attended with a greater success than were the
complaints of Dummie Dunnaker on a similar calamity. Paul, who, like
most people who are good for nothing, had an excellent heart, was
exceedingly grieved at MacGrawler's banishment on his account; and he
endeavoured to atone for it by such pecuniary consolations as he was
enabled to offer. These MacGrawler (purely, we may suppose, from a
benevolent desire to lessen the boy's remorse) scrupled not to accept;
and thus, so similar often are the effects of virtue and of vice, the
exemplary MacGrawler conspired with the unprincipled Long Ned and the
heartless Henry Finish in producing that unenviable state of vacuity
which now saddened over the pockets of Paul.

As our hero was slowly walking towards the sage's abode, depending
on his gratitude and friendship for a temporary shelter, one of those
lightning flashes of thought which often illumine the profoundest abyss
of affliction darted across his mind. Recalling the image of the critic,
he remembered that he had seen that ornament of “The Asinaeum” receive
sundry sums for his critical lucubrations.

“Why,” said Paul, seizing on that fact, and stopping short in the
street,--“why should I not turn critic myself?”

The only person to whom one ever puts a question with a tolerable
certainty of receiving a satisfactory answer is one's self. The moment
Paul started this luminous suggestion, it appeared to him that he had
discovered the mines of Potosi. Burning with impatience to discuss with
the great MacGrawler the feasibility of his project, he quickened
his pace almost into a run, and in a very few minutes, having only
overthrown one chimney-sweeper and two apple-women by the way, he
arrived at the sage's door.




CHAPTER V.

     Ye realms yet unrevealed to human sight,
     Ye canes athwart the hapless hands that write,
     Ye critic chiefs,-permit me to relate
     The mystic wonders of your silent state!

                       VIRGIL, AEneid, book vi.

Fortune had smiled upon Mr. MacGrawler since he first undertook the
tuition of Mrs. Lobkins's protege. He now inhabited a second-floor, and
defied the sheriff and his evil spirits. It was at the dusk of evening
that Paul found him at home and alone.

Before the mighty man stood a pot of London porter; a candle, with an
unregarded wick, shed its solitary light upon his labours; and an infant
cat played sportively at his learned feet, beguiling the weary moments
with the remnants of the spiral cap wherewith, instead of laurel, the
critic had hitherto nightly adorned his brows.

So soon as MacGrawler, piercing through the gloomy mist which hung about
the chamber, perceived the person of the intruder, a frown settled upon
his brow.

“Have I not told you, youngster,” he growled, “never to enter a
gentleman's room without knocking? I tell you, sir, that manners are no
less essential to human happiness than virtue; wherefore, never disturb
a gentleman in his avocations, and sit yourself down without molesting
the cat!”

Paul, who knew that his respected tutor disliked any one to trace
the source of the wonderful spirit which he infused into his critical
compositions, affected not to perceive the pewter Hippocrene, and with
many apologies for his want of preparatory politeness, seated himself as
directed. It was then that the following edifying conversation ensued.

“The ancients,” quoth Paul, “were very great men, Mr. MacGrawler.”

“They were so, sir,” returned the critic; “we make it a rule in our
profession to assert that fact.”

“But, sir,” said Paul, “they were wrong now and then.”

“Never, Ignoramus; never!”

“They praised poverty, Mr. MacGrawler!” said Paul, with a sigh.

“Hem!” quoth the critic, a little staggered; but presently recovering
his characteristic, acumen, he observed, “It is true, Paul; but that was
the poverty of other people.”

There was a slight pause. “Criticism,” renewed Paul, “must be a most
difficult art.”

“A-hem! And what art is there, sir, that is not difficult,--at least, to
become master of?”

“True,” sighed Paul; “or else--”

“Or else what, boy?” repeated Mr. MacGrawler, seeing that Paul
hesitated, either from fear of his superior knowledge, as the critic's
vanity suggested, or from (what was equally likely) want of a word to
express his meaning.

“Why, I was thinking, sir,” said Paul, with that desperate courage which
gives a distinct and loud intonation to the voice of all who set, or
think they set, their fate upon a cast,--“I was thinking that I should
like to become a critic myself!”

“W-h-e-w!” whistled MacGrawler, elevating his eyebrows; “w-h-e-w! great
ends have come of less beginnings!”

Encouraging as this assertion was, coming as it did from the lips of so
great a man and so great a critic, at the very moment too when nothing
short of an anathema against arrogance and presumption was expected to
issue from those portals of wisdom, yet such is the fallacy of all human
hopes, that Paul's of a surety would have been a little less elated, had
he, at the same time his ears drank in the balm of these gracious words,
been able to have dived into the source whence they emanated.

“Know thyself!” was a precept the sage MacGrawler had endeavoured to
obey; consequently the result of his obedience was that even by himself
he was better known than trusted. Whatever he might appear to others, he
had in reality no vain faith in the infallibility of his own talents and
resources; as well might a butcher deem himself a perfect anatomist
from the frequent amputation of legs of mutton, as the critic of “The
Asinaeum” have laid “the flattering unction to his soul” that he was
really skilled in the art of criticism, or even acquainted with one of
its commonest rules, because he could with all speed cut up and disjoint
any work, from the smallest to the greatest, from the most superficial
to the most superior; and thus it was that he never had the want of
candour to deceive himself as to his own talents. Paul's wish therefore
was no sooner expressed than a vague but golden scheme of future profit
illumined the brain of MacGrawler,--in a word, he resolved that Paul
should henceforward share the labour of his critiques; and that he,
MacGrawler, should receive the whole profits in return for the honour
thereby conferred on his coadjutor.

Looking therefore at our hero with a benignant air, Mr. MacGrawler thus
continued:--

“Yes, I repeat,--great ends have come from less beginnings! Rome was not
built in a day; and I, Paul, I myself was not always the editor of 'The
Asinaeum.' You say wisely, criticism is a great science, a very great
science; and it maybe divided into three branches,--namely, 'to tickle,
to slash, and to plaster.' In each of these three I believe without
vanity I am a profound adept! I will initiate you into all. Your labours
shall begin this very evening. I have three works on my table; they must
be despatched by tomorrow night. I will take the most arduous; I abandon
to you the others. The three consist of a Romance, an Epic in twelve
books, and an Inquiry into the Human Mind, in three volumes. I, Paul,
will tickle the Romance; you this very evening shall plaster the Epic,
and slash the Inquiry!”

“Heavens, Mr. MacGrawler!” cried Paul, in consternation, “what do you
mean? I should never be able to read an epic in twelve books, and I
should fall asleep in the first page of the Inquiry. No, no, leave me
the Romance, and take the other two under your own protection!”

Although great genius is always benevolent, Mr. MacGrawler could not
restrain a smile of ineffable contempt at the simplicity of his pupil.

“Know, young gentleman,” said he, solemnly, “that the Romance in
question must be tickled; it is not given to raw beginners to conquer
that great mystery of our science.”

“Before we proceed further, explain the words of the art,” said Paul,
impatiently.

“Listen, then,” rejoined MacGrawler; and as he spoke, the candle cast
an awful glimmering on his countenance. “To slash is, speaking
grammatically, to employ the accusative, or accusing case; you must cut
up your book right and left, top and bottom, root and branch. To plaster
a book is to employ the dative, or giving case; and you must bestow on
the work all the superlatives in the language,--you must lay on your
praise thick and thin, and not leave a crevice untrowelled. But to
tickle, sir, is a comprehensive word, and it comprises all the infinite
varieties that fill the interval between slashing and plastering. This
is the nicety of the art, and you can only acquire it by practice; a few
examples will suffice to give you an idea of its delicacy.

“We will begin with the encouraging tickle: 'Although this work is
full of faults,--though the characters are unnatural, the plot utterly
improbable, the thoughts hackneyed, and the style ungrammatical,--yet we
would by no means discourage the author from proceeding; and in the mean
while we confidently recommend his work to the attention of the reading
public.”

“Take, now, the advising tickle: 'There is a good deal of merit in these
little volumes, although we must regret the evident haste in which they
were written. The author might do better,--we recommend him a study of
the best writers;' then conclude by a Latin quotation, which you may
take from one of the mottoes in the 'Spectator.'

“Now, young gentleman, for a specimen of the metaphorical tickle: 'We
beg this poetical aspirant to remember the fate of Pyrenaeus, who,
attempting to pursue the Muses, forgot that he had not the wings of the
goddesses, flung himself from the loftiest ascent he could reach, and
perished.'

“This you see, Paul, is a loftier and more erudite sort of tickle, and
may be reserved for one of the Quarterly Reviews. Never throw away a
simile unnecessarily.

“Now for a sample of the facetious tickle: 'Mr.---has obtained a
considerable reputation! Some fine ladies think him a great philosopher,
and he has been praised in our hearing by some Cambridge Fellows for his
knowledge of fashionable society.'

“For this sort of tickle we generally use the dullest of our tribe;
and I have selected the foregoing example from the criticisms of a
distinguished writer in 'The Asinaeum,' whom we call, par excellence,
the Ass.

“There is a variety of other tickles,--the familiar, the vulgar, the
polite, the good-natured, the bitter; but in general all tickles may be
supposed to signify, however disguised, one or other of these meanings:
'This book would be exceedingly good if it were not exceedingly bad;'
or, 'this book would be exceedingly bad if it were not exceedingly
good.'

“You have now, Paul, a general idea of the superior art required by the
tickle?”

Our hero signified his assent by a sort of hysterical sound between a
laugh and a groan. MacGrawler continued:--

“There is another grand difficulty attendant on this class of
criticism.--it is generally requisite to read a few pages of the work;
because we seldom tickle without extracting, and it requires some
judgment to make the context agree with the extract. But it is not often
necessary to extract when you slash or when you plaster; when you slash,
it is better in general to conclude with: 'After what we have said, it
is unnecessary to add that we cannot offend the taste of our readers by
any quotation from this execrable trash.' And when you plaster, you may
wind up with: 'We regret that our limits will not allow us to give any
extracts from this wonderful and unrivalled work. We must refer our
readers to the book itself.'

“And now, sir, I think I have given you a sufficient outline of the
noble science of Scaliger and MacGrawler. Doubtless you are reconciled
to the task I have allotted you; and while I tickle the Romance, you
will slash the Inquiry and plaster the Epic!”

“I will do my best, sir!” said Paul, with that modest yet noble
simplicity which becomes the virtuously ambitious; and MacGrawler
forthwith gave him pen and paper, and set him down to his undertaking.

He had the good fortune to please MacGrawler, who, after having made a
few corrections in style, declared he evinced a peculiar genius in that
branch of composition. And then it was that Paul, made conceited by
praise, said, looking contemptuously in the face of his preceptor, and
swinging his legs to and fro,--

“And what, sir, shall I receive for the plastered Epic and the slashed
Inquiry?”

As the face of the school-boy who, when guessing, as he thinks rightly,
at the meaning of some mysterious word in Cornelius Nepos, receiveth
not the sugared epithet of praise, but a sudden stroke across the
os humerosve [Face or shoulders] even so, blank, puzzled, and
thunder-stricken, waxed the face of Mr. MacGrawler at the abrupt and
astounding audacity of Paul.

“Receive!” he repeated,--“receive! Why, you impudent, ungrateful puppy,
would you steal the bread from your old master? If I can obtain for
your crude articles an admission into the illustrious pages of 'The
Asinaeum,' will you not be sufficiently paid, sir, by the honour? Answer
me that. Another man, young gentleman, would have charged you a premium
for his instructions; and here have I, in one lesson, imparted to you
all the mysteries of the science, and for nothing! And you talk to me of
'receive!--receive!' Young gentleman, in the words of the immortal bard,
'I would as lief you had talked to me of ratsbane!'”

“In fine, then, Mr. MacGrawler, I shall get nothing for my trouble?”
 said Paul.

“To be sure not, sir; the very best writer in 'The Asinaeum' only gets
three shillings an article!” Almost more than he deserves, the critic
might have added; for he who writes for nobody should receive nothing!

“Then, sir,” quoth the mercenary Paul, profanely, and rising, he kicked
with one kick the cat, the Epic, and the Inquiry to the other end of the
room,--“then, sir, you may all go to the devil!”

We do not, O gentle reader! seek to excuse this hasty anathema. The
habits of childhood will sometimes break forth despite of the after
blessings of education; and we set not up Paul for thine imitation as
that model of virtue and of wisdom which we design thee to discover in
MacGrawler.

When that great critic perceived Paul had risen and was retreating in
high dudgeon towards the door, he rose also, and repeating Paul's last
words, said,--

“'Go to the devil!' Not so quick, young gentleman,--festinca lente,--all
in good time. What though I did, astonished at your premature request,
say that you should receive nothing; yet my great love for you may
induce me to bestir myself on your behalf. The 'Asinaeum,' it is true,
only gives three shillings an article in general; but I am its editor,
and will intercede with the proprietors on your behalf. Yes, yes; I will
see what is to be done. Stop a bit, my boy.”

Paul, though very irascible, was easily pacified; he reseated himself,
and taking MacGrawler's hand, said,--

“Forgive me for my petulance, my dear sir; but, to tell you the honest
truth, I am very low in the world just at present, and must get money in
some way or another,--in short, I must either pick pockets or write (not
gratuitously) for 'The Asinaeum. '”

And without further preliminary Paul related his present circumstances
to the critic, declared his determination not to return to the Mug,
and requested, at least, from the friendship of his old preceptor the
accommodation of shelter for that night.

MacGrawler was exceedingly disconcerted at hearing so bad an account of
his pupil's finances as well as prospects, for he had secretly intended
to regale himself that evening with a bowl of punch, for which he
purposed that Paul should pay; but as he knew the quickness of
parts possessed by the young gentleman, as also the great affection
entertained for him by Mrs. Lobkins, who in all probability would
solicit his return the next day, he thought it not unlikely that Paul
would enjoy the same good fortune as that presiding over his feline
companion, which, though it had just been kicked to the other end of the
apartment, was now resuming its former occupation, unhurt, and no less
merrily than before. He therefore thought it would be imprudent
to discard his quondam pupil, despite of his present poverty; and,
moreover, although the first happy project of pocketing all the profits
derivable from Paul's industry was now abandoned, he still perceived
great facility in pocketing a part of the same receipts. He therefore
answered Paul very warmly, that he fully sympathized with him in his
present melancholy situation; that, so far as he was concerned, he would
share his last shilling with his beloved pupil, but that he regretted
at that moment he had only eleven-pence halfpenny in his pocket; that he
would, however, exert himself to the utmost in procuring an opening for
Paul's literary genius; and that, if Paul liked to take the slashing and
plastering part of the business on himself, he would willingly surrender
it to him, and give him all the profits whatever they might be. En
attendant, he regretted that a violent rheumatism prevented his giving
up his own bed to his pupil, but that he might, with all the pleasure
imaginable, sleep upon the rug before the fire. Paul was so affected by
this kindness in the worthy man, that, though not much addicted to the
melting mood, he shed tears of gratitude. He insisted, however, on not
receiving the whole reward of his labours; and at length it was settled,
though with a noble reluctance on the part of MacGrawler, that it should
be equally shared between the critic and the critic's protege,--the half
profits being reasonably awarded to MacGrawler for his instructions and
his recommendation.




CHAPTER VI.

Bad events peep out o' the tail of good purposes.--Bartholomew Fair.

IT was not long before there was a visible improvement in the pages
of “The Asinaeum.” The slashing part of that incomparable journal
was suddenly conceived and carried on with a vigour and spirit which
astonished the hallowed few who contributed to its circulation. It
was not difficult to see that a new soldier had been enlisted in the
service; there was something so fresh and hearty about the abuse that it
could never have proceeded from the worn-out acerbity of an old slasher.
To be sure, a little ignorance of ordinary facts, and an innovating
method of applying words to meanings which they never were meant to
denote, were now and then distinguishable in the criticisms of the new
Achilles; nevertheless, it was easy to attribute these peculiarities
to an original turn of thinking; and the rise of the paper on the
appearance of a series of articles upon contemporary authors, written
by this “eminent hand,” was so remarkable that fifty copies--a number
perfectly unprecedented in the annals of “The Asinaeum”--were absolutely
sold in one week; indeed, remembering the principle on which it was
founded, one sturdy old writer declared that the journal would soon do
for itself and become popular. There was a remarkable peculiarity about
the literary debutant who signed himself “Nobilitas:” he not only put
old words to a new sense, but he used words which had never, among the
general run of writers, been used before. This was especially remarkable
in the application of hard names to authors. Once, in censuring a
popular writer for pleasing the public and thereby growing rich, the
“eminent hand” ended with “He who surreptitiously accumulates bustle
[money] is, in fact, nothing better than a buzz gloak!” [Pickpocket].

These enigmatical words and recondite phrases imparted a great air of
learning to the style of the new critic; and from the unintelligible
sublimity of his diction, it seemed doubtful whether he was a poet from
Highgate or a philosopher from Konigsberg. At all events, the reviewer
preserved his incognito, and while his praises were rung at no less
than three tea-tables, even glory appeared to him less delicious than
disguise.

In this incognito, reader, thou hast already discovered Paul; and now
we have to delight thee with a piece of unexampled morality in the
excellent MacGrawler. That worthy Mentor, perceiving that there was an
inherent turn for dissipation and extravagance in our hero, resolved
magnanimously rather to bring upon himself the sins of treachery and
malappropriation than suffer his friend and former pupil to incur those
of wastefulness and profusion. Contrary therefore to the agreement
made with Paul, instead of giving that youth the half of those profits
consequent on his brilliant lucubrations, he imparted to him only one
fourth, and, with the utmost tenderness for Paul's salvation, applied
the other three portions of the same to his own necessities. The best
actions are, alas! often misconstrued in this world; and we are now
about to record a remarkable instance of that melancholy truth.

One evening MacGrawler, having “moistened his virtue” in the same manner
that the great Cato is said to have done, in the confusion which such a
process sometimes occasions in the best regulated heads, gave Paul what
appeared to him the outline of a certain article which he wished to be
slashingly filled up, but what in reality was the following note from
the editor of a monthly periodical:--

SIR,--Understanding that my friend, Mr.---, proprietor of “The
Asinaeum,” allows the very distinguished writer whom you have introduced
to the literary world, and who signs himself “Nobilitas,” only five
shillings an article, I beg, through you, to tender him double that sum.
The article required will be of an ordinary length.

I am, sir, etc.,

Now, that very morning, MacGrawler had informed Paul of this offer,
altering only, from the amiable motives we have already explained, the
sum of ten shillings to that of four; and no sooner did Paul read
the communication we have placed before the reader than, instead
of gratitude to MacGrawler for his consideration of Paul's moral
infirmities, he conceived against that gentleman the most bitter
resentment. He did not, however, vent his feelings at once upon the
Scotsman,--indeed, at that moment, as the sage was in a deep sleep
under the table, it would have been to no purpose had he unbridled his
indignation,--but he resolved without loss of time to quit the abode of
the critic. “And, indeed,” said he, soliloquizing, “I am heartily tired
of this life, and shall be very glad to seek some other employment.
Fortunately, I have hoarded up five guineas and four shillings; and with
that independence in my possession, since I have forsworn gambling, I
cannot easily starve.”

To this soliloquy succeeded a misanthropical revery upon the
faithlessness of friends; and the meditation ended in Paul's making up a
little bundle of such clothes, etc., as Dummie had succeeded in removing
from the Mug, and which Paul had taken from the rag-merchant's abode one
morning when Dummie was abroad.

When this easy task was concluded, Paul wrote a short and upbraiding
note to his illustrious preceptor, and left it unsealed on the table.
He then, upsetting the ink-bottle on MacGrawler's sleeping countenance,
departed from the house, and strolled away he cared not whither.

The evening was gradually closing as Paul, chewing the cud of his bitter
fancies, found himself on London Bridge. He paused there, and leaning
over the bridge, gazed wistfully on the gloomy waters that rolled
onward, caring not a minnow for the numerous charming young ladies
who have thought proper to drown themselves in those merciless waves,
thereby depriving many a good mistress of an excellent housemaid or an
invaluable cook, and many a treacherous Phaon of letters beginning with
“Parjured Villen,” and ending with “Your affectionot but melancholy
Molly.”

While thus musing, he was suddenly accosted by a gentleman in boots and
spurs, having a riding-whip in one hand, and the other hand stuck in the
pocket of his inexpressibles. The hat of the gallant was gracefully and
carefully put on, so as to derange as little as possible a profusion of
dark curls, which, streaming with unguents, fell low not only on either
side of the face, but on the neck and even the shoulders of the owner.
The face was saturnine and strongly marked, but handsome and
striking. There was a mixture of frippery and sternness in its
expression,--something between Madame Vestries and T. P. Cooke, or
between “lovely Sally” and a “Captain bold of Halifax.” The stature of
this personage was remarkably tall, and his figure was stout, muscular,
and well knit. In fine, to complete his portrait, and give our readers
of the present day an exact idea of this hero of the past, we shall add
that he was altogether that sort of gentleman one sees swaggering in
the Burlington Arcade, with his hair and hat on one side, and a military
cloak thrown over his shoulders; or prowling in Regent Street, towards
the evening, whiskered and cigarred.

Laying his hand on the shoulder of our hero, this gentleman said, with
an affected intonation of voice,--

“How dost, my fine fellow? Long since I saw you! Damme, but you look the
worse for wear. What hast thou been doing with thyself?”

“Ha!” cried our hero, returning the salutation of the stranger, “and is
it Long Ned whom I behold? I am indeed glad to meet you; and I say, my
friend, I hope what I heard of you is not true!”

“Hist!” said Long Ned, looking round fearfully, and sinking his voice;
“never talk of what you hear of gentlemen, except you wish to bring them
to their last dying speech and confession. But come with me, my lad;
there is a tavern hard by, and we may as well discuss matters over a
pint of wine. You look cursed seedy, to be sure; but I can tell Bill the
waiter--famous fellow, that Bill!--that you are one of my tenants, come
to complain of my steward, who has just distrained you for rent, you
dog! No wonder you look so worn in the rigging. Come, follow me. I can't
walk with thee. It would look too like Northumberland House and the
butcher's abode next door taking a stroll together.”

“Really, Mr. Pepper,” said our hero, colouring, and by no means pleased
with the ingenious comparison of his friend, “if you are ashamed of my
clothes, which I own might be newer, I will not wound you with my--”

“Pooh! my lad, pooh!” cried Long Ned, interrupting him; “never take
offence. I never do. I never take anything but money, except, indeed,
watches. I don't mean to hurt your feelings; all of us have been poor
once. 'Gad, I remember when I had not a dud to my back; and now, you see
me,--you see me, Paul! But come, 't is only through the streets you need
separate from me. Keep a little behind, very little; that will do. Ay,
that will do,” repeated Long Ned, mutteringly to himself; “they'll take
him for a bailiff. It looks handsome nowadays to be so attended; it
shows one had credit once!”

Meanwhile Paul, though by no means pleased with the contempt expressed
for his personal appearance by his lengthy associate, and impressed with
a keener sense than ever of the crimes of his coat and the vices of
his other garment,--“Oh, breathe not its name!”--followed doggedly
and sullenly the strutting steps of the coxcombical Mr. Pepper. That
personage arrived at last at a small tavern, and arresting a waiter
who was running across the passage into the coffee-room with a dish of
hung-beef, demanded (no doubt from a pleasing anticipation of a similar
pendulous catastrophe) a plate of the same excellent cheer, to be
carried, in company with a bottle of port, into a private apartment. No
sooner did he find himself alone with Paul than, bursting into a
loud laugh, Mr. Ned surveyed his comrade from head to foot through an
eyeglass which he wore fastened to his button-hole by a piece of blue
ribbon.

“Well, 'gad now,” said he, stopping ever and anon, as if to laugh the
more heartily, “stab my vitals, but you are a comical quiz. I wonder
what the women would say, if they saw the dashing Edward Pepper,
Esquire, walking arm in arm with thee at Ranelagh or Vauxhall! Nay, man,
never be downcast; if I laugh at thee, it is only to make thee look
a little merrier thyself. Why, thou lookest like a book of my
grandfather's called Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy;' and faith, a
shabbier bound copy of it I never saw.”

“These jests are a little hard,” said Paul, struggling between anger
and an attempt to smile; and then recollecting his late literary
occupations, and the many extracts he had taken from “Gleanings of the
Belles Lettres,” in order to impart elegance to his criticisms, he threw
out his hand theatrically, and spouted with a solemn face,--

       “'Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
       Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest!'”

“Well, now, prithee forgive me,” said Long Ned, composing his features,
“and just tell me what you have been doing the last two months.”

“Slashing and plastering!” said Paul, with conscious pride.

“Slashing and what? The boy's mad. What do you mean, Paul?”

“In other words,” said our hero, speaking very slowly, “know, O very
Long Ned! that I have been critic to 'The Asinaeum.'”

If Paul's comrade laughed at first, he now laughed ten times more
merrily than ever. He threw his full length of limb upon a neighbouring
sofa, and literally rolled with cachinnatory convulsions; nor did his
risible emotions subside until the entrance of the hung-beef restored
him to recollection. Seeing, then, that a cloud lowered over Paul's
countenance, he went up to him with something like gravity, begged his
pardon for his want of politeness, and desired him to wash away all
unkindness in a bumper of port. Paul, whose excellent dispositions we
have before had occasion to remark, was not impervious to his friend's
apologies. He assured Long Ned that he quite forgave him for his
ridicule of the high situation he (Paul) had enjoyed in the literary
world; that it was the duty of a public censor to bear no malice, and
that he should be very glad to take his share in the interment of the
hung-beef.

The pair now sat down to their repast; and Paul, who had fared but
meagerly in that Temple of Athena over which MacGrawler presided, did
ample justice to the viands before him. By degrees, as he ate and
drank, his heart opened to his companion; and laying aside that Asinaeum
dignity which he had at first thought it incumbent on him to assume, he
entertained Pepper with all the particulars of the life he had lately
passed. He narrated to him his breach with Dame Lobkins, his agreement
with MacGrawler, the glory he had acquired, and the wrongs he had
sustained; and he concluded, as now the second bottle made its
appearance, by stating his desire of exchanging for some more active
profession that sedentary career which he had so promisingly begun.

This last part of Paul's confessions secretly delighted the soul of Long
Ned; for that experienced collector of the highways--Ned was, indeed, of
no less noble a profession--had long fixed an eye upon our hero, as
one whom he thought likely to be an honour to that enterprising calling
which he espoused, and an useful assistant to himself. He had not, in
his earlier acquaintance with Paul, when the youth was under the roof
and the surveillance of the practised and wary Mrs. Lobkins, deemed
it prudent to expose the exact nature of his own pursuits, and had
contented himself by gradually ripening the mind and the finances of
Paul into that state when the proposition of a leap from a hedge would
not be likely greatly to revolt the person to whom it was made. He now
thought that time near at hand; and filling our hero's glass up to the
brim, thus artfully addressed him:--

“Courage, my friend! Your narration has given me a sensible pleasure;
for curse me if it has not strengthened my favourite opinion,--that
everything is for the best. If it had not been for the meanness of that
pitiful fellow, MacGrawler, you might still be inspired with the paltry
ambition of earning a few shillings a week and vilifying a parcel of
poor devils in the what-d'ye-call it, with a hard name; whereas now, my
good Paul, I trust I shall be able to open to your genius a new career,
in which guineas are had for the asking,--in which you may wear fine
clothes, and ogle the ladies at Ranelagh; and when you are tired of
glory and liberty, Paul, why, you have only to make your bow to an
heiress, or a widow with a spanking jointure, and quit the hum of men
like a Cincinnatus!”

Though Paul's perception into the abstruser branches of morals was not
very acute,--and at that time the port wine had considerably confused
the few notions he possessed upon “the beauty of virtue,”--yet he could
not but perceive that Mr. Pepper's insinuated proposition was far from
being one which the bench of bishops or a synod of moralists would
conscientiously have approved. He consequently remained silent; and Long
Ned, after a pause, continued:--

“You know my genealogy, my good fellow? I was the son of Lawyer Pepper,
a shrewd old dog, but as hot as Calcutta; and the grandson of Sexton
Pepper, a great author, who wrote verses on tombstones, and kept a stall
of religious tracts in Carlisle. My grandfather, the sexton, was the
best temper of the family; for all of us are a little inclined to be hot
in the mouth. Well, my fine fellow, my father left me his blessing,
and this devilish good head of hair. I lived for some years on my own
resources. I found it a particularly inconvenient mode of life, and of
late I have taken to live on the public. My father and grandfather did
it before me, though in a different line. 'T is the pleasantest plan
in the world. Follow my example, and your coat shall be as spruce as my
own. Master Paul, your health!”

“But, O longest of mortals!” said Paul, refilling his glass, “though
the public may allow you to eat your mutton off their backs for a short
time, they will kick up at last, and upset you and your banquet; in
other words (pardon my metaphor, dear Ned, in remembrance of the part
I have lately maintained in 'The Asinaeum,' that most magnificent and
metaphorical of journals!),--in other words, the police will nab thee
at last; and thou wilt have the distinguished fate, as thou already hast
the distinguishing characteristic, of Absalom!”

“You mean that I shall be hanged,” said Long Ned, “that may or may
not be; but he who fears death never enjoys life. Consider, Paul, that
though hanging is a bad fate, starving is a worse; wherefore fill your
glass, and let us drink to the health of that great donkey, the people,
and may we never want saddles to ride it!”

“To the great donkey,” cried Paul, tossing off his bumper; “may your
(y)ears be as long! But I own to you, my friend, that I cannot enter
into your plans. And, as a token of my resolution, I shall drink no
more, for my eyes already begin to dance in the air; and if I listen
longer to your resistless eloquence, my feet may share the same fate!”

So saying, Paul rose; nor could any entreaty, on the part of his
entertainer, persuade him to resume his seat.

“Nay, as you will,” said Pepper, affecting a nonchalant tone, and
arranging his cravat before the glass,--“nay, as you will. Ned Pepper
requires no man's companionship against his liking; and if the noble
spark of ambition be not in your bosom, 't is no use spending my breath
in blowing at what only existed in my too flattering opinion of your
qualities. So then, you propose to return to MacGrawler (the scurvy old
cheat!), and pass the inglorious remainder of your life in the mangling
of authors and the murder of grammar? Go, my good fellow, go! scribble
again and forever for MacGrawler, and let him live upon thy brains
instead of suffering thy brains to--”

“Hold!” cried Paul. “Although I may have some scruples which prevent my
adoption of that rising line of life you have proposed to me, yet you
are very much mistaken if you imagine me so spiritless as any longer to
subject myself to the frauds of that rascal MacGrawler. No! My present
intention is to pay my old nurse a visit. It appears to me passing
strange that though I have left her so many weeks, she has never
relented enough to track me out, which one would think would have been
no difficult matter; and now, you see, that I am pretty well off, having
five guineas and four shillings all my own, and she can scarcely think I
want her money, my heart melts to her, and I shall go and ask pardon for
my haste!”

“Pshaw! sentimental,” cried Long Ned, a little alarmed at the thought
of Paul's gliding from those clutches which he thought had now so firmly
closed upon him. “Why, you surely don't mean, after having once tasted
the joys of independence, to go back to the boozing-ken, and bear all
Mother Lobkins's drunken tantrums! Better have stayed with MacGrawler,
of the two!”

“You mistake me,” answered Paul; “I mean solely to make it up with her,
and get her permission to see the world. My ultimate intention is--to
travel.”

“Right,” cried Ned, “on the high-road,--and on horseback, I hope.”

“No, my Colossus of Roads! no. I am in doubt whether or not I shall
enlist in a marching regiment, or--Give me your advice on it! I fancy I
have a great turn for the stage, ever since I saw Garrick in 'Richard.'
Shall I turn stroller? It must be a merry life.”

“Oh, the devil!” cried Ned. “I myself once did Cassio in a barn, and
every one swore I enacted the drunken scene to perfection; but you have
no notion what a lamentable life it is to a man of any susceptibility.
No, my friend, no! There is only one line in all the old plays worthy
thy attention,--

“'Toby [The highway] or not toby, that is the question.'

“I forget the rest!”

“Well,” said our hero, answering in the same jocular vein, “I confess
I have 'the actor's high ambition.' It is astonishing how my heart beat
when Richard cried out, 'Come bustle, bustle!' Yes, Pepper, avaunt!--

“'A thousand hearts are great within my bosom.'”

“Well, well,” said Long Ned, stretching himself, “since you are so fond
of the play, what say you to an excursion thither to-night? Garrick
acts.”

“Done!” cried Paul.

“Done!” echoed lazily Long Ned, rising with that blase air which
distinguishes the matured man of the world from the enthusiastic
tyro,-“done! and we will adjourn afterwards to the White Horse.”

“But stay a moment,” said Paul; “if you remember, I owed you a guinea
when I last saw you,--here it is!”

“Nonsense,” exclaimed Long Ned, refusing the money,--“nonsense! You
want the money at present; pay me when you are richer. Nay, never be coy
about it; debts of honour are not paid now as they used to be. We lads
of the Fish Lane Club have changed all that. Well, well, if I must!”

And Long Ned, seeing that Paul insisted, pocketed the guinea. When this
delicate matter had been arranged,--“Come,” said Pepper, “come, get your
hat; but, bless me! I have forgotten one thing.”

“What?”

“Why, my fine Paul, consider. The play is a bang-up sort of a place;
look at your coat and your waistcoat, that's all!”

Our hero was struck dumb with this argumentum ad hominem. But Long Ned,
after enjoying his perplexity, relieved him of it by telling him that
he knew of an honest tradesman who kept a ready-made shop just by the
theatre, and who could fit him out in a moment.

In fact, Long Ned was as good as his word; he carried Paul to a tailor,
who gave him for the sum of thirty shillings--half ready money, half
on credit-a green coat with a tarnished gold lace, a pair of red
inexpressibles, and a pepper-and-salt waistcoat. It is true, they were
somewhat of the largest, for they had once belonged to no less a person
than Long Ned himself; but Paul did not then regard those niceties of
apparel, as he was subsequently taught to do by Gentleman George (a
personage hereafter to be introduced to our reader), and he went to the
theatre as well satisfied with himself as if he had been Mr. T---- or
the Count de ----.

Our adventurers are now quietly seated in the theatre; and we shall
not think it necessary to detail the performances they saw, or the
observations they made. Long Ned was one of those superior beings of the
road who would not for the world have condescended to appear anywhere
but in the boxes; and, accordingly, the friends procured a couple of
places in the dress-tier. In the next box to the one our adventurers
adorned they remarked, more especially than the rest of the audience, a
gentleman and a young lady seated next each other; the latter, who was
about thirteen years old, was so uncommonly beautiful that Paul,
despite his dramatic enthusiasm, could scarcely divert his eyes from her
countenance to the stage. Her hair, of a bright and fair auburn, hung
in profuse ringlets about her neck, shedding a softer shade upon a
complexion in which the roses seemed just budding as it were into blush.
Her eyes, large, blue, and rather languishing than brilliant, were
curtained by the darkest lashes; her mouth seemed literally girt with
smiles, so numberless were the dimples that every time the full, ripe,
dewy lips were parted rose into sight; and the enchantment of the
dimples was aided by two rows of teeth more dazzling than the richest
pearls that ever glittered on a bride. But the chief charm of the face
was its exceeding and touching air of innocence and girlish softness;
you might have gazed forever upon that first unspeakable bloom, that all
untouched and stainless down, which seemed as if a very breath could mar
it. Perhaps the face might have wanted animation; but perhaps, also, it
borrowed from that want an attraction. The repose of the features was so
soft and gentle that the eye wandered there with the same delight, and
left it with the same reluctance, which it experiences in dwelling on
or in quitting those hues which are found to harmonize the most with its
vision. But while Paul was feeding his gaze on this young beauty, the
keen glances of Long Ned had found an object no less fascinating in a
large gold watch which the gentleman who accompanied the damsel ever
and anon brought to his eye, as if he were waxing a little weary of the
length of the pieces or the lingering progression of time.

“What a beautiful face!” whispered Paul.

“Is the face gold, then, as well as the back?” whispered Long Ned, in
return.

Our hero started, frowned, and despite the gigantic stature of his
comrade, told him, very angrily, to find some other subject for jesting.
Ned in his turn stared, but made no reply.

Meanwhile Paul, though the lady was rather too young to fall in love
with, began wondering what relationship her companion bore to her.
Though the gentleman altogether was handsome, yet his features and the
whole character of his face were widely different from those on
which Paul gazed with such delight. He was not, seemingly, above
five-and-forty, but his forehead was knit into many a line and furrow;
and in his eyes the light, though searching, was more sober and staid
than became his years. A disagreeable expression played about the
mouth; and the shape of the face, which was long and thin, considerably
detracted from the prepossessing effect of a handsome aquiline nose,
fine teeth, and a dark, manly, though sallow complexion. There was a
mingled air of shrewdness and distraction in the expression of his face.
He seemed to pay very little attention to the play, or to anything about
him; but he testified very considerable alacrity, when the play was
over, in putting her cloak around his young companion, and in threading
their way through the thick crowd that the boxes were now pouring forth.

Paul and his companion silently, and each with very different motives
from the other, followed them. They were now at the door of the theatre.

A servant stepped forward and informed the gentleman that his carriage
was a few paces distant, but that it might be some time before it could
drive up to the theatre.

“Can you walk to the carriage, my dear?” said the gentleman to his young
charge; and she answering in the affirmative, they both left the house,
preceded by the servant.

“Come on!” said Long Ned, hastily, and walking in the same direction
which the strangers had taken. Paul readily agreed. They soon overtook
the strangers. Long Ned walked the nearest to the gentleman, and brushed
by him in passing. Presently a voice cried, “Stop thief!” and Long Ned,
saying to Paul, “Shift for yourself, run!” darted from our hero's side
into the crowd, and vanished in a twinkling. Before Paul could recover
his amaze, he found himself suddenly seized by the collar; he turned
abruptly, and saw the dark face of the young lady's companion.

“Rascal!” cried the gentleman, “my watch!”

“Watch!” repeated Paul, bewildered, and only for the sake of the young
lady refraining from knocking down his arrester,--“watch!”

“Ay, young man!” cried a fellow in a great-coat, who now suddenly
appeared on the other side of Paul; “this gentleman's watch. Please your
honour,” addressing the complainant, “I be a watch too; shall I take up
this chap?”

“By all means,” cried the gentleman; “I would not have lost my watch
for twice its value. I can swear I saw this fellow's companion snatch
it from my fob. The thief's gone; but we have at least the accomplice. I
give him in strict charge to you, watchman; take the consequences if you
let him escape.” The watchman answered, sullenly, that he did not want
to be threatened, and he knew how to discharge his duty.

“Don't answer me, fellow!” said the gentleman, haughtily; “do as I tell
you!” And after a little colloquy, Paul found himself suddenly marched
off between two tall fellows, who looked prodigiously inclined to eat
him. By this time he had recovered his surprise and dismay. He did not
want the penetration to see that his companion had really committed
the offence for which he was charged; and he also foresaw that the
circumstance might be attended with disagreeable consequences to
himself. Under all the features of the case, he thought that an attempt
to escape would not be an imprudent proceeding on his part; accordingly,
after moving a few paces very quietly and very passively, he watched
his opportunity, wrenched himself from the gripe of the gentleman on
his left, and brought the hand thus released against the cheek of the
gentleman on his right with so hearty a good will as to cause him to
relinquish his hold, and retreat several paces towards the areas in a
slanting position. But that roundabout sort of blow with the left fist
is very unfavourable towards the preservation of a firm balance; and
before Paul had recovered sufficiently to make an effectual bolt, he was
prostrated to the earth by a blow from the other and undamaged watchman,
which utterly deprived him of his senses; and when he recovered those
useful possessions (which a man may reasonably boast of losing, since it
is only the minority who have them to lose), he found himself stretched
on a bench in the watchhouse.




CHAPTER VII.

     Begirt with many a gallant slave,
     Apparelled as becomes the brave,
     Old Giaffir sat in his divan:
  . . . . . . .
     Much I misdoubt this wayward boy
     Will one day work me more annoy.
            Bride of Abydos.

The learned and ingenious John Schweighaeuser (a name facile to spell
and mellifluous to pronounce) hath been pleased, in that Appendix
continens particulam doctrinae de mente humana, which closeth the volume
of his “Opuscula Academica,” to observe (we translate from memory) that,
“in the infinite variety of things which in the theatre of the world
occur to a man's survey, or in some manner or another affect his body
or his mind, by far the greater part are so contrived as to bring to him
rather some sense of pleasure than of pain or discomfort.” Assuming that
this holds generally good in well-constituted frames, we point out a
notable example in the case of the incarcerated Paul; for although that
youth was in no agreeable situation at the time present, and although
nothing very encouraging smiled upon him from the prospects of the
future, yet, as soon as he had recovered his consciousness, and given
himself a rousing shake, he found an immediate source of pleasure in
discovering, first, that several ladies and gentlemen bore him company
in his imprisonment; and, secondly, in perceiving a huge jug of water
within his reach, which, as his awaking sensation was that of burning
thirst, he delightedly emptied at a draught. He then, stretching
himself, looked around with a wistful earnestness, and discovered a back
turned towards him, and recumbent on the floor, which at the very first
glance appeared to him familiar. “Surely,” thought he, “I know that
frieze coat, and the peculiar turn of those narrow shoulders.” Thus
soliloquizing, he raised himself, and putting out his leg, he gently
kicked the reclining form. “Muttering strange oaths,” the form turned
round, and raising itself upon that inhospitable part of the body in
which the introduction of foreign feet is considered anything but an
honour, it fixed its dull blue eyes upon the face of the disturber of
its slumbers, gradually opening them wider and wider, until they seemed
to have enlarged themselves into proportions fit for the swallowing of
the important truth that burst upon them, and then from the mouth of the
creature issued,--

“Queer my glims, if that be n't little Paul!”

“Ay, Dummie, here I am! Not been long without being laid by the heels,
you see! Life is short; we must make the best use of our time!”

Upon this, Mr. Dunnaker (it was no less respectable a person) scrambled
up from the floor, and seating himself on the bench beside Paul, said in
a pitying tone,--

“Vy, laus-a-me! if you be n't knocked o' the head! Your poll's as bloody
as Murphy's face ven his throat's cut!”

     [“Murphy's face,” unlearned reader, appeareth, in Irish phrase,
     to mean “pig's head.”]

“'T is only the fortune of war, Dummie, and a mere trifle; the heads
manufactured at Thames Court are not easily put out of order. But tell
me, how come you here?”

“Vy, I had been lushing heavy vet--”

“'Till you grew light in the head, eh,--and fell into the kennel?”

“Yes.”

“Mine is a worse business than that, I fear;” and therewith Paul, in a
lower voice, related to the trusty Dummie the train of accidents which
had conducted him to his present asylum. Dummie's face elongated as
he listened; however, when the narrative was over, he endeavoured such
consolatory palliatives as occurred to him. He represented, first, the
possibility that the gentleman might not take the trouble to appear;
secondly, the certainty that no watch was found about Paul's person;
thirdly, the fact that, even by the gentleman's confession, Paul had not
been the actual offender; fourthly, if the worst came to the worst, what
were a few weeks' or even months' imprisonment?

“Blow me tight!” said Dummie, “if it be n't as good a vay of passing the
time as a cove as is fond of snuggery need desire!”

This observation had no comfort for Paul, who recoiled, with all
the maiden coyness of one to whom such unions are unfamiliar, from a
matrimonial alliance with the snuggery of the House of Correction.
He rather trusted to another source for consolation. In a word, he
encouraged the flattering belief that Long Ned, finding that Paul
had been caught instead of himself, would have the generosity to come
forward and exculpate him from the charge. On hinting this idea to
Dummie, that accomplished “man about town” could not for some time
believe that any simpleton could be so thoroughly unacquainted with the
world as seriously to entertain so ridiculous a notion; and, indeed,
it is somewhat remarkable that such a hope should ever have told its
flattering tale to one brought up in the house of Mrs. Margaret Lobkins.
But Paul, we have seen, had formed many of his notions from books; and
he had the same fine theories of your “moral rogue” that possess the
minds of young patriots when they first leave college for the House of
Commons, and think integrity a prettier thing than office.

Mr. Dunnaker urged Paul, seriously, to dismiss so vague and childish a
fancy from his breast, and rather to think of what line of defence it
would be best for him to pursue. This subject being at length exhausted,
Paul recurred to Mrs. Lobkins, and inquired whether Dummie had lately
honoured that lady with a visit.

Mr. Dunnaker replied that he had, though with much difficulty, appeased
her anger against him for his supposed abetment of Paul's excesses, and
that of late she had held sundry conversations with Dummie respecting
our hero himself. Upon questioning Dummie further, Paul learned the good
matron's reasons for not evincing that solicitude for his return which
our hero had reasonably anticipated. The fact was, that she, having no
confidence whatsoever in his own resources independent of her, had not
been sorry of an opportunity effectually, as she hoped, to humble
that pride which had so revolted her; and she pleased her vanity by
anticipating the time when Paul, starved into submission, would gladly
and penitently re-seek the shelter of her roof, and, tamed as it were by
experience, would never again kick against the yoke which her matronly
prudence thought it fitting to impose upon him. She contented herself,
then, with obtaining from Dummie the intelligence that our hero was
under MacGrawler's roof, and therefore out of all positive danger to
life and limb; and as she could not foresee the ingenious exertions of
intellect by which Paul had converted himself into the “Nobilitas” of
“The Asinaeum,” and thereby saved himself from utter penury, she
was perfectly convinced, from her knowledge of character, that the
illustrious MacGrawler would not long continue that protection to the
rebellious protege which in her opinion was his only preservative from
picking pockets or famishing. To the former decent alternative she knew
Paul's great and jejune aversion; and she consequently had little fear
for his morals or his safety, in thus abandoning him for a while
to chance. Any anxiety, too, that she might otherwise have keenly
experienced was deadened by the habitual intoxication now increasing
upon the good lady with age, and which, though at times she could be
excited to all her characteristic vehemence, kept her senses for the
most part plunged into a Lethean stupor, or, to speak more courteously,
into a poetical abstraction from the things of the external world.

“But,” said Dummie, as by degrees he imparted the solution of the dame's
conduct to the listening ear of his companion,--“but I hopes as how ven
you be out of this 'ere scrape, leetle Paul, you vill take varning, and
drop Meester Pepper's acquaintance (vich, I must say, I vas alvays a
sorry to see you hencourage), and go home to the Mug, and fam grasp the
old mort, for she has not been like the same cretur ever since you vent.
She's a delicate-'arted 'oman, that Piggy Lob!”

So appropriate a panegyric on Mrs. Margaret Lobkins might at another
time have excited Paul's risible muscles; but at that moment he really
felt compunction for the unceremonious manner in which he had left her,
and the softness of regretful affection imbued in its hallowing colours
even the image of Piggy Lob.

In conversation of this intellectual and domestic description, the night
and ensuing morning passed away, till Paul found himself in the awful
presence of Justice Burnflat. Several cases were disposed of before his
own; and among others Mr. Duminie Dunnaker obtained his release, though
not without a severe reprimand for his sin of inebriety, which no doubt
sensibly affected the ingenuous spirit of that noble character. At
length Paul's turn came. He heard, as he took his station, a general
buzz. At first he imagined it was at his own interesting appearance;
but raising his eyes, he perceived that it was at the entrance of the
gentleman who was to become his accuser.

“Hush,” said some one near him, “'t is Lawyer Brandon. Ah, he's a 'cute
fellow! it will go hard with the person he complains of.”

There was a happy fund of elasticity of spirit about our hero; and
though he had not the good fortune to have “a blighted heart,”--a
circumstance which, by the poets and philosophers of the present day,
is supposed to inspire a man with wonderful courage, and make him
impervious to all misfortunes,--yet he bore himself up with wonderful
courage under his present trying situation, and was far from
overwhelmed, though he was certainly a little damped, by the observation
he had just heard.

Mr. Brandon was, indeed, a barrister of considerable reputation, and
in high esteem in the world, not only for talent, but also for a great
austerity of manners, which, though a little mingled with sternness and
acerbity for the errors of other men, was naturally thought the more
praiseworthy on that account; there being, as persons of experience
are doubtless aware, two divisions in the first class of
morality,--imprimis, a great hatred for the vices of one's neighbour;
secondly, the possession of virtues in one's self.

Mr. Brandon was received with great courtesy by Justice Burnflat; and
as he came, watch in hand (a borrowed watch), saying that his time
was worth five guineas a moment, the justice proceeded immediately to
business.

Nothing could be clearer, shorter, or more satisfactory than the
evidence of Mr. Brandon. The corroborative testimony of the watchman
followed; and then Paul was called upon for his defence. This
was equally brief with the charge; but, alas! it was not equally
satisfactory. It consisted in a firm declaration of his innocence.
His comrade, he confessed, might have stolen the watch; but he humbly
suggested that that was exactly the very reason why he had not stolen
it.

“How long, fellow,” asked Justice Burnflat, “have you known your
companion?”

“About half a year.”

“And what is his name and calling?” Paul hesitated, and declined to
answer.

“A sad piece of business!” said the justice, in a melancholy tone, and
shaking his head portentously.

The lawyer acquiesced in the aphorism, but with great magnanimity
observed that he did not wish to be hard upon the young man. His youth
was in his favour, and his offence was probably the consequence of evil
company. He suggested, therefore, that as he must be perfectly aware of
the address of his friend, he should receive a full pardon if he would
immediately favour the magistrate with that information. He concluded by
remarking, with singular philanthropy, that it was not the punishment of
the youth, but the recovery of his watch, that he desired.

Justice Burnflat, having duly impressed upon our hero's mind the
disinterested and Christian mercy of the complainant, and the
everlasting obligation Paul was under to him for its display, now
repeated, with double solemnity, those queries respecting the habitation
and name of Long Ned which our hero had before declined to answer.

Grieved are we to confess that Paul, ungrateful for and wholly untouched
by the beautiful benignity of Lawyer Brandon, continued firm in his
stubborn denial to betray his comrade; and with equal obduracy
he continued to insist upon his own innocence and unblemished
respectability of character.

“Your name, young man?” quoth the justice. “Your name, you say, is
Paul,--Paul what? You have many an alias, I'll be bound.”

Here the young gentleman again hesitated; at length he replied,--

“Paul Lobkins, your worship.”

“Lobkins!” repeated the judge,--“Lobkins! Come hither, Saunders; have
not we that name down in our black books?”

“So, please your worship,” quoth a little stout man, very useful in many
respects to the Festus of the police, “there is one Peggy Lobkins, who
keeps a public-house, a sort of flash ken, called the Mug, in Thames
Court,--not exactly in our beat, your worship.”

“Ho, ho!” said Justice Burnflat; winking at Mr. Brandon, “we must
sift this a little. Pray, Mr. Paul Lobkins, what relation is the good
landlady of the Mug, in Thames Court, to yourself?”

“None at all, sir,” said Paul, hastily; “she's only a friend!”

Upon this there was a laugh in the court.

“Silence!” cried the justice. “And I dare say, Mr. Paul Lobkins,
that this friend of yours will vouch for the respectability of your
character, upon which you are pleased to value yourself?”

“I have not a doubt of it, sir,” answered Paul; and there was another
laugh.

“And is there any other equally weighty and praiseworthy friend of yours
who will do you the like kindness?”

Paul hesitated; and at that moment, to the surprise of the court,
but above all to the utter and astounding surprise of himself, two
gentlemen, dressed in the height of the fashion, pushed forward, and
bowing to the justice, declared themselves ready to vouch for the
thorough respectability and unimpeachable character of Mr. Paul Lobkins,
whom they had known, they said, for many years, and for whom they had
the greatest respect. While Paul was surveying the persons of these kind
friends, whom he never remembered to have seen before in the course
of his life, the lawyer, who was a very sharp fellow, whispered to
the magistrate; and that dignitary nodding as in assent, and eying the
new-comers, inquired the names of Mr. Lobkins's witnesses.

“Mr. Eustace Fitzherbert” and “Mr. William Howard Russell,” were the
several replies.

Names so aristocratic produced a general sensation. But the impenetrable
justice, calling the same Mr. Saunders he had addressed before, asked
him to examine well the countenances of Mr. Lobkins's friends.

As the alguazil eyed the features of the memorable Don Raphael and
the illustrious Manuel Morales, when the former of those accomplished
personages thought it convenient to assume the travelling dignity of an
Italian prince, son of the sovereign of the valleys which lie between
Switzerland, the Milanese, and Savoy, while the latter was contented
with being servant to Monseigneur le Prince; even so, with far more
earnestness than respect; did Mr. Saunders eye the features of those
high-born gentlemen, Messrs. Eustace Fitzherbert and William Howard
Russell; but after a long survey he withdrew his eyes, made an
unsatisfactory and unrecognizing gesture to the magistrate, and said,--

“Please your worship, they are none of my flock; but Bill Troutling
knows more of this sort of genteel chaps than I does.”

“Bid Bill Troutling appear!” was the laconic order.

At that name a certain modest confusion might have been visible in the
faces of Mr. Eustace Fitzherbert and Mr. William Howard Russell, had not
the attention of the court been immediately directed to another case. A
poor woman had been committed for seven days to the House of Correction
on a charge of disrespectability. Her husband, the person most
interested in the matter, now came forward to disprove the charge; and
by help of his neighbours he succeeded.

“It is all very true,” said Justice Burnflat; “but as your wife, my good
fellow, will be out in five days, it will be scarcely worth while to
release her now.”

     [A fact, occurring in the month of January, 1830.  Vide
     “The Morning Herald.”]

So judicious a decision could not fail of satisfying the husband; and
the audience became from that moment enlightened as to a very remarkable
truth,--namely, that five days out of seven bear a peculiarly small
proportion to the remaining two; and that people in England have so
prodigious a love for punishment that though it is not worth while to
release an innocent woman from prison five days sooner than one would
otherwise have done, it is exceedingly well worth while to commit her to
prison for seven!

When the husband, passing his rough hand across his eyes, and muttering
some vulgar impertinence or another had withdrawn, Mr. Saunders said,--

“Here be Bill Troutling, your worship!”

“Oh, well,” quoth the justice; “and now, Mr. Eustace Fitz---- Hallo,
how's this! Where are Mr. William Howard Russell and his friend Mr.
Eustace Fitzherbert?”

       “Echo answered,--where?”

Those noble gentlemen, having a natural dislike to be confronted with so
low a person as Mr. Bill Troutling, had, the instant public interest was
directed from them, silently disappeared from a scene where their rank
in life seemed so little regarded. If, reader, you should be anxious
to learn from what part of the world the transitory visitants appeared,
know that they were spirits sent by that inimitable magician, Long Ned,
partly to report how matters fared in the court; for Mr. Pepper, in
pursuance of that old policy which teaches that the nearer the fox is
to the hunters, the more chance he has of being overlooked, had,
immediately on his abrupt departure from Paul, dived into a house in
the very street where his ingenuity had displayed itself, and in which
oysters and ale nightly allured and regaled an assembly that, to speak
impartially, was more numerous than select. There had he learned how
a pickpocket had been seized for unlawful affection to another man's
watch; and there, while he quietly seasoned his oysters, had he, with
his characteristic acuteness, satisfied his mind by the conviction that
that arrested unfortunate was no other than Paul. Partly, therefore,
as a precaution for his own safety, that he might receive early
intelligence should Paul's defence make a change of residence expedient,
and partly (out of the friendliness of fellowship) to back his companion
with such aid as the favourable testimony of two well-dressed persons,
little known “about town,” might confer, he had despatched those
celestial beings who had appeared under the mortal names of Eustace
Fitzherbert and William Howard Russell to the imperial court of Justice
Burnflat. Having thus accounted for the apparition (the disapparition
requires no commentary) of Paul's “friends,” we return to Paul himself.

Despite the perils with which he was girt, our young hero fought out to
the last; but the justice was not by any means willing to displease Mr.
Brandon, and observing that an incredulous and biting sneer remained
stationary on that gentleman's lip during the whole of Paul's defence,
he could not but shape his decision according to the well-known
acuteness of the celebrated lawyer. Paul was sentenced to retire for
three months to that country-house situated at Bridewell, to which
the ungrateful functionaries of justice often banish their most active
citizens.

As soon as the sentence was passed, Brandon, whose keen eyes saw no hope
of recovering his lost treasure, declared that the rascal had perfectly
the Old Bailey cut of countenance, and that he did not doubt but,
if ever he lived to be a judge, he should also live to pass a very
different description of sentence on the offender.

So saying, he resolved to lose no more time, and very abruptly left
the office, without any other comfort than the remembrance that, at
all events, he had sent the boy to a place where, let him be ever so
innocent at present, he was certain to come out as much inclined to be
guilty as his friends could desire; joined to such moral reflection as
the tragedy of Bombastes Furioso might have afforded to himself in that
sententious and terse line,--

       “Thy watch is gone,--watches are made to go.”

Meanwhile Paul was conducted in state to his retreat, in company with
two other offenders,--one a middle-aged man, though a very old “file,”
 who was sentenced for getting money under false pretences, and the other
a little boy who had been found guilty of sleeping under a colonnade; it
being the especial beauty of the English law to make no fine-drawn and
nonsensical shades of difference between vice and misfortune, and its
peculiar method of protecting the honest being to make as many rogues as
possible in as short a space of time.




CHAPTER VIII.

Common Sense. What is the end of punishment as regards the individual
punished?

Custom. To make him better!

Common Sense. How do you punish young offenders who are (from their
youth) peculiarly alive to example, and whom it is therefore more easy
either to ruin or reform than the matured?

Custom. We send them to the House of Correction, to associate with the
d--dest rascals in the country!

Dialogue between Common Sense and Custom.--Very scarce.

As it was rather late in the day when Paul made his first entree at
Bridewell, he passed that night in the “receiving-room.” The next
morning, as soon as he had been examined by the surgeon and clothed in
the customary uniform, he was ushered, according to his classification,
among the good company who had been considered guilty of that
compendious offence, “a misdemeanour.” Here a tall gentleman marched up
to him, and addressed him in a certain language, which might be called
the freemasonry of flash, and which Paul, though he did not comprehend
verbatim, rightly understood to be an inquiry whether he was a thorough
rogue and an entire rascal. He answered half in confusion, half in
anger; and his reply was so detrimental to any favourable influence he
might otherwise have exercised over the interrogator, that the latter
personage, giving him a pinch in the ear, shouted out, “Ramp, ramp!” and
at that significant and awful word, Paul found himself surrounded in a
trice by a whole host of ingenious tormentors. One pulled this member,
another pinched that; one cuffed him before, and another thrashed him
behind. By way of interlude to this pleasing occupation, they stripped
him of the very few things that in his change of dress he had retained.
One carried off his handkerchief, a second his neckcloth, and a
third, luckier than either, possessed himself of a pair of carnelian
shirt-buttons, given to Paul as a gage d'amour by a young lady who
sold oranges near the Tower. Happily, before this initiatory
process--technically termed “ramping,” and exercised upon all new-comers
who seem to have a spark of decency in them--had reduced the bones
of Paul, who fought tooth and nail in his defence, to the state of
magnesia, a man of a grave aspect, who had hitherto plucked his oakum
in quiet, suddenly rose, thrust himself between the victim and the
assailants, and desired the latter, like one having authority, to leave
the lad alone, and go and be d--d.

This proposal to resort to another place for amusement, though uttered
in a very grave and tranquil manner, produced that instantaneous
effect which admonitions from great rogues generally work upon little.
Messieurs the ravmpers ceased from their amusements; and the ringleader
of the gang, thumping Paul heartily on the back, declared he was a
capital fellow, and it was only a bit of a spree like, which he hoped
had not given any offence.

Paul, still clenching his fist, was about to answer in no pacific mood,
when a turnkey, who did not care in the least how many men he locked up
for an offence, but who did not at all like the trouble of looking after
any one of his flock to see that the offence was not committed, now
suddenly appeared among the set; and after scolding them for the
excessive plague they were to him, carried off two of the poorest of the
mob to solitary confinement. It happened, of course, that these two had
not taken the smallest share in the disturbance. This scene over, the
company returned to picking oakum; the tread-mill, that admirably just
invention by which a strong man suffers no fatigue and a weak one loses
his health for life, not having been then introduced into our excellent
establishments for correcting crime. Bitterly and with many dark and
wrathful feelings, in which the sense of injustice at punishment
alone bore him up against the humiliations to which he was
subjected,--bitterly and with a swelling heart, in which the thoughts
that lead to crime were already forcing their way through a soil
suddenly warmed for their growth, did Paul bend over his employment. He
felt himself touched on the arm; he turned, and saw that the gentleman
who had so kindly delivered him from his tormentors was now sitting next
to him. Paul gazed long and earnestly upon his neighbour, struggling
with the thought that he had beheld that sagacious countenance in
happier times, although now, alas! it was altered not only by time
and vicissitudes but by that air of gravity which the cares of manhood
spread gradually over the face of the most thoughtless,--until all doubt
melted away, and he exclaimed,--

“Is that you, Mr. Tomlinson? How glad I am to see you here!”

“And I,” returned the quondam murderer for the newspapers, with a nasal
twang, “should be very glad to see myself anywhere else.”

Paul made no answer; and Augustus continued,--

“'To a wise man all places are the same,'--so it has been said. I don't
believe it, Paul,--I don't believe it. But a truce to reflection! I
remembered you the moment I saw you, though you are surprisingly grown.
How is my friend MacGrawler?--still hard at work for 'The Asinaeum'?”

“I believe so,” said Paul, sullenly, and hastening to change the
conversation; “but tell me, Mr. Tomlinson, how came you hither? I
heard you had gone down to the North of England to fulfil a lucrative
employment.”

“Possibly! The world always misrepresents the actions of those who are
constantly before it.”

“It is very true,” said Paul; “and I have said the same thing myself
a hundred times in 'The Asinaeum,' for we were never too lavish of our
truths in that magnificent journal. 'T is astonishing what a way we made
three ideas go.”

“You remind me of myself and my newspaper labours,” rejoined Augustus
Tomlinson. “I am not quite sure that I had so many as three ideas to
spare; for, as you say, it is astonishing how far that number may go,
properly managed. It is with writers as with strolling players,--the
same three ideas that did for Turks in one scene do for Highlanders in
the next; but you must tell me your history one of these days, and you
shall hear mine.”

“I should be excessively obliged to you for your confidence,” said Paul,
“and I doubt not but your life must be excessively entertaining. Mine,
as yet, has been but insipid. The lives of literary men are not fraught
with adventure; and I question whether every writer in 'The Asinaeum'
has not led pretty nearly the same existence as that which I have
sustained myself.”

In conversation of this sort our newly restored friends passed the
remainder of the day, until the hour of half-past four, when the
prisoners are to suppose night has begun, and be locked up in their
bedrooms. Tomlinson then, who was glad to re-find a person who had known
him in his beaux jours, spoke privately to the turnkey; and the result
of the conversation was the coupling Paul and Augustus in the same
chamber, which was a sort of stone box, that generally accommodated
three, and was--for we have measured it, as we would have measured the
cell of the prisoner of Chillon--just eight feet by six.

We do not intend, reader, to indicate, by broad colours and in long
detail, the moral deterioration of our hero; because we have found, by
experience, that such pains on our part do little more than make thee
blame our stupidity instead of lauding our intention. We shall therefore
only work out our moral by subtle hints and brief comments; and we shall
now content ourselves with reminding thee that hitherto thou hast seen
Paul honest in the teeth of circumstances. Despite the contagion of the
Mug, despite his associates in Fish Lane, despite his intimacy with Long
Ned, thou hast seen him brave temptation, and look forward to some other
career than that of robbery or fraud. Nay, even in his destitution, when
driven from the abode of his childhood, thou hast observed how, instead
of resorting to some more pleasurable or libertine road of life, he
betook himself at once to the dull roof and insipid employments of
MacGrawler, and preferred honestly earning his subsistence by the sweat
of his brain to recurring to any of the numerous ways of living on
others with which his experience among the worst part of society must
have teemed, and which, to say the least of them, are more alluring to
the young and the adventurous than the barren paths of literary labour.
Indeed, to let thee into a secret, it had been Paul's daring ambition
to raise himself into a worthy member of the community. His present
circumstances, it may hereafter be seen, made the cause of a great
change in his desires; and the conversation he held that night with the
ingenious and skilful Augustus went more towards fitting him for the
hero of this work than all the habits of his childhood or the scenes of
his earlier youth. Young people are apt, erroneously, to believe that it
is a bad thing to be exceedingly wicked. The House of Correction is so
called, because it is a place where so ridiculous a notion is invariably
corrected. The next day Paul was surprised by a visit from Mrs. Lobkins,
who had heard of his situation and its causes from the friendly
Dummie, and who had managed to obtain from Justice Burnflat an order of
admission. They met, Pyramus and Thisbe like, with a wall, or rather
an iron gate, between them; and Mrs. Lobkins, after an ejaculation of
despair at the obstacle, burst weepingly into the pathetic reproach,--

“O Paul, thou hast brought thy pigs to a fine market!”

“'T is a market proper for pigs, dear dame,” said Paul, who, though with
a tear in his eye, did not refuse a joke as bitter as it was inelegant;
“for, of all others, it is the spot where a man learns to take care of
his bacon.”

“Hold your tongue!” cried the dame, angrily. “What business has you to
gabble on so while you are in limbo?”

“Ah, dear dame,” said Paul, “we can't help these rubs and stumbles on
our road to preferment!”

“Road to the scragging-post!” cried the dame. “I tells you, child,
you'll live to be hanged in spite of all my care and 'tention to you,
though I hedicated you as a scholard, and always hoped as how you would
grow up to be an honour to your--”

“King and country,” interrupted Paul. “We always say, honour to king and
country, which means getting rich and paying taxes. 'The more taxes a
man pays, the greater honour he is to both,' as Augustus says. Well,
dear dame, all in good time.”

“What! you is merry, is you? Why does not you weep? Your heart is as
hard as a brickbat. It looks quite unnatural and hyena-like to be so
devil-me-careish!” So saying, the good dame's tears gushed forth with
the bitterness of a despairing Parisina.

“Nay, nay,” said Paul, who, though he suffered far more intensely, bore
the suffering far more easily than his patroness, “we cannot mend the
matter by crying. Suppose you see what can be done for me. I dare say
you may manage to soften the justice's sentence by a little 'oil of
palms;' and if you can get me out before I am quite corrupted,--a day or
two longer in this infernal place will do the business,--I promise you
that I will not only live honestly myself, but with people who live in
the same manner.”

“Buss me, Paul,” said the tender Mrs. Lobkins, “buss me--Oh! but I
forgits the gate. I'll see what can be done. And here, my lad, here's
summat for you in the mean while,--a drop o' the cretur, to preach
comfort to your poor stomach. Hush! smuggle it through, or they'll see
you.”

Here the dame endeavoured to push a stone bottle through the bars of the
gate; but, alas! though the neck passed through, the body refused, and
the dame was forced to retract the “cretur.” Upon this, the kind-hearted
woman renewed her sobbings; and so absorbed was she in her grief that
seemingly quite forgetting for what purpose she had brought the bottle,
she applied it to her own mouth, and consoled herself with that elixir
vitae which she had originally designed for Paul.

This somewhat restored her; and after a most affecting scene the dame
reeled off with the vacillating steps natural to woe, promising, as she
went, that if love or money could shorten Paul's confinement, neither
should be wanting. We are rather at a loss to conjecture the exact
influence which the former of these arguments, urged by the lovely
Margaret, might have had upon Justice Burnflat.

When the good dame had departed, Paul hastened to repick his oakum and
rejoin his friend. He found the worthy Augustus privately selling little
elegant luxuries, such as tobacco, gin, and rations of daintier viands
than the prison allowed; for Augustus, having more money than the rest
of his companions, managed, through the friendship of the turnkey, to
purchase secretly, and to resell at about four hundred per cent, such
comforts as the prisoners especially coveted.

     [A very common practice at the Bridewell.  The Governor at the
     Coldbath-Fields, apparently a very intelligent and active man, every
     way fitted for a most arduous undertaking, informed us, in the only
     conversation we have had the honour to hold with him, that he
     thought he had nearly or quite destroyed in his jurisdiction this
     illegal method of commerce.]

“A proof,” said Augustus, dryly, to Paul, “that by prudence and exertion
even in those places where a man cannot turn himself he may manage to
turn a penny.”




CHAPTER IX.

     “Relate at large, my godlike guest,” she said,
     “The Grecian stratagems,--the town betrayed!”
                              DRYDEN: Virgil, AEneid, book ii.

     Descending thence, they 'scaped!--Ibid.

A great improvement had taken place in the character of Augustus
Tomlinson since Paul had last encountered that illustrious man. Then
Augustus had affected the man of pleasure, the learned lounger about
town, the all-accomplished Pericles of the papers, gayly quoting Horace,
gravely flanking a fly from the leader of Lord Dunshunner. Now a more
serious yet not a less supercilious air had settled upon his features;
the pretence of fashion had given way to the pretence of wisdom;
and from the man of pleasure Augustus Tomlinson had grown to the
philosopher. With this elevation alone, too, he was not content: he
united the philosopher with the politician; and the ingenious rascal was
pleased especially to pique himself upon being “a moderate Whig”!

“Paul,” he was wont to observe, “believe me, moderate Whiggism is a most
excellent creed. It adapts itself to every possible change, to every
conceivable variety of circumstance. It is the only politics for us who
are the aristocrats of that free body who rebel against tyrannical laws;
for, hang it, I am none of your democrats. Let there be dungeons and
turnkeys for the low rascals who whip clothes from the hedge where
they hang to dry, or steal down an area in quest of a silver spoon;
but houses of correction are not made for men who have received an
enlightened education,--who abhor your petty thefts as much as a justice
of peace. can do,--who ought never to be termed dishonest in their
dealings, but, if they are found out, 'unlucky in their speculations'!
A pretty thing, indeed, that there should be distinctions of rank among
other members of the community, and none among us! Where's your boasted
British Constitution, I should like to know, where are your privileges
of aristocracy, if I, who am a gentleman born, know Latin, and have
lived in the best society, should be thrust into this abominable place
with a dirty fellow who was born in a cellar, and could never earn more
at a time than would purchase a sausage? No, no! none of your levelling
principles for me! I am liberal, Paul, and love liberty; but, thank
Heaven, I despise your democracies!”

Thus, half in earnest, half veiling a natural turn to sarcasm, would
this moderate Whig run on for the hour together during those long
nights, commencing at half-past four, in which he and Paul bore each
other company.

One evening, when Tomlinson was so bitterly disposed to be prolix that
Paul felt himself somewhat wearied by his eloquence, our hero, desirous
of a change in the conversation, reminded Augustus of his promise to
communicate his history; and the philosophical Whig, nothing loath to
speak of himself, cleared his throat, and began.

“Never mind who was my father, nor what was my native place! My first
ancestor was Tommy Linn (his heir became Tom Linn's son),--you have
heard the ballad made in his praise,

             “'Tommy Linn is a Scotchman born,
               His head is bald and his beard is shorn;
               He had a cap made of a hare skin,
               An elder man is Tommy Limn!'

“There was a sort of prophecy respecting my ancestor's descendants
darkly insinuated in the concluding stanza of this ballad:--

             “'Tommy Linn, and his wife, and his wife's mother,
               They all fell into the fire together;
               They that lay undermost got a hot skin,--

               “We are not enough!” said Tommy Linn.'”

“You see the prophecy: it is applicable both to gentlemen rogues and
to moderate Whigs; for both are undermost in the world, and both are
perpetually bawling out, 'We are not enough!'

“I shall begin my own history by saying, I went to a North Country
school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at
'prisoner's base,'--upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for
the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I
persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting
a christening. My father did not like this premature love for the
sacred rites. He took me home; and wishing to give my clerical ardour a
different turn, prepared me for writing sermons by reading me a dozen a
day. I grew tired of this, strange as it may seem to you. 'Father,'
said I, one morning, 'it is no use talking; I will not go into the
Church,--that's positive. Give me your blessing and a hundred pounds,
and I'll go up to London and get a living instead of a curacy.' My
father stormed; but I got the better at last. I talked of becoming a
private tutor; swore I had heard nothing was so easy,--the only things
wanted were pupils; and the only way to get them was to go to London
and let my learning be known. My poor father,--well, he's gone, and I am
glad of it now!” The speaker's voice faltered. “I got the better, I say,
and I came to town, where I had a relation a bookseller. Through his
interest, I wrote a book of Travels in Ethiopia for an earl's son, who
wanted to become a lion; and a Treatise on the Greek Particle, dedicated
to the prime minister, for a dean, who wanted to become a bishop,--Greek
being, next to interest, the best road to the mitre. These two
achievements were liberally paid; so I took a lodging in a first floor,
and resolved to make a bold stroke for a wife. What do you think I
did?--nay, never guess; it would be hopeless. First, I went to the best
tailor, and had my clothes sewn on my back; secondly, I got the peerage
and its genealogies by heart; thirdly, I marched one night, with the
coolest deliberation possible, into the house of a duchess, who was
giving an immense rout! The newspapers had inspired me with this idea. I
had read of the vast crowds which a lady 'at home' sought to win to her
house. I had read of staircases impassable, and ladies carried out in
a fit; and common-sense told me how impossible it was that the fair
receiver should be acquainted with the legality of every importation. I
therefore resolved to try my chance, and--entered the body of Augustus
Tomlinson, as a piece of stolen goods. Faith! the first night I was
shy,--I stuck to the staircase, and ogled an old maid of quality, whom
I had heard announced as Lady Margaret Sinclair. Doubtless she had never
been ogled before; and she was evidently enraptured with my glances. The
next night I read of a ball at the Countess of -------'s. My heart beat
as if I were going to be whipped; but I plucked up courage, and repaired
to her ladyship's. There I again beheld the divine Lady Margaret; and
observing that she turned yellow, by way of a blush, when she saw me, I
profited by the port I had drunk as an encouragement to my entree, and
lounging up in the most modish way possible, I reminded her ladyship of
an introduction with which I said I had once been honoured at the Duke
of Dashwell's, and requested her hand for the next cotillion. Oh, Paul,
fancy my triumph! The old damsel said, with a sigh, she remembered me
very well, ha, ha, ha!--and I carried her off to the cotillion like
another Theseus bearing away a second Ariadne. Not to be prolix on
this part of my life, I went night after night to balls and routs, for
admission to which half the fine gentlemen in London would have given
their ears. And I improved my time so well with Lady Margaret, who was
her own mistress and had L5,000,--a devilish bad portion for some, but
not to be laughed at by me,--that I began to think when the happy day
should be fixed. Meanwhile, as Lady Margaret introduced me to some
of her friends, and my lodgings were in a good situation, I had been
honoured with some real invitations. The only two questions I ever
was asked were (carelessly), 'Was I the only son?' and on my veritable
answer 'Yes!' 'What' (this was more warmly put),--'what was my county?'
Luckily my county was a wide one,--Yorkshire; and any of its inhabitants
whom the fair interrogators might have questioned about me could only
have answered, I was not in their part of it.

“Well, Paul, I grew so bold by success that the devil one day put it
into my head to go to a great dinner-party at the Duke of Dashwell's. I
went, dined,--nothing happened; I came away, and the next morning I read
in the papers,--

“'Mysterious affair--person lately going about--first houses--most
fashionable parties--nobody knows--Duke of Dashwell's yesterday. Duke
not like to make disturbance--as royalty present.”

“The journal dropped from my hands. At that moment the girl of the house
gave me a note from Lady Margaret,--alluded to the paragraph; wondered
who was 'The Stranger;' hoped to see me that night at Lord A-----'s,
to whose party I said I had been asked; speak then more fully on those
matters I had touched on!--in short, dear Paul, a tender epistle! All
great men are fatalists,--I am one now; fate made me a madman. In the
very face of this ominous paragraph I mustered up courage, and went that
night to Lord A-----'s. The fact is, my affairs were in confusion,--I
was greatly in debt. I knew it was necessary to finish my conquest over
Lady Margaret as soon as possible; and Lord A-----'s seemed the best
place for the purpose. Nay, I thought delay so dangerous, after the
cursed paragraph, that a day might unmask me, and it would be better
therefore not to lose an hour in finishing the play of 'The Stranger'
with the farce of 'The Honey Moon.' Behold me then at Lord A-----'s,
leading off Lady Margaret to the dance. Behold me whispering the
sweetest of things in her ear. Imagine her approving my suit, and gently
chiding me for talking of Gretna Green. Conceive all this, my dear
fellow, and just at the height of my triumph, dilate the eyes of your
imagination, and behold the stately form of Lord A-----, my noble
host, marching up to me, while a voice that, though low and quiet as an
evening breeze, made my heart sink into my shoes, said, 'I believe, sir,
you have received no invitation from Lady A-----?'

“Not a word could I utter, Paul,--not a word. Had it been the highroad
instead of a ballroom, I could have talked loudly enough; but I was
under a spell. 'Ehem!' I faltered at last,--'e-h-e-m! Some mis-take,
I--I--' There I stopped.

“'Sir,' said the earl, regarding me with a grave sternness, 'you had
better withdraw.'

“'Bless me! what's all this?' cried Lady Margaret, dropping my palsied
arm, and gazing on me as if she expected me to talk like a hero.

“'Oh,' said I, 'eh-e-m, eh-e-m,--I will exp--lain to-morrow,--ehem,
e-h-e-m.' I made to the door; all the eyes in the room seemed turned
into burning-glasses, and blistered the very skin on my face. I heard
a gentle shriek, as I left the apartment,--Lady Margaret fainting,
I suppose! There ended my courtship and my adventures in 'the best
society.'

“I felt melancholy at the ill-success of my scheme. You must allow it
was a magnificent project. What moral courage! I admire myself when I
think of it. Without an introduction, without knowing a soul, to become,
all by my own resolution, free of the finest houses in London, dancing
with earls' daughters, and all but carrying off an earl's daughter
myself as my wife. If I had, the friends must have done something
for me; and Lady Margaret Tomlinson might perhaps have introduced the
youthful genius of her Augustus to parliament or the ministry. Oh, what
a fall was there! Yet, faith, ha, ha, ha! I could not help laughing,
despite of my chagrin, when I remembered that for three months I had
imposed on these 'delicate exclusives,' and been literally invited by
many of them, who would not have asked the younger sons of their own
cousins, merely because I lived in a good street, avowed myself an only
child, and talked of my property in Yorkshire! Ha, ha! how bitter the
mercenary dupes must have felt when the discovery was made! What a pill
for the good matrons who had coupled my image with that of some
filial Mary or Jane,--ha, ha, ha! The triumph was almost worth the
mortification. However, as I said before, I fell melancholy on it,
especially as my duns became menacing. So I went to consult with my
cousin the bookseller. He recommended me to compose for the journals,
and obtained me an offer. I went to work very patiently for a short
time, and contracted some agreeable friendships with gentlemen whom I
met at an ordinary in St. James's. Still, my duns, though I paid them by
driblets, were the plague of my life. I confessed as much to one of
my new friends. 'Come to Bath with me,' quoth he, 'for a week, and you
shall return as rich as a Jew.' I accepted the offer, and went to Bath
in my friend's chariot. He took the name of Lord Dunshunner, an Irish
peer who had never been out of Tipperary, and was not therefore likely
to be known at Bath. He took also a house for a year; filled it with
wines, books, and a sideboard of plate. As he talked vaguely of setting
up his younger brother to stand for the town at the next parliament,
he bought these goods of the townspeople, in order to encourage their
trade. I managed secretly to transport them to London and sell them; and
as we disposed of them fifty per cent under cost price, our customers,
the pawnbrokers, were not very inquisitive. We lived a jolly life
at Bath for a couple of months, and departed one night, leaving our
housekeeper to answer all interrogatories. We had taken the precaution
to wear disguises, stuffed ourselves out, and changed the hues of our
hair. My noble friend was an adept in these transformations; and though
the police did not sleep on the business, they never stumbled on us. I
am especially glad we were not discovered, for I liked Bath excessively;
and I intend to return there some of these days, and retire from the
world--on an heiress!

“Well, Paul, shortly after this adventure I made your acquaintance. I
continued ostensibly my literary profession, but only as a mask for the
labours I did not profess. A circumstance obliged me to leave London
rather precipitately. Lord Dunshunner joined me in Edinburgh. D---it,
instead of doing anything there, we were done! The veriest urchin that
ever crept through the High Street is more than a match for the most
scientific of Englishmen. With us it is art; with the Scotch it is
nature. They pick your pockets without using their fingers for it; and
they prevent reprisal by having nothing for you to pick.

“We left Edinburgh with very long faces, and at Carlisle we found it
necessary to separate. For my part, I went as a valet to a nobleman who
had just lost his last servant at Carlisle by a fever; my friend gave
me the best of characters! My new master was a very clever man. He
astonished people at dinner by the impromptus he prepared at breakfast;
in a word, he was a wit. He soon saw, for he was learned himself, that
I had received a classical education, and he employed me in the
confidential capacity of finding quotations for him. I classed these
alphabetically and under three heads,--'Parliamentary, Literary,
Dining-out.' These were again subdivided into 'Fine,' 'Learned,' and
'Jocular;' so that my master knew at once where to refer for genius,
wisdom, and wit. He was delighted with my management of his intellects.
In compliment to him, I paid more attention to politics than I had
done before; for he was a 'great Whig,' and uncommonly liberal
in everything--but money! Hence, Paul, the origin of my political
principles; and I thank Heaven there is not now a rogue in England who
is a better--that is to say, more of a moderate-Whig than your humble
servant! I continued with him nearly a year. He discharged me for a
fault worthy of my genius: other servants may lose the watch or the
coat of their master; I went at nobler game, and lost him--his private
character!”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, I was enamoured of a lady who would not have looked at me as Mr.
Tomlinson; so I took my master's clothes and occasionally his carriage,
and made love to my nymph as Lord. Her vanity made her indiscreet. The
Tory papers got hold of it; and my master, in a change of ministers,
was declared by George the Third to be 'too gay for a Chancellor of the
Exchequer.' An old gentleman who had had fifteen children by a wife like
a Gorgon, was chosen instead of my master; and although the new minister
was a fool in his public capacity, the moral public were perfectly
content with him, because of his private virtues!

“My master was furious, made the strictest inquiry, found me out, and
turned me out too!

“A Whig not in place has an excuse for disliking the Constitution. My
distress almost made me a republican; but, true to my creed, I
must confess that I would only have levelled upwards. I especially
disaffected the inequality of riches; I looked moodily on every carriage
that passed; I even frowned like a second Catiline at the steam of a
gentle man's kitchen! My last situation had not been lucrative; I had
neglected my perquisites, in my ardour for politics. My master, too,
refused to give me a character: who would take me without one?

“I was asking myself this melancholy question one morning, when I
suddenly encountered one of the fine friends I had picked up at my old
haunt, the ordinary, in St. James's. His name was Pepper.”

“Pepper!” cried Paul.

Without heeding the exclamation, Tomlinson continued:--“We went to a
tavern and drank a bottle together. Wine made me communicative; it also
opened my comrade's heart. He asked me to take a ride with him that
night towards Hounslow. I did so, and found a purse.”

“How fortunate! Where?”

“In a gentleman's pocket. I was so pleased with my luck that I went
the same road twice a week, in order to see if I could pick up any more
purses. Fate favoured me, and I lived for a long time the life of the
blessed. Oh, Paul, you know not--you know not what a glorious life is
that of a highwayman; but you shall taste it one of these days,--you
shall, on my honour.

“I now lived with a club of honest fellows. We called ourselves 'The
Exclusives,'--for we were mighty reserved in our associates, and only
those who did business on a grand scale were admitted into our set. For
my part, with all my love for my profession, I liked ingenuity still
better than force, and preferred what the vulgar call swindling, even to
the highroad. On an expedition of this sort, I rode once into a country
town, and saw a crowd assembled in one corner; I joined it, and my
feelings!--beheld my poor friend Viscount Dunshunner just about to be
hanged! I rode off as fast as I could,--I thought I saw Jack Ketch at my
heels. My horse threw me at a hedge, and I broke my collar-bone. In the
confinement that ensued gloomy ideas floated before me. I did not like
to be hanged; so I reasoned against my errors, and repented. I recovered
slowly, returned to town, and repaired to my cousin the bookseller. To
say truth, I had played him a little trick: collected some debts of his
by a mistake,--very natural in the confusion incident on my distresses.
However, he was extremely unkind about it; and the mistake, natural as
it was, had cost me his acquaintance.

“I went now to him with the penitential aspect of the prodigal son; and,
faith, he would have not made a bad representation of the fatted
calf about to be killed on my return,--so corpulent looked he, and so
dejected! 'Graceless reprobate!' he began, 'your poor father is dead!'
I was exceedingly shocked; but--never fear, Paul, I am not about to be
pathetic. My father had divided his fortune among all his children; my
share was L500. The possession of this soon made my penitence seem much
more sincere in the eyes of my good cousin; and after a very pathetic
scene, he took me once more into favour. I now consulted with him as to
the best method of laying out my capital and recovering my character. We
could not devise any scheme at the first conference; but the second
time I saw him, my cousin said with a cheerful countenance: 'Cheer up,
Augustus, I have got thee a situation. Mr. Asgrave the banker will take
thee as a clerk. He is a most worthy man; and having a vast deal of
learning, he will respect thee for thy acquirements.' The same day I
was introduced to Mr. Asgrave, who was a little man with a fine, bald,
benevolent head; and after a long conversation which he was pleased to
hold with me, I became one of his quill-drivers. I don't know how it
was, but by little and little I rose in my master's good graces. I
propitiated him, I fancy, by disposing of my L500 according to his
advice; he laid it out for me, on what he said was famous security, on a
landed estate. Mr. Asgrave was of social habits,--he had a capital house
and excellent wines. As he was not very particular in his company, nor
ambitious of visiting the great, he often suffered me to make one of
his table, and was pleased to hold long arguments with me about the
ancients. I soon found out that my master was a great moral philosopher;
and being myself in weak health, sated with the ordinary pursuits of the
world, in which my experience had forestalled my years, and naturally of
a contemplative temperament, I turned my attention to the moral studies
which so fascinated my employer. I read through nine shelves full of
metaphysicians, and knew exactly the points in which those illustrious
thinkers quarrelled with each other, to the great advance of the
science. My master and I used to hold many a long discussion about the
nature of good and evil; as, by help of his benevolent forehead and a
clear dogged voice, he always seemed to our audience to be the wiser and
better man of the two, he was very well pleased with our disputes. This
gentleman had an only daughter,--an awful shrew, with a face like a
hatchet but philosophers overcome personal defects; and thinking only
of the good her wealth might enable me to do to my fellow-creatures, I
secretly made love to her. You will say that was playing my master but
a scurvy trick for his kindness. Not at all; my master himself had
convinced me that there was no such virtue as gratitude. It was an error
of vulgar moralists. I yielded to his arguments, and at length privately
espoused his daughter. The day after this took place, he summoned me to
his study. 'So, Augustus,' said he, very mildly, 'you have married my
daughter: nay, never look confused; I saw a long time ago that you were
resolved to do so, and I was very glad of it.'

“I attempted to falter out something like thanks. 'Never interrupt me!'
said he. 'I had two reasons for being glad,--first, because my daughter
was the plague of my life, and I wanted some one to take her off my
hands; secondly, because I required your assistance on a particular
point, and I could not venture to ask it of any one but my son-in-law.
In fine, I wish to take you into partnership!'

“'Partnership!' cried I, falling on my knees. 'Noble, generous man!'

“'Stay a bit,' continued my father-in-law. 'What funds do you think
requisite for carrying on a bank? You look puzzled! Not a shilling! You
will put in just as much as I do. You will put in rather more; for
you once put in L500, which has been spent long ago. I don't put in a
shilling of my own. I live on my clients, and I very willingly offer you
half of them!'

“Imagine, dear Paul, my astonishment, my dismay! I saw myself married to
a hideous shrew,--son-in-law to a penniless scoundrel, and cheated out
of my whole fortune! Compare this view of the question with that which
had blazed on me when I contemplated being son-in-law to the rich
Mr. Asgrave. I stormed at first. Mr. Asgrave took up Bacon 'On the
Advancement of Learning,' and made no reply till I

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