Project Gutenberg's The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11), by Thomas Hood

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Title: The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11)
       Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original
              Illustrations

Author: Thomas Hood

Editor: Tom Hood
        Frances Freeling Broderip (née Hood)

Release Date: February 2, 2020 [EBook #61301]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF THOMAS HOOD ***




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“HAVE I A WOTE FOR GRINNAGE?”

[Pg 1]

HOOD’S OWN:
OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR.

THE ISLE OF MAN.

THE BOY AT THE NORE.

THE BUOY AT THE NORE.

AS SAFE AS THE BANK.

“DO you see that ’ere gentleman in the buggy, with the clipt un?” enquired Ned Stocker, as he pointed with his whip at a chaise, some fifty yards in advance. “Well, for all he’s driving there so easy like, and comfortable, he once had a gig-shaft, and that’s a fact, driv right through his body!”

“Rather him than me,” drawled a passenger on the box, without removing his cigar from his mouth.

“It’s true for all that,” returned Ned, with a nod of his head equal to an affidavit.[Pg 5] “The shaft run in under one armpit, right up to the tug, and out again at t’other besides pinning him to the wall of the stable—and that’s a thing such as don’t happen every day.”

“Lucky it don’t,” said the smoker, between two puffs of his cigar.

“It an’t likely to come often,” resumed Ned, “let alone the getting over it afterwards, which is the wonderfullest part of it all. To see him bowling along there, he don’t look like a man pinned to a stable-wall with the rod through him, right up to the tug—do he?”

“Can’t say he does,” said the smoker.

“For my part,” said Ned, “or indeed any man’s part, most people in such a case would have said, it’s all up with me, and good reason why, as I said afore, with a shaft clean through your inside, right up to the tug—and two inches besides into the stable wall, by way of a benefit. But somehow he always stuck to it—not the wall, you know—but his own opinion, that he should get over it—he was as firm as flints about that—and sure enough the event came off exactly.”

“The better for him,” said the smoker.

“I don’t know the rights on it,” said Ned, “for I warn’t there—but they do say when he was dextricated from the rod, there was a regular tunnel through him, and in course the greatest danger was of his ketching cold in the lungs from the thorough draught.”

“Nothing more likely,” said the fumigator.

“Howsomever,” continued Ned,[Pg 6] “he was cured by Dr. Maiden of Stratford, who give him lots of physic to provoke his stomach, and make him eat hearty; and by taking his feeds well,—warm mashes at first, and then hard meat, in course of time he filled up. Nobody hardly believed it, though, when they see him about on his legs again—myself for one—but he always said he would overcome it, and he was as good as his word. If that an’t game, I don’t know what is.”

“No more do I,” said the man with the Havannah.

“I don’t know the philosophy on it,” resumed Ned, “but it’s a remark of mine about recovering, if a man says he will, he will,—and if he says he won’t, he won’t—you may book that for certain. Mayhap a good pluck helps the wounds in healing kindly,—but so it is, for I’ve observed it. You’ll see one man with hardly a scratch on his face, and says he, I’m done for—and he turns out quite correct—while another as is cut to ribbons will say—never mind,—I’m good for another round, and so he proves, particularly if he’s one of your small farmers. I’ll give you a reason why.”

“Now then,” said the smoker.

“My reason is,” replied Ned, “that they’re all as hard as nails—regular pebbles for game. They take more thrashing than their own corn, and that’s saying something. They’re all fortitude, and nothing else. Talk about punishment! nothing comes amiss to ’em, from butt-ends of whips and brickbats down to bludgeons loaded with lead. You can’t hurt their feelings. They’re jist like badgers, the more you welt ’em the more they grin, and when it’s over, maybe a turn-up at a cattle fair, or a stop by footpads, they’ll go home to their missises all over blood and wounds as cool and comfortable as cowcumbers, with holes in their heads enough to scarify a whole hospital of army surgeons.”

“The very thing Scott has characterised,” I ventured to observe, “in the person of honest Dandie.”

“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said Ned,[Pg 7] “I know Farmer Scott very well, and he’s anything but a dandy. I was just a going to bring forward, as one of the trumps, a regular out-and-outer. We become friends through an axident. It was a darkish night, you see, and him a little lushy or so, making a bit of a swerve in his going towards the middle of the road, before you could cry Snacks! I was over him with the old Regulator.”

“Good God!” exclaimed my left-hand companion on the roof. “Was not the poor fellow hurt?”

“Why, not much for HIM,” answered Ned, with a very decided emphasis on the pronoun. “Though it would have been a quietus for nine men out of ten, and, as the Jews say, Take your pick of the basket. But he looked queer at first, and shook himself, and made a wryish face, like a man that hadn’t got the exact bit of the joint he preferred.”

“Looked queer!” ejaculated the compassionate passenger, “he must have looked dreadful! I remember the Regulator, one of the oldest and heaviest vehicles on the road. But of course you picked him up, and got him inside, and——”

“Quite the reverse,” answered Ned, quietly, “and far from it; he picked himself up, quite independent, and wouldn’t even accept a lift on the box. He only felt about his head a bit, and then his back, and his arms, and his thighs, and his lines, and after that he guv a nod, and says he, ‘all right,’ and away he toddled.”

“I can’t credit it,” exclaimed the man on the roof.

“That’s jist what his wife said,” replied Ned, with considerable composure, in spite of the slur on his veracity. “Let alone two black eyes, and his collar bone, and the broke rib, he’d a hole in his head, with a flint sticking in it bigger than any one you can find since Macadaming. But he made so light on it all, and not being very clear besides in his notions, I’m blest if he didn’t tell her he’d only been knockt down by a man with a truck!”

“Not a bad story,” said the smoker on the box.

I confess I made internally a parallel remark. Naturally robust as my faith is, I could not, as Hamlet says, let “Belief lay hold of me,” with the coachman’s narrative in his hand, like a copy of a writ. I am no stranger, indeed, to the peculiar[Pg 8] hardihood of our native yeomanry; but Ned, in his zeal for their credit, had certainly overdrawn the truth. As to his doctrine of presentiments, it had never been one of the subjects of my speculations; but on a superficial view, it appeared to me improbable that life or death, in cases of casualty, could be predetermined with such certainty as he had averred; and particularly as I happen to know a certain lady, who has been accepting the Bills of Mortality at two months’ date, for many years past—but has never honoured them when due. It was fated, however, that honest Ned was to be confirmed in his theories and corroborated in his facts.

We had scarcely trotted half a mile in meditative silence, when we overtook a sturdy pedestrian, who was pacing the breadth as well as the length of the road, rather more like a land surveyor than a mere traveller. He evidently belonged to the agricultural class, which Ned had distinguished by the title of Small Farmers. Like Scott’s Liddesdale yeoman, he wore a shaggy dreadnought, below which you saw two well-fatted calves, penned in a pair of huge top-boots—the tops and the boots being of such different shades of brown as you may observe in two arable fields of various soil, a rich loam and a clay. In his hand he carried a formidable knotted club-stick, and a member of the Heralds’ College would have set him down at once a tenant of the Earl of Leicester, he looked so like a bear with a ragged staff.

I observed that Ned seemed anxious. One of his leaders was a bolter, and his wheelers were far from steady; and the man ahead walked not quite so straightly as if he had been ploughing a furrow. We were almost upon him—Ned gave a sharp halloo—the man looked back, and wavered. A minute decided the matter. He escaped Scylla, but Charybdis yawned for him—in plain prose, he cleared the Rocket, but contrived to get under the broad wheel of a Warwickshire waggon, which was passing[Pg 9] in the opposite direction. There was still a chance,—even a fly-waggon may be stopped without much notice—but the waggoner was inside, sweethearting with three maids that were going to Coventry. Every voice cried out Woh! but the right one. The horses plodded on—the wheels rumbled—the bells jingled—we all thought a knell.

Ned instantly pulled up, with his team upon their haunches—we all alighted, and in a moment the sixteen the Rocket was licensed to carry were at the fatal spot. In the midst of the circle lay, what we considered a bundle of last linen just come home from the mangle.

“That’s a dead un,” said the smoker, throwing away as he spoke the butt-end of a cigar.

“Poor wretch,” exclaimed the humane man from the roof, “what a shocking spectacle!”

“It’s over his chest,” said I.

“It’s all over,” said the passenger on my right.

“And a happy release,” said a lady on my left; “he must have been a cripple for life.”

“He can’t have a whole rib in his body,” said a man from the dicky.

“Hall to hattums,” said a gentleman from the inside.

“The worst I ever see, and I’ve had the good luck to see many,” said the guard.

“No, he can’t get over that,” said Ned himself.

To our astonishment, however, the human mass still breathed. After a long sigh it opened one eye—the right—then the other—the mouth gasped—the tongue moved—and at last even spoke, though in disjointed syllables.

“We’re nigh—hand—an’t we—the nine—milestun?”

“Yes—yes—close to it,” answered a dozen voices, and one in its bewilderment asked, “Do you live there?” but was set right by the sufferer himself.

[Pg 10]

“No—a mile fudder.”

“Where is there a surgeon?” asked the humane man, “I will ride off for him on one of the leaders.”

“Better not,” said the phlegmatic smoker, who had lighted a fresh cigar with some German tinder and a lucifer—“not used to saddle—may want a surgeon yourself.”

“Is there never a doctor among the company?” inquired the guard.

“I am a medical man,” replied a squat vulgar-looking personage. “I sell Morison’s pills—but I haven’t any about me.”

“Glad of it,” said the smoker, casting a long puff in the other’s face.

“THIS IS THE TIME WHEN CHURCH-YARDS YAWN.”

“Poor wretch!” sighed the compassionate man. “He is beyond human aid. Heaven help the widow and the fatherless—he looks like a family man!”

“I were not to blaame,” said the waggoner.[Pg 11] “The woife and childerin can’t coom upon I.”

“Does anyone know who he is?” inquired the coachman, but there was no answer.

“Maybe the gemman has a card or summut,” said the gentleman from the inside.

“Is there no house near?” inquired the lady.

“For to get a shutter off on,” added the gentleman.

“Ought we not to procure a postchaise,” inquired a gentleman’s footman.

“Or a shell, in case,” suggested the man from the dicky.

“Shell be hanged!” said the sufferer, in a tone that made us all jump a yard backward. “Stick me up agin the milestun—there, easy does it—that’s comfortable—and now tell me, and no nonsense,—be I flat?”

“A little pancakey,” said the man with the cigar.

“I say,” repeated the sufferer, with some earnestness, “be I flat—quite flat—as flat like as a sheet of paper? Yes or no?”

“No, no, no,” burst from sixteen voices at once, and the assurance seemed to take as great a load off his mind as had lately passed over his body. By an effort he contrived to get up and sit upon the milestone, from which he waved us a good-bye, accompanied by the following words:—

“Gentlefolk, my best thanks and my sarvice to you, and a pleasant journey. Don’t consarn yourselves about me, for there’s nothing dangerous. I shall do well, I know I shall; and I’ll tell you what I’ll go upon—if I bean’t flat I shall get round.”

“None despise puns but those who cannot make them.”—SWIFT.

To the Editor of the Comic Annual.

“Do you really believe, Dr. Johnson,” said a Lichfield lady, “in the dead walking after death?”—“Madam,” said Johnson, “I have no doubt on the subject; I have heard the Dead March in Saul.” “You really believe then, Doctor, in ghosts?”—“Madam,” said Johnson, “I think appearances are in their favour.”

The Doctor was notoriously very superstitious. The same lady once asked him—“if he ever felt any presentiment at a winding-sheet in the candle.”—“Madam,” said Johnson, “if a mould candle, it doubtless indicates death, and that somebody will go out like a snuff; but whether at Hampton Wick or in Greece, must depend upon the graves.”

Dr. Johnson was not comfortable in the Hebrides. “Pray, Doctor, how did you sleep?” inquired a benevolent Scotch hostess, who was so extremely hospitable that some hundreds always occupied the same bed.—“Madam,” said Johnson, “I had not a wink the whole night long; sleep seemed to flee from my eyelids, and to bug from all the rest of my body.”

The Doctor and Boswell once lost themselves in the Isle of[Pg 14] Muck, and the latter said they must “spier their way at the first body they met.” “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “you’re a scoundrel: you may spear anybody you like, but I am not going to ‘run a-Muck and tilt at all I meet.’”

AN ILLUMINATED MS.

“What do you think of whiskey, Dr. Johnson?” hiccupped Boswell after emptying a sixth tumbler of toddy. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “it penetrates my very soul like ‘the small-still voice of conscience,’ and doubtless the worm of the still is the ‘worm that never dies.’” Boswell afterwards inquired the Doctor’s opinion on illicit distillation, and how the great moralist would act in an affray between the smugglers and the Excise. “If I went by the letter of the law, I should assist the Customs, but according to the spirit I should stand by the contrabands.”

The Doctor was always very satirical on the want of timber in the North. “Sir,” he said to the young Laird of Icombally, who was going to join his regiment,[Pg 15] “may Providence preserve you in battle, and especially your nether limbs. You may grow a walking-stick here, but you must import a wooden leg.” At Dunsinane the old prejudice broke out. “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “Macbeth was an idiot; he ought to have known that every wood in Scotland might be carried in a man’s hand. The Scotch, Sir, are like the frogs in the fable: if they had a Log they would make a King of it.”

Boswell one day expatiated at some length on the moral and religious character of his countrymen, and remarked triumphantly that there was a Cathedral at Kirkwall, and the remains of a Bishop’s Palace. “Sir,” said Johnson, “it must have been the poorest of Sees: take your Rum and Egg and Mull altogether, and they won’t provide for a Bishop.”

East India company is the worst of all company. A Lady fresh from Calcutta once endeavoured to curry Johnson’s favour by talking of nothing but howdahs, doolies, and bungalows, till the Doctor took, as usual, to tiffin. “Madam,” said he, in a tone that would have scared a tiger out of a jungle, “India’s very well for a rubber or for a bandana, or for a cake of ink, but what with its Bhurtpore, Pahlumpore, Barrackpore, Hyderapore, Singapore, and Nagpore, its Hyderabad, Astrabad, Bundlebad, Sindbad, and Guzzaratbadbad, it’s a poor and bad country altogether.”

Master M., after plaguing Miss Seward and Dr. Darwin, and a large tea party at Lichfield, said to his mother that he would be good if she would give him an apple. “My dear child,” said the parent, feeling herself in the presence of a great moralist, “you ought not to be good on any consideration of gain, for ‘virtue is its own reward.’ You ought to be good disinterestedly, and without thinking what you are to get for it.” “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson, “you are a fool; would you have the boy good for nothing?”

The same lady once consulted the Doctor on the degree of turpitude to be attached to her son’s robbing an orchard.[Pg 16] “Madam,” said Johnson, “it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen of orchards with impunity, but the very first time I climbed up an apple tree, for I was always a heavy boy, the bough broke with me, and it was called a judgment. I suppose that’s why Justice is represented with a pair of scales.”

Caleb Whitefoord, the famous punster, once inquired seriously of Dr. Johnson whether he really considered that a man ought to be transported, like Barrington, the pickpocket, for being guilty of a double meaning. “Sir,” said Johnson, “if a man means well, the more he means the better.”

“Do you never deviate?”—JOHN BULL.

IT was on the evening of the 7th of November, 18—, that I went by invitation to sup with my friend P., at his house in Highstreet, Mary-le-bone. The only other person present was a Portuguese, by name Senor Mendez, P.’s mercantile agent at Lisbon, a person of remarkably retentive memory, and most wonderful power of description. The conversation somehow turned upon the memorable great earthquake at Lisbon, in the year of our Lord——, and Senor Mendez, who was residing at that time in the Portuguese capital, gave us a very lively picture—if lively it may be called—of the horrors of that awful convulsion of nature. The picture was dreadful; the Senor’s own house, a substantial stone mansion, was rent from attic to cellar: and the steeple of his parish church left impending over it at an angle surpassing that of the famous Leaning Tower of Bologna!

[Pg 17]

The Portuguese had a wonderfully expressive countenance, with a style of narration indescribably vivid; and as I listened with the most intense interest, every dismal circumstance of the calamity became awfully distinct to my apprehension. I could hear the dreary ringing of the bells, self-tolled from the rocking of the churches; the swaying to and fro of the steeples themselves, and the unnatural heavings and swellings of the Tagus, were vividly before me. As the agitations increased, the voice of the Senor became awfully tremulous, and his seat seemed literally to rock under him. I seemed palsied, and could see from P.’s looks that he was similarly affected. To conceal his disorder, he kept swallowing large gulps from his rummer, and I followed his example.

“DO THY SPIRITING GENTLY.”

This was only the first shock;—the second soon followed, and, to use a popular expression, it made us both[Pg 18] “shake in our shoes.” Terrific, however, as it was, the third was more tremendous; the order of nature seemed reversed; the ships in the Tagus sank to the bottom, and their ponderous anchors rose to the surface; volcanic fire burst forth from the water, and water from dry ground; the air, no longer elastic, seemed to become a stupendous solid; swaying to and fro, and irresistibly battering down the fabrics of ages; hollow rumblings and moanings as from the very centre of the world, gave warning of deafening explosions, which soon followed, and seemed to shake the very stars out of the sky. All this time the powerful features of the Senor kept working, in frightful imitation of the convulsion he was describing, and the effect was horrible; I saw P. quiver like an aspen—there seemed no such thing as terra firma. Our chairs rocked under us; the floor tossed and heaved; the candles wavered, the windows clattered, and the teaspoons rang again, as our tumblers vibrated in our hands.

Senor Mendez at length concluded his narrative, and shortly took leave; I staid but a few minutes after him, just to make a remark on the appalling character of the story, and then departed myself,—little thinking, that any part of the late description was to be so speedily realised by my own experience!

The hour being late, and the servants in bed, P. himself accompanied me to the door. I ought to remark here that the day had been uncommonly serene—not a breath stirring, as was noticed on the morning of the great catastrophe at Lisbon; however, P. had barely closed the door, when a sudden and violent motion of the earth threw me from the step on which I was standing, to the middle of the pavement; I had got partly up when a second shock, as smart as the first, threw me again on the ground. With some difficulty I recovered my legs a second time, the earth in the mean time heaving about under me like the deck of a ship at sea. The street lamps, too, seemed violently agitated, and the houses nodded over me as if they[Pg 19] would fall every instant. I attempted to run, but it was impossible; I could barely keep on my feet. At one step I was dashed forcibly against the wall; at the next I was thrown into the road; as the motion became more violent I clung to a lamp-post, but it swayed with me like a rush. A great mist came suddenly on, but I could perceive people hurrying about, all staggering like drunken men; some of them addressing me, but so confusedly as to be quite unintelligible; one—a lady—passed close to me in evident alarm: seizing her hand, I besought her to fly with me from the falling houses, into the open fields; what answer she made I know not, for at that instant, a fresh shock threw me on my face with such violence as to render me quite insensible. Providentially, in this state I attracted the notice of some of the night police, who humanely deposited me, for safety, in St. Anne’s watch-house, till the following morning; when being sufficiently recovered to give a collected account of that eventful evening, the ingenious Mr. W., of the Morning Herald, was so much interested by my narrative that he kindly did me the favour of drawing it up for publication in the following form.

“WELL! I NEVER COULD KEEP MY LEGS!”

Police Intelligence.—Bow Street.

“The rain it raineth every day.”

PRIDE AND HUMILITY.

“IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS.”

[Pg 24]

A FIGURE OF SPEECH:—A BROAD SCOTCHMAN.

THE APPARITION.

A TRUE STORY.

“To keep without a reef in a gale of wind like that—Jock was the only boatman on the Firth of Tay to do it!”—

“He had sail enough to blow him over Dundee Law.”—

“She’s emptied her ballast and come up again,—with her sails all standing—every sheet was belayed with a double turn.”

I give the sense rather than the sound of the foregoing speeches, for the speakers were all Dundee ferry-boatmen, and broad Scotchmen, using the extra-wide dialect of Angus-shire and Fife.

At the other end of the low-roofed room, under a coarse white sheet, sprinkled with sprigs of rue and rosemary, dimly lighted by a small candle at the head, and another at the feet, lay the[Pg 25] object of their comments—a corpse of startling magnitude. In life, poor Jock was of unusual stature, but stretching a little, perhaps, as is usual in death, and advantaged by the narrow limits of the room, the dimensions seemed absolutely supernatural. During the warfare of the Allies against Napoleon, Jock, a fellow of some native humour, had distinguished himself by singing about the streets of Dundee, ballads, I believe his own, against old Boney. The nick-name of Ballad-Jock was not his only reward; the loyal burgesses subscribed among themselves, and made him that fatal gift, a ferry-boat, the management of which we have just heard so seriously reviewed. The catastrophe took place one stormy Sunday, a furious gale blowing against the tide, down the river—and the Tay is anything but what the Irish call “weak tay,” at such seasons. In fact, the devoted Nelson, with all sails set,—fair-weather fashion,—caught aback in a sudden gust,—after a convulsive whirl capsized, and went down in forty fathoms, taking with her two-and-twenty persons, the greater part of whom were on their way to hear the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,—even at that time highly popular,—though preaching in a small church at some obscure village, I forget the name, in Fife. After all the rest had sunk in the waters, the huge figure of Jock was observed clinging to an oar, barely afloat,—when some sufferer probably catching hold of his feet, he suddenly disappeared, still grasping the oar, which afterwards springing upright into the air, as it rose again to the surface, showed the fearful depth to which it had been carried. The body of Jock was the last found; about the fifth day, it was strangely enough deposited by the tide almost at the threshold of his own dwelling, at the Craig, a small pier or jetty, frequented by the ferry-boats. It had been hastily caught up, and in its clothes laid out in the manner just described, lying as it were in state, and the public, myself one, being freely admitted, as far as the room would hold, it was crowded by[Pg 26] fish-wives, mariners, and other shore-haunters, except a few feet next the corpse, which a natural awe towards the dead kept always vacant. The narrow death’s door was crammed with eager listening and looking heads, and by the buzzing without, there was a large surplus crowd in waiting before the dwelling for their turn to enter it.

On a sudden, at a startling exclamation from one of those nearest the bed, all eyes were directed towards that quarter. One of the candles was guttering and sputtering near the socket,—the other just twinkling out, and sending up a stream of rank smoke,—but by the light, dim as it was, a slight motion of the sheet was perceptible just at that part where the hand of the dead mariner might be supposed to be lying at his side! A scream and shout of horror burst from all within, echoed, though ignorant of the cause, by another from the crowd without. A general rush was made towards the door, but egress was impossible. Nevertheless horror and dread squeezed up the company in the room to half their former compass: and left a far wider blank between the living and the dead! I confess at first I mistrusted my sight; it seemed that some twitching of the nerves of the eye, or the flickering of the shadows, thrown by the unsteady flame of the candle, might have caused some optical delusion; but after several minutes of sepulchral silence and watching, the motion became more awfully manifest, now proceeding slowly upwards, as if the hand of the deceased, still beneath the sheet, was struggling up feebly towards his head. It is possible to conceive, but not to describe, the popular consternation,—the shrieks of women,—the shouts of men—the struggles to gain the only outlet, choked up and rendered impassable by the very efforts of desperation and fear!—Clinging to each other, and with ghastly faces that dared not turn from the object of dread, the whole assembly backed with united force against the opposite wall, with a convulsive energy that[Pg 27] threatened to force out the very side of the dwelling—when, startled before by silent motion, but now by sound,—with a smart rattle something fell from the bed to the floor, and disentangling itself from the death drapery, displayed—a large pound Crab!—The creature, with some design, perhaps sinister, had been secreted in the ample clothes of the drowned seaman, but even the comparative insignificance of this apparition gave but little alleviation to the superstitious horrors of the spectators, who appeared to believe firmly, that it was only the Evil One himself, transfigured.—Wherever the crab straddled sidelong, infirm beldame and sturdy boatman equally shrank and retreated before it,—aye, even as it changed place, to crowding closely round the corpse itself, rather than endure its diabolical contact. The crowd outside, warned by cries from within, of the presence of Mahound, had by this time retired to a respectful distance, and the crab, doing what herculean sinews had failed to effect, cleared itself a free passage through the door in a twinkling, and with natural instinct began crawling as fast as he could clapperclaw, down the little jetty before mentioned that led into his native sea. The Satanic Spirit, however disguised, seemed everywhere distinctly recognised. Many at the lower end of the Craig lept into their craft; one or two even into the water, whilst others crept as close to the verge of the pier as they could, leaving a thoroughfare—wide as “the broad path of honour,”—to the Infernal Cancer. To do him justice, he straddled along with a very unaffected unconsciousness of his own evil importance. He seemed to have no aim higher than salt water and sand, and had accomplished half the distance towards them, when a little decrepit poor old sea-roamer, generally known as “Creel Katie,” made a dexterous snatch at a hind claw, and before the Crab-Devil was aware, deposited him in her patchwork apron, with an “Hech, Sirs, what for are ye gaun to let gang siccan a braw partane?” In vain a hundred voices shouted[Pg 28] out, “Let him bide, Katie,—he’s no cannie;” fish or fiend, the resolute old dame kept a fast clutch of her prize, promising him, moreover, a comfortable simmer in the mickle pat, for the benefit of herself and that “puir silly body the gudeman:” and she kept her word. Before night the poor Devil was dressed in his shell, to the infinite horror of all her neighbours. Some even said that a black figure, with horns, and wings, and hoofs, and forky tail, in fact old Clooty himself, had been seen to fly out of the chimney. Others said that unwholesome and unearthly smells, as of pitch and brimstone, had reeked forth from the abominable thing, through door and window. Creel Kate, however, persisted, aye, even to her dying day and on her deathbed, that the Crab was as sweet a Crab as ever was supped on; and that it recovered her old husband out of a very poor low way,—adding, “And that was a thing, ye ken, the Deil a Deil in the Dub of Darkness wad hae dune for siccan a gude man, and kirk-going Christian body, as my ain douce Davie.”

Is a Blackamoor turned outside in. His skin is fair, but his lining is utter dark; his eyes are like shotten stars,—mere jellies; or like mock-painted windows since the tax upon daylight: what his mind’s eye can be, is yet a mystery with the learned, or if he hath a mental capacity at all—for, “out of sight is out of mind.”

Wherever he stands, he is antipodean, with his midnight to your noon. The brightest sunshine serves only to make him the gloomier object; like a dark house at a general illumination. When he stirs, it is like a Venetian blind, being pulled up and down by a string; he is a human kettle tied to a dog’s tail, and with much of the same tin twang in his tone. With botanists he is a species of solanum, or night-shade, whereof the berries[Pg 29] are in his eyes;—amongst painters he is only contemned, for his ignorance of clare-obscure; but by musicians marvelled at for playing, ante-sight, on an invisible fiddle. He stands against a wall with his two blank orbs, like a figure in high relief, howbeit but seldom relieved; and though he is fond of getting pence, yet he is confessedly blind to his own interest.

A MISGUIDED MAN.

In his religion he is a materialist, putting no faith but in things palpable. In politics, no visionary; in his learning a smatterer, his knowledge of all being superficial; in his age a child, being yet in leading-strings; in his life immortal, for death may lengthen his night, but can put no end to his days; in his courage, heroic, for he winks at no danger; in his pretensions humble, confessing that he is nothing, even in his own eyes; in his malady hopeless, for eyes of looking-glass would not[Pg 30] help him to see. To conclude—he is pitied by the rich, relieved by the poor, oppressed by the beadle, and horse-whipped by the fox-hunter, for not giving the view holloa!

“BE TO THEIR FAULTS A LITTLE BLIND.”

FRIENDS AWAITING A SAILOR’S RETURN.

“Twine ye, twine ye.”—SIR W. SCOTT.

IT was my good fortune once, at Charing Cross, to witness the feeding of the Boa Constrictor; rather a rare occurrence, and difficult of observation, the reptile not being remarkable for[Pg 34] the regularity of its dinner-hour; and a very considerable interval intervenes, as the world knows, between Gorge the First, and Gorge the Second, Gorge the Third, and Gorge the Fourth. I was not in time to see the serpent’s first dart at the prey; she had already twisted herself round her victim,—a living White Rabbit—who with a large dark eye gazed piteously through one of the folds, and looked most eloquently that line in Hamlet—

THE BOA AFTER A MEAL.

The Snake evidently only embraced him in a kill-him-when-I-want-him manner, just firmly enough to prevent an escape—but her lips were glued on his, in a close “Judas’ kiss.” So long a time elapsed, in this position, both as marble-still as poor old Laocoon with his leaches on, that I really began to doubt the tale of the Boa’s ability in swallowing; and to associate the hoax before me, with that of the Bottle Conjuror. The head of the snake, in fact, might have gone without difficulty into a wine-glass, and the throat, down which the rabbit was to pro[Pg 35]ceed whole, seemed not at all thicker than my thumb. In short, I thought the reported cram was nothing but stuff, and the only other visitor declared himself of my opinion: “If that ’ere little wiper swallows up the rabbit, I’ll bolt um both!” and he seemed capable of the feat. He looked like a personification of what Political Economists call the Public Consumer; or, Geoffrey Crayon’s Stout Gentleman, seen through Carpenter’s Solar Microscope; a genuine Edax Rerum; one of your devourers of legs of mutton and trimmings, for wagers: the delight of eating-houses, and the dread of ordinaries. The contrast was whimsical, between his mountain of mummy, and the slim Macaroni figure of the Snake, the reputed Glutton. However, the Boa began at last to prepare for the meal, by lubricating the muzzle of the Rabbit with her slimy tongue, and then commenced in earnest,

The process was tedious—“one swallow makes a summer”—but it gradually became apparent, from the fate of the head, that the whole body might eventually be “lost in the Serpentine.” The Reptile, indeed, made ready for the rest of the interment by an operation rather horrible. On a sudden, the living cable was observed, as a sailor would say, to haul in her slack, and with a squeeze evincing tremendous muscular power, she reduced the whole body into a compass that would follow the head with perfect ease. It was like a regular smash in business:—the poor rabbit was completely broken—and the wily winder-up of his affairs recommenced paying herself in full. It was a sorry sight and sickening. As for the Stout Gentleman, he could not control his agitation. His eyes rolled and watered; his jaws constantly yawned like a panther’s; and his hands with a convulsive movement were clasped every now and then on his stomach;—but when the whole rabbit was smothered in snake, he could[Pg 36] restrain himself no longer, and rushed out of the menagerie as if he really expected to be called upon to fulfil his rash engagement. Anxious to ascertain the true nature of the impulse, I hurried in pursuit of him, and after a short but sharp chase, I saw him dash into the British Hotel, and overheard his familiar voice—the same that had promised to swallow both Snake and Snack—bellowing out, guttural with hunger—“Here!—waiter!—Quick!—Rabbits in onions for two!”

THE GREAT SEA SERPENT DISCOVERED FROM THE MAST-HEAD.

AN ABRIDGMENT OF ALL THAT IS PLEASANT IN MAN.

A TIDE-WAITER.

SHE FROM OCEAN RISING.

KETCHING ITS PREY.

“A SOW WESTER OFF THE CAPE:—PIGS IN THE TROUGH OF THE SEA.”

“THE Nelson,” I repeated to myself, as I read that illustrious name on the dicky of the vehicle—“the Nelson.” My fancy instantly converted the coach into a first-rate, the leaders and wheelers into sea-horses, the driver into Neptunus, brandishing a trident, and the guard into a Triton blowing his wreathed shell. There was room for one on the box, so I climbed up, and took my seat beside the coachman. “Now, clap on all sail,” said I, audibly, “I am proud to be one of the crew of the great Nelson, the hero of Aboukir.”

“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said the coachman, “the Hero ain’t a booker at Mrs. Nelson’s: it goes from some other yard.” Gracious powers! what a tumble down stairs for an idea! As for mine, it pitched on its head, as stunned and stupefied as if it had rolled down the whole flight at the Monument. “I have made a Bull, indeed,” I exclaimed, as the noted inn at Aldgate occurred to my memory; “but we are the slaves of association,” I continued, addressing the coachman, “and the name of Nelson identified itself with the Union Jack.”

“I really can’t say,” replied the coachman, very civilly, “whether the name of Mrs. Nelson is down to the Slave Associations or not: but as for Jack, if you mean Jack Bunce, he’s been off the Union these six months. Too fond of the Bar, Sir” (here he tipped me the most significant of winks),[Pg 49] “to keep his seat on the Bench.”

“I alluded, my good fellow, to Nelson, the wonder of the maritime world—the dauntless leader when yard was opposed to yard, and seas teemed with blood.”

“We’re all right—as right as a trivet,” said the coachman, after a pause of perplexity; “I thought our notions were getting rather wide apart, and that one of us wanted putting straight; but I see what you mean, and quite go along with your opinion, step for step. To be sure, Mrs. Nelson has done the world and all for coaching; and the Wonder is the crack of all the drags in London, and so is the Dauntless, let yard turn out agin yard, as you say, any day you like. And as for leaders, and teams full of blood, there’s as pretty a sprinkling of blood in the tits I’m now tooling of—”

“The vehicles of the proprietress, and the appearance of the animals, with their corresponding caparisons,” said I, “have often gratified my visual organs and elicited my mental plaudits.”

“That’s exactly what I says,” replied the coachman, very briskly, “there’s no humbug nor no nonsense about Mrs. Nelson. You never see her a standing a-foaming and fretting in front o’ the Bank, with a regular mob round her, and looking as if she’d bolt with the Quicksilver. And you never see her painted all over her body, wherever there’s room for ’em, with Saracen Heads, and Blue Boars, and Brown Bears, from her roller bolts to her dicky and hind boot. She’s plain and neat, and nothin’ else—and is fondest of having her body of a claret colour, pick’d out with white, and won’t suffer the Bull, no where, except on the back-gammon board.”

I know not how much further the whimsical description might have gone, if a strapping, capless, curly-headed lass, running with all her might and main, had not addressed a screaming retainer to the coachman. With some difficulty he pulled up, for he had been tacitly giving me a proof that the craft of his Nelson was a first-rate, with regard to its rate of travelling.

[Pg 50]

“If you please, Mr. Stevens,” said the panting damsel, holding up something towards the box—“if you please, Mr. Stevens, mother’s gone to Lonnon—in the light cart—and will you be so kind as to give her—her linchpin.”

Mr. Stevens took the article with a smile, and I fancied with a sly squeeze of the hand that delivered it.

“If such a go had been anyone’s but your mother’s, Fanny,” he slyly remarked, “I should have said it was somebody in love.” The Dispatch was too strictly timed to allow of further parley; the horses broke, or were rather broken, into a gallop, in pursuit of the mother of Fanny, the Flower of Waltham; and the pin secretly acting as a spur, we did the next five mile in something like twenty minutes.

In spite, however, of this unusual speed, we never overtook Mrs. Merryweather and her cart till we arrived at the Basing-House, where we found her chirping over a cup of ale; as safe and sound as if linchpins had never been invented; in fact, she made as light of the article, when it was handed to her, as if it had been only a pin out of her gown!

FANCY PORTRAIT—MRS. NELSON.

“Well, I must say one thing for Mrs. Nelson,” said our coachman, as he resumed his seat on the box,[Pg 51] “and that’s this. There’s no pinning at the Bull. She sets her face against everything but the patent boxes. She may come to a runaway with a bolter—or drop the ribbons—or make a mistake in clearing a gate, by being a little lushy—but you’ll never see Mrs. Nelson lying flat on her side in the middle of the road, with her insides gone to smash, and her outsides well distributed, because she’s been let go out of the yard without one of her pins.”

THE STAMP DUTY ON SCOTCH LINEN.

SONNET
TO A SCOTCH GIRL, WASHING LINEN AFTER HER COUNTRY FASHION.

GENTLE READERS,

For the present month, there must be what Dr. Johnson called a solution of continuity in my “Literary Reminiscences.” Confined to my chamber by what ought to be termed roomatism—then attacked by my old livery complaint—and finally, by a minor, but troublesome malady, the Present has too much prevailed over the Past, to let me indulge in any retrospective reviews. In such cases, on the stage, when a Performer is unable to support his character, a substitute is usually found to read the part; but, unfortunately, in the present case there is no part written, and consequently it cannot be read. But apropos of theatricals—there is an anecdote on point.

In the Olympic days of the great Elliston, there was one evening a tremendous tumult at his Theatre, in consequence of the absence of a favourite performer. One man in the pit—a Butcher—was especially vociferous in his cry for “Carl! Carl! Carl!” Others called for the Manager, who duly made his appearance, and black as the weather looked, he was the very sort of pilot to weather the storm. With one of his princely bows[Pg 53] he proceeded to address the House. “Ladies and Gentlemen—but by your leave I will address myself to a single individual. I will ask that gentleman (pointing to the vociferous Butcher) what right he has to demand the appearance of Mr. Carl?”

“’Cos,” said the Butcher, “’cos he’s down in the Bill.” Such an undeniable answer would have staggered any other Manager than Elliston, but he was not easily to be disconcerted. “Because he is down in the bill!” he echoed, in a tone of the loftiest indignation: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Mr. Carl, so unseasonably, so vociferously and so unfeelingly called for, is at this very moment labouring under severe illness—he is in bed. And let me ask, is a man, a fellow-creature, a human being, to be torn from his couch, from his home, on a cold night, from the affectionate attentions of his wife and family, at the risk of his valuable life perhaps, to go through a fatiguing part because he happens to be DOWN IN THE BILL?” [Cries of “Shame, shame!” from all parts of the house.] “And yet, ladies and gentlemen, there stands a man—if I may call him so—a Butcher, that for his own selfish gratification—the amusement of a few short hours—would risk the very existence of a deserving member of society, a good husband, father, friend, and one of your favourite actors, and all, forsooth, because he is DOWN IN THE BILL!” [Universal hooting, with cries of “Turn him out.”] “By all means,” acquiesced the Manager, with one of his best bows—and the indignant pittites actually hooted and kicked their own champion out of the theatre, as something more than a Butcher, and less than a Christian.

Now I am myself, gentle readers, in the same predicament with Mr. Carl. Like him I am an invalid—and like him I am unfortunately down in the Bill. It would not become me to set forth my own domestic or social virtues, or to hint what sort of gap my loss would make in society—still less would it consist with modesty to compare myself with a favourite actor—but as[Pg 54] a mere human being I throw myself on your mercy, and ask, in common charity, would you have had me leave my warm bed, to shiver in a printer’s damp sheets, at the risk of my reputation perhaps, and for the mere amusement of some half hour, or more probably for no amusement at all—simply because I was “down in the Bill?”

But there is no such Butcher, or Butcheress, or little Butcherling, amongst you; and by your good leave and patience, the instalment of my Reminiscences that is over due, shall be paid with interest in the NEXT NUMBER.

THE TOP OF HIS PROFESSION.

SONNET TO A DECAYED SEAMAN.

Dreadful Fire—Destruction of both Houses of Parliament—The Speaker’s House gutted—Reports of Incendiarism.

IT is our unexpected lot to announce that the Houses of Lords and Commons, so often threatened with combustion, are in a state of actual ignition. At this moment, both fabrics are furiously burning. We are writing this paragraph without the aid of lamp or candles; by the mere reflection of the flames. Nothing is known of the origin of the fire, although it is throwing a light upon everything else.—Evening Star.

The devouring element which destroyed Covent Garden and Drury Lane, the Royalty and the Pantheon, has made its appearance on a new stage, equally devoted to declamatory elocution. St. Stephen’s Chapel is in flames! The floor which was trodden by the eloquent legs of a Fox, a Burke, a Pitt, and a Sheridan, is reduced to a heap of ashes; and the benches which sustained the Demosthenic weight of a Wyndham, a Whitbread, and a Wilberforce, are a mere mass of charcoal. The very roof that re-echoed the classicalities of Canning is nodding to its fall. In Parliamentary language, Fire is in possession of the House:[Pg 56] the Destructive spirit is on its legs, and the Conservative principle can offer but a feeble opposition.—Daily Post.

The blow is struck. What we have long foreseen has come to pass. Incendiarism triumphs! The whole British Empire, as represented by the three estates, is in a blaze! The Throne, the Lords, and the Commons, are now burning. The cycle is complete. The spirit of Guy Fawkes revives in 1834!

England seems to have changed places with Italy; London with Naples. We stand hourly on the brink of a crater; every step we take is on a solfaterra—not a land of Sol Fa, as some musical people would translate it; but a frail crust, with a treacherous subsoil of ardent brimstone! At length the eyes of our rulers are opened; but we must ask, could nothing short of such an eruption awaken them to a sense of the perilous state of the country? For weeks, nay, months past, at the risk of being considered alarmists, we have called the attention of the legislature and magistracy to a variety of suspicious symptoms and signs of the times, and in particular to the multiplied chemical inventions, for the purpose of obtaining instantaneous lights. Well are certain matches or fire-boxes called Lucifers, for they may be applied to the most diabolical purposes! The origin of the fire cannot raise the shadow of a doubt in any reasonable mind. Accident is out of the question. Tell us not of tallies. We have just tried our milk-woman’s, and it contained so much water, that nothing could make it ignite.—Britannic Guardian.

The Houses of Parliament are in flames. We shall stop the press to give full particulars. Our reporters are at the spot, and Mons. C——, the celebrated Salamander, is engaged to give a description of the blazing interiors, exclusively for this journal.—Daily Times.

From a Correspondent.

On Thursday evening, towards seven o’clock, I was struck by the singular appearance of the moon silvering the opposite[Pg 57] chimneys with a blood-red light, a lunar phenomenon, which I conceived belonged only to our theatres. It speedily occurred to me that there must be a conflagration in my vicinity, and after a little hunting by scent as well as sight, I found myself in front of the Houses of Lords and Commons, which were burning with a rapidity and brilliancy that I make bold to say did not always characterise their proceedings. By favour of my natural assurance, which seemed to identify me with the firemen, I was allowed to pass through the lines of guards and policemen, who surrounded the blazing pile, and was thus enabled to select a favourable position for overlooking the whole scene. It was an imposing sight. The flames rose from the Peers’ in a volume, as red as the Extraordinary Red Book, and the House of Commons was not at all behind-hand in voting supplies of timber and other combustibles. Westminster Hall reminded me vividly of a London cry, “Hall hot, Hall hot,” that was familiar in our childhood—and the Gothic architecture of the Abbey seemed unusually florid. Instead of dingy stone, the venerable pile appeared to be built of the well-baked brick of the Elizabethan age. Indeed, so red-hot was its aspect, that it led to a ludicrous misapprehension on the part of the populace. A procession, bearing several male and female figures in a state of insensibility, naturally gave rise to the most painful conjectures, inferring loss of human life by the devouring element, but I have reason to believe it was only the Dean and Chapter saving the Wax-Work. As far as my own observation went, the first object carried out certainly bore a strong resemblance to General Monk.

In the meantime a select party had effected an entrance into the Hall, but not without some serious delay, occasioned, I believe, by somebody within bringing the wrong key, that belonged to a tea-caddy. However, at last they entered, and I followed their example. The first person I beheld was the[Pg 58] veteran Higginbottom, so unfairly, but facetiously, put to death by the authors of the Rejected Addresses; for no man is more alive to his duty. But he was sadly hampered. First came one Hon. Gent. said to be Mr. Morrison, and insisted on directing the Hose department; and next arrived a noble Lord from Crockford’s, who wouldn’t sit out, but persisted in taking a hand, and playing, though every body agreed that he played too high. I mention this, because some of the journals have imputed mismanagement to the engines, and have insinuated that the pipes wanted organising; indeed, I myself overheard a noble director of the Academy of Music lamenting that the firemen did not “play in concert.”

PLAYING AT HAZARD.

The same remark applies with greater force to the House of Commons. Here all was confusion worse confounded, and Higginbottom’s station was enviable, compared with that of[Pg 59] some of the poor fellows in St. Stephen’s Chapel. A considerable number of members had arrived, and without any attention to their usual parliamentary rules, were all making motions at once, which nobody seconded. The most prominent, I was informed, were Mr. Hume, Mr. O’Connell, Mr. Attwood, Mr. Buckingham, Mr. Pease, Sir Andrew, and Mr. Buxton—the latter almost covered with blacks. The clamour was terrific, and I really expected that the poor foremen who held the pipes would be torn in pieces. Every body wanted to command the Coldstream. Nothing but shouts of “Here! here! here!” answered like an Irish echo by cries of “There! there! there!” “Oh, save my savings!”—“My poor, Poor Bill!” “More water—more water for my Drunkenness!” “Work awa, lads, work awa—it’s no the Sabbath, and ye may just play at what ye like!”

In pleasing contrast to this tumult, was the unusual and cordial unanimity of the members of both Houses, in rescuing whatever was portable from the flames. It was a delightful novelty to see the Lords helping the Commons in whatever they moved or carried. No party spirit—no Whig, pulling at one leg of the table, whilst a Tory tugged at another in the opposite direction. They seemed to belong to the Hand-in-Hand. Peers and Commoners were alike seen burthened with loads of papers or furniture. Mr. Calvert, in particular, worked like any porter. Of course, in rescuing the papers and parchments, there was no time for inspecting their contents, and some curious results were the consequence. Every body remembers the pathetic story in the Tatler, of the lover who saved a strange lady from a burning theatre, under the idea that he was preserving the mistress of his affections, and some similar mistakes are currently reported to have occurred at the late conflagration—and equally to the chagrin of the parties. I go by hearsay, and cannot vouch for the facts, but it is said that the unpopular Six Acts,[Pg 60] including what I believe is called the Gagging Act, were actually preserved by Mr. Cobbett. Mr. O’Connell saved the Irish Coercion Bill, whilst the Reform Bill was snatched like “a brand out of the fire,” by a certain noble Duke, who resolutely set his face against it in all its stages! Amongst others, Mr. Ricardo saved an old tattered flag, which he thought was “the standard of value.”

CRIBBAGE:—ONE FOR HIS NOB AND TWO FOR HIS HEELS.

However deficient in general combination, and concentration of energies, individual efforts were beyond all praise. The instances of personal exertion and daring were numerous. Mr. Rice worked amidst the flames till he was nearly baked; and everybody expected that Mr. Pease would be parched. The greatest danger was from the melted metal pouring down from the windows and roof. The heads of some of the Hon. Gentle[Pg 61]men were literally nothing but lead. Great apprehensions were entertained of the falling in of one of the walls, which eventually gave way, but fortunately everybody had retreated on the timely warning of a gentleman, Mr. O’Connell, I believe, who declared that he saw a Rent in it.

I did not enter the House of Lords, which was now one mass of glowing fire, but directed my attention towards the Speaker’s mansion, which was partially burning. The garden behind was nearly filled with miscellaneous property—and numbers of well-dressed gentlemen were every moment rushing into the house, from which they issued again, laden with spits, sauce-pans, and other culinary implements. I, myself, saw one zealous individual thus encumbered—with a stew-pan on his head, the meat-screen under one arm, the dripping-pan under the other, the frying-pan in his right hand, the grid-iron in his left, and the rolling-pin in his mouth. Indeed, it is said that every article in the kitchen was saved down to the salt-box; and the cook declares that such was the anxiety to save her she was “cotched up in twelve gentlemen’s arms, and never felt her feet till the corner of Abingdon Street.”

The whole of the Foot Guards were in attendance, as well as a great number of the police, but the thieves had mustered in great force, and there was a good deal of plundering, which was however checked temporarily by a gentleman said to be one of the members and magistrates for Essex, who jumped up on a railing and addressed the populace to the following effect, “How do you hall dare!”

The origin of the fire is involved in much mystery; nor is it correctly ascertained by whom it was first discovered. Some say that one of the serjeants, in taking up the insignia, was astonished to find the mace as hot as ginger. Others relate that a Mr. Spell, or Shell, or Snell, whilst viewing the House, although no dancer, began suddenly, and in his boots, to the[Pg 62] utter amazement of his companions and Mrs. Wright, the housekeeper, to jump and caper like a bear upon a hotted floor. This story certainly seems to countenance a report that the mischief originated in the warming apparatus, an opinion that is very current, but, for my own part, I cannot conceive that the Collective Wisdom, which knows how to lay down laws for us all, should not know how to lay down flues. Rumours of Incendiarism are also very generally prevalent, and stories are in circulation of the finding of half-burnt matches and other combustibles. But these facts rest on very frail foundations. The links said to have been found in the Speaker’s garden have turned out to be nothing but German sausages; and another cock-and-a-bull that has got abroad will probably come to no better end. A Mr. Dudley affirms that he smelt the fire before it broke out, at Cooper’s Hill; but such olfactories are too much like manufactories to be believed.

I am, Sir, your most obedient Servant,
X. Y. Z.

Another Account.

The writer of these lines, who resides in Lambeth, was first awakened to a sense of conflagration by a cry of “Fire” from a number of persons who were running in the direction of Westminster Bridge. Owning myself a warm enthusiast on the subject of ignition, and indeed not having missed a fire for the last fifty years, except one, and that was only a chimney, it may be supposed the exclamation in question had an electric effect. We are all the slaves of some physical bias, strange as it may appear to others with opposite tendencies. It is recorded of some great marshal that he disliked music, but testified the liveliest pleasure at a salvo of artillery or a roll of thunder, and the rumble of an engine has the same effect on the author of these lines. To say I am a guebre, or fire-worshipper, is only to confess the truth. I have a sort of observatory erected on[Pg 63] the roof of my house, from which, if there be a break-out within the circuit of the metropolis, it may be discovered, and before going to bed I invariably visit this look-out.

Every man has his hobby-horse, and, figuratively speaking, mine was always kept harnessed and ready to run to a fire with the first engine. Many a time I have arrived before the turncocks, though I perhaps had to traverse half London, and I scarcely remember an instance that I did not appear long before the water. Habit is second nature—I verily believe I could sniff a conflagration by instinct; and if I was not, I ought to have been, the trainer of the firemen’s dog, which at present attracts so much of the public attention, by his eager running along with the Sun, the Globe, the British, and the Hand-in-Hand.

“’TIS DISTANCE LENDS ENCHANTMENT TO THE VIEW.”

Of course I have seen a great many fires in my time—Rotherhithe, the theatres, the Custom-house, &c. &c. I remember in the days of Thistlewood and Co., when the metropolis was expected to be set on fire, I slept for three weeks in my clothes in order to be ready for the first alarm; for I had the good fortune to witness the great riots of 1780, when no less than eight fires were blazing at once, and a lamentable sight it was.[Pg 64] I say lamentable, because it was impossible to be present at them all at the same time; but my good genius directed me to Langdale’s the Distiller, which made (excuse the vulgar popular phrase) a very satisfactory flare-up.

The Rotherhithe fire, not the recent little job, but some fifteen or twenty years ago, was also on a grand scale, and very lasting. The engine-pipes were wilfully cut; and I remember some of my friends rallying me on my well-known propensity, jocularly accusing me of lending my knife and my assistance. The Custom-house was a disappointment; it certainly cleared itself effectually, but it was done by day-light, and consequently the long-room fell short of my anticipations. Drury-lane and Covent-garden were better: but I have observed generally that theatres burn with more attention to stage effect. They avoid the noon; a dark night to a fire is like the black letters in a benefit-bill, setting off the red ones.

The destruction of the Kent Indiaman I should like to have witnessed, but contrary to the opinion of many experienced amateurs I conceive the Dartford Mills must have been a failure. Powder magazines make very indifferent conflagrations; they are no sooner on fire than they are off,—all is over before you know where you are, and there is no getting under, which quite puts you out. But fires, generally, are not what they used to be. What with gas, and new police, steam, and one cause or other, they have become what one might call slow explosions. A body of flame bursts from all the windows at once, and before B 25 can call fi-er in two syllables, the roof falls in, and all is over. It was not so in my time. First a little smoke would issue from a window-shutter, like the puff of a cigar, and after a long spring of his rattle, the rheumatic watchman had time to knock double and treble knocks, from No. 9 to No. 35, before a spark made its appearance out of the chimney-pot. The Volunteers had time to assemble under arms, and muffle their[Pg 65] drums, and the bell-ringers to collect in the belfry, and pull an alarm peal backwards. The parish engines even, although pulled along by the pursy churchwardens, and the paralytic paupers, contrived to arrive before the fire fairly broke out in the shape of a little squib-like eruption from the garret-window. The affrighted family, fourteen in number, all elaborately drest in their best Sunday clothes, saved themselves by the street-door, according to seniority, the furniture was carefully removed, and after an hour’s pumping, the fire was extinguished without extending beyond the room where it originated, namely a bed-room on the second floor. Such was the progress in my time of a fire, but it is the fashion now to sacrifice everything to pace. Look at our race-horses, and look at our fox-hounds,—and I will add look at our conflagrations. All that is cared for is a burst—no matter how short, if it be but rapid. The devouring element never sits down now to a regular meal—it pitches on a house and bolts it.

But I am wandering from the point. The announcement of both Houses of Parliament being in flames thrilled through every fibre. It seemed to promise what I may call a crowning event to the Conflagrationary Reminiscences of an Octogenarian. I snatched up my hat, and rushed into the street, at eighty years of age, with the alacrity of eighteen, when I ran from Highgate to Horselydown, to be present at the gutting of a ship chandler’s. As the bard says—

and I could almost have supposed myself a fireman belonging to the Phœnix. My first step into the street discouraged me, the moonlight was so brilliant, and in such cases the most splendid blaze is somewhat “shorn of its beams.” But a few steps reassured me. Even at the Surrey side of the river the sparks and burning particles were falling like flakes of snow—I mean of course the red snow formerly discovered by Captain[Pg 66] Ross, and the light was so great that I could have read the small print of the Police Gazette with the greatest ease, only I don’t take it in. I of course made the best of my way towards the scene, but the crowd was already so dense that I could only attain a situation on the Strand opposite Cotton Gardens, up to my knees in mud. Both Houses of Parliament were at this time in a blaze, and no doubt presented as striking objects of conflagration as the metropolis could offer. I say, “no doubt,”—forgetting jammed against a barge with my back towards the fire, I am unable to state anything on my own authority as an eye-witness, excepting that the buildings on the Surreyside exhibited a glowing reflection for some hours. At last the flowing of the tide caused the multitude to retreat, and releasing me from my retrospective position allowed me to gaze upon the ruins. By what I hear, it was a most imposing sight—but in spite of my Lord Althorpe, I cannot help thinking that Westminster Hall, with its long range, would have made up an admirable fire. Neither can I agree with the many that it was an Incendiary Act, that passed through both houses so rapidly. To enjoy the thing, a later hour and a darker night would certainly have been chosen. Fire-light and moon-light do not mix well:—they are best neat.

I am, Sir, Yours, &c.,
SENEX.

Various Accounts.

WE are concerned to state that Sir Jacob Jubb the new member for Shrops was severely burnt, by taking his seat in the House, on a bench that was burning under him. The danger of his situation was several times pointed out to him, but he replied that his seat had cost him ten thousand pounds, and he wouldn’t quit. He was at length removed by force.—Morning Ledger.

A great many foolish anecdotes of the fire are in circulation.[Pg 67] One of our contemporaries gravely asserts that the Marquis of Culpepper was the last person who left the South Turret, a fact we beg leave to question, for the exquisite reason that noble lord alluded to is at present at Constantinople.—The Real Sun.

We are enabled to state that the individual who displayed so much coolness in the South Turret was Captain Back.—The Public Journal.

FANCY PORTRAIT:—CAPTAIN BACK.

It is said that considerable interest was evinced by the members of the House of Commons who were present at the fire, as to the fate of their respective Bills. One honourable gentleman, in particular, was observed anxiously watching the last scintillations of some burnt paper. “Oh, my Sabbath Observances!” he exclaimed, “There’s an end of religion! There go the Parson and Clerk!”—Public Diary.

The Earl of M. had a very narrow escape. His lordship was on the point of kicking a bucket when a labourer rushed forward and snatched it out of the way. The individual’s name is M’Farrel. We understand he is a sober, honest, hard-working man, and has two wives, and a numerous family; the eldest not above a year old.—Daily Chronicle.

The exclamation of a noble lord, high in office, who was very active at the fire, has been very incorrectly given. The words were as follows:—“Blow the Commons! let ’em flare up—but oh,—for a save-all! a save-all.”—Morning News.

[Pg 68]

The public attention has been greatly excited by the extraordinary statement of a commercial gentleman, that he smelt the fire at the Cock and Bottle, in Coventry. He asserts that he mentioned the fact in the commercial room to a deaf gentleman, and likewise to a dumb waiter, but neither have any recollection of the circumstance. He has been examined before the Common Council, who have elicited that he actually arrived at Coventry on the night in question, by the Tallyho, and the near leader of that coach has been sent for by express.—New Monitor.

We were in error in stating that the Atlas was the first engine at the scene of action. So early as five o’clock Mr. Alderman A. arrived with his own garden engine, and began immediately to play upon the Thames.—British Guardian.

It must have struck everyone who witnessed the operations in the House of Commons, that there was a lamentable want of “order! order! order!” A great many gentlemen succeeded in making pumps of themselves, without producing any check on the flames. The conduct of the military also was far from unexceptionable. On the arrival of the Coldstream at the fire they actually refused to fall in. Many declined to stand at ease on the burning rafters—but what is the public interest to a private?—Public Advertiser.

Monsieur C.’s Account. (Exclusive.)

WHEN I am come first to the fire it was not long burnt up; and I was oblige to walk up and down the floor to keep myself warm. At last, I take my seat on the stove, quite convenient to look about. In the House of Commons there was nobody, and I am all alone. The first thing I observe was a great many rats, ratting about—but they did not known which way to turn. So they were all burnt dead. The flames grew very fast; and I am interested very much with the seats, how they burned, quite different from one another. Some seats made what you call a great splutter, and popped and bounced, and some other seats[Pg 69] made no noise at all. Mr. Bulwer’s place burned of a blue colour; Mr. Buckstone’s turned quite black; and there was one made a flame the colour of a drab. I observe one green flame and one orange, side by side, and they hiss and roar at one another very furious. The gallery cleared itself quite quickly, and the seat of Messieurs the reporters, exploded itself like a cannon of forty-eight pounds. The speaking chair burnt without any sound at all.

When everything is quite done in the Commons I leave them off, and go to the House of Lords, where the fire was all in one sheet, and almost the whole of its inside burnt out. I was able in this room to take off my great coat. I could find nothing to be saved except one great ink-stand, that was red hot, and which I carry away in my two hands. Likewise here, as well as in the Commons, I bottled up several bottles of smoke, to distribute afterwards, at five guineas a-piece, and may be more; for I know the English people admire such things, and are fond after reliques, like a madness almost. I did not make a long stop, for whenever I was visible, the pompiers was so foolish as play water upon me, and I was afraid of a catch-cold. In fact, when I arrive at home, I find myself stuffed in my head, and fast in my chest, and my throat was a little horse. I am going for it into a bath of boiling water, and cannot write any more at full length.

A Letter to a Labouring Man.

BUSHELL,

When you made a holiday last Whitsuntide to see the Sights of London, in your way to the Waxwork and Westminster Abbey, you probably noticed a vast pile of buildings in Palace Yard, and you stood and scratched that shock head of yours, and wondered whose fine houses they were. Seeing you to be a country clodpole, no doubt some well-dressed vagabond, by way of putting a hoax upon the hawbuck, told you that in those[Pg 70] buildings congregated all the talent, all the integrity and public spirit of the country—that beneath those roofs the best and wisest, and the most honest men to be found in three kingdoms, met to deliberate and enact the most wholesome, and just, and judicious laws for the good of the nation. He called them the oracles of our constitution, the guardians of our rights, and the assertors of our liberties. Of course, Bushell, you were told all this; but nobody told you, I dare say, that within those walls your master had lifted up his voice, and delivered the only sound, rational, and wholesome, upright, and able speeches that were ever uttered in St. Stephen’s Chapel. No, nobody told you that. But when I come home, Bushell, I will lend you all my printed speeches, and when you have spelt them, and read them, and studied them, and got them by heart, bumpkin as you are,[Pg 71] Bushell, you will know as much of legislation as all our precious members together.

“OUR CONSTITUTION’S GONE!”

Well, Bushell, the fine houses you stood gaping at are burnt down, gutted, as the vulgar call it, and nothing is left but the bare walls. You saw Farmer Gubbins’ house, or, at least, the shell of it, after the fire there: well, the Parliament Houses are exactly in the same state. There is news for you! and now, Bushell, how do you feel? Why, if the well-dressed vagabond told you the truth, you feel as if you had had a stroke—for all the British Constitution is affected, and you are a fraction of it, that is to say, a British subject. Your bacon grows rusty in your mouth, and your table-beer turns to vinegar on your palate. You cannot sleep at night, or work by day. You have no heart for anything. You can hardly drag one clouted shoe after another. And how do you look? Why, as pale as a parsnip, and as thin as a hurdle, and your carroty locks stand bolt upright as if you had just met old Lawson’s ghost with his head under his arm. I say thus you must feel and look, Bushell, if what the well-dressed vagabond told you is the truth. But is that the case? No. You drink your small-beer with a sigh and smack of delight; and you bolt your bacon with a relish, as if, as the virtuous Americans say, you could “go the whole hog.” Your clouted shoes clatter about as if you were counting hobnails with the Lord Mayor, and you work like a young horse, or an old ass, and at night you snore like an oratorio of jews’ harps. Your face is as bold and ruddy as the Red Lion’s. Your carroty locks lie sleek upon your poll, and as for poor old Lawson’s ghost, you could lend him flesh and blood enough to set him up again in life. But what, say you, does all this tend to? I will tell you, Bushell. There are a great many well-dressed vagabonds, besides the one you met in Palace Yard, who would persuade a poor man that a House of Lords or Commons is as good to him as his bread, beer, beef, bacon, bed, and breeches; and therefore I[Pg 72] address this to you, Bushell, to set such notions to rights by an appeal to your own back and belly. And now I will tell you what you shall do. You shall go three nights a week to the Red Lion (when your work is done), and you may score up a pint of beer, at my cost, each time. And when the parson, or the exciseman, or the tax-gatherer, or any such gentry, begin to talk of that deplorable great burning, and the national calamity, and such-like trash, you shall pull out my letter and read to them—I say, Bushell, you shall read this letter to them, twice over, loudly and distinctly, and tell them from me, that the burning of twenty Parliament Houses wouldn’t be such a national calamity as a fire at No. 1, Bolt Court.

To Mary Price, Fenny Hall, Lincolnshire.

O Mary,—I am writing in such a quiver, with my art in my mouth, and my tung sticking to it. For too hole hours Ive bean Doin nothink but taking on and going off, I mean into fits, or crying and blessing goodness for my miraclus escape. This day week I wear inwallopped in flams, and thinkin of roth to cum, and fire evverlasting. But thenks to Diving Providings, hear I am, althowgh with loss of wan high brew scotched off, a noo cap and my rite shew. But I hav bean terrifid to deth. Wen I was ate, or it mite be nine, I fell on the stow, and hav had a grate dred of fire evver since. Gudge then how low I felt at the idear of burning along with the Lords and Communer’s. It as bean a Warnin, and never, no, never never never agin will I go to Clandestiny parties behind Mississis backs. I now see my errer, but temtashun prevaled, tho the clovin fut of the Wicked Wan had a hand in it all: Oh Mary, down on yure marrybones, and bless yure stars for sitiating you in a loanly stooped poky place, wear you cant be lead into liteness and gayty, if you was evver so inclind. Fore wipping willies and a[Pg 73] windmill is a dullish luck out, shure enuff, but its better then moor ambishus prospex, and stairing at a grate fire, like a suckin pig, till yure eyes is reddy to drop out of yure hed!

“WHY DON’T THE MEN PROPOSE?”

You no wen Lady Manners is absent, a certin person allways givs a good rowt:—and I had a card in Coarse. I went verry ginteel, my Cloke cost I wont say Wot, and a hat and fethers to match. But it warnt to be. After takin off my things, I had barely set down, wen at the front dore there cums a dubble nock without any end to it, and a ring of the bell at the saim time, like a triangle keepin cumpany with a big drum. As soon as the door were opened a man with a pail face asked for the buckits, and that was the fust news we had of the fire. Oh Mary, never trust to the mail sects! They are all Alick from the Botcher and Backer that flurts at the front dore, down to the deer dissevers you throw away yure arts upon. For all their fine purfessions, they are only filling your ears with picrust, they make trifles of yure afections, and destroy yure comfits for life. They think no moore of parjuring themselvs then I do of sweeping the earth. If yure wise you will sit yure face agin all menkind and luv nonsense, as I meen to in futer, or may be, wen you are dreeming of brid cake and wite fevers, you may find yureself left with nothink but breeches of prommis. John Futman is a proof in pint. Menny tims Ive give him a hiding at number fore, and he all[Pg 74]ways had the best of the lardur at our stolin meatings, and God nose Ive offun alloud him to idelize me wen I ort to have bean at my wurks, besides larning to rite for his sack. Twenty housis afire ort not to hav abaited his warmth, insted of witch to jump up at the fust allurm and run away, leaving me to make my hone shifts. A treu luver wood have staid to shear my fat. O Mary, if ever there was a terryfickle spectikle that was won. Flams before and flams behind, and flams overhead. Sich axing and hollowing out, and mobbing and pumpin, and cussing and swaring, and the peple’s rushes into the Hous purvented all gitting out. For my hone parts, I climed up the dresser, and skreeked, but nobbody was man enuff to purtect. Men ant what they was. I am sick of the retches! It used to be femails fust, but now its furniter. I fully thort one gintleman was comin to cotch me up in arms, but he prefered the fish kettle. As for the sogers they marcht off to the wind seller and the pantry, ware they maid beleave to preserve the gusberry gam. How I was reskewd at last Lord nose, for my hed was unsensible tell I found meself setten on the pickid pinted ralings of St. Margret’s Church, with my fethers all frizzild, and a shew off. But of all lossis, my ridicule was most serius, for it had my puss in it.

How and ware it broke out is a mistery. Sum say both Howses was under minded. Sum say the Common members got over heatid in there fluency. A grate deal of property was burned, in spit of Lord Allthorp, who ingaged every cotch, cab, and gobbing porter as conveyancers. Westmunster may thenk his Lordship it did not lose its All. They say the Lords and Communs was connectid with a grate menny historicle associashuns, wich of coarse will hav to make good all dammage.

Fortnately, the Speker’s mornin, noon, and evning services of plait was not at home, or it mite hav sufferd, for they say goold and silver as stud the fire verry well, melted down when it got[Pg 75] furthur off. Tauking of plait a gentilman, who giv his card, Mr. William Soames, were verry kind and partickler in his inquerries efter Mr. Speker’s vallybles. I hope he will hav a place givn him for his indevvers.

Ware the poor burnt-out creturs will go noboddy nose. Sum say Exter Hall, sum say the Refudge for the Destitut, and sum say the King will lend them his Bensh to set upon! All I no is, I’ve had a frite that will go with me to my grave. I am allways snifing fire by day and dreeming on it by nite. Ony last Fryday I allarmd the hole naberhood by screaching out of winder for the warter to be plugged up. Liting fires, or striking lite, or making tindur, throes me into fits.

A REFINED WOMAN.

I shall nevver be the womman I was; but that is no excus for John’s unconstancy. I don’t dare to take my close off to go to bed, and I practice clambering up and down by a rop in case, and I giv police M 25 a shillin now and than to keep a specious eye to number fore, and be reddy to ketch anny won[Pg 76] in his harms. But it cums to munny, and particly givin the ingin keeper a pint of bear from time to time, and drams to the turncox: where there’s nabers fires will happen, howevver cerefull and precocius you may be youreself. I dred our too nex dores; number three is a Gurmin fammily, and them orrid forriners think nothink of smocking siggars in bed, witch will ketch sum day to a curtainty. Number fiv is wus; since his wif’s deth Mr. Sanders has betuck himself to comicle studis, and offin has a littel blo up amung his pistles and morters. O! Mary, how happy is them as livs lick you, as the song says, “Fur from the buzzy aunts of men.” If yu’re inflamd its nobbody’s folt but youre hone. Pray take the gratest car. Have sure eyes about you, and luck out for sparks; watever the men may say, don’t allow backerpips or long snufs, and let evvery boddy be thurrowly put out. Don’t neglect to rake out evvery nite, see that evvery sole in the hows is turnd down or xtinguished, and allways blo yureself out befour you go to yure piller. Thenk gudness you nevver larnd to reed, and therefor will not take anny bucks to bed with you. Allways ware stuff or woollin, insted of lite cottons and gingums, in case of the coles throwin out coffens or pusses, by witch munny persons gains their ends. In case of yure pettycots catchin don’t forgit standin on yure hed, as recommended by the Human Society, becoz fire burns uppards, but its a posishun as requiers practis. Have yure chimbly swept reglar wonce a munth, and wen visiters cum neveer put hot coles in the warmin pan, for fear you forgit and leave it in the spair bed. Remember fire is a good sarvent but a bad master, and sure enuff wen it is master it never gives a sarvent a munth’s notis. To be shure we have won marsy in town that is unbenone in the country, and that is Swingeing; there is no cornstax or heyrix in St. Jims’s Square. That is yure week pint, and I trembil for the barns; a rockite or a roaming candle mite set you in a blaze. But I hop and trust[Pg 77] wat I say will never pruve the truth. Oppydildock is good for burns, and I am, dear Mary,

Yure old and afexionate feller sarvent,
ANN GALE.

THE SWELL MOB.

From Lady Jubb to Mrs. Phipps, Housekeeper at the Shrubbery, Shrewsbury, Shrops.

MRS. PHIPPS,

You will prepare the house directly for the family’s return, not that our coming back is absolutely certain, but events have happened to render our stay in Portland Place very precarious. All depends upon Sir Jacob. In Parliament or out of Parliament his motions must guide ours. By this time what has happened will be known in Shropshire, but I forbid your talking. Politics belong to people of property, and those who have no voice in the country ought not to speak. In your inferior situations it’s a duty to be ignorant of what you know. The nation is out of your sphere, and besides, people out of town cannot know the state of the country. I want to put you on your guard; thanks to the press, as Sir Jacob says, public[Pg 78] affairs cannot be kept private, and the consequence is, the ignorant are as well informed as their betters. The burning of both Houses of Parliament I am afraid cannot be hushed up—but it is not a subject for servants, that have neither upper nor lower members amongst them, and represent nobody. I trust to you, Mrs. Phipps, to discourage all discussions in the kitchen, which isn’t the place for parliamentary canvassing. The most ridiculous notions are abroad. I should not be surprised even to hear that Sir Jacob had lost his seat, because the benches were burnt, but we have been deprived of none of our dignities or privileges. You will observe this letter is franked; the fire made no difference to your master, he is not dissolved, whatever the Blues may wish—he is still Sir Jacob Jubb, Baronet, M.P.

THE LIGHT HORSE.

The election of Sir Jacob at such a crisis was an act of Providence. His firmness at the fire affords an example to posterity; although the bench was burning under him he refused to retreat, replying emphatically, “I will sit by my order.” As far as this goes you may mention, and no more. I enjoin upon all else a diplomatic silence. Sir Jacob himself will write to the bailiff, and whatever may be the nature of his directions, I desire that no curiosity may be indulged in, and above[Pg 79] all, that you entertain no opinions of your own. You cannot square with the upper circles. I would write more, but I am going to a meeting, I need not say where, or upon what subject. I rely, Mrs. Phipps, on your discretion, and am, &c.,

ARABELLA ANASTASIA JUBB.

To T. Crawfurd, junior, Esquire, the Beeches, near Shrewsbury, Shrops.

DEAR TOM,

Throw up your cap and huzza. There’s glorious news, and so you’ll say when I tell you. I could almost jump out of my skin for joy! Father’s dismembered! The House of Commons caught fire, and he was dissolved along with the rest.

“THE LAST DAYS OF POMP—.”

I’ve never been happy since we came up to London, and all through Parliament. The election was good sport enough. I liked the riding up and down, and carrying a flag; and the[Pg 80] battle, with sticks, between the Blues and the Yellows, was famous fun; and I huzza’d myself hoarse at our getting the day at last. But after that came the jollup, as we used to say at Old Busby’s. Theme writing was a fool to it. If father composed one maiden speech he composed a hundred, and he made me knuckle down and copy them all out, and precious stupid stuff it was. A regular physicker, says you, and I’d worse to take after it. He made us all sit down and hear him spout them, and a poor stick he made.—Dick Willis, that we used to call Handpost, was a dab at it compared to him. He’s no better hand at figures, so much the worse for me. Did you ever have a fag, Tom, at the national debt? I don’t know who owes it, but I wish he’d pay it, or be made bankrupt at once. I’ve worked more sums last month than ever I did at school in the half year,—geography the same. I had to hunt out Don Carlos and Don Pedro, all over the maps. I came in for a regular wigging one day, for wishing both the Dons were well peppered, as Tom Tough says. I’ve seen none of the sights I wanted to see. He wouldn’t let me go to the play, because he says the theatres are bad schools, and would give me a vicious style of elocution. The only pleasure he promised me was to sit in the gallery at the Commons and see him present his petitions. Short-hand would have come next, that I might take down his speechifying—for he says the reporters all garble. An’t I well out of it all—and a place he was to get for me besides, from the Prime Minister? I suppose the Navy Pay, to sit on a high stool and give Jack Junk one pound two and ninepence twice a year. I’d rather be Jack Junk himself, wouldn’t you, Tom? But father’s lost his wicket, and huzza for Shropshire! In hopes of our soon meeting, I remain, my dear Tom,

Your old chum and schoolfellow,
FREDERICK JUBB.

[Pg 81]

P.S.—A court gentleman has just come in, with a knock-me-down-again. He says there’s to be a new election. I wish you’d do something; it would be a real favour, and I will do as much for you another time. What I want of you is, to get your father to set up against mine. Do try, Tom—there’s a good fellow. I will ask every body I know to give your side a plumper.

AN ADDER UP.

To Mr. Roger Davis, Bailiff, the Shrubbery, near Shrewsbury.

DAVIS,

I hope to God this will find you at home—I am writing in a state of mind bordering on madness. I can’t collect myself to give particulars—you will have a newspaper along with this—read that, and your hair will stand on end. Incendiarism has reached its height like the flaming thing on the top of the Monument. Our crisis is come. To my mind—political suicide—is as bad as felo de se. Oh Whigs, Whigs, Whigs—what have you brought us to! As the Britannic Guardian well says—England is gone to Italy—London is at Naples—and we are all standing on the top of Vesuvius. I have heard—and I believe it—that an attempt has been made to choke Aldgate Pump. A Waltham Abbey paper says positively that the mills were recently robbed of 513 barrels of powder, the exact number of the members for England and Wales. What a diabolical refinement—to blow up a government with its own powder! I can hardly persuade myself I am in England. God knows where it will spread to—I mean the incendiary spirit. The dry season is frightful—I suppose the springs are all dry. Keep the engine locked in the stable for fear of a cut at the pipes. I’ll send you down two more. Let all the labourers take a turn at them, by way of[Pg 82] practice. I’m persuaded the Parliament houses were burnt on purpose. The flue story is ridiculous. Mr. Cooper’s is a great deal more to the point. I believe everything I hear. A bunch of matches was found in the Speaker’s kitchen. I saw something suspicious myself—some said treacle, but I say tar. Have your eyes about you—lock all the gates, day as well as night—and above all, watch the stacks. One Tiger is not enough—get three or four more, I should have said Cæsar, but you know I mean the house-dog. Good mastiffs,—the biggest and savagest you can get. The gentry will be attempted first—beginning with the M.P.’s. You and Barnes and Sam must sit up by turns—and let the maids sit up too—women have sharp ears and sharp tongues.—If a mouse stirs I would have them squall—danger or no danger. It’s the only way to sleep in security—and comfort. I have read that the common goose is a vigilant creature—and saved Rome. Get a score of them at the next market—don’t stand about price—but choose them with good cackles. Alarm them now and then to keep them watchful,[Pg 83] Fire the blunderbuss off every night, and both fowling pieces and all the pistols. If all the Gentry did as much, it might keep the country quiet. If you were to ring the alarm-bell once or twice in the middle of the night, it would be as well—you would know then what help to depend upon. Search the house often from the garret to the cellar, for combustibles—if you could manage to go without candles, or any sort of light, it would be better.

THE MOVEMENT PARTY.

You’d find your way about in the dark after a little practice. Pray don’t allow any sweethearts; they may be Swings and Captain Rocks in disguise, and their pretended flames turn out real. I’ve misgivings about the maids. Tie them up and taste their liver, before they eat it themselves—I mean the house-dogs; but my agitation makes me unconnected. The scoundrels often poison them, before they attempt robbery and arson. Keep the cattle in the cowhouse for fear of their being houghed and hamstrung. Surely there were great defects somewhere. The Houses could not have been properly protected—if they had been watched as well as they were lighted—but it is too late to cast any blame on individuals. A paltry spirit of economy has been our bane. A few shillings would have purchased a watch-dog; and one or two geese in each house might have saved the capitol of the constitution! But the incendiary knew how to choose his time—an adjournment when there were none sitting.

I say incendiary, because no doubt can exist in any cool mind, that enters into the conflagration. I transcribe conclusive extracts from several papers, the editors of which I know to be upright men, and they all write on one side.

“We are confidently informed,” says the Beacon,[Pg 84] “that a quantity of tar-barrels was purchased at No. 2, High-street, Shadwell, about ten o’clock on the morning of the fire. There was abundant time before six a.m., for removing the combustibles to Westminster. The purchaser was a short, squat, down-looking man, and the name on his cart was I. Burns.”

“Trifling circumstances,” says the Sentinel, “sometimes point to great results. Our own opinion is formed. We have made it our business to examine the Guys in preparation for the impending anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, and we affirm that every one of the effigies bore a striking resemblance to some member or other of assemblies we need not name. These are signs of the times.”

“We should be loth,” says the Detector, “to impute the late calamity to any particular party: but we may reasonably inquire what relative stake in the country is possessed by the Whigs and the Tories. The English language may be taken as a fair standard. The first may lay claim to perri-wig, scratch-wig, tie-wig, bob-wig, in short, the whole family of the perruques, with whig-maleery. The latter, not to mention other good things, have a vested right in oratory, history, territory, and victory. Can a man of common patriotism have a doubt which side it is his interest to adhere to?”

“WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN?”

That last paragraph, Davis, is what I call sound argument. Indeed I don’t see how it is to be answered. You see they are all nem. con. as to our danger, and decidedly reckon fire an inflammatory agent. Take care what you read. Very pernicious doctrines are abroad, and especially across the Western Channel. The Irish are really frightful. I’m told they tie the cows’ tails together, and then saw off their horns for insurrectionary bugles. The foundations of society are shaken all over the world—the Whiteboys in Ireland, and the Blacks in the West Indies, all seem to fight under the same colours. It’s time for honest men to rally round themselves—but I’m sorry to say public spirit and love of one’s country are at a low ebb. There’s too much Americanism. One writer wants us to turn all our English wheat to Indian corn, and to grow no sort of apples but Franklin pippins. We want strong measures against associations and unions. There’s demagogues abroad—and they wear white hats. By-[Pg 85]the-bye, I more than half suspect that fellow Johnson is a delegate. Take him to the ale-house, and treat him freely—it may warm him to blab something. Besides, you will see what sort of papers the public-houses take in. You may drop a hint about their licenses. Give my compliments to Dr. Garratt, and tell him I hope he will preach to the times, and take strong texts. I wish I could be down amongst you, but I cannot desert my post. You may tell the tenantry, and electors—I’m burnt out and gutted—but my heart’s in the right place—and devoted to constituents. Come what may, I will be an unshaken pillar on the basis of my circular letter. Don’t forget any of my precautions. I am sorry I did not bring all the plate up to town—but at the first alarm bury it. Take in no letters or notices; for what you know they may be threatenings. If any Irishman applies for work, discharge him instantly. All the old spring-guns had better be set again, they are not now legal, but I am ministerial, and if they did go off, the higher powers would perhaps wink at them. But it’s fire that I am afraid of, fire that destroyed my political roof, and may now assail my paternal one. Walk, as I may say, bucket in hand, and be ready every moment for a break out. You may set fire to the small faggot stack, and try your hands at getting it under—there’s nothing worse than being taken by surprise. Read this letter frequently, and impress these charges on your mind. It is a sad change for England to have become,[Pg 86] I may say, this fiery furnace. I have not the least doubt, if properly traced, the burning cliff at Weymouth would be found to be connected with Incendiarism, and the Earthquakes at Chichester with our political convulsions. Thank Providence in your prayers, Davis, that your own station forbids your being an M.P., for a place in parliament is little better than sitting on a barrel of gunpowder. Honour forbids to resign, or I should wish I was nothing but a simple country gentleman. Remember, and be vigilant. Once more I cry Watch, Watch, Watch! By adopting the motions I propose, a conflagration may be adjourned sine die, which is a petition perpetually presented by

Your anxious but uncompromising Master,
JACOB JUBB, M.P.

To Lady Jubb, at 45, Portland Place.

RESPECTED MADAM,

I received your Ladyship’s obliging commands, and have used my best endeavours to conform to the wishes condescended therein. In respect to political controversy, I beg to say I have imposed a tacit silence on the domestic capacities as far as within the sphere of my control, but lament to say the Bailiff, Mr. Davis, is a party unamenable to my authority, and as such has taken liberties with decorum quite unconsistent with propriety and the decency due. However reluctant to censoriousness, duty compels to communicate subversive conduct quite unconformable to decency’s rules and order in a well-regulated establishment. I allude to Mr. Davis’s terrifically jumping out from behind doors and in obscure dark corners, on the female domestics, for no reasonable purpose I can discover, except to make them exert their voices in a very alarming manner. The housemaid, indeed, confirms me by saying in her own words, “he considered her skreek the best skreek in the family.” If impropriety had proceeded no further, I should have hesitated to[Pg 87] trouble your Ladyship with particulars; but Mr. Davis, not satisfied with thus working on the unsophisticated terrors of ignorant females, thought proper to horrify with inflammatory reports.

A MARKED MAN.

WAPPING OLD STARES.

One night, as a prominent instance, about twelve o’clock, he rang the alarm bell so violently, at the same time proclaiming conflagration, that the law of preservation became our paramount duty, and, as a consequence, we all escaped in a state of dishabille only to be ambiguously hinted at, by saying that time did not allow to put on my best lutestring to meet the neighbouring gentry—and must add, with indignation, in the full blaze of a heap of straw, thought proper to be set on fire by Mr. Davis in the fore-court. I trust your Ladyship will excuse a little warmth of language, in saying it was highly reprehensible; but I have not depictured the worst. I, one evening, lighted up what I conceived to be a mould candle, and your Ladyship will imagine my undescribable fright when it exploded itself like a missile of the squib description, an unwarrantable mode, I must say, of[Pg 88] convincing me, as Mr. Davis had the audaciousness to own to, that we may be made to be actors in our own combustion. To suppose at my years and experience, I can be unsensible of the danger of fire, must be a preposterous notion; but all his subsequent acts partake an agreeable character. For fear of being consumed in our beds, as he insidiously professed, he exerted all his influential arguments to persuade the females to set up nocturnally all night, a precaution of course declined, as well as his following scheme, being almost too much broached with absurdity to enumerate. I mean every retiring female reposing her confidence on a live goose in her chamber, as were purchased for the express purpose, but need not add were dispensed with by rational beings. I trust your ladyship will acquit of uncharitableness if I suspect it was out of vindictive feelings at their opposition to the geese that Mr. Davis insinuated a strict inquiry into every individual that came into the house, as far even as requiring to be personally present at all that passed between the dairymaid and her cousin. It escaped memory to say that when the feminine department refused to be deprived of rest, the male servants were equally adverse to go to bed, being spirited up by Mr. Davis to spend the night together, and likewise being furnished with the best strong ale in the cellar by his im[Pg 89]perious directions, which, by way of climax to assurance, was alleged to be by order of Sir Jacob himself. I say nothing reflectively on his repeatedly discharging his artillery at unseasonable hours, the shock principally concerning my own nervous constitution, which was so vibrated as to require calling in physical powers: and Doctor Tudor, considering advanced age and infirmity, is of opinion I may require to be under his professional hands for an ensuing twelvemonth. Of startling effects upon other parties I may make comments more unreserved, and without harsh extenuation must say, his letting off reports without due notice, frequently when the females had valuable cut glass and china in their hands, or on their trays, was blamable in the extreme, to express the least of it. Another feature which caused much unpleasantness, was Mr. Davis persisting to scrutinise and rummage the entire premises from top to bottom, but on this characteristic tediousness forbids to dwell, and more particularly as mainly affecting himself, such as the flow of blood from his nose, and two coagulated eyes, from the cellar door, through a peculiar whim of looking for every thing in a state of absolute obscurity. I may add, by way of incident, that Mr. Davis walks lame from a canine injury in the calf of his leg, which I hope will not prove rabid in the end,—but the animals he has on his own responsibility introduced on the premises, really resemble, begging your Ladyship’s pardon for the expression, what are denominated D.’s incarnate.

Such, your Ladyship, is the unpropitious posture of domestic affairs at the Shrubbery, originating, I must say, exclusively from the unprecedented deviations of Mr. Davis. A mild construction would infer, from such extraordinary extravagance of conduct, a flightiness, or aberration of mind in the individual, but I deeply lament to say a more obvious cause exists to put a negative on such a surmise. For the last week Mr. Davis has betrayed an unusual propensity to pass his evenings at the[Pg 90] George Tavern, and in consequence has several times exhibited himself in a Bacchanalian character to our extreme discomforture, and on one occasion actually trespassed so far beyond the bounds of modesty, as to offer me the rudeness of a salute. I blush to impart such details to your Ladyship; but justice demands an explicit statement, however repulsive to violated reserve and the rules of virtue. Amongst less immoral actions, I must advert to the arrival of two new engines with a vast number of leathern buckets, I fear ordered by Mr. Davis at my honoured master’s expense, and which are periodically exercised in pumping every day, by the gardeners and the hinds, being induced thereto by extra beverages of strong beer. By such means the aquatic supply of the well is frequently exhausted by playing upon nothing,—and at this present moment I am justified in stating we have not sufficient water to fulfil culinary purposes, or the demands of cleanliness. I feel ashamed to say there is not a strictly clean cap in the whole household.

THE UNITED SERVICE.

In short, Madam, we labour under an aggravated complication of insubordination, deprivation, discomfort, and alarm, daily and nightly, such as to shock my eyes whilst it grieves my heart, and I may almost say turns my head to be present at, without sufficient authority to dictate or power to enforce a course[Pg 91] more consistent with the line of rectitude. As my sway does not extend to Mr. Davis, I humbly beseech your Ladyship’s interference and influence in the proper quarter, in behalf, I may say, of a body of persecuted females, some of whom possess cultivated minds and sensitive feelings beyond their sphere.

I remain, respected Madam,
Your Ladyship’s most obliged and very humble Servant,
AMELIA PHIPPS.

P.S.—One of Mr. Davis’s savage bull-baiting dogs has just rushed with a frightful crash into the china-closet, in pursuit of the poor cat.

To Sir Jacob Jubb, Baronet, M.P.

HONNERD SUR,

Yure faver enclosin the Ruings of the Parlimint houses cam dully to hand, and did indeed put up all the hares on my hed. It cam like the bust of a thunder bolt. You mite hav nockt me down with the fether of a ginny ren. My bran swum. I seamed rooted to the hearth—and did not no weather I was a slip or a wack, on my hed or my heals. I was perfecly unconshunable, and could no more kollect meself then the Hirish tiths. I was a long Tim befor I cud perswade meself that the trooth was trew. But sich a dredful fire is enuff to unsettil wons resin. A thowsend ears mite role over our heds, and not prodeuce sich a blo to the constitushun. I was barley sensible. The Currier dropt from my hands wen I cam to the perrygraft witch says “Our hops are at an end. The Hous of Communs is a boddy of Flams, and so is the Hous of Pears! The Lords will be dun!”

GENERAL ELECTION.

Honnerd Sur, I beg to kondole as becums on yure missin yure seat. It must have bean the suddinest of shox, & jest wen goin to sit after standin for the hole county, on yure hone futt[Pg 92]ing, at your sole expens. But I do hop and trust it will not be yure dissolushun, as sum report; I do hop it is onely an emty rummer pict up at sum publick Hous. At such an encindery crisus our wust frend wood be General Elixion, by stirrin up inflametory peple, particly if there was a long pole. You see, Sir Jacob, I konker in evvery sentashus sentemint in yure respected Letter. The Volkano you menshun I can enter into. Theres a great deal of combustibul sperits in the country that onely wants a spark to convart them into catarax:—and I greave to say evvery inflammetory little demy Gog is nust, and has the caudle support of certin pappers. Im alludin to the Press. From this sort of countenins the nashunal aspec gits moor friteful evvery day. I see no prospex for the next gennerashun but rocking and swinging. I hav had a grate menny[Pg 93] low thorts, for wat can be moor dispiritin then the loss of our two gratest Publick Housis! There is nothin cumfortable. There is a Vesuvus under our feat, and evvery step brings us nearer to its brinks. Evvery reflective man must say we are a virgin on a precipus.

Honnerd Sur! In the mean tim I hav pade atenshuns to yure letter, and studid its epistlery derecshuns, witch I hav made meself very particler in fulfiling to the utmost xtent. If the most zellus effuts have not sucksedid to wish I humbly beg to blame but wat is dew may fall on me, and hope other peples shears will visit their hone heds. The axident with the spring gun was no neglex of mine. After Barnes settin it himself, his tumblin over the wier must be lade to his hone dore along with his shot legs. I sent for two surgings to sea to him, and they cauld in too moor, so that he is certin of a good dressin, but he was very down-harted about gitting a livin, till I tolled him yure honner wood settle on him for the rest of his days. I may say the lik of the other axident to Sanders and Sam, who got badly woundid wile wotchin the stax, by apprehendin won another after a sanguine conflic by mistake for incinderies. I have promist in yure honners nam to reword them boath hansumly for their vigilings, but they stedfistly refus to padrol anny moor after dusk, tho they ar agreble by daylit, which leavs me at my whits ends for Firegards, as strange men wood not be trusswurthy.

Honnered Sur—I am sorry I cood not git the mad servents to set up for theaves, even for wun nite runnin. I tried the Currier on them, but it didn’t wurk on there minds; they tuck lites in their hands and waukd to there pillers as if they hadn’t a car on there heds, and wen I insistid on their allarmin me they all give me warnin. As for the swetharts there’s a duzzen domesticatted luvers in the kitchen, and I’m sorry to say I can’t give them all a rowt. I ketchd the cook’s bo gettin in at a winder, and sercht his pockets for feer of fosfrus, but he contaned[Pg 94] nothin xcept a cruckid sixpens, a taler’s thimbel, and a tin backy-box, with a lock of hare witch did not match with cook’s. It is dangerus wurk. Becus I luck after the mades candels they tie strings to the banesters to ketch my fut, and I have twice pitcht from the hed to the futt of the stars. I am riting with my forrid brandid and brown pepperd, and my rite hand in a poltus from gropping in the dark for cumbustibils in the cole seller, and diskivering nothin but the torturous kat and her kittings.

“TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE.”

Honnerd Sur—I got six capitol gees a bargin, but am verry dubbius weather they possess the propperty that ort to make them wakful and weary of nites. The old specious may be lost. The Roman gees you menshun wood certinly hav nevver sufferd themselves to be stolen without a cakeling, as our hone did too nites ago. As for the wotch dogs, to be candied, they were all errors in gudgment. There was to much Bul in the bread. The verry fust nite they were let lose they flew in a rag, and began to vent their caning propensities on each other’s curcases. I regret[Pg 95] to say too was wurrid to deth before the next mourning, and the rest were so full of bad bits and ingeries in there vitties they were obligated to be kild. In shutting Seazer with the blunderbush, I lament to ad it hung fire, and in liftin it up it went off of its hone hed and shot the bucher’s horse at the gait, and he has thretind to tak the law if he isn’t made good, as he was verry vallyble.

Honnerd Sur—Accordin to orders I tuck Johnson the suspishus man evvery nite to the Gorge, and told him to caul for wat he likt, witch was allways an ot suppir and Punch. As yet he as diskivered nothin but sum lov nonsins about a deary-made, so that its uncertin weather he is a dillygate or not; but I shood say a desinin won, for by sum artful meens he allways manniged to make me drunk fust, and gennerally lent a hand to carry me home. I told the landlord to let him have aney thing he wantid and yure Honner wood pay the skore, but I think it was unprudent of Mr. Tapper to let him run up to ten pound. But it isn’t all drink, but eating as well—Johnson has a very glutinous appetit, and always stix to the tabel as long as there is meet.

Honnerd Sur—Last fridy morning there was grate riotism and sines of the populus risin, and accordin I lost no time in berryin the plait as derected by yure ordirs. I am gratifid to say the disturbans turned out onely a puggleistical fit; but owen to our hurry and allarm, the spot ware the plait was berrid went out of our heads. We have since dug up the hole srubbery, but without turnin up anny thing in its shape. But it cant be lost, tho’ it isnt to be found. The gardner swares the srubs will all di from being transplanted at unpropper sesin—but I trust it is onely his old grumblin stile witch he cannot git over.

Honnerd Sur—The wust is to cum. In casis of Fire the trooth is shure to brake out suner or latter, so I may as well cum to the catstrophy without any varnish on my tail. This morning according to yure order, I hignitted the littel faggit stak, fust[Pg 96] takin the precawshuny meshure of drawin up a line of men with buckits, from the dux-pond to the sene of combusting. Nothin can lay therefor on my sholders: it all riz from the men strikin for bear, wen they ort to hav bean handin warter to won another. I felt my deuty to argy the pint, which I trust will be apruved, and wile we were cussin and discussin the fire got a hed that defide all our unitted pours to subdo. To confess the fax, the fire inguns ware all lokt up in a stabble with a shy key that had lost itself the day before, and was not to be had wen we wantid to lay hands on it. Not that we could have wurkd the inguns if they had faverd with their presens, for want of hands. Evvery boddy had run so offen at the allarm bell that they got noboddy to go in there steed. It was an hawful site; the devowring ellemint swallerd won thing after another as sune as cotched, and rushed along roring with friteful violins. Were the finger of Providins is the hand as does we must not arrange it, but as the him says, “we must submit and humbel Bee.” Heavin direx the winds, and not us. As it blue towards the sow the piggry sune cotchd, and that cotchd the foul housis, and then the barn cotchd with all the straw, and the granery cotchd also, witch it wood not have dun if we had puld down the hay stax that stud between. That was all the cotching excep the hay stax, from Jenkins runnin about with a flaimin tale to his smoak frock. At last, by a blessin, when there was no moor to burn it was got under and squentched itself, prays be given without loss of lif or lim. Another comfit is all bein inshured in the Sun, enuff to kiver it; and I shud hop they will not refus to make gud on the ground that it was dun wilful by our hone ax and deeds. But fire officis are sumtimes verry unlibberal, and will ketch hold of a burning straw, and if fax were put on their oths I couldn’t deni a bundil of rags, matchis, candel ends, and other combustibils pokt into the faggits, and then litin up with my hone hand. Tim will sho. In the meenwhile I am consienshusly[Pg 97] easy, it was dun for the best, though turned out for the wust, and am gratified to reflect that I hav omitted nothin, but have scruppleusly fulfild evvery particler of yure honner’s instruxions, and in hop of approval of the saim, await the faver of furthir commands, and am,

Honnerd Sur Jacob,
Your humbel, faithful, and obedient Servint,
ROGER DAVIS.

LIGHT-FINGERED.

A PASTORAL AFTER POPE.

FOLLOW MY LEADER.

RAMSAY’S GENTLE SHEPHERD.

IT is not often when the Nine descend that they go so low as into areas; it is certain, nevertheless, that they were in the habit of visiting John Humphreys, in the kitchen of No. 189, Portland Place, disguised, no doubt, from mortal eye, as seamstresses or charwomen—at all events, as Winifred Jenkins says, “they were never ketch’d in the fact.” Perhaps it was the rule of the house to allow no followers, and they were obliged to come by stealth, and to go in the same manner; indeed, from the fragmental nature of John’s verses, they appear to have often left him very abruptly. Other pieces bear witness of the severe distraction he suffered between his domestic duty to the Umphravilles, twelve in family, with their guests, and his own secret visitors from Helicon. It must have been provoking, when seeking for a simile, to be sent in search of a salt-cellar; or when hunting for a rhyme, to have to look for a missing teaspoon. By a whimsical peculiarity, the causes of these lets and hindrances are recorded in his verses, by way of parenthesis:[Pg 102] and though John’s poetry was of a decidedly serious and moralising turn, these little insertions give it so whimsical a character, as to make it an appropriate offering in the present work. Poor John! the grave has put a period to his didactics, and the publication of his lays in “Hood’s Own,” therefore, cannot give him pain, as it certainly would have done otherwise, for the MSS. were left by last will and testament “to his very worthy master, Joshua Umphraville, Esq., to be printed in Elegant Extracts, or Flowers of English Poetry.” The Editor is indebted to the kindness of that gentleman for a selection from the papers; which he has been unable to arrange chronologically, as John always wrote in too great a hurry to put dates. Whether he ever sent any pieces to the periodicals is unknown, for he kept his authorship as secret as Junius’s, till his death discovered his[Pg 103] propensity for poetry, and happily cleared up some points in John’s character, which had appeared to his disadvantage. Thus when his eye was “in fine frenzy rolling,” bemused only with Castalian water, he had been suspected of being “bemused with beer;” and when he was supposed to indulge in a morning sluggishness, he was really rising with the sun, at least with Apollo. He was accused occasionally of shamming deafness, whereas it was doubtless nothing but the natural difficulty of hearing more than Nine at once. Above all, he was reckoned almost wilfully unfortunate in his breakage; but it appears that when deductions for damage were made from his wages, the poetry ought to have been stopped, and not the money. The truth is, John’s master was a classical scholar, and so accustomed to read of Pegasus, and to associate a Poet with a Horseman, that he never dreamt of one as a Footman.

NOT UP YET.

The Editor is too diffident to volunteer an elaborate criticism of the merits of Humphreys as a Bard—but he presumes to say thus much, that there are several Authors, of the present day, whom John ought not to walk behind.

THE BROKEN DISH.

ODE TO PEACE.
WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF MY MISTRESS’S GRAND ROUT.

A FEW LINES ON COMPLETING FORTY-SEVEN.

TO MARY HOUSEMAID,
ON VALENTINE’S DAY.

WHAT ODD LEGS!

“I apprehend you!”—SCHOOL OF REFORM.

SEE-VIEW:—BROAD STARES.

STERNE’S MARIA.

“The flying ball.”—GRAY.

A BALL is a round, but not a perpetual round, of pleasure. It spends itself at last, like that from the cannon’s mouth; or rather, like that greatest of balls, “that great globe itself,” is “dissolved with all that it inherits.”

Four o’clock strikes. The company are all but gone, and the[Pg 112] musicians “put up” with their absence. A few “figures,” however, remain, that have never been danced, and the hostess, who is all urbanity and turbanity, kindly hopes that they will stand up for “one set more.” The six figures jump at the offer; they “wake the Harp,” get the fiddlers into a fresh scrape, and “the Lancers” are put through their exercise. This may be called the Dance of Death, for it ends every thing. The band is disbanded, and the Ball takes the form of a family circle. It is long past the time when church-yards yawn, but the mouth of Mamma opens to a bore, that gives hopes of the Thames Tunnel. Papa, to whom the Ball has been anything but a force-meat one, seizes eagerly upon the first eatables he can catch, and with his mouth open and his eyes shut, declares, in the spirit of an “Examiner” into such things, that a “Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.” The son, heartily tired of a suit of broad cloth cut narrow, assents to the pro[Pg 113]position, and having no further use for his curled head, lays it quietly on the shelf. The daughter droops; art has had her Almack’s, and nature establishes a Free and Easy. Grace throws herself, skow-wow any-how, on an ottoman, and Good Breeding crosses her legs. Roses begin to relax, and Curls to unbend themselves; the very Candles seem released from the restraints of gentility, and getting low, some begin to smoke, while others indulge in a gutter. Muscles and sinews feel equally let loose, and by way of a joke, the cramp ties a double-knot in Clarinda’s calf.

Clarinda screams. To this appeal the maternal heart is more awake than the maternal eyes, and the maternal hand begins hastily to bestow its friction, not on the leg of suffering, but on the leg of the sofa. In the mean time, paternal hunger gets satisfied; he eats slower, and sleeps faster, subsiding, like a gorged Boa Constrictor, into torpidity; and in this state, grasping an extinguished candle, he lights himself up to bed. Clarinda follows, stumbling through her steps in a doze-à-doze; the brother is next, and Mamma having seen with half an eye, or something less, that all is safe, winds up the procession.

Every Ball, however, has its rebound, and so has this in their dreams—with the mother who has a daughter, as a Golden Ball; with the daughter, who has a lover, as an eye-ball; with his son, who has a rival, as a pistol-ball; but with the father, who has no dreams at all, as nothing but the blacking-ball of oblivion.

“’TIS PLEASANT SURE TO SEE ONE’S SELF IN PRINT.”

[Pg 116]

BREAKING UP, NO HOLIDAY.

“We thought she never would ride it out, and expected her every moment to go to pieces.”—NAVAL SKETCH BOOK.

“THERE you go, you villain—that’s the way to run over people! There’s a little boy in the road—you’d better run over him, for you won’t call out to him, no, not you, for a brute as you are! You think poor people an’t common Christians,—you grind the faces of the poor, you do. Ay, cut away, do—you’ll be Wilful Murdered by the Crowner some day! I’ll keep up with you and tell the gentlemen on the top! Women wasn’t created for you to gallop over like dirt, and scrunch their bones into compound fractions.—Don’t get into his coach, Ma’am! he’s no respect for the sects—he’ll lay you up in the hospital for months and months, he will, the inhuman hard-hearted varmin!”

The speaker, a little active old woman, had run parallel with the coach some fifty yards, when it stopped to take up a lady who was as prompt as ladies generally are, in giving dinner instructions to the cook, and setting domestic lessons to the housemaid, besides having to pack a parcel, to hunt for her clogs, to exchange the cook’s umbrella for her own, and to kiss all her seven children. Mat, thus reduced to a door-mat, was unable to escape the volley which the Virago still poured in upon him; but he kept a most imperturbable face and silence till he was fairly seated again on the box.

“There, gentlemen,” said he, pointing at the assailant with his whip;[Pg 121] “that’s what I call gratitude. Look at her figure now, and look at what it was six months ago. She never had a waist till I run over her.”

“I hope, friend, thee art not very apt to make these experiments on the human figure,” said an elderly Quaker on the roof. “Not by no means,” answered Mat; “I have done very little in the accidental line—nothing worth mentioning. All the years I’ve been on the road, I’ve never come to a kill on the spot; them sort o’things belongs to Burrowes, as drives over one with the Friend in Need, and he’s got quite a name for it. He’s called ‘Fatal Jack.’ To be sure, now I think of it, I was the innocent cause of death to one person, and she was rather out of the common.” “You fractured her limbs, p’r’aps?” inquired one of the outsides. “No such thing,” said Mat, “there was nothing fractious in the case; as to running over her limbs, it was the impossible thing with a woman born without legs and arms.” “You must allude to Miss Biffin,” said the outsider—“the Norfolk phenomenon.”

“Begging your pardon,” said Mat,[Pg 122] “it was before the Phenomenon was started. It was one of the regular old long-bodied double-coaches, and I drove it myself. Very uneasy they were; for springs at that time hadn’t much spring in ’em; and nobody on earth had thought of Macadaming Piccadilly. You could always tell whether you were on the stones, or off, and no mistake. I was a full hour behind time—for coaches in them days wasn’t called by such names as Chronometers and Regulators, and good reason why. So I’d been plying a full hour after time, without a soul inside, except a barrel of natives for a customer down the road: at last, a hackney-coach pulls up, and Jarvey and the waterman lifts Miss Biffin into my drag. Well, off I sets with a light load enough, and to fetch up time astonished my team into a bit of a gallop—and it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to keep one’s seat on the box, the coach jumped so over the stones. Well, away I goes, springing my rattle till I come to the gate at Hyde Park Corner, where one of my insides was waiting for me—and not very sorry to pull up, for the breath was almost shook out of my bellows. Well, I opens the door, and what do I see lying together at the bottom of the coach, but Miss Biffin bruised unsensible, and the head out of the barrel of oysters!”

FANCY PORTRAIT—OLD SARUM.

“I do hope, friend,” said the elderly Quaker, “that thou didst replace them on their seats.”

“To be sure I did,” answered Mat, “and the oysters took it quietly enough, without opening their mouths; but it didn’t go quite so smooth with Miss B. She talked of an action for damages, and consulted counsel; but, Lord bless you, when it came to taking steps agin us, she hadn’t a leg to stand upon!”

[Pg 123]

DICKY BIRDS.

SONNET.
TO LORD WHARNCLIFFE, ON HIS GAME-BILL.

MY commercial career was a brief one, and deserved only a sonnet in commemoration. The fault, however, lay not with the muses. To commit poetry indeed is a crime ranking next to forgery in the counting-house code; and an Ode or a song dated Copthall Court, would be as certainly noted and protested as a dishonoured bill. I have even heard of an unfortunate clerk, who lost his situation through being tempted by the jingle to subscribe under an account current

his employer emphatically declaring that Poetry and Logwood could never coexist in the same head. The principal of our firm on the contrary had a turn for the Belles Lettres, and would have winked with both eyes at verses which did not in[Pg 125]trude into an invoice or confuse their figures with those of the Ledger. The true cause of my retirement from Commercial affairs was more prosaic. My constitution, though far from venerable, had begun to show symptoms of decay: my appetite failed, and its principal creditor, the stomach, received only an ounce in the pound. My spirits daily became a shade lower—my flesh was held less and less firmly—in short, in the language of the price current, it was expected that I must “submit to a decline.” The Doctors who were called in, declared imperatively that a mercantile life would be the death of me—that by so much sitting, I was hatching a whole brood of complaints, and that no Physician would insure me as a merchantman from the Port of London to the next Spring. The Exchange, they said, was against me, and as the Exchange itself used to ring with “Life let us Cherish,” there was no resisting the advice. I was ordered to abstain from Ashes, Bristles, and Petersburg yellow candle, and to indulge in a more generous diet—to take regular country exercise instead of the Russia Walk, and to go to bed early even on Foreign Post nights. Above all I was recommended change of air, and in particular the bracing breezes of the North. Accordingly I was soon shipped as per advice, in a Scotch Smack, which “smacked through the breeze,” as Dibdin sings so merrily, that on the fourth morning we were in sight of the prominent old Steeple of “Bonny Dundee.”

My Biographer, in the Book of Gems, alludes to this voyage, and infers from some verses—“Gadzooks! must one swear to the truth of a song?”—that it sickened me of the sea. Nothing can be more unfounded. The marine terrors and disagreeables enumerated in the poem, belong to a Miss Oliver, and not to me, who regard the ocean with a natural and national partiality. Constitutionally proof against that nausea which extorts so many wave-offerings from the afflicted, I am as constant as Captain Basil Hall himself, in my regard[Pg 126] “for the element that never tires.” Some washy fellows, it is true, Fresh-men from Cambridge and the like, affect to prefer river or even pond water for their aquatics—the tame ripple to the wild wave, the prose to “the poetry of motion.” But give me “the multitudinous sea,” resting or rampant, with all its variable moods and changeable colouring. Methought, when pining under the maladie du pays, on a hopeless, sick bed, inland, in Germany, it would have relieved those yearnings but to look across an element so instinct with English associations, that it would seem rather to unite me to than sever me from my native island. And, truly, when I did at last stand on the brink of the dark blue sea, my home-sick wishes seemed already half fulfilled, and it was not till many months afterwards that I actually crossed the Channel. But I am, besides, personally under deep obligations to the great deep. Twice, indeed, in a calm, and in a storm, has my life been threatened with a salt-water catastrophe; but that quarrel has long been made up, and forgiven, in gratitude for the blessing and bracing influence of the breezes that smack of the ocean brine. Dislike the sea!—With what delight aforetime used I to swim in it, to dive in it, to sail on it! Ask honest Tom Woodgate, of Hastings, who made of me, for a landsman, a tolerable boatsman. Even now, when do I feel so easy in body, and so cheerful in spirit, as when walking hard by the surge, listening, as if expecting some whisperings of friendly but distant voices, in its eternal murmuring. Sick of the sea! If ever I have a water-drinking fancy, it is a wish that the ocean brine had been sweet, or sour instead of salt, so as to be potable; for what can be more tempting to the eye as a draught, than the pure fluid, almost invisible with clearness, as it lies in some sandy scoop, or rocky hollow, a true “Diamond of the Desert,” to say nothing of the same living liquid in its effervescing state, when it sparkles up, hissing and bubbling in the ship’s wake—the very Champaigne[Pg 127] of water! Above all what intellectual solar and soothing syrup have I not derived from the mere contemplation of the boundless main,—the most effectual and innocent of mental sedatives, and often called in aid of that practical philosophy it has been my wont to recommend in the present work. For whenever, owing to physical depression, or a discordant state of the nerves, my personal vexations and cares, real or imaginary, become importunate in my thoughts, and acquire, by morbid exaggeration, an undue prominence and importance, what remedy then so infallible as to mount to my solitary seat in the look-out, and thence gaze awhile across the broad expanse, till in the presence of that vast horizon, my proper troubles shrink to their true proportions, and I look on the whole race of men, with their insignificant pursuits, as so many shrimpers! But this is a digression—We have made the harbour of Dundee, and it is time to step ashore in “stout and original Scotland,” as it is called by Doctor Adolphus Wagner, in his German edition of Burns[2].

Like other shipments, I had been regularly addressed to the[Pg 128] care of a consignee:—but the latter, not anxious, probably, to take charge of a hobbledehoy, yet at the same time unwilling to incur the reproach of having a relative in the same town and not under the same roof, peremptorily declined the office. Nay, more, she pronounced against me a capital sentence, so far as returning to the place from whence I came, and even proceeded to bespeak my passage and reship my luggage. Judging from such vigorous measures the temper of my customer, instead of remonstrating, I affected resignation, and went with a grave face through the farce of a formal leave-taking; I even went on board, but it was in company with a stout fellow who relanded my baggage; and thus, whilst my transporter imagined, good easy soul! that the rejected article was sailing round St. Abb’s Head, or rolling off the Bass, he was actually safe and snug in Dundee, quietly laughing in his sleeve with the Law at his back. I have a confused recollection of meeting, some three or four days afterwards, a female cousin on her road to school, who at sight of me turned suddenly round, and galloped off towards home with the speed of a scared heifer.

My first concern was now to look out for some comfortable roof, under which “for a consideration” one would be treated as one of the family. I entered accordingly into a treaty with a respectable widower, who had no sons of his own, but in spite of the most undeniable references, and a general accordance as to terms, there occurred a mysterious hitch in the arrangement, arising from a whimsical prepossession which only came afterwards to my knowledge—namely, that an English laddie, instead of supping parritch, would inevitably require a rump-steak to his breakfeast! My next essay was more successful; and ended in my being regularly installed in a boarding-house, kept by a Scotchwoman, who was not so sure of my being a beefeater. She was a sort of widow, with a seafaring husband “as good as dead,” and in her appearance not unlike a personi[Pg 129]fication of rouge et noir, with her red eyes, her red face, her yellow teeth, and her black velvet cap. The first day of my term happened to be also the first day of the new year, and on stepping from my bed-room, I encountered our Hostess—like a witch and her familiar spirit—with a huge bottle of whiskey in one hand, and a glass in the other. It was impossible to decline the dram she pressed upon me, and very good it proved, and undoubtedly strong, seeing that for some time I could only muse its praise in expressive silence, and indeed, I was only able to speak with “a small still voice” for several minutes afterwards. Such was my characteristic introduction to the Land of Cakes, where I was destined to spend the greater part of two years, under circumstances likely to materially influence the colouring and filling up of my future life.

To properly estimate the dangers of my position, imagine a boy of fifteen, at the Nore, as it were, of life, thus left dependent on his own pilotage for a safe voyage to the Isle of Man; or conceive a juvenile Telemachus, without a Mentor, brought suddenly into the perilous neighbourhood of Calypso and her enchantments. It will hardly be expected, that from some half-dozen of young bachelors, there came forth any solemn voice didactically warning me in the strain of the sage Imlac to the Prince of Abyssinia. In fact, I recollect receiving but one solitary serious admonition, and that was from a she cousin of ten years old, that the Spectator I was reading on a Sunday morning, “was no the Bible.” For there was still much of this pious rigour extant in Scotland, though a gentleman was no longer committed to Tolboothia Infelix, for an unseasonable promenade during church time. It was once, however, my fortune to witness a sample of the ancien régime at an evening party composed chiefly of young and rather fashionable persons, when lo! like an Anachronism confounding times past with times present, there came out of some corner an antique figure,[Pg 130] with quaintly cut blue suit and three-cornered hat, not unlike a very old Greenwich Pensioner, who taking his stand in front of the circle, deliberately asked a blessing of formidable length on the thin bread and butter, the short cake, the marmalade, and the Pekoe tea. And here, en passant, it may be worth while to remark, for the benefit of our Agnews and Plumtres, as illustrating the intrinsic value of such sanctimonious pretension, that the elder Scotland, so renowned for armlong graces, and redundant preachments, and abundant psalm-singing, has yet bequeathed to posterity a singularly liberal collection of songs, the reverie of Divine and Moral, such as “can only be sung when the punch-bowl has done its work and the wild wit is set free[3].”

To return to my boarding-house, which with all its chairs, had none appropriated to a Professor of Moral Philosophy. In the absence of such a monitor, nature, fortunately for myself, had gifted me with a taste for reading, which the languor of ill-health, inclining me to sedentary habits, helped materially to encourage. Whatever books, good, bad, or indifferent, happened to come within my reach, were perused with the greatest avidity, and however indiscriminate the course, the balance of the impressions thence derived was decidedly in favour of the allegorical lady, so wisely preferred by Hercules when he had to make his election between Virtue and Vice. Of the material that ministered to this appetite, I shall always regret that I did not secure, as a literary curiosity—a collection of halfpenny Ballads, the property of a Grocer’s apprentice, and which contained, amongst other matters, a new version of Chevy Chase, wherein the victory was transferred to the Scots. In the mean time, this bookishness acquired for me a sort of reputation for scholarship amongst my comrades, and in consequence my pen was sometimes called into requisition, in divers and sometimes delicate cases. Thus for[Pg 131] one party, whom the Gods had not made poetical, I composed a love-letter in verse; for another, whose education had been neglected, I carried on a correspondence with reference to a tobacco manufactory in which he was a sleeping partner; whilst, on a graver occasion, the hand now peacefully setting down these reminiscences, was employed in penning a most horrible peremptory invitation to pistols and twelve paces, till one was nicked. The facts were briefly these. A spicy-tempered captain of Artillery, in a dispute with a superior officer, had rashly cashiered himself by either throwing up or tearing up his commission. In this dilemma he arrived at Dundee, to assume a post in the Customs, which had been procured for him by the interest of his friends. To his infinite indignation, however, he found that instead of a lucrative surveyorship, he had been appointed a simple tide-waiter! and magnificent was the rage with which he tore, trampled, and danced on the little official paper book wherein he had been set to tick off, bale by bale, a cargo of “infernal hemp.” Unluckily, on the very day of this revelation, a forgery was perpetrated on the local Bank, and those sapient Dogberries, the town officers, saw fit to take up our persecuted ex-captain, on the simple ground that he was the last stranger who had entered the town. Rendered almost frantic by this second insult, nothing would serve him in his paroxysm but calling somebody out, and he pitched at once on the cashier of the defrauded Bank. As the state of his nerves would not permit him to write, he entreated me earnestly to draw up a defiance, which I performed, at the expense of an agony of suppressed laughter, merely to imagine the effect of such a missive on the man of business—a respectable powdered, bald, pudgy, pacific little body, with no more idea of “going out” than a cow in a field of clover. I forget the precise result—but certainly there was no duel.

“In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God’s instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum, fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service—all things as it were with all men, ready to embrace the hand of Jew, Christian or Mahometan,—heavy with the German, light with the Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward in coming forward with the Hebrew,—in short, for flexibility, amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great Penn.”

PERRY’S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER.

HIS-TRIONICS.

“PENNSYLVANIA.”

THE CHECK-STRING.

THOSE who have travelled much, as inside passengers in a long stage-coach, whilst they admired the facility of starting off[Pg 140] with one, must have occasionally remarked the difficulty of stopping with it, just at the point where it would be convenient to be set down. An ailing man may not have voice enough to lock all the four wheels at once; and should he be, as is probable, a nervous man besides, he will not without some hesitation make up his mind to request of some stentorian neighbour the loan of a set of lungs. In a six-inside coach, the timid occupier of a middle seat has no chance whatever, unless to take advantage of the first casual halt, or an upset. Even in the four-inside vehicle, a weakly, shy traveller’s case is equally hopeless, supposing the passengers on the roof to have properly tucked up the skirts of their great and little coats. To a bold, brassy fellow even, with a tongue like a trumpet, it is anything but an easy affair to say woh! with any effect to a Dart that is flying at twelve miles within the hour. The coachman, who ought to hear, will not: the horses hear but do not understand: the coach cannot hear: the outsiders admire the pace too much to hear anything but the patter of the hoofs. At last, when he has succeeded, the stout gentleman with the big voice, who wants to run home, finds generally that he has a good hundred yards or two allowed him of law, measured, as the Irish always mete it out, backwards.

It was after a more serious dilemma,—for a little nervous bashful man with a little squeaking voice like Punch’s, though he was not so fond of exhibiting it, after suffering himself to be carried two miles beyond his house, had at last fractured the small bone of his leg, by opening the door in despair and jumping out,—that a discussion ensued in the Brighton “Age” as to the best means of being let out to order. Many different methods had been proposed before the little florid plump gentleman in black delivered his opinion, with his back to the horses.

[Pg 141]

“For my own part, ratiocinating on hackney-coaches, I should hypothetically propose check-strings.”

“Lord forbid!” exclaimed a voice from the other seat, on the same side. Nobody remembered to have heard that voice before, from London to Crawley Common.

The friend to check-strings seemed thunderstruck by the explosion. He screwed himself round to take a look at his neighbour—didn’t like him at all—turned back again—stole another look—liked him worse than before—then looked for the third time, and hated him. His seat became uneasy—he had found a choke-pear, very like a hedgehog, and very like a bull terrier, he could neither kill it nor let it alone. It clung to him like a burr which you pull off your hat that it may stick on your right-hand glove, thence to be transferred to the left-hand one, and so on alternately till you finally get rid of it on your pantaloons. The “Lord forbid,” like Macbeth’s “Amen,” stuck in his throat—it buzzed in his head like a fly in a horse’s ear. However, he held his uncomfortable peace till silence itself became insupportable. At last he broke out:

“Humph! Doubtful as I am whether common coach conversation ought to be tied by strict rules of logic, still I cannot suppress the remark, that when one gentleman syllogistically brings forward a proposition of check-strings, for another gentleman to cry ‘Lord forbid,’ does not appear to my mind to be following a regular line of argument. But perhaps the forbidding gentleman will have the goodness to explain the colloquial anomaly.”

The forbidding gentleman thus appealed to, good-humouredly apologised. It was a mere slip of the tongue, he said: the words escaped from him involuntarily; but his fellow-traveller would probably excuse him, in consideration of the fact, that on account of a check-string he had lost the only hope of affluence he ever had in his life.

“Indeed, Sir! why then I excuse the colloquial irregularity with all my heart,” said the warm man, putting both his hands[Pg 142] into his pockets; “but, upon my life, Sir, it must have been a very extraordinary consequence.”

A CHINESE PUZZLE.

“A very simple one, Sir,” returned the other.[Pg 143] “The facts are briefly these: my maternal uncle had lately returned from India with an immense fortune, a handsome portion of which was my own in expectance, on no worse authority than his own promise. He was a widower with an only daughter, with whom, and himself, I one evening found myself in the carriage, on our way to a dinner-party given by a nobleman, then intimately connected with East Indian affairs. We were very late: and my uncle, the Nabob, who rode backward, was extremely fidgety, insisting that we were going beyond our destination. Every other minute he was thrusting his head out of the front window to dispute with the coachman, who in truth, was a little less sober, and more obstinate, than became him. And so we went onwards, till my uncle’s temper, always irritable, was worked up almost to combustion. In such moods he was rather apt to give vent to serio-comic ebullitions; and my ill-fortune has gifted me with risible muscles of exquisite sensibility. I was in the very midst of an ill-smothered laugh, when my fair cousin, giving me a sudden push, and then clasping her hands, exclaimed that we were going past the house. I instantly jumped up and made for the check-string, but with no more effect than if I had pulled at anything else. Gracious Heaven! I had better have pulled the string of a shower-bath, full of scalding hot water, to pour itself on my devoted head!—By that one infernal pull, Sir, I pulled myself out of half a plum!”

“A sad pull, indeed, Sir!” said the florid plump man in black. “But—humph—begging your pardon, Sir, I cannot really derive any such deduction from the premises.”

“A SPLIT WITH DUCROW.”

“A moment’s patience, Sir,” continued the unfortunate coach-stopper.[Pg 144] “Lord forbid check-strings,—Lord forbid all strings whatever! I was in despair, Sir. I could have sunk through the bottom of the carriage!—I believe I went down on my knees. I said everything I could think of—and begged fifty thousand pardons, but my uncle was obdurate. ‘Pray don’t mention it,’ he said, in his most caustic tone—‘it has saved me fifty thousand pounds. It’s a very good practical joke, although it will not read quite so well in my will.’”

“But surely, Sir,” objected the plump man, “your uncle never acted on a conclusion, jumped to, as I may say, by such very imperfect inferences?”

“You did not know my uncle, Sir,” answered the unfortunate kinsman, with a deep sigh. “But you shall judge of his character from the clause itself:—Item, I give and bequeath to my jocose nephew, Arthur Carruthers Oliphant, for pulling his uncle’s pigtail, the sum of one shilling, sterling.”

“He shall not die.”—Uncle Toby.

AN INN-QUEST.

I DO not know what imp of mischief could have put such a fancy into the dreaming head of Mrs. Carnaby, except Puck—but on a fine morning in August she awoke with a determination to get up a gipsy party, and have a day’s pleasure “under the green-wood tree.” She opened her mind therefore to Mr. C——, as soon as he had opened his eyes, and before breakfast they had arranged the whole affair. Hornsey Wood was stale, and Norwood was rejected, for the very paradoxical reason that it was such a haunt for Gipsies; and Mrs. Carnaby meant to take even her youngest children. After a good deal of debating, Hainault was the Forest fixed upon;—it lay so handy to Whitechapel, and the redletter day was marked to be the Wednesday in the following week, because then Master Carnaby would only lose half a day’s schooling.

Accordingly, on the Wednesday, the Dryads of Wanstead were startled by the rumble of a well-laden tax-cart up that avenue which once led to a princely mansion; and the vehicle at last stopped, and set down its insides and outsides just where the lines of trees branch off into another verdant alley. “It was,” Mrs. Carnaby remarked, “a delicious green spot, and very handy to the Green Man for getting porter.” Mrs. C—— was assisted out of the cart; and then Miss C—— was lifted out by Mr. Hodges; and then the children were lifted out by the Mother; and then the nursemaid, an awkward plainlooking girl that nobody helped, tumbled out. In the mean time, Master C—— jumped out, all agog after blackberrying and birdnesting; and had swarmed half up a tree before his mother’s vigilance discovered, at a single glance, that he was tearing his trowsers,[Pg 149] and had his best clothes on. This was a bad setting out for the boy; and the horse was not better, for directly he got out of harness, and felt himself free and at grass, after two or three preliminary kicks and plunges, it occurred to him to indulge in a roll, and so he rolled over a pigeon pie that was unfortunately unpacked, and finished by getting very much up with his fore-legs in a basket of ginger beer. But it was only a moment of enthusiasm; and, like other old nags, he betook himself to eating his green grass salad as gravely as a judge. None of the performers were fortunate in their debut. The first thing Mrs. Carnaby did in her hurry to save the pop, was to pop down one of the children on the basket of knives and forks; but it was a sharp child and soon got up again: and the first thing the other twin did was to trip over a stump, and fall, as Betty nursemaid said, “with its face in a fuz.” The first thing Mr. Hodges did, was to take Miss Carnaby round the waist and give her a smacking kiss; in return for which, as her first act, she gave him a playful push, that sent him, with his white ducks, into a muddy miniature pond, that had recently been stirred up by a cow in search of a cold bath. The first thing that Mr. C—— did was to recommend some brandy as a preventive against catching cold; but the last thing the brandy bottle had done had been to stay at home in the cupboard. Mr. Hodges, therefore, walked off to the Green Man for his health’s sake; and Master Carnaby sneaked off, nobody knew where, for the sake of blackberries;—while the Nursemaid, for the sake of society, took a romantic walk with the two twins, and a strange footman. Gipsies are a wandering race, and all the performers topped their parts; the very horse roamed away like a horse that had neither parish nor settlement: and Mr. Carnaby would have gone roaming after him, if his Wife and Daughter had not hung round his neck and made him swear not to leave ’em till the others returned, which was afterwards softened down to[Pg 150] taking a little walk, provided he didn’t go out of sight and hearing. In the mean time Mrs. and Miss C—— laid the cloth, and began to review the eatables, not without lamenting over the smash of the pigeon pie; and when they came to plan their second course they found that the chief remove, a cold round of beef, had been pinned on the way down by a favourite bull-dog, that Master Carnaby had smuggled into the party. Luckily for the dog, he had also gone roving, with the whole forest before him, as naturally as if he had belonged to Bampfylde Moore Carew, the King of the Gipsies.

COIL AND RECOIL.

DEADLY NIGHTSHADE.

Mrs. Carnaby was one of those characters emphatically called fidgets; she never rested till each individual came back, and she never rested when they did. Mr. C. was the first to return, and not in the first of tempers. He had been done out of his long-anticipated rural walk by setting his foot, before he had gone a hundred yards, on a yard of snake, and it had frightened him so that Mrs. Carnaby expected “it would turn his whole mash of blood, and give him the yellow jaundice.” Mr. Hodges came in second, but to the impatient eye of Miss C. certainly did not proceed from the Green Man with the straightness of a bullet from a rifle. Master Carnaby was a good third, for he had been well horse-whipped, just as he had got three little red blackberries and[Pg 151] five thorns in his fingers, by a gentleman who did not approve of his trespassing upon his grounds. Boxer the bull-dog was fourth; he came back on three-legs, with his brindle well peppered with number six by the gamekeeper, to cure him of worrying park rabbits. In fact, poor Boxer, as Mrs. C. exclaimed, “was bleeding like a pig,” and the grateful animal acknowledged her compassionate notice by going and rubbing his shot hide against her shot silk, in return for which he got a blow quite hard enough to shiver the stick of something between a parasol and an umbrella. As for the nurse-maid and the twins they did not return for an hour, to the infinite horror of the mother; but just as they were all sitting[Pg 152] down to dinner Betsey appeared with her charge, walked off their feet, with their “pretty mouths all besmeared” with blue and red juice; but no one of the party was botanist enough to tell whether the berries they were munching were hips and haws, or bilberries, or deadly nightshade, but maternal anxiety made sure it was the “rank pison.” Accordingly dinner was postponed, and they set to get up an extempore fire to make the kettle hot, and as soon as the water was warm enough, these “two pretty babes” were well drenched, and were soon as perfectly uncomfortable as they had been two months before in a rough steam trip to Margate. As soon as peace was restored it transpired, from an examination of the children, and a very cross examination of the nurse-maid, that they had met with a real gipsy woman in the forest who had told Betty’s fortune, but had omitted to prognosticate that her mistress would give her warning on the spot, and that her gipsying would end, as it actually did, in finding herself suddenly out of place in the middle of a forest. Like other servants, when they lose a comfortable situation, “some natural tears she shed,” but did not wipe them soon, as did “our general mother,” for the very excellent reason that she had spread her pocket handkerchief on the ground to sit upon, somewhere between Wanstead and Walthamstow, and had left it as a waif to the lord of the manor.

BACKING OUT OF GOING TO MARKET.

Dinner time then came again, to the especial delight of the two empty children, though, thanks to the horse and dog, it was principally broken victuals. But on sitting down and counting heads Master C. had a second time absconded during the last bustle; and, as his mother could not touch a morsel for anxiety, Mr. Carnaby was obliged to set out fasting to look for him, and had soon the satisfaction of finding him sitting hatless crying in a wet ditch, and scraping a suit of brown off a suit of blue with an old oyster shell. His father, in the[Pg 153] first transport of anger and hunger, gave him what boys call “a regular larruping,” then a good rubbing down with a bunch of fern, and then brought him back to the cold collation, with the comfortable threat that he should go without his dinner. As soon as the culprit could explain for sobbing, he told them that[Pg 154] “he had gone for a little walk, like, and saw the most capital donkey with a saddle and bridle feeding wild about the forest as if he belonged to nobody, and he just got on him like, like they used to do at Margate; and then the donkey set off full tear, and never stopped till he came to a tent of gipsies in the middle of the wood; and they all set upon him, and swore at him like anything for running away with their donkey; and then all of a sudden he lost his hat and his handkerchief, and his money out of his pockets like conjuring; then they told him to run for his life, and so he did, and as for the mud it was all along of jumping over a hedge that had no other side to it.” This intelligence threw Mrs. Carnaby into an agony of horror which could only be pacified by their immediately packing up and removing, eatables and all, to a less lonesome place by the side of the road, an operation that was performed by their all pulling and pushing at the cart, as the horse had taken French leave of absence.

It was now Miss Carnaby’s turn to be discomfited: her retiring disposition made her wince under the idea of dining in public; for being market day at Romford, they were over-looked by plenty of farmers and pig butchers: consequently, after a very miffy dialogue with her mother, the young lady took herself off, as she was desired, with “her romantical notions,” to a place of more solitude, and Mr. Hodges, as in gallantry bound, postponed his dinner till his tea to keep her company. In the mean time, Betsey, who had been sent up to the Green Man for the porter, returned with the empty tankard, and a terrified tale of being “cotch’d hold on by a ruffian in the wood, that had drunk up all the beer to all their very good healths.” The first impulse of Mr. Carnaby was to jump up to do justice on the vagabond, but Mrs. C—— had the presence of mind to catch hold of his coat-flaps so abruptly, that before he could well feel his legs, he found himself sitting in a large plum pie, which the children had just set their hearts upon; of course it did not mend his temper to hear the shout from a dozen ragged boys who were looking on; and in the crisis of his vexation, he vented such a fervent devil’s blessing on gipsy parties, and all that proposed them, that Mrs. Carnaby was obliged to take it up, and to tell him sharply, what in reality was true enough, that[Pg 155] “if people did have gipsy parties, it didn’t follow that their stupid husbands was to sit down on plum pies.” Heaven knows to what size and shape this little quarrel might have ripened, but for the appearance of Miss Carnaby, who, with a terrified exclamation sat herself down, and after a vain attempt to recover, went off into a strong fit of what her mother called “kicking hysterics.” The cause was soon explained by the appearance of Mr. Hodges, with one eye poached black, and a dog-bite in the calf of his leg, because “he had only stood looking on at two men setting wires for rabbits, thinking to himself if he watched them well he could learn how to do it.” Fortunately, Miss Carnaby came to just in time to concur with her father and Mr. Hodges in the opinion, that the best thing they could all do was to pack up and go home, but which was stoutly combated by Mrs. Carnaby, who insisted that she was resolved to take tea in a wood for once in her life, and she was seconded by the children and Master C——, who said they hadn’t had any pleasure yet. It was an unanswerable argument; sticks were collected, a fire was made, the kettle boiled, the tea-things were set in order, the bread and butter was cut, and pleasure began to smile on the gipsy party so placidly that Mr. Hodges was encouraged to begin playing “In my Cottage near a Wood,” on the key bugle, but was obliged to break off in the middle, on finding that it acted as a bugle call to a corps of observation, who came and stood round to see “Rural Felicity.” Mrs. Carnaby, however, was happy; but “there is many a slip between the tea-cup and the lip.” She was in the triumphant fact of pouring the hot water on her best souchong, in her best china tea-pot, when a very well-charged gun went off just on the other side of the park palings, and Mrs. Carnaby had not been born like her Grace, old Sarah of Marlborough, “before nerves came in fashion.” The tea-kettle dropped from her hand upon the tea-pot, which it dashed to atoms, and then lay on its side, hot watering the daisies and[Pg 156] the dandelions that had the luck to grow near it. “Misfortunes never come single,” and the gun, therefore, acted like a double one in its inflictions; for no sooner did Boxer recognise its sound than he jumped up, and with an alarming howl dashed through the rest of the tea service, as if he had absorbed another ounce of number six: a fresh shout from the bystanders welcomed this new disaster, and with the true spirit of “biting a bitten cur,” they began to heap embarrassments on the disconcerted gipsyers. They kept pitching sticks into the fire till it grew a bonfire, and made cockshies of the remaining crockery; some audacious boys even helped themselves to bread and butter, as if on the principle that the open air ought to keep open house. As there were too many assailants to chastise, the only remedy was to pack up and take to the road as fast as they could, with a horse which they found with two broken knees, the consequence of his being too curious in the construction of a gravel-pit. “You may say what you like,” said Mr. Carnaby, in his summing up, “but for my part I must say of gipsying, that it’s impossible to take to it without being regularly ‘done brown.’”

THE FORTUNE HUNTER.

HALFPENNY HATCH.

To Mr. Richard Walton, 32, Lincoln’s Inn.

DEAR DICK,

IN re Pedro—Pike, Row, Badgery, and Crump, Mr. Theodore Hook’s attorneys, offered three years ago, and continued the allowance up to last Easter Term, to give me, with unexampled liberality, eighteen shillings per week as copying clerk, and to undertake the management of the Common Law—attend to the Chancery Department—do the out-door business—make out Bills of Costs—and make myself generally useful—which I have been doing as long as my health permitted. Not being strong, though with an attachment to the profession, I have been compelled to withdraw my record, and to sue out a Writ of Certiorari to carry my line of life into another court. Hearing that Don Pedro was about to bring an action against Don Miguel and Company, and that lots of John Does and Richard Roes were wanted, I took a retainer from an agent of the great Portuguese professional gentleman, and have really embarked in the cause. Being out here on the circuit, as one might call it (Mr. Chief Justice Sartorius goes it), and knowing the interest you take in my verdicts, I shall write at[Pg 163] intervals the particulars of plaintiff’s demand, and account of set-off on the part of the enemy’s fleet, or Defendant. Pray call on Mr. Wilson, the Common Law Clerk at Pike, Row, and Co., and tell him I have four hours to myself and a chance of being paid, but do this if possible without the knowledge of the Principals. White of the same office, when I enlisted, was to have taken the benefit of the act, but on mustering at Gravesend, he did not attend the roll call, and was struck off the Rolls. I can’t but say, putting Truth on her oath in the Admiralty Court, that when the Blue Peter gave legal notice to quit, I felt some regret at leaving a land where I might have been, so to speak, a tenant at will. Nor was it much better when I came to the Nore. I heartily wished, with Mr. Matthews, that if Britannia does rule the waves, she would rule them evener! but it was “rule refused.” The sea ran very rough, and you will understand me when I say I took nothing by my motion. There was the thought of my mother, besides, and the numberless feelings for which, though matters of everyday practice, it is difficult to show cause.

You remember Sugden with Hart & Co., and will not be surprised to hear that he volunteered to convince Don Miguel of his defective title. A few hours, however, sufficed to disgust him with conveyancing, as it is practised in the Marine Courts; and I heard him, by a verbal instrument, assign over with technical formality, the whole ship to the Devil, his Heirs, Executors, Administrators, and Assigns.

As for Butterworth, the Captain gave instructions with regard to the stays, and Butterworth in going aloft fell overboard. We thought for some time that he was dead, but after rubbing, and other means of revival, we had the satisfaction of seeing him moving for a new trial, and that he was beginning de novo.

You may conceive, professionally, our joy at entering the Douro with a prospect of being invited within the Bar,—but[Pg 164] the anchors were instructed to stay proceedings, and we stayed the same. As I took notes of what happened afterwards, I will give you a rough draft.

Michaelmas Term, Oct. 31. Admiral took Counsel’s opinion with regard to the Fort of St. Michael. Held that an action would lie. Judgment affirmed.

Nov. 2. Action of assault and battery. Admiral’s ship opened the case, and the others followed on the same side. Hills crowded with witnesses. Enemy’s damages laid at a hundred and fifty men. Tax off a hundred.

DRAKE DISPERSING THE ARMADA.

3. Discovering flaws and amending same. At intervals term reports. Pollock died of his wounds, and was struck off the paper. Gave him an undertaking.

4. A dies non. Poor Horne seized with lockjaw, and preparing for the long vacation.

[Pg 165]

5. Notice of action. Enemy’s Fleet put in an appearance, but non pros. Horne demised.

6. Joined issue with enemy’s flag ship. Wetherell killed by a ball lodging in the Inner Temple, and Denman subpœnaed by a bullet out of the main-top. Enemy attempted to put an officer and fifty men in possession—but we served them with an ejectment. Night coming on, agreed to withdraw a juror.

7. A violent storm, and a sail under a distress. Taken in execution by a wave,—levied on longboat and three men, and all the hen-coops.

8. Fell in with a Portuguese brig, and lodged a detainer. Have not received my share of prize, but have got a cognovit.

9. Enemy moved for a new trial. Bore up and fired a broadside; replied to same. Admiral endeavoured, by intercepting the rear-most ships, to cut off the entail. Boarding again,—obliged to fight with all my Power of Attorney. Gave quarter to one man, he was such a special pleader. Verdict—drawn battle.

10. Chitty fell overboard from the mizen chains. Action of trover failed. Filed a bill of him in Ocean’s Chancery, and sent an office copy to his Widow.

11. Enemy brought a fresh action. Boarding again, and obliged to defend in person. Enemy nonsuited with costs.

To abbreviate pleadings, you will see that our time has been Term time. Plenty of work at overhours, and I am sorry to say no extra charge. But I am not going to take a bill of exceptions. I comfort myself for the loss of my arm—I have lost that limb of the law, Dick—by reflecting that I am now like Nelson, except the blind eye, and that I do not follow the Hamiltonian system. Sometimes, however, as I look homeward,[Pg 166] and remember “dear Morton,” I sigh to join you by a Surrey-joinder, and to taste your Surrey-butter. I think that is the legal mode of expressing it.

Nothing can behave better than our men—from the principals down to the juniors. They fight as if they belonged to Lyon’s Inn. However, a good many have been ticked off,—including Tyndale, Thessiger, Phillips, Spankie, Scarlett, Gurney, Wilde, Burney, and some others of our acquaintance, who have received a general release. For my own part——

[LETTER ENCLOSING THE ABOVE.]

N.B. Go to the Duncan’s Head in Wapping, and Captain Bligh will tell you all about the Bounty. That’s if you mean to ’list.

[Pg 167]

“I HAVE A SILENT SORROW HERE.”

THE SWEEP’S COMPLAINT.

“I like to meet a sweep—such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes, sounding like the peep, peep, of a young sparrow.”—ESSAYS OF ELIA.

A WIND-FALL.

A REVERSE IN BUSINESS.

DEAR SIR,

I RECEAVED your’s of the first last, wich I should have anser’d it sooner, only I have ad the Roomatiz in my fingers, so you must Pleas to excus my crampd hand.

As to my Sporting Reminis-cences, as you are pleasd to say, I have look’d them out in the dixenary, and kno verry well what it is. I beg leaf to Say, I have forgot all my recolections, and can not bring to mind any of my old Rememberances.

As for Hunting, I shall never take a fence at it agen, altho I sumtims Ride to cover on the old Gray, wich is now be come quite Wite. The last tim I went out, we dru Hazelmere copses down to Broxley wood; then we dru Broxley wood over to Fox thorp; then we dru Fox thorp over to Middle ford, and then we dru Middle ford, in short, it was all drawing and no painting for want of a brush.

Sir William Chase coming to be his father’s hare, he set up a coarsing club, but being short of long dogs, and there hairs falling of, it was obleged to discourse, and is now turned into a conversasiony.

In regard to shuting, I have never dun anny thing Since per[Pg 174]cussion Captiousness cum up, wich I am Told they are sharper then Flints. The last hare I kild was 2 long ears ago, and the Last fezzant, But there’s a long tail belonging to that, wich you shall have when you cum over, as I hop you wil, with your Horse’s; I have good entertainment for boath, as the french Say, at my table D’ oats. The lads go out after Burds now and then, but I seldum cum at the rites of there shuting—you kno

WHICH WAY DID THE FOX GO?

Talking of shuting, hav you seen Ubbard’s new guns like wauking sticks—there a cappital defence agin cappital offences; as you may ether stick a feller or Shute him; or boath together. I wish farmer Gale had carrid one last friday, for he was Rob’d cuming from markit by a foot paddy Irish man, that knockd him[Pg 175] down to make him Stand. Luckly he had nothing on him when Stopd but sum notes of the Barnsby bank that had bin stopd the weak afore.

In the fishing line I am quite Dead bait, tho I have had manny a Good run in my tim, Partickler when the keeper spide me out were I hadent got Leaf. The last tim I went I could hardly un do my rod for roomatiz in my joints, and I got the Lumbago verry bad wen I cum back, and its atax I doant like. Beside wich I found very Little big fish on a count of the pochers, who Kil em al in colde blood. I used sumtims to float and sumtims to fli, but our waters is so over fished theres no fish to be had, and as I am very musicle, I dont like trolling without a catch, the last jack I caut was with my boot, and was only a foot long.

FLY FISHING.

As for raceing, I never cared much a bout it, and in regard of betting, I am Better with out it, tho I al ways take the feeld wen I am Able, and suport the Farmer’s Plate with al my Mite.

Our Wist club is going of, Some of the members go on so; two of em are perpetuly quareling like anny thing but double dummies, for one plays like Hoyle and the other like Vinegar.[Pg 176] The young men hav interduced Shorts, but I doant think theyle Last long. They are al so verry Sharp at the Pints, and as for drinking, I never se sich Liquorish Chaps in my life. They are al ways laying ods, even at Super, when theyle Bet about the age of a Roosted foul, with they cal Chicken hazzard, or about the Wait of a Curran py, with they cal the Currancy question. They al so smoke a grate manny seagars, but they cant Put the old men’s pips out, wich it Wood be a Burning shame if they did. I am sorry to say politicks has Crept in; Sum is al for reform, and some is al for none at al, and the only thing they agre in is, that the Land lord shant bring in no Bil. There is be sides grate dis-cushins as to the new game laws, sum entertaning douts wen sum peple go out a shuting, wether even acts of Parliament will inable them to shute anny game.

The crickit Club is going on uncomon wel. They are 36 members with out rekoning the byes; our best man at Wickit is Captin Batty—he often gets four notches running; and our best boler is Use Ball, tho we sumtims get Dr. Pilby to bolus. As for the crickit Bal, it is quit wore out, wich the gals say they are verry Sory for it, as they took a grate intrest in our matches.

My lads are boath of em marred, wich mayhap you have Herd,—and if the gals are not, I Believe its no falt of theres. They hope youle cum to the Wake, wich is next Sunday weak, for they Say there will be High fun, al tho I think it is Rather Low. The only use of waking that I can See, is to pervent folkes Sleeping, and as for there jumping and throwing up their Heals, I see no Pleasur in it. If they had the Roomatiz as Bad as I have, they woudent be for Dancing there fandangoes at that rat, and Kicking for partners.

Our county Member, Sir William Wiseacre, is going to bring in a bil “for the supression of the Barbarus past-time of bul beating, and for the better incorigement of the nobul art of Cockin,” by wich al buls, wether inglish or irish, are to be Made[Pg 177] game of no longer, and al such as are found at anny ring or stake are libel to be find. They cal it here the Cock and Bul Act, wich I think is a very good name. It has causd grate diversion in manny peple’s opinions, but most of us Think the cocks is quite as Bad as the buls. The same Barrownet as tried to interduce Forkenry, but the first atempts as been verry Hawkward. The forkens flu at a herin, who tried to be above there atax, for the more they pecked him the more they maid him sore, but a boy flying a Kite skared em al away togither.

WHERE’S YOUR HAWKER’S LICENSE?

Last week was our grand archery Meetin, and the first prize was won by Little Master Tomkins, of grove House. I supose his fondnes for lolli pops made him ame best at bulls Eyes. The Miss Courtenays were there as usul, and in comparison of arch Angles look ralyarcher.—The wags propposed miss Emilyshood[Pg 178] have the second prize for shuting in too a cows Eye that came to nere the target; she says she wos so nervus, it put her arrow into a quiver. In the middle of the meeting we herd a Bad playd Key buggle, and out of the shrubbery, were they had bin hiding, Jumpd Revd. Mister Crumpe and assistants; he is Rector of Bow and Curat of Harrow, and was disgised in every thing green, as Robin Hood and his mery Men; after geting Little John to string his bow for him, I am sorry to say, Robin Hood shot Worst of every Body, for he did not even hit the target, and we should have never Seen wear his arrow went, but by hereing it smash in to the conservatorry. When we came to look for the prize, a silver Arrow, every Body had lost it, for it had dropt out of the case, and would never have been found, but for Revd. mister Crumpe sittin downe on the lawne, and wich made Him jump up agen, as miss Courtenay said out of Byron, like “a warrior bounding from its Barb.” The Toxophilus Club is very flurrishing, but talk of expeling sum members for persisting in wereing peagreen insted of lincon, and puttin on there spanish Hats and fethers the rong side before.

Thank you for the Hoisters, wich was verry good. Mary has took the shels to make her a groto, of wich I think is very shameful, as I wanted them to Friten the Burds. Old Mark Lane, the man as Cheated you out of them oats, has bean sent to jail for Stealing barly. I am sadly Afearde old Marks corn will give Him 14 ears of Bottany.

Pleas to Remember me to al inquiring friends, if they should think it woth wile to Ask after me.

From your Humbel servant,
ANDREW AXELTREE.

P.S. I forgot to menshun the subskripshon Stag hounds kep by the same members as the wist club, and its there wim to have fifty too dogs to the pack. If old Bil, the huntsman, was drest[Pg 179] like Pam, theyd be complet. They have had sum cappital runs dooring the season. As you write for the sporting Maggazins, you may like to notice an apereance rather noo in the felde, I mean the Grate Creol Curnel Brown, who is very pompus, and hunts with Pompey, his black servant, after him. I have got a Deal more to Say, but carnt for want of Room. Mary says I should Cros it, wich I wood, but I doant Wish to put you to the expense of a Dubble leter.

[Pg 182]

BOARDING-SCHOOL.

THE ISLAND.

“Oh had I some sweet little Isle of my own!”—MOORE.

IF the author of the Irish Melodies had ever had a little Isle so much his own as I have possessed, he might not have found it so sweet as the song anticipates. It has been my fortune, like Robinson Crusoe, and Alexander Selkirk, to be thrown on such a desolate spot, and I felt so lonely, though I had a follower, that I wish Moore had been there. I had the honour of being in that tremendous action off Finisterre, which proved an end of the earth to many a brave fellow. I was ordered with a boarding party to forcibly enter the Santissima Trinidada, but in the[Pg 183] act of climbing into the quarter-gallery, which, however, gave no quarter, was rebutted by the butt-end of a marine’s gun, who remained the quarter-master of the place. I fell senseless into the sea, and should no doubt have perished in the waters of oblivion, but for the kindness of John Monday, who picked me up to go adrift with him in one of the ship’s boats. All our oars were carried away, that is to say we did not carry away any oars, and while shot was raining, our feeble hailing was unheeded. In short, as Shakspeare says, we were drifting off by “the current of a heady fight.” As may be supposed, our boat was anything but the jolly-boat, for we had no provisions to spare in the middle of an immense waste. We were, in fact, adrift in the cutter with nothing to cut. We had not even junk for junketing, and nothing but salt-water, even if the wind should blow fresh. Famine indeed seemed to stare each of us[Pg 184] in the ace; that is we stared at one another; but if men turn cannibals, a great allowance must be made for a short ditto. We were truly in a very disagreeable pickle, with oceans of brine and no beef, and, like Shylock, I fancy we would have exchanged a pound of gold for a pound of flesh. The more we drifted Nor, the more sharply we inclined to gnaw,—but when we drifted Sow, we found nothing like pork. No bread rose in the east, and in the opposite point we were equally disappointed. We could not compass a meal anyhow, but got mealy-mouth’d notwithstanding. We could see the Sea mews to the eastward, flying over what Byron calls the Gardens of Gull. We saw plenty of Grampus, but they were useless to all intents and porpusses, and we had no bait for catching a bottle-nose.

THE POUND OF FLESH.

CATCHING A BOTTLE-NOSE.

Time hung heavily on our hands, for our fast days seemed to pass very slowly, and our strength was rapidly sinking from being so much afloat. Still we nourished Hope, though we had nothing to give her. But at last we lost all prospect of land, if one may so say when no land was in sight. The weather got thicker as we were getting thinner; and though we kept a sharp watch, it was a very bad look-out. We could see nothing before us but nothing to eat and drink. At last the fog cleared off,[Pg 185] and we saw something like land right a-head, but alas, the wind was in our teeth as well as in our stomachs. We could do nothing but keep her near, and as we could not keep ourselves full, we luckily suited the course of the boat; so that after a tedious beating about—for the wind not only gives blows, but takes a great deal of beating—we came incontinently to an island. Here we landed, and our first impulse on coming to dry land was to drink. There was a little brook at hand to which we applied ourselves till it seemed actually to murmur at our inordinate thirst. Our next care was to look for some food, for though our hearts were full at our escape, the neighbouring region was dreadfully empty. We succeeded in getting some natives out of their bed, and ate them, poor things, as fast as they got up, but with some difficulty in getting them open; a common oyster-knife would have been worth the price of a sceptre. Our next concern was to look out for a lodging, and at last we discovered an empty cave, reminding me of an old inscription at Portsmouth, “The whole of this place to let.” We took the precaution of rolling some great stones to the entrance, for fear of last lodgers,—that some bear might come home from business, or a tiger to tea. Here, under the rock, we slept without rocking, and when, through the night’s failing, the day broke, we saw with the first instalment of light that we were upon a small desert isle, now for the first time an Isle of Man. Accordingly, the birds in this wild solitude were so little wild, that a number of boobies and noddies allowed themselves to be taken by hand, though the asses were not such asses as to be caught. There was an abundance of rabbits, which we chased unremittingly, as Hunt runs Warren; and when coats and trousers fell short, we clothed our skins with theirs, till, as Monday said, we each represented a burrow. In this work Monday was the tailor, for like the maker of shadowy rabbits and cocks upon the wall, he could turn his hand to anything. He became a potter, a[Pg 186] carpenter, a butcher, and a baker—that is to say, a master butcher and a master baker, for I became merely his journeyman. Reduced to a state of nature, Monday’s favourite phrase for our condition, I found my being an officer fulfilled no office; to confess the truth, I made a very poor sort of savage, whereas Monday, I am persuaded, would have been made a chief by any tribe whatever. Our situations in life were completely reversed; he became the leader and I the follower, or rather, to do justice to his attachment and ability, he became like a strong big brother to a helpless little one.

IN EMBARRASSED CIRCUMSTANCES.

We remained in a state of nature five years, when at last a whaler of Hull—though the hull was not visible—showed her masts on the horizon, an event which was telegraphed by Monday, who began saying his prayers and dancing the College[Pg 187] Hornpipe at the same time with equal fervour. We contrived by lighting a fire, literally a feu-de-joie, to make a sign of distress, and a boat came to our signal deliverance. We had a prosperous passage home, where the reader may anticipate the happiness that awaited us; but not the trouble that was in store for me and Monday. Our parting was out of the question; we would both rather have parted from our sheet anchor. We attempted to return to our relative rank, but we had lived so long in a kind of liberty and equality, that we could never resume our grades. The state of nature remained uppermost with us both, and Monday still watched over and tended me like Dominie Sampson with the boy Harry Bertram; go where I would, he followed with the dogged pertinacity of Tom Pipes; and do what I might, he interfered with the resolute vigour of John Dory in Wild Oats. This disposition involved us daily, nay, hourly, in the most embarrassing circumstances; and how the connexion might have terminated I know not, if it had not been speedily dissolved in a very unexpected manner. One morning poor Monday was found on his bed in a sort of convulsion, which barely enabled him to grasp my hand, and to falter out, “Good-bye, I am go—going—back—to a state of nature.”

A GOOD ACTION MEETS ITS OWN REWARD.

THE BATH GUIDE.

“DOG-BERRY.”

TO do justice to the climate of “stout and original Scotland,” it promised to act kindly by the constitution committed to its care. The air evidently agreed with the natives; and auld Robin Grays and John Andersons were plenty as blackberries, and Auld Lang Syne himself seemed to walk, bonneted, amongst[Pg 196] these patriarchal figures in the likeness of an old man covered with a mantle. The effect on myself was rather curious—for I seemed to have come amongst a generation that scarcely belonged to my era; mature spinsters, waning bachelors, very motherly matrons, and experienced fathers, that I should have set down as uncles and aunts, called themselves my cousins; reverend personages, apparently grandfathers and grandmothers, were simply great uncles and aunts: and finally I enjoyed an interview with a relative oftener heard of traditionally, than encountered in the body—a great-great grandmother—still a tall woman and a tolerable pedestrian, going indeed down the hill, but with the wheel well locked. It was like coming amongst the Struldbrugs; and truly, for any knowledge to the contrary, many of these Old Mortalities are still living, enjoying their sneeshing, their toddy, their cracks, and particular reminiscences. The very phrase of being “Scotch’d, but not killed,” seems to refer to this Caledonian tenacity of life, of which the well-known Walking Stewart was an example: he was an annuitant in the County-office, and as the actuaries would say, died very hard. It must be difficult for the teatotallers to reconcile this longevity with the imputed enormous consumption of ardent spirits beyond the Tweed. Scotia, according to the evidence of Mr. Buckingham’s committee, is an especially drouthie bodie, who drinks whiskey at christenings, and at buryings, and on all possible occasions besides. Her sons drink not by the hour or by the day, but by the week,—witness Souter Johnny:—

Swallowing no thin washy potation, but a strong overproof spirit, with a smack of smoke—and “where there is smoke there is fire,” yet without flashing off, according to temperance theories, by spontaneous combustion. On the contrary, the canny northerns are noted for soundness of constitution and clearness[Pg 197] of head, with such a strong principle of vitality as to justify the poetical prediction of C***, that the world’s longest liver, or Last Man, will be a Scotchman.

All these favourable signs I duly noted; and prophetically refrained from delivering the letter of introduction to Doctor C——, which was to place me under his medical care. As the sick man said, when he went into the gin-shop instead of the hospital, I “trusted to natur.” Whenever the weather permitted, therefore, which was generally when there were no new books to the fore, I haunted the banks and braes, or paid flying visits to the burns, with a rod intended to punish that rising generation amongst fishes called trout. But I whipped in vain. Trout there were in plenty, but like obstinate double teeth, with a bad operator, they would neither be pulled out nor come out of themselves. Still the sport, if so it might be called, had its own attractions, as, the catching excepted, the whole of the Waltonish enjoyments were at my command, the contemplative quiet, the sweet wholesome country air, and the picturesque scenery—not to forget the relishing the homely repast at the shealing or the mill; sometimes I went alone, but often we were a company, and then we had for our attendant a journeyman tobacco-spinner, an original, and literary withal, for he had a reel in his head, whence ever and anon he unwound a line of Allan Ramsay, or Beattie, or Burns. Methinks I still listen, trudging homewards in the gloaming, to the recitation of that appropriate stanza, beginning—

delivered with a gusto perhaps only to be felt by a day-labouring mechanic, who had “nothing but his evenings to himself.” Methinks I still sympathise with the zest with which he dwelt on the pastoral images and dreams so rarely realised, when a chance holiday gave him the fresh-breathing fragrance of the[Pg 198] living flower in lieu of the stale odour of the Indian weed; and philosophically I can now understand why poetry, with its lofty aspirations and sublimed feelings, seemed to sound so gratefully to the ear from the lips of a “squire of low degree.” There is something painful and humiliating to humanity in the abjectness of mind, that too often accompanies the sordid condition of the working classes; whereas it is soothing and consolatory to find the mind of the poor man rising superior to his estate, and compensating by intellectual enjoyment for the physical pains and privation that belong to his humble lot. Whatever raises him above the level of the ox in the garner, or the horse in the mill, ought to be acceptable to the pride, if not to the charity, of the fellow creature that calls him brother; for instance, music and dancing, but against which innocent unbendings some of our magistracy persist in setting their faces, as if resolved that a low neighbourhood should enjoy no dance but St. Vitus’s, and no fiddle but the Scotch.

To these open-air pursuits, sailing was afterwards added, bringing me acquainted with the boatmen and fishermen of The Craig, a hardy race, rough and ready-witted, from whom perchance was first derived my partiality for all marine bipeds and sea-craft, from Flag Admirals down to Jack Junk, the proud first-rate to the humble boatie that “wins the bairns’ bread.” The Tay at Dundee is a broad noble river, with a racing tide, which, when it differs with a contrary wind, will get up “jars” (Anglicè waves) quite equal to those of a family manufacture. It was at least a good preparatory school for learning the rudiments of boat craft; whereof I acquired enough to be able at need to take the helm without either going too near the wind or too distant from the port. Not without some boyish pride I occasionally found myself intrusted with the guidance of the Coach-Boat—so called from its carrying the passengers by the Edinburgh Mail—particularly in a calm, when the utmost exertions[Pg 199] of the crew, four old man-of-war’s-men, were required at the oars. It not unfrequently happened, however, that “the laddie” was unceremoniously ousted by the unanimous vote, and sometimes by the united strength, of the ladies, who invariably pitched upon the oldest old gentleman in the vessel to

The consequence being the landing with all the baggage, some half-mile above or below the town—and a too late conviction, that the Elder Brethren of our Trinity House were not the best Pilots.

It was during one of these brief voyages, that I witnessed a serio-comic accident, at which the reader will smile or sigh according to his connexion with the Corporation of London. I forget on what unconscious pilgrimage it was bound, but amongst the other passengers one day, there was that stock-dove of a gourmand’s affection, a five lively turtle. Rich and rare as it was, it did not travel unprotected like Moore’s heroine, but was under the care of a vigilant guardian, who seemed as jealous of the eyes that looked amorously at his charge, as if the latter had been a ward in Chancery. So far—namely, as far as the middle of the Tay—so good; when the spirit of mischief, or curiosity, or humanity, suggested the convenience of a sea-bath, and the refreshment the creature might derive from a taste of its native element. Accordingly, Testudo was lifted over the side, and indulged with a dip and a wallop in the wave, which actually revived it so powerfully, that from a playful flapping with its fore-fins it soon began to struggle most vigorously, like a giant refreshed with brine. In fact, it paddled with a power which, added to its weight, left no alternative to its guardian but to go with it, or without it. The event soon came off. The man tumbled backward into the boat, and the turtle plunged forward into the deep. There was a splash—a momentary glimpse of[Pg 200] the broad back-shell—the waters closed, and all was over—or at least under! In vain one of the boatmen aimed a lunge with his boat-hook, at the fatal spot in particular—in vain another made a blow with his oar at the Tay in general—whilst a third, in his confusion, heaved a coil of rope, as he would, could, should, might, or ought to have done to a drowning Christian. The Amphibious was beyond their reach, and no doubt, making westward and homeward with all its might, with an instinctive feeling that

Never shall I forget, whilst capable of reminiscences, the face of that mourning mate thus suddenly bereaved of his turtle! The unfortunate shepherd, Ding-dog, in Rabelais, could hardly have looked more utterly and unutterably dozed, crazed, mizmazed, and flabbergasted, when his whole flock and stock of golden-fleeced sheep suicidically sheepwashed themselves to death, by wilfully leaping over-board! He said little in words, but more eloquently clapped his hands to his waistcoat, as if the loss, as the nurses say, had literally “flown to his stomach.” And truly, after promising it both callipash and callipee, with the delicious green fat to boot, what cold comfort could well be colder than the miserable chilling reflection that there was

CHAPTER I.

“I AM perfectly at my wits’ ends!”

As Madame Doppeldick said this, she thrust both her fat hands into the pockets of her scarlet cotton apron, at the same time giving her head a gentle shake, as if implying that it was a case in which heads and hands could be of no possible avail. She was standing in a little dormitory, exactly equidistant from two beds, between which her eyes and her thoughts had been alternating some ten minutes past. They were small beds,—pallets,—cots,—cribs, troughs upon four legs, such as the old painters represent the manger in their pictures of the Nativity. Our German beds are not intended to carry double, and in such an obscure out-of-the way village as Kleinewinkel, who would think of finding any thing better in the way of a couch than a sort of box just too little for a bed, and just too large for a coffin? It was between two such bedlings, then, that Madame Doppeldick was standing, when she broke out into the aforesaid exclamation—“I am perfectly at my wits’ ends!”

Now, the wits’ ends of Madame Doppeldick scarcely extended farther from her scull than the horns of a snail. They seldom protruded far beyond her nose, and that was a short one; and moreover they were apt to recede and draw in from the first obstacle they encountered, leaving their proprietor to feel her own way, as if she had no wits’ ends at all. Thus, having satisfied themselves that there were only two beds in the rooms, they left the poor lady in the lurch, and absolutely[Pg 202] at a nonplus, as to how she was to provide for the accommodation of a third sleeper, who was expected to arrive the same evening. There was only one best bed-room in the house, and it happened to be the worst bed-room also; all for Gretchen, the maid-servant, went home nightly to sleep at her mother’s. To be sure a shake-down might be spread in the parlour; but to be sure the parlour was also a shop of all sorts; and to be sure the young officer would object to such accommodations; and to be very sure, Mr. Doppeldick would object equally to the shake-down, and giving up the two beds overhead to his wife and the young officer.

“God forgive me,” said the perplexed Madame Doppeldick as she went slowly down the stairs;—“but I wish Captain Schenk had been killed at the battle of Leipzig, or had got a bed of glory anywhere else, before he came to be billeted on us!”

“I’LL TAKE A BED WITH YOU.”

CHAPTER II.

IN extenuation of so unchristian-like an aspiration as the one which escaped from the lips of Madame Doppeldick at the end of the last chapter, it must be remembered that she was a woman[Pg 203] of great delicacy for her size. She was so corpulent, that she might safely have gone to court without a hoop, her arms were too big for legs; and as for her legs, it passed for a miracle of industry, even amongst the laborious hard-working inhabitants of Kleinewinkel, that she knitted her own stockings. It must be confessed, that she ate heartily, drank heartily, and slept heartily; and all she ate, drank, and slept, seemed to do her good, for she never ceased growing, at least horizontally, till she did ample justice to the name which became her own by marriage. Still, as the bulk of her body increased, the native shrinking, unobtrusive modesty of her mind remained the same; or rather it became even more tremulously sensitive. In spite of her huge dimensions, she seemed to entertain the Utopian desire of being seen by no eyes save those of her husband; of passing through life unnoticed and unknown; in short she was a globe-peony with the feelings of a violet. Judge then what a shock her blushing sensibilities received from the mere idea of the strange captain intruding on the shadiest haunts of domestic privacy! Although by birth, education, and disposition, as loyal[Pg 204] as the sunflower to the sun, in the first rash transports of her trepidation and vexation she wished anything but well to her liege sovereign the King of Prussia—wondering bitterly why his majesty could not contrive to have his reviews and sham-fights in Berlin itself; or at least in Posen, where there were spare beds to be had, and lodgings to let for single men. Then again, if the Quarter-master had but condescended to give a quarter’s notice, why, Mr. Doppeldick might have run up an extra room, or they might have parted off a portion of their own chamber with lath and plaster—or they might have done a thousand things; for instance, they might have sold their house and left the country, instead of being thus taken unawares in their own sanctorum by a strange gentleman, as suddenly as if he had tumbled through the roof. “It was too bad—it was really too bad—and she wondered what Mr. Doppeldick would say to it when he came home.”

“I WISH I WAS WELL THROUGH IT.”

CHAPTER III.

MR. DOPPELDICK did come home—and he said nothing to it at all. He only pulled his tobacco-bag out of one coat-pocket, and his tobacco-pipe out of the other, and then he struck a light, and fell to smoking, as complacently as if there had been no Captain Schenk in the world. The truth was, he had none of that nervous nicety of feeling, which his partner possessed so eminently, and, accordingly, he took no more interest in her domestic dilemma, than the walnut-wood chair that he sat upon. Moreover, when he once had in his mouth his favourite pipe, with a portrait of Kant on the bowl of it, he sucked through its tube a sort of Transcendental Philosophy which elevated him above all the ills of human life, to say nothing of such little domestic inconveniences as the present. If the house had been as big as the hotel de Nassau, at Schlangenbad, with as many chambers and[Pg 205] spare beds in it—or a barrack, with quarters for the captain and his company to boot—he could not have puffed on more contentedly. The very talk about beds and bedding appeared to lull him into a sort of sleep with his eyes open; and even when the voice and words of his helpmate grew a little sharp and querulous in detailing all her doubts, and difficulties, and disagreeables, they could not raise even a ripple in the calm placid expanse of his forehead. How should they? His equable German good humour might well be invulnerable to all outward attacks, which had so long withstood every internal one,—ay, in Temper’s very citadel, the stomach. For instance, the better part of his daily diet was of sours. He ate “sauer-kraut,” and “sauer-braten,” with sour sauce and “sauer-ampfer” by way of salad, and pickled plums by way of dessert, and “sauer-milch” with sourish brown bread—and then, to wash these down, he[Pg 206] drank sourish “Essigberger” wine, and “sauer-wasser,” of which the village of Kleinewinkel had its own peculiar brunnen. Still, I say, by all these sours, and many others not mentioned besides, his temper was never soured—nor could they turn one drop of the milk of human kindness that flowed in his bosom. Instead, therefore, of his round features being ever rumpled and crumpled, and furrowed up by the plough-share of passion, you never saw any thing on his face but the same everlasting sub-smile of phlegmatic philanthropy. In spite of the stream of complaint that kept pouring into his ear, he forgave Captain Schenk from the bottom of his soul for being billeted on him; and entertained no more spleen towards the King of Prussia and the Quarter-master, than he did towards the gnat that bit him last year. At length, his pipe wanting replenishing, he dropped a few comfortable words to his wife, meanwhile he refilled the bowl, and brought the engine again into play:—

“WE ALL SMOKE IN GERMANY.”

“THE LAST IN BED TO PUT OUT THE LIGHT.”

[Pg 207]

“As for undressing, Malchen—before the strange man—puff—why can’t we go to bed,—puff—before he does,—puff—puff and so put an end to the matter—puff—puff—puff!”

“As I live upon damsons and bullases!” (for it was the plum season,) exclaimed Madame Doppeldick, clapping her fat hands with delight, “I never thought of that! Gretchen, my lass, get the supper ready immediately, for your good master is mortal hungry, and so am I!—and then, my own Dietrich dear, we’ll bundle off to bed as fast as we can!”

CHAPTER IV.

TRAVELLERS SEEING THE “LIONS.”

THE best of plots may come to the worst of ends. It was no fault, however, of Gretchen’s; for being in a hurry of her own to meet Ludwig Liedeback, she clapped the supper upon the table in no time at all. The transcendental pipe, with the head of Kant upon it, instantly found itself deposited in a by[Pg 208] corner; for Mr. Doppeldick, like his better half, was a person of substance, keeping a good running account with Messer and Gabel. Besides, amongst other delicacies, the board actually displayed those rarest of all inland rarities, oysters,—a bag of which the warm-hearted Adam Kloot had sent, by way of a token of remembrance, to his old friend Dietrich; forgetting utterly that it was full a hundred leagues from the nearest high water-mark of the sea to the village of Kleinewinkel. Of course they came like other travellers, with their mouths wide agape, to see the wonders of the place,—but, then, so much the easier they were to open; and as the worthy couple did not contemplate any such superfluous nicety as shaving them before they swallowed them, there was a fair chance that the delicious morsels would all be devoured before the inauspicious arrival of Captain Schenk. Some such speculation seemed to glimmer in the eyes of both Mr. and Mrs. Doppeldick—when, lo! just as the sixth dead oyster had been body-snatched out of its shell, and was being flavoured up with lemon and vinegar, the door opened, and in walked a blue cap with a red band, a pair of mustachios, and a grey cloak without any arms in its sleeves. Had Madame Doppeldick held any thing but an oyster in her mouth at that moment it would infallibly have choked her, the flutter of her heart in her throat was so violent.

“Holy Virgin!—Captain Schenk!”

“At your service, Madame,” answered a voice through the mustachios.

“You are welcome, Captain!” said the worthy master of the house, at the same time rising, and placing a chair for his guest at that side of the table which was farthest from the oysters. The officer, without any ceremony, threw himself into the seat, and then, resting his elbows upon the table, and his cheeks between his palms, he fixed his dark eyes on the blushing face of Madame Doppeldick in a long and steady stare. It is true that[Pg 209] he was only mentally reviewing the review; or, possibly, calculating the chances he had made in favour of an application he had lately forwarded to Berlin, to be exchanged into the Royal Guards; but the circumstance sufficed to set every nerve of Madame Doppeldick a-vibrating, and in two minutes from his arrival, she had made up her mind that he was a very bold, forward, and presuming young man.

“O HAM—WHAT A FALLING OFF WAS THERE.”

It is astonishing, when we have once conceived a prejudice, how rapidly it grows, and how plentifully it finds nutriment! Like the sea polypus, it extends its thousand feelers on every side, for anything they can lay hold of, and the smallest particle afloat in the ocean of conjecture cannot escape from the tenacity of their grasp. So it was with Madame Doppeldick. From mistrusting the captain’s eyes, she came to suspect his nose, his mustachios, his mouth, his chin, and even the slight furrow of a[Pg 210] sabre cut that scarred his forehead just over the left eyebrow. She felt morally sure that he had received it in no battle-field, but in some scandalous duel. Luckily she had never seen Mozart’s celebrated opera, or she would inevitably have set down Captain Schenk as its libertine masquerading hero, Don Giovanni himself!

“A PIPING BULLFINCH.”

“You will be sharp-set for supper, Captain,” said the hospitable host, pushing towards his guest a dish of lean home-made bacon; but the Captain took no more notice of the invitation than if he had been stunned stone-deaf by the artillery at the sham-fight in the morning. Possibly he did not like bacon, or, at any rate, such bacon as was set before him; for to put the naked Truth on her bare oath, the Kleinewinkel pigs always looked as if they got their living, like cockroaches, by creeping through cracks. However, he never changed his posture, but kept his dark intolerable eyes still fixed on his hostess’s full and flushed face. He might just as well have stared,—if he must stare—at the shelves-full of old family china (some of it elaborately mended and riveted) in the corner cupboard, the door of[Pg 211] which she had left open on purpose; but he had, apparently, no such considerate respect for female modesty.

“Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand be near us!” said the disquieted Madame Doppeldick to herself. “It is hard enough for people of our years and bulk to be obliged to lie double;—but to have a strange, wild, rakish, staring young fellow in the same chamber—I do wish that Dietrich would make more haste with his supper, that we may get into bed first!”

CHAPTER V.

HONEST Dietrich was in no such hurry. A rational, moral, pious man, with a due grateful sense of the sapidity of certain gifts of the Creator, ought not to swallow them with the post-haste indifference of a sow swilling her wash; and as Dietrich Doppeldick did not taste oysters once in ten years, it was a sort of religious obligation, as well as a positive secular temptation, that the relish of each particular fish should be prolonged as far as possible on the palate by an orderly, decorous, and deliberate deglutition. Accordingly, instead of bolting the oysters as if he had been swallowing them for a wager, he sate soberly, with his eyes fixed on the two plumpest, as if only awaiting the “good-night” of his guest to do ample and Christian-like justice to the edible forget-me-nots of his good friend Adam Kloot. In vain his wife looked hard at him, and trod on his toes as long as she could reach them, besides being seized with a short hectic cough that was any thing but constitutional—

“Lord, help me!” said Mrs. Doppeldick in her soul, too fluttered to attend to the correctness of her metaphors—[Pg 212]“It’s as easy to catch the eye of a post!—He minds me no more than if I trod on the toes of a stock-fish! I might as well cough into the ears of a stone wall.”

In fact, honest Dietrich had totally forgotten the domestic dilemma.

“KISSING GOES BY FAVOUR.”

“He will never take his eyes off,” thought Madame Doppeldick, stealing a glance across the table; “I was never so stared at, never since I was a girl and wore pigtails! I expect every moment he will jump and embrace me.” Whereas nothing could be further from the Captain’s thought. The second battalion had joined that very morning, and accordingly he had kissed, or been kissed by, all its eight-and-twenty officers, tall or short, fat or lean, fair or swarthy,—which was quite kissing enough for a reasonable day’s ration. The truth is, he was staring at himself. He had just, mentally, put on a new uniform, and was looking with the back of his eyes at his own brilliant figure, as a Captain in the Royal Guards. It was, however, a stare, outwardly, at Madame Doppeldick, who took[Pg 213] everything to herself, frogs, lace, bullion, buttons, cuffs, collars, epaulettes, and the Deuce knows what besides.

“I would to Heaven!” she wished, “he had never thought of going into the army,—or at least that the Quarter-master had never taken it into his stupid head to quarter him on us. Young gay Captains are very well to flirt with, or to waltz with, but at my years and bulk waltzing is quite out of the question!”

WALTZING TO A NEW AIR.

CHAPTER VI.

AT last Captain Schenk changed his posture, and averted his familiar eyes from the face of Madame Doppeldick; but it was only to give her a fresh alarm with his free-and-easy mouth. First of all he clenched his fists—then he raised his arms at full stretch[Pg 214] above his head, as if he wanted to be crucified, and then turning his face upwards towards the ceiling, with his eyes shut, and his jaws open—he yawned such a yawn, as panther never yawned after prowling all day without prey, in a ten-foot cage—

“Auw-yauw-au-ya-augh-auwayawauwghf!”

HOB AND NOB.

“By all the Saints,” thought the terrified Madame Doppeldick, “he will be for packing off to bed at once!”—and in the vain hope of inducing him to sup beforehand, she seized, yes, she actually seized the devoted dish of oysters, and made them relieve guard, with the home-made bacon, just under the Captain’s nose. It was now honest Dietrich’s turn to try to catch the eyes of posts, and tread on the toes of stock-fish; however, for this time the natives were safe.

“By your leave, Madame,” said the abominable voice through the moustachios,[Pg 215] “I will take nothing except a candle. What with the heavy rain at first, and then the horse artillery ploughing up our marching ground, I am really dog-tired with my day’s work. If you will do me the favour, therefore, to show me to my chamber——”

“WHAT NEXT?” AS THE FROG SAID WHEN HIS TAIL FELL OFF.

“Not for the whole world!” exclaimed the horrified Madame Doppeldick—“not for the whole world, I mean, till you have hob-and-nobbed with us—at least with the good man”—and, like a warm-hearted hostess, jealous of the honour of her hospitality, she snatched up the spare-candle, and hurried off to the barrel. If she could but set them down to drinking, she calculated, let who would be the second, she would herself be the first in bed, if she jumped into it with all her clothes on. It was a likely scheme enough,—but alas! it fell through, like the rest!—Before she had drawn half a flask of Essigberger, or Holzapfelheimer, for I forget which—she was alarmed by the[Pg 216] double screech of two chairs pushed suddenly back on the uncarpeted floor. Then came a trampling of light and heavy feet—and although she dropped the bottle—and forgot to turn the spigot—and carried the candle without the candlestick—and left her left slipper behind her,—still, in spite of all the haste she could make, she only reached the stair-foot just in time to see two Prussian-blue coat-tails, turned up with red, whisking in at the bed-room door!

CHAPTER VII.

“OH the cruel, the killing ill-luck that pursues us!” exclaimed the forlorn Madame Doppeldick, as her husband returned, with his mouth watering, to the little parlour, where, by some sort of attraction, he was drawn into the Captain’s vacant chair, instead of his own. In a few seconds the plumpest of Adam Kloot’s tender souvenirs, of about the size and shape of a penny bun, was sliding over his tongue. Then another went—and another—and another. They were a little gone or so, and no wonder; for they had travelled up the Rhine and the Moselle, in a dry “schiff,” not a “dampschiff,” towed by real horse-powers, instead of steam-powers, against the stream. To tell the naked truth, there were only four words in the world that a respectably fresh Cod’s head could have said to them, namely—

“NONE OF YOUR SAUCE.”

[Pg 217]

No matter: down they went glibly, glibly. The lemon-juice did something for them, and the vinegar still more, by making them seem sharp instead of flat. Honest Dietrich enjoyed them as mightily as Adam Kloot could have wished; and was in no humour, you may be sure, for spinning prolix answers or long-winded speeches.

“They are good—very!—excellent! Malchen!—Just eat a couple.”

But the mind of the forlorn Malchen was occupied with any thing but oysters; it was fixed upon things above, or at least overhead. “I do not think I can sit up all night,” she murmured, concluding with such a gape that the tears squeezed out plentifully between her fat little eyelids.

“I’ve found only one bad one—and that was full of black mud—schloo—oo—oo—ooop!”—slirropped honest Dietrich. N. B. There is no established formula of minims and crotchets on the gamut to represent the swallowing of an oyster: so the aforesaid syllables of “schloo—oo—oo—ooop,” must stand in their stead.

“As for sleeping in my clothes,” continued Madame Doppeldick, “the weather is so very warm,—and the little window won’t open—and with two in a bed—”

“The English do it, Malchen,—schloo—oo—ooop!”

“But the English beds have curtains,” said Madame Doppeldick, “thick stuff or canvas curtains, Dietrich,—all round, and over the top—just like a general’s tent.”

“We can go—schloo—ooop—to bed in the dark, Malchen.”

“No—no,” objected Madam Doppeldick, with a grave shake of her head. “We’ll have no blindman’s-buff work, Dietrich,—and maybe blundering into wrong beds.”

[Pg 218]

“Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”

“And if ever I saw a wild, rakish, immoral, irreligious-looking young man, Dietrich, the Captain is one!”

“Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”

“Did you observe, Dietrich, how shamefully he stared at me?”

“Schloo—ooop.”

“And the cut on his forehead, Dietrich, I’ll be bound he got it for no good!”

“Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”

“Confound Adam Kloot and his oysters to boot!” exclaimed the offended Madame Doppeldick, irritated beyond all patience at the bovine apathy of her connubial partner. “I wish, I do, that the nets had burst in catching them!”

“Why, what can one do, Malchen?” asked honest Dietrich, looking up for the first time from the engrossing dish, whence the one-a-penny oysters had all vanished, leaving only the two-a-penny ones behind.

“Saint Ursula only knows!” sighed Madame Doppeldick, her voice relapsing into its former tone of melancholy. “I only know that I will never undress in the room!”

“Then you must undress out of it, Malchen. Schloo—oop. Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop.”

“I believe that must be the way after all,” said Madame Doppeldick, on whose mind her husband’s sentence of transcendental philosophy had cast a new light. “To be sure there is a little landing-place at the stair-head, and our bed is exactly opposite the door—and if one scuttled briskly across the room, and jumped in—But are you sure, Dietrich, that you explained every thing correctly to the Captain? Did you tell him that his was the one next the window—with the patchwork coverlet?”

“Not a word of it!” answered honest Dietrich, who like all other Prussians had served his two years as a soldier, and was therefore moderately interested in military manœuvres.[Pg 219] “Not a word of it—we talked all about the review. But I did what was far better, my own Malchen, for I saw him get into the bed with the patchwork coverlet, with my own eyes, and then took away his candle—Schloo—oo—oop!”

“It was done like my own dear, kind Dietrich,” exclaimed the delighted Madame Doppeldick, and in the sudden revulsion of her feelings, she actually pulled up his huge round bullet-head from the dish, and kissed him between the nose and chin.

The Domestic Dilemma was disarmed of its horns, Madame Doppeldick saw her way before her, as clear and open as the Rhine three months after the ice has broken up. From that moment, as long as the dish contained two oysters, the air of “Schloo—oo—oo—oo—ooop” was sung, as “arranged for a duet.”

CHAPTER VIII.

“ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the Captain is as fast as a church,” thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the little landing-place, at the stair-head. “Now then, my own Dietrich,” she whispered, “are you ready to run?” For like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.

But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth; indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of Andernach—that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing fan, with a well poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly.

[Pg 220]

“The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich.”

“Now then, Malchen!”

“Now then Dietrich,—and run gently—on your toes!”

No sooner said than done. The modest Malchen with the speed of a young wild elephant made a rush across the room, and, with something of a jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed. The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his leap, so that just as his bulk came squash! upon the coverlet, his predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the side of the bedstead.

COUNTRY QUARTERS.

“Sancta Maria!” sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics upon the floor.

[Pg 221]

“Potz-tausend!” said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the bed like a crab.

“Ten thousand devils!” bellowed Captain Schenk—a suppressed exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full force.

THE BEARER OF THE GREAT SEAL.

******

“Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader), that we left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with the patch-work coverlet?”

[Pg 222]

“And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand (says the author,) but it was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial—and between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face, his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp, going uninvited down his gullet!”

“WHY DID YOU SUP ON PORK?”

FINDING A MAY’R’S NEST.

ARMS FOUND.

THE HOUSE ADJOURNED.

SONNET.

FANCY PORTRAIT:—THE LORD MAYOR.

NO season has offered such variétés in costume as the early part of the present month. Fancy dresses of the most outré description have appeared, even in the streets. Short waists[Pg 231] and long, full sleeves and empty, broad skirts and narrow, whole skirts, half skirts, and none at all, have been indifferently worn. For the Promenade, rags and tatters of all kinds have been in much favour; very few buttons are worn; and the coats, waistcoats, and pantaloons, have been invariably padded and stuffed with hay or straw. We observed several exquisites making morning calls in scare-crow great-coats; the skirts, lappels, collars, and cuffs, picturesquely, but not too formally, jagged à la Vandyke. The prevailing colours—all colours at once. Wigs have been very general—both en buzz and frizzé; these have been commonly composed of deal shavings; but in some cases of tow, and sometimes horse-hair. For the evening party, a few squibs and crackers are stuck in the perruque or hat, and the boots and shoes are polished up with a little pitch or tar; sometimes a Catherine wheel has been added en coquarde. Frills, collars, and ruffles, of papier coupé, have entirely superseded those of cambric or lace, and shirts of every description are quite discarded. Paint has been in much request, and ruddle seems to have been preferred to rouge; patches are also[Pg 232] much worn, not on the countenance, but on the clothes; for these the favourite matériel is tartan, plush of any colour, or corduroy. Several dandies appeared on the 5th with gloves, but they are not essential requisites to be in the ton: canes are discarded; even a riding-whip would be reckoned to evince mauvais goût, but a half-penny bunch of matches “à la main” is indispensable to a fashionable aspirant. The old practice of being carried abroad in chairs has been universally revived; and it must be confessed, that it exhibits the Figure to much advantage.

Amongst the Nouveautés, we observed the following Caractère, as making a felicitous début. The coast was à-la-militaire, of the colour formerly so much in vogue under the name of fumée de Londres, turned up with flamme d’enfer. It was garni with very dead gold; and slashed à l’Espagnole, back and front. The pantaloons were equally bizarre; one leg being composed of Scotch tartan, and the other of blue striped bed-ticking, made very full, en matelot, in compliance with the prevailing taste for navals. The wig was made of green and white willow shavings, with a large link for a queue, tied on with a nœud of red tape. The hat, brown, somewhat darker than the Devonshire beaver, but disinclining to black. It had no brim, and was without a crown. A tarnished badge of the Phœnix Fire Office, on the bust, gave a distingué air to the whole Figure, which was going down Bond-street, and excited a sensation quite à-l’envie by its appearance in the World of Fashion.

N.B.—We are requested to state that the above described figure was entirely invented and manufactured by little Solomon Levy, of Hollywell-street, Strand, who has a variety always on show, about the metropolis.

“An indifference to tears, and blood, and human suffering, that could only belong to a Boney-parte.”—Life of Napoleon.

A BUCK-ANEER!

LUNAR CAUSTIC.

THERE are several objections to one-horse vehicles. With two wheels, they are dangerous; with four, generally cruel inventions, tasking one animal with the labour of two. And, in either case, should your horse think proper to die on the road you have no survivor to drag your carriage through the rest of the stage; or to be sent off galloping with the coachman on his back for a coadjutor.

That was precisely Miss Norman’s dilemma.

If a horse could be supposed to harbour so deadly a spite against his proprietor, I should believe that the one in question chose to vent his animosity by giving up the ghost just at the spot where it would cause most annoyance and inconvenience. For fourteen months past he had drawn the Lady in daily[Pg 238] airings to a point just short of the Binn Gate;—because that fifty yards further would have cost sixpence; a sum which Miss Norman could, or believed she could, but ill spare out of a limited income. At this very place, exactly opposite the tall elm which usually gave the signal for turning homeward, did Plantagenet prefer to drop down stone dead: as if determined that his mistress should have to walk every inch of it, to her own house.

But Miss Norman never walked.

“TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE, AND THE POUNDS WILL TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.”

Pedestrianism was, in her opinion, a very vulgar exercise, unavoidable with the poor, and to some people, as Postmen, Bankers’ clerks, Hawkers, and the like, a professional mode of progression, but a bodily exertion very derogatory to persons of birth and breeding. So far was this carried, that she was once heard to declare, speaking of certain rather humble obsequies,[Pg 239] “she would rather live for ever than have a walking funeral!” On another occasion, when the great performance of Captain Barclay, in walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, was submitted to her opinion, she said “it was a step she did not approve.”

DESCENDED FROM THE CONQUEROR.

It might be surmised from such declarations, that she was incapable of personal locomotion, through some original infirmity, for instance, such as results from the rickets; whereas, so far from allowing any deficiency on the part of her nurse or parents, in putting her to her feet, Miss Norman professed to have the perfect command of all her limbs, and would have felt extremely offended at a hint that she could not dance. It was quite another weakness than any bodily one which restricted her promenades, and made her feet almost as useless to her as[Pg 240] those of the female Chinese. Pride was in fault; and partly her surname, for suggesting to one of her ancestors that he was a descendant of William the First of England: a notion, which, after turning his own head, had slightly crazed those of his successors, who all believed, as part and parcel of their inheritance, on the strength of the “Norman” and some dubious old pedigree, that the Conqueror was their great Progenitor.

The hereditary arrogance engendered by this imaginary distinction, had successively displayed itself by outbreaks of different character, according to the temperament of the individual who happened to be head of the family: with Miss Norman, the last of her line, it took the form of a boast that every branch and twig of her illustrious tree had always ridden “in their own carriage.” I am not quite sure whether she did not push this pretension further back than the date of the invention of “little houses on wheels” would warrant; however, it held good, in local tradition, for several generations, although the family vehicle had gradually dwindled down from an ample coach to a chariot, a fly, and, finally, the one-inside sedan-chair upon wheels, which the sudden death of Plantagenet left planted fifty yards short of the Binn Gate. To glance at the whole set-out, nobody would ever have attributed high birth and inherent gentility to its owner. ’Twas never of a piece. For once that the body was new-painted, the arms were thrice refreshed and touched up, till the dingy vehicle, by the glaring comparison, looked more ancient than the quarterings. The crest was much oftener renewed than the hammer-cloth; and Humphrey, the coachman, evidently never got a new suit all at once. He had always old drab to bran-new bright sky-blue plush; or vice versâ. Sometimes a hat in its first gloss got the better of its old tarnished band; sometimes the fresh gold lace made the brown beaver look still more an antique. The same with the harness and the horse, which was sometimes a tall spanking[Pg 241] brute, who seemed to have outgrown the concern; at other times, a short pony-like animal, who had been put into the shafts by mistake. In short, the several articles seemed to belong the more especially to Miss Norman because they belonged so little to each other. A few minutes made a great change in her possessions, instead of a living horse, hight Plantagenet, she was proprietor of certain hundred-weights of dogs’-meat.

“WARRANTED QUIET TO RIDE OR DRIVE.”

It was just at this moment that I came up with my gig; and knowing something of the lady’s character, I pulled up in expectation of a scene. Leaving my own bay, who would stand as steady as a mute at death’s door, I proceeded to assist the coachman in extricating his horse; but the nag of royal line was stone dead: and I accompanied Humphrey to the carriage-door to make his report.

A recent American author has described as an essential attribute of high birth and breeding in England, a certain sort of quakerly composure, in all possible sudden emergencies, such as an alarm of the house on fire, or a man falling into a fit by one’s side; in fact, the same kind of self-command which Pope[Pg 242] praises in a lady who is “mistress of herself, though China fall.” In this particular Miss Norman’s conduct justified her pretensions. She was mistress of herself, though her horse fell. She did not start—exclaim—put her head out of the window, or even let down the front glass: she only adjusted herself more exactly in the middle of the seat, drew herself bolt upright, and fixed her eyes on the back of the coach-box. In this posture Humphrey found her.

“If you please, Ma’am, Planty-ginit be dead.” The lady acquiesced with the smallest nod ever made.

“I’ve took off the collar, and the bit out, and got un out o’ harness entirely; but he be as unanimate as his own shoes;” and the informant looked earnestly at the lady to observe the effect of the communication. But she never moved a muscle; and honest Humphrey was just shutting the coach-door, to go and finish the laying out of the corpse, when he was recalled.

“Humphrey!”

“What’s your pleasure, Ma’am?”

“Remember, another time——”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“When a horse of mine is deceased——”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Touch your hat.”

The abashed coachman instantly paid up the salute in arrear. Unblessed by birthright with self-possession, he had not even the advantage of experience in the first families, where he might have learned a little from good example: he was a raw uncouth country servant, with the great merit of being cheap, whom Miss Norman had undertaken to educate; but he was still so far from proficient, that in the importance of breaking the death to his mistress, he had omitted one of those minor tokens of respect which she always rigorously exacted.

[Pg 243]

It was now my own turn to come forward, and as deferentially as if she had been indeed the last of the Conqueror’s Normandy pippins, I tendered a seat in my chaise, which she tacitly declined, with a gracious gesture of head and hand.

“If you please, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, taking care to touch his hat, and shutting his head into the carriage so that I might not overhear him, “he’s a respectable kind of gentleman enough, and connected with some of the first houses.”

“The gentleman’s name?”

“To be sure, Ma’am, the gentleman can’t help his name,” answered Humphrey, fully aware of the peculiar prejudices of his mistress; “but it be Huggins.”

“ONE MAY GO FARTHER AND FARE WORSE”—AS THE HORSE SAID

“Shut the door.”

It appeared, on explanation with the coachman, that he had mistaken me for a person in the employ of the opulent firm of[Pg 244] Naylor and Co., whose province it was to travel throughout Britain with samples of hardware in the box-seat of his gig. I did not take the trouble to undeceive him, but determining to see the end of the affair, I affected to hope that the lady would change her mind; and accordingly I renewed, from time to time, my offer of accommodation, which was always stiffly declined. After a tolerably long pause on all sides, my expectation was excited by the appearance of the W—— coach coming through the Binn Gate, the only public vehicle that used the road. At sight of the dead horse, the driver (the noted Jem Wade) pulled up—alighted—and standing at the carriage-door with his hat off, as if he knew his customer, made an offer of his services. But Miss Norman, more dignified than ever, waved him off with her hand. Jem became more pressing, and the lady more rigid. “She never rode,” she condescended to say, “in public vehicles.” Jem entreated again; but “she was accustomed to be driven by her own coachman.” It was in vain that in answer he praised the quietness of his team, the safety of his patent boxes, besides promising the utmost steadiness and sobriety on his own part. Miss Norman still looked perseveringly at the back of her coach-box; which, on an unlucky assurance that “he would take as much care of her as of his own mother,” she exchanged for a steady gaze at the side-window, opposite to the coachman, so long as he remained in the presence.

“By your leave, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, putting his hand to his hat, and keeping it there, “Mr. Wade be a very civil-spoken careful whip, and his coach loads very respectable society. There’s Sir Vincent Ball on the box.”

“If Sir Vincent Ball chooses to degrade himself, it is no rule for me,” retorted the lady, without turning her head; when, lo! Sir Vincent appeared himself, and politely endeavoured to persuade her out of her prejudices. It was useless. Miss Norman’s ancestors had one and all expressed a very decided[Pg 245] opinion against stage-coaches, by never getting into one; and “she did not feel disposed to disgrace a line longer than common, by riding in any carriage but her own.” Sir Vincent bowed and retreated. So did Jem Wade, without bowing, fervently declaring “he would never do the civil thing to the old female sex again!”

“JACK’S AS GOOD AS HIS MASTER.”

The stage rattled away at an indignant gallop; and we were left once more to our own resources. By way of passing the time, I thrice repeated my offers to the obdurate old maiden, and endured as many rebuffs. I was contemplating a fourth trial, when a signal was made from the carriage window, and Humphrey, hat in hand, opened the door.

“Procure me a post-chaise.”

“A po-shay!” echoed Humphrey, but, like an Irish echo, with some variation from his original—[Pg 246]“Lord help ye, Ma’am, there bean’t such a thing to be had ten miles round—no, not for love nor money. Why, bless ye, it be election time, and there bean’t coach, cart, nor dog-barrow, but what be gone to it!”

“No matter,” said the mistress, drawing herself up with an air of lofty resignation. “I revoke my order; for it is far, very far from the kind of riding that I prefer. And Humphrey——”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Another time—”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Remember once for all—”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I do not choose to be blest, or the Lord to help me.”

Another pause in our proceedings, during which a company of ragged boys, who had been black-berrying, came up, and planted themselves, with every symptom of vulgar curiosity, around the carriage. Miss Norman had now no single glass through which she could look without encountering a group of low-life faces staring at her with all their might. Neither could she help hearing some such shocking ill-bred remarks as, “Vy don’t the frizzle-vigged old Guy get into the gemman’s drag?” Still the pride of the Normans sustained her. She seemed to draw a sort of supplementary neck out of her bosom, and sat more rigidly erect than ever, occasionally favouring the circle, like a mad bull at bay, with a most awful threatening look, accompanied ever by the same five words:

“I CHOOSE to be alone.”

It is easy to say choose, but more difficult to have one’s choice. The blackberry boys chose to remain; and in reply to each congé only proved by a general grin how very much teeth are set off to advantage by purple mouths. I confess I took pity on the pangs even of unwarrantable pride, and urged my[Pg 247] proposal again with some warmth; but it was repelled with absolute scorn.

“Fellow, you are insolent.”

“Quis Deus vult perdere,” thought I, and I determined to let her take her fate, merely staying to mark the result. After a tedious interval, in which her mind had doubtless looked abroad as well as inward, it appeared that the rigour of the condition, as to riding only in her own carriage, had been somewhat relaxed to meet the exigency of the case. A fresh tapping at the window summoned the obsequious Humphrey to receive orders.

“Present my compliments at the Grove—and the loan of the chariot will be esteemed a favour.”

“By your leave, Ma’am, if I may speak—”

“You may not.”

Humphrey closed the door, but remained for a minute gazing on the panel, at a blue arm, with a red carving-knife in its hand, defending a black and white rolling-pin. If he meditated any expostulation, he gave it up, and proceeded to drive away the boys, one of whom was astride on the dead Plantagenet, a second grinning through his collar, and two more preparing to play at horses with the reins. It seemed a strange mode enough that he took to secure the harness, by hanging it, collar and all, on his own back and shoulders; but by an aside to me, he explained the mystery, in a grumble,

“It be no use in the world. I see the charrot set off for Lonnon. I shan’t go complimenting no Grove. I’se hang about a bit at the George, and compliment a pint o’ beer.”

Away he went, intending, no doubt, to be fully as good as his word: and I found the time grow tedious in his absence. I had almost made up my mind to follow his example, when hope revived at the sound of wheels, and up came a tax-cart carrying four insides, namely, two well-grown porkers, Master[Pg 248] Bardell the pig-butcher, and his foreman Samuel Slark, or, as he was more commonly called, Sam the Sticker. They were both a trifle “the worse for liquor,” if such a phrase might honestly be applied to men who were only a little more courageous, more generous, and civil and obliging to the fair sex, than their wont when perfectly sober. The Sticker, especially—in his most temperate moments a perfect sky-blue-bodied, red-faced, bowing and smirking pattern of politeness to females, was now, under the influence of good ale, a very Sir Calidore, ready to comfort and succour distressed damsels, to fight for them, live or die for them, with as much of the chivalrous spirit as remains in our times. They inquired, and I explained in a few words the lady’s dilemma, taking care to forewarn them, by relating the issue of my own attempts in her behalf.

“Mayhap you warn’t half purlite or pressing enough,” observed Sam, with a side wink at his master. “It an’t a bit of a scrape, and a civil word, as will get a strange lady up into a strange gemman’s gig. It wants warmth-like, and making on her feel at home. Only let me alone with her, for a persuader, and I’ll have her up in our cart—my master’s that is to say—afore you can see whether she has feet or hoofs.”

In a moment the speaker was at the carriage-door, stroking down his sleek forelocks, bowing, and using his utmost eloquence, even to the repeating most of his arguments twice over. She would be perfectly safe, he told her, sitting up between him and master, and quite pleasant, for the pigs would keep themselves to themselves at the back of the cart, and as for the horse, he was nothing but a good one, equal to twelve mile an hour—with much more to the same purpose. It was quite unnecessary for Miss Norman to say she had never ridden in a cart with two pigs and two butchers; and she did not say it. She merely turned away her head from the man, to be addressed by the master, at the other window, the glass of which she had just let[Pg 249] down for a little air. “A taxed cart, Madam,” he said, “mayn’t be exactly the wehicle, accustomed to, and so forth; but thereby, considering respective ranks of life, why, the more honour done to your humbles, which, as I said afore, will take every care, and observe the respectful; likewise in distancing the two hogs. Whereby, every thing considered, namely, necessity and so forth, I will make so bold as hope, Madam, excusing more pressing, and the like, and dropping ceremony for the time being, you will embrace us at once, as you shall be most heartily welcome to, and be considered, by your humbles, as a favour besides.”

“NONE BUT THE BRAVE DESERVE THE FAIR.”

The sudden drawing up of the window, so violently as to shiver the glass, showed sufficiently in what light Miss Norman viewed Master Bardell’s behaviour. It was an unlucky smash, for it afforded what the tradesman would have called[Pg 250] “an advantageous opening” for pouring in a fresh stream of eloquence; and the Sticker, who shrewdly estimated the convenience of the breach, came round the back of the carriage, and as junior counsel “followed on the same side.” But he took nothing by the motion. The lady was invincible, or, as the discomfited pair mutually agreed, “as hard for to be convinced into a cart, as any thing on four legs.” The blackberry boys had departed, the evening began to close in, and no Humphrey made his appearance. The butcher’s horse was on the fret, and his swine grumbled at the delay. The master and man fell into consultation, and favoured me afterwards with the result, the Sticker being the orator. It was man’s duty, he said, to look after women, pretty or ugly, young or old; it was what we all came into the world to do, namely, to make ourselves comfortable and agreeable to the fair sex. As for himself, purtecting females was his nature, and he should never lie easy agin, if so be he left the lady on the road; and providing a female wouldn’t be purtected with her own free will, she ought to be forced to, like any other ’live beast unsensible of its own good. Them was his sentiments, and his master followed ’em up. They knowed Miss Norman, name and fame, and was both well-known respectable men in their lines, and I might ax about for their characters. Whereby, supposing I approved, they’d have her, right and tight, in their cart, afore she felt herself respectfully off her legs.

Such were the arguments and the plan of the bull-headed pair. I attempted to reason with them, but my consent had clearly been only asked as a compliment. The lady herself hastened the catastrophe. Whether she had overheard the debate, or the amount of long pent-up emotion became too overwhelming for its barriers, I know not, but Pride gave way to Nature, and a short hysteric scream proceeded from the carriage. Miss Norman was in fits! We contrived to get her seated on the step of the vehicle, where the butchers supported her, fanning her[Pg 251] with their hats, whilst I ran off to a little pool near at hand for some cold water. It was the errand only of some four or five minutes, but when I returned, the lady, only half conscious, had been caught up, and there she sate, in the cart, right and tight, between the two butchers, instead of the two Salvages, or Griffins, or whatever they were, her hereditary supporters. They were already on the move. I jumped into my own gig, and put my horse to his speed; but I had lost my start, and when I came up with them, they were already galloping into W——. Unfortunately her residence was at the further end of the town, and thither I saw her conveyed, struggling in the bright blue, and somewhat greasy, arms of Sam the Sticker, screaming in concert with the two swine, and answered by the shouts of the whole rabblement of the place, who knew Miss Norman quite as well, by sight, as “her own carriage!”

“I’M AFRAID I’M IN LOW COMPANY!”

[Pg 252]

A MINOR CANON.

I CANNOT BEAR A GUN.

“Timidity is generally reckoned an essential attribute of the fair sex, and this absurd notion gives rise to more false starts than a race for the Leger. Hence screams at mice, fits at spiders, faces at toads, jumps at lizards, flights from daddy longlegs, panics at wasps, sauve qui peut at sight of a gun. Surely, when the military exercise is made a branch of education at so many ladies’ academies, the use of the musket would only be a judicious step further in the march of mind. I should not despair, in a month’s practice, of making the most timid British female fond of small-arms.”—HINTS BY A CORPORAL.

“JAMES’S POWDER.”

WOOLWICH WARREN.

FANCY PORTRAIT—MRS. TRIMMER.

LITTLE JACK AND HIS TRIMMER.

“That boy is the brother of Pam——.”—JOSEPH ANDREWS.

“WILLIAM certainly is fond of whist!”

This was an admission drawn, or extracted, as Cartwright would say, like a double tooth from the mouth of William’s mother; an amiable and excellent lady, who ever reluctantly[Pg 260] confessed foibles in her family, and invariably endeavoured to exhibit to the world the sunny side of her children.

There can be no possibility of doubt that William was fond of whist. He doted on it. Whist was his first passion—his first love; and in whist he experienced no disappointment. The two were made for each other.

CARDY MUMS.

William was one of a large bunch of children, and he never grew up. On his seventh birthday a relation gave him a miniature pack of cards, and made him a whist-player for life. Our bias dates much earlier than some natural philosophers suppose. I remember William, a mere child, being one day William of Orange, and objecting to a St. Michael’s because it had no pips.

At school he was a total failure; except in reckoning the odd[Pg 261] tricks. He counted nothing by honours, and the schoolmaster said of his head what he has since said occasionally of his hand that “it held literally nothing.”

At sixteen, after a long maternal debate between the black and red suits, William was articled to an attorney: but instead of becoming a respectable land-shark, he played double-dummy with the Common-Law Clerk, and was discharged on the 6th of November. The principal remonstrated with him on a breach of duty, and William imprudently answered that he was aware of his duty, like the ace of spades. Mr. Bitem immediately banged the door against him, and William, for the first time in his life—to use his own expression, “got a slam.”

William having served his time, and, as he calls it, followed suit for five years, was admitted as an attorney, and began to play at that finessing game, the Law. Short-hand he still studied and practised; though more in parlours than in court.

William at one period admired Miss Hunt, or Miss Creswick, or Miss Hardy, or Miss Reynolds; a daughter of one of the great card-makers, I forget which—and he cut for partners, but without “getting the Lady.” His own explanation was that he “was discarded.” He then paid his addresses to a Scotch girl, a Miss MacNab, but she professed religious scruples about cards, and he revoked. I have heard it said that she expected to match higher; indeed William used to say she “looked over his hand.”

William is short, and likes shorts. He likes nothing of longs, but the St. John of them: and he only takes to him, because that saint is partial to a rubber. Whist seems to influence his face as well as form; it is like a knave of clubs. I sometimes fancy whist could not go on without William, and certainly William could not go on without whist. His whole conversation, except on cards, is wool-gathering; and on that subject is like wool—carded. He “speaks by the card,” and never gives equivocation a chance. At the Olympic once[Pg 262] he had a quarrel with a gentleman about the lead of Madame Vestris or Miss Sydney: he was required to give his card, and he gave the “Deuce of Hearts.” This was what he termed “calling out.”

Of late years William only goes out like a bad rushlight, earlyish of a night, and quits every table that is not covered with green baize with absolute disgust. The fairies love by night to “gambol on the green,” and so does William, and he is constantly humming with great gusto,

The only verses, by the way, he ever got by heart. He never cared to play much with the Muses. They stick, he used to say, at Nine.

William can sit longer—drink less—say as little—pay or receive as much—shuffle as well—and cut as deeply as any man on earth. You may leave him safely after dinner, and catch him at breakfast time without alteration of attitude or look. He is a small statue erected in honour of whist, and like Eloquence, “holds his hand well up.” He is content to ring the changes on thirteen cards a long Midsummer night; for he does not play at cards—he works at them, and considering the returns, for very low wages. William never was particularly lucky; but he bears the twos and threes with as much equanimity as any one, and seems, horticulturally speaking, to have grafted Patience upon Whist. I do not know whether it is the family motto, but he has upon his seal—with the great Mogul for a crest—the inscription of “Packs in Bello.”

William is now getting old (nearly fifty-two), with an asthma; which he says makes him rather “weak in trumps.” He is preparing himself accordingly to “take down his score,” and has made his will, bequeathing all he has or has not, to a whist club. His funeral he directs to be quite private, and his grave[Pg 263]stone a plain one, and especially “that there be no cherubims carved thereon, forasmuch,”—says this characteristic document, “that they never hold Honours.”

A DOUBLE AT LONG’S.

Speaking within compass, as to fabulousness I prefer Southcote to Northcote.—PIGROGROMITUS.

NATIVES OF THE SILLY ISLANDS.

PRO BONO PUBLICO.

“I cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this self-same Starling.”—STERNE’S SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.

“POSSE COMETATIS.”

THE HARVEST MOON.

MY first acquaintance with the press—a memorable event in an author’s experience—took place in Scotland. Amongst the temporary sojourners at our boarding-house, there came a legal[Pg 271] antiquarian who had been sent for from Edinburgh, expressly to make some unprofitable researches amongst the mustiest of the civic records. It was my humour to think, that in Political as well as Domestic Economy, it must be better to sweep the Present than to dust the Past; and certain new brooms were recommended to the Town Council in a quizzing letter, which the then editor of the Dundee Advertiser or Chronicle, thought fit to favour with a prominent place in his columns. “’Tis pleasant sure,” sings Lord Byron, “to see one’s self in print,” and according to the popular notion I ought to have been quite up in my stirrups, if not standing on the saddle, at thus seeing myself, for the first strange time, set up in type. Memory recalls, however, but a very moderate share of exaltation, which was totally eclipsed, moreover, by the exuberant transports of an accessory before the fact, whom, methinks, I still see in my mind’s eye, rushing out of the printing-office with the wet sheet steaming in his hand, and fluttering all along the High Street, to announce breathlessly that “we were in.” But G. was an indifferent scholar, even in English, and therefore thought the more highly of this literary feat. It was this defective education, and the want of a proper vent for his abundant love nonsense in prose or verse, that probably led to the wound he subsequently inflicted on his own throat, but which was luckily remedied by “a stitch in time.” The failure of a tragedy is very apt to produce something like a comedy, and few afterpieces have amused me more than the behaviour of this Amicus Redivivus, when, thus dramatising the saying of “cut and come again,” he made what ought to have been a posthumous appearance amongst his friends. In fact, and he was ludicrously alive to it, he had placed himself for all his supplementary days in a false position. Like the old man in the fable, after formally calling upon Death to execute a general release, he had quietly resumed his fardel, which he bore about, with exactly the uneasy ridiculous air of a[Pg 272] fine-would be gentleman, who is sensitively conscious that he is carrying a bundle. For the sake of our native sentimentalists who profess dying for love, as well as the foreign romanticists who affect a love for dying, it may not be amiss to give a slight sketch of the bearing of a traveller who had gone through half the journey. I had been absent some months, and was consequently ignorant of the affair, when lo! on my return to the town, the very first person who accosted me in the market-place was our felo-de-se; and truly, no Bashful Man, “with all his blushing honours thick upon him,” in the presence of a damp stranger, could have been more divertingly sheepish, and awkwardly backward in coming forward as to manner and address. Indeed, something or the embarrassment of a fresh introduction might naturally be felt by an individual, thus beginning again, as the lawyers say, de novo, and renewing ties he had virtually cast off. The guilty hand was as dubiously extended to me as if it had been a dyer’s,—its fellow meanwhile performing sundry involuntary motions and manipulations about his cravat, as if nervously mistrusting the correctness of the ties or the stability of a buckle. As for his face, there was a foolish, deprecatory smile upon it that would have puzzled the pencil of Wilkie; and even Liston himself could scarcely have parodied the indescribable croak with which, conscious of an unlucky notoriety, he inquired “if I had heard”—here, a short husky cough—“of anything particular?”

“Not a word,” was the answer.

“Then you don’t know”(—more fidgeting about the neck, the smile rather sillier, the voice more guttural, and the cough worse than ever)—“then you don’t know”—but, like Macbeth’s amen, the confession literally stuck in the culprit’s throat; and I was left to learn, an hour afterwards, and from another source, that[Pg 273] “Jemmy G*** had fought a duel with himself, and cut his own weazand, about a lady.”

For my own part, with the above figure, and all its foolish features vividly imprinted on my memory, I do not think that I could ever seriously attempt “what Cato did, and Addison approved,” in my own person. On the contrary, it seems to me that the English moralist gave but an Irish illustration of “a brave man struggling with the storms of fate,” by representing him as wilfully scuttling his own hold, and going at once to the bottom. As for the Censor, he plainly laid himself open to censure, when he used a naked sword as a stomachic—a very sorry way, by the way, when weary of conjectures, of enjoying the benefit of the doubt, and for which, were I tasked to select an inscription for his cenotaph, it should be the exclamation of Thisby, in the Midsummer Night’s Dream—

Mais revenons à nos moutons, as the wolf said to her cubs. The reception of my letter in the Dublin Newspaper encouraged me to forward a contribution to the Dundee Magazine, the Editor of which was kind enough, as Winifred Jenkins says, to “wrap my bit of nonsense under his Honour’s Kiver,” without charging anything for its insertion. Here was success sufficient to turn a young author at once into “a scribbling miller,” and make him sell himself, body and soul, after the German fashion, to that minor Mephistopheles, the Printer’s Devil! Nevertheless, it was not till years afterwards, and the lapse of term equal to an ordinary apprenticeship, that the Imp in question became really my Familiar. In the meantime, I continued to compose occasionally, and, like the literary performances of Mr. Weller Senior, my lucubrations were generally committed to paper, not in what is commonly called written hand, but an imitation of print. Such a course hints suspiciously of type and antetype, and a longing eye to the Row, whereas, it was adopted simply to make the reading more easy, and thus[Pg 274] enable me the more readily to form a judgment of the effect of my little efforts. It is more difficult than may be supposed to decide on the value of a work in MS., and especially when the handwriting presents only a swell mob of bad characters, that must be severally examined and re-examined to arrive at the merits or demerits of the case. Print settles it, as Coleridge used to say; and to be candid, I have more than once reversed, or greatly modified a previous verdict, on seeing a rough proof from the press. But, as Editors too well know, it is next to impossible to retain the tune of a stanza, or the drift of an argument, whilst the mind has to scramble through a patch of scribble scrabble, as stiff as a gorse cover. The beauties of the piece will as naturally appear to disadvantage through such a medium as the features of a pretty woman through a bad pane of glass; and without doubt, many a tolerable article has been consigned hand over head to the Balaam Box for want of a fair copy. Wherefore, O ye Poets and Prosers, who aspire to write in Miscellanies, and above all, O ye palpitating Untried, who meditate the offer of your maiden essays to established periodicals, take care, pray ye take care, to cultivate a good, plain, bold, round text. Set up Tomkins as well as Pope or Dryden for a model, and have an eye to your pothooks. Some persons hold that the best writers are those who write the best hands, and I have known the conductor of a magazine to be converted by a crabbed MS. to the same opinion. Of all things, therefore, be legible; and to that end, practise in penmanship. If you have never learned, take six lessons of Mr. Carstairs. Be sure to buy the best paper, the best ink, the best pens, and then sit down and do the best you can; as the schoolboys do—put out your tongue, and take pains. So shall ye haply escape the rash rejection of a jaded editor; so, having got in your hand, it is possible that your head may follow; and so, last not least, ye may fortunately avert those awful mistakes of the press which sometimes ruin[Pg 275] a poet’s sublimest effusion, by pantomimically transforming his roses into noses, his angels into angles, and all his happiness into pappiness.

“A man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity him.”—PERICLES.

IT was during a voyage to Margate, many summers ago—before steam was—that the little episode occurred which I am going to relate, by way of text, to some observations on the ocean.

The importance of the Mariner’s Compass to the sailor is as well known universally as the utility of the little one-eyed instrument, for which Whitechapel is so famous, to the tailor: but its mode of action, and the manner of its application, must be far less generally understood. Whether the plougher of the deep mends his checked shirts with the Needle, or sews the canvas into sails with it, or uses it, after a battle, to extract the splinters from his hard tarry hand, are speculations likely enough to be entertained by the plougher of the land; at least by those clod-compelling turners of the furrows, mid-county born and bred, who, despite of their predilection for such naval ballads as Tom Bowling and Jack Junk, have never set their simple eyes on ship or sailor, or the sea which they subdue. To many Londoners even, who jostle the tar in the streets, and behold tier after tier of masted vessels from their lower Bridge,—who have perchance stood and stared at the Compass itself in some shop-window of Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with its Card-inal Points, is an undeciphered hierogly[Pg 276]phic. It did not violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle, like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian’s show-box; and doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much a thing of life and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin. It was not until after a tedious poring at it—long enough, if there were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to have understood one another by mutual sympathy—that the wonderer made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine mystery. Fortunately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the characteristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness, as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to treat the raw voyager; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths, masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of probation: in the present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains—call them pleasures rather—than the honest man at the wheel, to explain the use and properties of the Compass: he boxed it again and again for the benefit of the gaping neophyte; a benevolent smile, and the twinkling of his blue eyes, declaring that he felt amply repaid by the supposed proficiency of his pupil,—when, all of a sudden, his well-earned pride was dashed to the deck by the pupil’s turning away on his heel, with a hunch of his shoulders, a blank look, and a dissatisfied grunt, exclaiming,

“Well, arter all, I don’t see how the turning round of that ’ere little needle can move about the rudder!”

I should have been no Christian man, but a brute beast, had I not sympathised with the feelings of the steersman. Contempt took the lead. All “the dismal hiss of universal scorn,” ascribed to Milton’s devils, seemed condensed into his whistle. Next came Resentment, wishing back the Cockney-Tailor to his[Pg 277] shop-board, sitting on his own needle—and then came Pity, inducing the milder reflection,

“I wonder the poor gentleman’s friends allows him to go about by himself!”

I doubt whether the force of contempt and pity could further go: and yet—to confess a truth—shall I?—dare I?—say, that to the intense sea-ignorance which incurred the scorn, anger, and compassion of our Palinurus, I look back with ENVY?

Methinks, every British Heart of Oak recoils, and every British head of the same material shakes itself, at such an avowal! Every lip that ever helped to chorus Rule Britannia, curls itself up—noses which never sniffed sea-weed tacitly snub me,—eyes which never glimpsed the ocean avert themselves in disgust. I am bespattered with salt-water oaths and tobacco-juice. The Thames Yacht Clubs, on the strength of having learned to bellow “Elm a-lee!”—“Ard-hup!” and “Oist-away!” agree to run me down. The very clerks of the Navy Pay Office propose to seize me up to the dingy fresh-water Neptune in their fore-court. Captain Basil Hall swears, on his best anchor-button, to keel-haul me daily, for six months, in “the element which never tires.” The last of the Dibdins asks for my card. Campbell flares up with the “Meteor Flag of England,” and vows to knock me down with its staff;—nay, our Sailor King himself repudiates me, as a subject, for not relishing his High Seas!

It can’t be helped. When one is confessing, there is no place under the sun like the Ocean for “making a clean breast of it:”—and am not I here staggering and tumbling—soberly tipsy—aboard a lubberly Dutch-built hull, becalmed in a heavy swell—dreaming, when I can sleep, that I am a barrel-churn, revolving with my inside full of half-turned cream or incipient butter;—and finding, when I awake, that dreams do not go so altogether by contraries?

[Pg 278]

If this perpetual motion hold, the cargo of cheeses we shipped at Dordrecht, flat as single Glo’sters, will be delivered in London spherical as bowls! The Jung Vrouw herself, before she reaches the Nore, will be a washing-tub! I have doubts whether the salt beef, produced at this day’s luncheon, was, originally, a round. The leathern conveniency that I brought aboard, a fair and square trunk, is already almost a portmanteau;—and, what is worse, every several morsel I have swallowed this blessed day without bliss, seems rolling itself into a bolus or a pill,—whether of opium or ipecacuanha, I leave you to divine. If the calm should continue, I may become—who knows?—a Ball myself—a Master Biffin! Every half-hour, on feeling my knees and elbows, I find joints by this friction losing some of their asperities, and getting obtuser. A little more, and I shan’t have a good point about me!

Is such as this a season to be squeamishly retentive in delivering one’s sentiments? Or, rather, is not open candour inevitable; seeing that you cannot have any reserve even with the merest stranger? It is impossible to keep your feelings to yourself. In spite, then, of Britannia, the Yacht Club, the Navy Pay,—of Dibdin, Campbell, and Basil Hall,—of the Lords of the Admiralty, with Portsmouth, Devonport, and Gosport, to boot—in spite of the Royal William, nay, in spite of my very self, the truth will out!—not sneaking out, or stepping out, or backing out, but bolting out, in a plain unequivocal straightforward style. I DO envy the simple man, with his sheer ignorance about rudders and compasses. I do detest and abominate the ocean—or to phrase it more mildly—the sea and I cannot agree with each other—there is sure to be falling-out between us—we can never be bosom friends.

The Marine Society must despise me for it; my Elder Brethren of the Trinity House will long to dispose of me as Joseph was made away with by his elder Brethren; Boatswain[Pg 279] Smith will preach, write Tracts and distribute them, against me: the Greenwich Pensioners will bind themselves by a round robin to kick me with me with their knottiest legs; Long Tom Coffin himself will be for fetching me, with a shroud in one hand, and a dead-light in the other; but I cannot eat my words.

SEE-SAW.

It is no time, when you cannot keep your legs, to “stand bandying compliments with your sovereign,” that is, Neptune. If he were present at this moment, in this cabin, I would tell him, from this my seat on its floor, that he might very much improve his paternal estate, to wit, by levelling, and still more by draining it. I would flatly say to him, lying flat on my face as it now happens, that a few little gravel walks, merely across and across it, would be of rare advantage both for show and use. For ’tis a sorry pleasure-garden that is all fish-pond; and, finally, I would broadly hint to him, from the broad of my back, as I am at this present—— But this is bullying Taurus behind his back. There is no sea-god present, only the Skipper. How he skips in such weather, give him his pick of all the ropes in the ship, is a miracle I would fain see ere I believe in[Pg 280] it. For my own part I cannot even step deliberately over a thread. Perhaps, without going too curiously into the Doctrine of Predestination, as regards the soul, it may hold good as concerns the body. Undoubtedly there be some men born to sit fast upon horses; others to fall off therefrom as if they had soaped saddles. Some to slide and skate upon the ice; others only to slip, straddle, and sprawl upon it. Some to walk, or at least waddle, on ships’ decks; others to flop, flounder, wallow, and grovel thereon. That is my destiny. None can be more safe on the Serpentine, or sure in the saddle;—but Fate, long before my great-great-great-grandfather was put to his feet, forbade me sea-legs. An average pedestrian on land, on the caulked plank I am a born cripple, hopeless of cure. Put me apprentice to the Goodwin, or the Dudgeon Light, at the end of my term you shall find me as unsafe on my soles as when I first paid my footing. Even now, whilst Hans Vandergroot and his crew are comfortably promenading, I rock and totter, balancing one end against the other, like a great rickety babe, until, after some posturing and scrambling, I trip up over nothing, and fall flat on everything. An earthquake in London, when its streets are what is called greasy, could not more puzzle my centre of gravity; if, indeed, I was not born a mathematical monster, devoid of that material point!

By way of clincher, Fate, who never does things by halves, whilst foredooming me incapable of standing my ground at sea, has also denied me the power of settling it. A camp-stool is sure to decamp with me; a chair, as if it stood on Siberian ice, suddenly throws itself on its back, and behold me in an extempore sledge! Barrels roll from under me; coils of rope shuffle me off. Even on the plain bare hard deck, or cabin floor, I throw demi-summersets, as if I had been returned to Parliament to represent the Antipodes by sitting on the back of my head.

To complete the Sea Curse,—there are three Fates, and each[Pg 281] had a boon for me at my birth—it was ordained that, like the great Nelson, I should never sail from fresh water into salt, without knowing it by a general rising and commotion, which might be called figuratively, a Mutiny at the Nore.

Like the standing and sitting infirmity, it is incurable. On my voyage outwards I tried every popular recipe; the hard ones first, to wit, raw carrots, raw onions, sailors’ biscuit with Dutch cheese, hard-boiled eggs, hard dumplings, raw stockfish. Next the easy ones: namely, cream cheese, Welsh rabbits, maccaroni, very hasty pudding, and insupportable soup. Then the neutrals: such as chewed blotting-paper, dry oatmeal, pounded egg-shells, scraped chalk, and unbaked dough.

To wash these down, I took, by prescription, tea without milk, coffee without sugar, bark without wine, water without brandy; and these formulæ all failing, I then tried them, as witches pray, backwards; brandy without water, wine without bark, and so forth. The experimental combinations followed; rum and milk, and mustard; eggs and wine, and camomile tea; gin and beer, and vinegar; sea-water and salad-oil, mulled, with sugar and nutmeg. Of which last, I drank by advice most prodigiously, the Doctors of the Marine College dispensing always on the Homœopathic principle, that a large dose of anything, whereof a little would set you wrong on the land, will set you right on the sea.

I need hardly say that, with my predisposed necessitarian viscera, all these infallible remedies failed of any effect, except to aggravate my case. Nothing short of liquid lead, maybe, or potable plaster of Paris, would have proved a settler.

Happy the man who hath never been driven in his despair to test, detest, invoke, evoke, swallow, and unswallow, such drugs and draughts of the naval Pharmacopœia! Thrice happy civic simpleton who hath never learned how the rudder revolveth, at the risk of turning round himself!

[Pg 282]

Vandergroot is visibly in course of transformation. At every visit to the cabin he looks more and more like a Dutch-pin. He talks to me roundly, and gets blunter and blunter! The last time I felt, I had no small to my back. If I may guess at my own figure, it is now about an oval. I must look like one of Leda’s babies, just emerged, with their insignificant buds of legs and arms, from the egg! From an oval to a circle is but a step. Heaven help me when I get landed, round and sound, as they say of cherries! How shall I get home—how get up—(there will be a short way down)—mine own stairs? How shall I sit? Instead of my old library chair, I must borrow its three-legged stool of the terrestrial globe!

Either my head swims, or the cabin is getting circular! I shall roll about in it like a bolus in its box! If I am not merely giddy, I am already as spherical as the earth; a little flatted, or so, that is, towards the poles. What a horrible rough calm! I will down on my knees, if I have knees, and with clasped hands, if hands remain to me, pray, beg, and supplicate for a dismal storm to batter me into shape again, though it be but nine-bobble-square!

I get more and more candid and communicative every moment. I can keep nothing to myself: you shall have my whole heart. I abhor, loathe, execrate, the sea! If I could throw up my hat, my cry would be “Land for ever!” A fico for Tom Tough! Down with Duncan Howe, and Jervis! No Dibdin!

If ever I get ashore, able to chalk upon a wall, you shall read—Ask for Stoke Pogis! Try Lupton Parva! If ever I get to a dry desk again, to write verse upon,—and the poetry of the ocean is all on the land, its prose only upon the sea, you shall have a rare new melody, published by Power, to some such strain as this:—

That last line halteth in its feet, as well it may, when the poet cannot keep his legs. Oh! it is well for Cornwall, born perchance “with one foot on sea and one foot on shore” at the Land’s End,—I have seen a picture of it by Turner, a bare bleak rocky promontory, with some nineteen gulls and cormor[Pg 284]ants sitting thereon, each with its tail turned contemptuously towards the barren granite, feldspar, and like sordid soils which there represent land.—It is well enough for him to chaunt laudations of the briny element, and cry up those amphibia, his first cousins almost, the Nereids and Tritons. Or it may become those others, born in a berth, and christened in brine, with Neptune for sponsor, to sing slightingly of the dry ground, on which they cannot claim even a parish. But my nativity was otherwise cast—I am a grass lamb, yeaned on the green sward—oh sweet sweet sweet Cropton-le-Moor, down in dear dear Wiltshire!

“HOW ARE YOU OFF FOR MONEY?”
“WHY I’M OFF WITH ALL MY MASTER’S.”

That pastoral reminiscence hath made me worse. It has given me an appetite—for acres. Methinks I yearn and long and crave for nice clay, delicious mould, and crisp pebbles, in a paroxysm of that strange bulimy that attacks the African Dirt Eater. Something of Nebuchadnezzar’s grazing propensity comes along with it. Gracious Heaven! can it be possible that, after having been battered and shaken out of all shape,—a mere mass of living flesh, like the unlicked ursine cub,—this same Circean Jung Vrouw has taken it into her figure-head to beat, bang, bump, and rumbledy-thump me into another form, a horse, a ram, or a brindled bull!

Thrice brute and beast-hyæna! Were-wolf! Dragon! horned Devil! that thou wast, my Land-steward, Peter Stuckey! after counselling me before thy last audit to abate my rents, to volunteer to reduce them thyself by absconding, across sea, with the whole receipt! Thrice Soland goose, booby, noddy, sea-calf, land-donkey, and loggerhead turtle was I, thus impoverished, instead of economising, to pursue thee on an element where I cannot control my out-goings!

Donner and Blitzen! what a crash! my rash prayer was heard: there is a storm coming—as the Powers proposed to storm Angiers in King John’s days—from all the four quarters at once! I must needs turn in: but how vilely this bed is made[Pg 285] with the foot two yards higher than the head! No, the head is highest—perpendicular. I designed to lie down, and here I am standing bolt erect on my heels—no, on my head. It must be getting cold: the very trunks, stools and tables are making a move towards the stove—nay, now we are in some sudden peril, for they are all doing their best to rush up the cabin-stair. Whew—that sea last shipped must needs have put all the Dutchmen’s pipes out. Another plunge; and a flood of brine soaks me through, shirt, sheet, and blankets. There is no washing put out here, I perceive; ’tis all done at home. What a complex, chaotic motion,—the ship tosses and flings like a wild desert-born horse, that is trying to rear, kick up behind, turn round and round, and roll on his back at one and the same moment. This is no Dutch ship, but a Dutch fair—with the drums, gongs, speaking-trumpets, and other discords, all braying together; and I am on the rocking-horse, the round-about, in the up-and-down, and each of the swings, all at once! Another crash! The Jung Vrouw is bereaved of her little one, alias the long-boat. How kind of Vandergroot to come down to tell me of it, direct through the sky-light, instead of going round by the stair! How kind of that table, lying on its back, to catch him in its legs! Angels of grace be near us! He tells me, as he sways up and down, partly in High, partly in Low Dutch, that the Jung Vrouw herself is washed overboard! But no—I misconstrued him. ’Tis only her great ruddy staring figure-head—which the blundering Holland shipwrights had stuck astern, on the crown of the tiller—that is gone adrift. Oh how I wish from my soul of souls that I could see the Commodore of the Thames Yachts now pulling, within hail, in the Wenus! Or, the last Dibdin taking a chair—or the chair taking him—in this cabin! Or, Campbell essaying to write down a new sea-song on yon topsy-turvy table! And oh! to behold the author of “The deep deep Sea” sitting on the poop, singing to that[Pg 286] floating Young Woman’s head and bust, taken by mistake for a mermaid’s!

Another shout. Pieter Pietersoon, in heaving the lead, hath chucked himself in along with it! I do not wonder; he heaveth after my own fashion, by wholesale. Have I not within the last two hours rejected, discharged, and utterly cast from me in disgust, the whole ocean, nay all the oceans, German, Atlantic, Pacific—the Arctic last, its solid calms, the next best things to Terra Firma, not so violently disagreeing with me as the rest. And do I not know and feel that I am now about to give up Neptune, trident and all, with the whole salt-water mythology? I warrant, ere ten minutes to come, there shall not remain within me so much as a syren’s mirror, or her tortoise-shell comb:—not one solitary Triton will be left on my stomach. Some unsavoury odour about the cabin—marvellously like the smell of oil paint—hath just given me a new turn, by conjuring up all the nauseous pictures of marine allegories, which even on steady dry land, used to stir and provoke my spleen.

Oh! that they were all here, President, R.A., and A.R.A., in a string, climbing after me up this perilous slippery stair, to the more perilous slippery deck, there to crawl on all-fours to the ship’s side, and clinging like cats or monkeys to the quarter boards, take a trembling peep at what Vandergroot calls “den wild zee!” What an awful sight! The tempest-tost sky is as troubled as the ocean: whilst betwixt the jagged base of the low black cloud, and the still jaggeder crest of the sea, the red angry lightning restlessly darts to and fro, as if in search of whatever presuming mortal dares fare between them! Oh tell me, Mister Elias Martin—if you a’nt dead—is the tossing crest of yonder mad black billow, that comes racing after us, at all like the black worsted fringe which your brethren are apt to hang on the necks of their marine Arabians? But hush, yonder comes Neptune himself, in his state-coach—aye, hats off—the wind hath taught[Pg 287] ye manners. Lo! yonder he stands,—Pshaw! no, no, no,—Zounds! you are all gaping at honest Hans Vandergroot. Look to starboard—to the left hand! That’s the gentleman, without his castor, nor indeed overwell togged otherwise for wet weather—with his beard lather’d but not shaved—standing up in an oyster-shell drag, and attempting, like a sorry whip as he is, to tool his team of bokickers with a potato-fork. Did you ever see four such unbroke brutes as he hath to keep together—neither reined-up, nor down, nor indeed, any ribbons to hold at all—and as I would have laid a pony to nothing, there they go, no pace at all, cause why? they are just come to some invisible sea obelisk, and each horse is for going down a road of his own. Did you ever set eyes on such action? No stepping out—but all pawing and prancing and putting their feet down again where they picked them up, like Ducrow’s dancing stud; as sure as I’m a judge, they have all got the string-halt in their fore-legs, because they can’t have it in their hinder ones! You may swear safely that they have four bad colds besides, and look what a rabble of naked postillions are hanging on by their manes, because they have no saddles, and if they had, they would never be able to sit in them with those salmon tails! Between ourselves, Elias, ’tis no great shakes of a show; the Lord Mayor’s pageant on the water beats it all to sticks; and if you make a picture of it, you will be a fool for your pains. Yet have I seen paintings by first-rate hands as like to this same trumpery Sadlers’ Wells water spectacle——

Murder! murder! Help! help! O Lord! A surgeon and a shutter, if there be such comfortable things in this unneighbourly neighbourhood. O! oh! oh! oh! Woe is me! I am not—I am now certain and sure I am not a Ball! I have limbs and members! legs and arms! like other people’s, only they’re broke; and a very distinct back. My head! Oh! my head, my head; there are nine lumps thereon, and there are nine cabin stairs.

[Pg 288]

The real Sea-King, in resentment, I suppose, of my untimely caricature of him and his state-coach, after spitting nine gallons of foam in my face, knocked me flat with a wave, and then kicked me down stairs; and here I am again trying to anoint my bruises with trunks, and bind them up with stools and tables, on the hard-hearted oak planks of the cabin-floor. Yet is it easier with me than I first feared. My legs are not broken but merely bent. I am only bandy and not lame for life; but my sea-sickness is not cured. Am I likely to put up, better or worse, think you, with Neptune and his satellites, for this unhandsome usage?

“FRIEND! DOST THEE CALL THIS THE PACIFIC?”

The Jung Vrouw, meanwhile, is as giddy as ever, nay, worse ten times told. She hath taken a tinge of high-flying, deep-living, German Romanticism into her wooden head, and is try[Pg 289]ing, plunge after plunge, to drown herself, and to make me commit wilful suicide along with her, whether I will or not. After that, there is no hope; but oh! yet oh, my Fates, let me die upon land. I have a horror of shipboard! The idea of severing all ties in this cabin is trebly agonising. Why, the very table is tied to the floor, the candlestick to the table, the snuffers to the candlestick, the extinguisher to the snuffers. Only the burning candle is unattached, and there—there it jumps into bed! No matter; it could as soon set fire to the Thames. Another squall! How she groans, creaks, squeaks, strains, grinds, and squeezes, like a huge walnut in Neptune’s crackers? Accursed Jung Vrouw! thou wilt be the widowing of my poor dear old one! Accursed Peter Stuckey, thou wilt be the murdering of my poor deaf old self!

I know not, for a surety, by reason that everything about me is quaking and shaking, but I suspect I am trembling like an aspen. It is impossible to hear, in the midst of this universal hubbub, but methinks, I am wailing and weeping aloud. But one may as well make a manly exit. Like other men, in such sea extremities, I would fain betake me to the rum-cask; but either Hans Vandergroot sails on Temperance principles, or I have looked in the wrong place. I will try a stave or two instead.

THE BEST BOWER ANCHOR.

Alas! it will not go down. I am too much out of sorts for even the “delicate Ariel.” It was one thing for Shakspeare, sailing, hugging the shore, never out of sight of land, on the safe serene coasts of Bohemia, to compose such a sea song for the wood and canvas Tempests of the stage; but it is another guess thing to hear it, as I do, howled through hoarse ship-ropes, by Boreas himself, in a real storm. What comfort to me that everything about me shall suffer a sea-change?—that my bones shall turn, forsooth, into coral? I would not give a bad[Pg 290] doit, with some of these poor metacarpal bones of mine to be rubbing the gums of the Royal Infant of Spain. I am not so blindly ambitious as to wish that these two precious useful balls of mine, turned into pearls, should shine in the British crown itself, or, what is more tempting, in the hair of the beautiful Countess of B. What if some economical jeweller—I think I feel him at it—should take it into his head to split them, for setting in a ring? As for the Syren’s knell, I would as lief have it as long hereafter as may be, from the plain prosaic old sexton of St. Sepulchre’s. I have no depraved yearning to be first wet-nursed to death, and then “lapped in Elysium,” by Mermaids, the most cold, flabby, washy, fishy, draggletails ever invented to give any human fancy the ague—half-and-half monsters, neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. A whole cargo of them, nay a glut of them, leaping alive, unfit for loving[Pg 291] or eating, is not worth one loveable real woman at Billingsgate, or one of the eatable maids on her stall. I could never imagine the boldest and gallantest boatswain encountering such a sea-witch, on a lone beach—combing the shrimps out of her wet sandy mud-coloured hair, and wriggling her foolish tail about, curling, or stretching it, or trying to put it into her pocket, forgetting that she has no pockets, as a shy man in company does not know what to do with his hands—I could never fancy him looking on such a creature, however attached to the fair sex, without his recoiling till he tumbled over his own pigtail, singing out, with a slight variation of a line of Dibdin’s,

For other sea-temptations, I would not give my old white pony, that stumbles over every stone in his road, and some out of it, to ride like that Lord Godolphin Arion over the seas on the fairest fish that was ever foaled. Speaking under fear of death, I would rather, waving all the romance, ride in a rill by a roadside on a stickle-back. On my solemn word, I would far liefer bestride even a pond perch with his dorsal fin erect. But hark! What means that dreadful cry? Our death-bell is tolling in Dutch—“Del, del, is verlooren!”

I must scramble, crawl, haul myself, spite of my sprained ankles, up unto the deck how I may. Next best unto witnessing our own funeral is the seeing how we are done to death.

What a sight! Here is the tiller tied hard a-port, or hard a-lee, as hard as they can tie it. Further back is the Skipper himself, entangled dismally by some cord or other to the stern-rails; and yonder is his mate, with a hundred and fifty turns of rope round himself and the mizen-mast, which he seems trying to strengthen. The gunner, as I take him to be, with a preposterous superfluity of breeching, is made fast to look through a hole, which seems to have been meant for a window to a cannon; and the carpenter, well pinioned and tethered by a[Pg 292] stout rope to the back-stay, is sheepishly dangling therefrom, whenever his side of the ship is uppermost, like unto the Lamb of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The cook, having given away both his hands, is spliced, as if for life, unto the capstan. Adam Vaart is double-turned and double-knotted to the main-mast, and Hendrick his brother is belayed down, on the broad of his back, in the place of the lost long-boat. Should the anchor be dropped, Jan Bart is sure, even from head to foot, to go along with it. Poor little Yacob Yops, the apprentice, hath been turned over, and re-bound into a ring-bolt, by articles which are called rope-yarns; and lo, up yonder, lashed by his legs to the rattlines, hangs Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, head downwards, like a split cod left there to dry, in the main shrouds!

Oh! that I were bound myself round and round all the ribs, from the top to the bottom, with good six-twist, lest even thus, in articulo mortis, I burst, split my sides, and die with excess of laughter. The Skipper, honest Hans, with much difficulty, for he grievously mistrusts his breathing to the beating of the wave, opening his mouth when it comes, and sealing up his lips when it is gone, hath let me into the whole secret. Considering the wild sea, he saith, and that no man can tie himself so surely as another man can, to some more steadfast substance, they had been all fastened, at their own special wish and agreement, to such hold-fasts as pleased them best, by Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, who was afterwards to provide for his safety as he judged surest, in order that he might liberate them again when the storm should be blown over. That accordingly, after first tying them all as securely as he was able, the said Diedrick betook himself to the main rigging, about half way up, to which he lashed himself by the ankles, holding on likewise with his hands, and his great clasp-knife in his mouth. That the Jung Vrouw driving before the wind and sea, they made shift, as they were to navigate her pretty comfortably for some twenty minutes[Pg 293] or thereby, when all of a sudden they saw Diedrick, being seized with a vertigo, let go his hold and drop into his present posture, from which he could never recover himself; and it was that dismal sight which had extorted the universal outcry that I heard.

I am sicker of the sea than ever! Is the safety of a Christian man’s life, and soul maybe, of no more interest than to be gambled away by such a set of Dutch Bottoms with Asses’ heads on their shoulders! Oh! that the worthy Chairman and all the Underwriters of Lloyd’s were here present on this deck—the mere sight of the Skipper’s countenance there, with not so much meaning in it as a smoked pig’s face, for that means to be eaten, would scare them from all sea-risks for ever!

Thanks be to Heaven! yonder’s a sail. It makes straight towards us—they come aboard. A Pilot?—well said! Oh, honest, good, dear Pilot, as you love a distressed poor countryman—as you understand the compass and how rudders are turned—if you know what a rope’s end is,—take the biggest bit of a cable you can pick, and give yonder Dutch sea-calves a round dozen a piece; ’twill cost you no great pains, seeing they are tied up ready to your hand. Pish! never mind their offence; they have mutinied against themselves. Smite, and spare not. I will go ashore meanwhile, in your boat. Hollo there! help me down. Take heed to my footing. Catch me, all of you, in your arms. Now I am in. No, I an’t! I an’t! I an’t!

If ye had not hauled me in again with that same boat-hook, I was drown’d. My shoulder bleeds for it, but I forgive. Never heed me: look to your helms and sails. ’Tis only a gallon or two of sea-water, just swallowed, that is indisposed to go on shore with me. I am used to it, indeed I am. Pray, what is the name of this blessed boat? The Lively Nancy. Lively indeed! The Jung Vrouw was a Quakeress to her! At every[Pg 294] jump she takes, my heart leaps also. Pray, pray, pray take in some canvas. You think you be sailing, but you are committing suicide. They mind me no more than stones. Oh! oh! I am out of Danger’s frying-pan into its fire! Peter Stuckey will be a murtherer after all!

What a set of dare-devils! They grin like baboons whilst she is driving with half her deck under water! I will shut mine eyes and hold fast by something. I am worse than ever. I give myself up. Oh! oh! what an awful roaring, hissing, grinding noise we are come into! The bottom of the sea is coming out, or else the bottom of the boat! Hah! Help! help! I am heels upward! Why did not some kindly soul forewarn me that she was going to stop short on the beach? Stand all aside, and let me leap upon the sand. Ah! I have made my nose spout gore in my over-haste to kiss my native land!

“WHY DON’T YOU LOOK OUT FOR WORK?”

Blessed be dry ground! Farewell, ocean! farewell, Jung Vrouw and Lively Nancy! Take my advice, and get married both of you to young farmers. Farewell, ye hang-dogs that saved me! Share my blessing amongst you; ’tis all I have[Pg 295] upon me or in me. Farewell, Neptune! We’ll part friends. If you ever come to Cropton-le-Moor, I shall be glad to see you, and not till then. Hans! Jan! Pieter! farewell one and all of you; “and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.” Now for a sweet, safe, still, silent land-bed! Set me but within a run and a jump of one, and in two clipped current minutes I will be fast asleep in it, even like the Irishman who forgot to say his prayers, but remembered to say amen.

ABSTRACTION.

HOME’S DOUGLAS.

BROKE BY A FALL OF THE STOCKS.

“WHEN WILL IT REACH LONDON?”

PRACTICE DRIVES ME MAD.

A POUTER.

POND’S ASTRONOMY.

“SHE’S BLACK IN THE FACE!”

DECAPITATION.

“STICK AS YOU BE—THAT’S THE COMET.”

TAILS OF THE HAUL BY CRAB.

A FOWL WIND.

“LORD, JOHN, HERE’S A BURROW!”

THE HEAD WAITER AT HATCHETT’S.

FREE TRADE.

“MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT ALONE.”

“I RAN IT THRO’ E’EN FROM MY BOYISH DAYS.”

ST. BLAISE.

[Pg 331]

“THOSE EVENING BELLS.”

THOSE EVENING BELLS.
“I’D BE A PARODY.”

THOSE Evening Bells, those Evening Bells,

How many a tale their music tells,

Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime,

And letters only just in time!—

The Muffin-boy has pass’d away,

The Postman gone—and I must pay,

For down below Deaf Mary dwells,

And does not hear those Evening Bells,

And so ’twill be when she is gone,

That tuneful peal will still ring on,

And other maids with timely yells

Forget to stay those Evening Bells.

[Pg 332]

BALL-PRACTICE.

LINES
TO A FRIEND AT COBHAM.

’Tis pleasant, when we’ve absent friends,

Sometimes to hob and nob ’em

With Memory’s glass—at such a pass

Remember me at Cobham!

Have pigs you will, and sometimes kill,

But if you sigh and sob ’em,

And cannot eat your home-grown meat,

Remember me at Cobham!

Of hen and cock, you’ll have a stock,

And death will oft unthrob ’em,—

A country chick is good to pick—

Remember me at Cobham!

Some orchard trees of course you’ll lease

And boys will sometimes rob ’em,

A friend (you know) before a foe—

Remember me at Cobham!

[Pg 333]

You’ll sometimes have wax-lighted rooms,

And friends of course to mob ’em,

Should you be short of such a sort,

Remember me at Cobham!

THE QUAKERS’ CONVERSAZIONE.

“Dost thou love silence, deep as that before the winds were made? Go not into the wilderness; descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the cells of thine ears, with little-faith’d, self-mistrusting Ulysses. Retire with me into a Quakers’ Meeting.”—ESSAYS OF ELIA.

IT may not, or rather it cannot, be generally known, that an attempt was made last winter, by certain influential members of the Society of Friends, to establish a Conversazione at Tottenham, a neighbourhood especially favoured by that respectable and substantial sect. The idea originated with a junior female branch of the opulent family of the Mumfords, which has been seated, time out of mind, in the vicinity of Bruce Castle; the notion was broached to a select few of the sisterhood, during a Sabbath walk homewards from the conventicle: the suggestion was relished; and a conference was called, at which the scheme was seriously brought forward, and gravely considered. At first there was a little boggling at the proposed title, as savouring, it was thought, of Loquacity; but the objection was dropped, on an explanation that although the word implied conversation, no one would be bidden to discourse against their own inclination; nay that, even amongst other persuasions, the conversazioni were frequently as distant as possible from a Negro “Talk,” or a Red Indian “Palaver.” This little demur excepted, the plan went on swimmingly, and was finally adopted with the subdued hum which, in that quiet-loving community, is equivalent to acclama[Pg 334]tions. A secretary was formally proposed, and tacitly chosen unanimously; being no other than the fair Foundress herself, the mild-spoken and meek-eyed Ruth Mumford. A few brief rules were then drawn up, and, after no debate, agreed to—some of them, considering the constitutional taciturnity of the sect, being sufficiently superfluous, as guarding against what Bubb Doddington called “a multiplicity of talk.” For instance, the 9th rule provided, that “no brother or sister should indulge in rambling irrelevant discourse, embracing a profusion of topics, wide of the matter in hand.” The 10th, that “no two or more Friends should disburden themselves of speech at one and the same time;” and the 12th, that “no member of this society shall deliver himself or herself with unreasonable continuity, to the prevention of other Friends who might desire to speak to the matter.” From the list of subjects to be “spoken to” politics and polemics were excluded; but poetry was allowed, or at least connived at, the excellent example of Bernard Barton and the Howitts having happily relaxed the primitive rigour of that proscription. Besides, it was well known, between Friends, that several of the younger female members, the fair secretary included, occasionally struck, or rather, as Quakers ought not to strike anything, twanged the lyre. For the rest, the society was modelled after other private literary associations; it was to meet twice weekly, visiting the houses of the members in rotation, when original essays or papers were to be read, and afterwards discussed; provided always, that they afforded any Debateable Land to make a stand upon, seeing that at the end of the rules and regulations, a special article earnestly recommended, that in the selection of subjects all such topics should be avoided “as might lead to differences of opinion amongst the brethren.”

Such was—for it is defunct—the Tottenham Friends’ Conversazione; of whose existence I became aware but by accident. It was my good fortune, till lately, to live next door to a family[Pg 335] of Quakers, and to make acquaintance with the eldest daughter, a young lively maiden just wearing out the last of her teens. I am afraid in the austere brown eyes of her parents she was not strictly considered as the flower of their flock, being a sort of nonconformist among nonconformists, as was especially to be seen in comparing her with her younger sisters, who seemed to have been brought up, or stuck up, under the most starched discipline. Instead of their plain close caps,—mere casts of their skulls taken in muslin,—she wore an airy fanciful structure of blonde and white ribbon, that a Parisian woman might have put on—at least of a morning. In lieu of their sleek mohair braids, her auburn ringlets flowed down her neck in all the “Unloveliness of Love-locks.” To her star-like hazel eyes she allowed a little planetary liberty of circulation; whereas it seemed the object of the others, to keep their demure brown orbs as immoveable in their faces, as bad halfpence nailed to counters. Instead of screwing up her lips, as if she had just come, minus a masticator, out of Cartwright’s into an east wind, she sometimes gave her ivory teeth an airing, by smiling at some innocent fancy, to which she would give utterance, without trying to send her clear sweet voice, by a New North-West Passage, through her nose. As for her figure, it was none of those shapes which have no shape, and may be swaddled up without detriment in dingy drabs, olives, slates, and snuffy browns,—shapes which nature makes on her basin-pudding days, instead of using her best jelly-moulds—shapes like the bonnet-shapes which balance baskets of live mackerel. To see the symmetrical Rachel standing near either of her sisters, you would think you beheld (borrowing a local image) Tottenham High Cross, beside the Waithman Obelisk. Accordingly, the orthodox warp of her glossy satin was always shot with a woof of some one of those gayer prismatic tints, to wear which is reckoned, among the severer Foxites,[Pg 336] “a profanation of the Rainbow, deserving a second deluge.” As will be seen hereafter, she put a little blue into her superfine silken hose; sometimes I even fancied that I detected a tinge of the more fleshy pink—in short, she was a Quakeress, but not of the sad-brown sort—only a brunette.

DISCOVERY OF ORGANIC REMAINS.

With the old Friends, her parents, I cannot boast that I was even on speaking terms; but with the lovely and lively Rachel my acquaintance had ripened even to the calling her by her Christian name; and the reciprocation of her thou and thee, to which I was led, not as a convertite, but from learning, in my French and German Grammars, that the use of the second person singular was an especial token of intimacy and affection. In this our neighbourly intercourse, a system of mutual accommodation sprang up between us, not by bills, but by books; for which she drew upon me by pretty little notes of hand, that I duly honoured, making them payable over the back garden[Pg 337] wall. Drawings and pieces of new music were equally negotiable. If I remember rightly, it was in return for Moore’s Melodies—the exchange at the time being against me—that I received “Fox’s Martyrs.” It was rather a ponderous tome for a lover of light reading; and if St. Swithin’s Festival had not fallen on a very wet Sunday in the country, I might never have opened its leaves,—if indeed they did not open of themselves,—thus letting fall certain MSS. intrusted to their custody, and which I now proceed to make public. In a new edition of the “Curiosities of Literature” they would deserve a distinguished place.

MINUTES OF THE TOTTENHAM FRIENDS’ CONVERSAZIONE;

ESTABLISHED with a view to sober, Intellectual, and Literary unbendings. Now first held, namely, on the fourteenth day of the eleventh month, one thousand eight hundred thirty and four. Brother Mumford, the Father of the present humble Pen, in the chair.

A most powerful and worthy setting forth, both in regard of numbers and our proceedings. Firstly, a word in season from Friend Oliver. Secondly, a draft of the rules. Thirdly, an opening poem; meditation thereon until the tenth hour, when our sitting was completed. Many congratulations between the brethren on the order, quiet, and decency thereof; myself as its humble founder, very joyously elevated—even unto the shedding of tears.

17. Some awkwardness on this night, arising out of the presentation of nine several Negroes’ Complaints to be read forth. Precedence yielded unto Sister Skeldrum’s complaint, in respect of her being so ancient, namely three-score and ten. After which, Sister Panyer’s was gone through, detaining us nearhand until our hour of dissolution. Friend Black in the chair.

[Pg 338]

21. The Negro Complaints resumed, whereof three more were gotten over, Sister Fagg kindly taking turn about with me in the deliverance thereof. Friend Thorne in the chair.

24. A spare meeting. The Negro Complaints brought to an end, save one; Sister Rumble consenting, on much persuasion, to reserve the Sorrows of Sambo for the Abolition Anniversary. Friend Woolley in the chair.

28. Friend Greathead read forth an original paper on the Manners of the Beavers. Much meditation thereon. Friend Stillfox in the chair.

“BEAR ABOUT THE MOCKERY OF WOE.”

1-12. Friend Seagrave in the chair. Sister Meeking read forth her Essay on Silence, but in so humble a tone, that little thereof was taken inward at our ears. No debate thereon. Dorcas Fysche, a visitor, craved to know whether Friends, not being members, were permitted to speak on the subject, and was replied to in the affirmative. Whereupon she held her peace.

5. Sister Knight read forth a self-composed addressing of herself unto Sleep. To which no objection was made by any present. Friend Knapp in the chair.

8. On this night I plucked up courage, and essayed to read forth mine own Stanzas on Universal Love; but my voice failing[Pg 339] me in the midst, it was completely finished for me by Friend Thicknesse, who did perversely continue to pronounce Jews instead of Dews, whereof came absurdity. Above all in the line which singeth,—“Descend ye Dews on this my head.” And again,—“Ye painted Flies that suck the Dews.”

12. No other member being prepared with originality, Sister Rumble read forth her Sorrows of Sambo. Much silent comment thereon. Brother Kersey in the chair, who shamefully suffered himself to be surprised with sleep.

15. No lecturing, and, by course, no debate; only meditation. A call made to order against Friend Dilly, who was in the chair, for untimeliness in asking the price of Anglo-Mexicans at a quarter before ten.

19. Sister Fetterlock being a visitor in expectancy, every one confined themselves unto Newgate. Several of the brethren declared their convictions. Friend Roper in the chair.

22. No lecturing. Sister Rumble distributed Sambo’s Sorrows amongst us, one unto each; the which she had caused to be imprinted at her own risk and cost. Friend Boulter was the chair.

26. No lecturing. It pleased our worthy Brother Upham, at his House of Welcome, to spread before us the creature comforts most abundantly, with a great out-pouring of the foreign luxury, which is called Champagne; the which was greatly discussed; and Brother Upham thereafter rebuked for the same, for that it was not of the kind which is still.

29. Friend Stock read forth a narrative of his own Life and Personal Adventures, the which held us for half an hour. Some debate touching the imprinting of the same, at the cost of the Society, in the shape of a Tract; which was agreed to, but put off at the instance of Friend Stock himself, in order to give him time to live into the shape of a pamphlet. Friend Smallbones went through the chair.

[Pg 340]

2-1-35. No assembly, by reason of the outrageous wind and hail, excepting Sister Rumble, with a new original poem, called “The Moral Gipsy.” The which she did read forth from the chair to my humble self and family, and our serving-man, Simon Dunny.

HOPE DEFERRED.

5. Friend Broadbent read forth, in part, an Essay on Innocent Jocularity; the which, in sundry passages, provoked dissentients, as tending to a defence of levity. A stiff debate thereon, in which all the brethren were agreeable to censure. Great merriment at Friend Sexton in his rebuking, saying, “Christian gravy,” instead of gravity, by a slip of the tongue.

9. The remains of Innocent Jocularity brought on again in a decidedly grave way, and nothing savouring of offensive. Followed with silence.

[Pg 341]

12. There were not sufficient friends to make a sitting, and no chair.

“IT CAN’T BE HELPED.”

16. At Sister Rumble’s by course of rotation. No other member present, save mine own self, as by duty bound. A deplorable falling away from the cause. Whereof more hereafter.

******

The Record here breaks off. The society probably did not proceed farther, but died on the spot, of a complication of Innocent Jocularity and Sister Rumble, and was buried tacitly, with the fair Ruth Mumford for its chief mourner. The other papers are in verse, and a reading of them will certainly persuade the reviewers that they were premature in applying the designation of “Quaker Poetry” to foregone lays and lyrics. The first is a genuine brown study after nature; the second a hint how Peace ought not to be proclaimed.

[Pg 342]

SONNET.
BY R. M.

HOW sweet thus clad, in Autumn’s mellow Tone,

With serious Eye, the russet Scene to view!

No Verdure decks the Forest, save alone

The sad green Holly, and the olive Yew.

The Skies, no longer of a garish Blue,

Subdued to Dove-like Tints, and soft as Wool,

Reflected show their slaty Shades anew

In the drab Waters of the clayey Pool.

Meanwhile yon Cottage Maiden wends to School,

In Garb of Chocolate so neatly drest,

And Bonnet puce, fit object for the Tool,

And chasten’d Pigments, of our Brother West;

Yea, all is silent, sober, calm, and cool,

Save gaudy Robin with his crimson Breast.

LINES
ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE.
BY DORCAS DOVE.

A GENERAL PEACE.

I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveller than the approach to Bedfordshire. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem like blankets, the lakes and ponds are clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of dreams to come. His travelling-cap transforms to a night-cap, the coach lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard’s horn plays “Lullaby.” Every flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble up stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread[Pg 345] “all before him where to choose his place of rest.”

It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog-day’s journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room, yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though it had been “a pint of nappy,” surrendered my boots, clutched a candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.

Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep: and blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster: “Great Nature’s second course” was spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace!

It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o’clock the next morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.

How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast as a Cathedral,—as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber: nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster—or rather I must have slept “like winkin,” for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a voice cried[Pg 346] “Sleep no more!”

It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, whilst through the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my chamber.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, your honour, I humbly ax pardon—but somehow I’ve oversleeped myself, and the coach be gone by!”

“The devil it is!—then I have lost my place!”

“No, not exactly, your honour. She stops a bit at the Dragon, t’other end o’ the town; and if your honour wouldn’t object to a bit of a run—”

“That’s enough—come in. Put down the light—and take up that bag—my coat over your arm—and waistcoat with it—and that cravat.”

Boots acted according to orders. I jumped out of bed—pocketed my nightcap—screwed on my stockings—plunged into my trowsers—rammed my feet into wrong right and left boots—tumbled down the back stairs—burst through a door, and found myself in the fresh air of the stable-yard, holding a lantern, which, in sheer haste, or spleen, I pitched into the horsepond. Then began the race, during which I completed my toilet, running and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as often as I could spare breath for one.

“And you call this waking me up—for the coach. My waistcoat!—Why I could wake myself—too late—without being called. Now my cravat—and be hanged to you!—Confound that stone!—and give me my coat. A nice road—for a run!—I suppose you keep it—on purpose. How many gentlemen—may you do a week?—I’ll tell you what. If I—run—a foot—further—”

I paused for wind; while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We had turned a corner into a small square; and on the opposite side, certainly stood an inn with the sign of the Dragon, but without any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me aghast, and surveying the house from the top[Pg 347] to the bottom; not a wreath of smoke came from a chimney; the curtains were closed over every window, and the door was closed and shuttered. I could hardly contain my indignation when I looked at the infernal somnolent visage of the fellow, hardly yet broad awake—he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out.

“Yes, you may well look—you have overslept yourself with a vengeance. The coach must have passed an hour ago—and they have all gone to bed again!”

“No, there be no coach, sure enough,” soliloquised Boots, slowly raising his eyes from the road, where he had been searching for the track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a deprecating expression on my face. “No, there’s no coach—I ax a thousand pardons, your honour—but you see, Sir, what with waiting on her, and talking on her, and expecting on her, and giving notice on her, every night of my life, your honour—why I sometimes dreams on her—and that’s the case as is now!”

“YOU’VE WAKED ME TOO SOON,
I MUST SLUMBER AGAIN.”

[Pg 348]

A STUFFED BIRD.

THE LAMENT OF TOBY,
THE LEARNED PIG.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”—POPE.

THE LEARNED PIG GROWN OUT OF KNOWLEDGE.

OUT AT ELBOWS.

SON AND HAIR.

THE FAMILY LIBRARY.

SON AND SHADE.

THE great Doctor Johnson—himself a sufferer—has pathetically described, in an essay on the miseries of an infirm constitution, the melancholy case of an Invalid, with a willing mind in a weak body. “The time of such a man,” he says, “is spent in forming schemes which a change of wind prevents him from executing; his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow; but in the night the skies are overcast; the temper of the air is changed; he wakes in languor, impatience, and distraction; and has no longer any wish but for ease, nor any attention but for misery.” In short the Rambler describes the whole race of Valetudinarians as a sort of great Bitumen Company, paving a certain nameless place, as some of the Asphalticals have paved Oxford Street, with not very durable good intentions. In a word, your Invalid promises like a Hogamy, and performs like a Pigamy.

To a hale hearty man, a perfect picture of health in an oaken frame, such abortions seem sufficiently unaccountable. A great hulking fellow, revelling as De Quincey used emphatically to say, “in rude BOVINE health,”—a voracious human animal, camel-stomached and iron-built, who could all but devour and digest himself like a Kilkenny cat,—can neither sympathise with nor understand those frequent failures and down-breakings which happen to beings not so fortunately gifted with indelicate constitutions. Such a half-horse half-alligator monster cannot judge, like a Puny Judge, of a case of feebleness. The broad-[Pg 359]chested cannot allow for the narrow-breasted; the robust for the no-bust. Nevertheless, even the stalwart may sometimes fall egregiously short of their own designs—as witness a case in point.

Amongst my fellow passengers, on a late sea-voyage, there was one who attracted my especial attention. A glance at his face, another at his figure, a third at his costume, and a fourth at his paraphernalia, sufficed to detect his country: by his light hair, nubbly features, heavy frame, odd-coloured dressing-gown, and the national meerschaum and gaudy tobacco-bag, he was undeniably a German. But, besides the everlasting pipe, he was provided with a sketching apparatus, an ample note book, a gun, and a telescope; the whole being placed ready for immediate use. He had predetermined, no doubt, to record his German sentiments on first making acquaintance with the German Ocean; to sketch the picturesque craft he might encounter on its surface; to shoot his first sea-gull; and to catch a first glimpse of the shores of Albion, beyond the reach of the naked eye. But alas! all these intentions fell—if one may correctly say so with only sky and water—to the ground. He ate nothing—drank nothing—smoked nothing—drew nothing—wrote nothing—shot nothing—spied nothing—nay, he merely stared, but replied nothing to my friendly inquiry (I am ill at the German tongue and its pronunciation) “Wie befinden sea sick?”

Now, my own case, gentle reader, has been precisely akin to that of our unfortunate Cousin German. Like him I have promised much, projected still more, and done little. Like him, too, I have been a sick man, though not at sea, but on shore—and in excuse of all that has been left undone, or delayed, with other Performers, when they do not perform, I must proffer the old theatrical plea of indisposition. As the Rambler describes, I have erected schemes which have been blown down by an ill wind; I have formed plans, and been weather-beaten, like[Pg 360] another Murphy, by a change in the weather. For instance, the Comic Annual for 1839 ought properly to have been published some forty days earlier; but was obliged, as it were, to perform quarantine, for want of a clean Bill of Health. Thus, too, the patron of the present Work who has taken the trouble to peruse certain chapters under the title of Literary Reminiscences, will doubtless have compared the tone of them with an Apology in Number Six, wherein, declining any attempt at an Auto-biography, a promise was made of giving such anecdotes as a bad memory and a bad hearing might have retained of my literary friends and acquaintance. Hitherto, however, the fragments in question have only presented desultory glimpses of a goose quill still in its green-gosling-hood, instead of any recollections of “celebrated pens.” The truth is that my malady forced me to temporise:—wherefore the kind reader will be pleased to consider the aforesaid chapters but as so many “false starts,” and that Memory has only now got away, to make play as well as she can.

Whilst I am thus closeted in the Confessional, it may be as well, as the Pelican said, to make a clean breast of it, and at once plead guilty to all those counts—and some from long-standing have become very Old Bailey counts—that haunt my conscience. The most numerous of these crimes relate to letters that would not, could not, or at least did not answer. Others refer to the receipt of books, and as an example of their heinousness it misgives me that I was favoured with a little volume by W. and M. Howitt, without ever telling them how-it pleased me. A few offences, concern engagements which it was impossible to fulfil, although doubly bound by principle and interest. Seriously I have perforce been guilty of many, many, and still many sins of omission: but Hope, reviving with my strength, promises, granting me life, to redeem all such pledges. In the mean time, in extenuation, I can only plead particularly that[Pg 361] deprecation which is offered up, in behalf of all Christian defaulters every Sunday,—“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,—And there is no HEALTH in us.”

It is pleasant after a match at Chess, particularly if we have won, to try back, and reconsider those important moves which have had a decisive influence on the result. It is still more interesting, in the game of Life, to recall the critical positions which have occurred during its progress, and review the false or judicious steps that have led to our subsequent good or ill fortune. There is, however, this difference, that chess is a matter of pure skill and calculation, whereas, the chequered board of human life is subject to the caprice of Chance—the event being sometimes determined by combinations which never entered into the mind of the player[4]. To such an accident it is perhaps attributable that the hand now tracing these reminiscences is holding a pen instead of an etching-point; jotting down these prose pleasures of memory, in lieu of furnishing articles “plated-on-steel,” for the pictorial periodicals.

It will be remembered that my mental constitution, however weak my physical one, was proof against that type-us fever which parches most scribblers till they are set up, done up, and may-be, cut-up, in print and boards. Perhaps I had read, and trembled at the melancholy annals of those unfortunates who, rashly undertaking to write for bread, had poisoned themselves, like Chatterton, for want of it, or choked themselves, like Otway, on obtaining it. Possibly, having learned to think humbly of myself—there is nothing like early sickness and sorrow for[Pg 362] “taking the conceit” out of one—my vanity did not presume to think, with certain juvenile Tracticians, that I “had a call” to hold forth in print for the edification of mankind. Perchance, the very deep reverence my reading had led me to entertain for our Bards and Sages, deterred me from thrusting myself into the fellowship of Beings that seemed only a little lower than the angels. However, in spite of that very common excuse for publication, “the advice of a friend,” who seriously recommended the submitting of my MSS. to a literary authority, with a view to his imprimatur, my slight acquaintance with the press was pushed no farther. On the contrary, I had selected a branch of the Fine Arts for my serious pursuit. Prudence, the daughter of Wisdom, whispering perhaps, that the engraver, Pye, had a better chance of a beefsteak inside, than Pye the Laureate; not that the verse-spinning was quite given up. Though working in aqua fortis, I still played with Castaly, now writing—all monkeys are imitators, and all young authors are monkeys—now writing a Bandit, to match the Corsair, and anon, hatching a Lalla Crow, by way of companion to Lalla Rookh. Moreover, about this time, I became a member of a private select Literary Society (alluded to at page 97 of the present work) that “waited on Ladies and Gentlemen at their own houses.” Our Minerva, allegorically speaking, was a motley personage, in blue stockings, a flounced gown, Quaker cap, and kerchief, French flowers, and a man’s hat. She held a fan in one hand, and a blowpipe in the other. Her votaries were of both sexes, old and young, married and single, assenters, dissenters, High Church, Low Church, No Church; Doctors in Physics, and Apothecaries in Metaphysics; dabblers in Logic, Chemistry, Casuistry, Sophistry, Natural and unnatural History, Phrenology, Geology, Conchology, Demonology; in short, all kinds of Colledgy-Knowledgy-Ology, including “Cakeology,” and tea and coffee. Like other Societies, we had our President—a sort of Speaker who never[Pg 363] spoke; at least within my experience he never unbosomed himself of anything but a portentous shirt frill. According to the usual order of the entertainment, there was—first, Tea and Small Talk; secondly, an original Essay, which should have been followed, thirdly, by a Discussion, or Great Talk; but nine times in ten, it chanced, or rather mumchanced, that, between those who did not know what to think, and others, who did not know how to deliver what they thought, there ensued a dead silence, so “very dead indeed,” as Apollo Belvi says, that it seemed buried into the bargain. To make this awkward pause more awkward, some misgiving voice, between a whisper and a croak, would stammer out some allusion to a Quaker’s Meeting, answered from right to left by a running titter, the speaker having innocently, or perhaps wilfully forgotten, that one or two friends in drab coats, and as many in slate-coloured gowns, were sitting, thumb-twiddling, in the circle. Not that the Friends contented themselves with playing dumby at our discussions. They often spoke, and very characteristically, to the matter in hand. For instance, their favourite doctrine of non-resistance was once pushed—if Quakers ever push—a little “beyond beyond.” By way of clencher, one fair, meek, sleek Quakeress, in dove colour, gravely told a melodramatical story of a conscientious Friend, who rather than lift even his little finger against a Foe, passively, yea, lamblike, suffered himself to be butchered in bed by an assassin, and died consistently, as he thought, with Fox principles, very like a Goose. As regards my own share in the Essays and Arguments, it misgives me that they no more satisfied our decidedly serious members, than they now propitiate Mr. Rae Wilson. At least, one Society night, in escorting a female Fellow towards her home, she suddenly stopped me, taking advantage perhaps of the awful locality, and its associations, just in front of our chief criminal prison, and looking earnestly in my face, by the light of a Newgate[Pg 364] lamp, inquired somewhat abruptly, “Mr. Hood! are you not an Infidel[5]?”

In the mean time, whilst thus playing at Literature, an event was ripening which was to introduce me to Authorship in earnest, and make the Muse, with whom I had only flirted, my companion for life. It had often occurred to me that a striking, romantical, necromantical, metaphysical, melodramatical, Germanish story, might be composed, the interest of which should turn on the mysterious influence of the fate of A over the destiny of B, the said parties having no more natural or apparent connexion with each other than Tenterden Steeple and the Goodwin Sands. An instance of this occult contingency occurred in my own case; for I did not even know by sight the unfortunate gentleman on whose untimely exit depended my entrance on the literary stage. In the beginning of the year 1821, a memorable duel, originating in a pen-and-ink quarrel, took place at Chalk Farm, and terminated in the death of Mr. John Scott, the able Editor of the London Magazine. The melancholy result excited great interest, in which I fully participated, little dreaming that his catastrophe involved any consequences of importance to myself. But on the loss of its conductor, the Periodical passed into other hands. The new Proprietors were my friends; they sent for me, and after some preliminaries, I was duly installed as a sort of sub-Editor of the London Magazine.

It would be affectation to say, that engraving was resigned with regret. There is always something mechanical about the art—moreover it is as unwholesome as wearisome to sit copper-fastened to a board, with a cantle scooped out to accommodate your stomach, if you have one, painfully ruling, ruling, and still ruling lines straight or crooked, by the long hundred to the[Pg 365] square inch, at the doubly hazardous risk which Wordsworth so deprecates, of “growing double.” So farewell Woollett! Strange! Bartolozzi! I have said, my vanity did not rashly plunge me into authorship; but no sooner was there a legitimate opening than I jumped at it, à la Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes.

To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at last found its natural bias[6]. Not content with taking articles, like candidates for holy orders—with rejecting articles like the Belgians—I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles, which were all inserted by the editor, of course, with the concurrence of his deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction of the press, were to me labours of love. I received a revise from Mr. Baldwin’s Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave him all his slips, and really thought that printers’ devils were not so black as they are painted. But my top-gallant glory was in “our Contributors!” How I used to look forward to Elia! and backward for Hazlitt, and all round for Edward Herbert, and how I used to look up to Allan Cunningham! for at that time the London had a goodly list of writers—a rare company. It is now defunct, and perhaps no ex-periodical might so appropriately be apostrophized with the Irish funereal question—“Arrah, honey, why did you die?” Had you not an editor, and elegant prose writers, and beautiful poets, and broths of boys for criticism and classics, and wits and humorists.—Elia, Cary, Procter, Cunningham, Bowring, Barton, Hazlitt, Elton, Hartley Coleridge, Talfourd, Soane, Horace Smith, Reynolds, Poole, Clare, and Thomas Benyon, with a[Pg 366] power besides. Hadn’t you Lions’ Heads with Traditional Tales? Hadn’t you an Opium Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant, and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man? Had not you a regular Drama, and a Musical Report, and a Report of Agriculture, and an Obituary, and a Price Current, and a current price, of only half-a-crown? Arrah, why did you die? Why, somehow the contributors fell away—the concern went into other hands—worst of all, a new editor tried to put the Belles Lettres in Utilitarian envelopes; whereupon, the circulation of the Miscellany, like that of poor Le Fevre, got slower, slower, slower,—and slower still—and then stopped for ever! It was a sorry scattering of those old Londoners! Some went out of the country: one (Clare) went into it. Lamb retreated to Colebrooke. Mr. Cary presented himself to the British Museum. Reynolds and Barry took to engrossing when they should pen a stanza, and Thomas Benyon gave up literature.

It is with mingled feelings of pride, pleasure, and pain, that I revert to those old times, when the writers I had long known and admired in spirit were present to me in the flesh—when I had the delight of listening to their wit and wisdom from their own lips, of gazing on their faces, and grasping their right hands. Familiar figures rise before me, familiar voices ring in my ears, and alas! amongst them are shapes that I must never see, sounds that I can never hear, again. Before my departure from England, I was one of the few who saw the grave close over the remains of one whom to know as a friend was to love as a relation. Never did a better soul go to a better world! Never perhaps (giving the lie direct to the common imputation of envy, malice, and hatred, amongst the brotherhood), never did an author descend—to quote his favourite Sir T. Browne—into “the land of the mole and the pismire” so hung with golden opinions, and honoured and regretted with such sincere eulogies and elegies, by his contemporaries. To HIM, the first of these,[Pg 367] my reminiscences, is eminently due, for I lost in him not only a dear and kind friend, but an invaluable critic; one whom, were such literary adoptions in modern use, I might well name, as Cotton called Walton, my “father.” To borrow the earnest language of old Jean Bertaut, as Englished by Mr. Cary—

I was sitting one morning beside our Editor, busily correcting proofs, when a visitor was announced, whose name, grumbled by a low ventriloquial voice, like Tom Pipes calling from the hold through the hatchway, did not resound distinctly on my tympanum. However, the door opened, and in came a stranger,—a figure remarkable at a glance, with a fine head, on a small spare body, supported by two almost immaterial legs. He was clothed in sables, of a bygone fashion, but there was something wanting, or something present about him, that certified he was neither a divine, nor a physician, nor a schoolmaster: from a certain neatness and sobriety in his dress, coupled with his sedate bearing, he might have been taken, but that such a costume would be anomalous, for a Quaker in black. He looked still more like (what he really was) a literary Modern Antique, a New-Old Author, a living Anachronism, contemporary at once with Burton the Elder, and Colman the Younger. Meanwhile he advanced with rather a peculiar gait, his walk was plantigrade, and with a cheerful “How d’ye,” and one of the blandest, sweetest smiles that ever brightened a manly countenance, held out two fingers to the Editor. The two gen[Pg 368]tlemen in black soon fell into discourse; and whilst they conferred, the Lavater principle within me, set to work upon the interesting specimen thus presented to its speculations. It was a striking intellectual face, full of wiry lines, physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great character. There was much earnestness about the brows, and a deal of speculation in the eyes, which were brown and bright, and “quick in turning;” the nose, a decided one, though of no established order; and there was a handsome smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common face—none of those willow-pattern ones, which Nature turns out by thousands at her potteries;—but more like a chance specimen of the Chinese ware, one to the set—unique, antique, quaint. No one who had once seen it, could pretend not to know it again. It was no face to lend its countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of Errors. You might have sworn to it piecemeal,—a separate affidavit for every feature. In short his face was as original as his figure; his figure as his character; his character as his writings; his writings the most original of the age. After the literary business had been settled, the Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding “we shall have a hare—”

“And—and—and—and many Friends!”

The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the illusion, were alike characteristic of the individual, whom his familiars will perchance have recognised already as the delightful Essayist, the capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and large-hearted Charles Lamb! He was shy like myself with strangers, so that, despite my yearnings, our first meeting scarcely amounted to an introduction. We were both at dinner, amongst the hare’s many friends, but our acquaintance got no farther, in spite of a desperate attempt on my part to attract his notice. His complaint of the Decay of Beggars[Pg 369] presented another chance: I wrote on coarse paper, and in ragged English, a letter of thanks to him as if from one of his mendicant clients, but it produced no effect. I had given up all hope, when one night, sitting sick and sad, in my bed-room, racked with the rheumatism, the door was suddenly opened, the well-known quaint figure in black walked in without any formality, and with a cheerful “Well, boy, how are you?” and the bland sweet smile, extended the two fingers. They were eagerly clutched of course, and from that hour we were firm friends.

Thus characteristically commenced my intimacy with C. Lamb. He had recently become my neighbour, and in a few days called again, to ask me to tea, “to meet Wordsworth.” In spite of any idle jests to the contrary, the name had a spell in it that drew me to Colebrooke Cottage[7] with more alacrity[8] than consisted with prudence, stiff joints and a North wind. But I was willing to run, at least hobble, some risk, to be of a party in a parlour with the Author of Laodamia and Hartleap Well. As for his Betty Foy-bles, he is not the first man by many, who has met with a simple fracture through riding his theory-hack so far and so fast, that it broke down with him. If he has now and then put on a nightcap, so have his own next-door mountains. If he has babbled, sometimes, like an infant of two years[Pg 370] old, he has also thought, and felt, and spoken, the beautiful fancies and tender affections, and artless language, of the children who can say “We are seven.” Along with food for babes, he has furnished strong meat for men. So I put on my great coat and in a few minutes found myself, for the first time at a door, that opened to me as frankly as its master’s heart; for, without any preliminaries of hall, passage, or parlour, one single step across the threshold brought me into the sitting-room, and in sight of the domestic hearth. The room looked brown with “old bokes,” and beside the fire sate Wordsworth, and his sister, the hospitable Elia, and the excellent Bridget. As for the bard of Rydal, his outward man did not, perhaps, disappoint one; but the palaver, as the Indians say, fell short of my anticipations. Perhaps my memory is in fault; ’twas many years ago, and, unlike the biographer of Johnson, I have never made Bozziness my business. However, excepting a discussion on the value of the promissory notes issued by our younger poets, wherein Wordsworth named Shelley, and Lamb took John Keats for choice, there was nothing of literary interest brought upon the carpet. But a book man cannot always be bookish. A poet, even a Rydal one, must be glad at times to descend from Saddleback, and feel his legs. He cannot, like the Girl in the Fairy Tale, be always talking diamonds and pearls. It is a “Vulgar Errour” to suppose that an author must be always authoring, even with his feet on the fender. Nevertheless, it is not an uncommon impression, that a writer sonnetises his wife, sings odes to his children, talks essays and epigrams to his friends, and reviews his servants. It was in something of this spirit that an official gentleman to whom I mentioned the pleasant literary meetings at Lamb’s, associated them instantly with his parochial mutual instruction evening schools, and remarked,[Pg 371] “Yes, yes, all very proper and praiseworthy—of course, you go there to improve your minds.”

And very pleasant and improving, though not of set purpose, to both mind and heart, were those extempore assemblies at Colebrooke Cottage. It was wholesome for the soul but to breathe its atmosphere. It was a House of Call for All Denominations. Sides were lost in that circle, Men of all parties postponed their partisanship, and met as on a neutral ground. There were but two persons, whom L. avowedly did not wish to encounter beneath his roof, and those two, merely on account of private and family differences. For the rest, they left all their hostilities at the door, with their sticks. This forbearance was due to the truly tolerant spirit of the Host, which influenced all within its sphere. Lamb, whilst he willingly lent a crutch to halting Humility, took delight in tripping up the stilts of Pretension. Anybody might trot out his Hobby; but he allowed nobody to ride the High Horse. If it was a High German, one like those ridden by the Devil and Doctor Faustus, he would chaunt

till the rider moderated his gallop. He hated anything like Cock-of-the-Walk-ism; and set his face and his wit against all Ultraism, Transcendentalism, Sentimentalism, Conventional Mannerism, and above all, Separatism. In opposition to the Exclusives, he was emphatically an Inclusive.

As he once owned to me, he was fond of antagonising. Indeed in the sketch of himself, prefacing the Last Essays of Elia—a sketch for its truth to have delighted Mason the Self-Knowledge man—he says, “with the Religionist I pass for a Free-thinker, while the other faction set me down for a Bigot.” In fact, no politician ever laboured more to preserve the Balance of Power in Europe, than he did to correct any temporary preponderances. He was always trimming in the nautical, not in the political, sense. Thus in his “magnanimous letter,” as Hazlitt called it, to High Church Southey, he professed himself[Pg 372] a Unitarian[9]. With a Catholic he would probably have called himself a Jew; as amongst Quakers, by way of a set-off against their own formality, he would indulge in a little extra levity. I well remember his chuckling at having spirited on his correspondent Bernard Barton, to commit some little enormities, such as addressing him as C. Lamb, Esquire.

My visits at Lamb’s were shortly interrupted by a sojourn to unrheumatize myself at Hastings; but in default of other intercourse I received a letter in a well-known hand, quaint as the sentences it conveyed.

The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the “Lions;” but on a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we verified the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his man, howbeit we tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery or cakery in its window. The whole was a batch of fancy bread; one of those fictions which the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends.

The evening meetings at Colebrooke Cottage—where somebody, who was somebody, or a literary friend, was sure to drop in—were the more grateful to me, as the London Magazine was[Pg 374] now in a rapid decline; some of its crack contributors had left it off, and the gatherings of the clan to eat, drink, and be merry, were few and far between. There was indeed one Venison Feast whereat, I have heard, the scent lay more than breast high, and the sport was of as rich a quality; but it was my chance to be absent from the pack. At former dinners, however, I had been a guest, and a sketch of one of them may serve to introduce some of the principal characters of our “London in the Olden Time.”

On the right hand then of the Editor sits Elia, of the pleasant smile, and the quick eyes—Procter said of them that “they looked as if they could pick up pins and needles”—and a wit as quick as his eyes, and sure, as Hazlitt described, to stammer out the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. Next to him, shining verdantly out from the grave-coloured suits of the literati, like a patch of turnips amidst stubble and fallow, behold our Jack i’ the Green—John Clare! In his bright, grass-coloured coat, and yellow waistcoat (there are greenish stalks too, under the table), he looks a very Cowslip, and blooms amongst us as Goldsmith must have done in his peach-blossom. No wonder the door-keeper of the Soho Bazaar, seeing that very countrified suit, linked arm-in-arm with the Editorial sables, made a boggle at admitting them into his repository, having seen, perchance, such a made-up Peasant “playing at playing” at thimble-rig about the Square. No wonder the gentleman’s gentleman, in the drab-coat and sealing-wax smalls, at W—— ’s, was for cutting off our Green Man, who was modestly the last in ascending the stairs as an interloper, though he made amends afterwards by waiting almost exclusively on the Peasant, perfectly convinced that he was some eccentric Notable of the Corinthian order, disguised in Rustic. Little wonder either, that in wending homewards on the same occasion through the Strand, the Peasant and Elia, Sylvanus et Urban, linked comfortably together; there arose the frequent[Pg 375] cry of “Look at Tom and Jerry—there goes Tom and Jerry!” for truly, Clare in his square-cut green coat, and Lamb in his black, were not a little suggestive of Hawthorn and Logic, in the plates to “Life in London.”

But to return to the table. Elia—much more of House Lamb than of Grass Lamb—avowedly caring little or nothing for Pastoral; cottons, nevertheless, very kindly to the Northamptonshire Poet, and still more to his ale, pledging him again and again as “Clarissimus,” and “Princely Clare,” and sometimes so lustily, as to make the latter cast an anxious glance into his tankard. By his bright happy look, the Helpstone Visitor is inwardly contrasting the unlettered country company of Clod, and Hodge and Podge, with the delights of “London” society Elia, and Barry, and Herbert, and Mr. Table Talk, cum multis—aliis—i.e. a multiplicity of all. But besides the tankard, the two “drouthie neebors” discuss Poetry in general[10], and Montgomery’s “Common Lot” in particular, Lamb insisting on the beauty of the tangental sharp turn at “O! she was fair!” thinking, mayhap, of his own Alice W——, and Clare swearing “Dal” (a clarified d—n) “Dal! if it isn’t like a Dead Man preaching out of his coffin!” Anon, the Humorist begins to banter the Peasant on certain “Clare-obscurities” in his own verses, originating in a contempt for the rules of Priscian, whereupon the accused, thinking with Burns,

vehemently denounces all Philology as nothing but a sort of man-trap for authors, and heartily dals Lindley Murray for[Pg 376] “inventing it!”

It must have been at such a time, that Hilton conceived his clever portrait of C——, when he was “C in alt.” He was hardy, rough, and clumsy enough to look truly rustic—like an Ingram’s rustic chair. There was a slightness about his frame, with a delicacy of features and complexion, that associated him more with the Garden than with the Field, and made him look the Peasant of a Ferme Ornée. In this respect he was as much beneath the genuine stalwart bronzed Plough-Poet, Burns, as above the Farmer’s Boy, whom I remember to have seen in my childhood, when he lived in a miniature house, near the Shepherd and Shepherdess, now the Eagle tavern, in the City Road, and manufactured Æolian harps, and kept ducks. The Suffolk Giles had very little of the agricultural in his appearance; he looked infinitely more like a handicraftsman, town-made.

Poor Clare!—It would greatly please me to hear that he was happy and well, and thriving; but the transplanting of Peasants and Farmers’ Boys from the natural into an artificial soil, does not always conduce to their happiness, or health, or ultimate well doing. I trust the true Friends, who, with a natural hankering after poetry, because it is forbidden them, have ventured to pluck and eat of the pastoral sorts, as most dallying with the innocence of nature,—and who on that account patronised Capel Lofft’s protégé—I do trust and hope they took off whole editions of the Northamptonshire Bard. There was much about Clare for a Quaker to like; he was tender-hearted, and averse to violence. How he recoiled once, bodily-taking his chair along with him,—from a young surgeon, or surgeon’s friend, who let drop, somewhat abruptly, that he was just come “from seeing a child skinned!”—Clare, from his look of horror, evidently thought that the poor infant, like Marsyas, had been flayed alive! He was both gentle and simple. I have heard that on his first visit to London, his publishers considerately sent their porter to meet him at the inn; but when Thomas[Pg 377] necessarily inquired of the gentleman in green, “Are you Mr. Clare?” the latter, willing to foil the traditionary tricks of London sharpers, replied to the suspicious query with “a positive negative.”[11]

The Brobdignagian next to Clare, overtopping him by the whole head and shoulders—a physical “Colossus of Literature,” the grenadier of our corps—is Allan, not Allan Ramsay, “no, nor Barbara Allan neither,” but Allan Cunningham,—“a credit,” quoth Sir Walter Scott (he might have said a long credit) “to Caledonia.” He is often called “honest Allan,” to distinguish him, perhaps, from one Allan-a-Dale, who was apt to mistake his neighbours’ goods for his own—sometimes, between ourselves, yelept the “C. of Solway,” in allusion to that favourite “Allan Water,” the Solway Sea. There is something of the true moody poetical weather observable in the barometer of his face, alternating from Variable to Showery, from Stormy to Set Fair. At times he looks gloomy and earnest and traditional—a little like a Covenanter—but he suddenly clears up and laughs a hearty laugh that lifts him an inch or two from his chair, for he rises at a joke when he sees one, like a trout at a fly, and finishes with a smart rubbing of his ample palms. He has store, too, of broad Scotch stories, and shrewd sayings; and he writes—no, he wrote rare old-new or new-old ballads. Why not now? Has his Pegasus, as he once related of his pony, run from under him? Has the Mermaid of Galloway left no little ones? Is Bonnie Lady Ann married, or May Morison dead? Thou vast formed for a poet, Allan, by nature, and by stature too, according to Pope—

And are there not Longman, or Tallboys, for thy Publishers? But alas! we are fallen on evil days for Bards and Barding, and[Pg 378] nine tailors do more for a man than the Nine Muses. The only Lay likely to answer now-a-days would be an Ode (with the proper testimonials) to the Literary Fund!

The Reverend personage on the Editor’s right, with the studious brow, deep-set eyes, and bald crown, is the mild and modest Cary—the same who turned Dante into Miltonic English blank verse. He is sending his plate towards the partridges, which he will relish and digest as though they were the Birds of Aristophanes. He has his eye, too, on the French made-dishes[12]. Pity, shame and pity, such a Translator found no better translation in the Church! Is it possible that, in some no-popery panic, it was thought by merely being Dragoman to Purgatory he had Romed from the true faith?

A very pleasant day we “Londoners” once spent at a Chiswick parsonage, formerly tenanted by Hogarth, along with the hospitable Cary, and, as Elia called them, his Caryatides![13] The last time my eyes rested on the Interpreter (of the House Beautiful as well as of the Inferno), he was on the Library steps of the British Museum. Ere this, I trust he hath reached the tiptop—nay, hath perhaps attained, being a Literary Worthy, even unto a Trusteeship, and had to buy, at Ellis’s, a few yards of the Blue Ribbon of Literature!

Procter,—alias Barry Cornwall, formerly of the Marcian Colonnade, now of some prosaical Inn of Court—the kindly Procter, one of the foremost to welcome me into the Brotherhood, with a too-flattering Dedication (another instance against the jealousy of authors), is my own left-hand file. But what he says shall be kept as strictly confidential; for he is whispering it into my Martineau ear. On my other side, when I turn that[Pg 379] way, I see a profile, a shadow of which ever confronts me on opening my writing-desk,—a sketch taken from memory, the day after seeing the original[14]. In opposition to the “extra man’s size” of Cunningham, the party in question looks almost boyish, partly from being in bulk somewhat beneath Monsieur Quetelet’s “Average Man,” but still more so from a peculiar delicacy of complexion and smallness of features, which look all the smaller from his wearing, in compliment, probably, to the Samsons of Teutonic Literature, his locks unshorn. Nevertheless whoever looks again,

There is speculation in the eyes, a curl of the lip, and a general character in the outline, that reminds one of some portraits of Voltaire. And a Philosopher he is every inch. He looks, thinks, writes, talks and walks, eats and drinks, and no doubt sleeps philosophically—i.e. deliberately. There is nothing abrupt about his motions,—he goes and comes calmly and quietly—like the phantom in Hamlet, he is here—he is there—he is gone! So it is with his discourse. He speaks slowly, clearly, and with very marked emphasis—the tide of talk flows like Denham’s river, “strong without rage, without overflowing, full.” When it was my frequent and agreeable duty to call on Mr. De Quincey (being an uncommon name to remember, the servant associated it, on the Memoria Technica principle, with a sore throat and always pronounced it Quinsy), and I have found him at home, quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of Literature, in a storm,—flooding all the floor, the table and the chairs,—billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging open,—on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour whilst the[Pg 380] Philosopher, standing, with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking than reading from a “handwriting on the wall.” Now and then he would diverge, for a Scotch mile or two, to the right or left, till I was tempted to inquire with Peregrine in John Bull (Colman’s not Hook’s), “Do you never deviate?”—but he always came safely back to the point where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence hunted his topic to the end. But look!—we are in the small hours, and a change comes o’er the spirit of that “old familiar face.” A faint hectic tint leaves the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by a growing shadow—signs of the waning influence of that Potent Drug whose stupendous Pleasures and enormous Pains have been so eloquently described by the English Opium Eater. Marry, I have one of his Confessions with his own name and mark to it:—an apology for a certain stain on his MS., the said stain being a large purplish ring,—“Within that circle none durst drink but he,”—in fact the impression, coloured, of “a tumbler of laudanum negus, warm, without sugar.”[15]

That smart active person opposite with a game-cock-looking head, and the hair combed smooth, fighter fashion, over his forehead—with one finger hooked round a glass of champagne, not that he requires it to inspirit him, for his wit bubbles up of itself—is our Edward Herbert, the Author of that true piece of Biography, the Life of Peter Corcoran. He is “good with both hands,” like that Nonpareil Randall, at a comic verse or a serious stanza—smart at a repartee—sharp at a retort, and not[Pg 381] averse to a bit of mischief. ’Twas he who gave the runaway ring at Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. Generally, his jests, set off by a happy manner, are only ticklesome, but now and then they are sharp-flavoured,—like the sharpness of the pine-apple. Would I could give a sample. Alas! What a pity it is that so many good things uttered by Poets, and Wits, and Humorists, at chance times—and they are always the best and brightest, like sparks struck out by Pegasus’ own hoof, in a curvet amongst the flints—should be daily and hourly lost to the world for want of a recorder! But in this Century of Inventions, when a self-acting drawing-paper has been discovered for copying visible objects, who knows but that a future Niepce, or Daguerre, or Herschel, or Fox Talbot, may find out some sort of Boswellish writing-paper to repeat whatever it hears!

There are other Contributors—poor Hazlitt for instance—whose shades rise up before me: but I never met with them at the Entertainments just described. Shall we ever meet anywhere again? Alas! some are dead; and the rest dispersed; and the days of Social Clubs are over and gone, when the Professors and Patrons of Literature assembled round the same steaming bowl, and Johnson, always best out of print, exclaimed, “Lads! who’s for Poonch!”

******

Amongst other notable men who came to Colebrooke Cottage, I had twice the good fortune of meeting with S. T. Coleridge. The first time he came from Highgate with Mrs. Gilman, to dine with “Charles and Mary.” What a contrast to Lamb was the full-bodied Poet, with his waving white hair, and his face round, ruddy, and unfurrowed as a holy Friar’s! Apropos to which face he gave us a humorous description of an unfinished portrait, that served him for a sort of barometer, to indicate the state of his popularity. So sure as his name made any temporary[Pg 382] stir, out came the canvas on the easel, and a request from the artist for another sitting: down sank the Original in the public notice, and back went the copy into a corner, till some fresh publication or accident again brought forward the Poet; and then forth came the picture for a few more touches. I sincerely hope it has been finished! What a benign, smiling face it was! What a comfortable, respectable figure! What a model, methought, as I watched and admired the “Old Man eloquent,” for a Christian bishop! But he was, perhaps, scarcely orthodox enough to be trusted with a mitre. At least, some of his voluntaries would have frightened a common everyday congregation from their propriety. Amongst other matters of discourse, he came to speak of the strange notions some literal-minded persons form of the joys of Heaven; joys they associated with mere temporal things, in which, for his own part, finding no delight in this world, he could find no bliss hereafter, without a change in his nature, tantamount to the loss of his personal identity. For instance, he said, there are persons who place the whole angelical beatitude in the possession of a pair of wings to flap about with, like “a sort of celestial poultry.” After dinner he got up, and began pacing to and fro, with his hands behind his back, talking and walking, as Lamb laughingly hinted, as if qualifying for an itinerant preacher; now fetching a simile from Loddiges’ garden, at Hackney; and then flying off for an illustration to the sugar-making in Jamaica. With his fine, flowing voice, it was glorious music, of the “never-ending, still-beginning” kind; and you did not wish it to end. It was rare flying, as in the Nassau Balloon; you knew not whither, nor did you care. Like his own bright-eyed Marinere, he had a spell in his voice that would not let you go. To attempt to describe my own feeling afterward, I had been carried, spiralling, up to heaven by a whirlwind intertwisted with sunbeams, giddy and dazzled, but not displeased,[Pg 383] and had then been rained down again with a shower of mundane stocks and stones that battered out of me all recollection of what I had heard, and what I had seen!

On the second occasion, the author of Christabel was accompanied by one of his sons. The Poet, talking and walking as usual, chanced to pursue some argument, which drew from the son, who had not been introduced to me, the remark, “Ah, that’s just like your crying up those foolish Odes and Addresses!” Coleridge was highly amused with this mal-àpropos, and, without explaining, looked slily round at me, with the sort of suppressed laugh one may suppose to belong to the Bey of Tittery. The truth was, he felt naturally partial to a book he had attributed in the first instance to the dearest of his friends.

It may be mentioned here, that instead of feeling “the infinitesimal of an unpleasance” at being Addressed in the Odes, the once celebrated Mr. Hunt presented to the Authors a bottle of his best “Permanent Ink,” and the eccentric Doctor Kitchiner sent an invitation to dinner.

From Colebrooke, Lamb removed to Enfield Chase,—a painful operation at all times, for as he feelingly misapplied Wordsworth, “the moving accident was not his trade.” As soon as he was settled, I called upon him, and found him in a bald-[Pg 385]looking yellowish house, with a bit of a garden, and a wasp’s nest convanient, as the Irish say, for one stung my pony as he stood at the door. Lamb laughed at the fun; but, as the clown says, the whirligig of time brought round its revenges. He was one day bantering my wife on her dread of wasps, when all at once he uttered a horrible shout,—a wounded specimen of the species had slily crawled up the leg of the table, and stung him in the thumb. I told him it was a refutation well put in, like Smollett’s timely snowball. “Yes,” said he, “and a stinging commentary on Macbeth—

There were no pastoral yearnings concerned in this Enfield removal. There is no doubt which of Captain Morris’s Town and Country Songs would have been most to Lamb’s taste. “The sweet shady side of Pall-Mall,” would have carried it hollow. In courtesy to a friend, he would select a green lane for a ramble, but left to himself, he took the turnpike road as often as otherwise. “Scott,” says Cunningham, “was a stout walker.” Lamb was a porter one. He calculated Distances, not by Long Measure, but by Ale and Beer Measure. “Now I have walked a pint.” Many a time I have accompanied him in these matches against Meux, not without sharing in the stake, and then, what cheerful and profitable talk! For instance, he once delivered to me orally the substance of the Essay on the Defect of Imagination in Modern Artists, subsequently printed in the Athenæum. But besides the criticism, there were snatches of old poems, golden lines and sentences culled from rare books, and anecdotes of men of note. Marry, it was like going a ramble with gentle Izaak Walton, minus the fishing.

To make these excursions more delightful to one of my temperament, Lamb never affected any spurious gravity. Neither did he ever act the Grand Senior. He did not exact that com[Pg 386]mon copy-book respect, which some asinine persons would fair command on account of the mere length of their years. As if, forsooth, what is bad in itself, could be the better for keeping; as if intellects already mothery, got anything but grandmothery by lapse of time! In this particular, he was opposed to Southey, or rather (for Southey has been opposed to himself) to his Poem on the Holly Tree.

There was nothing of Sir Oracle about Lamb. On the contrary, at sight of a solemn visage that “creamed and mantled like the standing pool,” he was the first to pitch a mischievous stone to disturb the duck-weed. “He was a boy-man,” as he truly said of Elia; “and his manners lagged behind his years.” He liked to herd with people younger than himself. Perhaps, in his fine generalizing way, he thought that, in relation to Eternity, we are all contemporaries. However, without reckoning birthdays, it was always “Hail fellow, well met;” and although he was my elder by a quarter of a century, he never made me feel, in our excursions, that I was “taking a walk with the schoolmaster.” I remember, in one of our strolls, being called to account, very pompously, by the proprietor of an Enfield Villa, who asserted that my dog Dash, who never hunted anything in his dog-days, had chased the sheep; whereupon, Elia taking the dog’s part, said very emphatically, “Hunt Lambs, Sir? Why he has never hunted me!” But he was always ready for fun, intellectual or practical—now helping to pelt D*****, a modern Dennis, with puns; and then to persuade his sister, God bless her! by a vox et preterea nihil, that she was as deaf as an adder. In the same spirit, being requested by a young Schoolmaster to take charge of his flock for a day, “during the unavoidable absence of the Principal,” he willingly[Pg 387] undertook the charge, but made no other use of his brief authority than to give the boys a whole holiday.

As Elia supplied the place of the Pedagogue, so once I was substitute for Lamb himself. A prose article in the Gem, was not from his hand, though it bore his name. He had promised a contribution, but being unwell, his sister suggested that I should write something for him, and the result was the “Widow” in imitation of his manner. It will be seen that the forgery was taken in good part.

How many of such pleasant reminiscences revive in my memory, whilst thinking of him, like secret writing brought out by the kindly warmth of the fire! But they must be deferred to leave me time and space for other attributes—for example, his charity, in its widest sense, the moderation in judgment which, as Miller says, is “the Silken String running through the Pearl Chain of all Virtues.” If he was intolerant of anything, it was of Intolerance. He would have been (if the foundation had existed, save in the fiction of Rabelais,) of the Utopian order of Thelemites, where each man under scriptural warrant did what seemed good in his own eyes. He hated evil speaking, carping, and petty scandal. On one occasion having slipped out an anecdote, to the discredit of a literary man, during a very confidential conversation, the next moment, with an expression of remorse, for having impaired even my opinion of the party, he bound me solemnly to bury the story in my own bosom. In[Pg 388] another case he characteristically rebuked the backbiting spirit of a censorious neighbour. Some Mrs. Candour telling him, in expectation of an ill-natured comment, that Miss ***, the teacher at the Ladies’ School, had married a publican, “Has she so?” said Lamb, “then I’ll have my beer there!”

As to his liberality in a pecuniary sense, he passed (says Lamb of Elia) with some people, through having a settled but moderate income, for a great miser. And in truth he knew the value of money, its power, its usefulness. One January night he told me with great glee that at the end of the late year he had been able to lay by—and thence proceeded to read me a serio-comic lecture on the text, of “Keep your hand out of your Pocket.” The truth is, Lamb, like Shakspeare in the universality of his sympathies, could feel, pro tempore, what belonged to the character of a Gripe-all. The reader will remember his capital Note in the “Dramatic Specimens,” on “the decline of Misers, in consequence of the Platonic nature of an affection for Money,” since Money was represented by “flimsies,” instead of substantial coin, the good old solid sonorous dollars and doubloons, and pieces of eight, that might be handled, and hugged, and rattled, and perhaps kissed. But to this passion for hoarding he one day attributed a new origin. “A Miser,” he said, “is sometimes a grand personification of Fear. He has a fine horror of Poverty. And he is not content to keep Want from the door, or at arm’s length,—but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance!” Such was his theory: now for his practice. Amongst his other guests, you occasionally saw an elderly lady, formal, fair, and flaxen-wigged, looking remarkably like an animated wax doll,—and she did visit some friends or relations, at a toyshop near St. Dunstan’s. When she spoke, it was as if by an artificial apparatus, through some defect in her palate, and she had a slight limp and a twist in her figure, occasioned—what would Hannah More have said!—by running[Pg 389] down Greenwich Hill! This antiquated personage had been Lamb’s Schoolmistress—and on this retrospective consideration, though she could hardly have taught him more than to read his native tongue—he allowed her in her decline, a yearly sum, equal to—what shall I say?—to the stipend which some persons of fortune deem sufficient for the active services of an all-accomplished gentlewoman in the education of their children. Say, thirty pounds per annum.

Such was Charles Lamb. To sum up his character, on his own principle of antagonism, he was, in his views of human nature, the opposite of Crabbe; in Criticism, of Gifford; in Poetry, of Lord Byron; in Prose, of the last new Novelist; in Philosophy, of Kant; and in Religion, of Sir Andrew Agnew. Of his wit I have endeavoured to give such samples as occurred to me; but the spirit of his sayings was too subtle and too much married to the circumstances of the time to survive the occasion. They had the brevity without the levity of wit—some of his puns contained the germs of whole essays. Moreover, like Falstaff, he seemed not only witty himself but the occasion of it by example in others. “There is M******” said he, “who goes about dropping his good things as an Ostrich lays her eggs, without caring what becomes of them.” It was once my good fortune to pick up one of Mr. M.’s foundlings, and it struck me as particularly in Lamb’s own style, containing at once a pun and a criticism. “What do you think,” asked somebody, “of the book called ‘A Day in Stowe Gardens?’” Answer: “A Day ill-bestowed.”

It is now some years ago, since I stood with other mourners in Edmonton Church Yard, beside a grave in which all that was mortal of Elia was deposited. It may be a dangerous confession to make, but I shed no tear; and scarcely did a sigh escape from my bosom. There were many sources of comfort. He had not died young. He had happily gone before that[Pg 390] noble sister, who not in selfishness, but the devotion of a unique affection, would have prayed to survive him but for a day, lest he should miss that tender care which had watched over him upwards from a little child. Finally he had left behind him his works, a rare legacy! and above all, however much of him had departed, there was still more of him that could not die—for as long as Humanity endures and man owns fellowship with man, the spirit of Charles Lamb will still be extant!

******

On the publication of the Odes and Addresses, presentation copies were sent at the suggestion of a friend, to Mr. Canning and Sir Walter Scott. The minister took no notice of the little volume; but the novelist did, in his usual kind manner. An eccentric friend in writing to me, once made a number of colons, semicolons, &c., at the bottom of the paper, adding

It will surprise no one, to observe that the author of Waverley had as little leisure for punctuation.

The first time I ever saw the Great Unknown, was at the private view of Martin’s Picture of “Nineveh,” when by a striking coincidence, one of our most celebrated women, and one of our[Pg 391] greatest men, Mrs. Siddons and Sir Walter Scott, walked simultaneously up opposite sides of the room, and met and shook hands in front of the painting. As Editor of the Gem, I had afterwards occasion to write to Sir Walter, from whom I received the following letter, which contains an allusion to some of his characteristic partialities:—

At last, during one of his visits to London, I had the honour of a personal interview with Sir Walter Scott at Mr. Lockhart’s in Sussex Place. The number of the house had escaped my memory; but seeing a fine dog down an area, I knocked without hesitation at the door. It happened however to be the wrong one. I afterwards mentioned the circumstance to Sir Walter. It was not a bad point, he said, for he was very fond of dogs; but he did not care to have his own animals with him,[Pg 392] about London, “for fear he should be taken for Bill Gibbons.” I then told him I had lately been reading the Fair Maid of Perth, which had reminded me of a very pleasant day spent many years before, beside the Linn of Campsie, the scene of Conachar’s catastrophe. Perhaps he divined what had really occurred to me,—that the Linn, as a cataract, had greatly disappointed me; for he smiled, and shook his head archly, and said he had since seen it himself, and was rather ashamed of it. “But I fear, Mr. Hood, I have done worse than that before now, in finding a Monastery where there was none to be found; though there was plenty (here he smiled again) of Carduus Benedictus, or Holy Thistle.”

In the meantime he was finishing his toilet, in order to dine at the Duchess of Kent’s; and before he put on his cravat I had an opportunity of noticing the fine massive proportions of his bust. It served to confirm me in my theory that such mighty men are, and must be, physically, as well as intellectually, gifted beyond ordinary mortals; that their strong minds must be backed by strong bodies. Remembering all that Sir Walter Scott had done, and all that he had suffered, methought he had been in more than one sense “a Giant in the Land.” After some more conversation, in the course of which he asked me if I ever came to Scotland, and kindly said he should be glad to see me at Abbotsford, I took my leave, with flattering dreams in my head that never were, and now, alas! never can be, realised!

******

And now, not to conclude in too melancholy a tone, allow me, gentle reader, to present to you the following genuine letter, the names, merely, for obvious reasons, being disguised.

[Pg 393]

PRESERVED IN SPIRITS.

[Pg 395]

A LEADING ARTICLE.

THE CARNABY CORRESPONDENCE.

THERE is no estimate more ludicrous than that which is formed by unthinking persons of the powers of Authors. Thus when a gentleman has once written a Book, say, on Domestic Medicine, it is popularly supposed that he is competent to compose a work on any subject whatever, from Transcendental Philosophy down to Five Minutes’ Advice on the Teeth. Something of the kind is observable in the Autobiography of Brasbridge, the Silversmith, of Fleet Street, who tells us that after the publication of his Memoirs, he was hailed by a fellow-citizen with “So you have written a book!—why, for the future I shall call you Shakspeare!” as if the recorder of a set of[Pg 396] “fiddle-headed” anecdotes became, ipso facto, on a par with the creator of Othello. For another instance I can refer to my own humble experience. The anti-antiquarian nature of my literary researches is sufficiently well known; yet it did not prevent a grave retrospective-looking gentleman from one day concluding an account of some inedited architectural remains near Whitehall, with—“I wonder now that you, as a writer, have never taken up the subject!” The worthy F.A.S. might as well have suggested a plot for a Farce to Sylvanus Urban;—but such is the general opinion of the universality of a genius that prints. Bearing this tendency in mind, it will not seem so extraordinary that the following correspondence should be placed in the hands of the Editor of the Comic Annual by a respectable tradesman, who affirmed with tears in his eyes, that “it was a grave subject, worthy of the serious consideration of the Public.”

THERE’S A DEFICIENCY ON THE QUARTER.

No. I.—To Mister BENJAMIN CARNABY, 7, Brigantine Row, Deptford, London. (With Spead.)

DEER BRUTHER,

I am trully sory to arrow up yure relativ felings But it do seam to Me as my deer Bob is beeing shamfully Iltretid at his Skull. Inclosd is the pore fellars too letters the last jist cum to hand, And were sich a blo to fathurly felings I have nevver bean my hone Man evver sins. Id appeer he hav wel ni bin Starvd. Prays God his pore Muther is coald under the Hearth, it wud spile the rest of hir hashes if so be she cood read his tail of pewtered meet. If she ad a delite hear abuv it were childrins legs strate And there Bellis well fild partickly groin up Yuths—and She wood av run creazy to think of the Constitushun bein rewind for evver and ever with turnd tabil Bear. And you too I no you will blead at art for the mizriz of yure pore Nevy But I hop you will old up under it tho it be as it war a thunder[Pg 397]boult on us boath. In respex of Larning it seam his mind hav bin reglectid to be nurrisht up as well as is bodely Fram even to cumpare the too Leters my Bob rite a site better gud Inglish nor his Master witch to my mind He mite hav dun grates at Home in loo of paing sich mints of Munny for Skulling But wat disapints me Most next to his fammishin is the Greek and Lattin as I did sit my Art upon to hav won clasicle Skollard branch in the famely. Them too hushers desarves a wiping at a carts tale, and so do that mawks with hir luv gammux in juvenal presents Much gud it wur my sendin him abuv a duzzin mile off from Lunnun to uncorrup his morrils. Has for the Dockter I cud find in my hart to strip his dipplomer over his years with my hone ands wen I think that in loo of techin the yung idear how to shut he has mayhap stunted the Pore boys groth for his lif to cum. But overpourin felings forebids my drawin moor picters of Bobs suffrin. I have had no stummuck ever sins the Post[Pg 398] nockt me down with the Nus. But it wood not be becummin a parrent and a Farthe to be revealing in lucksriz wile the Sun of his hone lines ware revealing in fliblod beaf and vargis. To be sure these is felings that you as an unmarred man cant enter into at full lenth, but as hone Unkil by fleash and blud you will enter into the hard boord partickly as yure hone coarse of lif as had its scrimps and cum shorts and tort you what it is to be pincht in youre Fud. Wi i mite as well hav sent him to a short communing Yorksheer Skull at twenty pound per anum a yeer and had his close chuckt in to his Bed and bord. In the interium I hav forwardid him a cumfitting letter with a Won Pun Not to treet himself to sumat moor stayin and suportin nor stal pastery. But I do hop and beg Deer Bruther to hav your sentimints on the cas as you be moor caperble to advize me than I am, and not to delay riting if so be yure officious dutis purvent pearsonally quitin the yard. I wud have tuck a place on the Rumfud Stag and sit off at wons but Gowt forebid my cotching and so do Missis Rumsey for as yusial wen my felings is Frustratid all my Nervs is flone to my Fut. Pore Missis Rumsey simperthizes at evvery thing and is quit as upsit in her sperrits for as she say altho but Houskeper her Bowls yarns to Bob all as one with an hone hoffspring. She do say as Bobs a littel piggin brested and shoes simtoms of pullmary afection she trembil for fear pourness of blud sows seeds of sumthink fatle in his lunges. Indeed her mutherly hangsity offen remind a lass of her as lies volting in All allows barking. With witch I conclud with all brutherly luv, hopping to here by return of Poast. I no you seldim or nevver anser peples favers partickly mine but I do hop as this hear is a matter of vittle importins you will devot a few minuets to

Yure luving but aflicted Bruther
JOHN CARNABY.

[Pg 399]

P. S. If so be you thort best to poshay off xpressivly to Bob, watever is disburstid out of pockit my Puss shall kiver the hole. Praps you may lick him to be tuck away at wons for it wud be a thowsend pitis to brake his sperrit and he is rayther tender artid as you may gudge by wat he rite of his pore late muther. Well, hevin nose I war never in faver of turning Cots but if so be they wood reform the Skulls I wood jine the Wigs.

ENCLOSURE, No. I.—To JOHN CARNABY, Esquire. Number 49, Polyanthus Place, Mile End Road, London.

HONOURED PARENT,

As the sight of his native Terra Firma to the hardy Mariner on the pathless waste of the vast expanse of Ocean, so are the filial affections of a Son and School boy to inform we break up on Friday the 21st Instant; when I hope to find Yourself, comprising all my Relations and Friends, enjoying that greatest of Blessings, a state of salubrity.

When we add to this the pleasing Sensation of scholastic Duties fulfilled with Attention, Industry, and Diligence, accompanied by a preponderating Progress in all juvenile Studies, Objects, and Pursuits, a sanguine expectation is indulged that the parental Sentiments of Satisfaction will be spontaneously conferred on the present half Year, participating however with a due regard to health, comfort, and morals. Indeed it would be precocious to anticipate otherwise by the unrelenting Vigilance and Inculcation evinced by our Guide, Philosopher, and Friend, Doctor Darby and Assistants, as likewise the more than maternal Solicitude betrayed by Mrs. Doctor D. who begs Leave to cordially unite with the Same in Respectful Compliments.

I am happy to say the improvement I have made in the Latin and Greek Tongues, including French and Italian, has been very great and such as I trust to deserve and obtain his Parent’s, Master’s, Friend’s and Wellwisher’s warmest approbation and[Pg 400] Esteem. And this Reflection will be enhanced to reflect, that by being impressed upon by pious, virtuous, and loyal Principles, every juvenile Member of the Establishment is a firm and uncompromising Supporter and Defender of King, Church and State.

I will now conclude by giving my best Love to all Relations and Friends, and accept the Same from

Honoured Parent,
Your Dutiful and Affectionate Son,
ROBERT CARNABY.

DRAWING UP ARTICLES OF SEPARATION.

ENCLOSURE No. II.—From the Same to the Same.

DEAR FATHER,

I hope you wont be angry at writing of my own Acord and if you like you may stop the postage out of what you mean to give me next time, but the other letter was all a flam and didnt speak my real mind. The Doctor frumpt it all up out of his own head, and we all copied it out for all our fathers. What I want to tell you is as the holidays is so nigh, I do wish you would make up your mind for me to be took away for good and all. I dont like the victuals for one thing and besides I am allmost sure we are not well teached. The table beer always gives me the stomach ake if I don’t tie a string tight round it and I only wish you see some of Mr. Murphy’s ruling when he smells so of rum Another thing is the batter puddings which the fellows call it putty, because it sticks pains in our insides, and sometimes we have stinking beef. Tom Spooner has saved a bit on the sly to show parents, but it’s so strong we are afeard it wont keep over the three weeks to the holidays, and we are treated like gally slaves, and hare and hounds is forbid because last time the hare got up behind the Chelmsford Coach and went home to his friends in Leadenhall Market. As for sums[Pg 401] we know the ciphering Master has got a Tutors Key because theres a board at the bottom of his desk comes out with a little coaxing, and more than that hes a cruel savage and makes love to Masters daughter, and shes often courted in the school room because its where her father don’t come so much as anywheres else. The new Footman is another complaint. The Doctor dont allow him nothing a year for his wages except his profits out of the boys with fruit and pastery, and besides being rotten and stale, hes riz burnt almonds twice since Micklemas. Then we are almost quite sure Monseur Le Smith dont know Italian at least we have always observed he never talks to the image boys, and the old Cook never favours no one now except Carter with sop in pans ever since his Mother come to see him. And thats[Pg 402] why I do hope at my next school you will raise my pocket money, its unpossible to tip handsome out of sixpence a week. Jackson saved enough to buy a Donkey and then divided him into shares and I had a shilling share but the Doctor were so unjust as seize on him altho there was no law agin bringing asses to the school. It was the same on Guy Fox day with our squibs and rockets which we was more mortified to hear them going off after we were in bed. I am certain sure we should have had a barring out in our school room long and long ago only the Doctor hardly ever wants to come in. Thats the way the ushers do just as they like in school hours and Mr. Huckings does a leathersellers bookkeeping and Mr. Snitch makes poetry for the newspapers. Its not my fault then if I am backwards in my Greek and Latin though I have got a Prize for Spelling and Grammer but we all have prizes for something to please our parents when we go home. The only treat we have is reddishes out of the garden when they are got old and burning hot and popgunny and them wont last long as masters going to keep pigs. I suppose then we shall have measely pork to match the stinking beef. The fellows say its because the Doctor swops Stokes’s schooling agin butchers meat and as the edication is so very bad old Stokes on his part wont send in any better quality. Thats whats called mutual accommodation in the newspapers. Give my love to Mrs. Rumsey with thanks for the plum cake only next time more sweetmeat, and say I am almost sure I sometimes sleep in a damp bed. I am certain sure Mrs. Rumsey would advise you the same as I do, namely for me to be took away, without running more risks, if it was only for fear of Mac Kenzie, for hes a regular tyrant and hectors over us all. Hes three parts a nigger and you cant punch his head so as to do any good, and only last Monday he was horsed for wanting to googe little Jones’s eyes out and for nothing at all but just looking at his towel to see if the black come off. I am ready to[Pg 403] take my drop down dead if it is not all faithfully true, Mac Kenzie and the beef and the Footman and all, and I do hope you will trust to my word and be agreeable to my offer to be took away and I do hope it will be before next Saturday for that’s Mr. Paynes visiting day, the Drawing Master as I call him, but some of the fellows have nick named him Sinbad because he hunted the elephants so for their teeth. Philip Frank says theres a capital school at Richmond where the Master permits fishing and boating and cigars and gunpowder and poney chaises for only sixty guineas a year. I often think if my poor dear late Mother was alive it is just the genteel sort of School she would like me to be finished off at. But thats as you prefer and if you will only promise upon your honour to remove me I wont run away. I forgot to say I have very bad head akes some[Pg 404]times besides the stomach akes and last week I was up in the nussery for being feverish and spotty, and I had to take antimonious wine but nothing made me sick except the gruel. Precious stuff it is and tastes like slate pencil dust and salt. I was in great hopes it was scarlet fever or something catching that I might be sent home to you, but the fisician said my rash was only chickings or stinging nettles. Altogether I am so unhappy at not getting on in my learning that I do beg and pray to be took away, and I will be very dutiful and grateful all the rest of my days. Do, pray, do, and consider me down on my bended knees. And I will wish you every comfort in life if you will only provide for mine, and I will pray for your gout to go away for ever and ever, and then I will nurse your last days and be such a good son to you as never was except me. And in that case I owe three shillings to the footman and shouldn’t like to leave the school in debt. I shall expect to see you come in all the coaches that go the road or at least that you will fetch me in a letter, and if I am disappointed I really do believe I shall go off my head or something. With which I remain

Dear Father,
Your dutiful and affectionate Son,
ROBERT CARNABY.

THE OLD ORIGINAL RAILWAY.

No. II.—To Mister JOHN CARNABY, Number 49, Polyanthus Place, Mile End, London.

DEAR BROTHER,

This is to acknowledge the favour of your family letter with enclosures, which came to hand as pleasant and welcome as a 4-inch shell, that is no great treat of itself, and discharges a worse lot of botheration from its inside. Between both I got as Port Royal a headache as a man need desire from a bottle of new rum, for which, as it’s not unbrotherly to swear at a nevy,[Pg 405] “dear Bob” and his school be d—d. As to my not answering letters, I always do, provided they are either saucy or challenging; in which case, like answering a broadside, it’s a point of duty and honour to return as good as you get;—but for swopping sweet civil lollipop letters, lick for lick, it’s more than I would do with any female alive, let alone a man. And when yours are not lollipopping, they’re snivelling, or else both together, as the case is now. However blood’s blood: and so for once I will commit what you want, rather than accept your invite, and go up to help you and that old dry red cow, Mother Rumsey, to chew the cud of the matter all over again by word of mouth. As for harrowing up my feelings, or ploughing them up either, thank my stars it’s a stiffer soil than that comes to. Why, my feelings are as tough—and not without need—as a bull-beef steak fresh killed, and take quite as much pitching into before they’re as tender as you suppose. Likely it is, that a man who has rammed his head, as I have in Africa, into a stuck camel for a secondhand swig at his cistern, would come within sixty degrees of the notion of pitying a lubberly school-boy for having as much as ever he could swill of sour swipes! Then for bad food, the stinkingest beef I ever met with was none to be had, good or bad, except the smell of the empty barrel. That’s something like what you call being pincht in my fud; and so it was I reckon when I gave my watch, and a good seven shilling piece besides, for about a pound of pork cartridges. So I’m not going to pipe my eye at dear Bob’s short commons neither. It’s all very well for pap-boating mothers to admire fat babbies while they’re on the lap; but the whole human breed would be spoiled, if Mother Nature did not unspoil it again by sending us now and then to the School of Adversity, without a knife and fork and a spoon. I came in for a quarter’s learning there myself, in the Desart as aforesaid, and one of the lessons I learnt was from the ostriches; namely, when you[Pg 406] can’t get a regular cargo of food, you must go in ballast with old shoes, leather caps, or any other odd matters you can pick up. There’s nothing in life like bringing chaps up hardy, if they’re to stand the hammering we’re all born to, provided we are born alive. I once heard a clever Yankee arguing to the same point. “Rear up your lads,” says he, “like nails; and then they’ll not only go through the world, but you may clench ’em on t’other side.” And for my part, if I was a father, which thank God I am not, to my knowledge, I would mark down a week of Banyan days to every month in the Almanack, just to accustom the youngsters to take in and let out their bread bags, till it came natural; like the Laps and Esquimaux, who spend their lives in a feast and a fast, turn and turn about, whereby their insides get as elastic as India rubber, and accommodate themselves to their loading, chock full or clean, as falls out. I’ve known the time I would have given all my prize-money for a set of linings of the same conveniency, as when it was coming to the toss-up of a cowry whether I was to eat Tom Pike, or Tom Pike was to eat me. Just read the North Pole Voyages, and you will see that pampering bellies is not the exact course to make Captain Backs. So for all that’s been made on that tack, hitherto, you owe nothing but a higher rating to Doctor Darby, provided there’s any step above Doctor in his service; I’ll even go so far as stand my share towards a bit of plate to him, for not making my nevy a loblolly milk-sop. That’s my notion about hard fare. To be sure there was Mother Brownrigg was hung for going a little too near the wind in her ‘prentices’ insides; but if the balance was squared, a few of the other old women would be run up to the yard-arm, for slow poisoning the rising generation with sugar-plum cakes and kickshaw tarts. And that your dear Bob has got a rare sweet tooth of his own is as plain as the Pike of Teneriffe, for it sticks out like a Barbary wild boar’s tusks all through his precious complaints.[Pg 407] Whereby you had better clap a stopper on in time, unless mayhap you want him to grow up in the fashion, which seems now-a-days for our young men to know, and think, and talk, aye and write too, about kitchen craft,—with their pully olays and volley vongs—as if they was so many cook’s mates at a French hotel. There’s no disputing likings, but rather than be such a macaroni dishclout dandy, as delicate as a lap-dog, I’d be a turnspit’s whelp at once, and sit up on my hind legs a-begging for the sop in the pan. Now if you’re for his being one of those unabled-bodied objects of creation, I’ve no more to say; for you have got the right bearings, and have only to stand on till you bring dear Bob and Molly Coddle into one. But if so be on the contrary you have gumption enough to want to claw off that point, then down helm at once, and cut Mother[Pg 408] Rumsey adrift, plum cakes and all. I’ve long had on my mind to drop you a word of advice against that old catamaran, who knows fast enough that two bears’ heads are never so likely to rub together as when they’re a-licking the same cub. By the cub I mean my nevy, and the two old ones are you and Mother R. Besides it’s been my observation through life. Many’s the young man and woman will live for years together in the same house, or make the India voyage together in the same ship, without hooking on, or even coming in sight of such a notion; but neither I, nor anybody else, ever saw two old ones, he and she, in the like case, without their coming at long and at last to a splice in church. So it is with an old cat and dog, that while they had a tooth in their heads could hardly abide in the same parish, whereas when they get on the superannuated list, you will see them as thick as thieves, and messing together in the same dish. The philosophy of it is more than I pretend to know, unless it be they’re past fighting, and fit for no active sort of work;—but so it is, as sure as the sea is salt. You had best then part company at once, if you don’t want to see dear Bob mast-headed up to the back garret, or cooped down in the coal-cellar, on monkey’s allowance; such being the first steps a stepmother always takes in any story-book I ever read. I’m for my nevy having fair-play after all. So as I’ve subscribed to the bit of plate to Dr. Darby for case-hardening the fellow’s carcass, you may set me down towards the spitefullest boatswain’s cat that ever was handled, in case it turns out he has neglected the boy’s mind. I’ve seen a man seized up for a much smaller offence than crimping and inveigling a long hundred of lads at a time to a Sham Abram school, and swindling them out of the best part of the property about them, namely their juvenile time. It is only a streak above kidnapping, seeing that for any profit in learning the youngsters might as well spend their best years in the Plantations. Not but that Parents de[Pg 409]serve a cobbing themselves for putting a boy under a master without asking to look at his certificates. As for the Latin and Greek, mayhap they’re no loss to take on about. The dead and gone tongues for a tradesman’s son, that’s going behind a counter, is much of a muchness with fitting up a Newcastle collier’s cabin after the pattern of a Leith smack’s; only that the gilding and polishing may be grimed and grubbed off again in the course of trade. Still, considering they were paid for as work done, in common honesty my nevy ought to have had them put in his head; or at least something in lieu, such as Navigation or the like. His own mother tongue is quite a different matter; and thereupon I’ll give you my mind, upright and downright, of the two School-letters. To be sure the Doctor likes weight of metal, and fires away with the high-soundingest words he can get, whereby his meaning is apt to loom bigger than it is, like a fishing-boat in a fog; and where there’s such a ground swell of language, a seaman is apt to think there’s no great depth of ideas; but bating that, there’s nothing to shake a rope’s end at, but quite the reverse, especially as to teaching the youngsters to give three cheers for their king and country. Now, Dear Bob’s letter-work on the other hand, with its complaints of hard fare, is only fit to be sung by a snivelling Swiss beggar boy to his hurdy gurdy; besides many a chafe in the grammar and orthography, and being writ in such a scrambling up and down fist as a drunken purser might scrawl in a gale of wind. Now it’s my opinion a landsman that hasn’t his hands made as hard as horn with hauling home sheets nor his fingers as stiff and sticky as pitch can make ’em, has it in his power to write as fine penmanship as copperplate except for the want of good will. So that the fault may be set down to my nevy’s own account, and mayhap many of the rest, for no doubt there are skulkers at school as well as on board ship. My advice then is this, namely, just throw a shot across Dr. Darby’s forefoot, to let him[Pg 410] know you mean to overhaul him, and demand a sight of the school log, and so forth; by which you will have satisfaction one way or another; and putting the case he has gone to leeward of his duty, why, then come hammer and tongs, and blaze away at him to your heart’s content. The next step in course will be to take my nevy from under his orders, and find him a berth in a well officered ship; and I am ready so far to do an uncle’s part by the lad, as help to look out for a proper well-appointed craft. That’s my advice whether you steer by it or not—and so no more at present, and not sorry to belay—from

Dear John, Your loving Brother,
BEN CARNABY.

LAYING DOWN THE LAW.

No. III.—To Mr. BENJAMIN CARNABY, Brigantine Row, Deptford, London.

DEER BRUTHER,

This is to acnolidge the faver of your verry hash letter as I am complld to call it, both as regard deer Bob and that verry wurthy sole, pore Mrs. Rumsey. I am sory to find you can bare a grug so long, for I am shure she is too obleeging and civil spokin to hav disagred to your smokin in the parler if so be she had none you maid it sich a int. As for her inwigglin me into becummin a step farther to my one child watever old brut bares and cats and dogs may do, I hop my Virtu will purtect me from infiddlety to a former ti. As for pore Bob, he hav no more sweat toth then all boys is born with, and if he do rite with a bad hand, i nevver cud rite any grate shacks myself on an emti stummach. But that’s what you can’t or won’t inter into, no more than I can inter into cammil’s insids or hostridges eating their old shues and lether caps. In regard to yure advis thanking you all the sam, but meen to foller my hone, not but wat it ware nateral for you to recumend acording to yure[Pg 411] one line of lif, to wom fiting and dueling is sekonand nater. As such hammer and tonges and blazin away pistles wood be quit in yure spear, but as for my wantin satisfaxion of Doctor Darby, and shuting his fore feet, or his hind feet ether, or inded any wares els, is moor than I coud promis tho no dout ment kindly, but I am nun of yure wingin amers. Besids being agin the Bibil and Gospil and only fit for gentilmen born. Still I tak as frendly ment, as well as yure offir to git yure nevy a siteation on bord ship witch wood be a shure way to hurry my dissent to the Tom. The see always was a haw to my mind, and if it litind or a grate hevvy gal came, I shod transpire with frite; or be thinkin on fogie nites of the ship lossing her way and gittin out of her depth. Howsumever I feal grateful for the horible idear, tho I cant xcept, and in meen time have rit to Dr.[Pg 412] D. to remonsterit and ask him to say candiddle wether he hav starvd deer Bob and ruind his mind or no. I faver with a coppy of mine and will foreward hisn wen it cum, and as my gowt is mendin, mayhap I may go down to rumfud sum of thes days, and luck into every think with my one ize.

I am Deer Benjamin
Yure luving Bruther
JOHN CARNABY.

BUTT AND BEN.

(Copy.)
To Dr. DARBY Socratis Hous School Establismint, Rumfud Essex.

DOCTER DARBY SUR.

If so be a farther and a Parrint may tak so grate a libberty, its my wish to rite about my Sun. Not bein a skollard, oing to neglected genus in yuth, I am uncompitent to be a Gudge and war indust to sho the skull letter to my Bruther Benjamin, of the late Rial Navy who had moor buck larning for his Sheers,[Pg 413] besids seein forren parts and he do say wot give grate concern to All as is concarned, namely my Suns edication is fur from a thurro nollige of evvery thing, and partickly his hostifografy or summat to that effect. As such is hily blammabil to yureself or tooters whos provins war to propergit wot they had in their hone heds into them under them, insted of witch his unkel say he hav bin teecht moor ignorans then anny think else. Witch is verry ard considring mints of munny lad out, and hevin nose I have not bin sparring with him, but pade away at a grate rat, ever sins he war britchd. Hunderds cant kiver him from fust to last And nothin but blited hops arter all. Cirkimstancis purvented my having moor nor one acomplishment and that war my farthers bisness, but tho brort up hill miself I no the Valley of edicashun. Warefor if it be no offens I wish to no candiddle from your hone Mouth wether you hav so unedicatted him as his Unkil suspex. At sam tim will esteam a faver to no if he continny in gud helth witch ware always a littel dellicat and pecking, but I trust as how Rumfud hare and gud beaf and muttin and holesum wit bred and milk hav made him quit fat. His pore late muther lickwise made a pint of gud unturnd tabel bear, as all assiduities is injurus to yuth. As she used to say, pore sole, fud and flanning saves fisick. Allso I hop and trust you disalow the boys of advanst years tirenizing over the weekly wons, or savedge tooters as is apt to sho lickings and dislickings. The tooters morrils in course is a car not overluckd, but sweetharting demand constant vigilings to gard agin its cumming in clandestiny where it ort not. Mrs. Rumsey also begs to apollogiz for naming damp beds, but in coarse Misses Doctor Darby have a muther’s feelings about damp lining for boys boddis. All witch will give grate sattisfaxun to here, as in case of the revers parrintel duty will feal hobbligated to remov afore the mischief go to fur. I shall luck eggerly for your anser and trust you will embrace all the queerys. I ashore it will giv grate pleshure not[Pg 414] to hav to remove my custom, with witch and respective compliments,

I remane Dr. Darby Sur
Your verry humbel Servant
JOHN CARNABY.

“WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE CAN DO TILL WE TRY.”

“THERE’S A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG FOR EVERY THING.”

No. IV.—To Mister BENJAMIN CARNABY, Brigantine Row, Deptford.

DEER BENJAMIN,

Inclosd is Dr. Darby’s explainative Not, witch for anny thing I no to the contrairy is evvery thing as we cud luck for, without going into the retales. He apear to hav no douts of a[Pg 415] misscomprehenshun on our parts, witch prove us to be boath in the rong as will be a grate comfit to you and deer Benjamin.

Yure luving Bruther
JOHN CARNABY.

(THE ENCLOSURE.)—To JOHN CARNABY, Esquire.

DEAR SIR,

In ancient Greece and Rome, so celebrated for their classical Attainments, it would have been considered derogatory to the Academical Dignity, for Scholastic Discipline to be subject to Animadversion from a Civic Character, professedly unconversant with Polite Literature in all its Branches. As the Principal of a Pedagogical Establishment, I might, therefore, objurgate with Propriety any irrelevant Discussion to be deprecated from such a superfluous source. Conscious, however, of standing on the Basis of an undeniable Prospectus, which professes to embrace Universal Knowledge, throughout the Circle of the Arts and Sciences, I am prepared to assert that a more Comprehensive System of Education could not be devised than that which is ascribed to the Establishment of Socrates House. If further Testimonials were necessary, I might triumphantly appeal to the Mental Cultivation of flourishing Members of Society, evinced in the successful Pursuit of Affluence, in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, so advantageous to the Commerce, Wealth, and Power, of the United Kingdom. Such Testimonies, it is presumed, are sufficiently obvious to the most Unprejudiced Mind, to demand those unerring Principles of fostering Talent, inviting Emulation, and stimulating Enquiry, combined with Moral, Intellectual, and Dietetical qualities, such as to command the unreserved Approbation and Confidence of all parties engaged in the important Task of Juvenile Tuition. Trusting that the Prolixity of this explanatory Statement will propitiate the[Pg 416] most Paternal Solicitude, with sentiments in accordance with the rapid Progress of Human Civilization, permit me to subscribe myself, with every feeling of respect,

Dear Sir,
Your most obedient, faithful, humble servant,
SIMON DARBY, LL.D.

WIGWAM.

No. V.—To Mr. JOHN CARNABY, 49, Polyanthus Place, Mile End Road, London.

DEAR BROTHER,

If I was to write what comes uppermost, I should stand a chance of a place I won’t name. But you always was a you-know-what, and as the proverb says, there’s never a one like you now you are old. As for the school, it’s the nest of a land pirate; and for any good to his mind, dear Bob might as well be in the Hulks. However it won’t do to let you go and make a so-and-so of yourself all over the country—whereby, luckily for you, there’s an old shipmate of mine laid up at Rumford,[Pg 417] and so I can kill him and my Nevy with the same stone. So let Mister Doctor Darby look out for squalls, and that’s all from