_BY A MODERN PYTHAGOREAN._
Fortune, it has been truly said, is blind, and the same thing may be
alleged of nature; for while there are some to whom the latter goddess
has denied the commonest gifts, either of person or intellect, she
has bestowed the most splendid upon others, with a prodigality which
astonishes and perplexes the world. A beautiful person, and genius
almost superhuman, fell to the share of Milton; nor can it be doubted,
that in these respects the blind goddess was equally kind to the bard
of Avon, whose presence, even judging from the imperfect, and somewhat
apocryphal likenesses handed down to us, was noble to behold, while
his genius more resembled that of a superior nature than of a
human being. The same remark applies to the beautiful, the divine
Raphael,--nor less to Tasso, and various others, whom we might easily
point out.
It will perhaps be deemed presumptuous, after naming those illustrious
characters--those "demigods of fame"--to allude to Augustus Merton,
who, although he obtained the distinction of first wrangler at
Brazennose, Oxford, and carried off a multitude of prizes from that
seat of learning, may yet be thought an inadequate testimony of
the fact with which we set out, more especially when placed in
juxtaposition with the Miltons, the Shakespeares, the Raphaels, and
the Tassos of the world. We discuss not this point. We claim for
him no equality with these august names; and yet, with all such
reservations, do we set him forward as no unmeet proof of the
soundness of our assertion.
Merton was gifted with fine genius, and with a person all but
faultless. In stature he rose to six feet, and was slightly but
elegantly formed; while his whole air bespoke at once the gentleman
and scholar. Those who have seen his fine Spanish countenance, dark
eyes, and rich clustering hair,--the whole communicating dignity,
grace, and interest to his natural melancholy,--will not soon efface
his imposing image from their remembrance. His talents were of a
highly-diversified order. He was a first-rate Grecian and had he
turned his attention exclusively to that language might have contested
the palm with Porson himself; nor do those who are best qualified to
judge hesitate to place him upon an equality with Burney, Young
or Parr. He was also an excellent Latinist, and had a profound
acquaintance with geometry, and the other branches of mathematical
science. For knowledge of the various eastern tongues he was no
unequal match for Lee, of Cambridge; while his acquirements in natural
philosophy, political economy, and metaphysics, were such as
would have fairly entitled him to prelect on these subjects in any
university in Europe. Besides this, he had an exquisite poetical
genius; and, in his very first contest, succeeded in carrying off the
prize of poetry, to the utter discomfiture of many formidable rivals.
But, with all these high acquirements, he was not a happy man. He had
been baptized in the waters of melancholy; and a circumstance which
occurred in the fifth year of his curriculum had a baleful and,
ultimately, a fatal effect upon him, dethroning reason from its lofty
seat, and plunging not him only, but another estimable individual,
in the deepest distress. This circumstance, painful as it is, we
must relate; and, on perusing it, the reader will see that the noble
aspirations, the keen susceptibilities, of the mind do not always lead
to happiness; for, alas! it was such an excess of susceptibility in
his intellect which disturbed so sadly the current of his ideas, and
made him an inmate of St. Luke's.
The weather at the period we speak of was truly melancholy. It was
in the gloomy month of November,--that month in which it is said
the suicidal propensities of the English nation are most strongly
in force. The air was either filled with dull, sluggish, unwholesome
fogs, which hung upon it like a nightmare, or soaked in a constant
drizzle of small, annoying, contemptible rain-drops, which, without
possessing the energy and dignity of a shower, were infinitely more
disagreeable, and found their way to the flesh in spite of all the
protective armoury of great-coats, hessian cloaks, or umbrellas. It
seemed as if a wet blanket were drawn between the sun and the earth.
The atmosphere was always foggy, often perfectly wet, but never
thoroughly dry. It wanted vitality; and every person that breathed it
partook of its own damp, hypochondriac, inanimate character.
It was in the morning of one of those days of fog, gloom, and _ennui_,
that Augustus last sallied out to lounge about the streets of Oxford,
as was his custom, before breakfast. There was a favourite spot in
which he was wont to walk; it was upon the footpath of a very short
street, about the middle of which stood the shop of Jonathan Hookey,
a barber. This street (we forget its name) is not above fifty yards in
length, and opens at each end into a cross street. Now, Merton's walk
extended from one of those cross streets to the other, including, of
course, the whole extent of the short street; he always walked on one
side of this street, viz. on that opposite to the barber's shop. These
particulars may seem trifling, but they are essential to the proper
understanding of the story.
While making these morning perambulations, he had always an air of
deep thought, his arms were crossed, and he kept his eyes constantly
fixed upon the ground, as if deeply engrossed in profound meditation.
It boots not now to inquire on what subjects his thoughts were mostly
employed, but it was unquestionably on themes of deep import, and
concerned not himself only, but the interests of science, learning,
and humanity at large. The morning in question was peculiarly dull and
foggy; but whether it was this or something else, certain it is, that
he felt himself more than usually overpowered. The air oppressed him
like a leaden shroud, and the energies of his soul seemed for once on
the point of sinking beneath the superincumbent burden.
Turn we now to Jonathan Hookey, the barber. In person he differed much
from Merton. His height did not exceed five feet, but, he made amends
for it in breadth; for he was a man of a lusty habit, and sported a
paunch which no London alderman or burgomaster of Amsterdam would look
upon with contempt. Bald was his head, and his nose was not merely
large but immense; but it is idle to grow eloquent upon noses. Has
not Sterne exhausted the theme? have not we ourselves more than once
expatiated upon it? Swakenbergius had a nose, so had Ovidius Naso;
but to neither would Jonathan Hookey's strike its colours, and good
crimson ones they were.
Jonathan, despite his bald head, his diminutive stature, his ample
pot-belly, and ampler nose, was a man of fine feelings. Nature was
outraged when he became a barber. He most assuredly was never destined
by her to shave beards, and manufacture perukes for heads more
brainless, many of them, than his own blocks. He ought to have been a
professor of metaphysics or logic in some famous university, such
as Heidelburg, Gottingen, or Glasgow;--but why lament over cureless
evils? it is sufficient to say he is a barber, and there is an end of
the matter.
We must now return to Merton. His solitary walks on the opposite side
of the street had not even, from the first, escaped the scrutinizing
eyes of Mr. Hookey. No: he saw in the tall, pale, elegant, dark-haired
student the victim of deep sensibility. From seeing him, he wondered,
from wondering he loved him, from loving he adored him: he knew
at once he was no common man. Having perused Byron's _Manfred_, he
conceived him to be such another as that strange character; or he
might be a second Lara; or, more, he might be, nay he was, a glorious
genius, full of high imaginings. Little do we know what bright
thoughts passed through the mind of the enthusiastic Hookey. He cursed
his profession, which debarred him from the fellowship of such a man:
he cursed his nose, which stood between him and the object of his
adoration.
Day after day had Mr. Hookey noticed the accomplished, the
highly-gifted Merton; but it was only upon this particular morning
that the recognition was mutual. Merton, on turning his eyes by chance
from the ground, looked to the opposite side of the street, and there
beheld _a nose_. He then turned his eyes to the earth in his usual
meditative mood; but, reflecting that a nose without an owner was
rather a singular phenomenon, he looked a second time, and there,
behind the nose, he saw a man; it was Mr. Hookey himself.
This was the first time that the melancholy and intellectual student
reciprocated upon Hookey the attention which Hookey had hitherto
bestowed exclusively upon him. No more was the barber's "sweetness
wasted upon the desert air," but fell on one who knew how to
appreciate it to its fullest extent. Merton stood stock-still, and
gazed upon him with mute admiration. He was positively fascinated. The
nose operated upon him like the head of Medusa, and almost turned him
to stone. And Mr. Hookey was fascinated too. Merton also had become
Medusafied, and exercised a petrifactive influence upon the barber. He
was nailed fast to the threshold of his own door, and gazed upon his
fancied personification of Lara and Manfred with an indomitable and
resistless perseverance, which utterly confounded himself; while
Merton, nailed alike fast to the opposite footpath, stood staring at
his antagonist, or rather at his nasal protuberance. This impressive
scene continued for several minutes, when Merton, regaining the power
of locomotion, slowly approached the barber, his arms all the while
crossed, and his eyes intently fixed upon the nose. Nine slow and
awful steps brought him face to face with Hookey. The barber's eyes
were fixed intently upon _his--his_ eyes upon the barber's nose. The
scene was extremely dreadful; and Mr. Hookey, after vainly trying to
keep his ground, retreated into the shop, still facing Merton, who
kept advancing upon him as he receded. Back, step by step, went
Hookey; forward, step by step, came Merton; each all the while eyeing
the other with equal astonishment. The barber continued retreating,
the other following him,--first through the shop, then through the
kitchen, then through the parlour--the three apartments leading into
one another. At last he got to the remotest corner of the parlour, and
could get no farther. Here he paused, and Merton paused also. Still
they gazed on each other,--the barber in the corner overpowered with
amazement, and the student standing before him hardly less surprised.
At last Merton broke silence in the following awful words,--"GRACIOUS
HEAVENS WHAT A NOSE!" So saying, he retreated as slowly as he entered,
leaving Mr. Hookey utterly stupified and bewildered. The sentence went
like iron into the barber's soul; he felt it in all its bitterness.
It is almost unnecessary to say what an effect this scene had upon the
highly-susceptible temperament of Merton. From that moment peace fled
his mind. He went instantly home; but instead of devoting himself, as
before, to those studies in which he delighted, and in which he was
wont so highly to excel, he immured himself in his chamber, giving way
to gloomy abstraction, and agonizing his spirit with painful and most
distressing fancies. The great power of his imagination caused him,
in a peculiar manner, to suffer from the remembrance of what he had
witnessed; and, accordingly, his waking as well as his sleeping hours
were haunted with visions of noses,--noses of stupendous size, which
arose, like ocean islands, amid the gloomy tabernacle of his brain,
and filled him with utter despair. At last, from bad to worse, he
became the mere shadow of his former self, the wreck of what he
was, and a picture of fallen and shattered genius. To drive away
the hideous phantasmagorias that tortured him, as with the stings of
demons, he had recourse to gin, and soon became a confirmed drunkard:
the next stage was lunacy; and he was confined for fourteen months in
Saint Luke's Hospital for the insane.
The fate of the barber was equally deplorable. The awful words
pronounced by Merton may be considered his death-knell. They rang ever
after in his ears; and, in a few weeks, his head was turned, his
shop shut up, and himself sent to Bedlam. "_Gracious heavens, what a
nose!_" This dreadful sentence--more dreadful than the hand-writing on
the wall to Belshazzar,--haunted him by day and by night. Reason was
dethroned, and "moody madness, laughing wild," was the result. Such
are the frightful consequences of _extreme susceptibility_, against
which the youth of both sexes ought to be constantly on their guard.
The worst remains to be told. These unhappy men were liberated from
confinement about the same time, and both returned to Oxford. They
seemed to have recovered their reasoning faculties, but the result
showed that this was very far from being the case; for, happening to
meet on the banks of the Cherwell, they attacked each other with
such fury, that, like Brutus and Aruns, they were both killed on
the spot,--the barber having been _burked_ in the encounter, and the
student having died of a wound which he received in the throat by his
antagonist's razor.--_Fraser's Magazine._
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