farther! Stalwart kern in buckskin, be pleased to lay down your
cat-o’-nine-tails! Old knight of the plush jerkin, ground your poker!
So, fair damsel with the pitchfork, you are too pretty for so rude an
encounter! Most miraculous Magog with the sledge-hammer, flit! Sooty
Cupid with the link, light me from Paphos. Ha! tall friend of the
barrel-organ, have you turned staff officer? Etna and Vesuvius! Wild
fire and wit! Blunderbusses and steam! Fly! Ha! have I not Burgundy in
my brain, murder in my plot, and a whole train of artillery in my
coat-pocket?” Right and left the ranks opened for my egress, and in a
few minutes I was alone on the road, and whistling “Lillibullero.”
This was my first folly. I looked at the lock of hair often, but I never
saw Margaret again. She has become the wife of a young clergyman, and
resides with him on a small living in Staffordshire. I believe she is
very happy, and I have forgotten the colour of her eyes.
POINTS.
“Peregrine,” said Lady Mary, “write.”
“I will make a point of it, may it please you ladyship.”
“Ο mes enfans! quelles âmes que celles qui ne sont inquiètes que
des mouvemens de l’écliptique, ou que des mœurs et des arts des
Chinois!”
MARMONTEL.
How far our happiness may be advanced or endangered by the indulgence of
a lively interest in all things and persons that chance throws in our
way, is a point on which I never could make up my mind. I have seen the
man of feeling rapt up in the fervour of his affection or the
enthusiasm of his benevolence, and I have believed him perfectly happy;
but I have seen him again when he has discovered that his affection had
been wasted on a fool, and his benevolence lavished on a scoundrel, and
I have believed him the most wretched of men. Again, I have looked on
the man of the world in an hour of trouble or embarrassment, and I have
envied his philosophy and his self-command; but I have marked him too in
the day of revel and exultation, and I have shrunk from the immobility
of his features and the torpor of his smile.
I could never settle it to my satisfaction. Acute pleasure seems to be
always the forerunner of intense pain, and weariness the inseparable
demon which dogs the steps of gratification. I have examined all ranks
and all faces; I have looked into eyes and I have looked into folios; I
have lost patience and I have lost time; I have made inquiries of many
and enemies of not a few; and drawn confessions and conclusions from
demoiselles who never had feelings, and from dowagers who have survived
them, from bards who have nourished them in solitude, and from
barristers who have crushed them in Westminster Hall. The choice spirit
who is loudest at his club to-night will be dullest in his chambers
to-morrow, and the girl who is merriest at the dance will infallibly be
palest at the breakfast-table. How shall I decide? The equability which
lives, or the excitement which dies? The beef without the mustard, or
the mustard without the beef?
Chance, or my kind stars, for I am very often inclined to believe in
their agency, especially on fine moonlight nights, has flung me into a
circle of acquaintance, where the pleasures and the pains attendant upon
these different tempers of mind are continually forced upon my notice,
and hold me delightfully balanced, like Mahomet’s coffin, between earth
and ether. Davenant Cecil is a being as thoroughly made up of sympathies
and affections as ever was a puppet of springs or a commentator of
absurdities. He never experienced, he never could endure five minutes of
calm weather; he is always carried up into the heaven and down again
into the deep; every hope, every exertion, every circumstance, be it of
light or of grave import, is to him equally productive of its exaltation
or its depression; like the Proserpina of fable he is in Olympus half
the year, and in Tartarus the other. Marmaduke Villars has about as much
notion of raptures and enthusiasm as a Mohawk chief entertains of turtle
soup, or a French milliner of the differential calculus. Except that he
prefers claret to port, and Drury Lane to Covent Garden, and eau de
Montpellier to eau de Cologne, I doubt whether he is conscious of any
predilection for one thing or any aversion to another. Marmaduke is like
Ladurlad in everything except “the fire in his heart, and the fire in
his brain;” and Davenant is the Sorcerer Benshee, who rode on a fast
horse, and talked with many, and jested with many, and laughed loudly,
and wept wildly for the things he saw; yet was he bound by his compact
to the fiend to sit at no table, and to lie on no couch, and to speed
forward by night and by day, sleeping never, and resting never, even
till his appointed hour.
A short time ago Davenant and myself received an invitation to spend a
few days with Villars. His favourite hunter, Sir Peter, had thrown him
or fallen with him, I forget which, and after being a little put to
rights, as he expressed it, at the little country place where the
accident happened, he had been removed to the Hall, and ordered to keep
himself quiet. There seemed to be some chance of his compliance with
this admonition, as the rest of his family were all absent, and there
was not a house within five miles; but in order to counteract these
favourable symptoms as much as possible, he summoned us to his sofa.
Cecil and Villars are the antipodes of one another; and, as is commonly
the case, are the fondest friends upon all occasions, because they never
can agree upon one.
We went accordingly, and were rejoiced to find our friend, pale to be
sure, and very intimate with crutches, but still apparently free from
pain, and enjoying that medicinal level of spirits which is a better
preservative against fever than you will easily find from the lancet or
the draught. He congratulated himself upon the safety of his nose,
which Mr. Perrott the apothecary had pronounced broken, and only
lamented the loss of his boot, which it had been necessary to cut from
his leg. In a short time we quite forgot that he was in the slightest
degree damaged, and conversed on divers topics without any intrusive
compassion for his flannel and his slipper.
And first, as in duty bound, we began to discuss the _Quarterly
Magazine_, and its past success, and its future hopes, and its patrons,
and its contributors. Davenant was wonderfully angry because some
“fathomless blockheads” found obscurities in his lyrical poem. “If there
were any descendings into the deep fountains of thought, any abstruse
researches ‘into the mind of man’--in short, to speak plainly, if there
were anything in the poem which a man might be very proud to risk his
reputation upon, then one might be prepared for darkness and coldness in
this improving and understanding age; but a mere fancy piece like this,
as simple in design as it is in execution--you know, Marmaduke, that
incapacity to comprehend must be either gross stupidity or supreme
affectation.”
“I think much may be said for the ‘blockheads,’” observed Marmaduke,
shaking his head.
“You think no such thing,” said Davenant, “and you feel that you think
no such thing: I shall detest you, Villars, if you ‘write yourself down
an ass,’ merely for the sake of telling me I am one.”
“You know, my dear Davenant,” said Villars, “you know you never detested
any body in your life, except, perhaps, a few of the commentators upon
Shakespeare, and the critic who considered Campbell the first poet of
the day and Wordsworth the second. But seriously, I cannot conceive why
you are ruffled about your verses; you know they are admired, as Mr.
Rigge says of his soap, by all the best judges; not to go out of our own
circle, you know Lady Mary, and Tristram, and Gerard, who are worth all
the world, think them about the best things going; nay, I am not clear
that our good friend Joyeuse has not some suspicion of the kind, only he
never speaks a word of truth upon any subject. And, loaded as you are
with all these accumulated commendations, you want to add the weight of
my valueless voice to your burthen, and to----”
“There never was a man more mistaken; what should I care for your
opinion? It is not worth a straw, it is not worth ‘Gertrude of Wyoming’
to me. But I am in a passion when I see a tolerably clever man making a
fool of himself wilfully. I read the poem to your sister, and she
understood it perfectly.”
“Then you persuaded her first that she was a clever girl, and she
thought her comprehension would confirm the idea. I will wager a beauty
against a bottle, or a haunch of venison against a page of rhyme, or
‘The Pleasures of Hope’ against ‘The Excursion,’ or any other boundless
odds which you like to suggest, that with the same object in view she
shall admire the Iliad or dote upon the Koran.”
“There is no answer to such an argument. All I know is, that Amelia
found nothing difficult in the poem.”
“What! she told you so, I suppose.”
“No; her eyes did.”
“Then her eyes lied confoundedly. Never, my dear Davenant--never, while
you live, believe in the language of the eyes. I would rather believe in
the miracles of Apollonius, or the infallibility of the Pope of Rome, or
the invincibility of the French army. I believed a pretty piercing pair
once, which told me the wearer was very fond of a particular person, and
I cultivated my whiskers accordingly, and did double duty at my glass.
By Paphos and its patroness, she went off in a month with a tall captain
of fusiliers, and left me to despondency and the new novel.”
“And you longed to be so deceived again,” said Davenant.
“No; it was very fatiguing. Never, while you live, believe in the
language of the eyes. But you will, because you were born to be a fool,
and you must fulfil your destiny. As Rousseau says--he is somewhere
about the room----”
“I have him in my hand,” said Davenant; “what a delightful little book!
I dote upon the size, and the binding, and the type, and the----”
“Yes; he was of great service to me a fortnight ago, when my hurt was
rather annoying at night. My people prescribed opium, and I used to take
Jean Jacques instead. But this way is my treasure-house of reading: _eh!
le voici!_” And he led us up to a bookcase where was conspicuously
placed an immense edition of Voltaire, and began taking down the volumes
and expressing the dotage of his delight with wonderful rapidity. “Ah!
Alzire! charming--and Merope; you are going to talk about Shakespeare,
Davenant. Hold your tongue!--a noisy, gross, fatiguing--no, no: the
French stage for me!--_Eh! ma belle Zaïre!_--the French stage for
me!--_tout dort, tout est tranquille, et_--and Candide! oh! I could
laugh for a century. _Et puis--la Pucelle! oh, pour le coup_----”
And _le coup_ came with a vengeance; for Davenant, who hates a French
play worse than poison, had just found something overpoweringly
ridiculous in the woes of “L’Orphelin de la Chine,” and bursting into an
ungovernable shriek of laughter, dropped some six or seven quarto
volumes upon the wounded foot of our unfortunate stoic. He fell on the
floor, in agony, and almost in a passion.
“Damnation!--_n’importe!_ My sweet Davenant, how could you----
Peregrine, my good fellow, do pull the bell! Horrible! Why, Cecil, how
out of your wits you look! _Ave Maria! Vive la bagatelle!_ Why you look
like a _diable_!--like a physician called in too late--_mort de ma
vie!_--or like a--_monstre_!--like a wood demon at the English Opera
House. Ring again, Courtenay! Ha, ha!--I played one myself once--_Oh!
que c’est affreux!_--for a wager, ha, ha!--Oh!--with a long torch, ha,
ha!--fire and brimstone!--with long black hair--_peste!_--but it would
never stand on end like yours! _oh que non!_ Ring again,
Courtenay!--_Eh! Perpignan!_ here has been a fall! a fall,--as they say
upon ‘Change. _Cher Perpignan_: take me to bed, Perpignan; take it
easy--_doucement!_ Ah! the wood demon, Davenant! I shall never get over
it!--ha, ha!--Oh!----”
And thus was Marmaduke carried off, laughing, and screaming, and
jesting, and swearing, by turns. His medical attendant was summoned, and
we saw him no more that night; he sent us word that he was as well as
could be expected, but that he should never get over the wood demon, in
spite of which consolatory intelligence Davenant wore a Tyburn
countenance the whole evening.
We met, however, the next morning, and proceeded most laudably to
remember nothing of the accident but its absurdity. “I never found
Voltaire heavy before,” said Villars, shaking Davenant by the hand; “but
you poets of the Lake are so horribly in the habit of taking liberties
with your own feet that you have no compassion at all for those of your
friends. Mercy upon my five toes! they will not meet in a boot for a
twelvemonth; and now, _àpropos de bottes_, we must have some breakfast.”
Rain confined us to the house, the newspapers were full of
advertisements, and the billiard-table was undergoing repair. Davenant
endeavoured to define intensity, and I endeavoured to sleep; Marmaduke
struck his sister’s tambourine, and the great clock struck one. We began
to feel as uncomfortably idle as a gaol-bird who has just been put in,
or a Minister who has just been turned out. At last some notice was
taken of two miniatures of our friend and his sister, which had been
done many years ago, and now hung on opposite sides of the mantelpiece,
gazing tenderly at one another in all the holiday magnificence which was
conferred by laced cap and pink ribbons upon the one, and by sky-blue
jacket and sugar-loaf buttons upon the other. Hence we began to talk of
painting, and of “Raphael, Correggio, and stuff,” until it was
determined that we should proceed to make a pilgrimage through a long
gallery of family portraits, which Marmaduke assured us had been covered
with commendations and cobwebs ever since he left his cradle. He hobbled
before us on his crutches, and made a very sufficient cicerone.
Marmaduke has no wit; but he has a certain off-hand manner which often
passes for it, and is sometimes as good a thing.
“That old gentleman,” he began, pointing to a magnificent fellow in rich
chain armour, whose effigies occupied one end of the gallery, “that old
gentleman is the founder of the family. Blessings on his beard! I almost
fancy it has grown longer since I saw it last. He fought inordinately
at Harfleur and Agincourt, was eminently admired and bruised, won a
whole grove of laurels, and lost three fingers and a thumb. See, over
his head is the crest which was his guerdon; a little finger rampant,
and the motto blazoned gorgeously round, ‘_Mon doyt est mon droit!_’”
“A splendid servant of the sword,” said Davenant; “what a glorious scope
of forehead, and what a lowering decision in the upper lip. A real
soldier! He would have cleft down a dozen of your modern male
_figurantes_!”
“Perhaps so,” replied Villars; “but you see he made a bad hand of it,
notwithstanding. His nephew, there, is something more soberly habited,
but he was not a jot less mad. Who would dream of such a frenzy in
sackcloth and sad countenance? He was a follower of Wyckliffe before it
was the fashion, and----”
“An excellent piece of workmanship too! I like to see some fury in a
man’s faith. Who can endure a minister of the gospel mounting his pulpit
at Marylebone, with his well-ordered bands, and his clean manuscript,
and his matter-of-fact disquisition, and his matter-of-course tone! That
bald apostle has lips I could have listened to: he might have been an
enthusiast, or a bigot, or a madman, or e’en what you will; but he has a
show of zeal, and an assumption of authority; there is fire about the
old man!”
“There was once,” said Marmaduke, “for he was burned in Smithfield. Come
hither, here is a young fellow you will admire--Everard the Beautiful
(by the way, they say he is like me), who fell in love with the pretty
Baroness de Pomeroy. He used to sing under her balcony at midnight, out
of pure gallantry, and out of all tune: catching sighs from the high
window, and colds from the high wind. He was full three years wailing
and whispering, and dreaming and dying, and smarting in the left breast,
and sonneting in the left turret. At last came the fifth act of the
drama, death and happiness blended together with strict poetic
propriety; the fates threw him into her arms one night, and the baron
threw him into the moat one morning.”
“I loathe and detest that eternal sneer of yours. You believe and feel,
Marmaduke, although you are too weak to confess it, that the life you
have described, a turbid unresting sea of passion and anxiety, and hope
and fear, and brief calm and long madness, is worth--oh! twenty times
over--the sleepy river of a pedant’s philosophy, or the dirty
ditch-water of your own clumsy indifference.”
“Why, my dear Davenant,” said Marmaduke, quietly, “you know love has its
ditch-water occasionally; my poor ancestor found it so. But pass on.
Here is a courtier of Queen Elizabeth’s day, lying on the green sward in
despondency and an attitude, with a myriad of cares and a bunch of
daffy-down-dillies in his bosom. There is your true cavalier; a health
to short wit and long spurs, blue eyes and white satin! The race has
been quite extinct since rapiers went out and political economists came
in.”
“I wish,” muttered Cecil, “I wish I had lived with those men. To have
had Spenser for my idol, or Sydney for my friend--to have held
Leicester’s mantle at court, or Raleigh’s back-hand at tennis--to have
stormed a town with Drake, or a bottle with Shakespeare--by Elizabeth’s
ruff, it would have been worth an eternity! That was your age for choice
spirits!”
“You will find very choice spirits at the Hummums,” said Marmaduke; “but
we are getting into the Great Rebellion. It abounded in good
subjects--for the pencil, I mean, not for the prince. Never was the land
so sorely plagued with dire confusion and daubed canvas. There is silly
Sir Lacy who lost his head, and was none the poorer; and sillier Sir
Maurice, who lost his lands, and was many acres the poorer: and there is
honest Sir Paul, who came in with the Restoration, and wrote my
favourite song. Ha, Davenant!
“‘For prince or for prig,
Long locks or flowery wig,
I don’t care a fig!--
Fill the glasses.
So I may hold my land,
And my bottle in my hand,
And moisten life’s sand
While it passes.’”
There was a curious portrait a little farther on--a beautiful and
interesting woman, as far as neck and bosom could give us any
information; but in place of her countenance was painted a thick black
veil. I asked for her history. “Oh,” said Villars, “that damosel was
called Priscilla the Penniless. She was wonderfully killing, but of
course that is not the reason she is veiled. Her uncle, the existing
head of the family, struck her face out of the picture, and her name out
of his will, because she married a young Roundhead, who had no merit but
his insolence and no fortune but his sword.”
“What a detestable fool!” said Davenant, meaning the uncle.
“I think she was,” said Marmaduke, meaning the niece. “_Mais allons_;
let me show you one more set of features, and we will adjourn. Here is
my earliest and most complete idea of feminine beauty. Down on your
knees, Davenant, and worship. The fairy-like symmetry of the shape, and
the pretty threatening of the right arm, and the admirable nonchalance
of the left, and the studied tranquillity of the black hair, and the
eloquent malignity of the dark eyes, and the exquisite caprice of the
nose, and the laughing scorn of her little lips! By Venus’ dimple,
Davenant, I have stood here, and talked rhapsodies to her for hours.”
“Pray give us one now,” said Cecil, laughing.
“I will. Fairest of Nature’s works! perfection in duodecimo! I speak to
you, and you do not hear; I question you, and you do not answer: but I
read your taste in your dress, and your character in your countenance.
You are the brightest of all earthly beauties. You would call me a
blockhead if I called you a goddess; you are fashioned for a
drawing-room, and not for Olympus--for champagne, and not for nectar;
you are born for conquest and for mirth, to busy your delicate brain
with the slaves of to-day, and to snap your delicate fingers at the
slaves of yesterday; epigrams only are indited to your charms,
witticisms only are uttered in your presence; you think laughter the
elixir vitæ, and a folio of theology poison; you look with contempt on
the Damon who has died for your sake, and with kindness on the fool who
bows to the ground and vows he is ‘yours entire,’ head and hand, pen and
pistol, from infancy to age, and from shining ringlet to shoe-ribbon!”
“Admirable!” cried Cecil, “and after all the woman is nothing
extraordinary.”
“_Chacun a son goût_,” said Villars.
“She has no poetry about her,” said the first.
“I never write poetry about anybody,” said the second.
“She is not guilty of intellect,” said the reviler.
“She is guilty of coquetry,” said the admirer.
“She would never understand Milton,” said the poet.
“She would dance divinely,” said the fashionable.
“You are over head and ears in love,” said Davenant, laughing immensely.
“She died anno Domini seventeen hundred!” said Marmaduke, with
inestimable gravity; and so we left the gallery.
We parted from our friend the next morning. If perfect indifference and
composure in all trials and temptations can constitute happiness,
Villars will be a happy man; but there is something repulsive in his
very happiness. Which shall I prefer? Marmaduke, with his unsunned and
unclouded weather, or Davenant, with his eternal alternation of bright
glow and fleeting shower?
I could never settle the point.
LEONORA.
Poor Alonzo! He was the best friend that ever drank Xeres: he picked me
out of the Guadalquivir, when I deemed I had said my last prayer.
It was a very conciliating introduction. I never in my life made a
friend of a man to whom I was introduced in a formal kind of way, with
bows from both parties, and cordiality from neither. I love something
more stirring, more animated; the river of life is at best but a quiet
stupid stream, and I want an occasional pebble to ruffle its surface
withal. The most agreeable introductions that ever fell to my lot were
these--my introduction to Pendragon, who was overturned with me in the
York Mail; my introduction to Eliza, who contrived to faint in my arms
on board the _Albion_ packet; and my introduction to Alonzo, who picked
me out of the Guadalquivir.
I was strolling beside it on a fine moonlight night, after a brilliant
and fatiguing party, at which the Lady Isidora had made ten conquests,
and Don Pedro had told twenty stories: I was tired to death of dancing
and iced waters, glaring lights and lemonade; and as I looked on the
sleepy wave, and the dark trees, and the cloudless sky, I felt that I
could wander there for ever, and dream of poetry, and--two or three
friends.
The sound of a guitar and a sweet voice waked me; I do not know why I
always associate the ideas of pleasant tones and bright eyes together;
but I cannot help it, and of course I was very anxious to see the
musician of the Guadalquivir. I clambered, by the aid of cracked stones,
and bushes which hung to them, to the summit of a low wall; and looking
down perceived a cavalier sitting with a lady under a grove of
sycamores. The cavalier seemed to have seen hardly seventeen winters; he
was slender and tall, with a ruddy complexion, black hair, and a quick
merry eye. The lady appeared full five years older; her eyes were as
quick, and her ringlets as black, and her complexion as warm, but more
delicate: they were evidently brother and sister; but that was a matter
of indifference to me.
I heard a Spanish song upon the fall of the Abencerrage, and another
upon the exploits of the Cid: then the lady began an Italian ditty, but
she had not accomplished the first stanza when a decayed stone gave way,
and carried me through all the intricacies of bush and bramble into the
cold bed of the river. I could not swim a stroke.
I remember nothing more until the minute when I opened my eyes, and
found myself in a pretty summer-house, very wet and very cold, with
Alonzo and his sister leaning over me. “For the love of heaven” were the
first words I heard, “run, Alonzo, to call the servants.”
“I wait,” said Alonzo, “to hear him speak. If he be a Frenchman he goes
to the bottom again.”
The Fates be thanked that I was born in Derbyshire, and called Sir Harry
my father; if I had bathed in the Seine instead of the Derwent, I had
rued my parentage bitterly. Alonzo detested the French.