And as for me, tho’ that I can but lite On bookes for to read I me
delight, And to hem give I faith and full credence; And in mine heart
have hem in reverence, So heartily that there is game none, That fro’ my
bookes maketh me to gone.--Chaucer.
Christopher Clutterbuck was a common individual of a common order, but
little known in this busy and toiling world. I cannot flatter myself
that I am about to present to your notice that rara avis, a new
character--yet there is something interesting, and even unhacknied, in
the retired and simple class to which he belongs: and before I proceed
to a darker period in my memoirs, I feel a calm and tranquillizing
pleasure in the rest which a brief and imperfect delineation of my
college companion, affords me. My friend came up to the University
with the learning one about to quit the world might, with credit, have
boasted of possessing, and the simplicity one about to enter it would
have been ashamed to confess. Quiet and shy in his habits and his
manners, he was never seen out of the precincts of his apartment, except
in obedience to the stated calls of dinner, lectures, and chapel. Then
his small and stooping form might be marked, crossing the quadrangle
with a hurried step, and cautiously avoiding the smallest blade of the
barren grass-plots, which are forbidden ground to the feet of all the
lower orders of the collegiate oligarchy. Many were the smiles and
the jeers, from the worse natured and better appointed students, who
loitered idly along the court, at the rude garb and saturnine appearance
of the humble under-graduate; and the calm countenance of the grave, but
amiable man, who then bore the honour and onus of mathematical lecturer
at our college, would soften into a glance of mingled approbation and
pity, as he noted the eagerness which spoke from the wan cheek and
emaciated frame of the ablest of his pupils, hurrying--after each
legitimate interruption--to the enjoyment of the crabbed characters
and worm-worn volumes, which contained for him all the seductions of
pleasure, and all the temptations of youth.
It is a melancholy thing, which none but those educated at a college
can understand, to see the debilitated frames of the aspirants for
academical honours; to mark the prime--the verdure--the glory--the
life--of life wasted irrevocably away in a labor ineptiarum, which
brings no harvest either to others or themselves. For the poet, the
philosopher, the man of science, we can appreciate the recompence if we
commiserate the sacrifice; from the darkness of their retreat there
goes a light--from the silence of their studies there issues a voice, to
illumine or convince. We can imagine them looking from their privations
to the far visions of the future, and hugging to their hearts, in the
strength of no unnatural vanity, the reward which their labours are
certain hereafter to obtain. To those who can anticipate the vast
dominions of immortality among men, what boots the sterility of
the cabined and petty present? But the mere man of languages and
learning--the machine of a memory heavily but unprofitably employed--the
Columbus wasting at the galley oar the energies which should have
discovered a world--for him there is no day-dream of the future, no
grasp at the immortality of fame. Beyond the walls of his narrow room he
knows no object; beyond the elucidation of a dead tongue he indulges no
ambition; his life is one long school-day of lexicons and grammars--a
fabric of ice, cautiously excluded from a single sunbeam--elaborately
useless, ingeniously unprofitable; and leaving at the moment it melts
away, not a single trace of the space it occupied, or the labour it
cost.
At the time I went to the University, my poor collegian had attained all
the honours his employment could ever procure him. He had been a Pitt
scholar; he was a senior wrangler, and a Fellow of his college. It often
happened that I found myself next to him at dinner, and I was struck by
his abstinence, and pleased with his modesty, despite of the gaucherie
of his manner, and the fashion of his garb. By degrees I insinuated
myself into his acquaintance; and, as I had still some love of
scholastic lore, I took frequent opportunities of conversing with him
upon Horace, and consulting him upon Lucian.
Many a dim twilight have we sat together, reviving each other’s
recollection, and occasionally relaxing into the grave amusement of
capping verses. Then, if by any chance my ingenuity or memory enabled
me to puzzle my companion, his good temper would lose itself in a quaint
pettishness, or he would cite against me some line of Aristophanes,
and ask me, with a raised voice, and arched brow, to give him a fitting
answer to that. But if, as was much more frequently the case, he fairly
run me down into a pause and confession of inability, he would rub his
hands with a strange chuckle, and offer me, in the bounteousness of his
heart, to read aloud a Greek Ode of his own, while he treated me “to
a dish of tea.” There was much in the good man’s innocence, and
guilelessness of soul, which made me love him, and I did not rest till I
had procured him, before I left the University, the living which he
now held. Since then, he had married the daughter of a neighbouring
clergyman, an event of which he had duly informed me; but, though this
great step in the life of “a reading man,” had not taken place many
months since, I had completely, after a hearty wish for his domestic
happiness, consigned it to a dormant place in my recollection.
The house which I now began to approach was small, but comfortable;
perhaps there was something triste in the old-fashioned hedges, cut and
trimmed with mathematical precision, which surrounded the glebe, as well
as in the heavy architecture and dingy bricks of the reverend recluse’s
habitation. To make amends for this, there was also something peculiarly
still and placid about the appearance of the house, which must have
suited well the tastes and habits of the owner. A small, formal lawn
was adorned with a square fish-pond, bricked round, and covered with
the green weepings of four willows, which drooped over it, from their
station, at each corner. At the opposite side of this Pierian reservoir,
was a hermitage, or arbour of laurels, shaped in the stiff rusticity of
the Dutch school, in the prevalence of which it was probably planted;
behind this arbour, the ground, after a slight railing, terminated in an
orchard.
The sound I elicited from the gate bell seemed to ring through that
retired place with singular shrillness; and I observed at the opposite
window, all that bustle of drawing curtains, peeping faces, and hasty
retreats, which denote female anxiety and perplexity, at the unexpected
approach of a stranger.
After some time the parson’s single servant, a middle-aged, slovenly
man, in a loose frock, and buff kerseymere nondescripts, opened the
gate, and informed me that his master was at home. With a few earnest
admonitions to my admittor--who was, like the domestics of many richer
men, both groom and valet--respecting the safety of my borrowed horse, I
entered the house: the servant did not think it necessary to inquire my
name, but threw open the door of the study, with the brief introduction
of--“a gentleman, Sir.”
Clutterbuck was standing, with his back towards me, upon a pair of
library steps, turning over some dusky volumes; and below stood a pale,
cadaverous youth, with a set and serious countenance, that bore no small
likeness to Clutterbuck himself.
“Mon Dieu,” thought I, “he cannot have made such good use of his
matrimonial state as to have raised this lanky impression of himself in
the space of seven months?” The good man turned round and almost fell
off the steps with the nervous shock of beholding me so near him: he
descended with precipitation, and shook me so warmly and tightly by the
hand, that he brought tears into my eyes, as well as his own.
“Gently, my good friend,” said I--“parce precor, or you will force me to
say, ‘ibimus una ambo, flentes valido connexi foedere.’”
Clutterbuck’s eyes watered still more, when he heard the grateful sounds
of what to him was the mother tongue. He surveyed me from head to foot
with an air of benign and fatherly complacency, and dragging forth from
its sullen rest a large arm chair, on whose cushions of rusty horse-hair
sat an eternal cloud of classic dust, too sacred to be disturbed, he
plumped me down upon it, before I was aware of the cruel hospitality.
“Oh! my nether garments,” thought I. “Quantus sudor incrit Bedoso, to
restore you to your pristine purity.”
“But, whence come you?” said my host, who cherished rather a formal and
antiquated method of speech.
“From the Pythian games,” said I. “The campus hight Newmarket. Do I see
right, or is not yon insignis juvenis marvellously like you? Of a surety
he rivals the Titans, if he is only a seven months’ child!”
“Now, truly, my worthy friend,” answered Clutterbuck, “you indulge in
jesting! The boy is my nephew, a goodly child, and a painstaking. I hope
he will thrive at our gentle mother. He goes to Trinity next October.
Benjamin Jeremiah, my lad, this is my worthy friend and benefactor, of
whom I have often spoken; go, and order him of our best--he will partake
of our repast!”
“No, really,” I began; but Clutterbuck gently placed the hand, whose
strength of affection I had already so forcibly experienced, upon my
mouth. “Pardon me, my friend,” said he. “No stranger should depart till
he had broken bread with us, how much more then a friend! Go, Benjamin
Jeremiah, and tell your aunt that Mr. Pelham will dine with us; and
order, furthermore, that the barrel of oysters sent unto us as a
present, by my worthy friend Dr. Swallow’em, be dressed in the fashion
that seemeth best; they are a classic dainty, and we shall think of our
great masters the ancients whilst we devour them. And--stop, Benjamin
Jeremiah, see that we have the wine with the black seal; and--now--go,
Benjamin Jeremiah!”
“Well, my old friend,” said I, when the door closed upon the sallow and
smileless nephew, “how do you love the connubiale jugum? Do you give
the same advice as Socrates? I hope, at least, it is not from the same
experience.”
“Hem!” answered the grave Christopher, in a tone that struck me as
somewhat nervous and uneasy, “you are become quite a humourist since we
parted. I suppose you have been warming your wit by the lambent fires of
Horace and Aristophanes!”
“No,” said I, “the living allow those whose toilsome lot it is to mix
constantly with them, but little time to study the monuments of the
dead. But, in sober earnest, are you as happy as I wish you?”
Clutterbuck looked down for a moment, and then, turning towards the
table, laid one hand upon a MS., and pointed with the other to his
books. “With this society,” said he, “how can I be otherwise?”
I gave him no reply, but put my hand upon his MS. He made a modest and
coy effort to detain it, but I knew that writers were like women, and
making use of no displeasing force, I possessed myself of the paper.
It was a treatise on the Greek participle. My heart sickened within me;
but, as I caught the eager glance of the poor author, I brightened up
my countenance into an expression of pleasure, and appeared to read and
comment upon the difficiles nugae with an interest commensurate to
his own. Meanwhile the youth returned. He had much of that delicacy of
sentiment which always accompanies mental cultivation, of whatever sort
it may be. He went, with a scarlet blush over his thin face, to his
uncle, and whispered something in his ear, which, from the angry
embarrassment it appeared to occasion, I was at no loss to divine.
“Come,” said I, “we are too long acquainted for ceremony. Your placens
uxor, like all ladies in the same predicament, thinks your invitation
a little unadvised; and, in real earnest, I have so long a ride to
perform, that I would rather eat your oysters another day!”
“No, no,” said Clutterbuck, with greater eagerness than his even
temperament was often hurried into betraying--“no, I will go and reason
with her myself. ‘Wives, obey your husbands,’ saith the preacher!” And
the quondam senior wrangler almost upset his chair in the perturbation
with which he arose from it.
I laid my hand upon him. “Let me go myself,” said I, “since you will
have me dine with you. ‘The sex is ever to a stranger kind,’ and I shall
probably be more persuasive than you, in despite of your legitimate
authority.”
So saying, I left the room, with a curiosity more painful than pleasing,
to see the collegian’s wife. I arrested the man servant, and ordered him
to usher and announce me.
I was led instanter into the apartment where I had discovered all the
signs of female inquisitiveness, which I have before detailed. There I
discovered a small woman, in a robe equally slatternly and fine, with
a sharp pointed nose, small, cold, grey eyes, and a complexion high
towards the cheek bones, but waxing of a light green before it reached
the wide and querulous mouth, which, well I ween, seldom opened to
smile upon the unfortunate possessor of her charms. She, like the Rev.
Christopher, was not without her companions; a tall meagre woman,
of advanced age, and a girl, some years younger than herself, were
introduced to me as her mother and sister.
My entree occasioned no little confusion, but I knew well how to remedy
that. I held out my hand so cordially to the wife, that I enticed,
though with evident reluctance, two bony fingers into my own, which I
did not dismiss without a most mollifying and affectionate squeeze; and
drawing my chair close towards her, began conversing as familiarly as
if I had known the whole triad for years. I declared my joy at seeing
my old friend so happily settled--commented on the improvement of his
looks--ventured a sly joke at the good effects of matrimony--praised
a cat couchant, worked in worsted by the venerable hand of the eldest
matron--offered to procure her a real cat of the true Persian breed,
black ears four inches long, with a tail like a squirrel’s; and then
slid, all at once, into the unauthorized invitation of the good man of
the house.
“Clutterbuck,” said I, “has asked me very warmly to stay dinner; but,
before I accepted his offer, I insisted upon coming to see how far it
was confirmed by you. Gentlemen, you are aware, my dear Madam, know
nothing of these matters, and I never accept a married man’s invitation
till it has the sanction of his lady: I have an example of that at home.
My mother (Lady Frances) is the best-tempered woman in the world: but my
father could no more take the liberty (for I may truly call it such) to
ask even his oldest friend to dinner, without consulting the mistress
of the house, than he could think of flying. No one (says my mother, and
she says what is very true,) can tell about the household affairs,
but those who have the management of them; and in pursuance of this
aphorism, I dare not accept any invitation in this house, except from
its mistress.”
“Really,” said Mrs. Clutterbuck, colouring, with mingled embarrassment
and gratification, “you are very considerate and polite, Mr. Pelham:
I only wish Mr. Clutterbuck had half your attention to these things;
nobody can tell the trouble and inconvenience he puts me to. If I had
known, a little time before, that you were coming--but now I fear we
have nothing in the house; but if you can partake of our fare, such as
it is, Mr. Pelham--”
“Your kindness enchants me,” I exclaimed, “and I no longer scruple to
confess the pleasure I have in accepting my old friend’s offer.”
This affair being settled, I continued to converse for some minutes with
as much vivacity as I could summon to my aid, and when I went once more
to the library, it was with the comfortable impression of having left
those as friends, whom I had visited as foes.
The dinner hour was four, and till it came, Clutterbuck and I amused
ourselves “in commune wise and sage.” There was something high in the
sentiments and generous in the feelings of this man, which made me
the more regret the bias of mind which rendered them so unavailing. At
college he had never (illis dissimilis in nostro tempore natis) cringed
to the possessors of clerical power. In the duties of his station, as
dean of the college, he was equally strict to the black cap and the
lordly hat. Nay, when one of his private pupils, whose father was
possessed of more church preferment than any nobleman in the peerage,
disobeyed his repeated summons, and constantly neglected to attend his
instructions, he sent for him, resigned his tuition, and refused any
longer to accept a salary which the negligence of his pupil would
not allow him to requite. In his clerical tenets he was high: in his
judgment of others he was mild. His knowledge of the liberty of Greece
was not drawn from the ignorant historian of her republics; [Note: It
is really a disgrace to the University, that any of its colleges should
accept as a reference, or even tolerate as an author, the presumptuous
bigot who has bequeathed to us, in his History of Greece, the
masterpiece of a declaimer without energy, and of a pedant without
learning.] nor did he find in the contemplative mildness and gentle
philosophy of the ancients, nothing but a sanction for modern bigotry
and existing abuses.
It was a remarkable trait in his conversation, that though he indulged
in many references to the old authors, and allusions to classic customs,
he never deviated into the innumerable quotations with which his memory
was stored. No words, in spite of all the quaintness and antiquity of
his dialect, purely Latin or Greek, ever escaped his lips, except in our
engagements at capping verses, or when he was allured into accepting
a challenge of learning from some of its pretenders; then, indeed, he
could pour forth such a torrent of authorities as effectually silenced
his opponent; but these contests were rarely entered into, and these
triumphs moderately indulged. Yet he loved the use of quotations in
others, and I knew the greatest pleasure I could give him was in the
frequent use of them. Perhaps he thought it would seem like an empty
parade of learning in one who so confessedly possessed it, to deal in
the strange words of another tongue, and consequently rejected them,
while, with an innocent inconsistency, characteristic of the man, it
never occurred to him that there was any thing, either in the quaintness
of his dialect or the occupations of his leisure, which might subject
him to the same imputation of pedantry.
And yet, at times, when he warmed in his subject, there was a tone in
his language as well as sentiment, which might not be improperly termed
eloquent; and the real modesty and quiet enthusiasm of his nature,
took away from the impression he made, the feeling of pomposity and
affectation with which otherwise he might have inspired you.
“You have a calm and quiet habitation here,” said I; “the very rooks
seem to have something lulling in that venerable caw which it always
does me such good to hear.”
“Yes,” answered Clutterbuck, “I own that there is much that is grateful
to the temper of my mind in this retired spot. I fancy that I can the
better give myself up to the contemplation which makes, as it were, my
intellectual element and food. And yet I dare say that in this (as in
all other things) I do strongly err; for I remember that during my only
sojourn in London, I was wont to feel the sound of wheels and of the
throng of steps shake the windows of my lodging in the Strand, as if it
were but a warning to recal my mind more closely to its studies--of a
verity that noisy evidence of man’s labour reminded me how little the
great interests of this rolling world were to me, and the feeling of
solitude amongst the crowds without, made me cling more fondly to the
company I found within. For it seems that the mind is ever addicted to
contraries, and that when it be transplanted into a soil where all
its neighbours do produce a certain fruit, it doth, from a strange
perversity, bring forth one of a different sort. You would little
believe, my honoured friend, that in this lonely seclusion, I cannot
at all times prohibit my thoughts from wandering to that gay world of
London, which, during my tarry therein, occupied them in so partial
a degree. You smile, my friend, nevertheless it is true; and when you
reflect that I dwelt in the western department of the metropolis, near
unto the noble mansion of Somerset House, and consequently in the very
centre of what the idle call Fashion, you will not be so surprised at
the occasional migration of my thoughts.”
Here the worthy Clutterbuck paused and sighed slightly. “Do you farm
or cultivate your garden,” said I; “they are no ignoble nor unclassical
employments?”
“Unhappily,” answered Clutterbuck, “I am inclined to neither; my chest
pains me with a sharp and piercing pang when I attempt to stoop, and my
respiration is short and asthmatic; and, in truth, I seldom love to stir
from my books and papers. I go with Pliny to his garden, and with Virgil
to his farm; those mental excursions are the sole ones I indulge in; and
when I think of my appetite for application, and my love of idleness, I
am tempted to wax proud of the propensities which reverse the censure of
Tacitus on our German ancestors, and incline so fondly to quiet, while
they turn so restlessly from sloth.”
Here the speaker was interrupted by a long, low, dry cough, which
penetrated me to the heart. ‘Alas!’ thought I, as I heard it, and looked
upon my poor friend’s hectic and hollow cheek, ‘it is not only his mind
that will be the victim to the fatality of his studies.’
It was some moments before I renewed the conversation, and I had
scarcely done so before I was interrupted by the entrance of Benjamin
Jeremiah, with a message from his aunt that dinner would be ready in
a few minutes. Another long whisper to Christopher succeeded. The
ci-devant fellow of Trinity looked down at his garments with a perplexed
air. I saw at once that he had received a hint on the propriety of a
change of raiment. To give him due leisure for this, I asked the youth
to shew me a room in which I might perform the usual ablutions
previous to dinner, and followed him upstairs to a comfortless sort of
dressing-room, without a fire-place, where I found a yellow were jug
and basin, and a towel, of so coarse a huckaback, that I did not dare
adventure its rough texture next my complexion--my skin is not made for
such rude fellowship. While I was tenderly and daintily anointing my
hands with some hard water, of no Blandusian spring, and that vile
composition entitled Windsor soap, I heard the difficult breathing of
poor Clutterbuck on the stairs, and soon after he entered the adjacent
room. Two minutes more, and his servant joined him, for I heard the
rough voice of the domestic say, “There is no more of the wine with the
black seal left, Sir!”
“No more, good Dixon; you mistake grievously. I had two dozen not a week
since.”
“Don’t know, I’m sure, Sir!” answered Dixon, with a careless and half
impertinent accent; “but there are great things, like alligators, in the
cellar, which break all the bottles!”
“Alligators in my cellar!” said the astonished Clutterbuck.
“Yes, Sir--at least a venomous sort of reptile like them, which the
people about here call efts!”
“What!” said Clutterbuck, innocently, and evidently not seeing the irony
of his own question; “What! have the efts broken two dozen bottles in
a week? Of an exceeding surety, it is strange that a little creature
of the lizard species should be so destructive--perchance they have an
antipathy to the vinous smell; I will confer with my learned friend,
Dr. Dissectall, touching their strength and habits. Bring up some of the
port, then, good Dixon.”
“Yes, Sir. All the corn is out; I had none for the gentleman’s horse.”
“Why, Dixon, my memory fails me strangely, or I paid you the sum of four
pounds odd shillings for corn on Friday last.”
“Yes, Sir: but your cow and the chickens eat so much, and then blind
Dobbin has four feeds a day, and Farmer Johnson always puts his horse
in our stable, and Mrs. Clutterbuck and the ladies fed the jackass the
other day in the hired donkeychaise; besides, the rats and mice are
always at it.”
“It is a marvel unto me,” answered Clutterbuck, “how detrimental the
vermin race are; they seem to have noted my poor possessions as their
especial prey; remind me that I write to Dr. Dissectall to-morrow, good
Dixon.”
“Yes, Sir, and now I think of it--” but here Mr. Dixon was cut short
in his items, by the entrance of a third person, who proved to be Mrs.
Clutterbuck.
“What, not dressed yet, Mr. Clutterbuck; what a dawdler you are!--and
do look--was ever woman so used? you have wiped your razor upon my
nightcap--you dirty, slovenly--”
“I crave you many pardons; I own my error!” said Clutterbuck, in a
nervous tone of interruption.
“Error, indeed!” cried Mrs. Clutterbuck, in a sharp, overstretched,
querulous falsetto, suited to the occasion: “but this is always the
case--I am sure, my poor temper is tried to the utmost--and Lord help
thee, idiot! you have thrust those spindle legs of yours into your
coat-sleeves instead of your breeches!”
“Of a truth, good wife, your eyes are more discerning than mine; and my
legs, which are, as you say, somewhat thin, have indued themselves in
what appertaineth not unto them; but for all that, Dorothea, I am not
deserving of the epithet of idiot, with which you have been pleased
to favour me; although my humble faculties are indeed of no eminent or
surpassing order--”
“Pooh! pooh! Mr. Clutterbuck, I am sure, I don’t know what else you are,
muddling your head all day with those good-for-nothing books. And now
do tell me, how you could think of asking Mr. Pelham to dinner, when you
knew we had nothing in the world but hashed mutton and an apple pudding?
Is that the way, Sir, you disgrace your wife, after her condescension in
marrying you?”
“Really,” answered the patient Clutterbuck, “I was forgetful of those
matters; but my friend cares as little as myself, about the grosser
tastes of the table; and the feast of intellectual converse is all that
he desires in his brief sojourn beneath our roof.”
“Feast of fiddlesticks, Mr. Clutterbuck! did ever man talk such
nonsense?”
“Besides,” rejoined the master of the house, unheeding this
interruption, “we have a luxury even of the palate, than which there are
none more delicate, and unto which he, as well as myself, is, I know,
somewhat unphilosophically given; I speak of the oysters, sent here by
our good friend, Dr. Swallow’em.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Clutterbuck? My poor mother and I had those
oysters last night for our supper. I am sure she as well as my sister
are almost starved; but you are always wanting to be pampered up above
us all.”
“Nay, nay,” answered Clutterbuck, “you know you accuse me wrongfully,
Dorothea; but now I think of it, would it not be better to modulate the
tone of our conversation, seeing that our guest, (a circumstance which
until now quite escaped my recollection,) was shown into the next room,
for the purpose of washing his hands, the which, from their notable
cleanliness, seemed to me wholly unnecessary. I would not have him
overhear you, Dorothea, lest his kind heart should imagine me less happy
than--than it wishes me.”
“Good God, Mr. Clutterbuck!” were the only words I heard farther: and
with tears in my eyes, and a suffocating feeling in my throat, for the
matrimonial situation of my unfortunate friend, I descended into the
drawing-room. The only one yet there, was the pale nephew; he was
bending painfully over a book; I took it from him, it was “Bentley
upon Phalaris.” I could scarcely refrain from throwing it into the
fire--another victim, thought I--oh, the curse of an English education!
By and by, down came the mother and the sister, then Clutterbuck, and
lastly, bedizened out with gewgaws and trumpery--the wife. Born and
nurtured as I was in the art of the volto sciolto pensieri stretti, I
had seldom found a more arduous task of dissimulation than that which
I experienced now. However, the hope to benefit my friend’s situation
assisted me; the best way, I thought, of obtaining him more respect from
his wife, would be by showing her the respect he meets with from
others: accordingly, I sat down by her, and having first conciliated her
attention by some of that coin, termed compliments, in which there is
no counterfeit that does not have the universal effect of real, I
spoke with the most profound veneration of the talents and learning of
Clutterbuck--I dilated upon the high reputation he enjoyed--upon the
general esteem in which he was held--upon the kindness of his heart--the
sincerity of his modesty--the integrity of his honour--in short,
whatever I thought likely to affect her; most of all, I insisted upon
the high panegyrics bestowed upon him, by Lord this, and the Earl that,
and wound up, with adding that I was certain he would die a bishop. My
eloquence had its effect; all dinner time, Mrs. Clutterbuck treated her
husband with even striking consideration: my words seemed to have gifted
her with a new light, and to have wrought a thorough transformation in
her view of her lord and master’s character. Who knows not the truth,
that we have dim and short-sighted eyes to estimate the nature of our
own kin, and that we borrow the spectacles which alone enable us to
discern their merits or their failings from the opinion of strangers! It
may be readily supposed that the dinner did not pass without its share
of the ludicrous--that the waiter and the dishes, the family and the
host, would have afforded ample materials no less for the student
of nature in Hogarth, than of caricature in Bunbury; but I was too
seriously occupied in pursuing my object, and marking its success, to
have time even for a smile. Ah! if ever you would allure your son to
diplomacy, show him how subservient he may make it to benevolence.
When the women had retired, we drew our chairs near to each other, and
laying down my watch on the table, as I looked out upon the declining
day, I said, “Let us make the best of our time, I can only linger here
one half hour longer.”
“And how, my friend,” said Clutterbuck, “shall we learn the method
of making the best use of time? there, whether it be in the larger
segments, or the petty subdivisions of our life, rests the great enigma
of our being. Who is there that has ever exclaimed--(pardon my pedantry,
I am for once driven into Greek)--Euzexa! to this most difficult of the
sciences?”
“Come,” said I, “it is not for you, the favoured scholar--the honoured
academician--whose hours are never idly employed, to ask this question!”
“Your friendship makes too flattering the acumen of your judgment,”
answered the modest Clutterbuck. “It has indeed been my lot to cultivate
the fields of truth, as transmitted unto our hands by the wise men of
old; and I have much to be thankful for, that I have, in the employ,
been neither curtailed in my leisure, nor abased in my independence--the
two great goods of a calm and meditative mind; yet are there moments in
which I am led to doubt of the wisdom of my pursuits: and when, with a
feverish and shaking hand, I put aside the books which have detained
me from my rest till the morning hour, and repair unto a couch often
baffled of slumber by the pains and discomforts of this worn and feeble
frame, I almost wish I could purchase the rude health of the peasant
by the exchange of an idle and imperfect learning for the ignorance,
content with the narrow world it possesses, because unconscious of the
limitless creation beyond. Yet, my dear and esteemed friend, there is a
dignified and tranquillizing philosophy in the writings of the ancients
which ought to teach me a better condition of mind; and when I have
risen from the lofty, albeit, somewhat melancholy strain, which swells
through the essays of the graceful and tender Cicero, I have indeed felt
a momentary satisfaction at my studies, and an elation even at the
petty success with which I have cherished them. But these are brief and
fleeting moments, and deserve chastisement for their pride. There is one
thing, my Pelham, which has grieved me bitterly of late, and that
is, that in the earnest attention which it is the--perhaps
fastidious--custom of our University, to pay to the minutiae of classic
lore, I do now oftentimes lose the spirit and beauty of the general
bearing; nay, I derive a far greater pleasure from the ingenious
amendment of a perverted text, than from all the turn and thought of the
sense itself: while I am straightening a crooked nail in the wine-cask,
I suffer the wine to evaporate; but to this I am somewhat reconciled,
when I reflect that it was also the misfortune of the great Porson, and
the elaborate Parr, men with whom I blush to find myself included in the
same sentence.”
“My friend,” said I, “I wish neither to wound your modesty, nor to
impugn your pursuits; but think you not that it would be better, both
for men and for yourself, that, while you are yet in the vigour of your
age and reason, you occupy your ingenuity and application in some more
useful and lofty work, than that which you suffered me to glance at in
your library; and moreover, as the great object of him who would perfect
his mind, is first to strengthen the faculties of his body, would it
not be prudent in you to lessen for a time your devotion to books; to
exercise yourself in the fresh air--to relax the bow, by loosing the
string; to mix more with the living, and impart to men in conversation,
as well as in writing, whatever the incessant labour of many years
may have hoarded? Come, if not to town, at least to its vicinity; the
profits of your living, if even tolerably managed, will enable you to
do so without inconvenience. Leave your books to their shelves, and your
flock to their curate, and--you shake your head--do I displease you?”
“No, no, my kind and generous adviser--but as the twig was set, the tree
must grow. I have not been without that ambition which, however vain and
sinful, is the first passion to enter the wayward and tossing vessel of
our soul, and the last to leave its stranded and shattered wreck; but
mine found and attained its object at an age, when in others it is, as
yet, a vague and unsettled feeling; and it feeds now rather upon the
recollections of what has been, than ventures forward on a sea of
untried and strange expectation. As for my studies! how can you, who
have, and in no moderate draught, drank of the old stream of Castaly,
how can you ask me now to change them? Are not the ancients my food, my
aliment, my solace in sorrow--my sympathizers, my very benefactors,
in joy? Take them away from me, and you take away the very winds which
purify and give motion to the obscure and silent current of my life.
Besides, my Pelham, it cannot have escaped your observation, that there
is little in my present state which promises a long increase of days:
the few that remain to me must glide away like their predecessors;
and whatever be the infirmities of my body, and the little harassments
which, I am led to suspect, do occasionally molest the most fortunate,
who link themselves unto the unstable and fluctuating part of creation,
which we term women, more especially in an hymeneal capacity--whatever
these may be, I have my refuge and my comforter in the golden-souled
and dreaming Plato, and the sententious wisdom of the less imaginative
Seneca. Nor, when I am reminded of my approaching dissolution by the
symptoms which do mostly at the midnight hour press themselves upon me,
is there a small and inglorious pleasure in the hope that I may meet
hereafter, in those islands of the blest which they dimly dreamt of, but
which are opened unto my vision, without a cloud, or mist, or shadow
of uncertainty and doubt, with those bright spirits which we do now
converse with so imperfectly; that I may catch from the very lips of
Homer the unclouded gorgeousness of fiction, and from the accents of
Archimedes, the unadulterated calculations of truth.”
Clutterbuck ceased, and the glow of his enthusiasm diffused itself over
his sunken eye and consumptive cheek. The boy, who had sat apart, and
silent, during our discourse, laid his head upon the table, and sobbed
audibly; and I rose, deeply affected, to offer to one for whom they
were, indeed, unavailing, the wishes and blessing of an eager, but not
hardened disciple of the world. We parted: on this earth we can never
meet again. The light has wasted itself away beneath the bushel. It
will be six weeks to-morrow since the meek and noble-minded academician
breathed his last.