I AM so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young
_Le Fever_’s, that is, from this turn of his fortune, to the time my
uncle _Toby_ recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very
few words in the next chapter.—All that is necessary to be added to
this chapter is as follows.—
That my uncle _Toby_, with young _Le Fever_ in his hand, attended the
poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave.
That the governor of _Dendermond_ paid his obsequies all military
honours,—and that _Yorick_, not to be behind-hand—paid him all
ecclesiastic—for he buried him in his chancel:—And it appears likewise,
he preached a funeral sermon over him——I say it _appears_,—for it was
_Yorick_’s custom, which I suppose a general one with those of his
profession, on the first leaf of every sermon which he composed, to
chronicle down the time, the place, and the occasion of its being
preached: to this, he was ever wont to add some short comment or
stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its
credit:—For instance, _This sermon upon the Jewish dispensation—I don’t
like it at all;—Though I own there is a world of_ WATER-LANDISH
_knowledge in it;—but ’tis all tritical, and most tritically put
together.—This is but a flimsy kind of a composition; what was in my
head when I made it?_
——N.B. _The excellency of this text is, that it will suit any
sermon,—and of this sermon,——that it will suit any text.——_
——_For this sermon I shall be hanged,—for I have stolen the greatest
part of it. Doctor_ Paidagunes _found me out. => Set a thief to catch a
thief.——_
On the back of half a dozen I find written, So, so, and no more——and
upon a couple _Moderato;_ by which, as far as one may gather from
_Altieri’s Italian_ dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a
piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of
_Yorick_’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked
_Moderato_, and the half dozen of _So, so_, tied fast together in one
bundle by themselves,—one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the
same thing.
There is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is
this, that the _moderato_’s are five times better than the _so,
so_’s;—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;—have seventy
times more wit and spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my
climax)—discovered a thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are
infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for which
reason, whene’er _Yorick’s dramatic_ sermons are offered to the world,
though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of the _so, so_’s,
I shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the two _moderato_’s without
any sort of scruple.
What _Yorick_ could mean by the words _lentamente,—tenutè,—grave_,—and
sometimes _adagio_,—as applied to _theological_ compositions, and with
which he has characterised some of these sermons, I dare not venture to
guess.——I am more puzzled still upon finding _a l’octava alta!_ upon
one;——_Con strepito_ upon the back of another;——_Scicilliana_ upon a
third;——_Alla capella_ upon a fourth;——_Con l’arco_ upon this;——_Senza
l’arco_ upon that.——All I know is, that they are musical terms, and
have a meaning;——and as he was a musical man, I will make no doubt, but
that by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions
in hand, they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters
upon his fancy,—whatever they may do upon that of others.
Amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably
led me into this digression——The funeral sermon upon poor _Le Fever_,
wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the
more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition——It is
upon mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn
thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty
blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general
review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.——Whether
these marks of humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;——because
at the end of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very
different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote——
Bravo!
——Though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least, and
a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at
the very extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it,
which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it
justice, it is wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small
_Italian_ hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether
your thumb is there or not,—so that from the _manner of it_, it stands
half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted
almost to nothing,—’tis more like a _ritratto_ of the shadow of vanity,
than of VANITY herself—of the two; resembling rather a faint thought of
transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer;
than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world.
With all these extenuations, I am aware, that in publishing this, I do
no service to _Yorick_’s character as a modest man;—but all men have
their failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes
it away, is this; that the word was struck through sometime afterwards
(as appears from a different tint of the ink) with a line quite across
it in this manner, BRAVO——as if he had retracted, or was ashamed of the
opinion he had once entertained of it.
These short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in
this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a
cover to it; and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned
towards the text;—but at the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he
had five or six pages, and sometimes, perhaps, a whole score to turn
himself in,—he took a large circuit, and, indeed, a much more
mettlesome one;—as if he had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself
with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice, than the straitness of the
pulpit allowed.—These, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and
out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue;—tell me
then, Mynheer Vander Blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not
be printed together?