sufficiently obvious. Never wear to-morrow the same character, or the
same dress, that you wore to-day. Be, if you can, _puncto mobilis horæ_.
Be red one hour, and pale the next; vary your temper, your appearance,
your language, your manners, unceasingly. Let not your studies or your
amusements continue the same for a week together. Skim over the surface
of everything, and be deep in nothing; you may think a little, read a
little, gamble a little: but you must not think deep, read deep, or play
deep. In short, be everything and nothing; the butterfly in life,
tasting every flower, and tasting only to leave it.
Do you think too much is required? Far from it. Antiquity has handed
down to us a character possessed, in a most transcendent degree, of all
the qualifications we have exacted. We always like to get an example or
two from antiquity, because it looks learned. Alcibiades then we can
safely propose as a model for all juvenile practitioners in the
Asyndeton. Was he grave one day? He laughed the next. Was he an orator
one day? He was a buffoon the next. Was he a Greek one day? He was a
Persian the next. To sum up his character: he was skilled in every
profession; an amateur in every fashion; adorned by every virtue; made
infamous by every vice. He moralized like a philosopher, jested like a
mountebank, fought like a hero, lied like a scoundrel, lived like a
knowing one, and died like a fool.
We assert, and we defy the soundest sophist in the world to contradict
us, that these mixed characters obtain and preserve a greater portion of
the admiration of the world, than more consistent and less interesting
personages. We wonder not at the uniformity of the fixed star, but our
imagination is actively employed upon the unusual appearance of the
comet. Thus the man of firm and unchangeable steadiness of principle
receives our esteem, and is forgotten; while the meteoric appearance of
inconsistent eccentricity takes instant hold of our admiration, and is
decorated with ten thousand indescribable attractions by the proper
exercise of the Asyndeton.
But why do we dilate so much upon the authority of Alcibiades? It has
been the almost invariable practice of all great men, in all ages, to
pay particular attention to the cultivation of this figure. What a
prodigy of the Asyndeton was Alexander! His father Philip may have had
more science, perhaps more bottom; but the eccentricities of Alexander,
the extraordinary rapidity with which he changed the ring for the
gin-shop, and laid down the thunder-bolt of Ammon to assume the
quart-pot of Hercules, have given, and will preserve to him, the first
leaf in the good books of the young and the hasty.
Are we not more delighted by the capricious mutability of Queen Bess
than by the moral uniformity of Queen Anne? Is it not a pleasing marvel,
and a marvellous pleasure, to look at the last days of Oliver Cromwell,
when the usurper, perpetually stretched upon the tenterhooks of
conscience, dared not travel the same road twice, nor sleep two nights
following in the same bed? Spirit of mutability, what pranks must thou
have played with the Protector!
Since these are the charms of the Asyndeton, it is not surprising that
the poets should have so frequently thrown a spice of it into the
characters of their heroes. Putting Fingal and Æneas out of the way, we
have no hero of any importance who can make pretensions to a consistency
in perfection; and even the latter of these trips occasionally into the
Asyndeton; especially when he puts off his usual denominations of _pius_
or _pater_, in order to be simply _Dux Trojanus_ at the court of Queen
Dido. As for Achilles, his whole life, _magno si quicquam credis
Homero_, is an Asyndeton. He is equally a warrior and a ballad-singer, a
prince and a cook. To-day he cuts up oxen, and to-morrow he cuts up
Trojans. In battle he is as stout a glutton as ever peeled at Moulsey
Hurst. At supper he is as hungry a glutton as ever sat down to a turtle.
Homer has been blamed for the faults of his hero. For our part we think,
with his defenders, that the character which aims with success at
perfection, aims in vain at interest; and the feats of Achilles appear
to us to derive much of their lustre from the Asyndeton which pervades
them. Aware of the charm which a character receives from the use of this
figure, modern writers have followed, in this point, the example of
their great forerunner, and have thrown into the characters of most of
their heroes a particle of this fascinating inconsistency. Hence we have
the soldier of Flodden Field, something between a freebooter and a
knight--
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight.
Hence we trace the unconnected wanderings of a noble but ruined spirit
in Manfred; and hence we wonder at the mysterious union of virtue and
vice in the gloomy Corsair, who
Leaves a name to other times,
Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.
Now, for the instruction of our readers in this elegant, nay, necessary
accomplishment, we must begin by observing that the Asyndeton may be
practised in various manners and matters. There is the Asyndeton in
actions, the Asyndeton in dress, and the Asyndeton in conversation. The
first of these is adapted to the capacities of promising young men, who
have some talent, some wit, and just sufficient vanity to render both of
no service. The second is very proper to be used by the lady with little
beauty, who wishes to be _brillante_; and the third is equally suitable
to the lady with little wit, who wishes to be _piquante_. We have made
our treatise so prolix, and indulged in such frequent digressions, that
we fear our description will be considered a specimen of the figure we
are describing; we will therefore briefly conclude this, as we concluded
our former essay, by throwing together a few promiscuous specimens of
the Asyndeton, in the above classes of its professors:--
William Mutable.--Jan. 31, 1820, left Cambridge a wrangler.--Feb.
12, studied “Fancy” with Jackson.--March 10, entered the
“Bachelors’ Club.”--April 1, married! the day was ominous.
Charles Random.--Feb. 20, 1820, bought a commission.--26th ditto,
entered himself of the Temple.--March 1, entered the Church, and
sported a wig.--March 6, left off the wig and fell in love.--March
20, despaired, and turned Quaker.--March 30, caught a fever by
dancing.--Feb. 1, quite recovered.--Feb. 2, died.
Sophia Mellon.--First Masquerade in the season, a Venus.--2nd, a
Vesta.--3rd, a Georgian.--4th, a Gipsy.
Laura Voluble.--Seven o’clock, talking morality with the
Doctor.--Eight, nonsense with the Captain.--Nine, Greek with the
pedant.--Ten, love with the Poet.--Eleven,--Silent!--This was the
most marvellous change of all, and Laura is without a rival in the
Practical Asyndeton.
ON HAIR-DRESSING.
“Jamque à tonsore magistro
Pecteris.” JUV.
We intend, with the permission of Mr. John Smith, to present our readers
with a few observations upon Hair-dressing. Before we enter upon this
topic, which we shall certainly treat _capitally_, we must assure the
respectable individual above alluded to, that it is our intention in no
respect to assume to ourselves the shears which he has so long and so
successfully wielded. We should be sorry to encroach upon the
privileges, or to step into the shoes, of so respectable a member of the
community. We have a real veneration for his pointed scissors, and his
no less pointed narratives, although our ears are occasionally outraged
by both, since the first deal occasionally in the _Tmesis_, and the
latter more frequently in the _hyperbole_. Long may he continue in the
undisturbed possession of those rights which he so deservedly enjoys;
long may he continue to restore its youthful polish to the whiskered
lip, and to prune with tonsoric scythe the luxuriance of our capillary
excrescences:
The last paragraph is from the pen of Allen Le Blanc. We must pull him
down from his high horse, and remount our ambling hobby. As we observed,
it is not our intention to provoke any competition or comparison with
Mr. J. Smith in the science of hair-dressing. We shall treat of a branch
of the profession totally distinct from that which is exercised by the
worthy tortor, or _dis_tortor of curls. We propose to discuss
hair-dressing as a test of character, and to show how you may guess at
the contents of the inside of the head by an inspection of the
cultivation of the outside of it.
The difficulty we experience in reading the hearts of men is a trite
subject of declamation. We find some men celebrated for their
discrimination of character, while others are in the same proportion
blamed for their want of it. The country maiden has no means of looking
into the intentions of her adorer until she has been unfeelingly
deserted; and the town pigeon has no means of scrutinizing the honour of
his Greek until he has been bit for a thousand. These are lamentable,
and, alas! frequent cases. The prescriptions of the regular philosophers
have had but little effect in the prevention of them. The idea of
Horace, _torquere mero quem perspexisse laborant_, has but little
influence, since the illiterate, who are most frequently in want of
assistance, have seldom the cash requisite to procure the necessary
_merum_. Allow us then to recommend our nostrum.
Think of the trouble we shall save if our proposal is adopted! We doubt
not but it might be carried into execution to so great an extent that
one might find a sharp genius in a sharp comb, and trace the intricacies
of a distorted imagination through the intricacies of a distorted curl.
Perfumes and manners might be studied together, and a Cavendish and a
character might be scrutinized by one and the same glance.
Do not be alarmed at the importance we attach to a head of hair; Homer
would never have attributed to one of his warriors the perpetual epithet
of Yellow-haired, if he had not seen in the expression something more
than a mere external ornament; nor would Pope have
Weighed the men’s wits against the ladies’ hair,
if he had not discerned on the heads of his belles something worthy of
so exalted a comparison. The attention which is paid by certain of our
companions to this part of the outward man, will with them be a
sufficient excuse for the weight which we attach to the subject.
We might go back to the ages of antiquity, and traverse distant
countries, in order to prove how constantly the manners of nations are
designated by their hair-dressing. We will omit, however, this
superfluous voyage, concluding that our schoolfellows need not to be
informed of the varieties of the ornaments for the poll, in which the
Persian, the Greek, and the Roman character evinced itself. We shall
find sufficient illustration of our position in the annals of English
manners. In the days of our ancestors the flowered wig was the
decoration of the gentlemen; and the hair, raised by cushions, stiffened
with powder, and fastened with wires, formed the most becoming insignia
of the lady. The behaviour of both sexes was the counterpart of their
occipital distinctions; among the gentlemen the formal gallantry of
those days was denoted by a no less formal peruke, and among the ladies
the lover was prepared to expect a stiffness of decorum by the warning
he received from so rigid a stiffness of _tête_. In our days the case is
altered--altered, we think, for the better; unshackled politeness and
innocent gaiety have by degrees succeeded to haughty repulsiveness and
affected condescension; and, in the same proportion, the wig of one sex,
and the tower of the other, have been gradually superseded by fashions
less appalling and more becoming. The harmless freedom, which is the
prevailing characteristic of the manners of the present age, is shown in
no particular more strikingly than in the cultivation of the head; and
the various shades by which the habits and dispositions of men are
diversified, are not more distinct from each other than the various
modes and tastes in which their heads are made up.
This, we believe, is the substance of a series of observations which we
heard from a stranger the last time we were at Covent Garden Theatre. We
were seated in the pit (in the fifth row from the orchestra--a situation
which we recommend to our readers); our companion was a middle-aged man,
of a tolerable person, but marked by no peculiarity except that ease of
deportment, and that ready conversational power, which are invariably
the characteristics of a man of the world. We were imperceptibly engaged
in a conversation with him, which finally turned upon the subject of
this paper. We are aware we have not done justice to his ideas. He
expressed them with all the ease and perspicuity, mingled with playful
humour, which denote a powerful mind employing its energies upon trivial
pursuits. Then, pointing as he spoke with a curiously knotted cane which
he held in his hand, he proceeded in the following manner to exemplify
his doctrines:--
“Cast your eye for a moment upon the pair of figures who are leaning
towards each other in the stage-box. The gentleman wears his hair cut
somewhat of the shortest, thrown up negligently in front, so as to
discover a full high forehead; I fancy he must be a naval officer--open,
bold, thoughtless. The character of the lady is equally legible. Her
long auburn hair, erected by the most assiduous attention into an
artificial cone, has a bold and imposing appearance, and denotes that
the lady is a beauty, and--knows it.
“There are three old gentlemen in the next box, who are worth a moment’s
notice. I mean the three in the second row, who are discussing some
question with no little vehemence of action and attitude. The first of
them, who has his hair so sprucely trimmed, and fitted to the sides of
his head with such scrupulous exactness, appears to be a sinecure
holder, who receives yearly a large salary, and finds his only
occupation in his brush; the second, whose hair seems to have been too
much neglected by the scissors, although it is powdered for the
occasion, and tied behind _en queue_, is, I should conceive, a
disappointed and disaffected military officer; the third, whose locks
seem to have a natural tendency to what was the newest fashion ten years
ago, must be a country gentleman come up to town to benefit his
constituents and ruin his heirs. By the earnest manner in which they are
speaking, their topic is probably some political change; and the fat old
gentleman, in the close wig, who is listening to them in the third row,
is reflecting upon the influence which such an event would have on the
five per cents.
“In the centre box there are a large body of fashionables, with some of
whom I have a trifling acquaintance. Let us see how far they comply with
my wishes in making the head an index of the heart. Look at the young
man on the right. His locks are composed into a studied negligence by
the labour of two hours; they are glossy with all the invention of
Delcroix, fragrant with a _mélange_ of rose, jasmin, and jonquil. You
need not proceed to the inspection of his neckcloth or his waist, in
order to be convinced that such a being is an exquisite.
“The lady next to him is a _languissante_. You might, with no great
effort of ingenuity, divine it from the state of her head. Its curls
hang over the ivory surface of her neck in a sort of artful
listlessness, which is admirably adapted to her torpid style of beauty,
and her yet more torpid style of mind. The other lady, in the front
row, is her sister. She has more fashion than beauty, more vivacity than
fashion, and more malice than either. With such qualifications, the
course of conquest she was to pursue was obvious. She studies
singularity, dresses her hair _à la grecque_, and sets up for a
Spirituelle. The success of these light troops is frequently more
brilliant than that of the Regulars. The fop with whom she is coquetting
is a young author striving to be known. His character is written legibly
on his forehead. The spruceness with which every hair is bound down in
its proper station, and the stiff pertness with which the topknot is
forced up, as if disdainful of the compression of the hat, plainly show
that he is, at least in his own estimation, a favourite of Apollo.
“There is a gentleman in the next box, of whom it was once remarked that
his countenance bore some resemblance to that of Lord Byron. Since this
luckless expression the poor man has studied much to make himself
ridiculous by imitating his lordship in his eccentricity, since to copy
his genius is out of the question. Without looking at the eye, which
takes great pains to be ‘fixed in vacancy,’ or the lip, which endeavours
to quiver with an expression of moroseness, you may tell, from the wild
and foreign costume of his tresses, that Lord Fanny is a would-be
Furioso.
“It is needless to multiply examples. You will see them at every glance
which you throw around you. Aurelia shows her reigning passion for rule
or misrule by the circlet of gold with which her head is encompassed;
and her husband, by the lank and dejected condition of his scanty
forelock, gives room for a conjecture that the principal feature of his
character is submission. Old Golding, the usurer, shows his aversion for
extravagance by the paucity of his visits to the barber; and his young
bride, Chloe, takes care to evince a contrary taste by the diamonds
which are so bountifully scattered amidst her profusion of dark
ringlets. Anna, by the unvaried sameness of her head-dress, gives you a
warning of the unvaried sameness of her disposition; and Matilda, by the
diversity of modes which her forehead assumes, gives you to understand
that her temper and character are diversified as often. It is not
surprising that this should be the case. Look to the stage, from which,
indeed, our attention has been too long withdrawn. Would you not smile
if Juliet were to soliloquize in Mrs. Hardcastle’s _tête_, or the Royal
Dane to moralize in the peruke of Sir Peter Teazle?”
Here the stranger paused, and we shortly became interested to such a
degree in the sorrows of Belvidera, that we know not what further
remarks he communicated, nor at what time he ceased to be our companion.
As the curtain fell we looked round, and he was no longer by our side.
ON A CERTAIN AGE.
“Tempora certa.”--HOR.
We happened the other day to be present at a small party, where, being
almost entire strangers ourselves, we had little to do but to listen to
and reflect upon what was said by others. While we were engaged in this
occupation, we heard one expression repeated several times, which made a
strong impression upon us, and induced us to draw up the following
treatise.
We first heard some gentlemen observing that it was quite proper for
Mrs.---- to withdraw from the stage in time, for that she was now of a
“certain age.” Immediately afterwards we heard it remarked by Mrs.
Racket, that it was lucky for Maria the Nabob had proposed in time, for
the lady must be of a “certain age.” Now, as the former of these objects
had seen fifty winters, of which the latter fell short by at least
twenty, it was natural for us to exert ourselves to discover what this
“certain age” might be, the limits of which were so extensive. We
accordingly commenced an investigation into the subject with great
alacrity, and carried it on for some time with great perseverance. We
regret to add that our success has not been proportionate to our
exertions; and that, by the most indefatigable research, we can only
ascertain that nothing in life is involved in such uncertainty as this
“certain age.”
Our first hope was, that by inquiries from some lady of our
acquaintance, who had the fortune or the misfortune to come under this
definition, we might be able to ascertain the precise boundaries of the
period. But here we met with a difficulty, as it were on the threshold
of our project. Out of all the young beauties of whom we made inquiries;
out of all the fashionable belles in high life, and the vulgar belles in
low life, and the languishing belles who have no life at all, we could
find no one to return a satisfactory answer to this mysterious,
unanswerable, insupportable question, “Are you of a certain age?” One
laughed naturally, and another laughed artificially; one looked amazed,
and another looked chagrined; one “left it to us to decide,” another
left the room; one professed utter ignorance, and another tapped us with
her fan, and wondered how we could have the impertinence. But plain
“Yes” or “No” was not forthcoming. The ladies had not studied our second
number, or they would doubtless have learnt from Messrs. Lozell and
Oakley the absolute necessity of these little monosyllables.
But to proceed. Finding this method ineffectual, we changed our battery,
and carried on the siege in another quarter. We now applied to the same
ladies for the names of such of their acquaintances as they considered
were liable to this imputation (for a terrible imputation the witnesses
appeared to consider it). Our difficulties were forthwith redoubled. We
are not acquainted with a single girl with good eyes, good hair, good
complexion, good fortune, or good character, whose name was not given to
us as verging upon a “certain age.” And it seemed to us extraordinary
that middle-aged fair ones, whose charms were manifestly in their
autumn, were seldom honoured with this appellation; it appeared to be
exclusively reserved for those who were young, beautiful, and new to a
fashionable life. Far be it from us to insinuate that envy had any
influence in making this appropriation.
Finding that the study which we had already bestowed upon this subject
had tended rather to perplex than to elucidate the matter, we found it
necessary to pursue the investigation a step farther. We now applied for
information to the middle-aged matrons, the sober wives, the mothers of
families. “Here,” said we to ourselves, “prejudice will have ceased to
influence, vanity to mislead, envy to embitter; here we shall learn the
real, the whole truth, from lips unsoured by petty peevishness or
violent passion.” But the event disappointed our expectations: there
appeared to be a strange disagreement upon this topic, for we found no
two opinions to coincide. Mrs. Cranstoun, who has two daughters, and is
in her twenty-ninth year, is of opinion that a “certain age” commences
at thirty-four: but Mrs. Argent, who, according to our guess, is just
entering her thirty-fourth year, is inclined to put off the dreaded
period to forty. Lady Evergreen, again, who, to do her justice, paints
as well at forty as she did at fourteen, disapproves of the impertinent
notions of these “girls,” and thinks that ten more years are wanting to
give any one a just and proper claim to this enviable distinction. Fifty
is with Lady Evergreen the precise period, the golden number, the
“certain age.” Still dissatisfied with the result of our examination, we
betook ourselves as a last hope to the dowagers. “They,” we thought, “as
they must have long passed the boundaries of this dreaded space, can
have no object or interest in withholding from us the truth.” Alas! we
were again lamentably deceived. Some of their ladyships had daughters
whom they were anxious to preserve from this abominable imputation.
Others had particular friends whom they were anxious to bring under it.
Lady Megrim begged we would not interrupt her; she really never held
good cards when any one looked over her hand; and Mrs. Volatile assured
us that she had made it a rule never to think after she was married. She
never would have married if she had thought before.
Finding ourselves quite at a loss to connect or reconcile with each
other these several sentiments, we shall throw together a few
observations which occur to us on the subject, and then leave it to
wiser heads to determine the day, the hour, the minute, at which the
unconscious fair one enters upon--“A certain age!”