"The letters are original, though sometimes in bad taste, and
generally verbose."
_Edinburgh Review_.
I had not been a long time at College before I received a large packet
from home, enclosing a number of letters from my uncle, Frederick, and
Lucy. One of them was folded in an odd fashion--directed in a stiff
and inky hand, and surmounted with a mass of red sealing wax, on which
was rudely impressed the ragged outline of the Granby arms. This was
one of my uncle's pedantic, prolix, advisory, and generous epistles,
and I was soon placed in possession of the following neatly written
sentences.
_Chalgrave_, ----.
_My Dear Boy_:--When Erasmus visited Sir Thomas More, that obstinate
sophist, and that martyr to a scolding wife, (how nobly he bore her!)
he said that he could always write a pleasing letter when his hand was
the secretary of his heart. _En passant_, Erasmus made a gallant
speech on this memorable visit. In admiring the kind fashion of
saluting females with a kiss, on your arrival or departure from an
entertainment, he said, and that philosophically, that this habit
preserved health, in calling a constant and blushing glow to the
cheek, and that in his moments of sickness he could wish no happier
situation than to be placed near an English nunnery, where if he could
not be kissed for charity he might yet live in hopes of it. Now my
hand is the obedient secretary, and my heart is anxious to dictate its
duties. How true, yet how simple is this conceit! and how far superior
to the monkish verbosity, and strangled sentiment of those bad novels
which you read merely because they are new. The heart is the
_écritoire_ of the letter writer, and have you never paused with
feelings of admiration and delight over the affectionate and eloquent
letters of a woman? She writes from the heart, and pours out the
swelling torrent of all her thoughts and feelings. Man thinks _what_
to write, and will fritter away feeling and sacrifice nature in the
struggle for easy periods and mellifluous cadences. It is not learning
that shadows with tints of tenderness the beautiful letters of
Tully--nor is it philosophy which lends that nameless grace, and
elastic interest, to the epistles of Pliny. 'Tis nature whose
affections, like the rainbow, beautify and hallow the roughness of
every spot over which it spans its creative arch. A letter, says
Tully, cannot blush, "_epistola enim non erubescit_," if it could, it
would never have this characteristic when I addressed it to you. I
cannot write aught that will suffuse either your cheek or mine, though
I might whisper something about your fair cousin, Isa Gordon. You love
her, Lionel? and she may return your affection, but you must owe it to
your distinction. Isa is no sickly and prurient-hearted girl who can
solely love the person, for she demands the intellectual man, and in
the hymeneal chaplet which is to adorn her brow, the laurel must twine
its emblematic vanities. Let this hope excite you to study--let this
holy object imp your eagle wing, for on every page of your books you
must see her name urging and stimulating the slumbering energies of
your ambition. I would not have you free from love, nor untouched, as
Spenser calls it, by its pensive discontent, for no young man can
prosper without its stirring and startling excitements. I myself,
"_vixi puellis idoneus_," and I know that it softens the asperities of
temper--gentles the turbulence of youth--breaks down the outworks of
vice, and detracts no more from the firmness of mind than the polish
of the diamond does from its solidity. You may read philosophy and
think of woman--dwell on poetry and find your taste expanding into
delicacy and elevation by dreaming of her gentleness, and I suppose
that even in the crabbed study of the law, you may find her image
peeping over black letter, or smiling through yellow parchment. When I
was at college poor Ridon whom Johnstone shot, ('twas a fair duel)
being in love, translated most of that portion of Coke upon Littleton
which relates to females, into poetry of all styles, and measures.
Only think of his drawing poetical conceits from this dull book, and
scattering them on the margin of the leaden volume, like so many
flowers prodigally thrown into a grave-yard! I have this rare copy,
and in a page blotted with notes, references, and _quæres_, these
crippled lines, have stumbled themselves into the text.
"_Tenant per la curtesie d'Englettere_."
Chap. iv. sect. 35.
A feme that has lands
Enters Hymen's bands,
And has heirs in the nuptial tye;
Then these lands shall descend,
When her life's at an end,
To her Lord in curtesy.
This species of poetry was all that he ever wrote, and he was wont to
say, that he thought it was his duty to the sex, to use the language
of rhyme, and thus make the law respectful.
I do not know how to advise you about the study of law. I once looked
into it, and though it may be a garden teeming with the elegancies of
Poestum, I could not bear that rough dragon of pedantry, Coke, who
guarded its threshold. It is a sort of hustle-cap game, between judges
and lawyers, and a perilous mystery wherein common sense cannot trust
itself, without that peculiar and dogged impudence, which bears all
the vulgarity, without the courage, of effrontery. Now there is
philosophy in every thing, and if you will acquire decent effrontery I
will call it, for your sake, dignity and learning; and I will even
believe that it requires some mind to understand a plain statute, and
some genius to pervert it. Yet I cannot look with a sarcastic eye on
the hallowed relics of the legal institutions of antiquity. Go back,
my dear boy, to the redundant fountains of ancient literature--and you
will find that Plato and Tully, have long ago, looked up for the pure
seat of law only to the bosom of God, and that the Norman gibberish
and dog-latin, which were quoted to burn witches and sustain kings,
though they may make you a lawyer skilled in precedents, can never
make you the scourge of knavery, the fearless champion of innocence,
nor the enlightened advocate of your country's rights. Old Sir Roger
L'Estrange wrote a mournful valedictory, when he left the riots and
Apician nights of the Inns for the labors and stolid gravity of the
bar, and, amid many sarcasms on the profession, he has thus happily
sketched the character of an honest lawyer.
"He can prosecute a suit in equity without seeking to create a
whirlpool where one order shall beget another, {30} and the poor
client be swung around (like a cat before execution,) from decree to
rehearing--from report to exception, and _vice versâ_, till his
fortunes are shipwrecked, and himself drowned, for want of white and
yellow earth to wade through on. He does not play the empiric with his
client, and put him on the rack to make him bleed more freely; casting
him into a swoon with frights of a judgment, and then reviving him
again with a cordial writ of error, or the dear elixir of an
injunction, to keep the brangle alive, as long as there are any vital
spirits in the pouch. He can suffer his neighbors to live quiet about
him without perpetual alarms of actions and indictments, or conjuring
up dormant titles to every commodious seat, and making land fall five
years purchase, merely for lying within ten miles of him."
Devote most of your leisure hours to the study of Virginian
antiquities, for it is a noble field, and one which glows into beauty
beneath cultivation. Williamsburg itself is a hoary and whitened
monument of ancient pomp and power, and there still dwells around it
the trembling twilight of former greatness. There is something
distinctive, learned, and patriotic, in the character of a home
antiquary, which will lift you far above the little pedants, who have
dipped the wing in Kennet, or tasted of the shallow learning of
Athenian Stuart. Do you not remember the indignant, yet pathetic lines
which Warton wrote in a blank leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon, and the
spirited scorn with which he repels the sneers of ignorance and
dulness? The antiquary is neither a visionary, nor an enthusiast, for
his pursuits teach the holiest love of country, and call into action
the softest and gentlest affections of the human heart, while his
guileless life occasionally shines forth with the chastened light of
virtue and learning. Virginia is a land whose thrilling history
beggars all romance--every fragment of which, like a broken vase, will
multiply perfume. Who knows aught of that gallant band, who so
fearfully revenged the massacre of 1622?--the bold patriots who
resisted the illegal restrictions on trade--the intrepid spirits who,
led by Bacon, anticipated by a century our national æra, or that
chivalric corps, who, under Vernon, rotted on the pestilential shores
of Carthagena? Who dwells with the patriot's pride, on that
unconquerable strength of infant freedom which made historic Beverley
the Hampden of the colony? Or who troubles himself to inquire into the
blood-stained life of that Westmoreland Parke, who seized the throne
of Antigua, and who died in the last dyke of a bootless though
fiercely fought field? Who cares to remember the enlightened and
learned botanist Clayton, whose modest book, written in the purest
Latin, gained for himself and country, a once proud though now
forgotten fame? And who will believe that the wise, pious, and
eloquent Bishop Porteus was born, and gambolled away his boyhood on
the sunny shores of the majestic York-river? They are all forgotten!
and we neglect the vivid and truthful romance of our own beautiful
land, to learn the nursery tales of fickle Greece, and factious Rome.
In the shifting of the social scene, naught has been left to remind us
of the busy drama once acted in Virginia, and even garrulous tradition
now doubts its existence, while our feet hourly trample on the
sepulchered silence of all that once adorned, dignified, and elevated
human nature.
I do not wish to give you a learned essay on books, nor to advise you
what authors to read. Your taste is now matured, and that faculty will
see that justice is done to its delicacy. The great object of study is
to teach us _how_, and not _what_ to think; and the principal art of
authorship is the power of pilfering with judgment from the ruins of
ancient lore. But trust not to this poor and suspicious honor. Rely
for success on the daring emprise of your own genius, and should it
fail to lift you from the earth, descend not to the dunghill of
pedantry. Be a poet for the women--a historian for the men--and a
scholar for your own happiness. Confirm your taste by satiating memory
with the beauties of the Spectator, and let Horace hourly talk you
into the dignity and elegance of the sensible gentleman. Be accurate,
rather than extensive, in your knowledge of history, and a
recollection of dates will give you victory in every contest. Learn
the technicalities of geometry; for this will satisfy the groping
mathematician, while the world will take your pedantry for wisdom, and
your crabbed words for learning. There has been, and ever will be, an
everlasting conflict between the radiant course of genius, and the
mole-hill track of diagrams and problems. Strength of mind is claimed
as the attribute of mathematical study, while we forget that any other
study, pursued with the same strictness of attention, will equally
fashion the mind into system and method, while it will be free from
the slavish obedience and indurated dulness, which result from the
memory of lines and proportions.
You know, my dear boy, my notions concerning your dress. Express
nothing in fancy; and without being the Alpha or Omega of fashion, be
neither fop nor sloven, and dress for the effect of general and not
particular dignity, and never wear a striped cravat. Do not ape
eccentricity of manner and opinion, and take the world in a laughing
and good humored mood. I detest a beardless Cato, for I never knew one
of them, who could stand fire. Talk to women about every thing but
prudence and propriety, and they will think you as wise as you are
well bred; for they cannot bear the restraint of advice, or the
judgment of criticism. Tasso makes his heroine taunt Rinaldo with
gravity and sedateness, and when she calls him a "Zenocrates in love"
the volume of her eloquence exhibits the bitterest venom of female
invective.
Chalgrave is now still, solitary, and deserted; and were it not for
Lucy's cheerful voice, I should look on myself as a living tomb. Your
pup Gildippe tore off the cover of my Elzevir Horace, an offence
deserving a halter, yet she is pardoned for your sake. Tell me not of
Sir Isaac Newton's diamond, for he never destroyed a jewel so rare,
and so highly prized--ask Col. H. if a colt is best broken in a
snaffle-bit--and tell him 'tis downright superstition to worm a
genuine pointer. I send the pistols made by Wodgen and Barton, and
carrying a ball of the most approved weight. Do write to me, and never
forget that you are a Granby.
I am, my dear boy,
Yours truly,
CHARLES GRANBY.
P. S. Translate the Ode to Fortune for me! Old Schrevelli said that he
had rather be the author of that poem, than the Emperor of all the
Austrias, and there was more sense than enthusiasm in his noble
preference.
{31} P. S. Never scrape your bullets with a knife--but use a flat
file. Do not play the flute; and never write verses on a "flower
presented to a lady," on "a lady singing," or on "receiving a lock of
hair;" for of all puppyism, this is the smallest accomplishment.
P. S. Never buy a gaudy handkerchief! Do not say _raised_,
_disremember_, _expect_ for _suspect_; and never end the common
courtesies of conversation with the frigid Sir! "Thank ye _Sir!_"
Drink tea instead of coffee, for 'tis more patrician; and do not
render yourself suspected by pronouncing criticisms on wines.
The postscripts were multiplied through a full page, which presented a
striking picture of all the odd conceits--incongruous notions, and
broad feeling which tortured my kind uncle's tranquil brain, and I
arose from the perusal of his letter with mingled emotions of love,
respect, and laughter. Lucy's epistle was like that of all girls, full
of small news, long words, and burning sentences of love and
sentiment, and inquiring in a postscript of the health of Arthur
Ludwell, as her mother was greatly interested in his welfare.
Frederick gave me a learned dissertation on the origin of civil
society, and the philosophy of Bolingbroke, scourging me into frantic
ambition, and ending with a prayer that I would ever keep my honor
untainted. My _honor_ was then the subject of their hopes and fears;
and, as I eyed the pistols, I found the fierceness of my nature
lurking with a tranquil rapture around the open, and undisguised hints
of my family. To my temperament, the neat and elegant workmanship, and
the beautiful polish of the pistols, argued sternness and chivalry:
and under the protection of the code of honor, I was determined, by
braving every conflict, to gratify my long, deep, and vindictive hate
of Pilton. How curiously constituted, how wayward, and yet how
uncontrollable is the swelling pulse of the human heart, when agitated
by some momentary and master passion; at any other period, the
remembrance of Isa Gordon, would have soothed me into a lover's
thoughtful gloom, but now every gentle and luxuriant tendril which was
woven around my heart was a crushed and bleeding ruin, and I examined
my uncle's gift of blood--only to murmur the name of Pilton.
My visits to Miss Pilton's had been attentive, and constant, and I had
concealed my fraud with such art, that I found her listening with
unhesitating confidence, to the deceitful passion which I daily
uttered. Cautious of proposing matrimony, yet ever alert to hint
it--affecting distress and melancholy--and alternately jealous and
confiding, I awoke her sympathy, only to gain her passionate and
abiding affection, while I secured my victory by every art which
duplicity could invent, or falsehood suggest. I saw her reject the
accomplished and educated youth whose pure and guileless feelings had
retained the early romance of childhood's love, and when I found her
in tears, with her head reclining on my bosom, she told me, with a
blushing cheek, that she had sacrificed him, whose singleness and
purity of heart she could not doubt, for me alone.
'Twas a calm and soft evening when Miss Pilton left Williamsburg, and,
ere we parted, I extorted from her unsuspicious feelings a promise
that she would write to me. Day had languished itself into night, when
I found myself a solitary loiterer in the noiseless grove which
skirted the city. The wind sobbed through the dreary and desolate
silence of the forest, and when I looked up to the twinkling and
radiant light which blazes in a starry sky of Virginia, the innate
piety of Nature almost chastened me into repentance. How vain is that
feeble wisdom which impotently labors to read those mute and living
oracles of God? yet who, in searching into them, docs not feel that
his heart is kindled into enthusiasm, by their wild and spiritual
eloquence. May not each bright and dazzling star whose lambent fire
dances over the cloudless sky be the abode of spirits enjoying a realm
of mind--of philosophers who rived the adamant of vulgar error--of
patriots who offered their blood at the shrine of their country--of
those who opened a vista for freedom through the gloom of tyranny--and
of the poet who, fettered to the earth, boldly anticipated a foretaste
of his eternal home, in some earthly, yet beautiful and rapturous
dream?