You may ask, Mr. Reflector, to what purpose is my appeal to you: what

can you do for me? Alas! I know too well that my case is out of the

reach of advice,--out of the reach of consolation. But it is some relief

to the wounded heart to impart its tale of misery; and some of my

acquaintance, who may read my case in your pages under a borrowed name,

may be induced to give it a more humane consideration than I could ever

yet obtain from them under my own. Make them, if possible, to _reflect_,

that an original peculiarity of constitution is no crime; that not that

which goes into the mouth desecrates a man, but that which comes out of

it,--such as sarcasm, bitter jests, mocks and taunts, and ill-natured

observations; and let them consider, if there be such things (which we

have all heard of) as Pious Treachery, Innocent Adultery, &c. whether

there may not be also such a thing as Innocent Gluttony.

I shall only subscribe myself,

Your afflicted servant,

EDAX.

_HOSPITA_ ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES OF THE PALATE

(1811. TEXT OF 1818)

_To the Editor of the Reflector_

Mr. Reflector,--My husband and I are fond of company, and being in easy

circumstances, we are seldom without a party to dinner two or three days

in a week. The utmost cordiality has hitherto prevailed at our meetings;

but there is a young gentleman, a near relation of my husband's, that

has lately come among us, whose preposterous behaviour bids fair, if not

timely checked, to disturb our tranquillity. He is too great a favourite

with my husband in other respects, for me to remonstrate with him in any

other than this distant way. A letter printed in your publication may

catch his eye; for he is a great reader, and makes a point of seeing all

the new things that come out. Indeed, he is by no means deficient in

understanding. My husband says that he has a good deal of wit; but for

my part I cannot say I am any judge of that, having seldom observed him

open his mouth except for purposes very foreign to conversation. In

short, Sir, this young gentleman's failing is, an immoderate indulgence

of his palate. The first time he dined with us, he thought it necessary

to extenuate the length of time he kept the dinner on the table, by

declaring that he had taken a very long walk in the morning, and came in

fasting; but as that excuse could not serve above once or twice at most,

he has latterly dropped the mask altogether, and chosen to appear in his

own proper colours without reserve or apology.

You cannot imagine how unpleasant his conduct has become. His way of

staring at the dishes as they are brought in, has absolutely something

immodest in it: it is like the stare of an impudent man of fashion at a

fine woman, when she first comes into a room. I am positively in pain

for the dishes, and cannot help thinking they have consciousness, and

will be put out of countenance, he treats them so like what they are

not.

Then again he makes no scruple of keeping a joint of meat on the table,

after the cheese and fruit are brought in, till he has what he calls

_done with it_. Now how awkward this looks, where there are ladies, you

may judge, Mr. Reflector,--how it disturbs the order and comfort of a

meal. And yet I always make a point of helping him first, contrary to

all good manners,--before any of my female friends are helped,--that he

may avoid this very error. I wish he would eat before he comes out.

What makes his proceedings more particularly offensive at our house is,

that my husband, though out of common politeness he is obliged to set

dishes of animal food before his visitors, yet himself and his whole

family (myself included) feed entirely on vegetables. We have a theory,

that animal food is neither wholesome nor natural to man; and even

vegetables we refuse to eat until they have undergone the operation of

fire, in consideration of those numberless little living creatures which

the glass helps us to detect in every fibre of the plant or root before

it be dressed. On the same theory we boil our water, which is our only

drink, before we suffer it to come to table. Our children are perfect

little Pythagoreans: it would do you good to see them in their nursery,

stuffing their dried fruits, figs, raisins, and _milk_, which is the

only approach to animal food which is allowed. They have no notion how

the substance of a creature that ever had life can become food for

another creature. A beef-steak is an absurdity to them; a mutton-chop, a

solecism in terms; a cutlet, a word absolutely without any meaning; a

butcher is nonsense, except so far as it is taken for a man who delights

in blood, or a hero. In this happy state of innocence we have kept their

minds, not allowing them to go into the kitchen, or to hear of any

preparations for the dressing of animal food, or even to know that such

things are practised. But as a state of ignorance is incompatible with a

certain age; and as my eldest girl, who is ten years old next Midsummer,

must shortly be introduced into the world and sit at table with us,

where she will see some things which will shock all her received

notions, I have been endeavouring by little and little to break her

mind, and prepare it for the disagreeable impressions which must be

forced upon it. The first hint I gave her upon the subject, I could see

her recoil from it with the same horror with which we listen to a tale

of Anthropophagism; but she has gradually grown more reconciled to it in

some measure, from my telling her that it was the custom of the

world,--to which, however senseless, we must submit so far as we could

do it with innocence, not to give offence; and she has shewn so much

strength of mind on other occasions, which I have no doubt is owing to

the calmness and serenity superinduced by her diet, that I am in good

hopes, when the proper season for her _debut_ arrives, she may be

brought to endure the sight of a roasted chicken or a dish of

sweatbreads, for the first time, without fainting. Such being the nature

of our little household, you may guess what inroads into the economy of

it,--what revolutions and turnings of things upside down, the example of

such a feeder as Mr. ---- is calculated to produce.

I wonder at a time like the present, when the scarcity of every kind of

food is so painfully acknowledged, that _shame_ has no effect upon him.

Can he have read Mr. Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food to

Population? Can he think it reasonable that one man should consume the

sustenance of many?

The young gentleman has an agreeable air and person, such as are not

unlikely to recommend him on the score of matrimony. But his fortune is

not over large; and what prudent young woman would think of embarking

hers with a man who would bring three or four mouths (or what is

equivalent to them) into a family? She might as reasonably choose a

widower in the same circumstances with three or four children.

I cannot think who he takes after. His father and mother, by all

accounts, were very moderate eaters; only I have heard that the latter

swallowed her victuals very fast, and the former had a tedious custom of

sitting long at his meals. Perhaps he takes after both.

I wish you would turn this in your thoughts, Mr. Reflector, and give us

your ideas on the subject of excessive eating; and, particularly, of

animal food.

HOSPITA.

THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF "THE COMPLETE ENGLISH

TRADESMAN"

(1811)

The Good Clerk.--He writeth a fair and swift hand, and is competently

versed in the Four First Rules of Arithmetic, in the Rule of Three

(which is sometimes called the Golden Rule) and in Practice. We mention

these things, that we may leave no room for cavillers to say, that any

thing essential hath been omitted in our definition; else, to speak the

truth, these are but ordinary accomplishments, and such as every

understrapper at a desk is commonly furnished with. The character we

treat of soareth higher.

He is clean and neat in his person; not from a vain-glorious desire of

setting himself forth to advantage in the eyes of the other sex (with

which vanity too many of our young Sparks now-a-days are infected) but

to do credit (as we say) to the office. For this reason he evermore

taketh care that his desk or his books receive no soil; the which things

he is commonly as solicitous to have fair and unblemished, as the owner

of a fine horse is to have him appear in good keep.

He riseth early in the morning; not because early rising conduceth to

health (though he doth not altogether despise that consideration) but

chiefly to the intent that he may be first at the desk. There is his

post, there he delighteth to be, unless when his meals, or necessity,

calleth him away; which time he alway esteemeth as lost, and maketh as

short as possible.

He is temperate in eating and drinking, that he may preserve a clear

head and steady hand for his master's service. He is also partly induced

to this observation of the rules of temperance by his respect for

religion and the laws of his country; which things (it may once for all

be noted) do add special assistances to his actions, but do not and

cannot furnish the main spring or motive thereto. His first ambition (as

appeareth all along) is to be a good Clerk, his next a good Christian, a

good Patriot, &c.

Correspondent to this, he keepeth himself honest, not for fear of the

laws, but because he hath observed how unseemly an article it maketh in

the Day Book, or Ledger, when a sum is set down lost or missing; it

being his pride to make these books to agree, and to tally, the one side

with the other, with a sort of architectural symmetry and

correspondence.

He marrieth, or marrieth not, as best suiteth with his employer's views.

Some merchants do the rather desire to have married men in their

Counting Houses, because they think the married state a pledge for their

servants' integrity, and an incitement to them to be industrious; and it

was an observation of a late Lord Mayor of London, that the sons of

Clerks do generally prove Clerks themselves, and that Merchants

encouraging persons in their employ to marry, and to have families, was

the best method of securing a breed of sober industrious young men

attached to the mercantile interest. Be this as it may, such a character

as we have been describing, will wait till the pleasure of his employer

is known on this point; and regulateth his desires by the custom of the

house or firm to which he belongeth.

He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so much time lost from his

employ; what spare time he hath for conversation, which in a Counting

House such as we have been supposing can be but small, he spendeth in

putting seasonable questions to such of his fellows (and sometimes

_respectfully_ to the master himself) who can give him information

respecting the price and quality of goods, the state of exchange, or the

latest improvements in book-keeping; thus making the motion of his lips,

as well as of his fingers, subservient to his master's interest. Not

that he refuseth a brisk saying, or a cheerful sally of wit, when it

comes unforced, is free of offence, and hath a convenient brevity. For

this reason he hath commonly some such phrase as this in his mouth:--

It's a slovenly look

To blot your book.

Or,

Red ink for ornament, black for use,

The best of things are open to abuse.

So upon the eve of any great holyday, of which he keepeth one or two at

least every year, he will merrily say in the hearing of a confidential

friend, but to none other:--

All work and no play

Makes Jack a dull boy.

Or,

A bow always bent must crack at last.

But then this must always be understood to be spoken confidentially,

and, as we say, _under the rose_.

Lastly, his dress is plain without singularity; with no other ornament

than the quill, which is the badge of his function, stuck under the

dexter ear, and this rather for convenience of having it at hand, when

he hath been called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his seat

there again shortly, than from any delight which he taketh in foppery or

ostentation. The colour of his clothes is generally noted to be black

rather than brown, brown rather than blue or green. His whole deportment

is staid, modest, and civil. His motto is Regularity.----

This Character was sketched, in an interval of business, to divert some

of the melancholy hours of a Counting House. It is so little a creature

of fancy, that it is scarce any thing more than a recollection of some

of those frugal and economical maxims which, about the beginning of the

last century, (England's meanest period), were endeavoured to be

inculcated and instilled into the breasts of the London Apprentices,[23]

by a class of instructors who might not inaptly be termed _The Masters

of mean Morals_. The astonishing narrowness and illiberality of the

lessons contained in some of those books is inconceivable by those whose

studies have not led them that way, and would almost induce one to

subscribe to the hard censure which Drayton has passed upon the

mercantile spirit:--

_The gripple merchant, born to be the curse

Of this brave Isle._

[23] This term designated a larger class of young men than that to

which it is now confined; it took in the articled Clerks of

Merchants and Bankers, the George Barnwells of the day.

I have now lying before me that curious book by Daniel Defoe, "The

Complete English Tradesman." The pompous detail, the studied analysis of

every little mean art, every sneaking address, every trick and

subterfuge (short of larceny) that is necessary to the tradesman's

occupation, with the hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues (in Defoe's

liveliest manner) interspersed, all tending to the same amiable

purpose, namely, the sacrificing of every honest emotion of the soul to

what he calls the main chance,--if you read it in an _ironical sense_,

and as a piece of _covered satire_, make it one of the most amusing

books which Defoe ever writ, as much so as any of his best novels. It is

difficult to say what his intention was in writing it. It is almost

impossible to suppose him in earnest. Yet such is the bent of the book

to narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims were as catching

and infectious as those of a licentious cast, which happily is not the

case, had I been living at that time, I certainly should have

recommended to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who presented the Fable of

the Bees, to have presented this book of Defoe's in preference, as of a

far more vile and debasing tendency. I will give one specimen of his

advice to the young Tradesman on the _Government of his Temper_. "The

retail tradesman in especial, and even every tradesman in his station,

must furnish himself with a competent stock of patience; I mean that

sort of patience which is needful to bear with all sorts of

impertinence, and the most provoking curiosity that it is impossible to

imagine the buyers, even the worst of them, are or can be guilty of. _A

tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and blood about him, no

passions, no resentment_; he must never be angry, no not so much as seem

to be so, if a customer tumbles him five hundred pounds worth of goods,

and scarce bids money for any thing; nay, though they really come to his

shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold,

and though he knows they cannot be better pleased, than they are, at

some other shop where they intend to buy, 'tis all one, the tradesman

must take it, he must place it to the account of his calling, that _'tis

his business to be ill used and resent nothing_; and so must answer as

obligingly to those that give him an hour or two's trouble and buy

nothing, as he does to those who in half the time lay out ten or twenty

pounds. The case is plain, and if some do give him trouble and do not

buy, others make amends and do buy; and as for the trouble, 'tis the

business of the shop." Here follows a most admirable story of a mercer

who, by his indefatigable meanness and more than Socratic patience under

affronts, overcame and reconciled a lady, who upon the report of another

lady that he had behaved saucily to some third lady, had determined to

shun his shop, but by the over-persuasions of a fourth lady was induced

to go to it; which she does, declaring before hand that she will buy

nothing, but give him all the trouble she can. Her attack and his

defence, her insolence and his persevering patience, are described in

colours worthy of a Mandeville; but it is too long to recite. "The short

inference from this long discourse (says he) is this, that here you see,

and I could give you many examples like this, how and in what manner a

shop-keeper is to behave himself in the way of his business; what

impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and ridiculous things, he must bear

in his trade, and must not shew the least return, or the least signal of

disgust: he must have no passions, no fire in his temper; he must be all

soft and smooth; nay, if his real temper be naturally fiery and hot, he

must shew none of it in his shop; he must be a perfect _complete

hypocrite_ if he will be a _complete tradesman_.[24] It is true, natural

tempers are not to be always counterfeited; the man cannot easily be a

lamb in his shop, and a lion in himself; but let it be easy or hard, it

must be done, and is done: there are men who have by custom and usage

brought themselves to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than

they, when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furious and

raging in every other part of life; nay the provocations they have met

with in their shops have so irritated their rage, that they would go up

stairs from their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness,

and beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps mischief themselves,

if not prevented, till the violence of it had gotten vent, and the

passions abate and cool. I heard once of a shop-keeper that behaved

himself thus to such an extreme, that when he was provoked by the

impertinence of the customers, beyond what his temper could bear, he

would go up stairs and beat his wife, kick his children about like dogs,

and be as furious for two or three minutes, as a man chained down in

Bedlam; and again, when that heat was over, would sit down and cry

faster than the children he had abused; and after the fit, he would go

down into the shop again, and be as humble, courteous, and as calm as

any man whatever; so absolute a government of his passions had he in the

shop and so little out of it: in the shop, a soul-less animal that

would resent nothing; and in the family a madman: in the shop, meek like

a lamb; but in the family, outrageous like a Libyan lion. The sum of the

matter is, it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself by all the

ways possible to his business; _his customers are to be his idols: so

far as he may worship idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them, and

worship them_; at least he is not in any way to displease them, or shew

any disgust or distaste whatsoever they may say or do; the bottom of all

is, that he is intending to get money by them, and it is not for him

that gets money to offer the least inconvenience to them by whom he gets

it; he is to consider that, as Solomon says, the borrower is servant to

the lender, so the seller is servant to the buyer."--What he says on the

head of _Pleasures and Recreations_ is not less amusing:--"The

tradesman's pleasure should be in his business, his companions should be

his books, (he means his Ledger, Waste-book, &c.) and if he has a

family, he makes _his excursions up stairs and no further_:--none of my

cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from diverting himself, as we

call it, with his fireside, or keeping company with his wife and

children."--Liberal allowance; nay, almost licentious and criminal

indulgence!--but it is time to dismiss this _Philosopher of Meanness_.

More of this stuff would illiberalize the pages of the _Reflector_. Was

the man in earnest, when he could bring such powers of description, and

all the charms of natural eloquence, in commendation of the meanest,

vilest, wretchedest degradations of the human character?--Or did he not

rather laugh in his sleeve at the doctrines which he inculcated, and

retorting upon the grave Citizens of London their own arts, palm upon

them a sample of disguised Satire under the name of wholesome

Instruction?

L. B.

[24] As no qualification accompanies this maxim, it must be

understood as the genuine sentiment of the Author!

MÉMOIR OF ROBERT LLOYD

(1811)

----Also, in October, in his 33d year, Mr. Robert Lloyd, third son of

Charles Lloyd. To dilate in many words upon his character, would be to

violate the modest regard due to his memory, who in his lifetime shrunk

so anxiously from every species of notice. His constitutional misfortune

was an excess of nervous sensibility, which in the purest of hearts

produced rather too great a spirit of self-abasement, a perpetual

apprehension of not doing what was right. Yet, beyond this tenderness,

he seemed absolutely to have no self-regards at all. His eye was single,

and ever fixed upon that form of goodness, which he venerated wherever

he found it, except in himself. What he was to his parents, and in his

family, the newness of their sorrow may make it unseasonable to touch

at; his loss, alas! was but one in a complication of domestic

afflictions which have fallen so heavy of late upon a very worthy house.

But as a friend, the writer of this memorial can witness, that what he

once esteemed and loved, it was an unalterable law of his mind to

continue to esteem and love. Absences of years, the discontinuance of

correspondence, from whatever cause, for ever so great a length of time,

made no difference. It seemed as if the affectionate part of his nature

could suffer no abatement. The display of what the world calls shining

talents, would have been incompatible with a character like his; but he

oftentimes let fall, in his familiar talk, and in his letters, bright

and original illustrations of feeling, which might have been mistaken

for genius, if his own watchful modest spirit had not constantly

interposed to recall and substitute for them some of the ordinary forms

of observation, which lay less out of that circle of common sympathy,

within which his kind nature delighted to move.

CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD

(1813. TEXT OF 1822)

Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favourite

topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with

abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient

himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has

seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple.

Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise the glass to his head

against his will. 'Tis as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies.

Alas! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear false witness, have no

constitutional tendency. These are actions indifferent to them. At the

first instance of the reformed will, they can be brought off without a

murmur. The itching finger is but a figure in speech, and the tongue of

the liar can with the same natural delight give forth useful truths,

with which it has been accustomed to scatter their pernicious

contraries. But when a man has commenced sot----

O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout nerves and a strong

head, whose liver is happily untouched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the

_name_ which I have written, first learn what the _thing_ is; how much

of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou may'st virtuously

mingle with thy disapprobation. Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact

not, under so terrible a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a state

of death almost as real as that from which Lazarus rose not but by a

miracle.

Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. But what if the

beginning be dreadful, the first steps not like climbing a mountain but

going through fire? what if the whole system must undergo a change

violent as that which we conceive of the mutation of form in some

insects? what if a process comparable to flaying alive be to be gone

through? is the weakness that sinks under such struggles to be

confounded with the pertinacity which clings to other vices, which have

induced no constitutional necessity, no engagement of the whole victim,

body and soul?

I have known one in that state, when he has tried to abstain but for one

evening,--though the poisonous potion had long ceased to bring back its

first enchantments, though he was sure it would rather deepen his gloom

than brighten it,--in the violence of the struggle, and the necessity he

has felt of getting rid of the present sensation at any rate, I have

known him to scream out, to cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the

strife within him.

Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man of whom I speak is

myself? I have no puling apology to make to mankind. I see them all in

one way or another deviating from the pure reason. It is to my own

nature alone I am accountable for the woe that I have brought upon it.

I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads and iron insides,

whom scarce any excesses can hurt; whom brandy (I have seen them drink

it like wine), at all events whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful

measure, can do no worse injury to than just to muddle their faculties,

perhaps never very pellucid. On them this discourse is wasted. They

would but laugh at a weak brother, who, trying his strength with them,

and coming off foiled from the contest, would fain persuade them that

such agonistic exercises are dangerous. It is to a very different

description of persons I speak. It is to the weak, the nervous; to those

who feel the want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits in

society to what is no more than the ordinary pitch of all around them

without it. This is the secret of our drinking. Such must fly the

convivial board in the first instance, if they do not mean to sell

themselves for term of life.

Twelve years ago I had completed my six and twentieth year. I had lived

from the period of leaving school to that time pretty much in solitude.

My companions were chiefly books, or at most one or two living ones of

my own book-loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went to bed betimes,

and the faculties which God had given me, I have reason to think, did

not rust in me unused.

About that time I fell in with some companions of a different order.

They were men of boisterous spirits, sitters up a-nights, disputants,

drunken; yet seemed to have something noble about them. We dealt about

the wit, or what passes for it after midnight, jovially. Of the quality

called fancy I certainly possessed a larger share than my companions.

Encouraged by their applause, I set up for a profest joker! I, who of

all men am least fitted for such an occupation, having, in addition to

the greatest difficulty which I experience at all times of finding words

to express my meaning, a natural nervous impediment in my speech!

Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character

but that of a wit. When you find a tickling relish upon your tongue

disposing you to that sort of conversation, especially if you find a

preternatural flow of ideas setting in upon you at the sight of a bottle

and fresh glasses, avoid giving way to it as you would fly your greatest

destruction. If you cannot crush the power of fancy, or that within you

which you mistake for such, divert it, give it some other play. Write an

essay, pen a character or description,--but not as I do now, with tears

trickling down your cheeks.

To be an object of compassion to friends, of derision to foes; to be

suspected by strangers, stared at by fools; to be esteemed dull when you

cannot be witty, to be applauded for witty when you know that you have

been dull; to be called upon for the extemporaneous exercise of that

faculty which no premeditation can give; to be spurred on to efforts

which end in contempt; to be set on to provoke mirth which procures the

procurer hatred; to give pleasure and be paid with squinting malice; to

swallow draughts of life-destroying wine which are to be distilled into

airy breath to tickle vain auditors; to mortgage miserable morrows for

nights of madness; to waste whole seas of time upon those who pay it

back in little inconsiderable drops of grudging applause,--are the wages

of buffoonery and death.

Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all connexions which have no

solider fastening than this liquid cement, more kind to me than my own

taste or penetration, at length opened my eyes to the supposed qualities

of my first friends. No trace of them is left but in the vices which

they introduced, and the habits they infixed. In them my friends survive

still, and exercise ample retribution for any supposed infidelity that I

may have been guilty of towards them.

My next more immediate companions were and are persons of such intrinsic

and felt worth, that though accidentally their acquaintance has proved

pernicious to me, I do not know that if the thing were to do over again,

I should have the courage to eschew the mischief at the price of

forfeiting the benefit. I came to them reeking from the steams of my

late over-heated notions of companionship; and the slightest fuel which

they unconsciously afforded, was sufficient to feed my old fires into a

propensity.

They were no drinkers, but, one from professional habits, and another

from a custom derived from his father, smoked tobacco. The devil could

not have devised a more subtle trap to re-take a backsliding penitent.

The transition, from gulping down draughts of liquid fire to puffing out

innocuous blasts of dry smoke, was so like cheating him. But he is too

hard for us when we hope to commute. He beats us at barter; and when we

think to set off a new failing against an old infirmity, 'tis odds but

he puts the trick upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) white

devil of tobacco brought with him in the end seven worse than himself.

It were impertinent to carry the reader through all the processes by

which, from smoking at first with malt liquor, I took my degrees through

thin wines, through stronger wine and water, through small punch, to

those juggling compositions, which, under the name of mixed liquors,

slur a great deal of brandy or other poison under less and less water

continually, until they come next to none, and so to none at all. But it

is hateful to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus.

I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of believing me, were

I to tell them what tobacco has been to me, the drudging service which I

have paid, the slavery which I have vowed to it. How, when I have

resolved to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has started up; how it

has put on personal claims and made the demands of a friend upon me. How

the reading of it casually in a book, as where Adams takes his whiff in

the chimney-corner of some inn in Joseph Andrews, or Piscator in the

Complete Angler breaks his fast upon a morning pipe in that delicate

room _Piscatoribus Sacrum_, has in a moment broken down the resistance

of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my midnight path before me, till the

vision forced me to realize it,--how then its ascending vapours curled,

its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious ministerings conversant

about it, employing every faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How from

illuminating it came to darken, from a quick solace it turned to a

negative relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, thence to

a positive misery. How, even now, when the whole secret stands confessed

in all its dreadful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond

the power of revocation. Bone of my bone----

Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of their actions, to

reckon up the countless nails that rivet the chains of habit, or perhaps

being bound by none so obdurate as those I have confessed to, may recoil

from this as from an overcharged picture. But what short of such a

bondage is it, which in spite of protesting friends, a weeping wife,

and a reprobating world, chains down many a poor fellow, of no original

indisposition to goodness, to his pipe and his pot?

I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three female figures are

ministering to a man who sits fast bound at the root of a tree.

Sensuality is soothing him, Evil Habit is nailing him to a branch, and

Repugnance at the same instant of time is applying a snake to his side.

In his face is feeble delight, the recollection of past rather than

perception of present pleasures, languid enjoyment of evil with utter

imbecility to good, a Sybaritic effeminacy, a submission to bondage, the

springs of the will gone down like a broken clock, the sin and the

suffering co-instantaneous, or the latter forerunning the former,

remorse preceding action--all this represented in one point of

time.--When I saw this, I admired the wonderful skill of the painter.

But when I went away, I wept, because I thought of my own condition.

Of _that_ there is no hope that it should ever change. The waters have

gone over me. But out of the black depths, could I be heard, I would cry

out to all those who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could

the youth, to whom the flavor of his first wine is delicious as the

opening scenes of life, or the entering upon some newly discovered

paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a

dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice

with open eyes and a passive will,--to see his destruction, and have no

power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself;

to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not to be able to

forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle

of his own self-ruins:--could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last

night's drinking, and feverishly looking for this night's repetition of

the folly; could he feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly

with feebler and feebler outcry to be delivered,--it were enough to make

him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its

mantling temptation; to make him clasp his teeth,

and not undo 'em

To suffer WET DAMNATION to run through 'em.

Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if sobriety be that fine

thing you would have us to understand, if the comforts of a cool brain

are to be perferred to that state of heated excitement which you

describe and deplore, what hinders in your own instance that you do not

return to those habits from which you would induce others never to

swerve? if the blessing be worth preserving, is it not worth recovering?

_Recovering!_--O if a wish could transport me back to those days of

youth, when a draught from the next clear spring could slake any heats

which summer suns and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the

blood, how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the drink of

children, and of child-like holy hermit. In my dreams I can sometimes

fancy thy cool refreshment purling over my burning tongue. But my waking

stomach rejects it. That which refreshes innocence, only makes me sick

and faint.

But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence and the excess which

kills you?--For your sake, reader, and that you may never attain to my

experience, with pain I must utter the dreadful truth, that there is

none, none that I can find. In my stage of habit (I speak not of habits

less confirmed--for some of them I believe the advice to be most

prudential) in the stage which I have reached, to stop short of that

measure which is sufficient to draw on torpor and sleep, the benumbing

apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, is to have taken none at all. The pain

of the self-denial is all one. And what that is, I had rather the reader

should believe on my credit, than know from his own trial. He will come

to know it, whenever he shall arrive at that state, in which,

paradoxical as it may appear, _reason shall only visit him through

intoxication_: for it is a fearful truth, that the intellectual

faculties by repeated acts of intemperance may be driven from their

orderly sphere of action, their clear day-light ministeries, until they

shall be brought at last to depend, for the faint manifestation of their

departing energies, upon the returning periods of the fatal madness to

which they owe their devastation. The drinking man is never less himself

than during his sober intervals. Evil is so far his good.[25]

[25] When poor M---- painted his last picture, with a pencil in one

trembling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in the other, his

fingers owed the comparative steadiness, with which they were

enabled to go through their task in an imperfect manner, to a

temporary firmness derived from a repetition of practices, the

general effect of which had shaken both them and him so terribly.

Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced to imbecility and

decay. Hear me count my gains, and the profits which I have derived from

the midnight cup.

Twelve years ago I was possessed of a healthy frame of mind and body. I

was never strong, but I think my constitution (for a weak one) was as

happily exempt from the tendency to any malady as it was possible to be.

I scarce knew what it was to ail any thing. Now, except when I am losing

myself in a sea of drink, I am never free from those uneasy sensations

in head and stomach, which are so much worse to bear than any definite

pains or aches.

At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the morning, summer and

winter. I awoke refreshed, and seldom without some merry thoughts in my

head, or some piece of a song to welcome the new-born day. Now, the

first feeling which besets me, after stretching out the hours of

recumbence to their last possible extent, is a forecast of the wearisome

day that lies before me, with a secret wish that I could have lain on

still, or never awaked.

Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion, the trouble, and

obscure perplexity, of an ill dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark

mountains.

Business, which, though never particularly adapted to my nature, yet as

something of necessity to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken

with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of alacrity,

now wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy all sorts of

discouragements, and am ready to give up an occupation which gives me

bread, from a harassing conceit of incapacity. The slightest commission

given me by a friend, or any small duty which I have to perform for

myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, &c. haunts me as a labour

impossible to be got through. So much the springs of action are broken.

The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse with mankind. I dare

not promise that a friend's honour, or his cause, would be safe in my

keeping, if I were put to the expense of any manly resolution in

defending it. So much the springs of moral action are deadened within

me.

My favourite occupations in times past, now cease to entertain. I can

do nothing readily. Application for ever so short a time kills me. This

poor abstract of my condition was penned at long intervals, with

scarcely any attempt at connexion of thought, which is now difficult to

me.

The noble passages which formerly delighted me in history or poetic

fiction, now only draw a few weak tears, allied to dotage. My broken and

dispirited nature seems to sink before any thing great and admirable.

I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, or none. It is

inexpressible how much this infirmity adds to a sense of shame, and a

general feeling of deterioration.

These are some of the instances, concerning which I can say with truth,

that it was not always so with me.

Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any further? or is this

disclosure sufficient?

I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to consult by these

Confessions. I know not whether I shall be laughed at, or heard

seriously. Such as they are, I commend them to the reader's attention,

if he finds his own case any way touched. I have told him what I am come

to. Let him stop in time.

ELIA.

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

(1813. TEXT OF 1818)

To comfort the desponding parent with the thought that, without

diminishing the stock which is imperiously demanded to furnish the more

pressing and homely wants of our nature, he has disposed of one or more

perhaps out of a numerous offspring, under the shelter of a care scarce

less tender than the paternal, where not only their bodily cravings

shall be supplied, but that mental _pabulum_ is also dispensed, which HE

hath declared to be no less necessary to our sustenance, who said, that

"not by bread alone man can live;" for this Christ's Hospital unfolds

her bounty. Here neither, on the one hand, are the youth lifted up above

their family, which we must suppose liberal though reduced; nor, on the

other hand, are they liable to be depressed below its level by the mean

habits and sentiments which a common charity-school generates. It is, in

a word, an Institution to keep those who have yet held up their heads in

the world from sinking; to keep alive the spirit of a decent household,

when poverty was in danger of crushing it; to assist those who are the

most willing, but not always the most able, to assist themselves; to

separate a child from his family for a season, in order to render him

back hereafter, with feelings and habits more congenial to it, than he

could even have attained by remaining at home in the bosom of it. It is

a preserving and renovating principle, an antidote for the _res angusta

domi_, when it presses, as it always does, most heavily upon the most

ingenuous natures.

This is Christ's Hospital; and whether its character would be improved

by confining its advantages to the very lowest of the people, let those

judge who have witnessed the looks, the gestures, the behaviour, the

manner of their play with one another, their deportment towards

strangers, the whole aspect and physiognomy of that vast assemblage of

boys on the London foundation, who freshen and make alive again with

their sports the else mouldering cloisters of the old Grey Friars--which

strangers who have never witnessed, if they pass through Newgate-street,

or by Smithfield, would do well to go a little out of their way to see.

For the Christ's Hospital boy feels that he is no charity-boy; he feels

it in the antiquity and regality of the foundation to which he belongs;

in the usage which he meets with at school, and the treatment he is

accustomed to out of its bounds; in the respect, and even kindness,

which his well known garb never fails to procure him in the streets of

the metropolis; he feels it in his education, in that measure of

classical attainments, which every individual at that school, though not

destined to a learned profession, has it in his power to procure,

attainments which it would be worse than folly to put it in the reach of

the labouring classes to acquire: he feels it in the numberless

comforts, and even magnificences, which surround him; in his old and

awful cloisters, with their traditions; in his spacious school-rooms,

and in the well-ordered, airy, and lofty rooms where he sleeps; in his

stately dining-hall, hung round with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and

others, one of them surpassing in size and grandeur almost any other in

the kingdom;[26] above all, in the very extent and magnitude of the body

to which he belongs, and the consequent spirit, the intelligence, and

public conscience, which is the result of so many various yet

wonderfully combining members. Compared with this last-named advantage,

what is the stock of information, (I do not here speak of book-learning,

but of that knowledge which boy receives from boy,) the mass of

collected opinions, the intelligence in common, among the few and narrow

members of an ordinary boarding-school?

[26] By Verrio, representing James the Second on his throne,

surrounded by his courtiers, (all curious portraits,) receiving the

mathematical pupils at their annual presentation, a custom still

kept up on New-year's-day at Court.

The Christ's Hospital or Blue-coat boy, has a distinctive character of

his own, as far removed from the abject qualities of a common

charity-boy as it is from the disgusting forwardness of a lad brought up

at some other of the public schools. There is _pride_ in it, accumulated

from the circumstances which I have described as differencing him from

the former; and there is a _restraining modesty_, from a sense of

obligation and dependence, which must ever keep his deportment from

assimilating to that of the latter. His very garb, as it is antique and

venerable, feeds his self-respect; as it is a badge of dependence, it

restrains the natural petulance of that age from breaking out into

overt-acts of insolence. This produces silence and a reserve before

strangers, yet not that cowardly shyness which boys mewed up at home

will feel; he will speak up when spoken to, but the stranger must begin

the conversation with him. Within his bounds he is all fire and play;

but in the streets he steals along with all the self-concentration of a

young monk. He is never known to mix with other boys, they are a sort of

laity to him. All this proceeds, I have no doubt, from the continual

consciousness which he carries about him of the difference of his dress

from that of the rest of the world; with a modest jealousy over himself,

lest, by over-hastily mixing with common and secular playfellows, he

should commit the dignity of his cloth. Nor let any one laugh at this;

for, considering the propensity of the multitude, and especially of the

small multitude, to ridicule any thing unusual in dress--above all,

where such peculiarity may be construed by malice into a mark of

disparagement--this reserve will appear to be nothing more than a wise

instinct in the Blue-coat boy. That it is neither pride nor rusticity,

at least that it has none of the offensive qualities of either, a

stranger may soon satisfy himself by putting a question to any of these

boys: he may be sure of an answer couched in terms of plain civility,

neither loquacious nor embarrassed. Let him put the same question to a

parish-boy, or to one of the trencher-caps in the ---- cloisters, and

the impudent reply of the one shall not fail to exasperate any more than

the certain servility, and mercenary eye to reward, which he will meet

with in the other, can fail to depress and sadden him.

The Christ's Hospital boy is a religious character. His school is

eminently a religious foundation; it has its peculiar prayers, its

services at set times, its graces, hymns, and anthems, following each

other in an almost monastic closeness of succession. This religious

character in him is not always untinged with superstition. That is not

wonderful, when we consider the thousand tales and traditions which must

circulate, with undisturbed credulity, amongst so many boys, that have

so few checks to their belief from any intercourse with the world at

large; upon whom their equals in age must work so much, their elders so

little. With this leaning towards an over-belief in matters of religion,

which will soon correct itself when he comes out into society, may be

classed a turn for romance above most other boys. This is to be traced

in the same manner to their excess of society with each other, and

defect of mingling with the world. Hence the peculiar avidity with which

such books as the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and others of a still

wilder cast, are, or at least were in my time, sought for by the boys. I

remember when some half-dozen of them set off from school, without map,

card, or compass, on a serious expedition to find out _Philip Quarll's

Island_.

The Christ's Hospital boy's sense of right and wrong is peculiarly

tender and apprehensive. It is even apt to run out into ceremonial

observances, and to impose a yoke upon itself beyond the strict

obligations of the moral law. Those who were contemporaries with me at

that School thirty years ago, will remember with what more than Judaic

rigour the eating of the fat of certain boiled meats[27] was

interdicted. A boy would have blushed, as at the exposure of some

heinous immorality, to have been detected eating that forbidden portion

of his allowance of animal food, the whole of which, while he was in

health, was little more than sufficient to allay his hunger. The same,

or even greater, refinement was shewn in the rejection of certain kinds

of sweet-cake. What gave rise to these supererogatory penances, these

self-denying ordinances, I could never learn;[28] they certainly argue

no defect of the conscientious principle. A little excess in that

article is not undesirable in youth, to make allowance for the

inevitable waste which comes in maturer years. But in the less ambiguous

line of duty, in those directions of the moral feelings which cannot be

mistaken or depreciated, I will relate what took place in the year 1785,

when Mr. Perry, the steward, died. I must be pardoned for taking my

instances from my own times. Indeed, the vividness of my recollections,

while I am upon this subject, almost brings back those times; they are

present to me still. But I believe that in the years which have elapsed

since the period which I speak of, the character of the Christ's

Hospital boy is very little changed. Their situation in point of many

comforts is improved; but that which I ventured before to term the

_public conscience_ of the school, the pervading moral sense, of which

every mind partakes, and to which so many individual minds contribute,

remains, I believe, pretty much the same as when I left it. I have seen

within this twelvemonth almost the change which has been produced upon a

boy of eight or nine years of age, upon being admitted into that school;

how, from a pert young coxcomb, who thought that all knowledge was

comprehended within his shallow brains, because a smattering of two or

three languages and one or two sciences were stuffed into him by

injudicious treatment at home, by a mixture with the wholesome society

of so many schoolfellows, in less time than I have spoken of, he has

sunk to his own level, and is contented to be carried on in the quiet

orb of modest self-knowledge in which the common mass of that

unpresumptuous assemblage of boys seem to move: from being a little

unfeeling mortal, he has got to feel and reflect. Nor would it be a

difficult matter to shew how, at a school like this, where the boy is

neither entirely separated from home, nor yet exclusively under its

influence, the best feelings, the filial for instance, are brought to a

maturity which they could not have attained under a completely domestic

education; how the relation of parent is rendered less tender by

unremitted association, and the very awfulness of age is best

apprehended by some sojourning amidst the comparative levity of youth;

how absence, not drawn out by too great extension into alienation or

forgetfulness, puts an edge upon the relish of occasional intercourse,

and the boy is made the better _child_ by that which keeps the force of

that relation from being felt as perpetually pressing on him; how the

substituted paternity, into the care of which he is adopted, while in

everything substantial it makes up for the natural, in the necessary

omission of individual fondnesses and partialities, directs the mind

only the more strongly to appreciate that natural and first tie, in

which such weaknesses are the bond of strength, and the appetite which

craves after them betrays no perverse palate. But these speculations

rather belong to the question of the comparative advantages of a public

over a private education in general. I must get back to my favourite

school; and to that which took place when our old and good steward died.

[27] Under the denomination of _gags_.

[28] I am told that the late steward,[A] who evinced on many

occasions a most praiseworthy anxiety to promote the comfort of the

boys, had occasion for all his address and perseverance to eradicate

the first of these unfortunate prejudices, in which he at length

happily succeeded, and thereby restored to one-half of the animal

nutrition of the school those honors which painful superstition and

blind zeal had so long conspired to withhold from it.

[A] Mr. Hathaway.

And I will say, that when I think of the frequent instances which I have

met with in children, of a hard-heartedness, a callousness, and

insensibility to the loss of relations, even of those who have begot and

nourished them, I cannot but consider it as a proof of something in the

peculiar conformation of that school, favourable to the expansion of the

best feelings of our nature, that, at the period which I am noticing,

out of five hundred boys there was not a dry eye to be found among them,

nor a heart that did not beat with genuine emotion. Every impulse to

play, until the funeral day was past, seemed suspended throughout the

school; and the boys, lately so mirthful and sprightly, were seen pacing

their cloisters alone, or in sad groupes standing about, few of them

without some token, such as their slender means could provide, a black

ribband, or something to denote respect and a sense of their loss. The

time itself was a time of anarchy, a time in which all authority (out of

school-hours) was abandoned. The ordinary restraints were for those days

superseded; and the gates, which at other times kept us in, were left

without watchers. Yet, with the exception of one or two graceless boys

at most, who took advantage of that suspension of authority to _skulk

out_, as it was called, the whole body of that great school kept

rigorously within their bounds, by a voluntary self-imprisonment; and

they who broke bounds, though they escaped punishment from any master,

fell into a general disrepute among us, and, for that which at any other

time would have been applauded and admired as a mark of spirit, were

consigned to infamy and reprobation: so much _natural government_ have

gratitude and the principles of reverence and love, and so much did a

respect to their dead friend prevail with these Christ's Hospital boys

above any fear which his presence among them when living could ever

produce. And if the impressions which were made on my mind so long ago

are to be trusted, very richly did their steward deserve this tribute.

It is a pleasure to me even now to call to mind his portly form, the

regal awe which he always contrived to inspire, in spite of a tenderness

and even weakness of nature that would have enfeebled the reins of

discipline in any other master; a yearning of tenderness towards those

under his protection, which could make five hundred boys at once feel

towards him each as to their individual father. He had faults, with

which we had nothing to do; but, with all his faults, indeed, Mr. Perry

was a most extraordinary creature. Contemporary with him, and still

living, though he has long since resigned his occupation, will it be

impertinent to mention the name of our excellent upper grammar-master,

the Rev. James Boyer? He was a disciplinarian, indeed, of a different

stamp from him whom I have just described; but, now the terrors of the

rod, and of a temper a little too hasty to leave the more nervous of us

quite at our ease to do justice to his merits in those days, are long

since over, ungrateful were we if we should refuse our testimony to that

unwearied assiduity with which he attended to the particular improvement

of each of us. Had we been the offspring of the first gentry in the

land, he could not have been instigated by the strongest views of

recompense and reward to have made himself a greater slave to the most

laborious of all occupations than he did for us sons of charity, from

whom, or from our parents, he could expect nothing. He has had his

reward in the satisfaction of having discharged his duty, in the

pleasurable consciousness of having advanced the respectability of that

institution to which, both man and boy, he was attached; in the honours

to which so many of his pupils have successfully aspired at both our

Universities; and in the staff with which the Governors of the Hospital

at the close of his hard labours, with the highest expressions of the

obligations the school lay under to him unanimously voted to present

him.

I have often considered it among the felicities of the constitution of

this school, that the offices of steward and schoolmaster are kept

distinct; the strict business of education alone devolving upon the

latter, while the former has the charge of all things out of school, the

controul of the provisions, the regulation of meals, of dress, of play,

and the ordinary intercourse of the boys. By this division of

management, a superior respectability must attach to the teacher while

his office is unmixed with any of these lower concerns. A still greater

advantage over the construction of common boarding-schools is to be

found in the settled salaries of the masters, rendering them totally

free of obligation to any individual pupil or his parents. This never

fails to have its effect at schools where each boy can reckon up to a

hair what profit the master derives from him, where he views him every

day in the light of a caterer, a provider for the family, who is to get

so much by him in each of his meals. Boys will see and consider these

things; and how much must the sacred character of preceptor suffer in

their minds by these degrading associations! The very bill which the

pupil carries home with him at Christmas, eked out, perhaps, with

elaborate though necessary minuteness, instructs him that his teachers

have other ends than the mere love to learning in the lessons which they

give him; and though they put into his hands the fine sayings of Seneca

or Epictetus, yet they themselves are none of those disinterested

pedagogues to teach philosophy _gratis_. The master, too, is sensible

that he is seen in this light; and how much this must lessen that

affectionate regard to the learners which alone can sweeten the bitter

labour of instruction, and convert the whole business into unwelcome

and uninteresting taskwork, many preceptors that I have conversed with

on the subject are ready, with a sad heart, to acknowledge. From this

inconvenience the settled salaries of the masters of this school in

great measure exempt them; while the happy custom of chusing masters

(indeed every officer of the establishment) from those who have received

their education there, gives them an interest in advancing the character

of the school, and binds them to observe a tenderness and a respect to

the children, in which a stranger, feeling that independence which I

have spoken of, might well be expected to fail.

In affectionate recollections of the place where he was bred up, in

hearty recognitions of old school-fellows met with again after the lapse

of years, or in foreign countries, the Christ's Hospital boy yields to

none; I might almost say, he goes beyond most other boys. The very

compass and magnitude of the school, its thousand bearings, the space it

takes up in the imagination beyond the ordinary schools, impresses a

remembrance, accompanied with an elevation of mind, that attends him

through life. It is too big, too affecting an object, to pass away

quickly from his mind. The Christ's Hospital boy's friends at school are

commonly his intimates through life. For me, I do not know whether a

constitutional imbecility does not incline me too obstinately to cling

to the remembrances of childhood; in an inverted ratio to the usual

sentiments of mankind, nothing that I have been engaged in since seems

of any value or importance, compared to the colours which imagination

gave to everything then. I belong to no _body corporate_ such as I then

made a part of.--And here, before I close, taking leave of the general

reader, and addressing myself solely to my old school fellows, that were

contemporaries with me from the year 1782 to 1789, let me have leave to

remember some of those circumstances of our school, which they will not

be unwilling to have brought back to their minds.

And first, let us remember, as first in importance in our childish eyes,

the young men (as they almost were) who, under the denomination of

_Grecians_, were waiting the expiration of the period when they should

be sent, at the charges of the Hospital, to one or other of our

Universities, but more frequently to Cambridge. These youths, from their

superior acquirements, their superior age and stature, and the fewness

of their numbers, (for seldom above two or three at a time were

inaugurated into that high order,) drew the eyes of all, and especially

of the younger boys, into a reverent observance and admiration. How tall

they used to seem to us!--how stately would they pace along the

cloisters!--while the play of the lesser boys was absolutely suspended,

or its boisterousness at least allayed, at their presence! Not that they

ever beat or struck the boys--that would have been to have demeaned

themselves--the dignity of their persons alone insured them all respect.

The task of blows, of corporal chastisement, they left to the common

monitors, or heads of wards, who, it must be confessed, in our time had

rather too much licence allowed them to oppress and misuse their

inferiors; and the interference of the Grecian, who may be considered as

the spiritual power, was not unfrequently called for, to mitigate by its

mediation the heavy unrelenting arm of this temporal power, or monitor.

In fine, the Grecians were the solemn Muftis of the school. Æras were

computed from their time;--it used to be said, such or such a thing was

done when S---- or T---- was Grecian.

As I ventured to call the Grecians the Muftis of the school, the king's

boys,[29] as their character then was, may well pass for the Janisaries.

They were the terror of all the other boys; bred up under that hardy

sailor, as well as excellent mathematician, and co-navigator with

Captain Cook, William Wales. All his systems were adapted to fit them

for the rough element which they were destined to encounter. Frequent

and severe punishments, which were expected to be borne with more than

Spartan fortitude, came to be considered less as inflictions of disgrace

than as trials of obstinate endurance. To make his boys hardy, and to

give them early sailor-habits, seemed to be his only aim; to this every

thing was subordinate. Moral obliquities, indeed, were sure of receiving

their full recompense, for no occasion of laying on the lash was ever

let slip; but the effects expected to be produced from it were something

very different from contrition or mortification. There was in William

Wales a perpetual fund of humour, a constant glee about him, which,

heightened by an inveterate provincialism of North country-dialect,

absolutely took away the sting from his severities. His punishments were

a game at patience, in which the master was not always worst contented

when he found himself at times overcome by his pupil. What success this

discipline had, or how the effects of it operated upon the after-lives

of these king's boys, I cannot say: but I am sure that, for the time,

they were absolute nuisances to the rest of the school. Hardy, brutal,

and often wicked, they were the most graceless lump in the whole mass;

older and bigger than the other boys, (for, by the system of their

education they were kept longer at school by two or three years than any

of the rest, except the Grecians,) they were a constant terror to the

younger part of the school; and some who may read this, I doubt not,

will remember the consternation into which the juvenile fry of us were

thrown, when the cry was raised in the cloisters, that _the First Order

was coming_--for so they termed the first form or class of those boys.

Still these sea-boys answered some good purposes in the school. They

were the military class among the boys, foremost in athletic exercises,

who extended the fame of the prowess of the school far and near; and the

apprentices in the vicinage, and sometimes the butchers' boys in the

neighbouring market, had sad occasion to attest their valour.

[29] The mathematical pupils, bred up to the sea, on the foundation

of Charles the Second.

The time would fail me if I were to attempt to enumerate all those

circumstances, some pleasant, some attended with some pain, which, seen

through the mist of distance, come sweetly softened to the memory. But I

must crave leave to remember our transcending superiority in those

invigorating sports, leap-frog, and basting the bear; our delightful

excursions in the summer holidays to the New River, near Newington,

where, like otters, we would live the long day in the water, never

caring for dressing ourselves when we had once stripped; our savoury

meals afterwards, when we came home almost famished with staying out all

day without our dinners; our visits at other times to the Tower, where,

by antient privilege, we had free access to all the curiosities; our

solemn processions through the City at Easter, with the Lord Mayor's

largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, with the festive questions and

civic pleasantries of the dispensing Aldermen, which were more to us

than all the rest of the banquet; our stately suppings in public, where

the well-lighted hall, and the confluence of well-dressed company who

came to see us, made the whole look more like a concert or assembly,

than a scene of a plain bread and cheese collation; the annual orations

upon St. Matthew's day, in which the senior scholar, before he had done,

seldom failed to reckon up, among those who had done honour to our

school by being educated in it, the names of those accomplished critics

and Greek scholars, Joshua Barnes and Jeremiah Markland (I marvel they

left out Camden while they were about it). Let me have leave to remember

our hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ; the doleful tune of the

burial anthem chanted in the solemn cloisters, upon the seldom-occurring

funeral of some school-fellow; the festivities at Christmas, when the

richest of us would club our stock to have a gaudy day, sitting round

the fire, replenished to the height with logs, and the penniless, and he

that could contribute nothing, partook in all the mirth, and in some of

the substantialities of the feasting; the carol sung by night at that

time of the year, which, when a young boy, I have so often lain awake to

hear from seven (the hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by

the older boys and monitors, and have listened to it, in their rude

chanting, till I have been transported in fancy to the fields of

Bethlehem, and the song which was sung at that season by angels' voices

to the shepherds.

Nor would I willingly forget any of those things which administered to

our vanity. The hem-stitched bands, and town-made shirts, which some of

the most fashionable among us wore; the town-girdles, with buckles of

silver, or shining stone; the badges of the sea-boys; the cots, or

superior shoe-strings of the monitors; the medals of the markers, (those

who were appointed to hear the Bible read in the wards on Sunday morning

and evening,) which bore on their obverse in silver, as certain parts of

our garments carried in meaner metal, the countenance of our Founder,

that godly and royal child, King Edward the Sixth, the flower of the

Tudor name--the young flower that was untimely cropt as it began to fill

our land with its early odours--the boy patron of boys--the serious and

holy child who walked with Cranmer and Ridley--fit associate, in those

tender years, for the bishops and future martyrs of our Church, to

receive, or (as occasion sometimes proved,) to give instruction.

"But, ah! what means the silent tear?

Why, e'en mid joy, my bosom heave?

Ye long-lost scenes, enchantments dear!

Lo! now I linger o'er your grave.

----Fly, then, ye hours of rosy hue,

And bear away the bloom of years!

And quick succeed, ye sickly crew

Of doubts and sorrows, pains and fears!

Still will I ponder Fate's unalter'd plan,

Nor, tracing back the child, forget that I am man."[30]

[30] Lines meditated in the cloisters of Christ's Hospital, in the

"Poetics" of Mr. George Dyer.

TABLE-TALK IN _THE EXAMINER_

I.--REYNOLDS AND LEONARDO DA VINCI

(1813)

The Reynolds Gallery has upon the whole disappointed me. Some of the

portraits are interesting. They are faces of characters whom we

(middle-aged gentlemen) were born a little too late to remember, but

about whom we have heard our fathers tell stories, till we almost fancy

to have seen them. There is a charm in the portrait of a Rodney, or a

Keppel, which even a picture of Nelson must want for me. I should turn

away after a slight inspection from the best likeness that could be made

of Mrs. Anne Clark; but Kitty Fisher is a considerable personage. Then

the dresses of some of the women so exactly remind us of modes which we

can just recall; of the forms under which the venerable relationships of

aunt or mother first presented themselves to our young eyes; the aprons,

the coifs, the lappets, the hoods. Mercy on us, what a load of

head-ornaments seem to have conspired to bury a pretty face in the

picture of Mrs. Long, _yet could not_! Beauty must have some "charmed

life" to have been able to surmount the conspiracy of fashion in those

days to destroy it. The portraits which least pleased me were those of

boys as infant Bacchuses, Jupiters, &c. But the Artist is not to be

blamed for the disguise. No doubt the parents wished to see their

children deified in their life-time. It was but putting a thunderbolt

(instead of a squib) into young master's hands, and a whey-faced chit

was transformed into the infant Ruler of Olympus, him who was afterwards

to shake heaven and earth with his black brow. Another good boy pleased

his grandmama with saying his prayers so well, and the blameless dotage

of the good old woman imagined in him an adequate representative of the

infancy of the awful prophet Samuel. _But the great historical

compositions, where the Artist was at liberty to paint from his own

idea--the Beaufort and the Ugolino_;--why then, I must confess, pleading

the liberty of Table-Talk for my presumption, that they have not left

any very elevating impressions upon my mind. Pardon a ludicrous

comparison. I know, Madam, you admire them both; but placed opposite to

each other as they are at the Gallery, as if to set the one work in

competition with the other, they did remind me of the famous contention

for the prize of deformity, mentioned in the 173d number of the

_Spectator_. The one stares and the other grins; but is their common

dignity in their countenances? Does any thing of the history of their

life gone by peep through the ruins of the mind in the face, like the

unconquerable grandeur that surmounts the distortions of the

Laocoon?--The figures which stand by the bed of Beaufort are indeed

happy representations of the plain unmannered old Nobility of the

English Historical Plays of Shakspeare; but for any thing else,--give me

leave to recommend these Macaroons.

After leaving the Reynolds Gallery, where, upon the whole, I received a

good deal of pleasure, not feeling that I had quite had my fill of

paintings, I stumbled upon a picture in Piccadilly (No. 22, I think),

which purports to be a portrait of Francis the First by Leonardo da

Vinci. Heavens, what a difference! It is but a portrait as most of those

I had been seeing; but placed by them it would kill them, swallow them

up as Moses's rod the other rods. Where did those old painters get their

models? I see no such figures, not in my dreams, as this Francis, in the

character, or rather with the attributes of John the Baptist. A more

than mortal majesty in the brow and upon the eyelid--an arm muscular,

beautifully formed--the long graceful massy fingers compressing, yet so

as not to hurt, a lamb more lovely, more sweetly shrinking, than we can

conceive that milk-white one which followed Una. The picture altogether

looking as if it were eternal--combining the truth of flesh with a

promise of permanence like marble.

Leonardo, from the one or two specimens we have of him in England, must

have been a stupendous genius. I scarce can think he has had his full

fame--he who could paint that wonderful personification of the Logos or

third person of the Trinity, grasping a globe, late in the possession of

Mr. Troward of Pall-Mall, where the hand was by the boldest licence

twice as big as the truth of drawing warranted, yet the effect to every

one that saw it, by some magic of genius, was confessed to be not

_monstrous_, but _miraculous_ and _silencing_. It could not be gainsaid.

II.--[THE NEW ACTING]

(1813)

The difference of the present race of actors from those I remember,

seems to be, that less study is found necessary for the profession than

was formerly judged to be requisite. Parsons and Dodd must have

_thought_ a good deal before they could have matured such exhibitions as

their _Foresight_ and _Aguecheek_. We do not want capable actors, but

their end is answered with less pains. The way is to get a kind of

familiarity with the audience, to strike up a kind of personal

friendship, to be "hail fellow, well met," with them: those excellent

comedians, Bannister and Dowton, who had least need of these arts, have

not disdained to use them. You see a reciprocity of greeting and

goodwill between them and the house at first entrance. It is amazing how

much carelessness of acting slips in by this intercourse. After all, it

is a good-natured fault, and a great many kindly feelings are generated

in the galleries by this process, feelings which are better than

criticism.--Russell's _Jerry Sneak_ appears to me to be a piece of the

richest colouring we have on the present stage in the comic line, if,

indeed, it be entirely comic, for its effect on me, in some passages, is

even pathetic. The innocent, good-natured tones with which _Sneak_ makes

his ineffectual appeals to the sympathy of the hard-hearted and

contemptuous betrayer of his honour, the _Major_; the slight dash of

idiotism which the Actor contrives to throw into the part, (which Foote,

I will venture to say, never dreamt of), but yet which has the happiest

effect in turning what would be _contempt_, an ill-natured and

heart-injuring passion, into _pity_ and _compassion_; are some of the

nicest effects of observation, and tend to unvulgarize the part, if I

may be allowed the expression.--For a piece of pure drollery, Liston's

_Lord Grizzle_ has no competitor. Comedy it is not, nor farce. It is

neither nature, nor exaggerated nature. It is a creation of the actor's

own. _Grizzle_ seems a being of another world, such an one as _Nicolaus

Klimius_ might have seen at the fantastic courts of his _World under the

Ground_. It is an abstract idea of court qualities,--an apotheosis of

apathy. Ben Jonson's abstractions of courtiers in his _Cynthia's Revels_

and _Every Man out of his Humour_, what a treat it would be to see them

on the stage done in the same manner!--What I most despair of is, seeing

again a succession of such actresses as Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope, and

Mrs. Jordan. This coquetting between the performer and the public is

carried to a shocking excess by some of the Ladies who play the first

characters in what is called genteel comedy. Instead of playing their

pretty airs upon their lover on the stage, as Mrs. Abingdon or Mrs.

Cibber were [was] content to do, or Mrs. Oldfield before them, their

whole artillery of charms is now directed to ensnare--whom?--why, the

whole audience--a thousand gentlemen, perhaps--for this many-headed

beast they furl and unfurl their fan, and teach their lips to curl in

smiles, and their bosoms exhibit such pretty instructive heavings. These

personal applications, which used to be a sort of sauce-piquant for the

pert epilogue, now give the standing relish to the whole play. I am

afraid an actress who should omit them would not find her account in it.

I am sure that the very absence of this fault in Miss Kelly, and her

judicious attention to her part, with little or no reference to the

spectators, is one cause why her varied excellencies, though they are

beginning to be perceived, have yet found their way more slowly to the

approbation of the public, than they have deserved. Two or three more

such instances would reform the stage, and drive off the Glovers, the

Johnstons, and the St. Legers. O! when shall we see a female part acted

in the quiet, unappealing manner of Miss Pope's _Miss Candour_? When

shall we get rid of the Dalilahs of the stage?

III.--[BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM]

(1813)

Dull poetry is to me far more oppressive than the same quantity of

dullness in prose. The act of attending to the metre is perfectly

painful where there is nothing to repay one in the thought. Of heavy

prose I can swallow a good dose. I do not know that I was ever deterred

from reading through a book which I had begun, supposing the subject to

be to my mind, except Patrick's Pilgrim. The freezing, appalling,

petrifying dullness of that book is quite astounding. Yet is there one

lively image in the preface, which an author in the present day might

comfort himself by applying to his reviewers: "If the writer of these

pages shall chance to meet with any that shall only study to cavil and

pick a quarrel with him, he is prepared beforehand to take no notice of

it, nor to be more troubled at their incivility, than a devout hermit is

at the ugly faces which the creatures who something resemble men make at

him as he is walking through the deserts." An amusing catalogue might be

made of books which contain but one good passage. They would be a sort

of single-speech Hamiltons; if Balaam's palfry might not be thought a

more apt counterpart to them. Killigrew's play of the Parson's Wedding,

which in length of massy dullness exceeds many books, is remarkable for

one little spark of liveliness. The languishing fine lady of the piece

exclaims most characteristically, upon coming in tired with walking: "I

am glad I am come home, for I am e'en as weary with this walking. For

God's sake, whereabouts does the pleasure of walking lie? I swear I have

often sought it till I was weary, and yet I could ne'er find

it."--Charron on Wisdom, a cumbrous piece of formality, which Pope's

eulogium lately betrayed me into the perusal of, has one splendid

passage; page 138, (I think) English translation. It contrasts the open

honours with which we invest the sword, as the means of putting man out

of the world, with the concealing and retiring circumstances that

accompany his introduction into it. It is a piece of gorgeous and happy

eloquence.--What could Pope mean by that line,--"sage Montaigne, or

more sage Charron?" Montaigne is an immense treasure-house of

observation, anticipating all the discoveries of succeeding essayists.

You cannot dip in him without being struck with the aphorism, that there

is nothing new under the sun. All the writers on common life since him

have done nothing but echo him. You cannot open him without detecting a

Spectator, or starting a Rambler; besides that his own character

pervades the whole, and binds it sweetly together. Charron is a mere

piece of formality, scholastic dry bones, without sinew or living flesh.

IV.--[A SYLVAN SURPRISE]

(1813)

Time and place give every thing its propriety. Strolling one day in the

Twickenham meadows, I was struck with the appearance of something dusky

upon the grass, which my eye could not immediately reduce into a shape.

Going nearer, I discovered the cause of the phenomenon. In the midst of

the most rural scene in the world, the day glorious over head, the wave

of Father Thames rippling deliciously by him, lay outstretched at his

ease upon Nature's verdant carpet--a chimney-sweeper--

----a spot like which

Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb

Through his glaz'd optic tube yet never saw.

There is no reason in nature why a chimney-sweeper should not indulge a

taste for rural objects, but somehow the ideas were discordant. It

struck upon me like an inartificial discord in music. It was a

combination of _urbs in rure_, which my experience had not prepared me

to anticipate.

V.--[STREET CONVERSATION]

(1813)

It should seem almost impossible for a person to have arrived at the age

of manhood, and never once to have heard or suspected that there have

been people born before our times. Yet this fact I am obliged to

conclude from the fragment of a conversation which I overheard between

two of the lower order of Irish, who passed me in Holborn the other

day. One of them, it seems, had appealed in defence of his argument to

the opinions or practice of their forefathers, for I heard the other

exclaim "the ancients! who were they?"--"What!" retorted his companion,

with an air of insolent superiority, "did you never hear of the

ancients? did you never read of them?" They had got too far from me to

hear the conclusion of their extraordinary discourse; but I have often

thought that it would be amusing to register the sentences, and scraps

of sentences, which one catches up in a day's walk about the town; I

mean in the way of fair and honest listening, without way-laying one's

neighbour for more than he would be willing to communicate. From these

flying words, with the help of a little imagination, one might often

piece out a long conversation foregone.

VI.--[A TOWN RESIDENCE]

(1813)

Where would a man of taste chuse his town residence, setting convenience

out of the question? Palace-yard,--for its contiguity to the Abbey, the

Courts of Justice, the Sittings of Parliament, Whitehall, the Parks,

&c.,--I hold of all places in these two great cities of London and

Westminster to be the most classical and eligible. Next in classicality,

I should name the four Inns of Court: they breathe a learned and

collegiate air; and of them chiefly,

----those bricky towers

The which on Thames' broad aged back doth ride,

Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers;

There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide,

Till they decay'd through pride--

as Spenser describes evidently with a relish. I think he had Garden

Court in his eye. The noble hall which stands there must have been built

about that time. Next to the Inns of Court, Covent-Garden, for its _rus

in urbe_, its wholesome scents of early fruits and vegetables, its

tasteful church and arcades,--above all, the neighbouring theatres,

cannot but be approved of. I do not know a fourth station comparable to

or worthy to be named after these. To an antiquarian, every spot in

London, or even Southwark, teems with historical associations, local

interest. He could not chuse amiss. But to me, who have no such

qualifying knowledge, the Surrey side of the water is peculiarly

distasteful. It is impossible to connect any thing interesting with it.

I never knew a man of taste to live, what they term, _over the bridge_.

Observe, in this place I speak solely of _chosen and voluntary_

residence.

VII.--[GRAY'S _BARD_]

(1813)

The beard of Gray's Bard, "streaming like a meteor," had always struck

me as an injudicious imitation of the Satanic ensign in the _Paradise

Lost_, which

----full high advanced,

Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind:

till the other day I met with a passage in Heywood's old play, _The Four

Prentices of London_, which it is difficult to imagine not to be the

origin of the similitude in both poets. The line in Italics Gray has

almost verbatim adopted--

In Sion towers hangs his victorious flag.

Blowing defiance this way; and its shews

_Like a red meteor in the troubled air_,

Or like a blazing comet that foretells

The fall of princes.

All here is noble, and as it should be. The comparison enlarges the

thing compared without stretching it upon a violent rack, till it bursts

with ridiculous explosion. The application of such gorgeous imagery to

an old man's beard is of a piece with the Bardolfian bombast: "see you

these meteors, these exhalations?" or the raptures of an Oriental lover,

who should compare his mistress's nose to a watchtower or a steeple. The

presageful nature of the meteor, which makes so fine an adjunct of the

simile in Heywood, Milton has judiciously omitted, as less proper to his

purpose; but he seems not to have overlooked the beauty of it, by his

introducing the superstition in a succeeding book--

----like a comet burn'd,

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge

In th' artic sky, and from his horrid hair

Shakes pestilence and war.

VIII.--[AN AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN]

(1813)

I have in my possession a curious volume of Latin verses, which I

believe to be unique. It is entitled _Alexandri Fultoni Scoti

Epigrammatorum libri quinque_. It purports to be printed at Perth, and

bears date 1679. By the appellation which the author gives himself in

the preface, _hypodidasculus_, I suppose him to have been usher at some

school. It is no uncommon thing now a days for persons concerned in

academies to affect a literary reputation in the way of their trade. The

"master of a seminary for a limited number of pupils at Islington,"

lately put forth an edition of that scarce tract, the _Elegy in a

Country Churchyard_ (to use his own words), with notes and

head-lines!--But to our author. These epigrams of Alexander Fulton,

Scotchman, have little remarkable in them besides extreme dulness and

insipidity; but there is one, which, by its being marshalled in the

front of the volume, seems to have been the darling of its parent, and

for its exquisite flatness, and the surprising stroke of anachronism

with which it is pointed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion. It is

addressed, like many of the others, to a fair one:--

AD MARIULAM SUAM AUTOR

Moverunt bella olim Helenæ decor atque venustas

Europen inter frugiferamque Asiam.

Tam bona, quam tu, tam prudens, sin illa fuisset,

Ad lites issent Africa et America!

Which, in humble imitation of mine author's peculiar poverty of stile, I

have ventured thus to render into English:--

THE AUTHOR TO HIS MOGGY

For love's illustrious cause, and Helen's charms,

All Europe and all Asia rush'd to arms.

Had she with these thy polish'd sense combin'd,

All Afric and America had join'd!

The happy idea of an American war undertaken in the cause of beauty

ought certainly to recommend the author's memory to the countrymen of

Madison and Jefferson; and the bold anticipation of the discovery of

that Continent in the time of the Trojan War is a flight beyond the

Sibyll's books.

IX.--[DRYDEN AND COLLIER]

(1813)

The different way in which the same story may be told by different

persons was never more strikingly illustrated than by the manner in

which the celebrated Jeremy Collier has described the effects of

Timotheus's music upon Alexander, in the Second Part of his Essays. We

all know how Dryden has treated the subject. Let us now hear his great

contemporary and antagonist:--"_Timotheus_, a _Grecian_," says Collier,

"was so great a _Master_, that he could make a Man storm and swagger

like a Tempest. And then, by altering the _Notes_ and the _Time_, he

would take him down again, and sweeten his Humour in a trice. One Time,

when _Alexander_ was at Dinner, this Man play'd him a _Phrygian_ Air:

The Prince immediately rises, snatches up his Lance, and puts himself

into a Posture of Fighting. And the Retreat was no sooner sounded by the

Change of the Harmony, but his Arms were grounded, and his Fire extinct;

and he sat down as orderly as if he had come from one of _Aristotle's

Lectures_. I warrant you _Demosthenes_ would have been flourishing about

such a Business a long Hour, and may be not have done it neither. But

_Timotheus_ had a nearer Cut to the Soul: He could neck a Passion at a

Stroke, and lay it Asleep. _Pythagoras_ once met with a Parcel of

drunken Fellows, who were likely to be troublesome enough. He presently

orders the _Musick_ to play Grave, and chop into a _Dorian_: Upon this,

they all threw away their _Garlands_, and were as sober and as

shame-faced as one would wish."--It is evident that Dryden, in his

inspired Ode, and Collier in all this pudder of prose, meant the same

thing. But what a work does the latter make with his "necking a passion

at his stroke," "making a man storm and swagger like a tempest," and

then "taking him down and sweetening his humour in a trice." What in

Dryden is "Softly sweet in Lydian measures," Collier calls "chopping

into a Dorian."--This Collier was the same who, in his Biographical

Dictionary, says of Shakespeare, that "though his genius generally was

jocular, and inclining to festivity, yet _he could when he pleased be as

serious as any body_."

X.--PLAY-HOUSE MEMORANDA

(1813)

I once sat in the Pit of Drury-lane Theatre next to a blind man, who, I

afterwards learned, was a street musician, well known about London. The

play was _Richard the Third_, and it was curious to observe the interest

which he took in every successive scene, so far more lively than could

be perceived in any of the company around him. At those pathetic

interviews between the _Queen_ and _Duchess of York_, after the murder

of the children, his eyes (or rather the places where eyes should have

been) gushed out tears in torrents, and he sat intranced in attention,

while every one about him was tittering, partly at him, and partly at

the grotesque figures and wretched action of the women, who had been

selected by managerial taste to personate those royal mourners. Having

no drawback of sight to impair his sensibilities, he simply attended to

the scene, and received its unsophisticated impression. _So much the

rather her celestial light shone inward._ I was pleased with an

observation which he made, when I asked him how he liked Kemble, who

played _Richard_. I should have thought (said he) that that man had been

reading something out of a book, if I had not known that I was in a

play-house.

I was once amused in a different way by a knot of country people who had

come to see a play at that same Theatre. They seemed perfectly

inattentive to all the best performers for the first act or two, though

the piece was admirably played, but kept poring in the play-bill, and

were evidently watching for the appearance of one, who was to be the

source of supreme delight to them that night. At length the expected

actor arrived, who happened to be in possession of a very insignificant

part, not much above a mule [? mute]. I saw their faint attempt at

raising a clap on his appearance, and their disappointment at not being

seconded by the audience in general. I saw them try to admire and to

find out something very wonderful in him, and wondering all the while at

the moderate sensation he produced. I saw their pleasure and their

interest subside at last into flat mortification, when the riddle was at

once unfolded by my recollecting that this performer bore the same name

with an actor, then in the acme of his celebrity, at Covent-Garden, but

who lately finished his theatrical and mortal career on the other side

the Atlantic. They had come to see Mr. C----, but had come to the wrong

house.

Is it a stale remark to say, that I have constantly found the interest

excited at a play-house to bear an exact inverse proportion to the price

paid for admission. Formerly, when my sight and hearing were more

perfect, and my purse a little less so, I was a frequenter of the upper

gallery in the old Theatres. The eager attention, the breathless

listening, the anxiety not to lose a word, the quick anticipation of the

significance of the scene (every sense kept as it were upon a sharp look

out), which are exhibited by the occupiers of those higher and now

almost out-of-sight regions (who, going seldom to a play, cannot afford

to lose any thing by inattention), suffer some little diminution, as you

descend to the lower or two-shilling ranks; but still the joy is lively

and unallayed, save [that] by some little _incursion_ of _manners_, the

expression of it is expected to abate somewhat of its natural

liveliness. The oaken plaudits of the trunkmaker would _here_ be

considered as going a little beyond the line.--In the pit first begins

that accursed critical faculty, which, making a man the judge of his own

pleasures, too often constitutes him the executioner of his own and

others! You may see the _jealousy of being unduly pleased_, the

_suspicion of being taken in to admire_; in short, the vile critical

spirit, creeping and diffusing itself, and spreading from the wrinkled

brows and cloudy eyes of the front row sages and newspaper reporters

(its proper residence), till it infects and clouds over the thoughtless,

vacant countenance, of John Bull tradesmen, and clerks of

counting-houses, who, but for that approximation, would have been

contented to have grinned without rule, and to have been pleased without

asking why. The sitting next a critic is contagious. Still now and then,

a _genuine spectator_ is to be found among them, a shopkeeper and his

family, whose honest titillations of mirth, and generous chucklings of

applause, cannot wait or be at leisure to take the cue from the sour

judging faces about them. Haply they never dreamed that there were such

animals in nature as critics or reviewers; even the idea of an author

may be a speculation they never entered into; but they take the mirth

they find as a pure effusion of the actor-folks, set there on purpose to

make them fun. I love the unenquiring gratitude of such spectators. As

for the Boxes, I never can understand what brings the people there. I

see such frigid indifference, such unconcerned spectatorship, such

impenetrability to pleasure or its contrary, such being _in the house_

and yet not _of it_, certainly they come far nearer the nature of _the

Gods_, upon the system of Lucretius at least, than those honest, hearty,

well-pleased, unindifferent mortals above, who, from time immemorial,

have had that name, upon no other ground than situation, assigned them.

Take the play-house altogether, there is a less sum of enjoyment than

used to be. Formerly you might see something like the effect of a

novelty upon a citizen, his wife and daughters, in the Pit; their

curiosity upon every new face that entered upon the stage. The talk of

how they got in at the door, and how they were crowded upon some former

occasion, made a topic till the curtain drew up. People go too often

now-a-days to make their ingress or egress of consequence. Children of

seven years of age will talk as familiarly of the performers, aye and as

knowingly (according to the received opinion) as grown persons; more

than the grown persons in my time. Oh when shall I forget first seeing a

play, at the age of five or six? It was _Artaxerxes_. Who played, or who

sang in it, I know not. Such low ideas as actors' names, or actors'

merits, never entered my head. The mystery of delight was not cut open

and dissipated for me by those who took me there. It was _Artaxerxes_

and _Arbaces_ and _Mandane_ that I saw, not Mr. Beard, or Mr. Leoni, or

Mrs. Kennedy. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has

since visited me but in dreams. I was in Persia for the time, and the

burning idol of their devotion in the Temple almost converted me into a

worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be

something more than elemental fires. I was, with Uriel, in the body of

the sun.--What should I have gained by knowing (as I should have done,

had I been born thirty years later) that that solar representation was a

mere painted scene, that had neither fire nor light in itself, and that

the royal phantoms, which passed in review before me, were but such

common mortals as I could see every day out of my father's window? We

crush the faculty of delight and wonder in children, by explaining every

thing. We take them to the source of the Nile, and shew them the scanty

runnings, instead of letting the beginnings of that seven fold stream

remain in impenetrable darkness, a mysterious question of wonderment and

delight to ages.

REVIEW OF _THE EXCURSION; A POEM_

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. LONDON. 4to. pp. 447

(1814)

The volume before us, as we learn from the Preface, is "a detached

portion of an unfinished poem, containing views of man, nature, and

society;" to be called the Recluse, as having for its principal subject

the "sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement;" and to be

preceded by a "record in verse of the origin and progress of the

author's own powers, with reference to the fitness which they may be

supposed to have conferred for the task." To the completion of this plan

we look forward with a confidence which the execution of the finished

part is well calculated to inspire.--Meanwhile, in what is before us

there is ample matter for entertainment: for the "Excursion" is not a

branch (as might have been suspected) prematurely plucked from the

parent tree to gratify an overhasty appetite for applause; but is, in

itself, a complete and legitimate production.

It opens with the meeting of the poet with an aged man whom he had known

from his school days; in plain words, a Scottish pedlar; a man who,

though of low origin, had received good learning and impressions of the

strictest piety from his stepfather, a minister and village

schoolmaster. Among the hills of Athol, the child is described to have

become familiar with the appearances of nature in his occupation as a

feeder of sheep; and from her silent influences to have derived a

character, meditative, tender, and poetical. With an imagination and

feelings thus nourished--his intellect not unaided by books, but those,

few, and chiefly of a religious cast--the necessity of seeking a

maintenance in riper years, had induced him to make choice of a

profession, the _appellation_ for which has been gradually declining

into contempt, but which formerly designated a class of men, who,

journeying in country places, when roads presented less facilities for

travelling, and the intercourse between towns and villages was

unfrequent and hazardous, became a sort of link of neighbourhood to

distant habitations; resembling, in some small measure, in the effects

of their periodical returns, the caravan which Thomson so feelingly

describes as blessing the cheerless Siberian in its annual visitation,

with "news of human kind."

In the solitude incident to this rambling life, power had been given him

to keep alive that devotedness to nature which he had imbibed in his

childhood, together with the opportunity of gaining such notices of

persons and things from his intercourse with society, as qualified him

to become a "teacher of moral wisdom." With this man, then, in a hale

old age, released from the burthen of his occupation, yet retaining much

of its active habits, the poet meets, and is by him introduced to a

second character--a sceptic--one who had been partially roused from an

overwhelming desolation, brought upon him by the loss of wife and

children, by the powerful incitement of hope which the French Revolution

in its commencement put forth, but who, disgusted with the failure of

all its promises, had fallen back into a laxity of faith and conduct

which induced at length a total despondence as to the dignity and final

destination of his species. In the language of the poet, he

----broke faith with those whom he had laid

In earth's dark chambers,

Yet he describes himself as subject to compunctious visitations from

that silent quarter.

----Feebly must They have felt,

Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips

The vengeful Furies. _Beautiful_ regards

Were turned on me--the face of her I loved;

The Wife and Mother; pitifully fixing

Tender reproaches, insupportable!--p. 133.

The conversations with this person, in which the Wanderer asserts the

consolatory side of the question against the darker views of human life

maintained by his friend, and finally calls to his assistance the

experience of a village priest, the third, or rather fourth

interlocutor, (for the poet himself is one,) form the groundwork of the

"Excursion."

It will be seen by this sketch that the poem is of a didactic nature,

and not a fable or story; yet it is not wanting in stories of the most

interesting kind,--such as the lovers of Cowper and Goldsmith will

recognise as something familiar and congenial to them. We might instance

the Ruined Cottage, and the Solitary's own story, in the first half of

the work; and the second half, as being almost a continued cluster of

narration. But the prevailing charm of the poem is, perhaps, that,

conversational as it is in its plan, the dialogue throughout is carried

on in the very heart of the most romantic scenery which the poet's

native hills could supply; and which, by the perpetual references made

to it either in the way of illustration or for variety and pleasurable

description's sake, is brought before us as we read. We breathe in the

fresh air, as we do while reading Walton's Complete Angler; only the

country about us is as much bolder than Walton's, as the thoughts and

speculations, which form the matter of the poem, exceed the trifling

pastime and low-pitched conversation of his humble fishermen. We give

the description of the "two huge peaks," which from some other vale

peered into that in which the Solitary is entertaining the poet and

companion. "Those," says their host,

----if here you dwelt, would be

Your prized Companions.--Many are the notes

Which in his tuneful course the wind draws forth

From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;

And well those lofty Brethren bear their part

In the wild concert--chiefly when the storm

Rides high; then all the upper air they fill

With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow,

Like smoke, along the level of the blast

In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song

Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails;

And in the grim and breathless hour of noon,

Methinks that I have heard them echo back

The thunder's greeting:--nor have Nature's laws

Left them ungifted with a power to yield

Music of finer frame; a harmony,

So do I call it, though it be the hand

Of silence, though there be no voice;--the clouds,

The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,

Motions of moonlight, all come thither--touch,

And have an answer--thither come, and shape

A language not unwelcome to sick hearts

And idle spirits:--there the sun himself

At the calm close of summer's longest day

Rests his substantial Orb;--between those heights

And on the top of either pinnacle,

More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault,

Sparkle the Stars as of their station proud.

Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man

Than the mute agent stirring there:--alone

Here do I sit and watch.--p. 84.

To a mind constituted like that of Mr. Wordsworth, the stream, the

torrent, and the stirring leaf--seem not merely to suggest associations

of deity, but to be a kind of speaking communication with it. He walks

through every forest, as through some Dodona; and every bird that flits

among the leaves, like that miraculous one[31] in Tasso, but in language

more intelligent, reveals to him far higher lovelays. In his poetry

nothing in Nature is dead. Motion is synonymous with life. "Beside yon

spring," says the Wanderer, speaking of a deserted well, from which, in

former times, a poor woman, who died heart-broken, had been used to

dispense refreshment to the thirsty traveller,

----beside yon Spring I stood,

And eyed its waters till we seem'd to feel

One sadness, they and I. For them a bond

Of brotherhood is broken: time has been

When, every day, the touch of human hand

Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up

In mortal stillness;--p. 27.

[31]

With partie coloured plumes and purple bill,

A woondrous bird among the rest there flew,

That in plaine speech sung love laies loud and shrill,

Her leden was like humaine language trew,

So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill,

That strange it seemed how much good she knew.

_Fairefax's Translation_ [Book 16, Stanza 13].

To such a mind, we say--call it strength or weakness--if weakness,

assuredly a fortunate one--the visible and audible things of creation

present, not dim symbols, or curious emblems, which they have done at

all times to those who have been gifted with the poetical faculty; but

revelations and quick insights into the life within us, the pledge of

immortality:--

----the whispering Air

Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights,

And blind recesses of the caverned rocks;

The little Rills, and Waters numberless,

Inaudible by day-light,

"I have seen," the poet says, and the illustration is an happy one:

----I have seen

A curious Child [who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground], applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd Shell;

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely, and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within

Were heard,--sonorous cadences! whereby,

To his belief, the Monitor expressed

Mysterious union with its native Sea.

Even such a Shell the Universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith; and [there are times,

I doubt not, when to you it] doth impart

Authentic tidings of invisible things;

Of ebb and flow, and ever during power;

And central peace subsisting at the heart

Of endless agitation.--p. 191.

Sometimes this harmony is imaged to us by an echo; and in one instance,

it is with such transcendant beauty set forth by a shadow and its

corresponding substance, that it would be a sin to cheat our readers at

once of so happy an illustration of the poet's system, and so fair a

proof of his descriptive powers.

Thus having reached a bridge, that overarched

The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed

In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw

A two-fold Image; on a grassy bank

A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood

Another and the same! Most beautiful,

On the green turf, with his imperial front

Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,

The breathing Creature stood; as beautiful,

Beneath him, shewed his shadowy Counterpart.

Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,

And each seemed centre of his own fair world:

Antipodes unconscious of each other,

Yet, in partition, with their several spheres,

Blended in perfect stillness, to our sight!--p. 407.

Combinations, it is confessed, "like those reflected in that quiet

pool," cannot be lasting: it is enough for the purpose of the poet, if

they are felt.--They are at least his system; and his readers, if they

reject them for their creed, may receive them merely as poetry. In him,

_faith_, in friendly alliance and conjunction with the religion of his

country, appears to have grown up, fostered by meditation and lonely

communions with Nature--an internal principle of lofty consciousness,

which stamps upon his opinions and sentiments (we were almost going to

say) the character of an expanded and generous Quakerism.

From such a creed we should expect unusual results; and, when applied to

the purposes of consolation, more touching considerations than from the

mouth of common teachers. The finest speculation of this sort perhaps in

the poem before us, is the notion of the thoughts which may sustain the

spirit, while they crush the frame of the sufferer, who from loss of

objects of love by death, is commonly supposed to pine away under a

broken heart.

----If there be whose tender frames have drooped

Even to the dust; apparently, through weight

Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power

An agonizing spirit to transmute,

Infer not hence a hope from those withheld

When wanted most; a confidence impaired

So pitiably, that, having ceased to see

With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love

Of what is lost, and perish through regret.

Oh! no, full oft the innocent Sufferer sees

Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs

To realize the Vision with intense

And overconstant yearning--there--there lies

The excess, by which the balance is destroyed.

Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh,

This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs,

Though inconceivably endowed, too dim

For any passion of the soul that leads

To extacy; and, all the crooked paths

Of time and change disdaining, takes its course

Along the line of limitless desires.--p. 148.

With the same modifying and incorporating power, he tells us,--

Within the soul a Faculty abides,

That with interpositions, which would hide

And darken, so can deal, that they become

Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt

Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,

In the deep stillness of a summer even

Rising behind a thick and lofty Grove,

Burns like an unconsuming fire of light,

In the green tree; and, kindling on all sides

Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil

Into a substance glorious as her own,

Yea with her own incorporated, by power

Capacious and serene. Like power abides

In Man's celestial Spirit; Virtue thus

Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds

A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,

From the incumbrances of mortal life,

From error, disappointment,--nay from guilt;

And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,

From palpable oppressions of Despair.--p. 188.

This is high poetry; though (as we have ventured to lay the basis of the

author's sentiments in a sort of liberal Quakerism) from some parts of

it, others may, with more plausibility, object to the appearance of a

kind of Natural Methodism: we could have wished therefore that the tale

of Margaret had been postponed, till the reader had been strengthened by

some previous acquaintance with the author's theory, and not placed in

the front of the poem, with a kind of ominous aspect, beautifully tender

as it is. It is a tale of a cottage, and its female tenant, gradually

decaying together, while she expected the return of one whom poverty and

not unkindness had driven from her arms. We trust ourselves only with

the conclusion--

Nine tedious years;

From their first separation, nine long years,

She lingered in unquiet widowhood,

A Wife and Widow. [Needs must it have been

A sore heart-wasting!] I have heard, my Friend,

That in yon arbour oftentimes she sate

Alone, through half the vacant Sabbath-day;

And if a dog passed by she still would quit

The shade, and look abroad. On this old Bench

For hours she sate; and evermore her eye

Was busy in the distance, shaping things

That made her heart beat quick. You see that path,

[Now faint,--the grass has crept o'er its grey line;]

There, to and fro, she paced through many a day

Of the warm summer, from a belt of hemp

That girt her waist, spinning the long drawn thread

With backward steps. Yet ever as there pass'd

A man whose garments shew'd the Soldier's[32] red,

[Or crippled Mendicant in Sailor's garb],

The little Child who sate to turn the wheel

Ceas'd from his task; and she with faultering voice

Made many a fond enquiry; and when they,

Whose presence gave no comfort, were gone by,

Her heart was still more sad. And by yon gate,

That bars the Traveller's road, she often stood,

And when a stranger Horseman came the latch

Would lift, and in his face look wistfully;

Most happy, if, from aught discovered there

Of tender feeling, she might dare repeat

The same sad question. Meanwhile her poor hut

Sank to decay: for he was gone--whose hand,

At the first nipping of October frost,

Closed up each chink, and with fresh bands of straw

Checquered the green-grown thatch. And so she lived

Through the long winter, reckless and alone;

Until her house by frost, and thaw, and rain,

Was sapped; and while she slept the nightly damps

Did chill her breast; and in the stormy day

Her tattered clothes were ruffled by the wind;

Even at the side of her own fire. Yet still

She loved this wretched spot, nor would for worlds

Have parted hence: and still that length of road,

And this rude bench, one torturing hope endeared,

Fast rooted at her heart: and here, my Friend,

In sickness she remains; and here she died,

Last human Tenant of these ruined Walls.--p. 44.

[32] Her husband had enlisted for a soldier.

The fourth book, entitled "Despondency Corrected," we consider as the

most valuable portion of the poem. For moral grandeur; for wide scope of

thought and a long train of lofty imagery; for tender personal appeals;

and a _versification_ which we feel we ought to notice, but feel it also

so involved in the poetry, that we can hardly mention it as a distinct

excellence; it stands without competition among our didactic and

descriptive verse. The general tendency of the argument (which we might

almost affirm to be the leading moral of the poem) is to abate the pride

of the calculating _understanding_, and to reinstate the _imagination_

and the _affections_ in those seats from which modern philosophy has

laboured but too successfully to expel them.

"Life's autumn past," says the grey-haired Wanderer,

----I stand on Winter's verge,

And daily lose what I desire to keep:

Yet rather would I instantly decline

To the traditionary sympathies

Of a most rustic ignorance, and take

A fearful apprehension from the owl

Or death-watch,--and as readily rejoice,

If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;

This rather would I do than see and hear

The repetitions wearisome of sense,

Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;--p. 168.

In the same spirit, those illusions of the imaginative faculty to which

the peasantry in solitary districts are peculiarly subject, are

represented as the kindly ministers of _conscience_:

----with whose service charged

They come and go, appear and disappear;

Diverting evil purposes, remorse

Awakening, chastening an intemperate grief,

Or pride of heart abating:

Reverting to more distant ages of the world, the operation of that same

faculty in producing the several fictions of Chaldean, Persian, and

Grecian idolatry, is described with such seductive power, that the

Solitary, in good earnest, seems alarmed at the tendency of his own

argument.--Notwithstanding his fears, however, there is one thought so

uncommonly fine, relative to the spirituality which lay hid beneath the

gross material forms of Greek worship, in metal or stone, that we cannot

resist the allurement of transcribing it--

----triumphant o'er this pompous show

Of Art, this palpable array of Sense,

On every side encountered; in despite

Of the gross fictions, chaunted in the streets

By wandering Rhapsodists; and in contempt

Of doubt and bold denials hourly urged

Amid the wrangling Schools--a SPIRIT hung,

Beautiful Region! o'er thy Towns and Farms,

Statues and Temples, and memorial Tombs;

And emanations were perceived; and acts

Of immortality, in Nature's course,

Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt

As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed

And armed Warrior; and in every grove

A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed

When piety more awful had relaxed.

"Take, running River, take these Locks of mine"--

Thus would the Votary say--"this severed hair,

My Vow fulfilling, do I here present,

Thankful for my beloved Child's return.

Thy banks, Cephissus, he again hath trod,

Thy murmurs heard; and drunk the chrystal lymph

With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lip,

And moisten all day long these flowery fields."

And doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed

Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose

Of Life continuous, Being unimpaired;

That hath been, is, and where it was and is

There shall be,--seen, and heard, and felt, and known,

And recognized,--existence unexposed

To the blind walk of mortal accident;

From diminution safe and weakening age;

While Man grows old, and dwindles, and decays;

And countless generations of Mankind

Depart; and leave no vestige where they trod.--p. 173.

In discourse like this the first day passes away.--The second (for this

almost dramatic poem takes up the action of two summer days) is varied

by the introduction of the village priest; to whom the Wanderer resigns

the office of chief speaker, which had been yielded to his age and

experience on the first. The conference is begun at the gate of the

church-yard; and after some natural speculations concerning death and

immortality--and the custom of funereal and sepulchral observances, as

deduced from a feeling of immortality--certain doubts are proposed

respecting the quantity of moral worth existing in the world, and in

that mountainous district in particular. In the resolution of these

doubts, the priest enters upon a most affecting and singular strain of

narration, derived from the graves around him. Pointing to hillock after

hillock, he gives short histories of their tenants, disclosing their

humble virtues, and touching with tender hand upon their frailties.

Nothing can be conceived finer than the manner of introducing these

tales. With heaven above his head, and the mouldering turf at his

feet--standing betwixt life and death--he seems to maintain that

spiritual relation which he bore to his living flock, in its

undiminished strength, even with their ashes; and to be in his proper

cure, or diocese, among the dead.

We might extract powerful instances of pathos from these tales--the

story of Ellen in particular--but their force is in combination, and in

the circumstances under which they are introduced. The traditionary

anecdote of the Jacobite and Hanoverian, as less liable to suffer by

transplanting, and as affording an instance of that finer species of

humour, that thoughtful playfulness in which the author more nearly

perhaps than in any other quality resembles Cowper, we shall lay (at

least a part of it) before our readers. It is the story of a whig who,

having wasted a large estate in election contests, retired "beneath a

borrowed name" to a small town among these northern mountains, where a

Caledonian laird, a follower of the house of Stuart, who had fled his

country after the overthrow at Culloden, returning with the return of

lenient times, had also fixed his residence.

----Here, then, they met,

Two doughty Champions; flaming Jacobite

And sullen Hanoverian! you might think

That losses and vexations, less severe

Than those which they had severally sustained,

Would have inclined each to abate his zeal

For his ungrateful cause; no,--I have heard

My reverend Father tell that, mid the calm

Of that small Town encountering thus, they filled

Daily its Bowling-green with harmless strife;

Plagued with uncharitable thoughts the Church;

And vexed the Market-place. But in the breasts

Of these Opponents gradually was wrought,

With little change of general sentiment,

Such change towards each other, that their days

By choice were spent in constant fellowship;

And if, at times, they fretted with the yoke,

Those very bickerings made them love it more.

A favourite boundary to their lengthened walks

This Church-yard was. And, whether they had come

Treading their path in sympathy and linked

In social converse, or by some short space

Discreetly parted to preserve the peace,

One Spirit seldom failed to extend its sway

Over both minds, when they awhile had marked

The visible quiet of this holy ground

And breathed its soothing air;----

[_Seven lines omitted_].

--There live who yet remember to have seen

Their courtly Figures,--seated on a stump

Of an old Yew, their favourite resting-place.

But, as the Remnant of the long-lived Tree

Was disappearing by a swift decay,

They, with joint care, determined to erect,

Upon its site, a Dial, which should stand

For public use; and also might survive

As their own private monument; for this

Was the particular spot, in which they wished

(And Heaven was pleased to accomplish their desire)

That, undivided their Remains should lie.

So, where the mouldered Tree had stood, was raised

Yon Structure, framing, with the ascent of steps

That to the decorated Pillar lead,

A work of art, more sumptuous, as might seem,

Than suits this Place; yet built in no proud scorn

Of rustic homeliness; they only aimed

To ensure for it respectful guardianship.

Around the margin of the Plate, whereon

The Shadow falls, to note the stealthy hours,

Winds an inscriptive Legend,----At these words

Thither we turned; and gathered, as we read,

The appropriate sense, in Latin numbers couched.

"Time flies; it is his melancholy task

To bring, and bear away, delusive hopes,

And re-produce the troubles he destroys.

But, while his blindness thus is occupied.

Discerning Mortal! do thou serve the will

Of Time's eternal Master, and that peace,

Which the World wants, shall be for Thee confirmed."--pp. 270-3.

The causes which have prevented the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth from

attaining its full share of popularity are to be found in the boldness

and originality of his genius. The times are past when a poet could

securely follow the direction of his own mind into whatever tracts it

might lead. A writer, who would be popular, must timidly coast the shore

of prescribed sentiment and sympathy. He must have just as much more of

the imaginative faculty than his readers, as will serve to keep their

apprehensions from stagnating, but not so much as to alarm their

jealousy. He must not think or feel too deeply.

If he has had the fortune to be bred in the midst of the most

magnificent objects of creation, he must not have given away his heart

to them; or if he have, he must conceal his love, or not carry his

expressions of it beyond that point of rapture, which the occasional

tourist thinks it not overstepping decorum to betray, or the limit which

that gentlemanly spy upon Nature, the picturesque traveller, has

vouchsafed to countenance. He must do this, or be content to be thought

an enthusiast.