Poor Tickler! The thing happened in this wise.—But, by the way, before

coming to that, it may not be amiss to give the reader some idea who

Tickler is:—to wit, a very Skye of Skyes, with a mouth the roof whereof

is dark as midnight: his glittering eyes are black as jet; his ears

short, his legs none of the longest, but his body is: his tail is a

triumph, when fairly spread out; and as for the strength with which it

is attached to his body, you may hold him up by the aforesaid tail as

long as you can—with one hand. Then his hair is pepper-and-salt in hue,

long and curly, and—if I may so speak (though no one but myself and the

family will know exactly what I mean by it)—with a kind of silken

wiriness. And as for cleanliness, why, he is washed thoroughly every

Friday morning, and carefully combed afterwards; and the recurring day

of that jobation (to use a word of his own) he is as perfectly

acquainted with as the gentleman who performs the operation, and has

come, in process of time, even to like the thing: witness how he jumps

into the tub of warm water of his own accord, alike in winter and

summer, with a kind of alacrity. He makes no fuss about it, except that

sometimes, when the soapy water gets into his eyes, they wink at you in

silent suffering, which he unconsciously aggravates, instead of

alleviating, by putting up his wet paw to rub them! Through this

operation he has gone for now nearly twelve years, and a sweeter dog

there is not than Tickler. I may indeed almost say as much in respect of

his temper, which is excellent whenever he has everything his own way. I

have reflected a good deal on the dog’s idiosyncrasy, and think I now

know it well. ’Tis tinctured by a warm regard for himself, with respect

to the good things of this life; he says, reasonably enough, that if

there are good things to be had, he cannot think why he should not try

to get them, and like them, since he is formed for the purpose, if he

can get them; and as for huge or little hungry dogs in the street, of

the plebeian order, he does not dislike to see them enjoying themselves,

by way of giving a zest, as it were, to starvation,—if he have no fancy

himself for what they have routed out of the gutter. He says he thinks

they must often be sore driven; for he has sometimes seen a gaunt dog

crunching a dirty bone till he has actually almost eaten it! I am sure

Tickler is not without feeling; for one day he was sitting on a chair,

with his paws resting on the top of it, near the window, in a warm

dining-room, on a blighting day in February—the dust-laden wind without

seeming to cut both man and beast to the very bone: and at the foot of

our steps there had presumed to sit a dirty half-starved cur, shivering

miserably in every muscle, but uttering no sound—neither whine nor bark.

“He starved, and made no sign!”

Was it necessary for that lout of a fellow that passed, to kick the

unoffending brute (which did not belong to him) from our steps, it

showing, however, no resentment, but simply sitting and shivering a foot

or two farther on? Then Tickler (who is of patrician descent), whose

eyes had been for some time fixed wistfully upon his plebeian brother,

could hold his peace no longer, but gave a loud, fierce, little bark,

jumped down from his chair, and fawned whiningly on me; and when I took

two nice chicken-bones from his plate under the sofa, and called the

forlorn victim of man’s chance brutality into the hall, and gave him the

bones, which he was for a while too cold, and also timid, to eat for

fear of another kick,—Tickler stood by, not only without growl or bark,

though he knew the victuals were his, but very complacently wagging his

tail. He had pity for his poor brother, who seemed such a wretched

little outcast! And as for the poor voracious creature before him,

crouching guiltily as if he had done wrong in enjoying himself, we could

hardly find it in our hearts to put him out again into the street. If he

could have carried away sixpence to a tripe-shop, he should have had it

to get a complete feast for once in his life. I think the incident made

a deep impression on Tickler; for when he returned into the dining-room,

he went again to the window, and sate for some time looking through it

wistfully, and whining; and then jumped down, went under the sofa, and

lay there for upwards of two hours, sighing several times, and without

touching his victuals.

But, on proper occasions, Tickler could show a proper spirit. We have a

cat; and if there be any force in the new saying, the right cat in the

right place, Tickler was the dog to insist on its being observed; for if

ever poor Tom presumed to steal up-stairs out of the kitchen (which, it

must be owned, was his proper place), there was no end of uproar on the

part of Tickler; though Tom would sometimes turn round, on his way down

stairs, and, curving up his back, and showing his teeth, glare at his

little tyrant with an expression that was perfectly fiendish; and

tended, moreover, effectually to keep the right dog in the right place,

viz. the dining-room, to which he would on these occasions retreat in

good order, perhaps, not without needless delay. Thus Tickler had a

notion of fitness.

He was also of a very contemplative character, shown by his long

sittings on the chair nearest one of the windows—in fact, always the

lefthand side window. He would sit on the chair, with his fore-paws

resting on the top of it, and his mouth between them, calmly surveying

so much of human nature as passed before our windows. It would have been

strange, indeed, if he could have lived so long with us,—growing up with

our children, and growing old alas! with ourselves,—without having

endeared himself to us all in a hundred different ways, and becoming

thoroughly familiar with our ways and habits. Can any one persuade me

that the little fellow did not know 6.30 P.M. o’clock, at which hour I

pretty regularly returned to dinner, when he used always to take his

seat on his chair a quarter of an hour before that time, with his

jet-black nose and watchful eyes pointed in the direction in which I

always came; and when I approached the steps, he would leap down and

bark like mad, till the dining-room door was opened,—and then the front

door? And how he jumped up against my legs, when I entered, and

scampered wildly to and fro! I know he liked me, and “no mistake,” as

the Great Duke said. But besides this, I am morally certain that he

always knew the Sunday morning. Even as early as breakfast-time, he was

grave and restrained, looking as though he knew that there was something

or other in the wind; and when we severally went out, he made no

indecent and clamorous attempts to accompany any of us, but lay looking

solemnly at us, as we respectively took our departure—and as soon as we

had all gone, he invariably went up to his bed, which was under our own,

never stirring till we returned; and who shall tell what he was thinking

of on such occasions? Did he sleep, dream? That he does dream, no one

knows better than I; for he talks—I beg pardon, barks—in his sleep

almost every night, often waking me from my own dreams. But what has

particularly pleased me in Tickler is, that when I sit up after

everybody else is gone to bed, he has, for years, voluntarily remained

with me, however long I may remain. I wheel an easy-chair (my wife’s)

towards the fire as soon as we are left alone, he waiting for it quite

as a matter of course, and jumping into it, immediately turning round,

slowly and thoughtfully, three or four times, and then settling down

into what he at length, I presume, conceives to be a comfortable

position—his mouth resting on his paws, and his eyes fixed on me, till

he falls asleep, with one eye open. Bless his little soul (for

_something_ of that sort he assuredly has)—how well I recollect one

night, soon after Madame and the young ones had retired, taking out of

my pocket a hard-hearted and insulting letter received during the

day—laying it down after reading it, with a sigh, and then gazing

affectionately at my faithful Tickler, whose watchful eyes were fixed

all the while on me! Ay, my little friend! this would try _your_ temper;

but dogs are mercifully spared such anxieties, although you have your

own sensibilities! In a long series of years, I have sate up many hours

engaged on my great work, in seventeen folio volumes, entitled, _The

Essence of Everything from the Beginning_; and if it please Heaven to

spare my life to finish it, I undertake that it shall finish the reader.

Well, it has been such a comfort to me, night after night, every now and

then to watch Tickler watching me, as I cannot describe; and I do

believe he has contributed, whether consciously or unconsciously, to

divers fine ideas of mine—at least I think them fine, and tranquilly

await the judgment of the critics, or such of them as shall survive to

see my great work, and, above all, survive the reading of it. How snug

he has made me feel, with my huge easy-chair exactly opposite his

smaller one (which is my wife’s till she goes to bed), my table and one

or two chairs covered with books, the crimson curtain drawn close, and

the fire crackling briskly; many and many a time have I been inwardly

tickled by seeing and hear him dreaming, his breathing quickened, and

his bark short and eager, but suppressed. I am certain that he sometimes

has nightmare! How pleasantly we used thus to keep one another company

in the winter nights! When my work was over, often not till two and even

three o’clock in the morning, Tickler had notice thereof by the act of

shutting up my desk, till which moment he never stirred; but that done,

and before I had extinguished my candles, he descended from his chair in

a leisurely way, and yawned and stretched himself; I often holding him

up by his tail, just to let him feel that all was right, and that he was

really awake. Then we both crept up-stairs to bed, as quietly as

possible, lest we should disturb the sleeping folk. And if I should

happen to have to go down stairs again to look at a book, or bring up my

watch left on the table, Tickler seemed to feel it his duty to get out

of his snug bed, and come pattering softly down stairs at my heels.

He was almost as vivacious as ever, though twelve summers had passed

over him at the period of that serious adventure which is presently to

be laid before the admiring reader. But no amount of vitality has

sufficed to prevent Mr Tickler’s face getting white; so that, when he is

in his lively humours, he suggests to my mind the funny face of a

frolicsome little elderly man, or a dog who had plunged his nose into a

flour-bag. I took him with me last autumn to a place which I described,

but without specifying, as may be seen in the October and November

numbers of Maga,[12] and the trip did him a world of good. Do you

recollect something that befell me there? viz., that I lost him for a

while, to my grievous discomfiture and painful exertion—finding at last

that the sweet little rogue was not lost at all, but squatting

comfortably on our drawing-room sofa? How little I dreamed, however,

that this might be deemed the shadow cast before, of a coming event—a

loss of Tickler!! in right earnest? Only the very midnight before this

startling occurrence he was sitting in his old place, about twelve

o’clock, opposite to me and the table, whereon lay a portion of the

stupendous accumulation of MSS., through which I was patiently

distilling off _The Essence of Everything_. I got up from my seat and

yawned with a sense of weariness, when he did the very same thing, and

thereby attracted my attention to him. So I sate down beside him, and,

tickling his ears, said, “Ah, you little runaway! A pretty wild-goose

chase you led me at——!” on which he wagged his tail, and smiled: but no

one can tell a dog’s smile that has not studied his countenance as I

have Tickler’s. The next morning I lost him in right earnest—in dreary

earnest! He left our house at 10 A.M. on Monday the 4th December, in

company with a steady middle-aged servant, almost as much attached to

him as we were ourselves, and who had come down on an errand to me—but

having left with Tickler, he arrived at the place where I pass most of

my day-time, without his better half. “I thought,” said I, on my

arrival, and finding him sitting in the ante-room, “that you were to

bring Tickler with you, for a walk?”

“So I did, sir, but I’ve lost un, sir, I’m afraid,” he replied stolidly.

“Lost Tickler!” I echoed in consternation.

“Yes, sir. Missed un in a moment, like, and couldn’t vind un anywhere!”

“Why, when did you leave our house, sir?”

“Just as the clock struck ten.”

“And now it’s not quite half-past!! What upon earth were you about not

to stop and look for him?”—Suffice it to say, that he described himself

as having suddenly missed Tickler, who had been following as usual close

at his heels, when at only two streets’ distance from our house,—had

consumed five minutes in looking for un—and then came quietly down

without him, to me! He said he thought the dog might have returned home

“of his-self! as he had done at ——!” I was disposed for a while to

entertain a very particular view of this strange transaction, but in the

mean time sternly despatched the delinquent back, at top speed, to

acquaint our family with the loss of Tickler; and also sent a trusty

messenger after him, in the forlorn hope that Tickler _might_ have

returned home “of his-self.” Nothing of the kind; he was gone, poor

little fellow, in earnest: and as he wore his collar, with my name and

address in full engraved thereon, it was plain that unless he quickly

made his appearance, he must have experienced the professional

attentions of a very vigilant class of London practitioners. Every

member of my family spent the rest of the day in scouring the

neighbourhood, especially the more dubious (_i. e._, discreditable or

suspicious) portions—but in vain. Our baker, whom Tickler used to visit

on business every day, saw him walking past the shopwindow, alone, and

at a leisurely pace, within about ten minutes of the time of my

servant’s missing him—but supposed, as a matter of course, that he was

in attendance upon some member of the family! Inquiries were made of all

our tradespeople—only to be answered by exclamations—“What! Tickler

gone? poor little thing, we loved him like a child!” “He can’t be far

away—you’ll be sure to see him by nighttime, in particular as he had his

collar with his master’s name;” “and, ma’am,” added one more sagacious

than the rest, in a mysterious whisper—“if you don’t—why, in course!

he’s been stole!” “He was the hamiablest of dogs—so petecler well bred!”

“Oh, you see, Miss! he’ll be sure to come back!” Then we betook

ourselves to the Police Station; where the courteous inspector, having

listened to us, said, with a quiet oracular air, “He’s not far away;

he’s taken of course for the reward, and as he had his collar on, they

know where to find you when they choose. Is he an old or young dog?”

“He’s in his thirteenth year!” “Oh, then, you’ll have him back very

soon; the dog-stealers are knowing fellows, and he won’t do. But take my

advice—advertise him in to-morrow’s _Times_, and offer only one pound

reward, and be sure to add, no further reward will be offered.” This we

did; and the next morning appeared the following public indication of

our calamity, drawn up by my own masterly pen, and all out of my own

head: “Dog Lost. One Sovereign Reward. On Monday the 4th inst., between

—— and ——, a pepper-and-salt Skye terrier, answering to the name of

Tickler. Collar round his neck with,” &c. “inscribed on it. To be

brought to that address. No further reward will be offered.” Having

dropped this our little line into the huge water of the _Times_

advertisement sheet, we awaited a nibble with such patience as we could

command. But we got no nibble at all, and very dull our house seemed,

without our merry and sagacious little Skye friend. Why, there was not a

room in the house, or a chair or sofa in it, that did not remind us of

him; and as for my wife’s little easy-chair opposite mine, when she had

gone to bed, and was no longer succeeded by Tickler, I wheeled it into

the corner of the room, and did not write at my _Essence_ with anything

like my former satisfaction or spirit. The advertisement in the _Times_

had explained our disaster to all our friends; and no one called on us

that did not ask, “Well, any news of Tickler?” or say, “Poor little

fellow, how you must miss him!” At length an exceedingly knowing person

came, and said, “Have you been to ——’s? You can’t do anything without

him; he knows all the respectable dog-stealers in London, and enjoys

their confidence.” So my wife and daughter went to him the next day; and

following his advice (given after a minutely accurate description of

Tickler), I inserted in the particular newspaper which he said was

likely to be read by the parties concerned, the following advertisement,

which no false modesty shall prevent my owning to be, in my opinion, a

choice morsel of expressive pithiness: “TICKLER.—One sovereign reward,

_and no more_, will be paid for the recovery of a pepper-and-salt Skye

Terrier, answers to the above name, and lost near ——, on Monday the 4th

instant. Had on a collar, with the words,” &c. &c. “In its 13th year,

and many teeth gone. To be brought to the above address.” It grieved me

thus to publish to the world poor Tickler’s age and infirmities; but

needs must, when a certain Jehu drives:—and the way in which I

vindicated my advertisement against the reclamations of all Tickler’s

friends was the following: If I show the thieves that I am quite wide

awake to the poor little dog’s age and infirmities, it may certainly be

no news to those gentlemen, so experienced in those matters, but will,

peradventure, add force to the three pregnant words in italics in the

above advertisement, “_and no more_.” The more candid of my opponents

said that there was something in this; but they held that I had,

nevertheless, greatly hurt Tickler’s feelings, if ever he came to hear

of it. The more long-headed of my friends went so far as to say,

besides, that it was, after all, a toss-up whether I ever got him again!

Now comes a remarkable occurrence, and the reader may depend upon its

being told him exactly as it occurred, viz., that on my returning to

dinner, one day, a strange Skye terrier presented himself to me, on

entering our dining-room. He had followed home two young ladies in the

neighbourhood, who took him to be our dog, of the loss of whom they had

heard. So they brought him to us; and on our saying that it was not

Tickler, they left, followed by the stranger, but refused to allow him

to enter their house. Now it was a blighty December afternoon, and this

poor _Waif and Stray_ sate outside their door shivering in the cold: so

our servants got leave to bring the poor thing into our house, to be

taken care of as a sort of _locum-tenens_ of poor Tickler. The Stranger

behaved so well, and had so many nice little tricks, that we all were

satisfied he was a gentleman’s or lady’s dog, and we began, in spite of

ourselves, to like him very fast: for his face reminded us of Tickler a

good deal; but on a more narrow investigation of Stranger’s pretensions

to our affections, it was discovered that he was not thorough-bred, as

testified by the mottled roof of his mouth; and also in respect of his

configuration, he seemed not like a canine homogeneity, but as it were

two dogs joined together—or rather a Skye terrier’s head stuck on a

rolled-up door-mat. Still we liked him, and called him Snap, to which

distinguished name he soon learned to answer, to our considerable

satisfaction, especially in respect of the younger folk. Still, he was

by no means Tickler; and besides this, suppose any of us took him out

for a walk, and the owner should claim his or her own in a disagreeable

kind of way? and threaten to do by us as we should have been quite ready

to do by those whom we believed to have been unconscientiously possessed

of Tickler? These were delicate matters; and as they impinged on the

dividing line between civil and criminal responsibility, what more

natural or praiseworthy than that we should have recourse to our old

friends at the Police Station? Those to whom we appealed, however, in

this our little quandary, seemed qualified to be Under-Secretaries of

State, in respect of a prodigious apparent sense of responsibility, and

a certain flatulent incertitude. They humm’d and ha’d, and finally said

that we had better do as we thought best, for that we must be too

respectable to be supposed to be dog-stealers; however, they said they

would send some one to us in the evening “to give us directions.” But by

that time the following state of things had come to pass.

“O, papa!” said one of my children, on my knocking at the door in the

evening, “news of Tickler!” “News of Tickler? Pho!” I exclaimed, half

hopefully, however. “But there really is!—A man came here at six

o’clock, and says that he really thinks he has heard of a dog that must

be ours!”

“Did he, indeed? Why?”

“He says that, from what people have told him, the dog he found some

time ago wandering about the suburbs, must most likely be ours! But

he’ll call again at half-past seven o’clock.” So, in short, and in due

time, we sate down to dinner; I indulging in sundry surmises concerning

the probability of our mysterious friend paying us his promised visit.

And while we sate at table, the following titillating story was told us,

as touching the subject of dogs, then uppermost in our thoughts.

A certain celebrated painter of animals as they never were painted

before, and may never be painted again, had painted the portrait of a

splendid Newfoundland dog, but he strayed or was stolen as he was

returning from his last sitting. His owner was inconsolable; but,

knowing the distinguished artist’s large and intimate acquaintance with

persons who confidentially concern themselves with other people’s dogs,

repaired to him for advice, and authorised him of the magnificent

palette to offer ten pounds reward for the recovery of the missing

favourite. The artist soon put himself into communication with one of

his private friends, who asked him what kind of dog it was? “Why,” says

the artist, “look here; this is his picture: should you know him again?”

The fellow gazed at the vividly faithful representation for a minute or

two intently, and then said, “I thinks I’se got him now; I shall know

him if I see him. But what’s the tip?” “Ten pounds.” “Werry ansome,

indeed, and worth a little trouble; but such a prime hanimal as that

’ere will cost a deal of trouble to get hold on, such uncommon care is

taked on ’em by them as has got ’em. Howse’er, I’ll do my best;” and

again he glued his eyes on the pictured dog, and then withdrew. A month

elapsed without tidings of the missing Ten Pounder; but at length, in

the dusk of the evening, the great artist was summoned into his

painting-room, and there found his confidential agent. “Well, Bill,”

quoth the former, “any news about the dog? I have given it up.” “O no,

don’t, sir,” was the reply, with a wink. “I do _rally_ b’lieve I’ve got

him at last. But is the tip all safe still, and no mistake?” “Ay—have it

anyway you like.” “It an’t a check” asked his astute companion. “No—a

ten-pound note, two fives, or sovereigns.” “Well—and no questions an’t

to be asked? lest I should get any friends into trouble?” “Only you

bring the dog, my man, and you take the money, and all’s done for ever.

Honour!” “Well, sir, where that word’s said by a gent, there’s an end of

everything; so the dog will be here in half-an-hour’s time, and a pretty

business I’ve had to find him.” Half-an-hour’s lapse saw this little

stroke of business complete, and dog and cash exchanged. “Well now, my

man,” said the artist, “and it’s all over, though I said I wouldn’t ask

you a question, I can’t help it, merely out of curiosity. I give you my

honour that I have no other motive, and will take no steps at all, in

consequence of what you may tell me. Did I ever deceive you?” “No, sir,

you never did.” “Well—do you know who stole him?” “Quite sure you won’t

do nothing if I tell you?” “Honour—honour!” “Well, sir, I was the chap

as prigg’d him.” “_You!_”—echoed the artist with expanded eyes, uplifted

hands, and a great start. “Yes, me, sir. I took’d the dog, and no

mistake.” “Whew!—Well—but now I’m more curious still to know why you

chose to be so long out of your money—your ten pounds? Why not have

brought him back in a few days and got your £10 at once?” “’Cos, sir,

you see, I sold un to another party for seven pounds, who took such a

liking to the creature, that I hadn’t the heart to steal un from him,

till he’d had a week or two’s comfort out on him; but as soon as he had,

I know’d how to prig the dog. I, as could do it once, could do it

twice—and now you’ve got what you want; but it sartinly sounds coorious,

don’t it?” “Why you consummate scamp,” quoth the artist, almost

splitting with laughter—“you’ve got seventeen pounds out of the dog!!”

“Yes, sir, that’s the figure, exact,” replied the stolid Man of Dogs.

“Well, but, you impudent vagabond—if you could prig a dog, as you say,

once, and twice, you may _thrice_——” “Well, sir, so I may—but this here

dog will be looked arter unkimmin close _now_, and I shan’t run no

risk.” “Well, honour among thieves—eh?” “Quite correct, sir,” quoth

κυνοκλεπτης.

We were laughing at this story, as we sate at dinner, when a single

knock came to the front door—and in a trice our servant, the unhappy

cause of all our sorrows, whisked out of the room, opened the Hall door,

and after a hasty colloquy returned. “He’s come, sir!—the man about

Tickler, sir,” said he, re-entering the room, excitedly. In a trice I

was in the Hall, followed by my two sons and the servant. My visitor

stood, his cap squared in his hands, in the angle formed by the side of

the Hall and the door.

“Well, my man, do you really know anything about my dog?”

“Why, sir,” he answered, very respectfully, “I think I do; it must be

the same dog.”

“What sort of a dog is it?”

“A Hile of Skye terrier, sir—pepper-and-salt, and rather white about the

mouth, and a many teeth gone.”

“Well; but does he answer to the name of Tickler?”

“Can’t say, sir, really. Haven’t seen him myself, sir; only my friend as

found him wandering about, a good way off.”

“What! haven’t you seen the advertisement in which he’s called Tickler?”

Here was a moment’s embarrassing pause.

“No, sir, can’t say I have; but maybe my friend has.”

“Why, do you mean to say that you’ve never heard him called Tickler?”

“I never see’d him, sir; and never heard the name Tickler.”

“What! not in the advertisement?” At this moment a heavy single knock at

the door, against which I was leaning, made me start. I opened it, and a

policeman stood there. “Is the inspector come, sir?” he asked. My friend

in the corner was instantly aghast, and seemed in the act of squeezing

himself into the wall (to avoid being seen by the grizzly visitor), his

eyes fixed on me with an expression I shall not soon forget.

“No; and you may tell him he need not come now. I am much obliged to you

both; but I now don’t want to part with the dog.” The policeman bowed,

descended the steps, and I shut the door. This visit had been paid us in

consequence of our application to the station-house for advice how to

dispose of Snap. My visitor had grown considerably whiter than so much

as was visible of his shirt!

“Don’t be under any apprehension, my man,” said I, with a smile; “it is

certainly one of the oddest coincidences I ever saw; but I pledge my

word to you that it is purely accidental, and in no way relates to you

or my own dog.”

“O no,” he exclaimed, with yet a scared and distrustful look; “in coorse

you knew it couldn’t consarn me anyhow, ’cause I an’t done nothing

wrong, I know; but it sartinly looked werry peticlar funny, didn’t it

now, sir?” wiping his forehead; “but when a gent gives his word, I

believe him, sir.”

“Well, but about _my_ dog; you’ve never seen him?”

“Never set these blessed eyes on him yet, sir.”

“Come, come, my man,” I said, good-naturedly, “I have acted honourably

by you, and do you so with me. I pledge my word that no harm shall come

to you through me. Now tell me—you _have_ seen Tickler!” I added, so

suddenly that I took him off his guard.

“Well, sir, you speak so werry ansome—I _have_ seen the dog, and I an’t

no manner of doubt it’s your’n.”

“His collar on.”

“Oh, he han’t got any collar on _now_—least wise, when I picked him up.”

“Why, I thought you told me your friend picked him up?”

“Did I indeed? Well pra’ps he did—but there an’t no collar.”

“Well, as to the Reward—you saw the advertisement offered only a

sovereign?”

“O, yes sir, that’s quite correct—” forgetting that he had _not_ seen

it—“but I expect to be paid for my two walks up here to-night, sir,

beside.”

“And what do you expect? I’ll give you half-a-crown.”

“O, no, _that_ won’t do,” he interrupted me peremptorily—“I always has a

five-shilling tip.”

“Always!!”

“Yes, sir—quite regular—ahem!” he suddenly stopped, as though he had

caught a glimmering of having committed himself.

“Let the dog die then, sir,” I said sternly, opening the door for him.

“Very well, poor thing!—if it’s your’n, which I’m sartin it is.”

“Well, I suppose I must pay it you!—That will be £1, 5s.?”

“Quite correct sir—and if you’ll let your man come with me, I’ll give

him the dog, after he’s given me the money.”

“But the dog must be present before he gives you the money.”

“O, yes, sir—all right—but all’s quite _honour_ in such things as

these.”

“How soon will the dog be here?”

“In less than an hour, sir.” With this I directed all three—my two sons

and the servant, to put on their greatcoats, and accompany him; first

whispering a hint to leave watches behind. After they had been gone five

minutes, the servant returned, saying that the man had advised him not

to go, as _three_ beside himself looked so suspicious-like, and might

prevent us getting the dog. My two sons accompanied their honourable

companion till he had got them into Drury Lane! And there he dodged them

about, up and down, and in and out of court after court, and alley after

alley, till they had reached a very little dirty public-house, into the

parlour of which their guide conducted his two companions. Such a

parlour! about six feet square, and reeking with odours of gin and

tobacco smoke. Another gentleman was sitting there, who had just been

discharged out of prison, he said—“And it wasn’t unlikely he might be in

again soon, for something or other—for he _must_ live!” He was giving a

very lively account of prison life, when my son’s companion

returned—after a ten minutes’ absence—with—Tickler! the true identical

dear old Tickler, and no mistake whatever about it! But—instead of

rushing up to his former patrons and playfellows, he came into the room

timidly, and, strange to say, seemed disposed to make the acquaintance

of two cats who were in the room, and who seemed quite at home with a

dog. When called by his name, he hardly noticed it, and seemed to have

forgotten my sons, or to feel no particular interest in them! The money

having been given, my sons took poor Tickler in their arms for safety’s

sake, quitted the vilest neighbourhood they had ever been in, and

carried him nearly all the way home—which he reached in half-an-hour’s

time. We were on the look-out at the windows for the poor little

fellow—and the moment we saw him, I rushed to the door and opened it,

just as Tickler came up the steps; but there stood Snap also—having run

up suddenly from the kitchen, whither he had been relegated by my

orders, to prevent his encountering Tickler—who, however, immediately

spoke to his _locum-tenens_ in a quiet friendly way. Then the latter was

carried down bodily into the kitchen, and Tickler whisked into his old

quarters in the dining-room. We resolved to take matters very quietly,

having been told that dogs had been known to die of joyful excitement

under such circumstances. So we all took our seats, eyeing his

movements. He ran rapidly to and fro about the room—under the sofa, the

tables, the sideboard, as if his scent were gradually reviving old

recollections and associations. Then he began to moan, or whine,

piteously, but in a very low tone; and finding a little bone which had

been left by Snap, he seized on it ravenously. On this we ordered him up

a little meat; and, in the mean time, he stood up against each of our

chairs, moaning while he looked into our faces, and trembling. “Tickler!

Tickler! dear old Tickler, how are you?” quoth I, gently; on which he

trembled, looked sorrowfully in my face, and wagged his tail slowly. To

aid him in recollecting himself, I resorted to one of my old habits with

him—viz. lifting him up gently by his fore-paws; but I almost let him

fall again, with concern; for the poor little fellow seemed not half his

former weight! And when I felt his backbone, how sharp and bare it was!

“Poor Tickler! what have they been doing with you?” said I. His whine

told of starvation. He seemed indeed perfectly blighted: and when we all

went up to bed, I following after a little interval with Tickler, it

gave me pain to observe the want of his old elasticity in going

up-stairs. He was evidently thin and weak. The next day I was anxious to

hear his adventures; but I knew that he felt embarrassed if required to

speak in the presence of any one beside myself: so I waited till I had a

favourable opportunity, which occurred on the next night but one. About

an hour after all except myself had ascended to their respective

dormitories, and when I was busy distilling off _The Essence of

Everything_, Tickler, who had been lying curled round himself, so to

speak, in his usual fashion, suddenly rose, shook himself, and in a

sitting posture, thus addressed me.

—But his adventures (for I had asked him to tell them to me) were far

too interesting and affecting for me to give them to the world at large,

before affording him an opportunity of hearing me read them to him for

his correction. That I shall do, and then let the reader form his own

judgment—next month:—but I feel it a point of honour to impress upon the

reader that he is to make no attempt to identify persons or localities!

[_To be concluded in our next._]

THE DRAMA.

Sir Andrew Agnew may have been a very good man, but he never said more

than one good thing—if even that is original. In one of his letters he

characterises the wit of the three kingdoms as follows: The Scotch play

upon the feelings, the Irish play upon ideas, the English play upon

words. The distribution is clever and very plausible, if not altogether

true. It is correct enough, we believe, as far as regards the Scotch.

There is little wit, but a great deal of humour in their fun; and

wherever there is wit, almost always it manifests itself in union with

strong feeling of some kind—is at one time sarcastic, at another time

profane. A Scotchman seldom indulges in pure wit—takes no especial

interest in a purely intellectual, or a purely auricular surprise. His

logical habits unfit him for that confusion of ideas which Sir Andrew

attributes to the Irish, and disincline him for that confusion of words

which he attributes to the English jesters. It is with reference to

these last that his division is most at fault, and it is also at fault

with regard to the Irish. An immense number of Hibernian witticisms, it

is true, are to be classed with those Yankee and negro sayings, of which

the point depends on a singular confusion of ideas, and of which the

following may be taken as typical examples: “Pompey and Cæsar very much

like, ’specially Pompey;”—“Uncle was so tall that he had to mount a

ladder every day to put on his hat.” A practical instance of the same

kind is the story of the Irishman who cut a great hole in his door for

the sow to pass through, and a little one beside it for the

sucking-pigs. But this very confusion of ideas is so apt to express

itself in a contradiction of terms, that the wit for which Paddy is

celebrated all over the world is known as an Irish bull; and an Irish

bull is as much a verbal play as an English pun. The difference between

them may be stated thus loosely: In a bull, the double meanings are

incompatible and contradictory; in a pun, they blend together, and do

not interfere with each other, except in the way of curious comparison

or odd contrast. Now, although perhaps no people have such an inveterate

habit of punning and quibbling as the English, it is not true that this

is the great characteristic of their wit. With all the reputation which

they have on the Continent for melancholy, with all that tone of sadness

which pervades their poetry, no people have ever displayed such a hearty

enjoyment of fun as the English, and no other comedy has such a wide

range as theirs. It contains every variety of humour and every variety

of wit. And however much we may despise puns, they have often been used

as the expression of profoundest feeling by men of the largest grasp.

Shakespeare is an example; his range of comicality is greater than that

of any other writer in the language, and he puts puns into the mouths of

his heroes and heroines, even in the moment of maddest passion. Thomas

Fuller is another instance of a man of deep sympathies and earnest

views, who gave expression to these sentiments in what we are accustomed

to regard as the most trivial and equivocal of forms.

But while Sir Andrew Agnew’s definition of English wit is extremely

partial, it has certainly at this season of the year the appearance of

conveying the whole truth. The puns are as thick in a Christmas

pantomime as plums in a Christmas pudding. They come out at this time of

the year as naturally as berries on the holly; and whoever means to

enjoy the season must accept it all, quips and quibbles, puns and buns,

the light fantastic toe at night, and the headache next morning. Of what

avail is it to shake one’s head over the mince-pies, to tell that young

savage, Mr Tommy, that he has eaten too many raisins, to look dismal

over another glass of champagne? It is all right; digestion will come in

its own good time; and what is the use of Christmas if one cannot once

in a year dismiss all thoughts of the doctor and his senna? What is the

use of Christmas, too, if theatrical managers cannot for once in a year

snap their fingers at the critic and his nauseous doses? On boxing-night

comes the pantomime, all paint and spangles, scenery and machinery,

fooling and pulling about; it is the reign of good-humour; clown grins

from ear to ear; pantaloon takes all the buffets he gets with the

greatest pleasure; while the manager is as obstreperous as the one, and

the critics are as delighted with his hard hits as the other. The fact

is, and there is no denying it, that the pantomime, and all that it

includes of burlesque and extravaganza, is at present the great glory of

the British drama. The drama has all gone to pot (the paint-pot), and

out of it has arisen rollicking pantomime, even as out of the caldron of

Medea, what went in an old ram came out a young lamb. That this young

lamb is the pride of the British stage at the present time, will be

evident to any one who enters a theatre. No chance of getting a seat,

even in the larger houses, if you happen to be half-an-hour late. And

not only are the houses crammed, the audience is different from the

usual audiences. There is a prim old lady, with a pursed-up mouth, in

the boxes, whose presence is accounted for by the fact that there are

two fairies at her side, who are as much in love with Clown as ever

Titania was with Bottom. Everybody who looks at the stalls knows that

the bald-headed old gentleman with the capacious waistcoat is “the

father of a family,” even were there no long lines of children on either

side of him. And will it be believed that through the curtain of the

private box there is peering, with his ivory opera-glass to his eyes,

that long-faced Grimshaw, who never enters a theatre—never—and who never

perpetrated a joke but once, when he quite seriously compared the pit to

the pit of Acheron, and wondered that when people saw written up, “The

way to the pit,” they did not take fright, and vow never again to enter

a playhouse? Everybody goes to the pantomime. It is the only successful

effort of the British drama. Tragedy has become so very tragic that she

has cut her own throat; comedy has been so very comical that she has

choked herself with laughing; and burlesque comes up like a demon

through the trap to supply the place of the one, pantomime comes

tumbling in head-over-heels to supply the place of the other. Every one

has his day: Shakespeare has gone out; Planché has come in. Let no one

accuse us of treason to “the divine William,” as Dumas calls him, when

we say that Planché is a kind of Shakespeare. He is precisely such a

Shakespeare as entered into Dr Johnson’s imagination when he said, “A

quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and

was content to lose it.”

It must be confessed that although most of Mr Planché’s extravaganzas

are published, there is not one of them that is readable. They are meant

to be acted, not read. Effervescing from the mouth of the performers,

and eked out with look and gesture, scenic effect and musical rubadub,

the galleries make a vociferous noise, and the boxes make a magnificent

show of teeth. Now it is some pun which has been lying in wait from the

beginning of the scene, now some extraordinary rhyme which seemed as

difficult to match as Cinderella’s glass slipper, now an allusion to the

events of the day, now the sudden falling into slang in the midst of

some high-flown language.

“But Cupid is a downy cove

Wot it takes a deal to hinder;

For if you shuts him out o’ the door,

Vy, he’ll valk in at the vinder.”

Nobody cares to read such verse, but, sung by Robson, it brings down the

House. As a specimen of the wit, it is difficult to make a selection

worthy of Planché from his latest pieces at the Olympic; but take the

following from the _Prince of Happy Land_, which he has repeated in a

weaker form in the _Yellow Dwarf_. The princess is to choose a husband

out of ten suitors.

“_Duchess._ ——You’d not refuse

Ten sovereigns in succession?

_Princess._ Yes, indeed,

If they’re bad sovereigns, madam.

_Duchess._ Bad ones!—Read,

Grand duke, the list of their illustrious names,

Sent in with all their portraits—

_Duke._ In such frames!—

It is impossible to find ten finer!

First, here’s the Emperor of Chelsea China.

_Princess._ A China husband!

_Floretta._ Off with him, I’d break.

_Duke._ The King of Chess.

_Princess._ A king one cannot take.

_Duke._ The Doge of Tennis.

_Floretta._ A sly doge, no doubt.

_Princess._ And much too prone to racket, sir, about.

_Duke._ The Dey of All-jeers.

_Princess._ Hey-day! that’s all joke.

_Duke._ The Sultan Meer-schaum.

_Princess._ Meer-shams end in smoke.

_Duke._ The Rajah Ram Jam Juggle Jib a hoy.

_Princess._ The name’s enough—

_Floretta._ I wish his lady joy.

_Duke._ Ali Kampain, the Shah of—

_Princess._ Pshaw! pooh! pooh!

_Duke._ The Khan of Creamo Tartar.

_Princess._ Cannot do.

_Duke._ The Prince of Orange Marmalade.

_Princess._ Too sweet.

_Duke._ The Duke of Mangel Wurzel.

_Princess._ Must be Beet.”

What a riot of words! what an amount of subtlety is here expended to no

purpose in stultifying the dictionary, and giving to words every

possible meaning but the right one. In this noble art, however, Mr

Planché is excelled by some of his disciples, and in the parody of

_Shylock_—the _Jerusalem Harty-Joke_—written by Mr Talfourd for Robson,

the system of punning has been carried to the limit of endurance. Let

any one read the following address of Gratiano to Nerissa, and attempt

if he can to make any meaning out of the puns, or see the fun of

continually violating the rules of the language merely to help a failing

rhyme.

“The pangs of Cupid I the first time knows-em;

His bows and arrows pierced my harrowed bo-sum.

Let’s off to-night—there’s no chance of diskivery.

With me, dear, _put up_, and don’t _stand at livery_.

Blush not that I’m a flunky, I implores;

Let not my plushes be the cause of yours.

_You_ to the eyes—but, though more difficulter,

_I_ to the knees plush as the _knee plush ultra_.”

Take another specimen, and then, as Mr Talfourd says, we shall bid

“a-Jew” to _Shylock_. Remember, too, that we are quoting the best bits.

“_Shylock._ Jessica! my own flesh and blood revolted?

I locked her in.

_Tubal._ And she herself has bolted!

_Shylock._ I always wondered why she eyed the men so!

What’s the dog’s Christian name?

_Tubal._ I think Lorenzo.

She’s got the start of us, and bolted right off.

_Shylock._ _Heavy_ the day that first the sun the _light_ off!

Offer rewards! Use every means to save her.

Let be but catch—I’ll _lather_ the young _shaver_.

My only _heiress_ folks will say in mock,

Fled like the _timid hair_ from a _Shy lock_.

Take with you, though, unthinking girl, my curse.

_Tubal._ She’s taken something more.

_Shylock._ What’s that?

_Tubal._ Your purse.

_Shylock._ You cannot mean she’s robbed her poor old father?

_Tubal._ I hate strong language, but I fancy—rather.

_Shylock._ Unfeeling child! who’s left her _sire_ to _sigh_

Without or _tie_ or _prop_, or _property_.”

This is what the fast young men of London call brilliant writing. All

this meaningless clatter of words, to produce which requires little more

skill than to clash the cymbals in the orchestra, there are crowds of

young fellows about the theatres who would give a great deal if they had

the brains to emulate. It is out of such slender materials that Robson

works up his effects, making the glitter pass for gold, the trash for

truth, the bad grammar for good sense, and the abortive pun for pointed

wit. Give us good puns by all means, if there is nothing better to be

had, and we shall laugh at them; but save us from word-torture as

incomprehensible, dull, and valueless as the anagrams which used to

puzzle and amuse our ancestors.

Cease your funning;

Force of punning

Ne’er shall Maga’s laugh trepan;

at least such punning as we have quoted. If we are asked to define

legitimate punning, take an example from _Punch_, who sums up his

metaphysics in the following queries and answers:—“What is matter? Never

mind.—What is mind? No matter.”

If any one wishes a defence of punning, we must refer him to the

Germans, and especially to Herman Ulrici, who thus discourses on the

quibbles of our great English dramatist: “If, then, we go back to the

origin of this verbal play, and further reflect that Shakespeare never

kept up this game of rejoinder and antithesis emptily and unmeaningly,

but that with him it has always some meaning, and _not unfrequently a

most profound significance_, we shall see good reason for the whole

representation being pervaded by it. For in this discrepancy between the

indicated matter and its indication, and the appropriateness of the same

or similar words to express wholly different objects, we have the

revelation of the deep fundamental and original disagreement between

human life and its true idea; as well as the inadequacy of human

cognition and knowledge of which language is the expression, for the

wide range of objective truth and reality, and consequently of the

weakness entailed upon man’s noblest intellectual power by the Fall and

the first lie.” So that puns are the result of the Fall, and the fruit

of the forbidden tree. Horrible thought for Mr ‘A Beckett—puns

impossible in paradise! Without, however, going to the profundities of

Ulrici, we have to point out the propriety of this style of wit in the

peculiar species of drama which it adorns. A pun is on a small scale

what parody is on a large. Accept the burlesque drama wholesale, and

there is no reason why one should object to the quibbling in detail. It

is consistent throughout.

The Olympic is the theatre in which Planché appears to the greatest

advantage—the intensity of which Robson is capable, giving a force to

the representation with which all the brilliance and gaiety of the old

Lyceum spectacle are not to be compared. It is one of the two best

theatres in London, in which one is always sure of good and finished

acting—the wayward humours of Robson being in fine contrast with the

sustained art of Wigan. Than the latter there is not a more accomplished

actor on the stage; he really acts; and it is a high intellectual treat,

which one does not often nowadays enjoy, to see how with successive

touches he works out a character, or graduates a passion with a delicacy

of detail that is not more marvellous than the consistency of tone

throughout. As Wigan satisfies the lover of intellectual enjoyment,

Robson satisfies the craving for excitement; the one is perfect art, the

other perfect nature. Perfect nature in burlesque—impossible! It is

possible, however, with Robson. Usually burlesque acting is the most

unnatural thing in the world; no single passion or state is represented

truly; every word, every tone, every look is false. With Robson,

however, every tone is true, every look is nature; it is in the jumble

and juxtaposition of details that his burlesque consists, in suddenly

passing from the extreme of anger or fear to the extreme of humorous

ease, in suddenly relapsing into vulgar slang in mid-volley of the most

passionate speech, and all with the most marvellous flexibility of voice

and feature. Presto! faster than we can follow him, he has changed from

grave to gay, from lively to severe. The _Yellow Dwarf_ of last year was

probably his greatest effort, although _Prince Richcraft_ of the present

season is not far behind. It has a mad scene which is equal to anything

he has ever personated. The story it is needless to recapitulate—it is

taken from the collection of _Mother Goose_. They are all nearly alike.

There is sure to be a prince or princess in disguise; a good fairy and a

bad one; an army extravagantly armed, murders by the score, magical

fruit or something else, a strange discovery, and the prince and

princess married at last, in spite of the villain, all his wiles and all

his passion. A strange life it is, that pictured in the fairy tales

which are worked up into these extravaganzas,—a life in which trap-doors

and invisible springs are as essential as patent-leather boots and gibus

hats are to us, in which there is always a gutta-percha eagle that comes

flying with a necessary key in its claw, and fish are poking their gills

out of still lakes with lost rings in their mouths, a purse of gold lies

on the ground just when it is wanted, beautiful witches in red-heeled

shoes come hobbling down to the footlights; and in the last tableau of

all, there are all the fairies in their fairy palace standing

pyramidally one above the other. As in the _Arabian Nights_ the

characters are always asking each other to tell tales—lives are saved by

stories well told—and one gathers that the thread of Arabian existence

is one long yarn; so, in the extravaganzas, songs are all the rage,—the

enchanter sings his victim to sleep, the princess wins her lover by the

charm of her voice,—the lover serenades his mistress; the king must be

amused, and his only amusement is “The Ratcatcher’s Daughter.” Music is

not only the food of love, but the blue-pill also; and it is the food

and the blue-pill of every other feeling as well. There is another

characteristic feature of the _Arabian Nights_ which is prominently

exhibited in the extravaganzas—the disregard of life. Murder is a mild

word for the destructiveness of the kings—they literally massacre all

around: it is the dance of death. But let no one confound all this

murder and massacre with the similar tendencies in the low

gallows-literature of the present time. All the murdering of the fairy

tales is counterbalanced by the effect of the slaughter. The victims are

scarcely ever killed outright—they are instantly transformed, they start

up and fly away in some new shape. The idea of death as annihilation

never enters into the fairy tales; all is immortal: murder is but the

plucking of a flower that will grow again; the massacre of a village is

only a series of dissolving views.

The Olympic is the only theatre without a harlequinade attached to its

fairy tale. For tricks of clown and pantaloon one naturally travels to

Covent Garden and the adjacent theatres. Who shall describe all the

nonsense and merriment that passes current in these temples of the Muse?

Puns, puns, nothing but puns—and such rough practical joking as the

youth of England delights in! What an immense deal of laughter they

manage to get out of that part of the body in which angels are said to

be deficient. It is kicked, pins are stuck into it as into a convenient

pin-cushion; Clown puts a live lobster into his comprehensive pockets,

and jumps up with fearful grimaces. Then what pulling of noses; how they

are flattened, how they are lengthened, how they are blackened with

soot, how they are filled with snuff till the poor member sneezes and

bleeds! And how the little fellows in the boxes laugh and crow over the

practical jokes! It is such rare fun to see Clown stumble over a baby,

and crush its head like a pancake, and double it up into the cradle. O

glorious to see a shopkeeper’s window smashed, and his coat torn off his

back; to see Clown burning the potatoes and licking the roast, and

throwing carrots and turnips about the stage; to see Pantaloon pitched

into the pot, and turning out a plum-pudding; to see Clown’s head cut

off, and the body running headless about the stage, the head crying out

for the body,—glued on to the shoulder, and so happily united that Clown

takes a leap through a window, and tumbles back as well as ever through

the grating below; to see the sucking-pig running about, and given to

the nurse instead of her lost child; to see Clown for all his iniquities

put into a great gun, with lots of powder, and shot to perdition, next

hanging like a caitiff from the top of the theatre, and suddenly

flopping down on the devoted heads of first and second fiddle in the

orchestra. Hip, hip! away, you little wicked-eyed younkers, and when you

go home put the poker in the fire, Master Jacky, turn in your small

toes, and with your redhot plaything burn holes in the tails of papa’s

coat, while Sarah Jane dances about in all the ecstasy of Columbine.

There is not much interest in going minutely over the theatres, and

recording all the peculiarities of treatment. At Covent Garden the

preliminary burlesque is the best subject that can be imagined— _Y^e

Belle Alliance_, but it is very poorly treated. The most remarkable

thing about the pantomime is the curtain. What is that, most gentle

reader? An immense advertisement sheet, in which Mechi, and Moses, and

Madame Tussaud, and all the notorious puffers, dazzle the eye of the

spectators, with magic strops and wonders of cheapness, until the

curtain rises on the usual trickery of the evening. “Shilling

razors”—“Whiskers in five minutes”—“Baking powder”—“Who’s your

glover?”—“Look to your legs”—“Gentlemen’s hair dyed in half-an-hour,

ladies’ in an hour”—“Caspiato, or the folding bonnet; to fold in a box

two inches deep”—“The Teflis silk umbrella,” and all the chicanery of

Sheffield and Brummagem wares;—these are the objects of contemplation

that, as a kind of mercantile prelude, in which the auctioneer’s hammer

and the chinking of coin are the principal instruments, are intended to

prepare the mind for the more honest arts of harlequin and pantaloon.

Let us go to Drury Lane, the lessee of which is a man who seems anxious

to be regarded as the English Barnum, and who probably, like his

American prototype, would accept it as the greatest of compliments were

we to describe him as the most perfect humbug in London. Jenny Lind, the

Feejee mermaid, and the woolly horse, were all the same to Barnum. The

African twins, Vauxhall Gardens, the cage of lions, Charles Mathews, or

Miss Glyn—it is all the same to E. T. Smith. His great guns for the

present are Charles Mathews and Tom Matthews. The _Great Gun-Trick_, of

which the former is the life and soul, appearing as Professor Mathews,

the wizard of the S.S.W. by S., is a really clever little piece, happy

in idea, brilliant in execution, and worthy of all its success. The

pantomime, _Hey, diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle_, is all

fiddlededee. Tom Matthews, the clown, plays the deuce with the tea and

the pale ale, and when Jim and Jerry go to the public-house hard by,

with the name of Tom Matthews above it, and his picture as merry-andrew

above that, don’t they expect to see a red-and-white face peeping from

the back shop, and wonder what sort of a man Mr Clown is at home, and

what sort of fourpenny he can recommend? Pass down the Strand to the

Adelphi. There is an audience on the most friendly terms with the

performers, an unsophisticated audience, that roars and screams, and

thoroughly enjoys. When Wright takes off his hat, how they laugh; when

he puts it on a chair, how they scream; when he sits on it, what

convulsions! The peculiarity of the pantomime here is, that Madame

Celeste appears as harlequin. She goes through the performance with

marvellous agility, but, on the whole, one could wish that in this case

the cap of harlequin had really the power of rendering the wearer

invisible. At the Haymarket, Mr Buckstone has turned his attention to

entomology, and given us _The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s

Feast_. He has succeeded in overcoming our antipathy to insects, in

teaching us to endure wasps, negotiate with fleas, hobanob with spiders,

and flirt with flies. If the Haymarket is entomological, Sadler’s Wells

is decidedly feline, and the Princess’s partly feline, partly canine,

partly ornithological. The latter is without doubt the best pantomime of

the year—the best in idea, the best put upon the stage. It is impossible

to give an idea of it without going more into detail than we can afford.

The introduction is supposed to take place partly in the land of birds

and partly in the isle of beasts; the canaries and humming-birds are

afraid of the cats, and the story of the Maid and the Magpie is

interweaved with the hopes and fears of the bright-plumed birds and the

gigantic grimalkins, that play and roll over each other like veritable

kittens on the hearth-rug. Then, in the harlequinade, we have the _pas

des parachutes_ by the young ladies, who come upon the stage—how?

dropping from the clouds; the gymnastic feats of Mr Tanner’s wonderful

dogs, who poise themselves on barrels and dance on their heads as nimbly

as clown in the sawdust of the circus; and best of all, the

representation of the banquet in _Henry VIII._ by a troop of children,

the little bluff King Hal making love to a diminutive Anne Bulleyn, a

miniature Queen Kate scratching the face and tearing the eyes of her

maid of honour in a way that would have shocked Shakespeare not less

than Dr Watts, who declares that little hands were never made for such a

purpose.

The Princess’s Theatre ought to produce the best pantomime, for it is

the theatre of all others which pays most attention to stage effect; and

it would be strange, if, eclipsing all others in the illustration of the

Shakespearean drama, it should be behindhand in the representation of

its pantomime. It is no vulgar brilliance of scenery, no clap-trap

effects of green, red, and gold without meaning, that Mr Charles Kean

introduces to his audience. There is always something striking,

something to remember, something wholly original and highly suggestive,

sometimes even poetical, in his scenic effect. Take the angel tableau in

_Faust_ and _Marguerite_, which is substantially the same as in the

dying vision of Queen Katherine, what a fine solemn effect it had in

feeling, how pure and beautiful it looked as a picture, and, last of

all, how cleverly managed as a mere mechanical contrivance—the angels

sliding down without any visible support. Or take the banquet scene in

_Henry VIII._; there was a marvellous originality in the point of view

from which the banquet-hall was seen. It was represented slanting up the

stage, so that the spectators were supposed to stand, not at the end,

but at the corner of it. There is a picture in the window of every

printshop, in which the Duke of Wellington is represented feasting his

Waterloo comrades, and which is drawn from a similar point of view. Make

the slant greater, cut the table off in the middle by the side-scenes or

the picture-frame, and we have the suggestion of a room of illimitable

extent. Compare this imaginative mode of suggesting a great space, with

the vulgar method adopted in Drury Lane, where, in the absurd procession

of idols that ended Fitzball’s Egyptian monster of a play, the stage was

thrown open to the back wall, and one looked at a stream of cats, rats,

and crocodiles, coming down a small street. The scenery and upholstery

of Mr Charles Kean, it is true, are very much decried by certain

writers, and are continually brought forward as evidences of the low

estate of the drama. These writers, however, seem to speak with a

personal feeling against the manager of the Princess’s, and with very

little knowledge of the history of the drama. And on these two points,

the present low estate of the theatre and Mr Kean’s share in that

degradation, we have a few remarks to make. Praise it or blame it—the

tendency to scenic illustration is the characteristic of the British

theatre in its latest development, and rightly to understand its

intention, is rightly to comprehend the position of our modern drama.

With regard to the present decline of the drama, we must point out that

in its entire history there never has been a time when it has not been

exposed to the severest condemnation which our language is capable of

expressing. It has always been giving up the ghost, always dead, or

worthy of death. Shakespeare began to write for the stage in 1589.

Exactly ten years before was published the earliest diatribe against the

stage, at least the earliest of importance:—“The School of Abuse:

containing a pleasant invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters,

and suchlike Caterpillars of a Commonwealth: setting up the flag of

defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their bulwarks,

by profane writers, natural reason, and common experience: a discourse

as pleasant for gentlemen that favour learning, as profitable for all

that will follow virtue. By Stephen Gosson.” After Gosson came Philip

Stubbes, then Rankins, then Rainolds; then _Histriomastin_, the play:

and many years afterwards, the still more celebrated _Histriomastin_ of

William Prynne, which took the author seven years to compose, and four

years more to pass through the press. These attacks were levelled

against the licentiousness of the stage; had in view the suppression,

rather than the reformation, of the theatres; and were so far successful

that for a period of years, in which the drama suffered greater

comparative injury than has ever since or was ever before inflicted on

it, the acting of plays was entirely prohibited. So great was the injury

inflicted that from this time forward—from the reopening of the

playhouses under Charles II. to the present hour—the cry has never

ceased to be heard that the British drama is either dead or dying. All

manner of changes have been rung upon it. At one time, amid the

unparalleled licentiousness of Wycherley and Congreve, Vanbrugh and

Farquhar, when a hard heart was the best flint for wit to sparkle from,

and a hardened conscience the best steel to make it sparkle, the

conclusion was drawn quite logically that artistic degradation is the

inevitable accompaniment of such moral debasement, the sensual inhuman

spirit tending to destroy that power of sympathy which is the

fountainhead of dramatic inspiration. Then when the Italian opera came

into vogue, and the fashionables of London turned a ready ear to the

poetry of an unknown language, it was declared (by Sir Richard Steele,

if we remember rightly, or at all events in the epilogue to one of his

plays) that the English, who had eschewed Popery in religion, were

hankering after Popery in wit; and loud and many were the warnings

raised against the growing apostasy. Again, when the vein of native

talent seemed to have been exhausted, and almost every piece that could

boast of the slightest success had a plot borrowed from the Spanish, and

sentiment borrowed from the French, refugee characters and the refuse of

foreign wit, how bitterly was it lamented that so wealthy an heiress,

and so beautiful, as the muse of the British drama, having squandered

her dowry and prostituted her gifts to ignoble ends, should thus at

length be driven forth in penury to live on alien charity, and perhaps,

like another Jane Shore, to end a wretched existence begging on the

highways and byways of literature? At a later period, the ignominious

demise of the British muse was expected with still greater certainty,

when the play-wrights seemed to have forgotten even the art of forging

clever imitations, seemed to have lost even the Spartan talent of clever

plagiarism, and their highest achievements were avowedly translated from

Kotzebue and other Germans. And afterwards, when some of the poets who

adorned the early part of the present century—Coleridge, Maturin,

Milman—surrounding as it were the deathbed of the old lady, did their

best to keep her in life, critical doctors shook their heads and

shrugged their shoulders as if the labour were useless, and but a

prolonging of the last inevitable agonies of a toothless, palsied,

miserable old beldame, that had better die than live. She has not yet

given up the ghost, however, nor is likely to do so in a hurry.

Nevertheless the symptoms of dissatisfaction, so far from being

silenced, are more frequent and doleful than ever, and are now directed

not only against the dramatists, but also against the actors, there

being no doubt that, to whatever cause it may be owing (probably it is

very much due to that commonly assigned, the abolition of theatrical

monopoly, which has distributed amongst a number of companies the

histrionic talent formerly concentrated in two), it is extremely

difficult to secure for a comedy, and almost impossible to secure for

the highest tragedy, a strong and thoroughly good cast, so that from the

protagonist down to the meanest performer every part is well fitted, and

the result on the stage, with all the accompaniments of costume,

scenery, and music, is a perfect whole, a true work of art. When, partly

on this account—namely, the inefficiency of the actors—but partly also

through a tendency which is inherent in all art, Mr Macready and other

managers after him paid extraordinary attention to the dressing of the

stage, so that cases have occurred, on the representation of a new

piece, of the audience calling before the curtain, not the author who

planned the whole of it, not the manager who brought it effectually to

light, not the actors who stood forward as the chief interpreters of the

play, but the scenic artist who, with his paint-pots and his Dutch foil,

his muslin waterfalls and his paper moons, wrought in the gorgeous

background,—dire were the denunciations hurled against those who seemed

bent on transforming the theatre into a prodigious panoramic peep-show,

to which the dialogue of the players has about the same merely accessory

relation as the music of the orchestra. And these last are the most

frequent cries, now that Mr Charles Kean has so far outstript his

predecessors as almost to create an epoch in the history of the stage,

by the production of spectacles which, for splendour and truth of

representation, could, some years ago, have hardly been deemed possible.

On the production of _Sardanapalus_, it was said that he had turned his

theatre into a Gallery of Illustration, and that, properly read, his

playbills invited the public to witness, not the Drama of

_Sardanapalus_, but the Diorama of Nineveh.

Now, suppose that this, and worse than all this, is true—granting that

the stage is in the worst state possible, let us compare the

denunciations now directed against it with the description that Gifford

gives of a period which we are accustomed to look back upon us a kind of

golden age. It may be instructive to quote the passage, as a warning to

those who may be disposed to howl too lugubriously over the fancied ruin

of the drama. In the preface to the _Mæviad_, published in 1795, he

writes as follows: “I know not if the stage has been so low, since the

days of Gammer Gurton, as at this hour. It seems as if all the

blockheads in the kingdom had started up, and exclaimed with one voice,

‘Come, let us write for the theatres.’ In this there is nothing,

perhaps, altogether new; the striking and peculiar novelty of the times

seems to be, that ALL they write is received. Of the three parties

concerned in this business, the writers and the managers seem the least

culpable. If the town will feed on husks, extraordinary pains need not

be taken to find them anything more palatable. But what shall we say of

the people? The lower orders are so brutified by the lamentable follies

of O’Keefe, and Cobbe, and Pilon, and I know not who—_Sardi venales_,

each worse than the other—that they have lost all relish for simplicity

and genuine humour; nay, ignorance itself, unless it be gross and

glaring, cannot hope for ‘their most sweet voices.’ And the higher ranks

are so mawkishly mild that they take with a placid simper whatever comes

before them; or, if they now and then experience a slight fit of

disgust, have not resolution enough to express it, but sit yawning and

gaping in each other’s faces for a little encouragement in their

culpable forbearance.” Then, in a note to the _Baviad_, he speaks of a

deep even lower than the bathos of O’Keefe. On referring to Morton,

Reynolds, and Holcroft—to “Morton’s catchword,” to Reynolds’ “flippant

trash,” and to “Holcroft’s Shug-lane cant”—he asks, “Will future ages

believe that this facetious triumvirate should think nothing more to be

necessary to the construction of a play than an eternal repetition of

some contemptible vulgarity, such as ‘That’s your sort!’ ‘Hey, damme!’

‘What’s to pay!’ ‘Keep moving!’ &c. They will: for they will have

blockheads of _their own_, who will found their claims to celebrity on

similar follies. What, however, they will never credit is, that these

drivellings of idiotism, these catchwords, should actually preserve

their respective authors from being hooted off the stage. No, they will

not believe that an English audience could be so besotted, so brutified,

as to receive such senseless exclamations with bursts of laughter, with

peals of applause. I cannot believe it myself, though I have witnessed

it. _Haud credo_—if I may reverse the good father’s position—_haud

credo, quia possibile est._” And not to quote further, let us but cite

his description of the tragedy of the time:

“From first to last

Your joy is fustian, and your grief bombast;

Rhetoric has banished reason; kings and queens

Vent in hyperboles their royal spleens;

Guardsmen in metaphors express their hopes;

And ‘maidens, in white linen,’ howl in tropes.”

Terribly severe is all this—terrible for its truth. Gifford was not the

man to write mincingly. Nor ought we, at the present day, to write

mincingly of the iniquities and stupidities of the stage. But the fact

is, that whatever be the shortcomings of the British stage at the

present moment, and however much it may deserve the denunciations of

criticism, it is incumbent on us to dwell on those indications of

promise which are too much overlooked, rather than on the enormous

deficiencies which are patent to every observer. Let us see whether the

illustrative tendency of the time may not have its bright side as well

as a dark, and may not have a higher purpose than spectacular effect.

It would indeed be a great mistake to imagine, that in the production of

_King Henry VIII._, and the other dramas that went before it, the

principal object of Mr Charles Kean was simply to place upon the stage a

dazzling spectacle, and that his success as a manager has been due to a

correct appreciation of the public taste in this matter. Were this the

case, there would be nothing special in his managerial career. Brilliant

spectacle is nothing new in the history of the theatre—and the history

of the English theatre. In the days of James I., some of the stage

properties were so very splendid, that we have read of certain lieges

who were afraid lest the double-gilt magnificence of the tragedy-kings

should cast the majesty of the real sovereign into shade, and so

endanger the crown. However absurd and chimerical, what could be more

gorgeous than the masques and pageants which were so common in those

days? Our extravaganzas (counterparts, to a certain extent, of the

ancient masque), although they are more appropriate in costume, and

altogether more matter of fact, are not nearly so garish. Where,

nowadays, shall we find a queen willing to act like Queen Anne of

Denmark—she and the ladies of her court acting the negresses in Ben

Jonson’s masque of _Blackness_? Such magnificence Mr Charles Kean

assuredly cannot rival, and his claim to originality is not founded on

the gorgeousness of the spectacle which he has placed before the

footlights: he claims the praise of historical accuracy. It will be

remembered how, in the playbill of his _Macbeth_—a curiosity in its

way—he cited the authority of Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, Strabo, Xiphilin,

Snorre, Ducange, and the Eyrbiggia Saga—(not bad for a playbill, the

Eyrbiggia Saga!)—and in the not less remarkable programme of

_Sardanapalus_, he lays so great a stress on the virtues of antiquarian

research and historical fidelity, as not only to speak of his having

learnt that scenic illustration, _if it have the weight of authority_,

may adorn and add dignity to the noble works of genius; and to assert

that in decoration of every kind, whether scenic or otherwise, he has,

in the first instance, aimed at truth, with the grand object of

conveying to the stage an accurate portraiture and a living picture of a

bygone age; but also to point it out as a note-worthy fact that, until

the present moment, it has been impossible to render Lord Byron’s

tragedy of _Sardanapalus_ upon the stage with proper dramatic effect,

_because until now we have known nothing of Assyrian architecture and

costume_; so that, according to this view, it is not enough to have for

such plays an architecture and costume artistically correct—they must

also be historically genuine. This magnifying of historical truth, this

drifting from the open and trackless sea of fiction to the _terra firma_

and unalterable landmarks of fact—a strong tendency to REALISM, is the

chief characteristic of Mr Kean’s management. And it is observable not

merely in his mode of placing a drama upon the stage, but in his own

style of acting. Look at Louis XI.—look at Cardinal Wolsey, remarkable

for the specification of little traits and details that serve to realise

the character as much as possible in that style which has been called

pre-Raphaelite.

Nor is this tendency peculiar to the management of the Princess’s

Theatre. It is manifested in various ways on nearly every stage

throughout the country, sometimes absurdly enough. A provincial theatre

announces a grand chivalric spectacle, “with seven hundred pounds’ worth

of real armour!” A New York theatre announces that the _School for

Scandal_ will be produced with magnificent carpets, mirrors, and genuine

silver plate! _Whittington and his Cat_ is produced with a _real_ rat

amongst the crowds of sham ones, only the sense of reality is destroyed

by the terrier that plays the cat, forgetting his catskin and beginning

to yelp. One of the City theatres, in announcing the _Hertfordshire

Tragedy_, set forth that the very gig in which Thurtell drove his victim

to be murdered, and the very table on which the pork-chops were

afterwards devoured, would form part of the stage properties—being

expressly engaged for this theatre. In contrast with such inane realism,

one had considerable satisfaction in gazing on the dog which Launcelot

Gobbo, in Mr Talfourd’s travesty of _Shylock_, so triumphantly led

about—a toy-spaniel on wheels. It is perhaps unfair to quote in such a

connection the latest vagary of this realistic tendency—a curious bit of

pre-Raphaelitism—on the part of Messrs Tom Taylor and Charles Reade,

who, intending in the _King’s Rival_ to produce as complete a picture as

possible of the times of Charles II.—with its wit and wantonness,

courtesies, familiarities, periwigs, Mr Pepys, and Spring

Gardens—actually brought Major Wildman on the stage, in shirt and

breeches, wet and torn, and abominably plague-stricken, all the people

flying from the unsightly wretch as from an Afrit of the horrible Kaf,

or a Goul of the bottomless pit. And so, for the sake of presenting a

picture of perfect accuracy, these authors chose to turn the theatre

into a Chamber of Horrors. And since this pre-Raphaelitism, or an

antiquarianism worse than pre-Raphaelitism, is the order of the day, we

are sometimes surprised that none of the managers has seized upon that

one of Shakespeare’s plays in which, of all others, there is room for

the display of historical ingenuity, and all the originality of

research. We allude to the _Tempest_, and hope they will make use of the

idea, when we point out that as, according to Mr Kean, it was impossible

to represent the _Sardanapalus_ of Lord Byron upon the stage until Mr

Layard made his discoveries at Nineveh; so, until about fifty years ago,

when Mr Malone’s _Essay on the Tempest_ was published, it was impossible

to produce that play adequately in any theatre. The Rev. Joseph Hunter

has attempted to identify the abode of Prospero with Lampedusa, an

island half-way between Malta and the African coast, grounding his

opinion upon this amongst other facts, that Lampedusa furnishes the

Maltese with firewood, and Prospero sends Caliban forth to collect

firewood! This, however, is but child’s-play to the labour of Malone,

who not only succeeds in identifying the island with the Bermudas, but

actually discovers the identical tempest that gives its name to the

play—“the dreadful hurricane that dispersed the fleet of Sir George

Somers and Sir Thomas Gates, in July 1609, on their passage with a large

supply of provisions and men for the infant colony in Virginia, by which

the Admiral ship, as it was called, having those commanders on board

[‘some noble creatures’], was separated from the rest of the fleet, and

wrecked on the Island of Bermuda.” Then come the incidental phrases

descriptive of the storm that identify it with the _Tempest_—“Admiral

ship parted from the rest of the fleet”—“they resolved to shut up the

hatches”—“take leave of each other”—“ship struck upon a rock”—“most

luckily thrown up between two, as upright as if she had been on the

stocks”—“arrived in safety without the loss of a man”—“Bermodes”—“Isle

of Devils”—“enchanted place”—“sea-monster in shape like a man”—“richest,

pleasantest, most healthful place ever seen.” What a splendid hit Mr

Kean or Mr Phelps would make if only some possible Mr Layard could be

found who should go and excavate the cell of Prospero! Why not? Is there

not perfect truth in what Mr Charles Mathews says:—“In France the

dramatic authors have free permission to distort history ingeniously, on

condition of being gay and witty. In England, provided we are true to

history, we have free permission to be dull and tiresome.”

Now, if some of the phrases which we have been using, have been used

correctly; if we have been right in speaking of the pre-Raphaelitism and

realism of the theatre, it will be evident that the question as to the

present state of the drama, in particular, resolves itself into a much

wider question as to the present state of art generally. And the fact

is, that the more narrowly we examine the sister arts, the more nearly

do we find that they assimilate. In the pictorial art we find the same

symptoms of disintegration and decay as in the dramatic; in both, we

find the same elements of promise. Look at the walls of our

exhibition-rooms, and behold the inanities that figure there,

contemporary with the inanities of the theatre. This picture either

displays as little action as a modern tragedy, or its action is as

spasmodic as an Adelphi melodrama. In how many of these pictures do we

find the artists compensating for bad drawing with gaudy colour, hiding

vacancy of expression in a blaze of light, feebleness of passion in a

tornado of shadows, and blundering perspective, aerial and linear, in a

mist as convenient as the clouds by which the gods of Homer saved their

heroes from the lances of the enemy? The very faults we find in the

theatre! Eternal mannerism, staginess, mimicry, trickery, grimacing,

catchwords, red lights and blue lights, and the name of the perruquier

mentioned in the playbills in large letters! In how many pictures of

naked legs in the last Exhibition, did you not recognise the calves of

the gallant grenadier who is now fighting the battles of his country?

That beard, that turban; we think we have seen the face of that Turkish

Jew in at least fifty-seven pictures; and he so haunts us throughout the

Exhibition-rooms in a thousand intolerable disguises—his long nose here,

and his cold brown eye there, as if, after using him whole as long as

possible, the artists at length cut him into little pieces, and made a

division of his remains, that really it would be a pleasure to know that

such had been his actual fate. It is the very vice of the stage, where

we find Mr A—— (who plays the villains), or Mr B—— (who plays the

enamoured young gentleman), or Mr C—— (who does the comic), eternally

playing themselves, and through every possible transformation presenting

us with the same legs and arms, and expressive nose and cracked voice.

Whether on the boards or on the canvass, incapacity and commonplace

issue in virtually the same results. And it so happens that if one were

asked what are the most striking, the most note-worthy, or the most

notorious peculiarities, at this moment, of our picture-galleries on the

one hand, or of the theatres on the other, one must inevitably fix upon

the pre-Raphaelitism of the one, and the Revivalism of the other, and

recognise them as twins. Only it must be remembered that the

pre-Raphaelitism of the picture-galleries is but one of the forms,

although the most peculiar form, in which the tendency to realism is

manifested. It is manifested not less determinately in the prominence

given to portraiture—portraits of “men, women, and Herveys,” portraits

of dogs, portraits of horses, portraits of prize oxen and pigs, and dead

game, and black-faced ewes. The colouring which Gibson gives to his

statues is a move in the same direction. And the tendency is symbolised

and strengthened by the photographic art which has sprung up within the

last few years, and promises, whether for good or for evil, to exercise

so much influence on every easel throughout the country.

To come to the point then: What is the meaning of all this realism? If,

with all the multiform absurdities in which it is manifested, it must

nevertheless be admitted that all or most of the symptoms of vitality in

the imitative arts are at the present moment expressed in this manner,

what is the value of it?

The fact is, that whenever this tendency to realism is manifested with

more than ordinary force (we were going to say, virulence), it is a most

critical symptom. It is distinctive of what the old physicians would

have called two separate climacterics in the history of art. It marks

the infancy and the old age of art—the rise and the fall. It is just as

in the individual man—at first in childhood, and at last in second

childhood, he worships the real, and refuses to accept what he cannot

believe in as absolutely and historically true. “But is it true?”

inquires the child; “is it a fact?” says the old man. The precise

difference between the realism of infancy and that of age is another

matter to which we shall afterwards have to refer: at present we have

only to do with their generic identity. And as the individual man is in

almost every respect a miniature of the race, so we find this generic

realism characteristic of at once the beginning and the end of art. In

the middle space it culminates towards the pure azure of the ideal.

We are not sure, however, that this doctrine as to the periods of

realism, evident as it would seem to be, will obtain the immediate

acceptance of every reader: we are not sure, because the counter-view

has more than once already been put forward—and by some of the critics

in the present century has been maintained with great vigour, that art

displays most imagination in its infancy, and that—as at once a proof

and illustration of the fact—we find its most ancient works to be the

best. While the doctrine, as commonly advanced, seems to make this wide

and sweeping generalisation, it is of course more cautiously worded, so

as to apply chiefly to poetry—epical and lyrical: as applied to the

dramatic or imitative arts, there is such a mass of evidence against it,

that it could safely be advanced only by implication. But it is not true

even with reference to the narrative poet—call him what men will—bard,

aoidos, minstrel, maker, minnesinger, scald. For observe, that the point

in dispute is not whether the most ancient poets are the best; grant for

a moment that they are: but wherein lies their distinguishing

excellence? are they more _imaginative_ than later ones? Nothing of the

kind: the _imaginative_ poets belong to what a geologist would call the

pleiocene formation—a much later epoch. The elder bards are remarkable

above all things for their truthfulness, their minute observation, their

naturalness, their reality. Life, the present life in the present world,

was to them an overwhelming reality, and they had no inclination, little

need, to imagine a new world, and go and live in it. A most wonderful

imagination they certainly displayed, but they were quite unconscious of

the gift: they did not imagine, like Edmund Spenser or John Keats, for

the sake of imagining; they did not dream for the mere pleasure of

dreaming. Their pleasure in dreaming was a sub-conscious pleasure. Truth

was the grand and ostensible object; and if the facts which they

proposed to discover and describe were often mere fancies, still they

were not recognised as fancies. A mere imagination they would have

regarded as a mere lie. The so-called facts for which, in modern phrase,

they were indebted to imagination, they professed to have received from

reason, from memory, from inspiration, from veritable supernatural

vision, always from a credible source. And here, indeed, lies the

strength of the argument which refers the origin of verse to the

requirements of memory, so that versification was in its first intention

but a system of mnemonics. Right or wrong, that theory has been endorsed

by illustrious names; and it must be admitted even by an opponent, that

the whole tone of the elder poetry speaks in its favour. There is a tone

of sincerity in the elder poets, as if they could not play with their

subject, and as if upon them all had been bestowed the gift which a

fairy is said to have bestowed upon Thomas of Ercildoune—the tongue that

could not lie, the tongue that could not feign. They never seem to be

telling tales; they are relating histories. They do not attempt to

tickle the imagination; they are committing important and interesting

facts to memory. And this also is the reason why the rhyming

chroniclers—say Robert de Brunne, or Robert of Gloucester, who were

nothing but rhymers—were nevertheless regarded as true poets. They

narrated history in numerous verse: what more did those who were truly

called poets profess to do? These latter made their narratives more

interesting, but it was not recognised that the narratives were of a

different kind. Psychological analysis had not yet penetrated so far as

to discern imagination in the true poet, and none in the rhyming

chronicler. It had not yet discovered that the office of the poet is

more than this—viz., to tell what he knows faithfully, pleasingly, and

in verse. Credibility was deemed the first virtue of the poet, the

primrose of the poetical flora. What if their world be all or half

unreal?—still they believed it to be real. As it is long before the poor

mortals who have been snatched away to Elfland discover that all the

splendour which surrounds them is but a dream, that the gold is dross,

and the diamonds glass, and the brocades worsted, and the velvets

cotton, and all unreality; even so the poets of a country (children

kidnapped from a better world) do not all at once discover that the

world they live in is wholly unreal, wholly ideal. They are, at first,

the most extreme of realists.

It thus appears that even in poetry the early period is remarkable for

its realism. The poets do not begin with sublimated fancies in the

highest heaven of invention. The ascent of Mont Blanc is quite a modern

feat. All that old Provençal minstrelsy—sirvente and chanson—murmurs at

the foot of the Alps. And if this be true of poetry, it is much more

true of the imitative arts—the drama, painting, and sculpture. If

sculpture perished in the realism of Roman portraiture, it began with

the realism of Egyptian mummy—inglorious attempt to preserve the real

thing. The same law holds in painting. In his work on the North American

Indians, Mr Catlin describes a little incident which furnishes a very

good illustration of how a savage regards painting, and how the art in

its infancy would infallibly be treated. In taking the likeness of one

of these Indians, Mr Catlin proceeded to paint the shadow of the nose,

to the no small bewilderment of the onlookers, who immediately found

fault with the dark patch. He pointed out the shadow of the nose which

it was intended to represent; but no—they were unable to understand; it

was an injury to the countenance of their medicine-man; there must be no

shadow, and without shadow the picture was painted. They insisted on his

painting reality, not appearance. We find the counterpart of this in the

old medieval pictures—all so shadowless. The feeling for shadow stole

very gradually over the artistic mind. And in many other details one

might note how the painter, in the early dawn of the art, seeks to

represent the object before him, not as it appears to his eye at one

particular moment, but as it is, or as he knows it to be, in reality. He

knows, for example, that a hand is the flattened extremity of the arm,

ending in five points; in his pictures, accordingly, the hand is

invariably spread out with the unmistakable digits—one, two, three,

four, five—always five. And we do not know that there is anything in the

history of art more remarkable than the contrast between our present

mode of regarding a picture, and that which we find current in the olden

times. We regard a picture as a picture—a representation—a memory—an

imagination. Three hundred years ago, it was the established formula of

praise to say that it was a reality—the thing itself. One might still go

farther back and recall the anecdotes told of the old Greek painters—of

the horse neighing to the picture of a horse by Apelles, and the curious

test which Zeuxis applied to one of his pictures, the birds coming to

eat the grapes, which were thus shown to be well painted, but

unterrified by the figure of the man who carried the grapes, which was

thus shown to be badly painted.[13] And we might quote whole pages from

Vasari to show how an artist and a critic of the _cinque cento_ looked

upon a work of art. We will quote but one or two sentences: “Every touch

of the pencil,” says Vasari of one of Raphael’s Madonnas—“every touch of

the pencil in the heads, hands, and feet of this work, has produced such

effect that the parts seem rather to be of the living flesh than the

mere colours of the painter.” Again, with reference to musical

instruments in a picture of St Cecilia, he says, that they “lie

scattered around her; and these do not seem to be merely painted, but

might be taken for the real objects represented.” Yet again he says, “It

may indeed with truth be declared that the paintings of other masters

are properly to be called paintings, but those of Raphael may well be

designated the life itself, for the flesh trembles, the breathing is

made obvious to sight, the pulses in his figures are beating, and life

is in its utmost animation through all his works.” Here we find still in

force the old feeling after realism which is characteristic of the

earliest period of art, and we find it coincident with a style of

painting that more and more daily tended towards conventional treatment

and idealisations—until at length, in course of time, ideality, having

reached its highest point, passed into allegory, and in these allegories

too often took the one venturesome step from the sublime to the

ridiculous, so that we can scarcely regard Goldsmith as indulging in

caricature when he described the painting of the Wakefield family, with

Mrs Primrose as Venus, and the worthy doctor in a gown and bands

presenting her with his books on the Whistonian controversy; Olivia, an

amazon, dressed in a green Joseph; Sophia, a shepherdess, with plenty of

sheep; and poor Moses with a hat and white feather. Let any one who

doubts this turn to Rubens’ allegories descriptive of the life and reign

of Marie de Medici, where naked young gentlemen appear at court beside

ladies overladen with dress, where the caduceus fraternises with the

crosier, and the queen grasps indifferently a thyrsus or a sceptre;

where Mercury stands unabashed by the legate of the pope, his winged hat

in delightful contrast with the red hat of the cardinal; and where one

can hardly tell which is more terrible, the lion raging on earth, or the

lion gloriously rampant amongst the signs of the Zodiac. And if now,

against such bewildering allegory and algebraic generalisations, the

caricature of ideality, we find the present generation of artists

protesting with perhaps too much vehemence, and all more or less in one

way or another—sometimes soberly, sometimes extravagantly—returning

again to realism, what are we to say? Is it the art of painting sinking

into dotage, or the art of painting renewing its youth? Certainly,

whatever faults have been attributed to the realists of our time, we are

not aware that they have ever been charged with the sin of paralytic

senility.