noble contemporaries, a tendency to pronounce after the old manner, as
“_hull_,” for whole; “_marchant_,” for merchant; “_cheney_,” for china;
“_showlder_,” for shoulder; “_buzzoms_,” for bosoms, &c.; and this
pronunciation answers to the orthography of the great lords and ladies
of Whitehall after the restoration, who being “_un peu brouillés avec
l’alphabet_,” endeavoured to spell as near to the sounds of words as they
could. The Duchess of Cleveland, writing to the king, says, “_I never
was so surprized in my hulle life_,” &c. &c. &c. Jonathan Wild quizzes
the ordinary of Newgate for falling into this jacobite pronunciation, by
spelling _whole_, _hull_.
Many forms of courtesy, rites of hospitality, and traits of habits,
manners, and customs, to be found in the old comedies, from the time of
Elizabeth to Anne, are still observable in the remote parts of Ireland;
a country which, like an old coffer in the country mansion of an old
fashioned family, is the exchequer of all the odds and ends and relics of
modes long passed, and exploded in modern life.
I remember, in my childhood, dining at the country house of an old
catholic family, where, after the chaplain had pronounced an interminable
grace, the lady of the mansion rose, and bowing round graciously to her
company, pronounced, “much good may it do ye,” which was always followed,
at the end of the dinner, by the observation that none of her guests had
eaten any thing; indicating the delicacy of their appetites, and the
unworthiness of her table.
A few months back, having stopped to change horses at a road-side inn,
and the horses having to be sent for to the field, we alighted, and
found the family at dinner in the reception room, which was also the
kitchen. A wretched man, begging his way to Dublin, half-naked, and half
starved, and so faint from want, cold, and exhaustion, as to be scarcely
articulate, paused at the threshold, and moving the crown of a leafless
hat, said, “Much good may it do ye, genteels!” This form of courtesy, in
practice among the gentry not many years back, has now fallen to the very
lowest classes of society; and this is the history of manners, as well as
of phraseology. In Shakspeare’s time the salutation of the modern Irish
beggar to the peasant, was deemed a trait of royal courtesy.
The modern house-maid, who accompanies her lover, the footman, to the
upper gallery, flushes at the coarseness of the fine ladies of Wycherley,
Vanbrugh, and Farquhar; and feels her own superiority in modesty and
gentility to the lovely Lady Lurewell, or even to the prudent Angelica of
Sir Harry Wildair.
Tales, novels, and dramas, are the true sources from which the philosophy
of manners can best be drawn, and are illustrative of the progress of
society at various and successive epochs. History does nothing in this
respect; and modern historians, in this point of view, are infinitely
less valuable and useful, than the dryest chronicler of the middle ages.
A page of Froissart is worth a volume of Hume, (who, as an historian,
by the by, is daily losing ground in public estimation). The literary
fiction, which gives cotemporary manners, modes, and prevailing
phraseology, has a fair chance of surviving the tale which, placed in a
remote epoch, creates a manner and a dialect neither illustrative of the
times of which it treats, nor the times in which it is written. This is
the fault of the beautiful romance of Ivanhoe, which is written with all
the colouring and dialect of Queen Elizabeth’s day, copied, even to set
idioms and phrases, from Shakspeare and the play-writers of his time.
English was not spoken in the time of King John; the people spoke Saxon,
the upper classes Norman-French. When Shakspeare wrote his play of King
John, he did not affect to go back to the style and language of Henry the
Fifth, because he could not employ that which was in use when his scene
was supposed to take place. He therefore wrote in the language of his own
times; and among the many admirable qualities of his inspired authorship,
not the least admirable is, that he has given in his dramas, the very
tone, accent, idioms, and manner of colloquial communication, from the
court to the peasant’s hut.
To know how exactly Shakspeare has copied existing forms, and to account
for the rapidity with which he wrote, it is only necessary to read some
of the memoirs and chronicles of Henry the Eighth’s and Elizabeth’s
day, where dialogues on every state affair, carried on by ministers,
secretaries, and Irish Lords Lieutenant, are given verbatim,—all ready
to go upon the stage, and to pass for a scene of Shakspeare’s or Ben
Jonson’s,—just as a group at the Hague or Cologne, still exhibits a high
toned picture of Vandervelt or Rembrandt.
I open at random a volume from the shelf of the bookcase of the
dressing-room in which I write, and copy literally a scene and dialogue,
meant only to be a simple narrative. It is taken from Campion’s _Historie
of Ireland_, written 1571;—the scene is a room at court,—several lords
sitting in commission on Gerald Fitzgerald, Earle of Kildare, “a
gentleman valiant and well spoken, yet in his latter time overtaken
with vehement suspicion of sundrie treasons.” The Cardinal Chancellor
Wolsey is his inveterate enemy and chief accuser. It requires no great
effort of imagination to conceive the place and persons of this veracious
drama. The gloomy gothic chamber, the ponderous costume of the lords,
many of whom have been made familiar to posterity by the pencil of
Vandyke, the sober splendour of Wolsey’s habit, his scarlet hat, and
glittering crucifix, the picturesque habit, and more picturesque person
of the Geraldine,—his gigantic form, and stern, bold bearing, waiting
in indignant silence for the accusations to be made against him, by a
powerful and interested enemy. After a solemn pause, the lords “being
diversly affectioned,” the Cardinal Chancellor broke forth in these words:
“I wot well, my lord, that I am not the meetest man at this board to
charge you with these treasons; because it hath pleased some of your
pew-fellows to report that I am a professed enemy of the Geraldines. I
must have leave, notwithstanding your stale slander, to be the mouth of
these honourable persons at this time, and to trumpe your treasons in
your way, howsoever you take me.
“First, You remember how the lewde Earle, your kinsman, who passeth not
whom he serve, might he change his master, sent his confederates with
letters of credence to Francis the French king. How many letters?—what
precepts?—what threats have been sent you to apprehend him?—and yet not
done; why so?—Forsooth, I could not catch him. Nay, nay, Earle, forsooth
you would not nighly watch him. If he be justly suspected, why are you
partial in so great a charge? If not, why are you fearful to have him
tryed? Surely, this juggling and false play little became either an
honest man called to such honour, or a nobleman put in such trust. Had
you lossed but a cow or a garron of your owne, two hundred kyrneghis
(kirns) would have come at your whistle, to rescue the prey from the
uttermost edge of Ulster. All the Irish in Ireland must have given you
way. But in persuing so weighty a matter as this, merciful God, how nice,
how dangerous, how wayward have you bin? I wis, my lord, there be shrewde
bogges in the borders, for the Earle of Kildare to fear.”
Whilst the Cardinal was speaking, the Earl chafed and changed colour,
and sundry proffers made to answer every sentence as it came. At last he
broke out, and interrupted them thus—
“My Lord Chancellor,—I beseech you pardon me. I am short witted, and
you, I perceive, intend a long tale. If you proceede in this order,
half my purgation wil be loste for lack of carryage. I have no schoole
tricks, nor art of memory: except you hear me, while I remember your
words, your second process will hammer out the former. What my cousin
Desmond hath compassed, as I know not, so I beshrew his naked heart for
holding out so long. Cannot the Earle of Desmond shift, but I must be
of counsell?—Cannot hee bee hid, except I winke?—If hee bee close, am I
his mate?—If hee bee friended, am I a traytour? This is a doughty kind
of accusation which they urge against me, wherein they are stabled and
mirde, at my first deniall. ‘You would not see him,’ say they;—‘who made
them so familiar with mine eye-sight?—As touching my kingdom, my lord, I
would that you and I had exchanged kingdoms, but for one moneth, I would
trust to gather up more crummes in that space than twice the revenues
of my poor earldome. But you are well and warm, and so hold you; and
upbraide not me with such an odious storme. I sleep in a cabin, when
you lie soft on a bed of downe. I serve under the cope of heaven, when
you are served under a canopy. I drink water out of a scull, when you
drinke out of golden cuppes. My courser is trained to the field, when
your jennet is taught to amble. When you are begraced, and belorded,
and crouched and kneeled unto, then I find small grace with our Irish
borderers, except I cut them off by the knees.’”
A CHARACTER.
Mr. —— is that sort of man, who has all the faults that help to please,
and forbid to serve. His character is a study; his great talent is his
power of assimilation. He is never displaced, never out of keeping with
times, persons, or circumstances. He dovetails with all opinions and all
orders of intellect—a perfect Aristippus. He is like mustard-seed: fling
him where you will, he takes root on the surface and flourishes. Sow him
in a hot-bed, in a flannel cap, in a lady’s beau-pot, or in a potatoe
ridge, _c’est égal_.
THE DÉLAISSÉ.
The most dissipated man, who has once known the distinction of being
loved by a woman capable of the intense devotedness which springs from
passionate feelings and strong intellect, must feel a dreadful void
when he is loved no longer. Deserting, or deserted, he will feel it
with remorse, or with mortification. The passing fancy of the light and
the foolish leaves no scar behind; the wound closes rapidly, and all is
forgotten.
TAVERNS.
“You may be wise in your study in the morning,” (says brow-beating
Johnson, to his gape-mouthed admirer Boswell,) “and gay in company at a
tavern in the evening.” What a trait of manners! Fancy a man of fashion,
or a man of letters, or any man, in the rank of a gentleman, setting
forth after dinner, to be “gay at a tavern in an evening.”
The tavern life has now fallen to the lowest classes of society. In the
time of Charles, and James the Second, princes of the blood, and the
proudest of the peerage, frequented the tavern. In Louis the Fourteenth’s
day, men of fashion resorted to places of the same description in France;
and ladies of rank, by way of a frolic, sometimes accompanied them to
some fashionable auberge in the suburbs, or the Boulevards. In another
half century, there will be nothing between the common chop-house, and
a magnificent club—between Crockford’s, and “the cheap and nasty.” The
improvements of social and domestic life are filling up the intervals.
The improvements in female education are also giving a charm to home,
which it wanted in those times, when the women were treated as slaves or
sultanas in one class; and were deemed in others creatures only fit
“To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.”
SOLEMN BLOCKHEADS.
“Eh! qui ne connoit pas la gravité des sots.”
CHENIER.
Last night I met Mr. —— at Lord A——’s. What a solemn blockhead! Unluckily
for him, he has precisely that sort of learning, which draws out fools
from their obscurity, and drives them from the secure asylum of their
insignificance, to a public exhibition of their inefficiency. Still, such
men get on! and, under the present system, make their way to place, and
power, and endowment.
For the last twenty years, there was scarcely an instance of a man of
very superior genius, or of great intellectual strength, being employed
in the public offices of the greatest nation of the earth. A few shrewd,
acute clerks worked their way into the subordinate places in the state;
but the moment they were found to be too shrewd for their masters, they
were got rid of.
There is nothing so fearful as a nation becoming more enlightened than
its government. Of such elements was the French revolution composed.
CATHOLIC PETITIONS.
The earliest petition I know of, on behalf of the Roman Catholics is
that addressed to James the First, beginning, “Most Puissant Prince, and
Orient Monarch!” In this petition the sufferers class their persecutors
as being Protestants, Puritans, and atheists, or politicians: a meddler
in politics, in the days of the absolute Stuarts, was set down as an
atheist.
LAUGHING AND CRYING.
This morning, in describing a scene of distress I had witnessed a few
days back, the tears dropped fast from M——’s eyes; and yet I know few
firmer intellects; but the finest metals dissolve the easiest. It is
extremely difficult to draw tears from blockheads, except when muddled;
and then they talk of themselves, and are pathetic. It is easier to
make “butchers weep,” than to move the self-sufficient coxcomb who is
wrapt up exclusively in his own importance, to the exclusion of all human
sympathy. But, after all, I doubt if the gift of laughing heartily be not
an equal proof of feeling. Alas! for those who neither laugh nor weep!
and doubly alas! for those who are obliged to live with them! There is an
immense variety and character in laughs. I have often heard it said of
the Countess of C——, that her laugh is even more beautiful than her face.
One could write chapters upon this subject; and perhaps I shall do so
some of these days, even at the risk of being laughed at for my pedantry,
for there really are a great many odd things to be said on the subject.
Somebody has written a catalogue of persons who died laughing.
EXPECTATION.
It is pleasant to expect; at least it is so in youth, when temperament
and inexperience combine to paint life _en beau_. Expectation is hope
coloured by fancy. It is a proof of abundant vitality; and even when
disappointment falls over it, like a shadow, it is still worth its
purchase.
“Ah! que ne puis-je encore l’attendre.
Dût-il encore ne pas venir.”[26]
This is perfectly in nature. The old seldom expect. It is among
the terrible inflictions of age, when humanity loses so many of
its attributes, that the heart sends forth none of those shoots of
expectation which fill up the intervals of actual enjoyment. The sap is
dried, and the trunk is shrivelled—shrunk in its dimensions, and seared
on its surface; and the branch, and the flower, and the fruit have
withered and dropped. “The spring shall return with its blossoms; but of
me not a leaf shall arise,” says Ossian. Alas for the beauty, the truth,
and the sadness of this image!
THE DEVOTEE.
Under the old regime in France, the first symptom of a woman’s intending
to “give herself to God” (_se donner à Dieu_, as the phrase ran) was her
giving up rouge; so that paint and piety became inseparably connected
in the minds of the demi-saints, and demireps, of the profligate reign
of Louis XIV. “La Princesse d’Harcourt,” says Madame de Coulanges, in
one of her letters, “has appeared at court, without rouge. This is a
circumstance which, for the present, absorbs every other: one may add,
that it is a great sacrifice.”
This outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, this
toilette baptism of regeneration, is not peculiar to Catholics. The
sacrifice of rouge is but the grey gown and little bonnet of an English
Methodist; and the rigorous proscription of gay colours of the
Protestant sectarian is but the counterpart of what appears so ridiculous
in the French penitent, “_qui se jette dans la dévotion_,”—who gives
herself up to Heaven when nobody else will have her. On this subject,
Madame du Deffand, the blind and aged enamorata of Horace Walpole, is
singularly pleasant. When she was young and pretty, and the enamorata
of the President d’Hainhault, she took a sudden fit of devotion; and
her director stipulated for the usual sacrifices. Fasts, prayers, &c.
&c. were promised at the first word; but when it came to love, and the
toilette, she cut him short at once, with “_pour ce qui est du rouge, et
du président, je ne leur ferai pas l’honneur de les quitter_.”[27]
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.
“We dined at Mr. H.’s,” says Bozzy, in his delightful book of twaddle,
which has proved such an evidence of the world’s love of idle gossip—“We
dined at Mr. H.’s (Dr. Johnson and myself), and Mr. H. expected Miss
Helen Maria Williams. He gave her Ode on Peace to Dr. Johnson; and
when this amiable, elegant, and accomplished young lady entered, he
(Dr. J.) took her hand in the most courteous manner, and repeated the
finest stanza of her poem. He complained of ill health, and said to Miss
Williams, ‘I am very ill, when you are near me; what should I be if you
were at a distance?’”
Young, amiable, elegant, and a poetess! Sylphs, nymphs, and muses, how ye
glided before me when, at sixteen, I read this passage in a green arbour
at B—— Castle! Then, to think of Dr. Cerberus growling gallantries:
hearts of stone! what were your callosity under the influence of Helen
Maria’s eyes! I immediately wrote an ode to Helen Maria Williams, with
all the rhymes borrowed from Pope’s Essay on Man, and all the spirit from
Anna Matilda’s Farewell to Della Crusca (my constant study). My ode was
quite as good as the poetry of rhyming young ladies of sixteen generally
is. There was not an original thought in it; but then there were such
pretty sounding words! and it began, too, I remember, with “Oh! thou.”
I was most desirous to send my ode to Miss Williams without knowing any
thing of her “whereabouts,” partly for her sake, and very much for my
own; for I really thought the composition Sapphic, and when my volume
of poems was published immediately after, (my _début_ in authorship, of
which nobody ever heard,) I was no less anxious to print it. But I did
not. Still, however, my imagination was full of its fair subject, of
whom I only knew what Bozzy had told me; and the lapse of time which had
intervened since he wrote, never suggested itself.
I was then in the commencement of my intimacy with Mrs. Le Fanu, the
presiding priestess of the muses in Dublin; and I wrote to her on the
subject, and received the following pleasant and sensible letter, which
I have just tossed out of my portfolio, and which has brought the long
forgotten subject to my recollection, in all its original freshness. The
whole letter is so fair a specimen of the style of the literary ladies
of the old school, so like the charming conversation of the writer, and
so good a lesson to young ladies who write odes, and who read and write
sentimental novels, (besides its coming from a Sheridan,) that I will
transcribe it at large.
“Imagine to yourself, _ma belle amie_, how very _gay_ I must
feel, when I tell you I have had a confinement of near five
weeks. I caught a feverish cold and sore throat, and, at the
end of a fortnight, supposing myself in a manner well, I went
out to take the air, or rather the damp, (for nothing else was
to be had;) and I came home with rheumatic pains, first in
my lungs, which removed to my right shoulder and arm, which
confined me to my bed, where I was as agreeably as St. Laurence
on his gridiron. Thank God I am better, and hope revives,
though the season be cheerless; but every day brings us nearer
the spring, and as Madame de Sévigné observes, no one stops
short in the midst of a month, or a bad road, for want of
power to get through it. So _vive la patience_, best friend in
sickness or sorrow. You recollect, no doubt, Mason’s beautiful
personification of it, in Elfrida. ‘Patience here, her meek
hands folded on her modest breast, in mute submission lifts the
adoring eye, even to the storm that wrecks her.’ The following
is (I think) no bad invocation to the temperate goddess:—
‘Oh! Patience, heavenly power, hear!
Be ever to thy suppliant near,
Nor let one murmur rise;
Since still some mighty joys are given,
Dear to her soul, the gift of heaven,
The sweet domestic ties.’
You are precisely at the age; you are exactly of the character
of mind to admire more the splendid than the useful virtues.
They ever attract and still deceive. How many have lulled
themselves into perfect self-satisfaction upon the strength of
quick feelings, tender emotions, and easily excited sympathies,
who have never practised the every-day qualities that come
perpetually into play, and are essential to human happiness.
Good humour, according to Johnson’s definition, endurance
of the follies and absurdities of others, appear qualities
of such easy attainment, that they are neglected as vulgar.
What a mistake—how fatal in its consequences! Talents extort
admiration; but genuine and habitual affectionate feelings
alone beget love. Well has Rousseau insisted so much upon the
‘_cœur aimant_’ of Julie. I know two women, both highly gifted,
the one of very striking and generally admired talents, the
other possessing taste and powers of conversation in a very
high degree, yet neither of them can boast the possession
of one friend even in their own families. For, ‘proud with
opinion of superior merit,’ it tinctures their manners, it
renders even their condescension offensive. And à propos to
remarkable women, Helen Maria Williams’s history is briefly
as follows:—I believe it is many years since she first came
forward as a literary character. The novel of Julia was, I
think, her first publication: it has merit, but certainly a
very bad tendency—some of the poetry in it is, I think, very
beautiful. She was soon known to Dr. Johnson and other literary
characters. She was at that time not more than twenty. The
year after the French revolution, she was in Paris, and was
present at a meeting of the National Assembly, of which she
gives a very lively picture. In Paris she met a Mr. Stone, a
married man; but with a noble disdain of every opinion we are
bound by the laws of God and man to respect, she chose this
gentleman for her companion in a tour to Switzerland. Perhaps
you will think me harsh in my judgment, but certainly a woman
possessing those talents that necessarily imply strong and
delicate feelings, more justly incurs blame than another, when
she sacrifices to passion the respectability of her character,
and voluntarily incurs contempt when she might command respect
and admiration. She becomes useless when she might highly
benefit her fellow-creatures.[28]
“As I have not been out, I gave your two commissions to Tom.
Archer has not yet received the English edition of St. Clair.
He also called at Power’s music shop, who lays the fault upon
Stevenson that Castle Hyde has not yet come out. He has had it,
I know not what time, to put basses to it.
“I have just been reading St. Clair for the third time, and
was more pleased with it than at first, but I think the hero
and heroine very dangerous people. You will tell me that
the catastrophe would prevent any mischief arising from the
witchery of such characters. I do not think so, for we all know
that people are not punished in this world because they are
vicious; and (as Horatio has it) ‘to be good’ is not always ‘to
be happy.’ Moralists lead you into errors, and often throw you
into despair, when they tell you so; for if _you are_ good to
the best of your lights and means, and the events of your life
are disastrous, you will certainly not feel _happy_, though you
may be resigned; and you will then, like Burgher’s Leonora,
either be tempted to arraign Providence, or reject altogether
doctrines, of which you have found the fallacy.”
Time passed: and it became my turn to receive odes from young ladies
in the country, beginning “Oh thou,” quite as good and as poetical as
my own. Yet oh! how many successive idols of admiration had my fancy
erected in the interval. There was Miss Edgeworth, and Madame de Staël,
and Madame Cottin, and Miss Baillie, and a long _et cetera_ of literary
females, to each and all of whom I felt the sincerest gratitude for the
amusement and instruction they afforded me, though I did not write them
odes to tell them so.