Among the high privileges, which we digressive writers enjoy, may be
reckoned that which Don Quixote gave his horse, to choose a path and
pursue it at pleasure. In another point there is an affinity between us
and that errant steed, so renowned in the volumes of Cervantic chivalry.
When we begin an excursion, the Lord only knows how it will be
prosecuted, or where it will end. Whim and caprice being commonly our
guides, and those personages never keeping in _their_ almanack a list of
stages, we are sometimes most sadly benighted. As this is my day for
similitudes, I stop not here; having so modestly compared myself and
other ramblers to a quadruped, I will descend still lower into “the
valley of humiliation,” and liken them to an insect, which is a spider.
Though their stock is confessedly small, they have the art of drawing
out a most lengthy texture. Thus an essayist, conscious of the
scantiness of his stores, handles a topic as a farmer’s wife manages her
annual pound of bohea, in such a manner as to make it last.
When I began my second speculation with some general remarks on the
utility of an alliance between application and genius, I little thought
that I should quit my sober task, and commence character painter. When
Fancy handed me a pencil, and bade me sketch the likeness of Meander,
I had no design to ransack his room, or transcribe his diary; and
lastly, when the journal was published, I tremblingly thought I had said
too much, and dreaded lest my readers should complain that they were
surfeited by the Farrago. But they who are even tinged with the
metaphysical doctrine of ideas flowing in a train, will not be
confounded, though they see another speculation rising from the last,
when I narrate the following incident. A friend who had attentively
gazed at the portrait of Meander, saw me the day after its exhibition.
So, Mr. Delineator, cries he, must you become a dauber in caricature?
One so fond of the zigzag walk in life as you, is hardly entitled to
ridicule deviation in another. I blushed; and the suffusion, like
Corporal Trim’s bow, spoke as plainly as a blush could speak, “my man of
remark, you are perfectly sage in your opinion.” This trivial
circumstance led me to reflect, first on my own inconsistency, and next
on that of others. By exposing the rambles of genius I virtually made
proclamation for dissipation to depart, but she taxed me with issuing
contradictory orders, and pertinently asked how she could go into exile,
when I insisted on her keeping me company? I then looked on my
neighbours. Their characters were similar to mine, and they wore not the
uniform of regularity more than myself. Celia, who murders reputations,
as “butcher felleth ox” pronounced, t’other day at a tea-table, a most
bitter invective against scandal, though five minutes before she had
invented a tale of calumny against her friend. Vafer censorially
cautions a young gallant to beware an indulgence of the licentious
passion, but forgets, while reading his lecture, that he once was
amorous, that he solicited the virgin and the wife, and that,
unsatisfied with the ordinary mysteries of intrigue, he elaborately
refined on the system of seduction. Vinoso, whose face is as
red-lettered as the court calendar, and who makes his Virginia fence at
nine in the morning, applauds a very heavy excise on distilled spirits,
and zealously damns every drunkard in the nation. Bobbin the
haberdasher, who in vending a row of pins, defrauds the heedless
customer of four, and who, when furnishing the village lass, with a set
of apron-strings, pilfers from her a portion of the tape, exclaims
against a vinter for adulterating his liquors, and wittily wonders, that
he can adopt the Christian scheme so far, as to baptize even his wine.
Messalina, whole chastity is valiant as a holiday Captain because no
enemy is at hand, and who produced a _lovely pair of twins_ six months
before marriage, frowns at the forwardness of young flirts; and a
decayed maiden, “far gone in her wane, Sir,” who has been but twenty
these ten years, and who has more wrinkles in her forehead, than dimples
on her chin, even she scoffs the vestal sisterhood, and turns up her
note at the staleness of antiquated virginity.
In literature, as well as in life, we may recognize this propensity.
Authors are noted for inconsistence. Instances might be selected from
almost every writer in our language. Pope, in conjunction with Arbuthnot
and Swift, composed a satirical treatise, the design of which was, to
lash his poetical brethren for attempting to soar, when their wings only
served them to sink. Yet Pope, after some fine panegyrical verses upon
Lord Mansfield, fell from a noble height of poetry to the very bottom of
the bathos, by concluding his eulogy with the following feeble lines,
Graced as thou art with all the power of words,
So known, so honoured in the House of Lords.
Surely this was as risible a couplet of anticlimax, as the distich the
bard ridicules, by merely quoting it,
Thou Dalhoussy, the great God of war,
Lieutenant Colonel to the Earl of Mar.
In the works of Swift, who omits no opportunity of damning dullness, may
be found some compositions where the disappointed reader, instead of
being dazzled with the gleam of fancy, sorrowing sees nothing but the
vapid insipidity of a poet laureat’s ode, and eagerly inquires if it be
upon record, that Swift ever studied the sing song of Cibber. Knox,
a modern and, as he in his wisdom thinketh, a classic writer, censures,
in one of his essays, the bombastic style; yet, were his own effusions
arraigned in the court of criticism, they would, without any
peradventure, be found guilty of turgidity. This pragmatical critic, who
heated by high-church zeal, gives Gibbon to the Devil, and his writings
to Lethe, presumptuously condemns that elegant historian for
super-abundance of epithet, though a reader of Knox would suppose that
the favourite page of this pedagogue’s grammar was that which contained
the declension and variation of _adjectives_. Dr. Beattie, in the warmth
of his wishes to promote social benevolent affections, almost _hates_
the man, who practices not _philanthropy_. Rocked in the cradle of the
_kirk_, and implicitly believing all that the nurse and priest had
taught him, this presbyterian zealot declaims in terms so acrimonious
against the sceptics of the age, that one is led to think his “milk of
human kindness,” had became sour by the means he employed to
preserve it.
Juvenal, the ancient satyrist, in one of his virulent attacks on the
reigning Roman follies, avers that the most profligate of the senate
were invariably strenuous advocates for a revival and execution of the
obsolete rigid laws against debauchery. The indignant poet declares that
if such glaring inconsistencies continue, none could be astonished
should Clodius commence railer against libertines, and Cataline be first
to impeach a conspirator. Were a name-sake of this bard to arise,
I should tremble for the sect of modern _inconsistents_. He might
brandish the lance of satire against such characters with more justice,
though perhaps with less dexterity, than his classic predecessor. The
field of foibles and follies is so fully ripe, that some one should put
in the sickle. In this field appears, and will again appear, a labourer,
who though aukward, may be useful, and who will be “worthy of his hire,”
if he cut up nothing but tares.
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