poetical contributions which can be inserted, are not those which
come post free, in rose-coloured tinted paper, scented with musk, and
sealed with fancy wax. The real article arrives by post, unpaid, sealed
with rosin, or possibly with a dab of pitch or cobbler’s wax, bearing
the impression of a halfpenny, or more frequently of a button,--the
paper is dingy, and scant--the hand-writing has evidently come to
the author by nature--there are trips in the spelling, and Priscian
is a little scratch’d or so--but a rill of the true Castalian runs
through the whole composition, though its fountain-head was a broken
tea-cup, instead of a silver standish. A few years ago I used to be
favoured with numerous poems for insertion, which bore the signature
of Fitz-Norman; the crest on the seal had probably descended from the
Conquest, and the packets were invariably delivered by a Patagonian
footman in green and gold. The author was evidently rich, and the
verses were as palpably poor; they were declined, with the usual
answer to correspondents who do not answer, and the communications
ceased--as I thought for ever, but I was deceived; a few days back one
of the dirtiest and raggedest of street urchins delivered a soiled
whity brown packet, closed with a wafer, which bore the impress of a
thimble. The paper had more the odour of tobacco than of rose leaves,
and the writing appeared to have been perpetrated with a skewer dipped
in coffee-grounds; but the old signature of Fitz-Norman had the honour
to be my “very humble servant” at the foot of the letter. It was
too certain that he had fallen from affluence to indigence, but the
adversity which had wrought such a change upon the writing implements,
had, as usual, improved his poetry. The neat crowquill never traced on
the superfine Bath paper any thing so unaffected as the following:--
[Illustration: “YOUR VERY HUMBLE SERVANT.”]
STANZAS.
WRITTEN UNDER THE FEAR OF BAILIFFS.
Alas! of all the noxious things
That wait upon the poor,
Most cruel is that Felon-Fear
That haunts the “Debtor’s Door!”
Saint Sepulchre’s begins to toil,
The Sheriffs seek the cell:--
So I expect their officers,
And tremble at the bell!
I look for _beer_, and yet I quake
With fright at every _tap_;
And dread a _double-knock_, for oh!
I’ve not a _single rap_!
SONNET.
WRITTEN IN A WORKHOUSE.
Oh, blessed ease! no more of heaven I ask:
The overseer is gone--that vandal elf--
And hemp, unpick’d, may go and hang itself,
While I, untask’d, except with Cowper’s Task,
In blessed literary leisure bask,
And lose the workhouse, saving in the works
Of Goldsmiths, Johnsons, Sheridans, and Burkes;
Eat prose and drink of the Castalian flask;
The themes of Locke, the anecdotes of Spence,
The humorous of Gay, the Grave of Blair--
Unlearned toil, unletter’d labours hence!
But, hark! I hear the master on the stair
And Thomson’s Castle, that of Indolence,
Must be to me a castle in the air.
SONNET.--A SOMNAMBULIST.
“A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.”--BYRON.
Methought--for Fancy is the strangest gadder
When sleep all homely Mundane ties hath riven--
Methought that I ascended Jacob’s ladder,
With heartfelt hope of getting up to Heaven:
Some bell, I knew not whence, was sounding seven
When I set foot upon that long one-pair;
And still I climbed when it had chimed eleven,
Nor yet of landing-place became aware;
Step after step in endless flight seem’d there;
But on, with steadfast hope, I struggled still,
To gain that blessed haven from all care,
Where tears are wiped, and hearts forget their ill,
When, lo! I wakened on a sadder stair--
Tramp--tramp--tramp--tramp--upon the Brixton Mill!
FUGITIVE LINES ON PAWNING MY WATCH.
“Aurum _potabile_:”--Gold biles the pot.--FREE TRANSLATION.
Farewell then, my golden repeater,
We’re come to my Uncle’s old shop;
And hunger won’t be a dumb-waiter,
The Cerberus growls for a sop!
To quit thee, my comrade diurnal,
My feelings will certainly scotch;
But oh! there’s a riot internal,
And Famine calls out for the Watch!
Oh! hunger’s a terrible trial,
I really must have a relief,--
So here goes the plate of your dial
To fetch me some Williams’s beef!
As famish’d as any lost seaman,
I’ve fasted for many a dawn,
And now must play chess with the Demon,
And give it a _check_ with a _pawn_.
I’ve fasted, since dining at Buncle’s,
Two days with true Perceval zeal--
And now must make up at my Uncle’s.
By getting a _duplicate_ meal.
[Illustration: “OH MY PROPHETIC SOUL--MY UNCLE!”]
No Peachum it is, or young Lockit,
That rifles my fob with a snatch;
Alas! I must pick my own pocket,
And make gravy-soup of my watch!
So long I have wander’d a starver,
I’m getting as keen as a hawk;
Time’s long hand must take up a carver,
His short hand lay hold of a fork.
Right heavy and sad the event is,
But oh! it is Poverty’s crime;
I’ve been such a Brownrigg’s Apprentice,
I thus must be “out of my Time.”
Alas! when in Brook Street the Upper,
In comfort I lived between walls,
I’ve gone to a dance for my supper;
But now I must go to Three Balls!
Folks talk about dressing for dinner,
But I have for dinner undrest;
Since Christmas, as I am a sinner,
I’ve eaten a suit of my best.
I haven’t a ram or a mummock
To fetch me a chop or a steak;
I wish that the coats of my stomach
Were such as my uncle would take!
When dishes were ready with garnish
My watch used to warn with a chime--
But now my repeater must furnish
The dinner in lieu of the time!
My craving will have no denials,
I can’t fob it off, if you stay,
So go,--and the old Seven Dials
Must tell me the time of the day.
Your chimes I shall never more hear ’em,
To part is a Tic Douloureux!
But Tempus has his edax rerum,
And I have my Feeding-Time too!
Farewell then, my golden repeater,
We’re come to my Uncle’s old shop--
And Hunger won’t be a dumb-waiter,
The Cerberus growls for a sop!
THE LIFE OF ZIMMERMANN.
(BY HIMSELF).
“This, this, is solitude.”--LORD BYRON.
I was born, I may almost say, an orphan; my Father died three months
before I saw the light, and my Mother three hours after--thus I was
left in the whole world alone, and an only child, for I had neither
Brothers nor Sisters; much of my after passion for solitude might be
ascribed to this cause, for I believe our tendencies date themselves
from a much earlier age, or rather, youth, than is generally imagined.
It was remarked that I could go alone at nine months, and I have had
an aptitude to going alone all the rest of my life. The first words
I learnt to say, were “I by myself, I”--or thou--or he--or she--or
it--but I was a long time before I could pronounce any personals in the
plural; my little games and habits were equally singular. I was fond of
playing at Solitary or at Patience, or another game of cards of my own
invention, namely, whist, with _three_ dummies. Of books, my favourite
was Robinson Crusoe, especially the first part, for I was not fond of
the intrusion of Friday, and thought the natives really were Savages
to spoil such a solitude. At ten years of age I was happily placed
with the Rev. Mr. Steinkopff, a widower, who took in only the limited
number of six pupils, and had only me to begin with; here I enjoyed
myself very much, learning in a first and last class in school hours,
and playing in play time at hoop, and other pretty games not requiring
partners. My playground was, in short, a garden of Eden, and I did not
even sigh for an Eve, but, like Paradise, it was too happy to last.
I was removed from Mr. Steinkopff’s to the University of Göttingen,
and at once the eyes of six hundred pupils, and the pupils of twelve
hundred eyes, seemed fastened upon me: I felt like an owl forced into
day-light; often and often I shammed ill, as an excuse for confining
myself to my chamber, but some officious would-be friends, insisting
on coming to sit with me, as they said, to enliven my solitude, I
was forced as a last resource to do that which subjected me, on the
principle of Howard’s Prison Discipline, to solitary confinement.
But even this pleasure did not last; the heads of the College found
out that solitary confinement was no punishment, and put another
student in the same cell; in this extremity I had no alternative but
to endeavour to make him a convert to my principles, and in some days
I succeeded in convincing him of the individual independence of man,
the solid pleasures of solitude, and the hollow one of society,--in
short, he so warmly adopted my views, that in a transport of sympathy
we swore an eternal friendship, and agreed to separate for ever,
and keep ourselves to ourselves as much as possible. To this end we
formed with our blanket a screen across our cell, and that we might
not even in thought associate with each other, he soliloquised only
in French, of which I was ignorant, and I in English, to which he was
equally a stranger. Under this system my wishes were gratified, for
I think I felt more intensely lonely than I ever remember when more
strictly alone. Of course this condition had a conclusion; we were
brought out again unwillingly into the common world, and the firm
of Zimmermann, Nobody, and Co., was compelled to admit--six hundred
partners. In this extremity, my fellow prisoner Zingleman and myself
had recourse to the persuasions of oratory. We preached solitude, and
got quite a congregation, and of the six hundred hearers, four hundred
at least became converts to our Unitarian Doctrine; every one of these
disciples strove to fly to the most obscure recesses, and the little
cemetery of the College had always a plenty of those who were trying
to make themselves scarce. This of course was afflicting; as in the
game of puss in a corner, it was difficult to get a corner unoccupied
to be alone in; the defections and desertions from the College were
consequently numerous, and for a long time the state gazette contained
daily advertisements for missing gentlemen, with a description of their
persons and habits, and invariably concluding with this sentence: “of a
melancholy turn,--calls himself a Zimmermanian, and affects solitude.”
In fact, as Schiller’s Robbers begot Robbers, so did my solitude
beget solitudinarians, but with this difference, that the dramatist’s
disciples frequented the Highways, and mine the Byeways!
The consequence was what might have been expected, which I had
foreseen, and ardently desired. I was expelled from the University of
Göttingen. This was perhaps the triumph of my life. A grand dinner was
got up by Zingleman in my honour, at which more than three hundred
were present, but in tacit homage to my principles, they never spoke
nor held any communication with each other, and at a concerted signal
the toast of “Zimmermann and Solitude” was drunk, by dumb show, in
appropriate solemn silence. I was much affected by this tribute, and
left with tears in my eyes, to think, with such sentiments, how many of
us might be thrown together again. Being thus left to myself, like a
vessel with only one hand on board, I was at liberty to steer my own
course, and accordingly took a lodging at Number One, in Wilderness
Street, that held out the inviting prospect of a single room to let for
a single man. In this congenial situation I composed that my great work
on Solitude, and here I think it necessary to warn the reader against
many spurious books, calling themselves “Companions to Zimmermann’s
Solitude,” as if solitude could have society. Alas, from this work I
may date the decline which my presentiment tells me will terminate
in my death. My book, though written against populousness, became so
popular, that its author, though in love with loneliness, could never
be alone. Striving to fly from the face of man, I could never escape
it, nor that of woman and child into the bargain. When I stirred
abroad mobs surrounded me, and cried, “Here is the Solitary!”--when
I staid at home I was equally crowded; all the public societies of
Göttingen thought proper to come up to me with addresses, and not even
by deputation. Flight was my only resource, but it did not avail, for
I could not fly from myself. Wherever I went Zimmermann and Solitude
had got before me, and their votaries assembled to meet me. In vain
I travelled throughout the European and Asiatic continent: with an
enthusiasm and perseverance of which only Germans are capable, some of
my countrymen were sure to haunt me, and really showed by the distance
they journeyed, that they were ready to go all lengths with me and my
doctrine. Some of these Pilgrims even brought their wives and children
along with them, in search of my solitude; and were so unreasonable
even as to murmur at my taking the inside of a coach, or the cabin of a
packet-boat to myself.
From these persecutions I was released by what some persons would call
an unfortunate accident, a vessel in which I sailed from Leghorn, going
down at sea with all hands excepting my own pair, which happened to
have grappled a hen-coop. There was no sail in sight, nor any land to
be seen--nothing but sea and sky; and from the midst of the watery
expanse it was perhaps the first and only glimpse I ever had of real
and perfect solitude, yet so inconsistent is human nature, I could
not really and perfectly enter into its enjoyment. I was picked up
at length by a British brig of war, and, schooled by the past, had
the presence of mind to conceal my name, and to adopt the English one
of Grundy. Under this _nom de guerre_, but really a name of peace,
I enjoyed comparative quiet, interrupted only by the pertinacious
attendance of an unconscious countryman, who, noticing my very retired
habits, endeavoured by daily lectures from my own work, to make me
a convert to my own principles. In short, he so wore me out, that
at last, to get rid of his importunities, I told him in confidence
that I was the author himself. But the result was anything but what I
expected; and here I must blush again for the inconsistency of human
nature. While Winkells knew me only as Grundy, he painted nothing but
the charms of Solitude, and exhorted me to detach myself from society;
but no sooner did he learn that I was Zimmermann, than he insisted on
my going to Lady C----’s rout and his own conversazione. In fact,
he wanted to make me, instead of a Lion of the Desert, a Lion of the
Menagerie. How I resented such a proposition may be supposed, as
well as his offer to procure for me the first vacancy that happened
in the situation of Hermit at Lord P----’s Hermitage; being, as he
was pleased to say, not only able to bear solitude, but well-bred
and well-informed, and fit to _receive company_. The effect of this
unfortunate disclosure was to make me leave England, for fear of
meeting with the fate of a man or an ox that ventures to quit the
common herd. I should immediately have been declared mad, and mobbed
into lunacy, and then put into solitary confinement, with a keeper
always with me, as a person beside himself, and not fit to be left
alone for a moment. As such a fate would have been worse to me than
death, I immediately left London, and am now living anonymously in an
uninhabited house,--prudence forbids me to say where.
[Illustration:
“Sare, I am at where?--”
“Well, I know you be!”
]
THE PORTRAIT:
BEING AN APOLOGY FOR NOT MAKING AN ATTEMPT ON MY OWN LIFE.
The late inimitable Charles Mathews, in one of his amusing
entertainments, used to tell a story of a certain innkeeper, who made
it a rule of his house, to allow a candle to a guest, only on condition
of his ordering a pint of wine. Whereupon the guest contends, on the
reciprocity system, for a light for every half-bottle, and finally
drinks himself into a general illumination.
Something of the above principle seems to have obtained in the case of
a Portrait and a Memoir, which in literary practice have been usually
dependent on each other--a likeness and a life,--a candle and a pint of
wine. The mere act of sitting, probably suggests the idea of hatching;
at least an author has seldom nestled in a painter’s chair, without
coming out afterwards with a brood of Reminiscences, and accordingly,
no sooner was my effigy about to be presented to the Public, than I
found myself called upon by my Publisher, with a finished proof of the
engraving in one hand, and a request for an account of myself in the
other. He evidently supposed, as a matter of course, that I had my
autobiography in the bottle, and that the time was come to uncork and
pour it out _with a Head_.
To be candid, no portrait, perhaps, ever stood more in need of such an
accompaniment. The figure opposite has certainly the look of one of
those practical jokes whereof the original is oftener suspected than
really culpable. It might pass for the sign of “The Grave Maurice.” The
author of Elia has declared that he once sat as substitute for a whole
series of British Admirals,[2] and a physiognomist might reasonably
suspect that in wantonness or weariness, instead of giving my head I
had procured myself to be painted by proxy. For who, that calls himself
stranger, could ever suppose that such a pale, pensive, peaking,
sentimental, sonneteering countenance--with a wry mouth as if it always
laughed on its wrong side--belonged bonâ fide to the Editor of the
Comic--a Professor of the Pantagruelian Philosophy, hinted at in the
preface to the present work? What unknown who reckons himself decidedly
serious, would recognise the head and front of my “offending,” in a
visage not at all too hilarious for a frontispiece to the Evangelical
Magazine! In point of fact the owner has been taken sundry times, ere
now, for a Methodist Minister, and a pious turn has been attributed
to his hair--lucus a non lucendo--from its having no turn in it at
all.[3] In like manner my literary contemporaries who have cared to
remark on my personals, have agreed in ascribing to me a melancholy
bias; thus an authority in the New Monthly Magazine has described me
as “a grave anti-pun-like-looking person,” whilst another--in the Book
of Gems--declares that “my countenance is more grave than merry,” and
insists, therefore, that I am of a pensive habit, and “have never
laughed heartily in company or in rhyme.” Against such an inference,
however, I solemnly protest, and if it be the fault of my features,
I do not mind telling my face to its face that it insinuates a false
Hood, and grossly misrepresents a person notorious amongst friends
for laughing at strange times and odd places, and in particular when
he has the worst of the rubber. For it is no comfort for the loss of
points, by his theory, to be upon thorns. And truly what can be more
unphilosophical, than to sit ruefully as well as whistfully, with your
face inconsistently playing at longs and your hand at shorts,--getting
hypped as well as pipped,--“talking of Hoyle,” as the City lady said,
“but looking like winegar,” and betraying as keen a sense of the profit
and loss, as if the _pack_ had turned you into a _pedlar_.
[Illustration: “ON THE CARD-RACK.”]
But I am digressing; and turning my back, as Lord Castlereagh would
have said, on my face. The portrait, then, is genuine--“an ill-favoured
thing, Sir,” as Touchstone says, “but mine own.” For its quarrel with
the rules of Lavater there is precedent. I remember seeing on Sir
Thomas Lawrence’s easel, an unfinished head of Mr. Wilberforce, so
very merry, so rosy, so good-fellowish, that nothing less than the Life
and Correspondence recently published could have persuaded me that
he was really a serious character. A memoir, therefore, would be the
likeliest thing to convince the world that the physiognomy prefixed
to this number is actually Hood’s Own:--indeed a few of the earlier
chapters would suffice to clear up the mystery, by proving that my face
is only answering in the affirmative, the friendly enquiry of the Poet
of all circles--“Has sorrow thy young days shaded?”--and telling the
honest truth of one of those rickety constitutions which, according to
Hudibras, seem
“---- as if intended
For nothing else but to be mended.”
To confess the truth, my vanity pricked up its ears a little at the
proposition of my Publisher. There is something vastly flattering in
the idea of appropriating the half or quarter of a century, mixing it
up with your personal experience, and then serving it out as your own
Life and Times. On casting a retrospective glance, however, across
Memory’s waste, it appeared so literally a waste that vanity herself
shrank from the enclosure act, as an unpromising speculation. Had I
foreseen, indeed, some five-and-thirty years ago, that such a demand
would be made upon me, I might have laid myself out on purpose, as
Dr. Watts recommends, so as “to give of every day some good account
at last.” I would have lived like a Frenchman, for effect, and made
my life a long dress rehearsal of the future biography. I would have
cultivated incidents “pour servir,” laid traps for adventures, and
illustrated my memory like Rogers’s, by a brilliant series of Tableaux.
The earlier of My Seven Stages should have been more Wonder Phenomenon
Comet and Balloon-like, and have been timed to a more Quicksilver
pace than they have travelled; in short, my Life, according to the
tradesman’s promise, should have been “fully equal to bespoke.” But
alas! in the absence of such a Scottish second-sight, my whole course
of existence up to the present moment would hardly furnish materials
for one of those “bald biographies” that content the old gentlemanly
pages of Sylvanus Urban. Lamb, on being applied to for a Memoir of
himself, made answer that it would go into an epigram; and I really
believe that I could compress my own into that baker’s dozen of lines
called a sonnet. Montgomery, indeed, has forestalled the greater part
of it, in his striking poem on the “Common Lot,” but in prose, nobody
could ever make anything of it, except Mr. George Robins. The lives of
literary men are proverbially barren of interest, and mine, instead of
forming an exception to the general rule, would bear the application
of the following words of Sir Walter Scott, much better than the
career of their illustrious author. “There is no man known at all in
literature, who may not have more to tell of his private life than I
have. I have surmounted no difficulties either of birth or education,
nor have I been favoured by any particular advantages, and my life
has been as void of incidents of importance as that of the weary
knife-grinder--‘Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, Sir.’”
Thus my birth was neither so humble that, like John Jones, I have been
obliged amongst my lays to lay the cloth, and to court the cook and
the muses at the same time; nor yet so lofty, that, with a certain
lady of title, I could not write without letting myself down. Then,
for education, though on the one hand I have not taken my degree, with
Blucher; yet on the other, I have not been rusticated, at the Open Air
School, like the poet of Helpstone. As for incidents of importance, I
remember none, except being drawn for a soldier, which was a hoax, and
having the opportunity of giving a casting vote on a great parochial
question, only I didn’t attend. I have never been even third in a duel,
or crossed in love. The stream of time has flowed on with me very like
that of the New River, which everybody knows has so little romance
about it, that its head has never troubled us with a Tale. My own story
then, to possess any interest, must be a fib.
Truly given, with its egotism and its barrenness, it would look too
like the chalked advertisements on a dead wall. Moreover, Pope has read
a lesson to self-importance in the Memoirs of P.P., the Parish Clerk,
who was only notable after all amongst his neighbours as a swallower of
loaches. Even in such practical whims and oddities I am deficient,--for
instance, eschewing razors, or bolting clasp-knives, riding on painted
ponies, sleeping for weeks, fasting for months, devouring raw tripe,
and similar eccentricities, which have entitled sundry knaves, quacks,
boobies, and brutes, to a brief biography in the Wonderful Magazine.
And, in the absence of these distinctions, I am equally deficient in
any spiritual pretensions. I have had none of those experiences which
render the lives of saintlings, not yet in their teens, worth their own
weight in paper and print, and consequently my personal history, as a
Tract, would read as flat as the Pilgrim’s Progress without the Giants,
the Lions, and the grand single combat with the Devil.
To conclude my life,--“upon my life,”--is not worth giving or taking.
The principal just suffices for me to live upon; and of course, would
afford little interest to anyone else. Besides, I have a bad memory;
and a personal history would assuredly be but a middling one, of which
I have forgotten the beginning and cannot foresee the end. I must,
therefore, respectfully decline giving my life to the world--at least
till I have done with it--but to soften the refusal, I am willing,
instead of a written character of myself, to set down all that I can
recall of other authors, and, accordingly, the next number will contain
the first instalment of
MY LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
[2] He perhaps took the hint from Dibdin, who lays down the rule in
his Sea Songs, that a Naval Hero ought to be a Lion in battle,
but afterwards a Lamb.