“I’ll go to her,”--herewith his hat he touch’d,

And gave his arm a most heroic brandish;

“But no--I’ll write”--and here a spoon he clutch’d,

And ramm’d it with such fury in the standish,

A sable flood, like Niger the outlandish,

Came rushing forth--Oh Antics and Buffoons!

Ye never danced a caper so ran-dan-dish;

He jump’d, thump’d--tore--swore, more than ten dragoons,

At all nights, noons, moons, spoons, and pantaloons!

But soon ashamed, or weary, of such dancing,

Without a Collinet’s or Weippert’s band,

His rampant arms and legs left off their prancing,

And down he sat again, with pen in hand,

Not fiddle-headed, or King’s-pattern grand,

But one of Bramah’s patent Caligraphics;

And many a sheet it spoil’d before he plann’d

A likely letter. Used to pure seraphics,

Philippics sounded strangely after Sapphics.

Long while he rock’d like Yankee in his chair,

Staring as he would stare the wainscot through,

And then he thrust his fingers in his hair,

And set his crest up like a cockatoo;

And trampled with his hoofs, a mere Yahoo:

At last with many a tragic frown and start,

He penn’d a billet, very far from doux,

’Twas sour, severe--but think of a man’s smart

Writing with lunar caustic on his heart!

The letter done and closed, he lit his taper,

And sealing, as it were, his other mocks,

He stamped a grave device upon the paper,

No Cupid toying with his Psyche’s locks,

But some stern head of the old Stoic stocks--

Then, fiercely striding through the staring streets,

He dropt the bitter missive in a box,

Beneath the cakes and tarts, and sugar’d treats,

In Mrs. Smelling’s window full of sweets.

[Illustration: BROKE BY A FALL OF THE STOCKS.]

Soon sped the letter--thanks to modern plans,

Our English mails run little in the style

Of those great German wild-beast caravans,

_Eil_-wagons--tho’ they do not “go like _ile_,”--

But take a good twelve minutes to the mile--

On Monday morning, just at ten o’clock,

As Ellen humm’d “The young May Moon” the while,

Her ear was startled by that double knock

Which thrills the nerves like an electric shock!

Her right hand instantly forgot its cunning,

And down into the street it dropt, or flung,

Right on the hat and wig of Mr. Gunning,

The jug that o’er her ten-week stocks had hung;

Then down the stairs by twos and threes she sprung,

And through the passage like a burglar darted.

Alas! how sanguine are the fond and young--

She little thought, when with the coin she parted,

She paid a sixpence to be broken-hearted!

[Illustration: “WHEN WILL IT REACH LONDON?”]

Too dear at any price--had she but paid

Nothing and taken discount, it was dear;

Yet, worthless as it was, the sweet-lipped maid

Oft kissed the letter in her brief career

Between the lower and the upper sphere,

Where, seated in a study bistre-brown,

She tried to pierce a mystery as clear

As _that_ I saw once puzzling a young clown--

“Reading Made Easy,” but turned upside down.

Yet Ellen, like most Misses in the land,

Had sipped sky blue, through certain of her teens,

At one of those establishments which stand

In highways, byeways, squares, and village greens;

’Twas called “The Grove,”--a name that always means

Two poplars stand like sentries at the gate--

Each window had its close Venetian screens

And Holland blind, to keep in a cool state

The twenty-four Young Ladies of Miss Bate.

But when the screens were left unclosed by chance,

The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead,

Each upper window to a passing glance

Revealed a little dimity white bed;

Each lower one a cropp’d or curly head;

And thrice a week, for soul’s and health’s economies,

Along the road the twenty four were led,

Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies

With faces rather graver than Melpomene’s.

And thus their studies they pursued:--On Sunday,

Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price;

Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar--of a Monday;

Tuesday--hard dumplings, globes, Chapone’s Advice;

Wednesday--fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice);

Thursday--pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading;

Friday--beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice;

Saturday--scraps, short lessons and short feeding,

Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding

From this repertory of female learning,

Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter!

To gratify the eyes of parents yearning.

’Twas evident in bolsters, beef, and batter,

Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter,

But heartily, as Jenkins says, “demollidge;”

But as for any learning, not to flatter,

As often happens when girls leave their college,

She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge.

[Illustration: PRACTICE DRIVES ME MAD.]

At Long Division sums she had no chance,

And History was quite as bad a balk;

Her French it was too small for Petty France,

And Priscian suffered in her English talk:

Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk;

As for the globes--the use of the terrestrial

She knew when she went out to take a walk,

Or take a ride; but, touching the celestial,

Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial.

Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars;

Georgium, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo,

Sidus, for Master: then, for northern stars,

The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go,

The Bull was Farmer Giles’s bull, and, ergo,

The Ram the same that butted at her brother;

As for the Twins, she only guessed that Virgo,

From coming after them, must be their mother;

The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other.

As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia,

She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but

A private, may be, in the Kent Militia;

That Charles’s Wain would stick in a deep rut,

That Venus was a real West-End slut--

Oh, Gods and Goddesses of Greek Theogony!

That Berenice’s Hair would curl and cut,

That Cassiopëia’s Chair was good Mahogany,

Nicely French-polished,--such was her cosmogony!

Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics

Lorenzo’s letter came now to dispense;

A lizard, crawling over hieroglyphics,

Knows quite as much of their Egyptian sense;

A sort of London fog, opaque and dense,

Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives.

In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intense;

As well is known to oyster-operatives,

Mere looking at the shells won’t open natives.

Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found

Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers:

Words giving tongue against her, like a hound

At picking out a fault--words speaking daggers.

The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers,

To lash their tails, but not as horses do,

Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers,

But like a lion’s, ere he tears in two

A black, to see if he is black all through.

With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch,

She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry,

No sound--no stir--quite petrified, poor wretch!

As when Apollo, in old allegory,

Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry

Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone;

In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry,

Judge if a suing lover, let alone

A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone.

[Illustration: A POUTER.]

“Ellen, I will no longer call you mine,

That time is past, and ne’er can come again;

However other lights undimmed may shine,

And undiminishing, one truth is plain,

Which I, alas! have learned,--that love can wane.

The dream is pass’d away, the veil is rent,

Your heart was not intended for my reign;

A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant

With one poor man in it to be content.

“It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure,

To wander underneath the whispering bough

With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure.

Nay, fear not,--I absolve of every vow,--

Use,--use your own celestial pleasure now,

Your apogee and perigee arrange.

Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how,

To me that constant disk has nothing strange--

A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change.

“Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write

Such words unto you, with so hard a pen;

Yet outraged love will change its nature quite,

And turn like tiger hunted to its den--

How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men!

And stands abash’d, discover’d, and forlorn!

Had it been only cusp’d--but gibbous--then

It had gone down--but Faith drew back in scorn,

And would not swallow it--without a horn!

“I am in occultation,--that is plain:

My culmination’s past,--that’s quite as clear.

But think not I will suffer your disdain

To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear.

Whate’er my pangs, they shall be buried here;

No murmur,--not a sigh,--shall thence exhale:

Smile on,--and for your own peculiar sphere

Choose some eccentric path,--you cannot fail,

And pray stick on a most portentous tail!

“Farewell! I hope you are in health and gay;

For me, I never felt so well and merry--

As for the bran-new idol of the day,

Monkey or man, I am indifferent--very!

Nor e’en will ask who is the Happy Jerry;

My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep,

But let me hint that you will want a wherry,

Three weeks’ spring-tide, and not a chance of neap,

Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep!”

[Illustration: POND’S ASTRONOMY.]

“Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light

Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend,

Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night--

No more of that----the lover’s at an end.

Yet if I may advise you, as a friend,

Before you next pen sentiments so fond,

Study your cycles--I would recommend

Our Airy--and let South be duly conn’d,

And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.

“Farewell again! it is farewell for ever!

Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice,

I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River,

Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice,

Or Boothia Felix--happy clime of ice!

For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon,

Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice,

Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon,

Or roaming o’er--The Mountains of the Moon!

“What matters where? my world no longer owns

That dear meridian spot from which I dated

Degrees of distance, hemispheres, and zones,

A globe all blank and barren and belated.

What matters where my future life be fated?

With Lapland hordes, or Koords or Afric peasant,

A squatter in the western woods located,

What matters where? My bias, at the present,

Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!

“Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well!

As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs:

I ask no sexton for his passing-bell,

I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters,

However I may die, transfix’d by Tartars,

By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled,

By shark or cayman snapt above the garters,

By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled,

Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled,

“Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake,

Or smother’d in the sandy hot simoom,

Or crush’d in Chili by earth’s awful quake,

Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb,

Or dirged by syrens and the billows’ boom

Or stiffen’d to a stock mid Alpine snows,

Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom,

Or suck’d by Vampyres to a last repose,

Or self-destroy’d, impatient of my woes,

“Still fare you well, however I may fare,

A fare perchance to the Lethean shore,

Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air,

Or dash’d down cataracts with dreadful roar:

Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core,

This hand you should have claim’d in church or minster

Some cannibal may gnaw”--she read no more--

Prone on the carpet fell the senseless spinster,

Losing herself, as ’twere, in Kidderminster!

Of course of such a fall the shock was great,

In rush’d the father, panting from the shop,

In rush’d the mother, without cap or tête,

Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop;

The cook to change her apron did not stop,

The charwoman next scrambled up the stair,--

All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop,

And then they stand and smother round the chair,

Exclaiming in a chorus, “Give her air!”

One sears her nostrils with a burning feather,

Another rams a phial up her nose;

A third crooks all her finger-joints together,

A fourth rips her up laces and her bows,

While all by turns keep trampling on her toes,

And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump

A sudden drench that down her thorax goes,

As if in fetching her--some wits so jump--

She must be fetched with water like a pump!

[Illustration: “SHE’S BLACK IN THE FACE!”]

No wonder that thus drench’d, and wrench’d, and gall’d,

As soon as possible from syncope’s fetter

Her senses had the sense to be recall’d,

“I’m better--that will do--indeed I’m better,”

She cried to each importunate besetter;

Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother,

The prudent parent seized the lover’s letter,

(Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother)

And read it thro’ from one end to the other.

From first to last she never skipp’d a word--

For young Lorenzo of all youths was one

So wise, so good, so moral she averr’d,

So clever, quite above the common run--

She made him sit by her, and call’d him son,

No matrimonial suit, e’en Duke’s or Earl’s,

So flatter’d her maternal feelings--none!

For mothers always think young men are pearls

Who come and throw themselves before their girls.

[Illustration: DECAPITATION.]

And now, at warning signal from her finger,

The servants most reluctantly withdrew,

But list’ning on the stairs contrived to linger;

For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue,

At last the features of her parent knew,

And summoning her breath and vocal pow’rs,

“Oh, mother!” she exclaimed--“Oh, is it true--

Our dear Lorenzo”--the dear name drew show’rs--

“_Ours_,” cried the mother, “pray don’t call him ours!”

“I never liked him, never, in my days!”

[“Oh yes--you did”--said Ellen with a sob,]

“There always _was_ a something in his ways--”

[“So sweet--so kind,” said Ellen, with a throb,]

“His very face was what I call a snob,

And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons,

He had a sort of air of the swell mob;

I’m sure when he has come of afternoons

To tea, I’ve often thought--I’ll watch my spoons!”

“The spoons!” cried Ellen, almost with a scream,

“Oh cruel--false as cruel--and unjust!

He that once stood so high in your esteem!”

“He!” cried the dame, grimacing her disgust,

“I like him?--yes--as any body must

An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil:

Didn’t he bring you Bonaparty’s bust?

Lord! when he calls I hardly can be civil--

_My_ favourite was always Mr. Neville.

“Lorenzo?--I should like, of earthly things,

To see him hanging forty cubits high;

Doesn’t he write like Captain Rocks and Swings?

Nay, in this very letter bid you try

To make yourself particular, and tie

A tail on--a prodigious tail!--Oh, daughter!

And don’t he ask you down his area--fie!

And recommend to cut your being shorter,

With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?”

Alas! to think how readers thus may vary

A writer’s sense!--What mortal would have thought

Lorenzo’s hint about Professor Airy

And Pond to such a likeness could be brought!

Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught

To make a comet of poor Ellen’s moon,

Could furnish forth an image so distraught,

As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon,

Tail’d--like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!

[Illustration: “STICK AS YOU BE--THAT’S THE COMET.”]

And yet, whate’er absurdity the brains

May hatch, it ne’er wants wet-nurses to suckle it!

Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains

To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it;

No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it

To jingle bell-like on his empty head,

No mental mud--but some will knead and knuckle it,

And fancy they are making fancy-bread;--

No ass has written, but some ass has read.

No dolts could lead if others did not follow ’em.

No Hahnémann could give decillionth drops,

If any man could not be got to swallow ’em;

But folly never comes to such full stops.

As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps

Of all Lorenzo’s meanings, heads and tails,

The Father seized upon her malaprops--

“My girl down areas--of a night! ’Ods nails!

I’ll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!”

[Illustration: TAILS OF THE HAUL BY CRAB.]

“I will!--as sure as I was christen’d John!

A girl--well born--and bred,--and school’d at Ditton--

Accomplish’d--handsome--with a tail stuck on!

And chuck’d, Zounds! chuck’d in horseponds like a kitten

I wish I had been by when that was written!”--

And doubling to a fist each ample hand,

The empty air he boxed with, a-la-Bitton,

As if in training for a fight, long plann’d,

With Nobody--for love--at No Man’s Land!

[Illustration: A FOWL WIND.]

“I’ll pond--I’ll tail him!”--In a voice of thunder

He recommenced his fury and his fuss,

Loud, open-mouth’d, and wedded to his blunder,

Like one of those great guns that end in buss.

“I’ll teach him to write ponds and tails to us!”

But while so menacing this-that-and-t’others,

His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus:

“Men are not women--fathers can’t be mothers,--

Females are females”--and a few such others.

So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly,

She hustled him outside the chamber-door,

Looking, it must be own’d, a little silly;

And then she did as the Carinthian boor

Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that’s poor!

_Id est_, she shut him in the outer space,

With just as much apology--no more--

As Boreas would present in such a case,

For slamming the street door right in your face.

And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept,

What passed in that important tête-à-tête

’Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except

Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate--

So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late,

In front of Mrs. Snelling’s sugar’d snacks,

In such a very waspish stinging state,

But now at the Old Dragon, stretch’d on racks,

Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;

Because that new fast four-inside--the Comet,

Instead of keeping its appointed time,

Had deviated some few minutes from it,

A thing with all astronomers a crime,

And he had studied in that lore sublime;

Nor did his heat get any less or shorter

For pouring upon passion’s unslaked lime

A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water,

Mix’d stiff as starch by the Old Dragon’s daughter.

At length, “Fair Ellen” sounding with a flourish,

The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart:

Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish

The hasty spirit in Lorenzo’s heart,

And soon upon the roof he “topped his part,”

Which never had a more impatient man on,

Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start

Like lightning greased,--or, as at Ballyshannon

Sublimed, “greased lightning shot out of a cannon.”

For, ever since the letter left his hand,

His mind had been in vacillating motion,

Dodge-dodging like a fluster’d crab on land,

That cannot ask its way, and has no notion

If right or left leads to the German Ocean--

Hatred and Love by turns enjoy’d monopolies,

Till, like a Doctor following his own potion,

Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis,

He went and booked himself for our metropolis.

“Oh, for a horse,” or rather four,--“with wings!”

For so he put the wish into the plural--

No relish he retained for country things,

He could not join felicity with rural,

His thoughts were all with London and the mural,

Where architects--not paupers--heap and _pile_ stones;

Or with the horses’ muscles, called the crural,

How fast they could macadamize the milestones

Which pass’d as tediously as gall or bile stones.

Blind to the picturesque, he ne’er perceived

In Nature one artistical fine stroke;

For instance, how that purple hill relieved

The beggar-woman in the gipsy-poke,

And how the red cow carried off her cloak;

Or how the aged horse, so gaunt and grey,

Threw off a noble mass of beech and oak!

Or, how the tinker’s ass, beside the way,

Came boldly out from a white cloud--to bray!

Such things have no delight for worried men,

That travel full of care and anxious smart:

Coachmen and horses, are your artists then:

Just try a team of draughtsmen with the Dart,

Take Shee, for instance, Etty, Jones, and Hart,

Let every neck be put into its noose,

Then tip ’em on the flank to make ’em start,

And see how they will draw!--Four screws let loose

Would make a difference--or I’m a goose!

Nor cared he more about the promised crops,

If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid,

For flies in turnip, or a blight in hops,

Or how the barley prosper’d or decay’d;

In short, no items of the farming trade.

Peas, beans, tares, ’taters, could his mind beguile;

Nor did he answer to the servant maid,

That always asked at every other mile,

“Where do we change, Sir?” with her sweetest smile.

[Illustration: “LORD, JOHN, HERE’S A BURROW!”]

Nor more he listened to the Politician,

Who lectured on his left, a formal prig,

Of Belgium’s, Greece’s, Turkey’s sad condition,

Not worth a cheese, an olive, or a fig;

Nor yet unto the critic, fierce and big,

Who, holding forth, all lonely, in his glory,

Called one a sad bad Poet--and a Whig,

And one, a first-rate proser--and a Tory;

So critics judge, now, of a song or story.

Nay, when the coachman spoke about the ’Leger,

Of Popsy, Mopsy, Bergamotte, and Civet,

Of breeder, trainer, owner, backer, hedger,

And nags as right, or righter than a trivet,

The theme his crack’d attention could not rivet,

Though leaning forward to the man of whips,

He seem’d to give an ear,--but did not give it,

For Ellen’s moon (that saddest of her slips)

Would not be hidden by a “new Eclipse.”

[Illustration: THE HEAD WAITER AT HATCHETT’S.]

If any thought e’er flitted in his head

Belonging to the sphere of Bland and Crocky,

It was to wish the team all thorough-bred,

And every buckle on their backs a jockey:

When spinning down a steep descent, or rocky,

He never watch’d the wheel, and long’d to lock it,

He liked the bolters that set off so cocky:

Nor did it shake a single nerve or shock it

Because the Comet raced against the Rocket.

Thanks to which rivalry, at last the journey

Finish’d an hour and a quarter under time,

Without a case for surgeon or attorney,

Just as St. James’s rang its seventh chime,

And now, descending from his seat sublime,

Behold Lorenzo, weariest of wights,

In that great core of brick, and stone, and lime,

Call’d England’s Heart--but which, as seen of nights,

Has rather more th’ appearance of its lights.

[Illustration: FREE TRADE.]

Away he scudded--elbowing, perforce,

Thro’ cads, and lads, and many a Hebrew worrier,

With fruit, knives, pencils,--all dirt cheap of course,

Coachmen, and hawkers of the Globe and “Currier;”

Away!--the cookmaid is not such a skurrier,

When, fit to split her gingham as she goes,

With six just striking on the clock to hurry her,

She strides along with one of her three beaux,

To get well placed at “Ashley’s”--now Ducrow’s.

“I wonder if her moon is full to-night!”

He mutter’d, jealous as a Spanish Don,

When, lo!--to aggravate that inward spite,

In glancing at a board he spied thereon

A play-bill for dramatic folks to con,

In letters such as those may read, who run,

“‘KING JOHN’--oh yes,--I recollect King John!

‘My Lord, they say five moons’--_five_ moons!--well done!

I wonder Ellen was content with one!

“Five moons--all full!--and all at once in heav’n!

She should have lived in that prolific reign!”

Here he arrived in front of number seven,

Th’ abode of all his joy and all his pain;

A sudden tremor shot through every vein,

He wish’d he’d come up by the heavy waggon,

And felt an impulse to turn back again,

Oh, that he ne’er had quitted the Old Dragon!

Then came a sort of longing for a flagon.

His tongue and palate seem’d so parch’d with drouth,--

The very knocker fill’d his soul with dread,

As if it had a living lion’s mouth,

With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red,

In which he had engaged to put his head,

The bell-pull turn’d his courage into vapour,

As though ’t would cause a shower-bath to shed

Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper--

He look’d askance, and did not like the scraper.

“What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce

A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster,

Instead of putting out its wick at once;

She’s gone--it’s very evident I’ve lost her,--

And to the wanton wind I should have toss’d her--

Pish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease,

To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster,

Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese,

Or make a honey-moon, if so she please.

“Yes--here I leave her,” and as thus he spoke,

He plied the knocker with such needless force,

It almost split the panel of sound oak;

And then he went as wildly through a course

Of ringing, till he made abrupt divorce

Between the bell and its dumfounded handle,

Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse,

And thrust into his face her blown-out candle,

To recognise the author of such scandal.

Who, presto! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot,

Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair,

With other noise than his whose “very foot

Had music in’t as he came up the stair:”

And then with no more manners than a bear,

His hat upon his head, no matter how,

No modest tap his presence to declare,

He bolted in a room, without a bow,

And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow!

Like fond Medora, watching at her window,

Yet not of any Corsair bark in search--

The jutting lodging-house of Mrs. Lindo,

“The Cheapest House in Town” of Todd and Sturch.

The private house of Reverend Doctor Birch,

The public-house, closed nightly at eleven,

And then that house of prayer, the parish church,

Some roofs, and chimneys, and a glimpse of heaven,

Made up the whole look-out of Number Seven.

[Illustration: “MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT ALONE.”]

Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her,

She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream;

As if her own belov’d full moon still orb’d her,

Lulling her fancy in some lunar scheme,

With lost Lorenzo, may be, for its theme--

Yet when Lorenzo touch’d her on the shoulder,

She started up with an abortive scream,

As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder,

Had come within his bony arms to fold her.

“Lorenzo!” “Ellen!” then came “Sir!” and “Madam!”

They tried to speak, but hammer’d at each word,

As if it were a flint for great Mac Adam:

Such broken English never else was heard,

For like an aspen leaf each nerve was stirr’d,

A chilly tremor thrill’d them through and through,

Their efforts to be stiff were quite absurd,

They shook like jellies made without a due

And proper share of common joiner’s glue.

“Ellen! I’m come--to bid you--fare--farewell!”

They thus began to fight their verbal duel;

“Since some more hap--hap--happy man must dwell--”

“Alas--Loren--Lorenzo!--cru--cru--cruel!”

For so they split their words like grits for gruel.

At last the Lover, as he long had plann’d,

Drew out that once inestimable jewel,

Her portrait, which was erst so fondly scann’d,

And thrust poor Ellen’s face into her hand.

“There--take it, Madam--take it back, I crave,

The face of one--but I must now forget her,

Bestow it on whatever hapless slave

Your art has last enticed into your fetter--

And there are your epistles--there! each letter!

I wish no record of your vow’s infractions,

Send them to South--or Children--you had better--

They will be novelties--rare benefactions!

To shine in Philosophical Transactions!

“Take them--pray take them--I resign them quite!

And there’s the glove you gave me leave to steal--

And there’s the handkerchief, so pure and white,

Once sanctified by tears, when Miss O’Neill--

But no--you did not--cannot--do not feel

A Juliet’s faith, that time could only harden!

Fool that I was, in my mistaken zeal!

I should have led you,--by your leave and pardon--

To Bartley’s Orrery, not Covent Garden!”

[Illustration: “I RAN IT THRO’ E’EN FROM MY BOYISH DAYS.”]

“And here’s the birth-day ring--nor man nor devil

Should once have torn it from my living hand,

Perchance ’twill look as well on Mr. Neville;

And that--and that is all--and now I stand

Absolved of each dissever’d tie and band--

And so farewell, till Time’s eternal sickle

Shall reap our lives; in this, or foreign land

Some other may be found for truth to stickle

Almost as fair--and not so false and fickle!”

And there he ceased: as truly it was time,

For of the various themes that left his mouth,

One half surpass’d her intellectual climb:

She knew no more than the old Hill of Howth

About that “Children of a larger growth,”

Who notes proceedings of the F. R. S.’s;

Kit North, was just as strange to her as South,

Except the south the weathercock expresses,

Nay, Bartley’s Orrery defied her guesses.

Howbeit some notion of his jealous drift

She gather’d from the simple outward fact,

That her own lap contained each slighted gift;

Though quite unconscious of his cause to act

So like Othello, with his face unblack’d;

“Alas!” she sobbed, “your cruel course I see

These faded charms no longer can attract;

Your fancy palls, and you would wander free,

And lay your own apostacy on me!”

“_I_, false!--unjust Lorenzo!--and to _you_!

Oh, all ye holy gospels that incline

The soul to truth, bear witness I am true!

By all that lives, of earthly or divine--

So long as this poor throbbing heart is mine--

_I_ false!--the world shall change its course as soon!

True as the streamlet to the stars that shine--

True as the dial to the sun at noon,

True as the tide to ‘yonder blessed moon’!”

And as she spoke, she pointed through the window,

Somewhere above the houses’ distant tops,

Betwixt the chimney-pots of Mrs. Lindo,

And Todd and Sturch’s cheapest of all shops

For ribbons, laces, muslins, silks, and fops:--

Meanwhile, as she upraised her face so Grecian,

And eyes suffused with scintillating drops,

Lorenzo looked, too, o’er the blinds venetian,

To see the sphere so troubled with repletion.

“The Moon!” he cried, and an electric spasm

Seem’d all at once his features to distort,

And fix’d his mouth, a dumb and gaping chasm--

His faculties benumb’d and all amort--

At last his voice came, of most shrilly sort,

Just like a sea-gull’s wheeling round a rock--

“Speak!--Ellen!--is your sight indeed so short?

The Moon!--Brute! savage that I am, and block!

The Moon! (O, ye Romantics, what a shock!)

Why that’s the new Illuminated Clock!”

[Illustration: ST. BLAISE.]

[Illustration: “THOSE EVENING BELLS.”]

THOSE EVENING BELLS.

“I’D BE A PARODY.”

THOSE Evening Bells, those Evening Bells,

How many a tale their music tells,

Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime,

And letters only just in time!--

The Muffin-boy has pass’d away,

The Postman gone--and I must pay,

For down below Deaf Mary dwells,

And does not hear those Evening Bells,

And so ’twill be when she is gone,

That tuneful peal will still ring on,

And other maids with timely yells

Forget to stay those Evening Bells.

[Illustration: BALL-PRACTICE.]

LINES

TO A FRIEND AT COBHAM.

’Tis pleasant, when we’ve absent friends,

Sometimes to hob and nob ’em

With Memory’s glass--at such a pass

Remember me at Cobham!

Have pigs you will, and sometimes kill,

But if you sigh and sob ’em,

And cannot eat your home-grown meat,

Remember me at Cobham!

Of hen and cock, you’ll have a stock,

And death will oft unthrob ’em,--

A country chick is good to pick--

Remember me at Cobham!

Some orchard trees of course you’ll lease

And boys will sometimes rob ’em,

A friend (you know) before a foe--

Remember me at Cobham!

You’ll sometimes have wax-lighted rooms,

And friends of course to mob ’em,

Should you be short of such a sort,

Remember me at Cobham!

THE QUAKERS’ CONVERSAZIONE.

“Dost thou love silence, deep as that before the winds were made?

Go not into the wilderness; descend not into the profundities of

the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the cells

of thine ears, with little-faith’d, self-mistrusting Ulysses.

Retire with me into a Quakers’ Meeting.”--ESSAYS OF ELIA.

IT may not, or rather it cannot, be generally known, that an attempt

was made last winter, by certain influential members of the Society of

Friends, to establish a Conversazione at Tottenham, a neighbourhood

especially favoured by that respectable and substantial sect. The idea

originated with a junior female branch of the opulent family of the

Mumfords, which has been seated, time out of mind, in the vicinity

of Bruce Castle; the notion was broached to a select few of the

sisterhood, during a Sabbath walk homewards from the conventicle: the

suggestion was relished; and a conference was called, at which the

scheme was seriously brought forward, and gravely considered. At first

there was a little boggling at the proposed title, as savouring, it was

thought, of Loquacity; but the objection was dropped, on an explanation

that although the word implied conversation, no one would be bidden to

discourse against their own inclination; nay that, even amongst other

persuasions, the conversazioni were frequently as distant as possible

from a Negro “Talk,” or a Red Indian “Palaver.” This little demur

excepted, the plan went on swimmingly, and was finally adopted with the

subdued hum which, in that quiet-loving community, is equivalent to

acclamations. A secretary was formally proposed, and tacitly chosen

unanimously; being no other than the fair Foundress herself, the

mild-spoken and meek-eyed Ruth Mumford. A few brief rules were then

drawn up, and, after no debate, agreed to--some of them, considering

the constitutional taciturnity of the sect, being sufficiently

superfluous, as guarding against what Bubb Doddington called “a

multiplicity of talk.” For instance, the 9th rule provided, that “no

brother or sister should indulge in rambling irrelevant discourse,

embracing a profusion of topics, wide of the matter in hand.” The

10th, that “no two or more Friends should disburden themselves of

speech at one and the same time;” and the 12th, that “no member of this

society shall deliver himself or herself with unreasonable continuity,

to the prevention of other Friends who might desire to speak to the

matter.” From the list of subjects to be “spoken to” politics and

polemics were excluded; but poetry was allowed, or at least connived

at, the excellent example of Bernard Barton and the Howitts having

happily relaxed the primitive rigour of that proscription. Besides,

it was well known, between Friends, that several of the younger

female members, the fair secretary included, occasionally struck, or

rather, as Quakers ought not to strike anything, twanged the lyre.

For the rest, the society was modelled after other private literary

associations; it was to meet twice weekly, visiting the houses of the

members in rotation, when original essays or papers were to be read,

and afterwards discussed; provided always, that they afforded any

Debateable Land to make a stand upon, seeing that at the end of the

rules and regulations, a special article earnestly recommended, that in

the selection of subjects all such topics should be avoided “as might

lead to differences of opinion amongst the brethren.”

Such was--for it is defunct--the Tottenham Friends’ Conversazione; of

whose existence I became aware but by accident. It was my good fortune,

till lately, to live next door to a family of Quakers, and to make

acquaintance with the eldest daughter, a young lively maiden just

wearing out the last of her teens. I am afraid in the austere brown

eyes of her parents she was not strictly considered as the flower of

their flock, being a sort of nonconformist among nonconformists, as

was especially to be seen in comparing her with her younger sisters,

who seemed to have been brought up, or stuck up, under the most

starched discipline. Instead of their plain close caps,--mere casts of

their skulls taken in muslin,--she wore an airy fanciful structure of

blonde and white ribbon, that a Parisian woman might have put on--at

least of a morning. In lieu of their sleek mohair braids, her auburn

ringlets flowed down her neck in all the “Unloveliness of Love-locks.”

To her star-like hazel eyes she allowed a little planetary liberty

of circulation; whereas it seemed the object of the others, to keep

their demure brown orbs as immoveable in their faces, as bad halfpence

nailed to counters. Instead of screwing up her lips, as if she had

just come, minus a masticator, out of Cartwright’s into an east wind,

she sometimes gave her ivory teeth an airing, by smiling at some

innocent fancy, to which she would give utterance, without trying

to send her clear sweet voice, by a New North-West Passage, through

her nose. As for her figure, it was none of those shapes which have

no shape, and may be swaddled up without detriment in dingy drabs,

olives, slates, and snuffy browns,--shapes which nature makes on her

basin-pudding days, instead of using her best jelly-moulds--shapes

like the bonnet-shapes which balance baskets of live mackerel. To

see the symmetrical Rachel standing near either of her sisters, you

would think you beheld (borrowing a local image) Tottenham High Cross,

beside the Waithman Obelisk. Accordingly, the orthodox warp of her

glossy satin was always _shot_ with a woof of some one of those gayer

prismatic tints, to wear which is reckoned, among the severer Foxites,

“a profanation of the Rainbow, deserving a second deluge.” As will

be seen hereafter, she put a little blue into her superfine silken

hose; sometimes I even fancied that I detected a tinge of the more

fleshy pink--in short, she was a Quakeress, but not of the sad-brown

sort--only a brunette.

[Illustration: DISCOVERY OF ORGANIC REMAINS.]

With the old Friends, her parents, I cannot boast that I was even on

speaking terms; but with the lovely and lively Rachel my acquaintance

had ripened even to the calling her by her Christian name; and the

reciprocation of her thou and thee, to which I was led, not as a

convertite, but from learning, in my French and German Grammars, that

the use of the second person singular was an especial token of intimacy

and affection. In this our neighbourly intercourse, a system of mutual

accommodation sprang up between us, not by bills, but by books; for

which she drew upon me by pretty little notes of hand, that I duly

honoured, making them payable over the back garden wall. Drawings and

pieces of new music were equally negotiable. If I remember rightly,

it was in return for Moore’s Melodies--the exchange at the time being

against me--that I received “Fox’s Martyrs.” It was rather a ponderous

tome for a lover of light reading; and if St. Swithin’s Festival had

not fallen on a very wet Sunday in the country, I might never have

opened its leaves,--if indeed they did not open of themselves,--thus

letting fall certain MSS. intrusted to their custody, and which I

now proceed to make public. In a new edition of the “Curiosities of

Literature” they would deserve a distinguished place.

MINUTES OF THE TOTTENHAM FRIENDS’ CONVERSAZIONE;

ESTABLISHED with a view to sober, Intellectual, and Literary

unbendings. Now first held, namely, on the fourteenth day of the

eleventh month, one thousand eight hundred thirty and four. Brother

Mumford, the Father of the present humble Pen, in the chair.

A most powerful and worthy setting forth, both in regard of numbers

and our proceedings. Firstly, a word in season from Friend Oliver.

Secondly, a draft of the rules. Thirdly, an opening poem; meditation

thereon until the tenth hour, when our sitting was completed. Many

congratulations between the brethren on the order, quiet, and decency

thereof; myself as its humble founder, very joyously elevated--even

unto the shedding of tears.

17. Some awkwardness on this night, arising out of the presentation of

nine several Negroes’ Complaints to be read forth. Precedence yielded

unto Sister Skeldrum’s complaint, in respect of her being so ancient,

namely three-score and ten. After which, Sister Panyer’s was gone

through, detaining us nearhand until our hour of dissolution. Friend

Black in the chair.

21. The Negro Complaints resumed, whereof three more were gotten

over, Sister Fagg kindly taking turn about with me in the deliverance

thereof. Friend Thorne in the chair.

24. A spare meeting. The Negro Complaints brought to an end, save one;

Sister Rumble consenting, on much persuasion, to reserve the Sorrows of

Sambo for the Abolition Anniversary. Friend Woolley in the chair.

28. Friend Greathead read forth an original paper on the Manners of the

Beavers. Much meditation thereon. Friend Stillfox in the chair.

[Illustration: “BEAR ABOUT THE MOCKERY OF WOE.”]

1-12. Friend Seagrave in the chair. Sister Meeking read forth her Essay

on Silence, but in so humble a tone, that little thereof was taken

inward at our ears. No debate thereon. Dorcas Fysche, a visitor, craved

to know whether Friends, not being members, were permitted to speak on

the subject, and was replied to in the affirmative. Whereupon she held

her peace.

5. Sister Knight read forth a self-composed addressing of herself unto

Sleep. To which no objection was made by any present. Friend Knapp in

the chair.

8. On this night I plucked up courage, and essayed to read forth

mine own Stanzas on Universal Love; but my voice failing me in the

midst, it was completely finished for me by Friend Thicknesse, who did

perversely continue to pronounce _Jews_ instead of _Dews_, whereof came

absurdity. Above all in the line which singeth,--“Descend ye Dews on

this my head.” And again,--“Ye painted Flies that suck the Dews.”

12. No other member being prepared with originality, Sister Rumble read

forth her Sorrows of Sambo. Much silent comment thereon. Brother Kersey

in the chair, who shamefully suffered himself to be surprised with

sleep.

15. No lecturing, and, by course, no debate; only meditation. A

call made to order against Friend Dilly, who was in the chair, for

untimeliness in asking the price of Anglo-Mexicans at a quarter before

ten.

19. Sister Fetterlock being a visitor in expectancy, every one confined

themselves unto Newgate. Several of the brethren declared their

convictions. Friend Roper in the chair.

22. No lecturing. Sister Rumble distributed Sambo’s Sorrows amongst us,

one unto each; the which she had caused to be imprinted at her own risk

and cost. Friend Boulter was the chair.

26. No lecturing. It pleased our worthy Brother Upham, at his

House of Welcome, to spread before us the creature comforts most

abundantly, with a great out-pouring of the foreign luxury, which is

called Champagne; the which was greatly discussed; and Brother Upham

thereafter rebuked for the same, for that it was not of the kind which

is still.

29. Friend Stock read forth a narrative of his own Life and Personal

Adventures, the which held us for half an hour. Some debate touching

the imprinting of the same, at the cost of the Society, in the shape

of a Tract; which was agreed to, but put off at the instance of Friend

Stock himself, in order to give him time to live into the shape of a

pamphlet. Friend Smallbones went through the chair.

2-1-35. No assembly, by reason of the outrageous wind and hail,

excepting Sister Rumble, with a new original poem, called “The Moral

Gipsy.” The which she did read forth from the chair to my humble self

and family, and our serving-man, Simon Dunny.

[Illustration: HOPE DEFERRED.]

5. Friend Broadbent read forth, in part, an Essay on Innocent

Jocularity; the which, in sundry passages, provoked dissentients, as

tending to a defence of levity. A stiff debate thereon, in which all

the brethren were agreeable to censure. Great merriment at Friend

Sexton in his rebuking, saying, “Christian gravy,” instead of gravity,

by a slip of the tongue.

9. The remains of Innocent Jocularity brought on again in a decidedly

grave way, and nothing savouring of offensive. Followed with silence.

12. There were not sufficient friends to make a sitting, and no chair.

[Illustration: “IT CAN’T BE HELPED.”]

16. At Sister Rumble’s by course of rotation. No other member present,

save mine own self, as by duty bound. A deplorable falling away from

the cause. Whereof more hereafter.

* * * * *

The Record here breaks off. The society probably did not proceed

farther, but died on the spot, of a complication of Innocent Jocularity

and Sister Rumble, and was buried tacitly, with the fair Ruth Mumford

for its chief mourner. The other papers are in verse, and a reading of

them will certainly persuade the reviewers that they were premature

in applying the designation of “Quaker Poetry” to foregone lays and

lyrics. The first is a genuine brown study after nature; the second a

hint how Peace ought _not_ to be proclaimed.

SONNET.

BY R. M.

HOW sweet thus clad, in Autumn’s mellow Tone,

With serious Eye, the russet Scene to view!

No Verdure decks the Forest, save alone

The sad green Holly, and the olive Yew.

The Skies, no longer of a garish Blue,

Subdued to Dove-like Tints, and soft as Wool,

Reflected show their slaty Shades anew

In the drab Waters of the clayey Pool.

Meanwhile yon Cottage Maiden wends to School,

In Garb of Chocolate so neatly drest,

And Bonnet puce, fit object for the Tool,

And chasten’d Pigments, of our Brother West;

Yea, all is silent, sober, calm, and cool,

Save gaudy Robin with his crimson Breast.

LINES

ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE.

BY DORCAS DOVE.

AND is it thus ye welcome Peace,

From Mouths of forty-pounding Bores?

Oh cease, exploding Cannons, cease!

Lest Peace, affrighted, shun our shores!

Not so the quiet Queen should come;

But like a Nurse to still our Fears,

With Shoes of List, demurely dumb,

And Wool or Cotton in her Ears!

She asks for no triumphal Arch;

No Steeples for their ropy Tongues;

Down, Drumsticks, down, She needs no March,

Or blasted Trumps from brazen Lungs.

She wants no Noise of mobbing Throats

To tell that She is drawing nigh;

Why this Parade of scarlet Coats,

When War has closed his bloodshot Eye?

Returning to Domestic Loves,

When War has ceased with all its Ills,

Captains should come like sucking Doves,

With Olive Branches in their Bills.

[Illustration: A GENERAL PEACE.]

No need there is of vulgar Shout,

Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife, and Drum,

And Soldiers marching all about,

To let Us know that Peace is come.

Oh mild should be the Signs and meek,

Sweet Peace’s Advent to proclaim!

Silence her noiseless Foot should speak,

And Echo should repeat the same.

Lo! where the Soldier walks, alas!

With Scars received on Foreign Grounds;

Shall we consume in Coloured Glass

The Oil that should be pour’d in Wounds?

The bleeding Gaps of War to close,

Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail?

Will Squibs enliven Orphans’ Woes?

Or Crackers cheer the Widow’s Tale?

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE MORNING CALL.

I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveller

than the approach to _Bedfordshire_. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy

Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem like blankets, the lakes and ponds are

clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of

dreams to come. His travelling-cap transforms to a night-cap, the coach

lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard’s horn plays “Lullaby.” Every

flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a

drowsy stumble up stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the

gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he

winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the

wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be

sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread “all

before him where to choose his place of rest.”

It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog-day’s

journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the

door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room,

yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though

it had been “a pint of nappy,” surrendered my boots, clutched a

candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.

Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep: and

blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his

discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy

haze the likeness of a four-poster: “Great Nature’s second course” was

spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace!

Here’s a body--there’s a bed!

There’s a pillow--here’s a head!

There’s a curtain--here’s a light!

There’s a puff--and so Good Night!

It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the

occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o’clock the next

morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do

as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short

measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.

How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops,

others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast

as a Cathedral,--as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber:

nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole

Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as

fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster--or rather I must have

slept “like winkin,” for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a

voice cried “Sleep no more!”

It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, whilst through

the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my chamber.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, your honour, I humbly ax pardon--but somehow I’ve oversleeped

myself, and the coach be gone by!”

“The devil it is!--then I have lost my place!”

“No, not exactly, your honour. She stops a bit at the Dragon, t’other

end o’ the town; and if your honour wouldn’t object to a bit of a run--”

“That’s enough--come in. Put down the light--and take up that bag--my

coat over your arm--and waistcoat with it--and that cravat.”

Boots acted according to orders. I jumped out of bed--pocketed my

nightcap--screwed on my stockings--plunged into my trowsers--rammed

my feet into wrong right and left boots--tumbled down the back

stairs--burst through a door, and found myself in the fresh air of

the stable-yard, holding a lantern, which, in sheer haste, or spleen,

I pitched into the horsepond. Then began the race, during which I

completed my toilet, running and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as

often as I could spare breath for one.

“And you call this waking me up--for the coach. My waistcoat!--Why I

could wake myself--too late--without being called. Now my cravat--and

be hanged to you!--Confound that stone!--and give me my coat. A

nice road--for a run!--I suppose you keep it--on purpose. How many

gentlemen--may you do a week?--I’ll tell you what. If I--run--a

foot--further--”

I paused for wind; while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We

had turned a corner into a small square; and on the opposite side,

certainly stood an inn with the sign of the Dragon, but without

any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me aghast, and

surveying the house from the top to the bottom; not a wreath of smoke

came from a chimney; the curtains were closed over every window,

and the door was closed and shuttered. I could hardly contain my

indignation when I looked at the infernal somnolent visage of the

fellow, hardly yet broad awake--he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes

with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out.

“Yes, you may well look--you have overslept yourself with a vengeance.

The coach must have passed an hour ago--and they have all gone to bed

again!”

“No, there be no coach, sure enough,” soliloquised Boots, slowly

raising his eyes from the road, where he had been searching for the

track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a deprecating expression

on my face. “No, there’s no coach--I ax a thousand pardons, your

honour--but you see, Sir, what with waiting on her, and talking on her,

and expecting on her, and giving notice on her, every night of my life,

your honour--why I sometimes dreams on her--and that’s the case as is

now!”

[Illustration: “YOU’VE WAKED ME TOO SOON, I MUST SLUMBER AGAIN.”]

[Illustration: A STUFFED BIRD.]

THE LAMENT OF TOBY, THE LEARNED PIG.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”--POPE.

O HEAVY day! oh day of woe!

To misery a poster,

Why was I ever farrow’d--why

Not spitted for a roaster?

In this world, pigs, as well as men,

Must dance to fortune’s fiddlings,

But must I give the classics up,

For barley-meal and middlings?

Of what avail that I could spell

And read, just like my betters,

If I must come to this at last,

To litters, not to letters?

O, why are pigs made scholars of?

It baffles my discerning,

What griskins, fry, and chitterlings

Can have to do with learning.

Alas! my learning once drew cash,

But public fame’s unstable,

So I must turn a pig again,

And fatten for the table.

To leave my literary line

My eyes get red and leaky;

But Giblett doesn’t want me _blue_,

But red and white, and streaky

Old Mullins used to cultivate

My learning like a gard’ner;

But Giblett only thinks of lard,

And not of Doctor Lardner!

He does not care about my brain

The value of two coppers,

All that he thinks about my head

Is, how I’m off for choppers.

Of all my literary kin

A farewell must be taken,

Goodbye to the poetic Hogg!

The philosophic Bacon!

Day after day my lessons fade,

My intellect gets muddy;

A trough I have, and not a desk,

A sty--and not a study!

Another little month, and then

My progress ends like Bunyan’s;

The seven sages that I loved

Will be chopp’d up with onions!

Then over head and ears in brine

They’ll souse me, like a salmon,

My mathematics turned to brawn,

My logic into gammon.

My Hebrew will all retrograde,

Now I’m put up to fatten;

My Greek, it will all go to grease;

The Dogs will have my Latin!

Farewell to Oxford!--and to Bliss!

To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop,--

I now must be content with chats,

Instead of learned gossip!

Farewell to “Town!” farewell to “Gown!”

I’ve quite outgrown the latter,--

Instead of Trencher-cap my head

Will soon be in a platter!

O why did I at Brazen-Nose

Rout up the roots of knowledge?

A butcher that can’t read will kill

A pig that’s been to college!

For sorrow I could stick myself,

But conscience is a clasher;

A thing that would be rash in man,

In me would be a rasher!

One thing I ask when I am dead,

And past the Stygian ditches--

And that is, let my schoolmaster

Have one of my two flitches:

’Twas he who taught my letters so

I ne’er mistook or miss’d ’em,

Simply by _ringing_ at the nose,

According to _Bell’s_ system.

[Illustration: THE LEARNED PIG GROWN OUT OF KNOWLEDGE.]

TO A BAD RIDER.

I.

WHY, Mr. Rider, why

Your nag so ill indorse, man?

To make observers cry,

You’re mounted, but no horseman?

II.

With elbows out so far,

This thought you can’t debar me--

Though no Dragoon-- Hussar--

You’re surely of the army!

III.

I hope to turn M.P.

You have not any notion,

So awkward you would be

At “seconding a motion!”

[Illustration: OUT AT ELBOWS.]

MY SON AND HEIR.

I.

MY mother bids me bind my heir,

But not the trade where I should bind;

To place a boy--the how and where--

It is the plague of parent-kind!

II.

She does not hint the slightest plan,

Nor what indentures to endorse;

Whether to bind him to a man,--

Or, like Mazeppa, to a horse.

[Illustration: SON AND HAIR.]

III.

What line to choose of likely rise,

To something in the Stocks at last,--

“Fast bind, fast find,” the proverb cries,

I find I cannot bind so fast!

IV.

A Statesman James can never be;

A Tailor?--there I only learn

His chief concern is cloth, and he

Is always cutting his concern.

V.

A Seedsman?--I’d not have him so;

A Grocer’s plum might disappoint;

A Butcher?--no, not that--although

I hear “the times are out of joint!”

VI.

Too many of all trades there be,

Like Pedlars, each has such a pack,

A merchant selling coals?--we see

The buyer send to cellar back.

VII.

A Hardware dealer?--that might please,

But if his trade’s foundation leans

On spikes and nails, he won’t have ease

When he retires upon his means.

VIII.

A Soldier?--there he has not nerves

A Sailor seldom lays up pelf:

A Baker?--no, a baker serves

His customer before himself.

IX.

Dresser of hair?--that’s not the sort;

A joiner jars with his desire--

A Churchman?--James is very short,

And cannot to a church aspire.

X.

A Lawyer?--that’s a hardish term!

A Publisher might give him ease,

If he could into Longman’s firm

Just plunge at once “in medias Rees.”

XI.

A shop for pot, and pan, and cup,

Such brittle Stock I can’t advise;

A Builder running houses up,

Their gains are stories--may be lies!

XII.

A Coppersmith I can’t endure--

Nor petty Usher A, B, C-ing;

A Publican no father sure,

Would be the author of his being!

XIII.

A Paper-maker?--come he must

To rags before he sells a sheet--

A Miller?--all his toil is just

To make a meal--he does not eat.

XIV.

A Currier?--that by favour goes--

A Chandler gives me great misgiving--

An Undertaker?--one of those

That do not hope to get their living!

XV.

Three Golden Balls?--I like them not;

An Auctioneer I never did--

The victim of a slavish lot,

Obliged to do as he is bid!

XVI.

A Broker watching fall and rise

Of Stock?--I’d rather deal in stone,--

A Printer?--there his toils comprise

Another’s work beside his own.

XVII.

A Cooper?--neither I nor Jem

Have any taste or turn for that,--

A fish retailer?--but with him,

One part of trade is always flat.

[Illustration: THE FAMILY LIBRARY.]

XVIII.

A Painter?--long he would not live,--

An Artist’s a precarious craft--

In trade Apothecaries give,

But very seldom take, a draught.

XIX.

A Glazier?--what if he should smash!

A Crispin he shall not be made--

A Grazier may be losing cash,

Although he drives “a roaring trade.”

XX.

Well, something must be done! to look

On all my little works around--

James is too big a boy, like book,

To leave upon the shelf unbound.

XXI.

But what to do?--my temples ache

From evening’s dew till morning’s pearl,

What course to take my boy to make--

Oh could I make my boy--a girl!

[Illustration: SON AND SHADE.]

LITERARY REMINISCENCES.

No. IV.

“And are ye sure the news is true?

And are ye sure he’s weel?”--OLD SCOTCH SONG.

THE great Doctor Johnson--himself a sufferer--has pathetically

described, in an essay on the miseries of an infirm constitution, the

melancholy case of an Invalid, with a willing mind in a weak body.

“The time of such a man,” he says, “is spent in forming schemes which

a change of wind prevents him from executing; his powers fume away in

projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down

delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow; but in the night the skies

are overcast; the temper of the air is changed; he wakes in languor,

impatience, and distraction; and has no longer any wish but for ease,

nor any attention but for misery.” In short the Rambler describes the

whole race of Valetudinarians as a sort of great Bitumen Company,

paving a certain nameless place, as some of the Asphalticals have paved

Oxford Street, with not very durable good intentions. In a word, your

Invalid promises like a Hogamy, and performs like a Pigamy.

To a hale hearty man, a perfect picture of health in an oaken frame,

such abortions seem sufficiently unaccountable. A great hulking

fellow, revelling as De Quincey used emphatically to say, “in rude

BOVINE health,”--a voracious human animal, camel-stomached and

iron-built, who could all but devour and digest himself like a Kilkenny

cat,--can neither sympathise with nor understand those frequent

failures and down-breakings which happen to beings not so fortunately

gifted with indelicate constitutions. Such a half-horse half-alligator

monster cannot judge, like a _Puny_ Judge, of a case of feebleness. The

broad-chested cannot allow for the narrow-breasted; the robust for the

no-bust. Nevertheless, even the stalwart may sometimes fall egregiously

short of their own designs--as witness a case in point.

Amongst my fellow passengers, on a late sea-voyage, there was one who

attracted my especial attention. A glance at his face, another at his

figure, a third at his costume, and a fourth at his paraphernalia,

sufficed to detect his country: by his light hair, nubbly features,

heavy frame, odd-coloured dressing-gown, and the national meerschaum

and gaudy tobacco-bag, he was undeniably a German. But, besides

the everlasting pipe, he was provided with a sketching apparatus,

an ample note book, a gun, and a telescope; the whole being placed

ready for immediate use. He had predetermined, no doubt, to record

his German sentiments on first making acquaintance with the German

Ocean; to sketch the picturesque craft he might encounter on its

surface; to shoot his first sea-gull; and to catch a first glimpse of

the shores of Albion, beyond the reach of the naked eye. But alas!

all these intentions fell--if one may correctly say so with only

sky and water--to the ground. He ate nothing--drank nothing--smoked

nothing--drew nothing--wrote nothing--shot nothing--spied nothing--nay,

he merely stared, but replied nothing to my friendly inquiry (I am ill

at the German tongue and its pronunciation) “Wie befinden _sea sick_?”

Now, my own case, gentle reader, has been precisely akin to that of our

unfortunate Cousin German. Like him I have promised much, projected

still more, and done little. Like him, too, I have been a sick man,

though not at sea, but on shore--and in excuse of all that has been

left undone, or delayed, with other Performers, when they do not

perform, I must proffer the old theatrical plea of indisposition. As

the Rambler describes, I have erected schemes which have been blown

down by an _ill_ wind; I have formed plans, and been weather-beaten,

like another Murphy, by a change in the weather. For instance, the

Comic Annual for 1839 ought properly to have been published some forty

days earlier; but was obliged, as it were, to perform quarantine, for

want of a clean Bill of Health. Thus, too, the patron of the present

Work who has taken the trouble to peruse certain chapters under the

title of Literary Reminiscences, will doubtless have compared the tone

of them with an Apology in Number Six, wherein, declining any attempt

at an Auto-biography, a promise was made of giving such anecdotes as

a bad memory and a bad hearing might have retained of my literary

friends and acquaintance. Hitherto, however, the fragments in question

have only presented desultory glimpses of a goose quill still in its

green-gosling-hood, instead of any recollections of “celebrated pens.”

The truth is that my malady forced me to temporise:--wherefore the

kind reader will be pleased to consider the aforesaid chapters but as

so many “false starts,” and that Memory has only now got away, to make

play as well as she can.

Whilst I am thus closeted in the Confessional, it may be as well, as

the Pelican said, to make a clean breast of it, and at once plead

guilty to all those counts--and some from long-standing have become

very Old Bailey counts--that haunt my conscience. The most numerous

of these crimes relate to letters that would not, could not, or at

least did not answer. Others refer to the receipt of books, and as an

example of their heinousness it misgives me that I was favoured with a

little volume by W. and M. Howitt, without ever telling them _how-it_

pleased me. A few offences, concern engagements which it was impossible

to fulfil, although doubly bound by principle and interest. Seriously

I have perforce been guilty of many, many, and still many sins of

omission: but Hope, reviving with my strength, promises, granting me

life, to redeem all such pledges. In the mean time, in extenuation,

I can only plead particularly that deprecation which is offered up,

in behalf of all Christian defaulters every Sunday,--“We have left

undone those things which we ought to have done,--_And there is no_

HEALTH _in us_.”

It is pleasant after a match at Chess, particularly if we have won,

to try back, and reconsider those important moves which have had a

decisive influence on the result. It is still more interesting, in the

game of Life, to recall the critical positions which have occurred

during its progress, and review the false or judicious steps that have

led to our subsequent good or ill fortune. There is, however, this

difference, that chess is a matter of pure skill and calculation,

whereas, the chequered board of human life is subject to the caprice

of Chance--the event being sometimes determined by combinations which

never entered into the mind of the player[4]. To such an accident it

is perhaps attributable that the hand now tracing these reminiscences

is holding a pen instead of an etching-point; jotting down these prose

pleasures of memory, in lieu of furnishing articles “plated-on-steel,”

for the pictorial periodicals.

It will be remembered that my mental constitution, however weak my

physical one, was proof against that type-us fever which parches most

scribblers till they are set up, done up, and may-be, cut-up, in print

and boards. Perhaps I had read, and trembled at the melancholy annals

of those unfortunates who, rashly undertaking to write for bread,

had poisoned themselves, like Chatterton, for want of it, or choked

themselves, like Otway, on obtaining it. Possibly, having learned to

think humbly of myself--there is nothing like early sickness and sorrow

for “taking the conceit” out of one--my vanity did not presume to

think, with certain juvenile Tracticians, that I “had a call” to hold

forth in print for the edification of mankind. Perchance, the very

deep reverence my reading had led me to entertain for our Bards and

Sages, deterred me from thrusting myself into the fellowship of Beings

that seemed only a little lower than the angels. However, in spite of

that very common excuse for publication, “the advice of a friend,”

who seriously recommended the submitting of my MSS. to a literary

authority, with a view to his imprimatur, my slight acquaintance with

the press was pushed no farther. On the contrary, I had selected a

branch of the Fine Arts for my serious pursuit. Prudence, the daughter

of Wisdom, whispering perhaps, that the engraver, Pye, had a better

chance of a beefsteak inside, than Pye the Laureate; not that the

verse-spinning was quite given up. Though working in _aqua fortis_,

I still played with Castaly, now writing--all monkeys are imitators,

and all young authors are monkeys--now writing a Bandit, to match

the Corsair, and anon, hatching a Lalla Crow, by way of companion

to Lalla Rookh. Moreover, about this time, I became a member of a

private select Literary Society (alluded to at page 97 of the present

work) that “waited on Ladies and Gentlemen at their own houses.” Our

Minerva, allegorically speaking, was a motley personage, in blue

stockings, a flounced gown, Quaker cap, and kerchief, French flowers,

and a man’s hat. She held a fan in one hand, and a blowpipe in the

other. Her votaries were of both sexes, old and young, married and

single, assenters, dissenters, High Church, Low Church, No Church;

Doctors in Physics, and Apothecaries in Metaphysics; dabblers in

Logic, Chemistry, Casuistry, Sophistry, Natural and unnatural History,

Phrenology, Geology, Conchology, Demonology; in short, all kinds of

Colledgy-Knowledgy-Ology, including “Cakeology,” and tea and coffee.

Like other Societies, we had our President--a sort of Speaker who

never spoke; at least within my experience he never unbosomed himself

of anything but a portentous shirt frill. According to the usual order

of the entertainment, there was--first, Tea and Small Talk; secondly,

an original Essay, which should have been followed, thirdly, by a

Discussion, or Great Talk; but nine times in ten, it chanced, or

rather mumchanced, that, between those who did not know what to think,

and others, who did not know how to deliver what they thought, there

ensued a dead silence, so “very dead indeed,” as Apollo Belvi says,

that it seemed buried into the bargain. To make this awkward pause

more awkward, some misgiving voice, between a whisper and a croak,

would stammer out some allusion to a Quaker’s Meeting, answered from

right to left by a running titter, the speaker having innocently, or

perhaps wilfully forgotten, that one or two friends in drab coats, and

as many in slate-coloured gowns, were sitting, thumb-twiddling, in the

circle. Not that the Friends contented themselves with playing _dumby_

at our discussions. They often spoke, and very characteristically,

to the matter in hand. For instance, their favourite doctrine of

non-resistance was once pushed--if Quakers ever push--a little “beyond

beyond.” By way of clencher, one fair, meek, sleek Quakeress, in dove

colour, gravely told a melodramatical story of a conscientious Friend,

who rather than lift even his little finger against a Foe, passively,

yea, lamblike, suffered himself to be butchered in bed by an assassin,

and died consistently, as he thought, with Fox principles, very like a

Goose. As regards my own share in the Essays and Arguments, it misgives

me that they no more satisfied our decidedly serious members, than

they now propitiate Mr. Rae Wilson. At least, one Society night, in

escorting a female Fellow towards her home, she suddenly stopped me,

taking advantage perhaps of the awful locality, and its associations,

just in front of our chief criminal prison, and looking earnestly in my

face, by the light of a Newgate lamp, inquired somewhat abruptly, “Mr.

Hood! are you not an Infidel[5]?”

In the mean time, whilst thus playing at Literature, an event was

ripening which was to introduce me to Authorship in earnest, and make

the Muse, with whom I had only flirted, my companion for life. It

had often occurred to me that a striking, romantical, necromantical,

metaphysical, melodramatical, Germanish story, might be composed, the

interest of which should turn on the mysterious influence of the fate

of A over the destiny of B, the said parties having no more natural

or apparent connexion with each other than Tenterden Steeple and the

Goodwin Sands. An instance of this occult contingency occurred in my

own case; for I did not even know by sight the unfortunate gentleman

on whose untimely exit depended my entrance on the literary stage.

In the beginning of the year 1821, a memorable duel, originating in

a pen-and-ink quarrel, took place at Chalk Farm, and terminated in

the death of Mr. John Scott, the able Editor of the London Magazine.

The melancholy result excited great interest, in which I fully

participated, little dreaming that his catastrophe involved any

consequences of importance to myself. But on the loss of its conductor,

the Periodical passed into other hands. The new Proprietors were my

friends; they sent for me, and after some preliminaries, I was duly

installed as a sort of sub-Editor of the London Magazine.

It would be affectation to say, that engraving was resigned with

regret. There is always something mechanical about the art--moreover

it is as unwholesome as wearisome to sit copper-fastened to a board,

with a cantle scooped out to accommodate your stomach, if you have one,

painfully ruling, ruling, and still ruling lines straight or crooked,

by the long hundred to the square inch, at the doubly hazardous risk

which Wordsworth so deprecates, of “growing double.” So farewell

Woollett! Strange! Bartolozzi! I have said, my vanity did not rashly

plunge me into authorship; but no sooner was there a legitimate opening

than I jumped at it, à la Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily

behind the scenes.

To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at

last found its natural bias[6]. Not content with taking articles,

like candidates for holy orders--with rejecting articles like the

Belgians--I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles, which

were all inserted by the editor, of course, with the concurrence of his

deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction

of the press, were to me labours of love. I received a revise from Mr.

Baldwin’s Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave

him all his slips, and really thought that printers’ devils were not

so black as they are painted. But my top-gallant glory was in “our

Contributors!” How I used to look forward to Elia! and backward for

Hazlitt, and all round for Edward Herbert, and how I used to _look

up_ to Allan Cunningham! for at that time the London had a goodly

list of writers--a rare company. It is now defunct, and perhaps no

ex-periodical might so appropriately be apostrophized with the Irish

funereal question--“Arrah, honey, why did you die?” Had you not an

editor, and elegant prose writers, and beautiful poets, and broths

of boys for criticism and classics, and wits and humorists.--Elia,

Cary, Procter, Cunningham, Bowring, Barton, Hazlitt, Elton, Hartley

Coleridge, Talfourd, Soane, Horace Smith, Reynolds, Poole, Clare, and

Thomas Benyon, with a power besides. Hadn’t you Lions’ Heads with

Traditional Tales? Hadn’t you an Opium Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant,

and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man? Had not you a regular Drama, and

a Musical Report, and a Report of Agriculture, and an Obituary, and

a Price Current, and a current price, of only half-a-crown? Arrah,

why did you die? Why, somehow the contributors fell away--the concern

went into other hands--worst of all, a new editor tried to put the

Belles Lettres in Utilitarian envelopes; whereupon, the circulation

of the Miscellany, like that of poor Le Fevre, got slower, slower,

slower,--and slower still--and then stopped for ever! It was a sorry

scattering of those old Londoners! Some went out of the country: one

(Clare) went into it. Lamb retreated to Colebrooke. Mr. Cary presented

himself to the British Museum. Reynolds and Barry took to engrossing

when they should pen a stanza, and Thomas Benyon gave up literature.

It is with mingled feelings of pride, pleasure, and pain, that I revert

to those old times, when the writers I had long known and admired

in spirit were present to me in the flesh--when I had the delight

of listening to their wit and wisdom from their own lips, of gazing

on their faces, and grasping their right hands. Familiar figures

rise before me, familiar voices ring in my ears, and alas! amongst

them are shapes that I must never see, sounds that I can never hear,

again. Before my departure from England, I was one of the few who

saw the grave close over the remains of one whom to know as a friend

was to love as a relation. Never did a better soul go to a better

world! Never perhaps (giving the lie direct to the common imputation

of envy, malice, and hatred, amongst the brotherhood), never did

an author descend--to quote his favourite Sir T. Browne--into “the

land of the mole and the pismire” so hung with golden opinions, and

honoured and regretted with such sincere eulogies and elegies, by his

contemporaries. To HIM, the first of these, my reminiscences,

is eminently due, for I lost in him not only a dear and kind friend,

but an invaluable critic; one whom, were such literary adoptions in

modern use, I might well name, as Cotton called Walton, my “father.” To

borrow the earnest language of old Jean Bertaut, as Englished by Mr.

Cary--

“Thou, chiefly, noble spirit, for whose loss

Just grief and mourning all our hearts engross,

Who seeing me devoted to the Nine,

Didst hope some fruitage from those buds of mine;

Thou didst excite me after thee t’ascend

The Muses’ sacred hill; nor only lend

Example, but inspirit me to reach

The far-off summit by thy friendly speech.

* * * * *

May gracious Heaven, O honour of our age!

Make the conclusion answer thy presage,

Nor let it only for vain fortune stand,

_That I have seen thy visage--touch’d thy hand_!”

I was sitting one morning beside our Editor, busily correcting

proofs, when a visitor was announced, whose name, grumbled by a low

ventriloquial voice, like Tom Pipes calling from the hold through the

hatchway, did not resound distinctly on my tympanum. However, the door

opened, and in came a stranger,--a figure remarkable at a glance, with

a fine head, on a small spare body, supported by two almost immaterial

legs. He was clothed in sables, of a bygone fashion, but there was

something wanting, or something present about him, that certified he

was neither a divine, nor a physician, nor a schoolmaster: from a

certain neatness and sobriety in his dress, coupled with his sedate

bearing, he might have been taken, but that such a costume would be

anomalous, for a _Quaker_ in black. He looked still more like (what

he really was) a literary Modern Antique, a New-Old Author, a living

Anachronism, contemporary at once with Burton the Elder, and Colman

the Younger. Meanwhile he advanced with rather a peculiar gait, his

walk was plantigrade, and with a cheerful “How d’ye,” and one of the

blandest, sweetest smiles that ever brightened a manly countenance,

held out two fingers to the Editor. The two gentlemen in black soon

fell into discourse; and whilst they conferred, the Lavater principle

within me, set to work upon the interesting specimen thus presented to

its speculations. It was a striking intellectual face, full of wiry

lines, physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great character.

There was much earnestness about the brows, and a deal of speculation

in the eyes, which were brown and bright, and “quick in turning;” the

nose, a decided one, though of no established order; and there was

a handsome smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common

face--none of those _willow-pattern_ ones, which Nature turns out by

thousands at her potteries;--but more like a chance specimen of the

Chinese ware, one to the set--unique, antique, quaint. No one who had

once seen it, could pretend not to know it again. It was no face to

lend its countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of Errors.

You might have sworn to it piecemeal,--a separate affidavit for every

feature. In short his face was as original as his figure; his figure

as his character; his character as his writings; his writings the most

original of the age. After the literary business had been settled,

the Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding “we shall have a

hare--”

“And--and--and--and many Friends!”

The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the illusion,

were alike characteristic of the individual, whom his familiars will

perchance have recognised already as the delightful Essayist, the

capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and

large-hearted Charles Lamb! He was shy like myself with strangers,

so that, despite my yearnings, our first meeting scarcely amounted

to an introduction. We were both at dinner, amongst the hare’s many

friends, but our acquaintance got no farther, in spite of a desperate

attempt on my part to attract his notice. His complaint of the Decay

of Beggars presented another chance: I wrote on coarse paper, and

in ragged English, a letter of thanks to him as if from one of his

mendicant clients, but it produced no effect. I had given up all hope,

when one night, sitting sick and sad, in my bed-room, racked with the

rheumatism, the door was suddenly opened, the well-known quaint figure

in black walked in without any formality, and with a cheerful “Well,

boy, how are you?” and the bland sweet smile, extended the two fingers.

They were eagerly clutched of course, and from that hour we were firm

friends.

Thus characteristically commenced my intimacy with C. Lamb. He had

recently become my neighbour, and in a few days called again, to

ask me to tea, “to meet Wordsworth.” In spite of any idle jests to

the contrary, the name had a spell in it that drew me to Colebrooke

Cottage[7] with more alacrity[8] than consisted with prudence, stiff

joints and a North wind. But I was willing to run, at least hobble,

some risk, to be of a party in a parlour with the Author of Laodamia

and Hartleap Well. As for his Betty Foy-bles, he is not the first

man by many, who has met with a _simple_ fracture through riding his

theory-hack so far and so fast, that it broke down with him. If he has

now and then put on a nightcap, so have his own next-door mountains.

If he has babbled, sometimes, like an infant of _two_ years old, he

has also thought, and felt, and spoken, the beautiful fancies and

tender affections, and artless language, of the children who can say

“We are _seven_.” Along with food for babes, he has furnished strong

meat for men. So I put on my great coat and in a few minutes found

myself, for the first time at a door, that opened to me as frankly as

its master’s heart; for, without any preliminaries of hall, passage,

or parlour, one single step across the threshold brought me into the

sitting-room, and in sight of the domestic hearth. The room looked

brown with “old bokes,” and beside the fire sate Wordsworth, and his

sister, the hospitable Elia, and the excellent Bridget. As for the bard

of Rydal, his outward man did not, perhaps, disappoint one; but the

_palaver_, as the Indians say, fell short of my anticipations. Perhaps

my memory is in fault; ’twas many years ago, and, unlike the biographer

of Johnson, I have never made Bozziness my business. However, excepting

a discussion on the value of the promissory notes issued by our younger

poets, wherein Wordsworth named Shelley, and Lamb took John Keats for

choice, there was nothing of literary interest brought upon the carpet.

But a book man cannot always be bookish. A poet, even a Rydal one,

must be glad at times to descend from Saddleback, and feel his legs.

He cannot, like the Girl in the Fairy Tale, be always talking diamonds

and pearls. It is a “Vulgar Errour” to suppose that an author must

be always authoring, even with his feet on the fender. Nevertheless,

it is not an uncommon impression, that a writer sonnetises his wife,

sings odes to his children, talks essays and epigrams to his friends,

and reviews his servants. It was in something of this spirit that an

official gentleman to whom I mentioned the pleasant literary meetings

at Lamb’s, associated them instantly with his parochial mutual

instruction evening schools, and remarked, “Yes, yes, all very proper

and praiseworthy--of course, you go there _to improve your minds_.”

And very pleasant and improving, though not of set purpose, to both

mind and heart, were those extempore assemblies at Colebrooke Cottage.

It was wholesome for the soul but to breathe its atmosphere. It was

a House of Call for All Denominations. _Sides_ were lost in that

_circle_, Men of all parties postponed their partisanship, and met

as on a neutral ground. There were but two persons, whom L. avowedly

did not wish to encounter beneath his roof, and those two, merely on

account of private and family differences. For the rest, they left all

their hostilities at the door, with their sticks. This forbearance was

due to the truly tolerant spirit of the Host, which influenced all

within its sphere. Lamb, whilst he willingly lent a crutch to halting

Humility, took delight in tripping up the stilts of Pretension. Anybody

might trot out his Hobby; but he allowed nobody to ride the High Horse.

If it was a High German, one like those ridden by the Devil and Doctor

Faustus, he would chaunt

“Gëuty Gëuty

Is a great Beauty,”

till the rider moderated his gallop. He hated anything like

Cock-of-the-Walk-ism; and set his face and his wit against all

Ultraism, Transcendentalism, Sentimentalism, Conventional Mannerism,

and above all, Separatism. In opposition to the Exclusives, he was

emphatically an Inclusive.

As he once owned to me, he was fond of antagonising. Indeed in the

sketch of himself, prefacing the Last Essays of Elia--a sketch for its

truth to have delighted Mason the Self-Knowledge man--he says, “with

the Religionist I pass for a Free-thinker, while the other faction set

me down for a Bigot.” In fact, no politician ever laboured more to

preserve the Balance of Power in Europe, than he did to correct any

temporary preponderances. He was always _trimming_ in the nautical,

not in the political, sense. Thus in his “magnanimous letter,” as

Hazlitt called it, to High Church Southey, he professed himself a

Unitarian[9]. With a Catholic he would probably have called himself

a Jew; as amongst Quakers, by way of a set-off against their own

formality, he would indulge in a little extra levity. I well remember

his chuckling at having spirited on his correspondent Bernard Barton,

to commit some little enormities, such as addressing him as C. Lamb,

_Esquire_.

My visits at Lamb’s were shortly interrupted by a sojourn to

unrheumatize myself at Hastings; but in default of other intercourse

I received a letter in a well-known hand, quaint as the sentences it

conveyed.

“And what dost thou at the Priory? Cucullus non facit Monachum.

English me that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better.

“My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately.

But there hope sits day after day speculating upon traditionary

gudgeons. I think she has taken the fisheries. I now know the

reason why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles.

Yet is there no lack of spawn, for I wash my hands in fishets that

come through the pump every morning, thick as motelings--little

things that perish untimely, and never taste the brook. You do

not tell me of those romantic Land Bays that be as thou goest to

Lovers’ Seat, neither of that little Churchling in the midst of a

wood (in the opposite direction nine furlongs from the town), that

seems dropt by the Angel that was tired of carrying two packages;

marry, with the other he made shift to pick his flight to Loretto.

Inquire out and see my little Protestant Loretto. It stands apart

from trace of human habitation, yet hath it pulpit, reading-desk,

and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson Crusoe had

reared it to soothe himself with old church-going images. I forget

its Xtian name, and what She Saint was its gossip.

“You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street, a Baker, who has

the finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea counties;

sea-dragons, polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to

name the old Gentleman in black (not the Devil), that lodged with

him a week (he’ll remember) last July, and he will show courtesy.

He is by far the foremost of the Savans. His wife is the funniest

thwarting little animal! They are decidedly the Lions of green

Hastings. Well, I have made an end of my say;--my epistolary time

is gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not say as

agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am dwindled to notes and

letterets. But in good earnest I shall be most happy to hail thy

return to the waters of old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like inland

murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows.

“He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran,

To the rough ocean and red restless sands.

I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the

equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo, or quo pro _quid_, as

Tom Woodgate would correct me. My service to him.

“C. L.”

The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the “Lions;” but on

a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we

verified the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his

man, howbeit we tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery

or cakery in its window. The whole was a batch of _fancy_ bread; one of

those fictions which the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends.

The evening meetings at Colebrooke Cottage--where somebody, who _was_

somebody, or a literary friend, was sure to drop in--were the more

grateful to me, as the London Magazine was now in a rapid decline;

some of its crack contributors had left it off, and the gatherings of

the clan to eat, drink, and be merry, were few and far between. There

was indeed one Venison Feast whereat, I have heard, the scent lay more

than breast high, and the sport was of as rich a quality; but it was my

chance to be absent from the pack. At former dinners, however, I had

been a guest, and a sketch of one of them may serve to introduce some

of the principal characters of our “London in the Olden Time.”

On the right hand then of the Editor sits Elia, of the pleasant smile,

and the quick eyes--Procter said of them that “they looked as if they

could pick up pins and needles”--and a wit as quick as his eyes, and

sure, as Hazlitt described, to stammer out the best pun and the best

remark in the course of the evening. Next to him, shining verdantly out

from the grave-coloured suits of the literati, like a patch of turnips

amidst stubble and fallow, behold our Jack i’ the Green--John Clare!

In his bright, grass-coloured coat, and yellow waistcoat (there are

greenish stalks too, under the table), he looks a very Cowslip, and

blooms amongst us as Goldsmith must have done in his peach-blossom.

No wonder the door-keeper of the Soho Bazaar, seeing that _very

countrified_ suit, linked arm-in-arm with the Editorial sables, made a

boggle at admitting them into his repository, having seen, perchance,

such a made-up Peasant “playing at playing” at thimble-rig about the

Square. No wonder the gentleman’s gentleman, in the drab-coat and

sealing-wax smalls, at W---- ’s, was for cutting off our Green Man,

who was modestly the last in ascending the stairs as an interloper,

though he made amends afterwards by waiting almost exclusively on the

Peasant, perfectly convinced that he was some eccentric Notable of the

Corinthian order, disguised in Rustic. Little wonder either, that in

wending homewards on the same occasion through the Strand, the Peasant

and Elia, _Sylvanus et Urban_, linked comfortably together; there arose

the frequent cry of “Look at Tom and Jerry--there goes Tom and Jerry!”

for truly, Clare in his square-cut green coat, and Lamb in his black,

were not a little suggestive of Hawthorn and Logic, in the plates to

“Life in London.”

But to return to the table. Elia--much more of House Lamb than of

Grass Lamb--avowedly caring little or nothing for Pastoral; cottons,

nevertheless, very kindly to the Northamptonshire Poet, and still

more to his ale, pledging him again and again as “Clarissimus,”

and “Princely Clare,” and sometimes so lustily, as to make the

latter cast an anxious glance into his tankard. By his bright happy

look, the Helpstone Visitor is inwardly contrasting the unlettered

country company of Clod, and Hodge and Podge, with the delights of

“London” society Elia, and Barry, and Herbert, and Mr. Table Talk,

_cum multis_--_aliis_--i.e. a multiplicity of all. But besides the

tankard, the two “drouthie neebors” discuss Poetry in general[10], and

Montgomery’s “Common Lot” in particular, Lamb insisting on the beauty

of the tangental sharp turn at “O! she was fair!” thinking, mayhap, of

his own Alice W----, and Clare swearing “Dal” (a clarified d--n) “Dal!

if it isn’t like a Dead Man preaching out of his coffin!” Anon, the

Humorist begins to banter the Peasant on certain “Clare-obscurities” in

his own verses, originating in a contempt for the rules of Priscian,

whereupon the accused, thinking with Burns,

“What ser’es their grammars?

They’d better ta’en up spades and shools,

Or knappin hammers,”

vehemently denounces all Philology as nothing but a sort of man-trap

for authors, and heartily dals Lindley Murray for “inventing it!”

It must have been at such a time, that Hilton _conceived_ his clever

portrait of C----, when he was “C in alt.” He was hardy, rough, and

clumsy enough to look truly rustic--like an Ingram’s rustic chair.

There was a slightness about his frame, with a delicacy of features

and complexion, that associated him more with the Garden than with the

Field, and made him look the Peasant of a Ferme Ornée. In this respect

he was as much beneath the genuine stalwart bronzed Plough-Poet,

Burns, as above the Farmer’s Boy, whom I remember to have seen in my

childhood, when he lived in a miniature house, near the Shepherd and

Shepherdess, now the Eagle tavern, in the City Road, and manufactured

Æolian harps, and kept ducks. The Suffolk Giles had very little of

the agricultural in his appearance; he looked infinitely more like a

handicraftsman, _town-made_.

Poor Clare!--It would greatly please me to hear that he was happy and

well, and thriving; but the transplanting of Peasants and Farmers’ Boys

from the natural into an artificial soil, does not always conduce to

their happiness, or health, or ultimate well doing. I trust the true

Friends, who, with a natural hankering after poetry, because it is

forbidden them, have ventured to pluck and eat of the pastoral sorts,

as most dallying with the innocence of nature,--and who on that account

patronised Capel Lofft’s protégé--I do trust and hope they took off

whole editions of the Northamptonshire Bard. There was much about Clare

for a Quaker to like; he was tender-hearted, and averse to violence.

How he recoiled once, bodily-taking his chair along with him,--from a

young surgeon, or surgeon’s friend, who let drop, somewhat abruptly,

that he was just come “from seeing a child skinned!”--Clare, from his

look of horror, evidently thought that the poor infant, like Marsyas,

had been flayed _alive_! He was both gentle and simple. I have heard

that on his first visit to London, his publishers considerately sent

their porter to meet him at the inn; but when Thomas necessarily

inquired of the gentleman in green, “Are you Mr. Clare?” the latter,

willing to foil the traditionary tricks of London sharpers, replied to

the suspicious query with “a positive negative.”[11]

The Brobdignagian next to Clare, overtopping him by the whole head and

shoulders--a physical “Colossus of Literature,” the grenadier of our

corps--is Allan, not Allan Ramsay, “no, nor Barbara Allan neither,”

but Allan Cunningham,--“a credit,” quoth Sir Walter Scott (he might

have said a long credit) “to Caledonia.” He is often called “honest

Allan,” to distinguish him, perhaps, from one Allan-a-Dale, who was

apt to mistake his neighbours’ goods for his own--sometimes, between

ourselves, yelept the “C. of Solway,” in allusion to that favourite

“Allan Water,” the Solway Sea. There is something of the true moody

poetical weather observable in the barometer of his face, alternating

from Variable to Showery, from Stormy to Set Fair. At times he looks

gloomy and earnest and traditional--a little like a Covenanter--but he

suddenly clears up and laughs a hearty laugh that lifts him an inch or

two from his chair, for he rises at a joke when he sees one, like a

trout at a fly, and finishes with a smart rubbing of his ample palms.

He has store, too, of broad Scotch stories, and shrewd sayings; and

he writes--no, he wrote rare old-new or new-old ballads. Why not now?

Has his Pegasus, as he once related of his pony, run from under him?

Has the Mermaid of Galloway left no little ones? Is Bonnie Lady Ann

married, or May Morison dead? Thou vast formed for a poet, Allan, by

nature, and by stature too, according to Pope--

“To snatch a grace _beyond the reach_ of Art.”

And are there not Longman, or Tallboys, for thy Publishers? But alas!

we are fallen on evil days for Bards and Barding, and nine tailors

do more for a man than the Nine Muses. The only Lay likely to answer

now-a-days would be an Ode (with the proper testimonials) to the

Literary Fund!

The Reverend personage on the Editor’s right, with the studious brow,

deep-set eyes, and bald crown, is the mild and modest Cary--the same

who turned Dante into Miltonic English blank verse. He is sending

his plate towards the partridges, which he will relish and digest as

though they were the Birds of Aristophanes. He has his eye, too, on

the French made-dishes[12]. Pity, shame and pity, such a Translator

found no better translation in the Church! Is it possible that, in some

no-popery panic, it was thought by merely being Dragoman to Purgatory

he had _Romed_ from the true faith?

A very pleasant day we “Londoners” once spent at a Chiswick parsonage,

formerly tenanted by Hogarth, along with the hospitable Cary, and, as

Elia called them, his Caryatides![13] The last time my eyes rested on

the Interpreter (of the House Beautiful as well as of the Inferno), he

was on the Library steps of the British Museum. Ere this, I trust he

hath reached the tiptop--nay, hath perhaps attained, being a Literary

Worthy, even unto a Trusteeship, and had to buy, at Ellis’s, a few

yards of the Blue Ribbon of Literature!

Procter,--alias Barry Cornwall, formerly of the Marcian Colonnade, now

of some prosaical Inn of Court--the kindly Procter, one of the foremost

to welcome me into the Brotherhood, with a too-flattering Dedication

(another instance against the jealousy of authors), is my own left-hand

file. But what he says shall be kept as strictly confidential; for he

is whispering it into my Martineau ear. On my other side, when I turn

that way, I see a profile, a shadow of which ever confronts me on

opening my writing-desk,--a sketch taken from memory, the day after

seeing the original[14]. In opposition to the “extra man’s size” of

Cunningham, the party in question looks almost boyish, partly from

being in bulk somewhat beneath Monsieur Quetelet’s “Average Man,” but

still more so from a peculiar delicacy of complexion and smallness of

features, which look all the smaller from his wearing, in compliment,

probably, to the _Samsons_ of Teutonic Literature, his locks unshorn.

Nevertheless whoever looks again,

Sees more than marks the crowd of common men.

There is speculation in the eyes, a curl of the lip, and a general

character in the outline, that reminds one of some portraits of

Voltaire. And a Philosopher he is every inch. He looks, thinks,

writes, talks and walks, eats and drinks, and no doubt sleeps

philosophically--_i.e._ deliberately. There is nothing abrupt

about his motions,--he goes and comes calmly and quietly--like the

phantom in Hamlet, he is here--he is there--he is gone! So it is

with his discourse. He speaks slowly, clearly, and with very marked

emphasis--the tide of talk flows like Denham’s river, “strong without

rage, without overflowing, full.” When it was my frequent and agreeable

duty to call on Mr. De Quincey (being an uncommon name to remember,

the servant associated it, on the Memoria Technica principle, with a

sore throat and always pronounced it Quinsy), and I have found him at

home, quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of _Literature_, in

a storm,--flooding all the floor, the table and the chairs,--billows

of books tossing, tumbling, surging open,--on such occasions I have

willingly listened by the hour whilst the Philosopher, standing, with

his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking

than reading from a “handwriting on the wall.” Now and then he would

diverge, for a Scotch mile or two, to the right or left, till I was

tempted to inquire with Peregrine in John Bull (Colman’s not Hook’s),

“Do you never deviate?”--but he always came safely back to the point

where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence hunted his topic to

the end. But look!--we are in the small hours, and a change comes o’er

the spirit of that “old familiar face.” A faint hectic tint leaves

the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by

a growing shadow--signs of the waning influence of that Potent Drug

whose stupendous Pleasures and enormous Pains have been so eloquently

described by the English Opium Eater. Marry, I have one of his

Confessions with his own name and mark to it:--an apology for a certain

stain on his MS., the said stain being a large purplish ring,--“Within

that circle none durst drink but he,”--in fact the impression,

coloured, of “a tumbler of laudanum negus, warm, without sugar.”[15]

That smart active person opposite with a game-cock-looking head, and

the hair combed smooth, fighter fashion, over his forehead--with

one finger hooked round a glass of champagne, not that he requires

it to inspirit him, for his wit bubbles up of itself--is our Edward

Herbert, the Author of that true piece of Biography, the Life of Peter

Corcoran. He is “good with both hands,” like that Nonpareil Randall,

at a comic verse or a serious stanza--smart at a repartee--sharp at a

retort, and not averse to a bit of mischief. ’Twas he who gave the

runaway ring at Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. Generally, his jests, set

off by a happy manner, are only ticklesome, but now and then they are

sharp-flavoured,--like the sharpness of the pine-apple. Would I could

give a sample. Alas! What a pity it is that so many good things uttered

by Poets, and Wits, and Humorists, at chance times--and they are always

the best and brightest, like sparks struck out by Pegasus’ own hoof,

in a curvet amongst the flints--should be daily and hourly lost to the

world for want of a recorder! But in this Century of Inventions, when

a self-acting drawing-paper has been discovered for copying visible

objects, who knows but that a future Niepce, or Daguerre, or Herschel,

or Fox Talbot, may find out some sort of Boswellish writing-paper to

repeat whatever it hears!

There are other Contributors--poor Hazlitt for instance--whose shades

rise up before me: but I never met with them at the Entertainments just

described. Shall we ever meet anywhere again? Alas! some are dead; and

the rest dispersed; and the days of _Social_ Clubs are over and gone,

when the Professors and Patrons of Literature assembled round the same

steaming bowl, and Johnson, always best out of print, exclaimed, “Lads!

who’s for Poonch!”

* * * * *

Amongst other notable men who came to Colebrooke Cottage, I had twice

the good fortune of meeting with S. T. Coleridge. The first time

he came from Highgate with Mrs. Gilman, to dine with “Charles and

Mary.” What a contrast to Lamb was the full-bodied Poet, with his

waving white hair, and his face round, ruddy, and unfurrowed as a

holy Friar’s! Apropos to which face he gave us a humorous description

of an unfinished portrait, that served him for a sort of barometer,

to indicate the state of his popularity. So sure as his name made

any temporary stir, out came the canvas on the easel, and a request

from the artist for another sitting: down sank the Original in the

public notice, and back went the copy into a corner, till some fresh

publication or accident again brought forward the Poet; and then forth

came the picture for a few more touches. I sincerely hope it has been

finished! What a benign, smiling face it was! What a comfortable,

respectable figure! What a model, methought, as I watched and admired

the “Old Man eloquent,” for a Christian bishop! But he was, perhaps,

scarcely orthodox enough to be trusted with a mitre. At least, some of

his voluntaries would have frightened a common everyday congregation

from their propriety. Amongst other matters of discourse, he came to

speak of the strange notions some literal-minded persons form of the

joys of Heaven; joys they associated with mere temporal things, in

which, for his own part, finding no delight in this world, he could

find no bliss hereafter, without a change in his nature, tantamount to

the loss of his personal identity. For instance, he said, there are

persons who place the whole angelical beatitude in the possession of a

pair of wings to flap about with, like “_a sort of celestial poultry_.”

After dinner he got up, and began pacing to and fro, with his hands

behind his back, talking and walking, as Lamb laughingly hinted, as

if qualifying for an itinerant preacher; now fetching a simile from

Loddiges’ garden, at Hackney; and then flying off for an illustration

to the sugar-making in Jamaica. With his fine, flowing voice, it was

glorious music, of the “never-ending, still-beginning” kind; and you

did not wish it to end. It was rare flying, as in the Nassau Balloon;

you knew not whither, nor did you care. Like his own bright-eyed

Marinere, he had a spell in his voice that would not let you go. To

attempt to describe my own feeling afterward, I had been carried,

spiralling, up to heaven by a whirlwind intertwisted with sunbeams,

giddy and dazzled, but not displeased, and had then been rained down

again with a shower of mundane stocks and stones that battered out of

me all recollection of what I had heard, and what I had seen!