Nothing if not political appears to be the order of the new magazine and
other literary enterprises of the present day. Is this good policy in
itself? it may be so from the vivifying aid it lends to the springs of
imaginative writing. We have therefore no right to complain of the
_leaven_ of Mr. Tait's Magazine: it is anything but dull: _e.g._ the life
and jauntiness of the following paper is very pleasant, shrewd, and clever:
_The Martinet_.
The "Martinet" is the name of a genus, not of a species; the title of a
race variously feathered, but having specific qualities in common. There
is your military martinet, your clerical martinet, your legal martinet,
and the martinet of common life, ("_Gallicrista fastidiosa communis_,"
Linnaeus would class him,) who is to the others what the house-sparrow is
to the rest of his tribe. It is with him alone we have to do. The
"martinet" is a person who is all his life violently busied in
endeavouring to be a perfect gentleman, and who _almost_ succeeds. He
misses the point by over-stepping it. He is like one of those greyhounds
which outrun the hare fleetly enough, but cannot "_take_" her when they
have done so. They have a little too much speed, and a little too little
tact. The martinet is always bent upon thinking, saying, doing, and having,
every thing after a nicer fashion than other people, until his nicety runs
into downright mannerism; all his ideas become "clipped taffeta," and all
his eggs are known to have "two yolks." He rarely comes of age or is
thoroughly ripe till near forty, before which he may be a little of the
precise fop, and after which he changes to the somewhat foppish precisian,
which is the best definition of him. He would be an excellent member of
society were he not a little too nice for its every-day work, which, to
speak a truth in metaphor, will not always admit of white gloves. He is
remarkably consistent in all his proceedings, however, and the outward man
is a perfect and complete type of the inward, and _vice versa_. His soul
is never out of pumps and silk stockings, and picks its way amidst the
little mental puddles and cross-roads of this world with a chariness of
step, which is at once edifying and amusing. Of inward show _he_ is not
less "elaborate" than of outward; and, though a descendant of Eve, takes
equal care of the clothing of both mind and body.
Were his tailor to be abandoned enough to attempt to palm upon him a coat
of the very best Yorkshire, instead of the very best Wiltshire broad-cloth,
(an enormity of which--_horresco referens_--he was once very near being
the victim,) the one would be sure to lose, if discovered, the best of his
customers, and the other the best of a month's sleep. If he wears a wig,
his expenditure with his _peruquier_ is never less than five-and-twenty
guineas a-year. His cigars, though he smokes little, cost him nearly as
much. His hat is water-proof; his stop-watch and repeater are of a
scapement that never varies more than six seconds in the twelve months
from the time-piece at the Observatory at Greenwich, where he has a friend,
who is so good as sometimes to compare notes with him. By the advice of
his boot-maker--who, by the way, has some knowledge of the length of his
foot--he never puts on a new pair until they are at least a year old; and
he parted with his last footboy because he one day discovered a
perceptible difference between the polish of the right and left foot. In
winter, he wears and recommends cork soles. His toilet is no sinecure; and
on the table are always to be found, besides his dressing-box, which
contains an assortment of combs, scissors, tweezers, pomades, and essences,
not easily equalled, a bottle of "Eau de Cologne, veritable," a Packwood
and Criterion strop; a case of gold-mounted razors, (the best in England,)
which he bought, nearly thirty years ago, of the successor of "Warren," in
the Strand, and a silvered shaving-pot, upon a principle of his own,
redolent of Rigges' "patent violet-scented soap." His net-silk purse is
ringed with gold at one end, and with silver at the other; and although
not _much_ of a snuff-taker, he always carries a box, on the lid of which
smiles the portrait of the once celebrated and beautiful, though now
somewhat forgotten, Duchess of D----, or the equally resplendent Lady
Emily M----.
His table is of the same finish with his wardrobe. If he sat down to
dinner, even when alone, in boots, that visitation which Quin ascribed to
the prevalent neglect of "pudding on a Sunday"--an earthquake might be
expected to follow. His spoons and silver forks are marked with his crest;
and he omits no opportunity to inform his friends, that the right of the
family to the arms was proved at Herald's College by his great uncle John.
He has receipts for mulligatawny and oyster soups, not to be equalled; and
another for currie-powder, which a friend of his obtained, as the greatest
of favours, from Sir Stamford Raffles, and which, though bound in honour
not to make known, he means to leave to his son by will, under certain
injunctions. His cookery of a "French rabbit," provided the claret be
first-rate, is superb; and on _very_ particular occasions, he condescends
to know how to concoct a bowl of punch, especially champagne punch, for
the which he has a formula in rhyme, the poetry of which never, as is its
happy case, losing sight of correctness and common-sense, comes, as well
as its subject matter, home to "his business and his bosom." His "caviar"
is, through the kindness of a commercial friend, imported from the hand of
the very Russian _cuisinier_, who prepares it (unctuous relish!) for the
table of the Emperor himself. His cheese is Stilton or Parmesan.
Like "Mrs. Diana Scapes," he is also "curious in his liquors," and, in
despite of Beau Brummell, patronizes "malt," as far as to take one glass
of excellent "college ale,"--which he gets through his friend Dr. Dusty of
All Souls--between pastry and Parmesan. After cheese, he can relish one,
and only one, glass of port--all the better if of the "Comet vintage," or
of some vintage ten years anterior to that. His drink, however, is claret,
old hock, Madeira, and latterly, since it has become a sort of fashion,
old sherry. In these he is a connoisseur not to be sneezed at; and if
asked his opinion, makes it a rule never to give it upon the first glass,
invariably observing, that "if he would he couldn't, and if he could he
_wouldn't_!" He produces anchovy toast as an indispensable in a long
evening, after dinner, and to it he recommends a liqueur-glass of
cherry-brandy, which he believes is of that incomparable recipe, of which
the late King was so fond. If he be a bachelor, he has, in his dining-room,
a cellaret, in which repose this, and other similar liquid rarities, and
beneath his sideboard stands a machine, for which he paid twelve guineas,
for producing _ice extempore_.
His literary tastes bear a certain resemblance to, and have a certain
analogy with, his gustatory--proving the truth of that intimate connexion
between the stomach and the head, upon which physiologists are so
delighted to dwell. In poetry the heresies and escapades of Lord Byron are
too much for him, although as a Peer and a gentleman he always speaks well
and deferentially of him. Shelley he can make nothing of, and therefore
says, which is the strict truth in one sense at least, that he has never
read him. He praises Campbell, Crabbe, and Rogers, and shakes his head at
Tom Moore; but Pope is his especial favourite; and if anything in verse
has his heart, it is the "Rape of the Lock." Peter Pindar he partly
dislikes, but Anstey, the "Bath Guide," is high in his estimation; and
with him "Gray's Odes" stand far above those of Collins'. Of the "Elegy in
a Country Church" he thinks, as he says, "like the rest of the world."
"Shenstone's Pastorals" he has read. Burns he praises, but in his heart
thinks him a "wonderful clown," and shrugs his shoulders at his extreme
popularity. He says as little about Shakespeare as he can, and has by
heart some half dozen lines of Milton, which is all he really knows of him.
In the drama he inclines to the "unities;" and of the English Theatre
"Sheridan's School for Scandal," and Otway's "Venice Preserved," or Rowe's
"Fair Penitent," are what he best likes in his heart. John Kemble is his
favourite actor--Kean he thinks somewhat vulgar. In prose he thinks Dr.
Johnson the greatest man that ever existed, and next to him he places
Addison and Burke. His historian is Hume; and for morals and metaphysics
he goes to Paley and Dr. Reid, or Dugald Stewart, and is well content. For
the satires of Swift he has no relish. They discompose his ideas; and he
of all things detests to have his head set a spinning like a tetotum,
either by a book or by anything else. Bishop Berkeley once did this for
him to such a tune, that he showed a visible uneasiness at the mention of
the book ever after. In Tristram Shandy, however, he has a sort of
suppressed delight, which he hardly likes to acknowledge, the magnet of
attraction being, though he knows it not, in the characters of Uncle Toby,
Corporal Trim, and the Widow Wadman. His religious reading is confined to
"Blair's Sermons," and the "Whole Duty of Man," in which he always keeps a
little slip of double gilt-edged paper as a marker, without reflecting
that it is a sort of proof that he has never got through either. His
Pocket Bible always lies upon his toilet table. He knows a little of
Mathematics in general, a little of Algebra, and a little of Fluxions,
which is principally to be discovered from his having Emmerson, Simpson,
and Bonnycastle's works in his library. In classical learning he confesses
to having "forgotten" a good deal of Greek; but sports a Latin phrase upon
occasion, and is something of a critic in languages. He prefers Virgil to
Homer, and Horace to Pindar, and can, upon occasion, enter into a
dissertation on the precise meaning of a "Simplex munditiis." He also
delights in a pun, and most especially in a Latin one; and when applied to
for payment of _paving-rate_, never fails to reply "_Paveant_ illi, non
_paveam_ ego!" which, though peradventure repeated for the twentieth time,
still serves to sweeten the adieu between his purse and its contents. He
is also an amateur in etymologies and derivatives, and is sorry that the
learned Selden's solution of the origin of the term "gentleman" seems to
include in it something not altogether complimentary to religion. This is
his only objection to it. He speaks French; and his accent is, he flatters
himself, an approximation to the veritable Parisian. Modern novels he does
not read, but has read "Waverley" and "Pelham."
His library is not large, but select; and as he does not sit in it
excepting very occasionally, the fire grate is a movable one, and can be
turned at will from parlour to library and _vice versa_,--a whim of his
old acquaintance Dr. Trifle of Oxford. In it are his library table and
stuffed chair; a bust of Pitt and another of Cicero; a patent inkstand and
silver pen; an atlas, and maps upon rollers; a crimson screen, an improved
"Secretaire;" a barometer and a thermometer. Upon the shelves may be found
almost for certain Boswell's Johnson; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Peptic
Precepts and Cook's Oracle; the Miseries of Human Life; Prideaux'
Connexion of the Old and New Testament; Dr. Pearson's Culina Famulatrix
Medecinae; Soame Jenyn's Essays; the Farrier's Guide; Selden's Table-talk;
Archbishop Tillotson's Sermons; Henderson on Wines; Boscawen's Horace;
Croker's Battles of Talavera and Busaco; Dictionary of Quotations; Lord
Londonderry's Peninsular Campaigns; the Art of Shaving, with directions
for the management of the Razor; Todd's Johnson's Dictionary; Peacham's
Complete Gentleman; Harris' Hermes; Roget on the Teeth; Memoirs of Pitt;
Jokeby, a Burlesque on Rokeby; English Proverbs; Paley's Moral Philosophy;
Chesterfield's Letters; Buchan's Domestic Medicine; Debrett's Peerage;
Colonel Thornton's Sporting Tour; Court Kalendar; the Oracle, or Three
Hundred Questions explained and answered; Gordon's Tacitus an Elzevir
Virgil; Epistolae obscurorum virorum; Martial's Epigrams; Tully's Offices;
and Henry's Family Bible.
His general character for nicety is excellent, both in a moral and
religious point of view: and he holds himself to have done a questionable
thing in looking into a number of Harriette Wilson, in which a gay
_quondam_ friend of his figured. When he marries, the ceremony is
performed by the Honourable and very Reverend the Dean of some place, to
whom he claims a distant relationship. He takes his wine in moderation;
never bets, nor plays above guinea points, and _always_ at whist. He goes
to church regularly; his pew is a square one, with green curtains. He
dines upon fish on Good Friday, and declines visiting during Passion week
in mixed parties. If he ever had any peccadilloes of any kind, they are
buried in a cloud as snug as that which shrouded the pious Eneas when he
paid his first visit to Queen Dido.
He dies, aged fifty-seven, of a pleuritic attack, complicated with angina
pectoris; and having left fifty pounds to each of the principal charitable
institutions of his neighbourhood, and fifty pounds to the churchwardens
of his parish, to be distributed amongst the poor professing the religion
of the Church of England, he is buried in his "family vault," and his last
wish fulfilled,--that is to say, his epitaph is composed in Latin, and the
inscription put up under the especial care and inspection of his friend Dr.
Dusty of Oxford. _Requiescat._
* * * * *