THE PEDIGREE AND BIRTH OF NOBS, GIVEN IN REPLY TO THE FIRST QUERY IN
THE SECOND CHAPTER P. I.
_Theo._ Look to my Horse, I pray you, well.
_Diego._ He shall Sir.
_Inc._ Oh! how beneath his rank and call was that now!
Your Horse shall be entreated as becomes
A Horse of fashion, and his inches.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Who was Nobs?
A troop of British cavalry which had served on the continent was
disbanded in the City of York, and the horses were sold. Their
commander Sir Robert Clayton was a wealthy man, and happening to be a
noble-minded man also, he could not bear to think that his old fellow
campaigners, who had borne brave men to battle, should be ridden to
death as butcher's hacks, or worked in dung-carts till they became
dog's meat. So he purchased a piece of ground upon Knavesmire heath,
and turned out the old horses to have their run there for life. There
may be persons living who remember to have heard of this honourable
act, and the curious circumstance which has preserved it from being
forgotten. For once these horses were grazing promiscuously while a
summer storm gathered, and when the first lightnings flashed from the
cloud, and the distant thunder began to roll; but presently, as if
they supposed these fires and sounds to be the signal of approaching
battle, they were seen to get together and form in line, almost in as
perfect order as if they had had their old masters upon their backs.
One of these old soldiers was what the Spaniards with the gravity
peculiar to their language call a _Caballo Padre_; or what some of our
own writers, with a decorum not less becoming, appellate an Entire
horse;—or what a French interpreter accompanying an Englishman to
obtain a passport wherein the horse as well as the rider was to be
described, denominated _un cheval de pierre_ to the astonishment of
the clerks in the office, whose difficulty was not at all removed by
the subsequent definition of the English applicant, which the said
interpreter faithfully rendered thus, _un cheval de pierre est un
cheval qui couvre les officiers municipaux._ He had found his way in a
Cossack regiment from the Steppes of Tartary to the plains of Prussia;
had run loose from a field of battle in which his master was killed,
and passing from hand to hand had finally been sold by a Jew into the
service of his majesty King George II. In the course of this eventful
life he had lost his Sclavonic name, and when he entered the British
regiment was naturalized by that of Moses in honour of his late
possessor.
It so happened that a filly by name Miss Jenny had been turned out to
recover from a sprain in a field sufficiently near Knavesmire Heath
for a Houyhnhnm voice to be within hearing of Houyhnhnm ears. In this
field did Miss Jenny one day beguile the solitude by exclaiming
“heigh-ho for a husband!” an exclamation which exists in the Equine as
well as in the English language. It is also found in the Feline
tongue, but Grimalkin has set it to very unpleasant music. Moses heard
the strain and listened to the voice of love. The breezes did for him
what many a lover has in vain requested them to do in sonnet, and in
elegy, and in song;—they wafted back his sympathetic wishes, and the
wooing was carried on at a quarter of a mile distance: after which the
Innamorato made no more of hedge and ditch than Jupiter was wont to do
of a brazen Tower. Goonhilly in Cornwall was indebted for its once
famous breed of horses to a Barb, which was turned loose (like Moses)
by one of the Erisey family,—the Erisey estate joining the down.
A few days afterwards Miss Jenny having perfectly recovered of her
sprain was purchased by Dr. Dove. The alteration which took place in
her shape was so little that it excited no suspicion in any person:—a
circumstance which will not appear extraordinary to those who remember
that the great Mr. Taplin himself having once booked his expectations
of a colt, kept the mare eleven lunar months and a fortnight by the
Almanack, and then parted with her, after taking the opinion of almost
every farmer and breeder in the country, upon an universal decision
that she had no foal in her;—ten days afterwards the mare shewed cause
why the decision of the judges should be reversed. Those persons, I
say, who know the supereminent accuracy of Mr. Taplin, and that in
matters of this kind every thing past under his own eye, (for he tells
you that it was a trust which he never delegated to another), will not
be so much surprised as the Doctor was at what happened on the present
occasion. The Doctor and Nicholas were returning from
Adwick-in-the-Street where they had been performing an operation. It
was on the eleventh of June; the day had been unusually hot; they were
overtaken by a thunderstorm, and took shelter in a barn. The Doctor
had no sooner alighted than Miss Jenny appeared greatly distressed;
and to the utter astonishment both of Dr. Dove and Nicholas, who could
scarcely believe their own eyes, there was—almost as soon as they
could take off the saddle—what I once saw called in the letter of a
waiting gentlewoman—_dishion_ to the family. To express the same event
in loftier language,
_Ἦλθεν δ᾿ υπὸ σπλάγχνων ὑπ ὠ——
δῖνος τ᾿ ἐρατᾶς ΝΟΨ
Ες φάος ἀυτίκα._
It is for the gratification of the learned Thebans who will peruse
this history that I quote Pindar here.
INTERCHAPTER XVI.
THE AUTHOR RELATES SOME ANECDOTES, REFERS TO AN OPINION EXPRESSED BY A
CRITIC ON THE PRESENT OPUS, AND DESCANTS THEREON.
Every man can say B to a battledore, and write in praise of virtue and
the seven liberal sciences; thresh corn out of full sheaves, and fetch
water out of the Thames. But out of dry stubble to make an
after-harvest, and a plentiful crop without sowing, and wring juice
out of a flint, that is Pierce a God's name, and the right trick of a
workman.
NASH.
There is an anecdote related of the Speaker in one of Queen
Elizabeth's Parliaments, who when the Queen, during a session in which
small progress had been made in the public business, asked him what
the House had got through, made answer, “May it please your Majesty,
eight weeks.” In like manner, if it be asked what I have got through
in the prosecution of this my Opus, I reply, “May it please your
Readership, four volumes.”
This brings to my recollection another anecdote, which though not
matter of history like the former, is matter of fact, and occurred in
the good town of Truro. A lady in that town hired a servant, who at
the time of hiring thought herself bound to let the lady know that she
had once “had a misfortune.” When she had been some time in service,
she spoke of something to her Mistress, inadvertently, as having
happened just after the birth of her first child. Your first! said the
Lady; why how many have you had then?—Oh Ma'am said she, I've had
four. Four! exclaimed the Mistress; why you told me you had had but
one. However I hope you mean to have no more. Ma'am, replied the
woman, that must be as it may please God.
“We are” says Lord Camelford, “as it pleases God,—and sometimes as it
displeases him.”
The reflection is for every one; but the anecdote is recommended to
the special notice of a Critic on the Athenæum establishment, who in
delivering his opinion upon the third volume of this Opus, pronounced
it to be “clear to him,” that the Author had “expended” on the two
former, “a large portion of his intellectual resources, no less than
of his lengthy common-place book.”
The aforesaid Critic has also pronounced that the Opus entitled The
Doctor might have been and ought to have been a Novel. _Might_ have
been is one consideration, _ought_ to have been is another, and
whether it would have been better that it _should_ have been, is a
third; but without discussing either of these propositions, because as
Calderon says,
_Sobre impossibles y falsas
proposiciones, no hai
argumento;_
without, I say, enquiring into what might, would, could, or should
have been, neither of which imports of the preterperfect tense,
optative, potential or subjunctive, are suitable to the present case,
the Author of this Opus replies to the aforesaid Critic's assertion
that the Opus might have been a Novel,—That, Sir, _must_ have been as
it pleased ME.
When Corporal Trim in one of his many attempts to begin the immortal
story of the King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, called that King
unfortunate, and Uncle Toby compassionately asked “was he unfortunate
then?” the Corporal replied, the King of Bohemia, an' please your
honour was _unfortunate_, as thus,—that taking great pleasure and
delight in navigation and all sort of sea affairs, and there happening
throughout the whole Kingdom of Bohemia, to be no sea-port town
whatever,—“How the Deuce should there, Trim? cried my Uncle Toby; for
Bohemia being totally inland, it could have happened no
otherwise.”—“It might said Trim, if it had pleased God.”—“I believe
not, replied my Uncle Toby, after some pause—for being inland as I
said, and having Silesia and Moravia to the East; Lusatia and Upper
Saxony to the North; Franconia to the West, and Bavaria to the South,
Bohemia could not have been propelled to the sea, without ceasing to
be Bohemia,—nor could the sea, on the other hand, have come up to
Bohemia, without overflowing a great part of Germany, and destroying
millions of unfortunate inhabitants who could make no defence against
it,—which would bespeak, added my Uncle Toby, mildly, such a want of
compassion in Him who is the Father of it,—that, I think, Trim—the
thing could have happened no way.”
Were I to say of a Homo on any establishment whatsoever, political,
commercial or literary, public or private, legal or ecclesiastical,
orthodox or heterodox, military or naval,—I include them all that no
individual in any may fancy the observation was intended for himself
and so take it in snuff, (a phrase of which I would explain the origin
if I could,)—and moreover that no one may apply to himself the
illustration which is about to be made, I use the most generic term
that could be applied,—Were I to say of any Homo, (and how many are
there of whom it might be said!) that he might have been whelped or
foaled, instead of having been born, no judicious reader would
understand me as predicating this to be possible, but as denoting an
opinion that such an animal might as well have been a quadruped as
what he is; and that for any use which he makes of his intellect, it
might have been better for society if he had gone on four legs and
carried panniers.
“There stands the Honourable Baronet, hesitating between two bundles
of opinions”—said a certain noble Lord of a certain County Member in
the course of an animated debate in the House of Commons on a subject
now long since forgotten. I will not say of any Homo on any
establishment that his fault is that of hesitating too long or
hazarding too little; but I will say of any such hypothetical Homo as
might better have been foaled, that I wish his panniers had supplied
him with better bundles to choose of.
“How,” says Warburton, “happened it in the definitions of Man, that
_reason_, is always made essential to him? Nobody ever thought of
making _goodness_ so. And yet it is certain that there are as few
reasonable men as there are good. To tell you my mind, I think Man
might as properly be defined, _an animal to whom a sword is
essential_, as one to _whom reason is essential_. For there are as few
that _can_, and yet fewer that _dare_, use the one as the other.”—And
yet, he might have added, too many that misuse both.
The aforesaid Critic on the Athenæum establishment spoke with as
little consideration as Trim, when he said that the Opus might have
been a novel, implying the while—if it had so pleased the Author; and
I make answer advisedly like my Uncle Toby in saying that it could not
have pleased me.
The moving accident is not my trade;
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts.[1]
[Footnote 1: WORDSWORTH.]
Wherefore should I write a novel? There is no lack of novels nor of
novel-writers in these days, good, bad, and indifferent. Is there not
Mr. James who since the demise of Sir Walter is by common consent
justly deemed King of the historical Novelists? And is there not Mrs.
Bray who is as properly the Queen? Would the Earl of Mulgrave be less
worthily employed in writing fashionable tales upon his own views of
morality, than he is in governing Ireland as he governs it? Is there
any season in which some sprigs of nobility and fashion do not bring
forth hot-house flowers of this kind? And if some of them are rank or
sickly, there are others (tell us, Anne Grey! are there not?) that are
of delicate penciling, rich colours, and sweet scent. What are the
Annuals but schools for Novelists male and female? and if any lady in
high life has conceived a fashionable tale, and when the critical time
arrives wishes for a temporary concealment, is not Lady Charlotte Bury
kindly ready to officiate as _Sage Femme_?
The Critic was not so wide of the mark in saying that this Opus ought
to have been a novel—to have pleased him, being understood.
Oh, like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er;
But there's more in me than thou understandest:[2]
And indeed as Chapman says in his Commentary on the Iliad, “where a
man is understood there is ever a proportion between the writer's wit
and the writees,—that I may speak with authority, according to my old
lesson in philosophy, _intellectus in ipsa intelligibilia transit_.”
[Footnote 2: TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.]
_Le role d'un auteur est un role assez vain_, says Diderot, _c'est
celui d'un homme qui se croit en etat de donner des leçons au public.
Et le role du critique? Il est plus vain encore; c'est celui d'un
homme qui se croit en etat de donner des leçons à celui qui se croit
en etat d'en donner au public. L'auteur dit, Messieurs, écoutezmoi,
car je suis votre maitre. Et le critique, C'est moi, Messieurs, qu'il
faut écouter, car je suis le maitre de vos maitres._
The Athenæan Critic plays the Master with me,—and tops his part. “It
is clear, he says, from every page of this book that the Author does
not in vulgar parlance, think Small Beer of himself.” Right, my
Master? certainly I do not. I do not think that the contents of this
book would be truly compared to small beer, which is either weak and
frisky, or weak and flat; that they would turn sour upon a sound, that
is to say an orthodox stomach, or generate flatulence except in an
empty one. I am more inclined, as my Master insinuates, to think
Strong Beer of myself, Cwrw, Burton, Audit Ale, Old October,—what in
his parlance used be called Stingo; or Porter, such as Thrale's
Entire, and old Whitbread's, in days when the ingredients came from
the malster and the hop merchant, not from the Brewer's druggist. Or
Cider, whether of Herefordshire, Somersetshire or Devonshire growth,
no matter; Stire, Cokaghee, or Fox-whelp, a beverage as much better
than Champagne, as it is honester, wholesomer and cheaper. Or Perry,
the Teignton-Squash. These are right old English liquors, and I like
them all. Nay, I am willing if my Master pleases, to think Metheglin
of myself also, though it be a Welsh liquor, for there is Welsh blood
in my veins, and Metheglin has helped to make it, and it is not the
worse for the ingredient. Moreover with especial reference to the
present Opus, there is this reason why I should think Metheglin of
myself,—that Metheglin is made of honey and honey is collected from
all the flowers of the fields and gardens: and how should I have been
able to render this tribute to the Philosopher of Doncaster, my true
Master, if I had not been busy as a Bee in the fields and gardens of
literature, yea in the woods and wilds also? And in the orchards,—for
have I not been plying early and late amongst
“the orchard trees
Last left and earliest found by birds and bees?”[3]
Of Bees however let me be likened to a Dumbledore, which Dr. Southey
says is the most goodnatured of God's Insects; because great must be
the provocation that can excite me to use my sting.
[Footnote 3: EBENEZER ELLIOTT.]
My Master's mention of Small Beer, in vulgar parlance Swipes, reminds
me of Old Tom of Oxford's Affectionate Condolence with the Ultras,
some years ago, whereby it appears that he thought Small Beer at that
time of some very great Patriots and Queenites.
I see your noble rage too closely pent;
I hear you Whigs and Radicals ferment,
Like close-cork'd bottles fill'd with fizzing barm.
Now, Gentlemen, whose stopper is the strongest?
Whose eloquence will bottle-in the longest?
Who'll first explode, I wonder, or who last?
As weak small Beer is sure to fly the first,
Lo! poor Grey Bennet hath already burst,
And daub'd with froth the Speaker as he past.
Who next? Is't Lambton, weak and pert and brisk,
And spitting in one's face, like Ginger-frisk?
Lord John, keep in _thy_ cork, for Heaven's sake do!
The strength and spirit of Champagne is thine,
Powers that will mellow down to generous wine;
Thy premature explosion I should rue.
The Oxford satirist thought Champagne of Lord John in the reign of
Queen Caroline. I think Champagne of him still, which the Satirist
assuredly does not, but we differ in opinion upon this point only
because we differ concerning the merits of the wine so called. I
request him to accept the assurance of my high consideration and
good-will, I shake hands with him mentally and cordially, and entreat
him to write more songs, such as gladden the hearts of true
Englishmen.
Dr. Clarke says in a note to his Travels, that Champagne is an
artificial compound: that “the common champagne wine drunk in this
country is made with green grapes and sugar; and that the imitation of
it, with green gooseberries and sugar, is full as salutary, and
frequently as palatable.” A Frenchman who translated these Travels
remarks upon this passage thus, _C'est sans doute par un sentiment de
patriotisme, et pour degoûter ses compatriotes du vin de Champagne,
que le Docteur Clarke se permet de hasarder de pareilles assertions.
Croit-il que le vin de Champagne se fasse avec du sucre et des raisins
verts, ou des groseilles, et qu'un semblable mélange puisse passer,
même en Angleterre, pour un analogue des vins d'Ai et d'Epernai?_ Dr.
Clarke, as it became him to do, inserted this remark in his next
edition, and said in reply to it, “It so happens that the author's
information does not at all depend upon any conjectures he may have
formed; it is the result of enquiries which he made upon the spot, and
of positive information relative to the chemical constituents ‘_des
vins d'Ai et d'Epernai_,’ from Messrs. Moett and Company, the
principal persons concerned in their fabrication.” It was in the town
of Epernai, whither the author repaired for information upon this
subject, that in answer to some written questions proposed to Mons.
Moett, the following statement was given by that gentleman touching
the admission of sugar into the composition of their wine:
“_Peut-être regarderoit-on en Champagne comme un indiscretion, la
réponse a cette question, puisque la révélation de ce qu'on appelle_
LE SECRET DU PROPRIETAIRE _pourroit nuire a la reputation des vins de
Champagne: mais les hommes instruits et éclairés doivent connoître les
faits et les causes, parcequ'ils savent apprecier et en tirer les
justes consequences._
“_Il est tres vrai que dans les années froides ou pluvieuses, le
raisin n'ayant pas acquis assez de maturité, ou ayant été privé de la
chaleur du soleil, les vins n'ont plus cette liqueur douce et aimable
qui les characterise: dans ce cas quelques propriétaires y ont supplée
par l'introduction dans leur vins d'une liqueur tres eclaire, dont la
base est nécessairement du sucre; sa fabrication est un secrêt; cette
liqueur meslée en très petites quantités aux vins verts, corrige le
vice de l'année, et leur donne absolument la même douceur que celle
que procure le soleil dans les années chaudes. Il s'est élevé en
Champagne même des frequentes querelles entre des connoisseurs qui
pretendoient pouvoir distinguer au goût la liqueur artificielle de
celle qui est naturelle; mais c'est une chimère. Le sucre produit dans
le raisin, comme dans toute espèce de fruit par le travail de la
nature, est toujours du sucre, comme celui que l'art pourroit y
introduire, lorsque l'intemperance des saisons les en a privé. Nous
nous sommes plûs très souvent à mettre en defaut l'expérience de ces
prétendus connoisseurs; et il est si rare de les voir rencontrer
juste, que l'on peut croire que c'est le hazard plus que leur goût qui
les a guidé._”
Having thus upon the best authority shown that Champagne in
unfavourable years is doctored in the country, and leaving the reader
to judge how large a portion of what is consumed in England is made
from the produce of our own gardens, I repeat that I think Champagne
of Lord John Russell,—not such as my friend of Oxford intended in his
verses,—but Gooseberry Champagne, by no means brisk, and with a very
disagreeable taste of the Cork.
If the Oxford Satirist and I should peradventure differ concerning
Champagne, we are not likely to differ now concerning Lord John
Russell. I am very well assured that we agree in thinking of his Lord
Johnship as he is thought of in South Devonshire. Nor shall we differ
in our notions of some of Lord John's Colleagues, and their left
handed friends. If he were to work out another poem in the same vein
of satire, some of the Whole-hoggery in the House of Commons he would
designate by Deady, or Wet and Heavy, some by weak tea, others by
Blue-Ruin, Old Tom which rises above Blue-Ruin to the tune of three
pence a glass—and yet more fiery than Old Tom, as being a fit beverage
for another Old one who shall be nameless,—Gin and Brimstone.
There is a liquor peculiar to Cornwall, with which the fishermen
regale, and which because of its colour they call Mahogany, being a
mixture of two parts gin and one part treacle, well beaten together.
Mahogany then may be the representative _liqueur_ of Mr. Charles
Buller, the representative of a Cornish borough: and for Sir John
Campbell there is Athol porridge, which Boswell says is the
counterpart of Mahogany, but which Johnson thought must be a better
liquor, because being a similar mixture of whiskey and honey, both its
component parts are better: _qui non odit_ the one, _amet_ the other.
Mr. Shiel would put the Satirist in mind of Whiskey “unexcised by
Kings,” and consequently above proof. Mr. Roebuck of Bitters, Mr.
Joseph Hume of Ditch Water, Mr. Lytton Bulwer of Pop, Mr. Ward of
_Pulque_, Mr. O'Connell of _Aqua Tofana_, and Lord Palmerston of
_Parfait Amour_.
Observe good Reader, it was to bottled Small Beer that the Oxford
Satirist likened Grey Bennet, not to Brown Stout, which is a generous
liquor having body and strength.
Hops and Turkeys, Carp and Beer
Came into England all in one year
and that year was in the reign of Henry VIII. The Turkeys could not
have come before the discovery of America, nor the Beer before the
introduction of the Hops. Bottled Beer we owe to the joint agency of
Alexander Nowell, Bishop Bonner, and Mr. Francis Bowyer, afterwards
Sheriff of London.
Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Pauls,
A famous preacher in the halcyon days
Of Queen Elizabeth of endless praise,
was at the beginning of Queen Mary's cruel reign, Master of
Westminster School. Izaak Walton would have pronounced him a very
honest man from his picture at Brazen Nose College, (to which he was a
great Benefactor,) inasmuch as he is there represented “with his
lines, hooks and other tackling, lying in a round on one hand, and his
angles of several sorts on the other.” But says Fuller, whilst Nowell
was catching of Fishes, Bonner was catching of Nowell, and
understanding who he was, designed him to the shambles, whither he had
certainly been sent, had not Mr. Francis Bowyer then a London
merchant, conveyed him upon the seas. Nowell was fishing upon the
Banks of the Thames when he received the first intimation of his
danger, which was so pressing that he dared not go back to his own
house to make any preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler he
had taken with him provision for the day; and when in the first year
of England's deliverance he returned to his own country and his own
haunts, he remembered that on the day of his flight he had left a
bottle of beer in a safe place on the bank; there he looked for it,
and “found it no bottle but a gun, such the sound at the opening
thereof; and this, says Fuller, is believed, (casualty is mother of
more inventions than industry,) the original of Bottled Ale in
England.”
Whatever my Master may think of me, whether he may class me with Grey
Bennet's weak and frothy, or Dean Nowell's wholesome and strong, be
the quality of the liquor what it may, he certainly mistook the
capacity of the vessel, even if he allowed it to be a Magnum Bonum or
Scotch Pint. Greatly was he mistaken when he supposed that a large
portion of my intellectual resources was expended, and of my
common-place Book also.—The former come from a living spring,—and the
latter is like the urn under a River God's arm. I might hint also at
that Tun which the Pfalzgraf Johannes Kasimir built at Heidelberg in
the year 1591,
_Dessgleichen zu derselben zeit
War keines in der Christenheit:_
but alas! it is now a more melancholy object than the Palace to which
it appertained,—for the ruins of that Palace are so beautiful, that
the first emotion with which you behold them is that of unmingled
pleasure:—and the tun is empty! My Master, however, who imagines that
my vat runs low and is likely to be drawn dry, may look at one of the
London Brewers great casks.
END OF VOL. IV.
W. Nicol, 51, Pall Mall.