“What! the girl I adore by another embraced!”
Reference to the sentiments expressed in his poem “The Waltz” makes it
probable that the lines came from his pen. The subject of waltzing
serves as a reminder of an impromptu addressed by an indignant lover to
his betrothed and her partner:
“You have brushed the bloom from the peach,
From the rose its soft hue.
What you’ve touched you may take,
Pretty waltzer, adieu.”
_A Statesman as a Scientist_
In the “Crotchet Castle,” published in 1831, is a merciless exposure of
astonishing inaccuracies in some papers on scientific subjects, written
by Lord Brougham for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
Among the sarcastic thrusts is the following:
“I suppose the learned friend [Brougham] has written a sixpenny treatise
on mechanics, and the rascals who robbed me have been reading it.
“_Mr. Crotchet_: Your house would have been very safe, doctor, if they
had had no better science than the learned friend’s to work with.”
_Lardner’s Mistaken Prediction_
Few men have presented as prominent a target for irony as Dr. Dionysius
Lardner, in view of his alleged statement, in 1836, that steam
navigation for a voyage across the Atlantic was impracticable. What he
said, according to the report of his address in the London _Times_,
August 27, 1836, was that by collation of the amount of coal needed per
horse-power, the speed obtainable, and the number of hours needed for
the distance, no vessel could stow away enough coal to carry her through
a voyage of three thousand miles, and that two thousand miles was the
longest possible run. Brunel, the chief engineer of the Great Western
Railway, pointed out an arithmetical error in the “demonstration” which
vitiated the whole of it, and the learned doctor sat down suddenly
without acknowledgment of his palpable error.
_The Lawyers and the Playwrights_
Samuel Hand, Esq., in the course of an address before the New York State
Bar Association said, “It must be confessed that in modern times there
has been strongly impressed upon the world’s imagination a dark view of
the lawyer and his pursuits. Hear Ben Jonson describe us in the age of
Shakespeare:
“‘I oft have heard him say how he admired
Men of your large profession, that could speak
To every cause, and things mere contraries,
Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law;
That with most quick agility, could turn
And return; make knots and undoe them;
Give forked counsel; take provoking gold
On either hand, and put it up; these men
He knew would thrive with their humility
And (for his part) he thought he would be blest
To have his heir of such a suffering spirit,
So wise, so grave, of so perplexed a tongue
And loud withal, that would not wag nor scarce
Lie still without a fee; when every word
Your worship but lets fall is a zecchin.’
“Turning to the contemporary dramatists, Boucicault and others, we find
the advocate generally handsomely used, but the attorney most
outrageously maltreated and abused. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine
anything more revolting than the figure usually cut by a stage attorney.
He is depicted as meanness itself—vulgar, impudent, prying, without
modesty or veracity, to whom honor is nothing but a word, offering his
person to be kicked and himself to be reviled, if, by that means, any
money can be made. I do not know how it may be with others, but when
this libel on us appears on the stage I can hardly keep my countenance.
It is needless to say that, whatever else may be true of us, these
disgusting pictures are not even good caricatures. They have not the
merit of suggesting the reality. It is difficult to conjecture how they
could have originated, or what circumstances retain them in dramatical
composition, for they have not the most remote resemblance, even in
caricature, to the real average attorney, either English or American.”
_Bancroft as a Historian_
In the Critical and Political Essays of Severn Teackle Wallis, in his
day the leader of the Maryland bar, is a severe arraignment of Bancroft
as a historian. Mr. Wallis charges the author of the “History of the
United States” with such trespasses as “misstatement, omission,
garbling, perversion, and suppression;” the indictment is sustained, and
the conviction is complete. A single paragraph will serve as a specimen
of his vigor.
“Every one who knows anything of our revolutionary history is aware of
the feeling which from time to time was manifested in the Continental
Army against some of the troops and officers from New England. The
attempts of modern historians and lecturers in that quarter to conceal
the traces and evade the justice of this feeling are equally notorious.
The controversy between Lord Mahon and Mr. Sparks is familiar to our
readers. Those who have taken the pains to read what Washington did
actually think and write upon the subject will remember how often, in
the bitterness and sadness of despair, and with the fierce indignation
of his own burning and unselfish patriotism, he denounced the trading
spirit, the littleness, the cowardice, the mean cabals and interests by
which the troops in question so frequently imperilled the great cause.
In the face of facts so generally known and incontestable, we confess
our amazement at finding, on page 335 of the volume of his history now
under review, the broad statement by Mr. Bancroft that ‘it was on the
militia of these (the New England) States, that Washington placed his
chief reliance.’ Nor is this inconceivable assertion guarded by
qualifications of any sort, as to time, or place, or occasion. On the
contrary, it is coupled with an observation ascribed to the British
commander-in-chief, that the New England militia, ‘when brought into
action, were the most persevering of any in all North America,’—the
purpose of combining the two statements being, of course, to perpetuate
it as a historical fact, attested by the heads of both armies, that the
troops from New England were the right arm of the one and the terror of
the other. It is the misfortune of criticism that its decorum has no
language by which falsifications of the sort can be properly
characterized. Happily, on the other hand, it is but seldom called to
expose anything so gross. Mr. Bancroft did himself infinite injustice by
not adding to it at once, that John Adams was the unswerving friend and
stay of Washington in the dark hours of doubt; that the Declaration of
Independence was signed in Boston, and the sword of Cornwallis
surrendered on Bunker Hill.”
_Unsuspected Turns_
When Charles Lamb was invited, at a public dinner, to say grace, and
responded with the remark, “Is there no minister present? Then let us
thank God!” he was a satirist, and knew it. When a sheriff up in
Vermont, in opening the county court, cried, “All persons having causes
or matters pending therein, draw near, and they shall be heard, and God
save the people!” he was a satirist and didn’t know it.
_Plain Speaking_
An elderly resident of a village in Western New York still tells with
glee the story of his aspirations to become justice of the peace many
years ago, when his youthful temper was not always under control. He
says he went to the leader of the dominant party in the town, still well
remembered for his prominence in that locality and with whom he was on
familiar terms, and told him that he would like to get the nomination
for justice of the peace. The answer he got, pronounced with great
deliberation and dignity, was “A——, you are just as fit for justice of
the peace as hell is for a powder house.”
_Stanhope_
Lord Chesterfield’s “Letters to his Son,” though unrivalled as models
for epistolary style, have incurred strong reprehension on two grounds:
first, because some of their maxims are repugnant to good morals; and,
secondly, as insisting too much on manners and graces instead of more
solid acquirements. What effect these lessons in the art of
dissimulation, these precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces, had
upon Philip Stanhope, for whom they were designed, may be inferred from
the following stanzas:
“Vile Stanhope—Demons blush to tell—
In twice two hundred places
Has shown his son the road to hell
Escorted by the Graces;
But little did the ungenerous lad
Concern himself about them;
For base, degenerate, meanly bad,
He sneaked to hell without them.”
_Pens Dipped in Gall_
Theodore Hook declared that Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound” was the most
appropriate of titles, rattling off his criticism in the lines:
“For surely an age would be spent in the finding
A reader so weak as to pay for the binding.”
Erskine is the author of an ill-natured couplet concerning Sir Walter
Scott’s “On Waterloo’s Ensanguined Field:”
“None by sabre or by shot
Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.”
Samuel Rogers, the London poet and banker, was the victim of a woman’s
unsparing wit, when Lady Blessington wrote of his exquisitely
illustrated “Italy” that “the work would surely have been dished had it
not been for the plates.” Tom Moore once experienced a savage dislike
for a cross-eyed woman, who was said to be a poetess, and sneeringly
observed that “instead of her gazing at one muse at a time, she had an
eye for the whole nine at once.” Garrick was a relentless critic of Sir
John Hill, who was a doctor and dramatist:
“Thou essence of dock and valerian and sage
At once the disgrace and the pest of the age,
The worst that we wish thee for all thy sad crimes
Is to take thine own physic and read thine own rhymes.”
The great lake poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, were satirized
by a cynical author, who wrote:
“They came from the lakes, an appropriate quarter
For poems diluted with plenty of water.”
It was one of Pope’s observations: “We have just enough religion to make
us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Swift, who was the
keenest of English satirists, remarked in the same vein: “A man of
business should always have his eyes open, but must often seem to have
them shut.” Satire has its place, and the foibles of individuals and
races may be dealt with most effectively at times with the pen dipped in
gall, but in general its use is to be deplored, not alone in criticism,
but in all the relationships of life.
_Samuel Rogers_
Captain Medwin, in his “Life of Shelley,” copies the following verses on
the poet-banker Rogers, which he attributes, whether justly or not, to
Byron:
“Nose and chin would shame a knocker,
Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker,
Mouth which marks the envious scorner,
With a scorpion at the corner,
Turning its quick tail to sting you,
In the place that most may wring you;
Eyes of lead-like hue and gummy,
Carcase picked up from some mummy,
Bowels—but they were forgotten,
Save the liver and that’s rotten;
Skin all sallow, flesh all sodden,
From the devil would frighten Godwin.
Is’t a corpse set up for show?
Galvanized at times to go?
With the Scripture in connection,
New proof of the resurrection?
Vampire! ghost! or goat, what is it?
I would walk ten miles to miss it.”
“The author of the ‘Pleasures of Memory,’” remarks William Howitt, “has
never met with that species of Mohawk criticism, that scalping and
scarifying literary assault and battery, which so many of his
contemporaries have had to undergo.” Nevertheless, it would be hard to
find in the wide range of Satanic literature a scarification as intense
and as sweeping as that in the lines above quoted.
_Junius on the Duke of Bedford_
“My lord, you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect
or esteem from the public, that if in the following lines a compliment
or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it
as a mockery of your established character, and perhaps an insult to
your understanding. You have nice feelings if we may judge from your
resentments. Cautious, therefore, of giving offence where you have so
little deserved it, I shall leave the illustration of your virtues to
other hands. Your friends have a privilege to play upon the easiness of
your temper, or probably they are better acquainted with your good
qualities than I am. You have done good by stealth. The rest is upon
record. You have still ample room for speculation when panegyric is
exhausted....
“Let us consider you, then, as arrived at the summit of worldly
greatness; let us suppose that all your plans of avarice and ambition
are accomplished, and your most sanguine wishes gratified in the fear as
well as the hatred of the people. Can age itself forget that you are now
in the last act of life? Can gray hairs make folly venerable? Is there
no period to be reserved for meditation and retirement? For shame, my
lord! Let it not be recorded of you that the latest moments of your life
were dedicated to the same unworthy pursuits, the same busy agitations,
in which your youth and manhood were exhausted. Consider that though you
cannot disgrace your former life, you are violating the character of age
and exposing the impotent imbecility, after you have lost the vigor of
the passions.
“Your friends will ask, perhaps, Whither shall this unhappy old man
retire? Can he remain in the metropolis where his life has been so often
threatened, and his palace so often attacked? If he returns to Woburn,
scorn and mockery await him; he must create a solitude round his estate
if he would avoid the face of reproach and derision. At Plymouth his
destruction would be more than probable; at Exeter, inevitable. No
honest Englishman will ever forget his attachment, nor any honest
Scotchman forget his treachery, to Lord Bute. At every town he enters he
must change his liveries and name. Whichever way he flies, the hue and
cry of the country pursues him.
“In another kingdom, indeed, the blessings of his administration have
been more sensibly felt, his virtues understood; or, at worst, they will
not for him alone forget their hospitality. As well might Verres have
returned to Sicily. You have twice escaped, my lord; beware of a third
experiment. The indignation of a whole people, plundered, insulted, and
oppressed as they have been, will not always be disappointed.
“It is in vain, therefore, to shift the scene; you can no more fly from
your enemies than from yourself. Persecuted abroad, you look into your
own heart for consolation, and find nothing but reproaches and despair.
But, my lord, you may quit the field of business, though not the field
of danger; and though you cannot be safe, you may cease to be
ridiculous. I fear you have listened too long to the advice of those
pernicious friends with whose interests you have sordidly united your
own, and for whom you have sacrificed every thing that ought to be dear
to a man of honor. They are still base enough to encourage the follies
of your age, as they once did the vices of your youth. As little
acquainted with the rules of decorum as with the laws of morality, they
will not suffer you to profit by experience, nor even to consult the
propriety of a bad character. Even now they tell you that life is no
more than a dramatic scene, in which the hero should preserve his
consistency to the last; and that as you lived without virtue, you
should die without repentance.”
_Ruskin on the Bicycle_
This is what John Ruskin thought of the bicycle: “Some time since I put
myself on record as an antagonist of the devil’s own toy, the bicycle. I
want to reiterate, with all the emphasis of strong language, that I
condemn all manner of bi-, tri-, and 4–, 5–, 6–, or 7–cycles. Any
contrivance or invention intended to supersede the use of human feet on
God’s own ground is damnable. Walking, running, leaping, and dancing are
legitimate and natural joys of the body, and every attempt to stride on
stilts, dangle on ropes, or wiggle on wheels is an affront to the
Almighty. You can’t improve on God’s appointed way of walking by
substituting an improved cart-wheel.”
_A Serious Interruption_
An amusing story about the late Baron James de Rothschild, who was as
sarcastic as he was shrewd, is now going the rounds of the French press.
It is to the effect that the baron was playing whist one night, “a
financier’s game”—for moderate stakes, that is—with the wealthy Marquis
d’Aligre and a party, when the marquis, having let a louis fall on the
floor, insisted on stopping the game until he found it. The baron,
learning the cause of the interruption, exclaimed in a pathetic tone, “A
louis on the floor? Ah! that is a serious matter,” and coolly taking a
hundred-franc note from his pocket, rolled it up, lighted it at a
candle, and held the blazing paper down to the carpet with profound
gravity to help the marquis in his search!
_Imitation of Shakespeare’s Commentators_
“_Stilton Cheese._”—So, some of the old copies; yet the 4to, 1600, reads
“_Tilton_.” But I confess the word _Tilton_ gives me no idea. I find
Stilton to be a village in Huntingdon, famous for its cheese—a fact
which clearly evinces the propriety of the reading in the old copy, and
justifies my emendation.