CHAPTER XV.

THE MOTHER AND SON.--VIRTUE SHOULD BE THE SOVEREIGN OF THE FEELINGS, NOT

THEIR DESTROYER.

I TOOK the first opportunity to escape from the good company who were so

divided in opinion as to my mental accomplishments, and repaired to

my mother; for whom, despite of her evenness of disposition, verging

towards insensibility, I felt a powerful and ineffaceable affection.

Indeed, if purity of life, rectitude of intentions, and fervour of piety

can win love, none ever deserved it more than she. It was a pity that,

with such admirable qualities, she had not more diligently cultivated

her affections. The seed was not wanting; but it had been neglected.

Originally intended for the veil, she had been taught, early in life,

that much feeling was synonymous with much sin; and she had so long and

so carefully repressed in her heart every attempt of the forbidden fruit

to put forth a single blossom, that the soil seemed at last to have

become incapable of bearing it. If, in one corner of this barren but

sacred spot, some green and tender verdure of affection did exist,

it was, with a partial and petty reserve for my twin-brother, kept

exclusive, and consecrated to Aubrey. His congenial habits of pious

silence and rigid devotion; his softness of temper; his utter freedom

from all boyish excesses, joined to his almost angelic beauty,--a

quality which, in no female heart, is ever without its value,--were

exactly calculated to attract her sympathy, and work themselves into her

love. Gerald was also regular in his habits, attentive to devotion,

and had, from an early period, been high in the favour of her spiritual

director. Gerald, too, if he had not the delicate and dream-like beauty

of Aubrey, possessed attractions of a more masculine and decided order;

and for Gerald, therefore, the Countess gave the little of love that

she could spare from Aubrey. To me she manifested the most utter

indifference. My difficult and fastidious temper; my sarcastic turn of

mind; my violent and headstrong passions; my daring, reckless and, when

roused, almost ferocious nature,--all, especially, revolted the even

and polished and quiescent character of my maternal parent. The little

extravagances of my childhood seemed to her pure and inexperienced mind

the crimes of a heart naturally distorted and evil; my jesting vein,

which, though it never, even in the wantonness of youth, attacked the

substances of good, seldom respected its semblances and its forms, she

considered as the effusions of malignity; and even the bursts of love,

kindness, and benevolence, which were by no means unfrequent in my wild

and motley character, were so foreign to her stillness of temperament

that they only revolted her by their violence, instead of affecting her

by their warmth.

Nor did she like me the better for the mutual understanding between my

uncle and myself. On the contrary, shocked by the idle and gay turn

of the knight’s conversation, the frivolities of his mind, and his

heretical disregard for the forms of the religious sect which she so

zealously espoused, she was utterly insensible to the points which

redeemed and ennobled his sterling and generous character; utterly

obtuse to his warmth of heart,--his overflowing kindness of

disposition,--his charity,--his high honour,--his justice of principle,

that nothing save benevolence could warp,--and the shrewd, penetrating

sense, which, though often clouded by foibles and humorous eccentricity,

still made the stratum of his intellectual composition. Nevertheless,

despite her prepossessions against us both, there was in her temper

something so gentle, meek, and unupbraiding, that even the sense of

injustice lost its sting, and one could not help loving the softness of

her character, while one was most chilled by its frigidity. Anger, hope,

fear, the faintest breath or sign of passion, never seemed to stir the

breezeless languor of her feelings; and quiet was so inseparable from

her image that I have almost thought, like that people described by

Herodotus, her very sleep could never be disturbed by dreams.

Yes! how fondly, how tenderly I loved her! What tears, secret but deep,

bitter but unreproaching, have I retired to shed, when I caught her

cold and unaffectionate glance! How (unnoticed and uncared for) have I

watched and prayed and wept without her door when a transitory sickness

or suffering detained her within; and how, when stretched myself upon

the feverish bed to which my early weakness of frame often condemned

me,--how have I counted the moments to her punctilious and brief visit,

and started as I caught her footstep, and felt my heart leap within me

as she approached! and then, as I heard her cold tone and looked

upon her unmoved face, how bitterly have I turned away with all that

repressed and crushed affection which was construed into sullenness

or disrespect! O mighty and enduring force of early associations, that

almost seems, in its unconquerable strength, to partake of an innate

prepossession, that binds the son to the mother who concealed him in her

womb and purchased life for him with the travail of death?--fountain of

filial love, which coldness cannot freeze, nor injustice embitter, nor

pride divert into fresh channels, nor time, and the hot suns of our

toiling manhood, exhaust,--even at this moment, how livingly do you gush

upon my heart, and water with your divine waves the memories that yet

flourish amidst the sterility of years?

I approached the apartments appropriated to my mother: I knocked at

her door; one of her women admitted me. The Countess was sitting on a

high-backed chair, curiously adorned with tapestry. Her feet, which

were remarkable for their beauty, were upon a velvet cushion; three

hand-maids stood round her, and she herself was busily employed in a

piece of delicate embroidery, an art in which she eminently excelled.

“The Count, Madam!” said the woman who had admitted me, placing a chair

beside my mother, and then retiring to join her sister maidens.

“Good day to you, my son,” said the Countess, lifting her eyes for a

moment, and then dropping them again upon her work.

“I have come to seek you, dearest mother, as I know not, if, among the

crowd of guests and amusements which surround us, I shall enjoy another

opportunity of having a private conversation with you: will it please

you to dismiss your women?”

My mother again lifted up her eyes. “And why, my son? surely there

_can_ be nothing between us which requires their absence; what is your

reason?”

“I leave you to-morrow, Madam: is it strange that a son should wish to

see his mother alone before his departure?”

“By no means, Morton; but your absence will not be very long, will it?”

“Forgive my importunity, dear Mother; but _will_ you dismiss your

attendants?”

“If you wish it, certainly; but I dislike feeling alone, especially in

these large rooms; nor did I think being unattended quite consistent

with our rank: however, I never contradict you, my son,” and the

Countess directed her women to wait in the anteroom.

“Well, Morton, what is your wish?”

“Only to bid you farewell, and to ask if London contains nothing which

you will commission me to obtain for you?”

The Countess again raised her eyes from her work. “I am greatly obliged

to you, my dear son; this is a very delicate attention on your part. I

am informed that stomachers are worn a thought less pointed than they

were. I care not, you well know, for such vanities; but respect for the

memory of your illustrious father renders me desirous to retain a

seemly appearance to the world, and my women shall give you written

instructions thereon to Madame Tourville; she lives in St. James’s

Street, and is the only person to be employed in these matters. She is

a woman who has known misfortune, and appreciates the sorrowful and

subdued tastes of those whom an exalted station has not preserved from

like afflictions. So you go to-morrow: will you get me the scissors?

They are on the ivory table yonder. When do you return?”

“Perhaps never!” said I, abruptly.

“Never, Morton; how singular--why?”

“I may join the army, and be killed.”

“I hope not. Dear, how cold it is: will you shut the window? pray

forgive my troubling you, but you _would_ send away the women. Join the

army, you say? It is a very dangerous profession; your poor father might

be alive now but for having embraced it; nevertheless, in a righteous

cause, under the Lord of Hosts, there is great glory to be obtained

beneath its banners. Alas, however, for its private evils! alas, for the

orphan and the widow! You will be sure, my dear son, to give the note

to Madame Tourville herself? Her assistants have not her knowledge of my

misfortunes, nor indeed of my exact proportions; and at my age, and in

my desolate state, I would fain be decorous in these things, and that

reminds me of dinner. Have you aught else to say, Morton?”

“Yes!” said I, suppressing my emotions, “yes, Mother! do bestow on me

one warm wish, one kind word, before we part: see,--I kneel for your

blessing,--will you not give it me?”

“Bless you, my child,--bless you! look you now; I have dropped my

needle!”

I rose hastily, bowed profoundly (my mother returned the courtesy with

the grace peculiar to herself), and withdrew. I hurried into the

great drawing-room, found Lady Needleham alone, rushed out in despair,

encountered the Lady Hasselton, and coquetted with her the rest of the

evening. Vain hope! to forget one’s real feelings by pretending those

one never felt!

The next morning, then, after suitable adieux to all (Gerald excepted)

whom I left behind; after some tears too from my uncle, which, had it

not been for the presence of the Lady Hasselton, I could have returned

with interest; and after a long caress to his dog Ponto, which now, in

parting with that dear old man, seemed to me as dog never seemed before,

I hurried into the Beauty’s carriage, bade farewell forever to the

Rubicon of Life, and commenced my career of manhood and citizenship by

learning, under the tuition of the prettiest coquette of her time, the

dignified duties of a Court Gallant and a Town Beau.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

THE HERO IN LONDON.--PLEASURE IS OFTEN THE SHORTEST, AS IT IS

THE EARLIEST ROAD TO WISDOM, AND WE MAY SAY OF THE WORLD WHAT

ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND-BUSY SAYS OF THE PIG-BOOTH, “WE ESCAPE SO MUCH OF THE

OTHER VANITIES BY OUR EARLY ENTERING.”

IT had, when I first went to town, just become the fashion for young men

of fortune to keep house, and to give their bachelor establishments the

importance hitherto reserved for the household of a Benedict.

Let the reader figure to himself a suite of apartments, magnificently

furnished, in the vicinity of the court. An anteroom is crowded with

divers persons, all messengers in the various negotiations of pleasure.

There, a French valet,--that inestimable valet, Jean Desmarais,--sitting

over a small fire, was watching the operations of a coffee-pot, and

conversing, in a mutilated attempt at the language of our nation, though

with the enviable fluency of his own, with the various loiterers who

were beguiling the hours they were obliged to wait for an audience of

the master himself, by laughing at the master’s Gallic representative.

There stood a tailor with his books of patterns just imported from

Paris,--that modern Prometheus, who makes a man what he is! Next to him

a tall, gaunt fellow, in a coat covered with tarnished lace, a night-cap

wig, and a large whip in his hands, comes to vouch for the pedigree and

excellence of the three horses he intends to dispose of, out of pure

love and amity for the buyer. By the window stood a thin starveling

poet, who, like the grammarian of Cos, might have put lead in his

pockets to prevent being blown away, had he not, with a more paternal

precaution, put so much in his works that he had left none to spare.

Excellent trick of the times, when ten guineas can purchase every virtue

under the sun, and when an author thinks to vindicate the sins of his

book by proving the admirable qualities of the paragon to whom it is

dedicated.* There with an air of supercilious contempt upon his smooth

cheeks, a page, in purple and silver, sat upon the table, swinging

his legs to and fro, and big with all the reflected importance of

a _billet-doux_. There stood the pert haberdasher, with his box of

silver-fringed gloves, and lace which Diana might have worn. At that

time there was indeed no enemy to female chastity like the former

article of man-millinery: the delicate whiteness of the glove, the

starry splendour of the fringe, were irresistible, and the fair Adorna,

in poor Lee’s tragedy of “Caesar Borgia,” is far from the only lady who

has been killed by a pair of gloves.

* Thank Heaven, for the honour of literature, _nous avons change tout

cela!_--ED.

Next to the haberdasher, dingy and dull of aspect, a book-hunter bent

beneath the load of old works gathered from stall and shed, and about to

be re-sold according to the price exacted from all literary gallants who

affect to unite the fine gentleman with the profound scholar. A little

girl, whose brazen face and voluble tongue betrayed the growth of her

intellectual faculties, leaned against the wainscot, and repeated, in

the anteroom, the tart repartees which her mistress (the most celebrated

actress of the day) uttered on the stage; while a stout, sturdy,

bull-headed gentleman, in a gray surtout and a black wig, mingled

with the various voices of the motley group the gentle phrases of

Hockley-in-the-Hole, from which place of polite merriment he came

charged with a message of invitation. While such were the inmates of the

anteroom, what picture shall we draw of the _salon_ and its occupant?

A table was covered with books, a couple of fencing foils, a woman’s

mask, and a profusion of letters; a scarlet cloak, richly laced, hung

over, trailing on the ground. Upon a slab of marble lay a hat, looped

with diamonds, a sword, and a lady’s lute. Extended upon a sofa, loosely

robed in a dressing-gown of black velvet, his shirt collar unbuttoned,

his stockings ungartered, his own hair (undressed and released for a

brief interval from the false locks universally worn) waving from his

forehead in short yet dishevelled curls, his whole appearance stamped

with the morning negligence which usually follows midnight dissipation,

lay a young man of about nineteen years. His features were neither

handsome nor ill-favoured, and his stature was small, slight, and

somewhat insignificant, but not, perhaps, ill-formed either for active

enterprise or for muscular effort. Such, reader, is the picture of the

young prodigal who occupied the apartments I have described, and such

(though somewhat flattered by partiality) is a portrait of Morton

Devereux, six months after his arrival in town.

The door was suddenly thrown open with that unhesitating rudeness by

which our friends think it necessary to signify the extent of their

familiarity; and a young man of about eight-and-twenty, richly dressed,

and of a countenance in which a dissipated _nonchalance_ and an

aristocratic _hauteur_ seemed to struggle for mastery, abruptly entered.

“What! ho, my noble royster,” cried he, flinging himself upon a

chair, “still suffering from St. John’s Burgundy! Fie, fie, upon your

apprenticeship!--why, before I had served half your time, I could take

my three bottles as easily as the sea took the good ship ‘Revolution,’

swallow them down with a gulp, and never show the least sign of them the

next morning!”

“I really believe you, most magnanimous Tarleton. Providence gives to

each of its creatures different favours,--to one wit, to the other a

capacity for drinking. A thousand pities that they are never united!”

“So bitter, Count!--ah, what will ever cure you of sarcasm?”

“A wise man by conversation, or fools by satiety.”

“Well, I dare say that is witty enough, but I never admire fine

things of a morning. I like letting my faculties live till night in a

deshabille; let us talk easily and sillily of the affairs of the day.

_Imprimis_, will you stroll to the New Exchange? There is a black eye

there that measures out ribbons, and my green ones long to flirt with

it.”

“With all my heart--and in return you shall accompany me to Master

Powell’s puppet-show.”

“You speak as wisely as Solomon himself in the puppet-show. I own that

I love that sight: ‘tis a pleasure to the littleness of human nature

to see great things abased by mimicry; kings moved by bobbins, and the

pomps of the earth personated by Punch.”

“But how do you like sharing the mirth of the groundlings, the filthy

plebeians, and letting them see how petty are those distinctions which

you value so highly, by showing them how heartily you can laugh at such

distinctions yourself? Allow, my superb Coriolanus, that one purchases

pride by the loss of consistency.”

“Ah, Devereux, you poison my enjoyment by the mere word ‘plebeian’! Oh,

what a beastly thing is a common person!--a shape of the trodden clay

without any alloy; a compound of dirty clothes, bacon breaths, villanous

smells, beggarly cowardice, and cattish ferocity. Pah, Devereux! rub

civet on the very thought!”

“Yet they will laugh to-day at the same things you will, and

consequently there would be a most flattering congeniality between you.

Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow; whether raised at a

puppet-show, a funeral, or a battle,--is your grandest of levellers. The

man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.”

“Oracular, as usual, Count,--but, hark, the clock gives tongue. One, by

the Lord!--will you not dress?”

And I rose and dressed. We passed through the anteroom; my attendant

assistants in the art of wasting money drew up in a row.

“Pardon me, gentlemen,” said I (“gentlemen, indeed!” cried Tarleton),

“for keeping you so long. Mr. Snivelship, your waistcoats are exquisite:

favour me by conversing with my valet on the width of the lace for my

liveries; he has my instructions. Mr. Jockelton, your horses shall be

tried to-morrow at one. Ay, Mr. Rymer, I beg you a thousand pardons;

I beseech you to forgive the ignorance of my rascals in suffering a

gentleman of your merit to remain for a moment unattended to. I have

read your ode; it is splendid,--the ease of Horace with the fire of

Pindar; your Pegasus never touches the earth, and yet in his wildest

excesses you curb him with equal grace and facility: I object, sir, only

to your dedication; it is too flattering.”

“By no means, my Lord Count, it fits you to a hair.”

“Pardon me,” interrupted I, “and allow me to transfer the honour to Lord

Halifax; he loves men of merit; he loves also their dedications. I will

mention it to him to-morrow: everything you say of me will suit him

exactly. You will oblige me with a copy of your poem directly it is

printed, and suffer me to pay your bookseller for it now, and through

your friendly mediation; adieu!”

“Oh, Count, this is too generous.”

“A letter for me, my pretty page? Ah! tell her ladyship I shall wait

upon her commands at Powell’s: time will move with a tortoise speed till

I kiss her hands. Mr. Fribbleden, your gloves would fit the giants at

Guildhall: my valet will furnish you with my exact size; you will see

to the legitimate breadth of the fringe. My little beauty, you are from

Mrs. Bracegirdle: the play _shall_ succeed; I have taken seven boxes;

Mr. St. John promised his influence. Say, therefore, my Hebe, that

the thing is certain, and let me kiss thee: thou hast dew on thy

lip already. Mr. Thumpen, you are a fine fellow, and deserve to be

encouraged; I will see that the next time your head is broken it shall

be broken fairly: but I will not patronize the bear; consider that

peremptory. What, Mr. Bookworm, again! I hope you have succeeded better

this time: the old songs had an autumn fit upon them, and had lost

the best part of their _leaves_; and Plato had mortgaged one half his

‘Republic,’ to pay, I suppose, the exorbitant sum you thought proper to

set upon the other. As for Diogenes Laertius, and his philosophers--”

“Pish!” interrupted Tarleton; “are you going, by your theoretical

treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical part of it, and

prate upon learning while I am supporting myself with patience?”

“Pardon me! Mr. Bookworm; you will deposit your load, and visit me

to-morrow at an earlier hour. And now, Tarleton, I am at your service.”

CHAPTER II.

GAY SCENES AND CONVERSATIONS.--THE NEW EXCHANGE AND THE

PUPPET-SHOW.--THE ACTOR, THE SEXTON, AND THE BEAUTY.

“WELL, Tarleton,” said I, looking round that mart of millinery and

love-making, which, so celebrated in the reign of Charles II., still

preserved the shadow of its old renown in that of Anne,--“well, here

we are upon the classical ground so often commemorated in the comedies

which our chaste grandmothers thronged to see. Here we can make

appointments, while we profess to buy gloves, and should our mistress

tarry too long, beguile our impatience by a flirtation with her

milliner. Is there not a breathing air of gayety about the place?--does

it not still smack of the Ethereges and Sedleys?”

“Right,” said Tarleton, leaning over a counter and amorously eying the

pretty coquette to whom it belonged; while, with the coxcombry then in

fashion, he sprinkled the long curls that touched his shoulders with

a fragrant shower from a bottle of jessamine water upon the

counter,--“right; saw you ever such an eye? Have you snuff of the

true scent, my beauty--foh! this is for the nostril of a Welsh

parson--choleric and hot, my beauty,--pulverized horse-radish,--why, it

would make a nose of the coldest constitution imaginable sneeze like a

washed school-boy on a Saturday night.--Ah, this is better, my princess:

there is some courtesy in this snuff; it flatters the brain like a

poet’s dedication. Right, Devereux, right, there is something infectious

in the atmosphere; one catches good humour as easily as if it were

cold. Shall we stroll on?--_my_ Clelia is on the other side of the

Exchange.--You were speaking of the play-writers: what a pity that our

Ethereges and Wycherleys should be so frank in their gallantry that the

prudish public already begins to look shy on them. They have a world of

wit!”

“Ay,” said I; “and, as my good uncle would say, a world of knowledge of

human nature, namely, of the worst part of it. But they are worse than

merely licentious: they are positively villanous; pregnant with the most

redemptionless _scoundrelism_,--cheating, lying, thieving, and fraud;

their humour debauches the whole moral system; they are like the

Sardinian herb,--they make you laugh, it is true, but they poison you in

the act. But who comes here?”

“Oh, honest Coll!--Ah, Cibber, how goes it with you?”

The person thus addressed was a man of about the middle age, very

grotesquely attired, and with a periwig preposterously long. His

countenance (which, in its features, was rather comely) was stamped with

an odd mixture of liveliness, impudence, and a coarse yet not unjoyous

spirit of reckless debauchery. He approached us with a saunter, and

saluted Tarleton with an air servile enough, in spite of an affected

familiarity.

“What think you,” resumed my companion, “we were conversing upon?”

“Why, indeed, Mr. Tarleton,” answered Cibber, bowing very low, “unless

it were the exquisite fashion of your waistcoat, or your success with my

Lady Duchess, I know not what to guess.”

“Pooh, man,” said Tarleton, haughtily, “none of your compliments;”

and then added in a milder tone, “No, Colley, we were abusing the

immoralities that existed on the stage until thou, by the light of thy

virtuous example, didst undertake to reform it.”

“Why,” rejoined Cibber, with an air of mock sanctity, “Heaven be

praised, I have pulled out some of the weeds from our theatrical

_parterre_--”

“Hear you that, Count? Does he not look a pretty fellow for a censor?”

“Surely,” said Cibber, “ever since Dicky Steele has set up for a saint,

and assumed the methodistical twang, some hopes of conversion may be

left even for such reprobates as myself. Where, may I ask, will Mr.

Tarleton drink to-night?”

“Not with thee, Coll. The Saturnalia don’t happen every day. Rid us

now of thy company: but stop, I will do thee a pleasure; know you this

gentleman?”

“I have not that extreme honour.”

“Know a Count, then! Count Devereux, demean yourself by sometimes

acknowledging Colley Cibber, a rare fellow at a song, a bottle, and a

message to an actress; a lively rascal enough, but without the goodness

to be loved, or the independence to be respected.”

“Mr. Cibber,” said I, rather hurt at Tarleton’s speech, though the

object of it seemed to hear this description with the most unruffled

composure--“Mr. Cibber, I am happy and proud of an introduction to the

author of the ‘Careless Husband.’ Here is my address; oblige me with a

visit at your leisure.”

“How could you be so galling to the poor devil?” said I, when Cibber,

with a profusion of bows and compliments, had left us to ourselves.

“Ah, hang him,--a low fellow, who pins all his happiness to the skirts

of the quality, is proud of being despised, and that which would

excruciate the vanity of others only flatters his. And now for my

Clelia.”

After my companion had amused himself with a brief flirtation with

a young lady who affected a most edifying demureness, we left the

Exchange, and repaired to the puppet-show.

On entering the Piazza, in which, as I am writing for the next century,

it may be necessary to say that Punch held his court, we saw a tall,

thin fellow, loitering under the columns, and exhibiting a countenance

of the most ludicrous discontent. There was an insolent arrogance about

Tarleton’s good-nature, which always led him to consult the whim of the

moment at the expense of every other consideration, especially if the

whim referred to a member of the _canaille_ whom my aristocratic friend

esteemed as a base part of the exclusive and despotic property of

gentlemen.

“Egad, Devereux,” said he, “do you see that fellow? he has the audacity

to affect spleen. Faith, I thought melancholy was the distinguishing

patent of nobility: we will smoke him.” And advancing towards the man

of gloom, Tarleton touched him with the end of his cane. The man started

and turned round. “Pray, sirrah,” said Tarleton, coldly, “pray who the

devil are you that you presume to look discontented?”

“Why, Sir,” said the man, good-humouredly enough, “I have some right to

be angry.”

“I doubt it, my friend,” said Tarleton. “What is your complaint? a rise

in the price of tripe, or a drinking wife? Those, I take it, are the

sole misfortunes incidental to your condition.”

“If that be the case,” said I, observing a cloud on our new friend’s

brow, “shall we heal thy sufferings? Tell us thy complaints, and we will

prescribe thee a silver specific; there is a sample of our skill.”

“Thank you humbly, gentlemen,” said the man, pocketing the money, and

clearing his countenance; “and seriously, mine is an uncommonly hard

case. I was, till within the last few weeks, the under-sexton of St.

Paul’s, Covent Garden, and my duty was that of ringing the bells

for daily prayers but a man of Belial came hitherwards, set up a

puppet-show, and, timing the hours of his exhibition with a wicked

sagacity, made the bell I rang for church serve as a summons to

Punch,--so, gentlemen, that whenever your humble servant began to pull

for the Lord, his perverted congregation began to flock to the devil;

and, instead of being an instrument for saving souls, I was made the

innocent means of destroying them. Oh, gentlemen, it was a shocking

thing to tug away at the rope till the sweat ran down one, for four

shillings a week; and to see all the time that one was thinning one’s

own congregation and emptying one’s own pockets!”

“It was indeed a lamentable dilemma; and what did you, Mr. Sexton?”

“Do, Sir? why, I could not stifle my conscience, and I left my place.

Ever since then, Sir, I have stationed myself in the Piazza, to warn my

poor, deluded fellow-creatures of their error, and to assure them that

when the bell of St. Paul’s rings, it rings for prayers, and not for

puppet-shows, and--Lord help us, there it goes at this very moment;

and look, look, gentlemen, how the wigs and hoods are crowding to the

motion* instead of the minister.”

* An antiquated word in use for puppet-shows.

“Ha! ha! ha!” cried Tarleton, “Mr. Powell is not the first man who has

wrested things holy to serve a carnal purpose, and made use of church

bells in order to ring money to the wide pouch of the church’s enemies.

Hark ye, my friend, follow my advice, and turn preacher yourself; mount

a cart opposite to the motion, and I’ll wager a trifle that the crowd

forsake the theatrical mountebank in favour of the religious one; for

the more sacred the thing played upon, the more certain is the game.”

“Body of me, gentlemen,” cried the ex-sexton, “I’ll follow your advice.”

“Do so, man, and never presume to look doleful again; leave dulness to

your superiors.” *

* See “Spectator,” No. 14, for a letter from this unfortunate

under-sexton.

And with this advice, and an additional compensation for his confidence,

we left the innocent assistant of Mr. Powell, and marched into the

puppet-show, by the sound of the very bells the perversion of which the

good sexton had so pathetically lamented.

The first person I saw at the show, and indeed the express person I came

to see, was the Lady Hasselton. Tarleton and myself separated for the

present, and I repaired to the coquette. “Angels of grace!” said I,

approaching; “and, by the by, before I proceed another word, observe,

Lady Hasselton, how appropriate the exclamation is to _you_! Angels of

_grace_! why, you have moved all your patches--one--two--three--six--

eight--as I am a gentleman, from the left side of your cheek to the

right! What is the reason of so sudden an emigration?”

“I have changed my politics, Count,* that is all, and have resolved

to lose no time in proclaiming the change. But is it true that you are

going to be married?”

* Whig ladies patched on one side of the cheek, Tories on the other.

“Married! Heaven forbid! which of my enemies spread so cruel a report?”

“Oh, the report is universal!” and the Lady Hasselton flirted her fan

with the most flattering violence.

“It is false, nevertheless; I cannot afford to buy a wife at present,

for, thanks to jointures and pin-money, these things are all matters of

commerce; and (see how closely civilized life resembles the savage!) the

English, like the Tartar gentleman, obtains his wife only by purchase!

But who is the bride?”

“The Duke of Newcastle’s rich daughter, Lady Henrietta Pelham.”

“What, Harley’s object of ambition!* Faith, Madam, the report is not so

cruel as I thought for!”

* Lord Bolingbroke tells us that it was the main end of Harley’s

administration to marry his son to this lady. Thus is the fate of

nations a bundle made up of a thousand little private schemes.

“Oh, you fop!--but is it not true?”

“By my honour, I fear not; my rivals are too numerous and too powerful.

Look now, yonder! how they already flock around the illustrious heiress;

note those smiles and simpers. Is it not pretty to see those very fine

gentlemen imitating bumpkins at a fair, and grinning their best _for

a gold ring_! But you need not fear me, Lady Hasselton, my love cannot

wander if it would. In the quaint thought of Sidney,* love having once

flown to my heart, burned its wings there, and cannot fly away.”

* In the “Arcadia,” that museum of oddities and beauties.

“La, you now!” said the Beauty; “I do not comprehend you exactly: your

master of the graces does not teach you your compliments properly.”

“Yes, he does, but in your presence I forget them; and now,” I added,

lowering my voice into the lowest of whispers, “now that you are assured

of my fidelity, will you not learn at last to discredit rumours and

trust to me?”

“I love you too well!” answered the Lady Hasselton in the same tone, and

that answer gives an admirable idea of the affection of every coquette!

love and confidence with them are qualities that have a natural

antipathy, and can never be united. Our _tete-a-tete_ was at an end; the

people round us became social, and conversation general.

“Betterton acts to-morrow night,” cried the Lady Pratterly: “we must

go!”

“We must go,” cried the Lady Hasselton.

“We must go!” cried all.

And so passed the time till the puppet-show was over, and my attendance

dispensed with.

It is a charming thing to be the lover of a lady of the mode! One

so honoured does with his hours as a miser with his guineas; namely,

nothing but count them!

CHAPTER III.

MORE LIONS.

THE next night, after the theatre, Tarleton and I strolled into Wills’s.

Half-a-dozen wits were assembled. Heavens! how they talked! actors,

actresses, poets, statesmen, philosophers, critics, divines, were all

pulled to pieces with the most gratifying malice imaginable. We sat

ourselves down, and while Tarleton amused himself with a dish of coffee

and the “Flying Post,” I listened very attentively to the conversation.

Certainly if we would take every opportunity of getting a grain or

two of knowledge, we should soon have a chest-full; a man earned

an excellent subsistence by asking every one who came out of a

tobacconist’s shop for a pinch of snuff, and retailing the mixture as

soon as he had filled his box.*

* “Tatler.”

While I was listening to a tall lusty gentleman, who was abusing Dogget,

the actor, a well-dressed man entered, and immediately attracted the

general observation. He was of a very flat, ill-favoured countenance,

but of a quick eye, and a genteel air; there was, however, something

constrained and artificial in his address, and he appeared to be

endeavouring to clothe a natural good-humour with a certain primness

which could never be made to fit it.

“Ha, Steele!” cried a gentleman in an orange-coloured coat, who seemed

by a fashionable swagger of importance desirous of giving the tone

to the company,--“Ha, Steele, whence come you? from the chapel or the

tavern?” and the speaker winked round the room as if he wished us to

participate in the pleasure of a good thing.

Mr. Steele drew up, seemingly a little affronted; but his good-nature

conquering the affectation of personal sanctity, which, at the time

I refer to, that excellent writer was pleased to assume, he contented

himself with nodding to the speaker, and saying,--

“All the world knows, Colonel Cleland, that you are a wit, and

therefore we take your fine sayings as we take change from an honest

tradesman,--rest perfectly satisfied with the coin we get, without

paying any attention to it.”

“Zounds, Cleland, you got the worst of it there,” cried a gentleman in a

flaxen wig. And Steele slid into a seat near my own.

Tarleton, who was sufficiently well educated to pretend to the character

of a man of letters, hereupon thought it necessary to lay aside the

“Flying Post,” and to introduce me to my literary neighbour.

“Pray,” said Colonel Cleland, taking snuff and swinging himself to and

fro with an air of fashionable grace, “has any one seen the new paper?”

“What!” cried the gentleman in the flaxen wig, “what! the ‘Tatler’s’

successor,--the ‘Spectator’?”

“The same,” quoth the colonel.

“To be sure; who has not?” returned he of the flaxen ornament. “People

say Congreve writes it.”

“They are very much mistaken, then,” cried a little square man with

spectacles; “to my certain knowledge Swift is the author.”

“Pooh!” said Cleland, imperiously, “pooh! it is neither the one nor the

other; I, gentlemen, am in the secret--but--you take me, eh? One must

not speak well of one’s self; mum is the word.”

“Then,” asked Steele, quietly, “we are to suppose that you, Colonel, are

the writer?”

“I never said so, Dicky; but the women will have it that I am,” and the

colonel smoothed down his cravat.

“Pray, Mr. Addison, what say you?” cried the gentleman in the flaxen

wig; “are you for Congreve, Swift, or Colonel Cleland?” This was

addressed to a gentleman of a grave but rather prepossessing mien; who,

with eyes fixed upon the ground, was very quietly and to all appearance

very inattentively solacing himself with a pipe; without lifting his

eyes, this personage, then eminent, afterwards rendered immortal,

replied,

“Colonel Cleland must produce other witnesses to prove his claim to the

authorship of the ‘Spectator:’ the women, we well know, are prejudiced

in his favour.”

“That’s true enough, old friend,” cried the colonel, looking askant at

his orange-coloured coat; “but faith, Addison, I wish you would set up a

paper of the same sort, d’ye see; you’re a nice judge of merit, and your

sketches of character would do justice to your friends.”

“If ever I do, Colonel, I, or my coadjutors, will study at least to do

justice to you.” *

* This seems to corroborate the suspicion entertained of the identity of

Colonel Cleland with the Will Honeycomb of the “Spectator.”

“Prithee, Steele,” cried the stranger in spectacles, “prithee, tell us

thy thoughts on the subject: dost thou know the author of this droll

periodical?”

“I saw him this morning,” replied Steele, carelessly.

“Aha! and what said you to him?”

“I asked him his name.”

“And what did he answer?” cried he of the flaxen wig, while all of us

crowded round the speaker, with the curiosity every one felt in

the authorship of a work then exciting the most universal and eager

interest.

“He answered me solemnly,” said Steele, “in the following words,--

“‘Graeci carent ablativo, Itali dativo, ego nominativo.’”*

* “The Greek wants an ablative, the Italians a dative, I a nominative.”

“Famous--capital!” cried the gentleman in spectacles; and then, touching

Colonel Cleland, added, “what does it exactly mean?”

“Ignoramus!” said Cleland, disdainfully, “every _schoolboy knows

Virgil_!”

“Devereux,” said Tarleton, yawning, “what a d----d delightful thing

it is to hear so much wit: pity that the atmosphere is so fine that no

lungs unaccustomed to it can endure it long, Let us recover ourselves by

a walk.”

“Willingly,” said I; and we sauntered forth into the streets.

“Wills’s is not what it was,” said Tarleton; “‘tis a pitiful ghost of

its former self, and if they had not introduced cards, one would die of

the vapours there.”

“I know nothing so insipid,” said I, “as that mock literary air which

it is so much the fashion to assume. ‘Tis but a wearisome relief to

conversation to have interludes of songs about Strephon and Sylvia,

recited with a lisp by a gentleman with fringed gloves and a languishing

look.”

“Fie on it,” cried Tarleton, “let us seek for a fresher topic. Are

you asked to Abigail Masham’s to-night, or will you come to Dame de la

Riviere Manley’s?”

“Dame de la what?--in the name of long words who is she?”

“Oh! Learning made libidinous: one who reads Catullus and profits by

it.”

“Bah, no, we will not leave the gentle Abigail for her. I have promised

to meet St. John, too, at the Mashams’.”

“As you like. We shall get some wine at Abigail’s, which we should never

do at the house of her cousin of Marlborough.”

And, comforting himself with this belief, Tarleton peaceably accompanied

me to that celebrated woman, who did the Tories such notable service, at

the expense of being termed by the Whigs one great want divided into two

parts; namely, a great want of every shilling belonging to other people,

and a great want of every virtue that should have belonged to herself.

As we mounted the staircase, a door to the left (a private apartment)

was opened, and I saw the favourite dismiss, with the most flattering

air of respect, my old preceptor, the Abbe Montreuil. He received her

attentions as his due, and, descending the stairs, came full upon me.

He drew back, changed neither hue nor muscle, bowed civilly enough, and

disappeared. I had not much opportunity to muse over this circumstance,

for St. John and Mr. Domville--excellent companions both--joined us; and

the party being small, we had the unwonted felicity of talking, as well

as bowing, to each other. It was impossible to think of any one else

when St. John chose to exert himself; and so even the Abbe Montreuil

glided out of my brain as St. John’s wit glided into it. We were all of

the same way of thinking on politics, and therefore were witty without

being quarrelsome,--a rare thing. The trusty Abigail told us stories of

the good Queen, and we added _bons mots_ by way of corollary. Wine, too,

wine that even Tarleton approved, lit up our intellects, and we spent

altogether an evening such as gentlemen and Tories very seldom have the

sense to enjoy.

O Apollo! I wonder whether Tories of the next century will be such

clever, charming, well-informed fellows as we were!

CHAPTER IV.

AN INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURE.

A LITTLE affected by the vinous potations which had been so much an

object of anticipation with my companion, Tarleton and I were strolling

homeward when we perceived a remarkably tall man engaged in a contest

with a couple of watchmen. Watchmen were in all cases the especial and

natural enemies of the gallants in my young days; and no sooner did we

see the unequal contest than, drawing our swords with that true English

valour which makes all the quarrels of other people its own, we hastened

to the relief of the weaker party.

“Gentlemen,” said the elder watchman, drawing back, “this is no common

brawl; we have been shamefully beaten by this here madman, and for no

earthly cause.”

“Who ever did beat a watchman for any earthly cause, you rascal?” cried

the accused party, swinging his walking cane over the complainant’s head

with a menacing air.

“Very true,” cried Tarleton, coolly. “Seigneurs of the watch, you are

both made and paid to be beaten; _ergo_--you have no right to complain.

Release this worthy cavalier, and depart elsewhere to make night hideous

with your voices.”

“Come, come,” quoth the younger Dogberry, who perceived a reinforcement

approaching, “move on, good people, and let us do our duty.”

“Which,” interrupted the elder watchman, “consists in taking this

hulking swaggerer to the watchhouse.”

“Thou speakest wisely, man of peace,” said Tarleton; “defend thyself;”

and without adding another word he ran the watchman through--not the

body but the coat; avoiding with great dexterity the corporeal substance

of the attacked party, and yet approaching it so closely as to give

the guardian of the streets very reasonable ground for apprehension. No

sooner did the watchman find the hilt strike against his breast, than he

uttered a dismal cry and fell upon the pavement as if he had been shot.

“Now for thee, varlet,” cried Tarleton, brandishing his rapier before

the eyes of the other watchman, “tremble at the sword of Gideon.”

“O Lord, O Lord!” ejaculated the terrified comrade of the fallen man,

dropping on his knees, “for Heaven’s sake, sir, have a care.”

“What argument canst thou allege, thou screech-owl of the metropolis,

that thou shouldst not share the same fate as thy brother owl?”

“Oh, sir!” cried the craven night-bird (a bit of a humourist in its

way), “because I have a nest and seven little owlets at home, and t’

other owl is only a bachelor.”

“Thou art an impudent thing to jest at us,” said Tarleton; “but thy wit

has saved thee; rise.”

At this moment two other watchmen came up.

“Gentlemen,” said the tall stranger whom we had rescued, “we had better

fly.”

Tarleton cast at him a contemptuous look, and placed himself in a

posture of offence.

“Hark ye,” said I, “let us effect an honourable peace. Messieurs the

watch, be it lawful for you to carry off the slain, and for us to claim

the prisoners.”

But our new foes understood not a jest, and advanced upon us with a

ferocity which might really have terminated in a serious engagement, had

not the tall stranger thrust his bulky form in front of the approaching

battalion, and cried out with a loud voice, “Zounds, my good fellows,

what’s all this for? If you take us up you will get broken heads

to-night, and a few shillings perhaps to-morrow. If you leave us alone,

you will have whole heads, and a guinea between you. Now, what say you?”

Well spoke Phaedra against the dangers of eloquence. The watchmen looked

at each other. “Why really, sir,” said one, “what you say alters the

case very much; and if Dick here is not much hurt, I don’t know what we

may say to the offer.”

So saying, they raised the fallen watchman, who, after three or four

grunts, began slowly to recover himself.

“Are you dead, Dick?” said the owl with seven owlets.

“I think I am,” answered the other, groaning.

“Are you able to drink a pot of ale, Dick?” cried the tall stranger.

“I think I am,” reiterated the dead man, very lack-a-daisically.

And this answer satisfying his comrades, the articles of peace were

subscribed to.

Now, then, the tall stranger began searching his pockets with a most

consequential air.

“Gad, so!” said he at last; “not in my breeches pocket!--well, it

must be in my waistcoat. No. Well, ‘tis a strange thing--demme it is!

Gentlemen, I have had the misfortune to leave my purse behind me: add

to your other favours by lending me wherewithal to satisfy these honest

men.”

And Tarleton lent him the guinea. The watchmen now retired, and we were

left alone with our portly ally.

Placing his hand to his heart he made us half-a-dozen profound bows,

returned us thanks for our assistance in some very courtly phrases, and

requested us to allow him to make our acquaintance. We exchanged cards

and departed on our several ways.

“I have met that gentleman before,” said Tarleton. “Let us see what name

he pretends to. ‘Fielding--Fielding;’ ah, by the Lord, it is no less a

person! It is the great Fielding himself.”

“Is Mr. Fielding, then, as elevated in fame as in stature?”

“What, is it possible that you have not yet heard of Beau Fielding,

who bared his bosom at the theatre in order to attract the admiring

compassion of the female part of the audience?”

“What!” I cried, “the Duchess of Cleveland’s Fielding?”

“The same; the best-looking fellow of his day! A sketch of his history

is in the ‘Tatler,’ under the name of ‘Orlando the Fair.’ He is terribly

fallen as to fortune since the day when he drove about in a car like a

sea-shell, with a dozen tall fellows, in the Austrian livery, black and

yellow, running before and behind him. You know he claims relationship

to the house of Hapsburg. As for the present, he writes poems, makes

love, is still good-natured, humorous, and odd; is rather unhappily

addicted to wine and borrowing, and rigidly keeps that oath of the

Carthusians which never suffers them to carry any money about them.”

“An acquaintance more likely to yield amusement than profit.”

“Exactly so. He will favour you with a visit--to-morrow, perhaps, and

you will remember his propensities.”

“Ah! who ever forgets a warning that relates to his purse!”

“True!” said Tarleton, sighing. “Alas! my guinea, thou and I have parted

company forever! _vale, vale, inquit Iolas_!”

CHAPTER V.

THE BEAU IN HIS DEN, AND A PHILOSOPHER DISCOVERED.

MR. FIELDING having twice favoured me with visits, which found me from

home, I thought it right to pay my respects to him; accordingly one

morning I repaired to his abode. It was situated in a street which had

been excessively the mode some thirty years back; and the house still

exhibited a stately and somewhat ostentatious exterior. I observed a

considerable cluster of infantine ragamuffins collected round the

door, and no sooner did the portal open to my summons than they pressed

forward in a manner infinitely more zealous than respectful. A servant

in the Austrian livery, with a broad belt round his middle, officiated

as porter. “Look, look!” cried one of the youthful gazers, “look at the

Beau’s _keeper_!” This imputation on his own respectability and that of

his master, the domestic seemed by no means to relish; for, muttering

some maledictory menace, which I at first took to be German, but which

I afterwards found to be Irish, he banged the door in the faces of the

intrusive impertinents, and said, in an accent which suited very ill

with his Continental attire,--

“And is it my master you’re wanting, Sir?”

“It is.”

“And you would be after seeing him immediately?”

“Rightly conjectured, my sagacious friend.”

“Fait then, your honour, my master’s in bed with a terrible fit of the

megrims.”

“Then you will favour me by giving this card to your master, and

expressing my sorrow at his indisposition.”

Upon this the orange-coloured lacquey, very quietly reading the address

on the card, and spelling letter by letter in an audible mutter,

rejoined,

“C--o--u (cou) n--t (unt) Count, D--e--v. Och, by my shoul, and it’s

Count Devereux after all I’m thinking?”

“You think with equal profundity and truth.”

“You may well say that, your honour. Stip in a bit: I’ll tell my master;

it is himself that will see you in a twinkling!”

“But you forget that your master is ill?” said I.

“Sorrow a bit for the matter o’ that: my master is never ill to a

jontleman.”

And with this assurance “the Beau’s keeper” ushered me up a splendid

staircase into a large, dreary, faded apartment, and left me to amuse

myself with the curiosities within, while he went to perform a cure

upon his master’s “megrims.” The chamber, suiting with the house and

the owner, looked like a place in the other world set apart for the

reception of the ghosts of departed furniture. The hangings were wan and

colourless; the chairs and sofas were most spiritually unsubstantial;

the mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral sea-green; even a huge

picture of Mr. Fielding himself, placed over the chimney-piece, seemed

like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery, and indistinct had

it been rendered by neglect and damp. On a huge tomb-like table in

the middle of the room, lay two pencilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a

pawnbroker’s ticket, a pair of ruffles, a very little muff, an immense

broadsword, a Wycherley comb, a jackboot, and an old plumed hat; to

these were added a cracked pomatum-pot containing ink, and a scrap of

paper, ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and torches, on which

were scrawled several lines in a hand so large and round that I could

not avoid seeing the first verse, though I turned away my eyes as

quickly as possible; that verse, to the best of my memory, ran thus:

“Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain.” Upon the ground lay a box of

patches, a periwig, and two or three well thumbed books of songs.

Such was the reception-room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently well

calculated to exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half

fribble; a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd

humours, and a living shadow of a past renown. “There are changes in wit

as in fashion,” said Sir William Temple, and he proceeds to instance a

nobleman who was the greatest wit of the court of Charles I., and the

greatest dullard in that of Charles II.* But Heavens! how awful are the

revolutions of coxcombry! what a change from Beau Fielding the Beauty,

to Beau Fielding the Oddity!

* The Earl of Norwich.

After I had remained in this apartment about ten minutes, the great

man made his appearance. He was attired in a dressing-gown of the

most gorgeous material and colour, but so old that it was difficult to

conceive any period of past time which it might not have been supposed

to have witnessed; a little velvet cap, with a tarnished gold tassel,

surmounted his head, and his nether limbs were sheathed in a pair

of military boots. In person he still retained the trace of that

extraordinary symmetry he had once possessed, and his features were yet

handsome, though the complexion had grown coarse and florid, and

the expression had settled into a broad, hardy, farcical mixture of

effrontery, humour, and conceit.

But how different his costume from that of old! Where was the long wig

with its myriad curls? the coat stiff with golden lace? the diamond

buttons,--“the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war?” the

glorious war Beau Fielding had carried on throughout the female

world,--finding in every saloon a Blenheim, in every play-house a

Ramilies? Alas! to what abyss of fate will not the love of notoriety

bring men! to what but the lust of show do we owe the misanthropy of

Timon, or the ruin of Beau Fielding!

“By the Lord!” cried Mr. Fielding, approaching, and shaking me

familiarly by the hand, “by the Lord, I am delighted to see thee! As I

am a soldier, I thought thou wert a spirit, invisible and incorporeal;

and as long as I was in that belief I trembled for thy salvation, for I

knew at least that thou wert not a spirit of Heaven, since thy door

is the very reverse of the doors above, which we are assured shall be

opened unto our knocking. But thou art early, Count; like the ghost in

‘Hamlet,’ thou snuffest the morning air. Wilt thou not keep out the rank

atmosphere by a pint of wine and a toast?”

“Many thanks to you, Mr. Fielding; but I have at least one property of a

ghost, and don’t drink after daybreak.”

“Nay, now, ‘tis a bad rule! a villanous bad rule, fit _only for_ ghosts

and graybeards. We youngsters, Count, should have a more generous

policy. Come, now, where didst thou drink last night? has the bottle

bequeathed thee a qualm or a headache, which preaches repentance and

abstinence this morning?”

“No, but I visit my mistress this morning; would you have me smell of

strong potations, and seem a worshipper of the ‘_Glass_ of Fashion,’

rather than of ‘the Mould of Form’? Confess, Mr. Fielding, that the

women love not an early tippler, and that they expect sober and sweet

kisses from a pair ‘of youngsters’ like us.”

“By the Lord,” cried Mr. Fielding, stroking down his comely stomach,

“there is a great show of reason in thy excuses, but only the show, not

substance, my noble Count. You know me, you know my experience with the

women: I would not boast, as I’m a soldier; but ‘tis something! nine

hundred and fifty locks of hair have I got in my strong box, under

padlock and key; fifty within the last week,--true, on my soul,--so that

I may pretend to know a little of the dear creatures; well, I give thee

my honour, Count, that they like a royster; they love a fellow who can

carry his six bottles under a silken doublet; there’s vigour and manhood

in it; and, then, too, what a power of toasts can a six-bottle man

drink to his mistress! Oh, ‘tis your only chivalry now,--your modern

substitute for tilt and tournament; true, Count, as I am a soldier!”

“I fear my Dulcinea differs from the herd, then; for she quarrelled with

me for supping with St. John three nights ago, and--”

“St. John,” interrupted Fielding, cutting me off in the beginning of

a witticism, “St. John, famous fellow, is he not? By the Lord, we will

drink to his administration, you in chocolate, I in Madeira. O’Carroll,

you dog,--O’Carroll--rogue--rascal--ass--dolt!”

“The same, your honour,” said the orange-coloured lacquey, thrusting in

his lean visage.

“Ay, the same indeed, thou anatomized son of Saint Patrick; why dost

thou not get fat? Thou shamest my good living, and thy belly is a

rascally minister to thee, devouring all things for itself, without

fattening a single member of the body corporate. Look at _me_, you dog,

am _I_ thin? Go and get fat, or I will discharge thee: by the Lord I

will! the sun shines through thee like an empty wineglass.”

“And is it upon your honour’s lavings you would have me get fat?”

rejoined Mr. O’Carroll, with an air of deferential inquiry.

“Now, as I live, thou art the impudentest varlet!” cried Mr. Fielding,

stamping his foot on the floor, with an angry frown.

“And is it for talking of your honour’s lavings? an’ sure that’s

_nothing_ at all, at all,” said the valet, twirling his thumbs with

expostulating innocence.

“Begone, rascal!” said Mr. Fielding, “begone; go to the Salop, and bring

us a pint of Madeira, a toast, and a dish of chocolate.”

“Yes, your honour, in a twinkling,” said the valet, disappearing.

“A sorry fellow,” said Mr. Fielding, “but honest and faithful, and loves

me as well as a saint loves gold; ‘tis his love makes him familiar.”

Here the door was again opened, and the sharp face of Mr. O’Carroll

again intruded.

“How now, sirrah!” exclaimed his master.

Mr. O’Carroll, without answering by voice, gave a grotesque sort of

signal between a wink and a beckon. Mr. Fielding rose muttering an oath,

and underwent a whisper. “By the Lord,” cried he, seemingly in a furious

passion, “and thou hast not got the bill cashed yet, though I told thee

twice to have it done last evening? Have I not my debts of honour to

discharge, and did I not give the last guinea I had about me for a

walking cane yesterday? Go down to the city immediately, sirrah, and

bring me the change.”

The valet again whispered.

“Ah,” resumed Fielding, “ah--so far, you say, ‘tis true; ‘tis a great

way, and perhaps the Count can’t wait till you return. Prithee (turning

to me), prithee now, is it not vexatious,--no change about me, and my

fool has not cashed a trifling bill I have, for a thousand or so,

on Messrs. Child! and the cursed Salop puts not its _trust_ even in

princes; ‘tis its way; ‘Gad now, you have not a guinea about you?”

What could I say? My guinea joined Tarleton’s, in a visit to that bourne

whence no _such_ traveller e’er returned.

Mr. O’Carroll now vanished in earnest, the wine and the chocolate soon

appeared. Mr. Fielding brightened up, recited his poetry, blessed his

good fortune, promised to call on me in a day or two; and assured me,

with a round oath, that the next time he had the honour of seeing me, he

would treat me with another pint of Madeira, exactly of the same sort.

I remember well that it was the evening of the same day in which I had

paid this visit to the redoubted Mr. Fielding, that, on returning from

a drum at Lady Hasselton’s, I entered my anteroom with so silent a step,

that I did not arouse even the keen senses of Monsieur Desmarais. He was

seated by the fire, with his head supported by his hands, and intently

poring over a huge folio. I had often observed that he possessed a

literary turn, and all the hours in which he was unemployed by me he was

wont to occupy with books. I felt now, as I stood still and contemplated

his absorbed attention in the contents of the book before him, a strong

curiosity to know the nature of his studies; and so little did my taste

second the routine of trifles in which I had been lately engaged, that

in looking upon the earnest features of the man on which the solitary

light streamed calm and full; and impressed with the deep quiet and

solitude of the chamber, together with the undisturbed sanctity of

comfort presiding over the small, bright hearth, and contrasting what I

saw with the brilliant scene--brilliant with gaudy, wearing, wearisome

frivolities--which I had just quitted, a sensation of envy at the

enjoyments of my dependant entered my breast, accompanied with a

sentiment resembling humiliation at the nature of my own pursuits. I am

generally thought a proud man; but I am never proud to my inferiors;

nor can I imagine pride where there is no competition. I approached

Desmarais, and said, in French,--

“How is this? why did you not, like your fellows, take advantage of my

absence to pursue your own amusements? They must be dull indeed if they

do not hold out to you more tempting inducements than that colossal

offspring of the press.”

“Pardon me, Sir,” said Desmarais, very respectfully, and closing the

book, “pardon me, I was not aware of your return. Will Monsieur doff his

cloak?”

“No; shut the door, wheel round that chair, and favour me with a sight

of your book.”

“Monsieur will be angry, I fear,” said the valet (obeying the first two

orders, but hesitating about the third), “with my course of reading: I

confess it is not very compatible with my station.”

“Ah, some long romance, the ‘Clelia,’ I suppose,--nay, bring it hither;

that is to say, if it be movable by the strength of a single man.”

Thus urged, Desmarais modestly brought me the book. Judge of my surprise

when I found it was a volume of Leibnitz, a philosopher then very much

the rage,--because one might talk of him very safely, without having

read him.* Despite of my surprise, I could not help smiling when my eye

turned from the book to the student. It is impossible to conceive an

appearance less like a philosopher’s than that of Jean Desmarais. His

wig was of a nicety that would not have brooked the irregularity of

a single hair; his dress was not preposterous, for I do not remember,

among gentles or valets, a more really exquisite taste than that of

Desmarais; but it evinced, in every particular, the arts of the toilet.

A perpetual smile sat upon his lips,--sometimes it deepened into a

sneer, but that was the only change it ever experienced; an irresistible

air of self-conceit gave piquancy to his long, marked features, small

glittering eye, and withered cheeks, on which a delicate and soft bloom

excited suspicion of artificial embellishment. A very fit frame of body

this for a valet; but I humbly opine a very unseemly one for a student

of Leibnitz.

* Which is possibly the reason why there are so many disciples of Kant

at the present moment.--ED.

“And what,” said I, after a short pause, “is your opinion of this

philosopher? I understand that he has just written a work* above all

praise and comprehension.”

* The “Theodicaea.”

“It is true, Monsieur, that it is above his own understanding. He knows

not what sly conclusions may be drawn from his premises; but I beg

Monsieur’s pardon, I shall be tedious and intrusive.”

“Not a whit! speak out, and at length. So you conceive that Leibnitz

makes ropes which _others_ will make into ladders?”

“Exactly so,” said Desmarais; “all his arguments go to swell the sails

of the great philosophical truth,--‘Necessity!’ We are the things and

toys of Fate, and its everlasting chain compels even the Power that

creates as well as the things created.”

“Ha!” said I, who, though little versed at that time in these

metaphysical subtleties, had heard St. John often speak of the strange

doctrine to which Desmarais referred, “you are, then, a believer in the

fatalism of Spinoza?”

“No, Monsieur,” said Desmarais, with a complacent smile, “my system is

my own: it is composed of the thoughts of others; but my thoughts are

the cords which bind the various sticks into a fagot.”

“Well,” said I, smiling at the man’s conceited air, “and what is your

main dogma?”

“Our utter impotence.”

“Pleasing! Mean you that we have no free will?”

“None.”

“Why, then, you take away the very existence of vice and virtue; and,

according to you, we sin or act well, not from our own accord, but

because we are compelled and preordained to it.”

Desmarais’ smile withered into the grim sneer with which, as I have

said, it was sometimes varied.

“Monsieur’s penetration is extreme; but shall I not prepare his nightly

draught?”

“No; answer me at length; and tell me the difference between good and

ill, if we are compelled by Necessity to either.”

Desmarais hemmed, and began. Despite of his caution, the coxcomb

loved to hear himself talk, and he talked, therefore, to the following

purpose:

“Liberty is a thing impossible! Can you _will_ a single action,

however simple, independent of your organization,--independent of

the organization of others,--independent of the order of things

past,--independent of the order of things to come? You cannot. But if

not independent, you are dependent; if dependent, where is your liberty?

where your freedom of will? Education disposes our characters: can you

control your own education, begun at the hour of birth? You cannot. Our

character, joined to the conduct of others, disposes of our happiness,

our sorrow, our crime, our virtue. Can you control your character?

We have already seen that you cannot. Can you control the conduct of

others,--others perhaps whom you have never seen, but who may ruin

you at a word; a despot, for instance, or a warrior? You cannot. What

remains? that if we cannot choose our characters, nor our fates, we

cannot be accountable for either. If you are a good man, you are a lucky

man; but you are not to be praised for what you could not help. If

you are a bad man, you are an unfortunate one; but you are not to be

execrated for what you could not prevent.” *

* Whatever pretensions Monsieur Desmarais may have had to originality,

this tissue of opinions is as old as philosophy itself.--ED.

“Then, most wise Desmarais, if you steal this diamond loop from my

hat, you are only an unlucky man, not a guilty one, and worthy of my

sympathy, not anger?”

“Exactly so; but you must hang me for it. You cannot control events, but

you can modify man. Education, law, adversity, prosperity, correction,

praise, modify him,--without his choice, and sometimes without his

perception. But once acknowledge Necessity, and evil passions cease; you

may punish, you may destroy others, if for the safety and good of the

commonwealth; but motives for doing so cease to be private: you can

have no personal hatred to men for committing actions which they were

irresistibly compelled to commit.”

I felt that, however I might listen to and dislike these sentiments, it

would not do for the master to argue with the domestic, especially when

there was a chance that he might have the worst of it. And so I

was suddenly seized with a fit of sleepiness, which broke off our

conversation. Meanwhile I inly resolved, in my own mind, to take the

first opportunity of discharging a valet who saw no difference between

good and evil, but that of luck; and who, by the irresistible compulsion

of Necessity, might some day or other have the involuntary misfortune to

cut the throat of his master!

I did not, however, carry this unphilosophical resolution into effect.

Indeed, the rogue, doubting perhaps the nature of the impression he

had made on me, redoubled so zealously his efforts to please me in the

science of his profession that I could not determine upon relinquishing

such a treasure for a speculative opinion, and I was too much accustomed

to laugh at my Sosia to believe there could be any reason to fear him.

CHAPTER VI.

A UNIVERSAL GENIUS.--PERICLES TURNED BARBER.--NAMES OF BEAUTIES IN

171-.--THE TOASTS OF THE KIT-CAT CLUB.

As I was riding with Tarleton towards Chelsea, one day, he asked me if

I had ever seen the celebrated Mr. Salter. “No,” said I, “but I heard

Steele talk of him the other night at Wills’s. He is an antiquarian and

a barber, is he not?”

“Yes, a shaving virtuoso; really a comical and strange character, and

has oddities enough to compensate one for the debasement of talking with

a man in his rank.”

“Let us go to him forthwith,” said I, spurring my horse into a canter.

“_Quod petis hic est_,” cried Tarleton, “there is his house.” And my

companion pointed to a coffee-house.

“What!” said I, “does he draw wine as well as teeth?”

“To be sure: Don Saltero is a universal genius. Let us dismount.”

Consigning our horses to the care of our grooms, we marched into the

strangest-looking place I ever had the good fortune to behold. A

long narrow coffee-room was furnished with all manner of things that,

belonging neither to heaven, earth, nor the water under the earth, the

redoubted Saltero might well worship without incurring the crime of

idolatry. The first thing that greeted my eyes was a bull’s head, with

a most ferocious pair of vulture’s wings on its neck. While I was

surveying this, I felt something touch my hat; I looked up and

discovered an immense alligator swinging from the ceiling, and fixing a

monstrous pair of glass eyes upon me. A thing which seemed to me like

an immense shoe, upon a nearer approach expanded itself into an Indian

canoe; and a most hideous spectre with mummy skin, and glittering teeth,

that made my blood run cold, was labelled, “Beautiful specimen of a

Calmuc Tartar.”

While lost in wonder, I stood in the middle of the apartment, up walks a

little man as lean as a miser, and says to me, rubbing his hands,--

“Wonderful, Sir, is it not?”

“Wonderful, indeed, Don!” said Tarleton; “you look like a Chinese Adam

surrounded by a Japanese creation.”

“He, he, he, Sir, you have so pleasant a vein,” said the little Don, in

a sharp shrill voice. “But it has been all done, Sir, by one man; all of

it collected by me, simple as I stand.”

“Simple, indeed,” quoth Tarleton; “and how gets on the fiddle?”

“Bravely, Sir, bravely; shall I play you a tune?”

“No, no, my good Don; another time.”

“Nay, Sir, nay,” cried the antiquarian, “suffer me to welcome your

arrival properly.”

And, forthwith disappearing, he returned in an instant with a

marvellously ill-favoured old fiddle. Throwing a _penseroso_ air into

his thin cheeks, our Don then began a few preliminary thrummings, which

set my teeth on edge, and made Tarleton put both hands to his ears.

Three sober-looking citizens, who had just sat themselves down to pipes

and the journal, started to their feet like so many pieces of clockwork;

but no sooner had Don Saltero, with a _degage_ air of graceful

melancholy, actually launched into what he was pleased to term a tune,

than a universal irritation of nerves seized the whole company. At

the first overture, the three citizens swore and cursed, at the

second division of the tune, they seized their hats, at the third they

vanished. As for me, I found all my limbs twitching as if they were

dancing to St. Vitus’s music; the very drawers disappeared; the

alligator itself twirled round, as if revivified by so harsh an

experiment on the nervous system; and I verily believe the whole museum,

bull, wings, Indian canoe, and Calmuc Tartar, would have been set into

motion by this new Orpheus, had not Tarleton, in a paroxysm of rage,

seized him by the tail of the coat, and whirled him round, fiddle and

all, with such velocity that the poor musician lost his equilibrium, and

falling against a row of Chinese monsters, brought the whole set to

the ground, where he lay covered by the wrecks that accompanied his

overthrow, screaming and struggling, and grasping his fiddle, which

every now and then, touched involuntarily by his fingers, uttered a

dismal squeak, as if sympathizing in the disaster it had caused, until

the drawer ran in, and, raising the unhappy antiquarian, placed him on a

great chair.

“O Lord!” groaned Don Saltero, “O Lord! my monsters--my monsters--the

pagoda--the mandarin, and the idol where are they?--broken--ruined--

annihilated!”

“No, Sir; all safe, Sir,” said the drawer, a smart, small, smug, pert

man; “put ‘em down in the bill, nevertheless, Sir. Is it Alderman

Atkins, Sir, or Mr. Higgins?”

“Pooh,” said Tarleton, “bring me some lemonade; send the pagoda to the

bricklayer, the mandarin to the surgeon, and the idol to the Papist over

the way! There’s a guinea to pay for their carriage. How are you, Don?”

“Oh, Mr. Tarleton, Mr. Tarleton! how could you be so cruel?”

“The nature of things demanded it, my good Don. Did I not call you a

Chinese Adam? and how could you bear that name without undergoing the

fall?”

“Oh, Sir, this is no jesting matter,--broke the railing of my pagoda,

bruised my arm, cracked my fiddle, and cut me off in the middle of that

beautiful air!--no jesting matter.”

“Come, Mr. Salter,” said I, “‘tis very true! but cheer up. ‘The gods,’

says Seneca, ‘look with pleasure on a great man falling with the

statesmen, the temples, and the divinities of his country;’ all of

which, mandarin, pagoda, and idol, accompanied _your_ fall. Let us have

a bottle of your best wine, and the honour of your company to drink it.”

“No, Count, no,” said Tarleton, haughtily; “we can drink not with the

Don; but we’ll have the wine, and he shall drink it. Meanwhile, Don,

tell us what possible combination of circumstances made thee fiddler,

barber, anatomist, and virtuoso!”

Don Saltero loved fiddling better than anything in the world, but next

to fiddling he loved talking. So being satisfied that he should be

reimbursed for his pagoda, and fortifying himself with a glass or two of

his own wine, he yielded to Tarleton’s desire, and told us his history.

I believe it was very entertaining to the good barber, but Tarleton

and I saw nothing extraordinary in it; and long before it was over, we

wished him an excellent good day, and a new race of Chinese monsters.

That evening we were engaged at the Kit-Cat Club, for though I was

opposed to the politics of its members, they admitted me on account of

my literary pretensions. Halifax was there, and I commended the poet to

his protection. We were very gay, and Halifax favoured us with three new

toasts by himself. O Venus! what beauties we made, and what characters

we murdered! Never was there so important a synod to the female world as

the gods of the Kit-Cat Club. Alas! I am writing for the children of an

after age, to whom the very names of those who made the blood of their

ancestors leap within their veins will be unknown. What cheek will

colour at the name of Carlisle? What hand will tremble as it touches

the paper inscribed by that of Brudenel? The graceful Godolphin, the

sparkling enchantment of Harper, the divine voice of Claverine, the

gentle and bashful Bridgewater, the damask cheek and ruby lips of the

Hebe Manchester,--what will these be to the race for whom alone these

pages are penned? This history is a union of strange contrasts! like

the tree of the Sun, described by Marco Polo, which was green when

approached on one side, but white when perceived on the other: to me it

is clothed in the verdure and spring of the existing time; to the reader

it comes covered with the hoariness and wanness of the Past!

CHAPTER VII.

A DIALOGUE OF SENTIMENT SUCCEEDED BY THE SKETCH OF A CHARACTER, IN WHOSE

EYES SENTIMENT WAS TO WISE MEN WHAT RELIGION IS TO FOOLS; NAMELY, A

SUBJECT OF RIDICULE.

ST. JOHN was now in power, and in the full flush of his many ambitious

and restless schemes. I saw as much of him as the high rank he held

in the state, and the consequent business with which he was oppressed,

would suffer me,--me, who was prevented by religion from actively

embracing any political party, and who, therefore, though inclined to

Toryism, associated pretty equally with all. St. John and myself formed

a great friendship for each other, a friendship which no after change

or chance could efface, but which exists, strengthened and mellowed by

time, at the very hour in which I write.

One evening he sent to tell me he should be alone, if I would sup with

him; accordingly I repaired to his house. He was walking up and down the

room with uneven and rapid steps, and his countenance was flushed

with an expression of joy and triumph, very rare to the thoughtful and

earnest calm which it usually wore. “Congratulate me, Devereux,” said

he, seizing me eagerly by the hand, “congratulate me!”

“For what?”

“Ay, true: you are not yet a politician; you cannot yet tell how

dear--how inexpressibly dear to a politician--is a momentary and petty

victory,--but--if I were Prime Minister of this country, what would you

say?”

“That you could bear the duty better than any man living; but remember

Harley is in the way.”

“Ah, there’s the rub,” said St. John, slowly, and the expression of

his face again changed from triumph to thoughtfulness; “but this is a

subject not to your taste: let us choose another.” And flinging himself

into a chair, this singular man, who prided himself on suiting his

conversation to every one, began conversing with me upon the lighter

topics of the day; these we soon exhausted, and at last we settled upon

that of love and women.

“I own,” said I, “that, in this respect, pleasure has disappointed as

well as wearied me. I have longed for some better object of worship than

the trifler of fashion, or the yet more ignoble minion of the senses.

I ask a vent for enthusiasm, for devotion, for romance, for a thousand

subtle and secret streams of unuttered and unutterable feeling. I often

think that I bear within me the desire and the sentiment of poetry,

though I enjoy not its faculty of expression; and that that desire and

that sentiment, denied legitimate egress, centre and shrink into one

absorbing passion,--which is the want of love. Where am I to satisfy

this want? I look round these great circles of gayety which we term

the world; I send forth my heart as a wanderer over their regions

and recesses, and it returns, sated and palled and languid, to myself

again.”

“You express a common want in every less worldly or more morbid nature,”

said St. John; “a want which I myself have experienced, and if I had

never felt it, I should never, perhaps, have turned to ambition to

console or to engross me. But do not flatter yourself that the want will

ever be fulfilled. Nature places us alone in this hospitable world, and

no heart is cast in a similar mould to that which we bear within us. We

pine for sympathy; we make to ourselves a creation of ideal beauties, in

which we expect to find it: but the creation has no reality; it is the

mind’s phantasma which the mind adores; and it is because the phantasma

can have no actual being that the mind despairs. Throughout life, from

the cradle to the grave, it is no real living thing which we demand; it

is the realization of the idea we have formed within us, and which, as

we are not gods, we can never call into existence. We are enamoured of

the statue ourselves have graven; but, unlike the statue of the Cyprian,

it kindles not to our homage nor melts to our embraces.”

“I believe you,” said I; “but it is hard to undeceive ourselves. The

heart is the most credulous of all fanatics, and its ruling passion the

most enduring of all superstitions. Oh! what can tear from us, to the

last, the hope, the desire, the yearning for some bosom which, while it

mirrors our own, parts not with the reflection! I have read that, in the

very hour and instant of our birth, one exactly similar to ourselves,

in spirit and form, is born also, and that a secret and unintelligible

sympathy preserves that likeness, even through the vicissitudes of

fortune and circumstance, until, in the same point of time, the two

beings are resolved once more into the elements of earth: confess that

there is something welcome, though unfounded in the fancy, and that

there are few of the substances of worldly honour which one would not

renounce, to possess, in the closest and fondest of all relations, this

shadow of ourselves!”

“Alas!” said St. John, “the possession, like all earthly blessings,

carries within it its own principle of corruption. The deadliest foe to

love is not change nor misfortune nor jealousy nor wrath, nor anything

that flows from passion or emanates from fortune; the deadliest foe to

it is custom! With custom die away the delusions and the mysteries which

encircle it; leaf after leaf, in the green poetry on which its beauty

depends, droops and withers, till nothing but the bare and rude trunk

is left. With all passion the soul demands something unexpressed, some

vague recess to explore or to marvel upon,--some veil upon the mental as

well as the corporeal deity. Custom leaves nothing to romance, and often

but little to respect. The whole character is bared before us like

a plain, and the heart’s eye grows wearied with the sameness of the

survey. And to weariness succeeds distaste, and to distaste one of the

myriad shapes of the Proteus Aversion; so that the passion we would

make the rarest of treasures fritters down to a very instance of the

commonest of proverbs,--and out of familiarity cometh indeed contempt!”

“And are we, then,” said I, “forever to forego the most delicious of our

dreams? Are we to consider love as an entire delusion, and to reconcile

ourselves to an eternal solitude of heart? What, then, shall fill the

crying and unappeasable void of our souls? What shall become of those

mighty sources of tenderness which, refused all channel in the rocky

soil of the world, must have an outlet elsewhere or stagnate into

torpor?”

“Our passions,” said St. John, “are restless, and will make each

experiment in their power, though vanity be the result of all.

Disappointed in love, they yearn towards ambition; _and the object of

ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly possessed, ambition is

the more durable passion of the two_. But sooner or later even that and

all passions are sated at last; and when wearied of too wide a flight we

limit our excursions, and looking round us discover the narrow bounds

of our proper end, we grow satisfied with the loss of rapture if we

can partake of enjoyment; and the experience which seemed at first so

bitterly to betray us becomes our most real benefactor, and ultimately

leads us to content. For it is the excess and not the nature of our

passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grew by the tomb of

Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach a certain height, but

no sooner is that height attained than they wither away.”

Before I could reply, our conversation received an abrupt and complete

interruption for the night. The door was thrown open, and a man, pushing

aside the servant with a rude and yet a dignified air, entered the room

unannounced, and with the most perfect disregard to ceremony--

“How d’ye do, Mr. St. John,” said he,--“how d’ye do?--Pretty sort of a

day we’ve had. Lucky to find you at home,--that is to say if you will

give me some broiled oysters and champagne for supper.”

“With all my heart, Doctor,” said St. John, changing his manner at once

from the pensive to an easy and somewhat brusque familiarity,--“with

all my heart; but I am glad to hear you are a convert to champagne: you

spent a whole evening last week in endeavouring to dissuade me from the

sparkling sin.”

“Pish! I had suffered the day before from it; so, like a true Old Bailey

penitent, I preached up conversion to others, not from a desire of their

welfare, but a plaguy sore feeling for my own misfortune. Where did you

dine to-day? At home! Oh! the devil! I starved on three courses at the

Duke of Ormond’s.”

“Aha! Honest Matt was there?”

“Yes, to my cost. He borrowed a shilling of me for a chair. Hang this

weather, it costs me seven shillings a day for coach-fare, besides my

paying the fares of all my poor brother parsons, who come over from

Ireland to solicit my patronage for a bishopric, and end by borrowing

half-a-crown in the meanwhile. But Matt Prior will pay me again, I

suppose, out of the public money?”

“To be sure, if Chloe does not ruin him first.”

“Hang the slut: don’t talk of her. How Prior rails against his place!*

He says the excise spoils his wit, and that the only rhymes he ever

dreams of now-a-days are ‘docket and cocket.’”

* In the Customs.

“Ha, ha! we must do something better for Matt,--make him a bishop or an

ambassador. But pardon me, Count, I have not yet made known to you the

most courted, authoritative, impertinent, clever, independent, haughty,

delightful, troublesome parson of the age: do homage to Dr. Swift.

Doctor, be merciful to my particular friend, Count Devereux.”

Drawing himself up, with a manner which contrasted his previous one

strongly enough, Dr. Swift saluted me with a dignity which might even

be called polished, and which certainly showed that however he might

prefer, as his usual demeanour, an air of negligence and semi-rudeness,

he had profited sufficiently by his acquaintance with the great to equal

them in the external graces, supposed to be peculiar to their order,

whenever it suited his inclination. In person Swift is much above the

middle height, strongly built, and with a remarkably fine outline of

throat and chest; his front face is certainly displeasing, though far

from uncomely; but the clear chiselling of the nose, the curved upper

lip, the full, round Roman chin, the hanging brow, and the resolute

decision, stamped upon the whole expression of the large forehead, and

the clear blue eye, make his profile one of the most striking I ever

saw. He honoured me, to my great surprise, with a fine speech and a

compliment; and then, with a look, which menaced to St. John the retort

that ensued, he added: “And I shall always be glad to think that I owe

your acquaintance to Mr. Secretary St. John, who, if he talked

less about operas and singers,--thought less about Alcibiades and

Pericles,--if he never complained of the load of business not being

suited to his temper, at the very moment he had been working, like

Gumdragon, to get the said load upon his shoulders; and if he persuaded

one of his sincerity being as great as his genius,--would appear to all

time as adorned with the choicest gifts that Heaven has yet thought fit

to bestow on the children of men. Prithee now, Mr. Sec., when shall we

have the oysters? Will you be merry to-night, Count?”

“Certainly; if one may find absolution for the champagne.”

“I’ll absolve you, with a vengeance, on condition that you’ll walk home

with me, and protect the poor parson from the Mohawks. Faith, they ran

young Davenant’s chair through with a sword, t’ other night. I hear

they have sworn to make daylight through my Tory cassock,--all Whigs you

know, Count Devereux, nasty, dangerous animals, how I hate them! they

cost me five-and-sixpence a week in chairs to avoid them.”

“Never mind, Doctor, I’ll send my servants home with you,” said St.

John.

“Ay, a nice way of mending the matter--that’s curing the itch by

scratching the skin off. I could not give your tall fellows less than a

crown a-piece, and I could buy off the bloodiest Mohawk in the kingdom,

if he’s a Whig, for half that sum. But, thank Heaven, the supper is

ready.”

And to supper we went. The oysters and champagne seemed to exhilarate,

if it did not refine, the Doctor’s wit. St. John was unusually

brilliant. I myself caught the infection of their humour, and

contributed my quota to the common stock of jest and repartee; and that

evening, spent with the two most extraordinary men of the age, had in

it more of broad and familiar mirth than any I have ever wasted in

the company of the youngest and noisiest disciples of the bowl and its

concomitants. Even amidst all the coarse ore of Swift’s conversation,

the diamond perpetually broke out; his vulgarity was never that of a

vulgar mind. Pity that, while he condemned St. John’s over affectation

of the grace of life, he never perceived that his own affectation of

coarseness and brutality was to the full as unworthy of the simplicity

of intellect;* and that the aversion to cant, which was the strongest

characteristic of his mind, led him into the very faults he despised,

only through a more displeasing and offensive road. That same aversion

to cant is, by the way, the greatest and most prevalent enemy to the

reputation of high and of strong minds; and in judging Swift’s

character in especial, we should always bear it in recollection.

This aversion--the very antipodes to hypocrisy--leads men not only to

disclaim the virtues they have, but to pretend to the vices they

have not. Foolish trick of disguised vanity! the world, alas, readily

believes them! Like Justice Overdo, in the garb of poor Arthur of

Bradley, they may deem it a virtue to have assumed the disguise; but

they must not wonder if the sham Arthur is taken for the real, beaten as

a vagabond, and set in the stocks as a rogue!

* It has been said that Swift was only coarse in his later years, and,

with a curious ignorance both of fact and of character, that Pope was

the cause of the Dean’s grossness of taste. There is no doubt that he

grew coarser with age; but there is also no doubt that, graceful and

dignified as that great genius could be when he pleased, he affected

at a period earlier than the one in which he is now introduced, to be

coarse both in speech and manner. I seize upon this opportunity, _mal

a propos_ as it is, to observe that Swift’s preference of Harley to St.

John is by no means so certain as writers have been pleased generally to

assert. Warton has already noted a passage in one of Swift’s letters to

Bolingbroke, to which I will beg to call the reader’s attention.

“It is _you were_ my hero, but the other (Lord Oxford) _never was_; yet

if he were, it was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often

vindicated him, in the beginning of your ministry, from my accusations.

But I granted he had the greatest inequalities of any man alive; and his

whole scene was fifty times more a what-d’ye-call-it than yours; for

I declare yours was _unie_, and I wish you would so order it that the

world may be as wise as I upon that article.”

I have to apologize for introducing this quotation, which I have done

because (and I entreat the reader to remember this) I observe that Count

Devereux always speaks of Lord Bolingbroke as he was spoken of by the

eminent men of that day,--not as he is now rated by the judgment of

posterity.--ED.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIGHTLY WON, LIGHTLY LOST.--A DIALOGUE OF EQUAL INSTRUCTION AND

AMUSEMENT.--A VISIT TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER.

ONE morning Tarleton breakfasted with me. “I don’t see the little page,”

said he, “who was always in attendance in your anteroom; what the deuce

has become of him?”

“You must ask his mistress; she has quarrelled with me, and withdrawn

both her favour and her messenger.”

“What! the Lady Hasselton quarrelled with you! _Diable_! Wherefore?”

“Because I am not enough of the ‘pretty fellow;’ am tired of carrying

hood and scarf, and sitting behind her chair through five long acts of a

dull play; because I disappointed her in not searching for her at every

drum and quadrille party; because I admired not her monkey; and because

I broke a teapot with a toad for a cover.”

“And is not that enough?” cried Tarleton. “Heavens! what a black

bead-roll of offences; Mrs. Merton would have discarded me for one of

them. However, thy account has removed my surprise; I heard her praise

thee the other day; now, as long as she loved thee, she always abused

thee like a pickpocket.”

“Ha! ha! ha!--and what said she in my favour?”

“Why, that you were certainly very handsome, though you were small; that

you were certainly a great genius, though every one would not discover

it; and that you certainly had the air of high birth, though you were

not nearly so well dressed as Beau Tippetly. But _entre nous_, Devereux,

I think she hates you, and would play you a trick of spite--revenge is

too strong a word--if she could find an opportunity.”

“Likely enough, Tarleton; but a coquette’s lover is always on his guard;

so she will not take me unawares.”

“So be it. But tell me, Devereux, who is to be your next mistress, Mrs.

Denton or Lady Clancathcart? the world gives them both to you.”

“The world is always as generous with what is worthless as the bishop in

the fable was with his blessing. However, I promise thee, Tarleton, that

I will not interfere with thy claims either upon Mrs. Denton or Lady

Clancathcart.”

“Nay,” said Tarleton, “I will own that you are a very Scipio; but

it must be confessed, even by you, satirist as you are, that Lady

Clancathcart has a beautiful set of features.”

“A handsome face, but so vilely made. She would make a splendid picture

if, like the goddess Laverna, she could be painted as a head without a

body.”

“Ha! ha! ha!--you have a bitter tongue, Count; but Mrs. Denton, what

have you to say against her?”

“Nothing; she has no pretensions for me to contradict. She has a green

eye and a sharp voice; a mincing gait and a broad foot. What friend of

Mrs. Denton would not, therefore, counsel her to a prudent obscurity?”

“She never had but one lover in the world,” said Tarleton, “who was old,

blind, lame, and poor; she accepted him, and became Mrs. Denton.”

“Yes,” said I, “she was like the magnet, and received her name from the

very first person* sensible of her attraction.”

*Magnes.

“Well, you have a shrewd way of saying sweet things,” said Tarleton;

“but I must own that you rarely or never direct it towards women

individually. What makes you break through your ordinary custom?”

“Because I am angry with women collectively; and must pour my spleen

through whatever channel presents itself.”

“Astonishing,” said Tarleton; “I despise women myself. I always did; but

you were their most enthusiastic and chivalrous defender a month or two

ago. What makes thee change, my Sir Amadis?”

“Disappointment! they weary, vex, disgust me; selfish, frivolous, mean,

heartless: out on them! ‘tis a disgrace to have their love!”

“O _Ciel_! What a sensation the news of thy misogyny will cause; the

young, gay, rich Count Devereux, whose wit, vivacity, splendour of

appearance, in equipage and dress, in the course of one season have

thrown all the most established beaux and pretty fellows into the shade;

to whom dedications and odes and _billet-doux_ are so much waste paper;

who has carried off the most general envy and dislike that any man ever

was blest with, since St. John turned politician; what! thou all of a

sudden to become a railer against the divine sex that made thee what

thou art! Fly, fly, unhappy apostate, or expect the fate of Orpheus, at

least!”

“None of your raileries, Tarleton, or I shall speak to you of plebeians

and the _canaille!_”

“_Sacre_! my teeth are on edge already! Oh, the base, base _canaille_,

how I loathe them! Nay, Devereux, joking apart, I love you twice as well

for your humour. I despise the sex heartily. Indeed, _sub rosa_ be it

spoken, there are few things that breathe that I do not despise. Human

nature seems to me a most pitiful bundle of rags and scraps, which the

gods threw out of Heaven, as the dust and rubbish there.”

“A pleasant view of thy species,” said I.

“By my soul it is. Contempt is to me a luxury. I would not lose the

privilege of loathing for all the objects which fools ever admired. What

does old Persius say on the subject?

“‘Hoc ridere meum, tam nil, nulla tibi vendo Iliade.’”*

* “This privilege of mine, to laugh,--such a nothing as it seems,--I

would not barter to thee for an Iliad.”

“And yet, Tarleton,” said I, “the littlest feeling of all is a delight

in contemplating the littleness of other people. Nothing is more

contemptible than habitual contempt.”

“Prithee, now,” answered the haughty aristocrat, “let us not talk of

these matters so subtly: leave me my enjoyment without refining upon it.

What is your first pursuit for the morning?”

“Why, I have promised my uncle a picture of that invaluable countenance

which Lady Hasselton finds so handsome; and I am going to give Kneller

my last sitting.”

“So, so, I will accompany you; I like the vain old dog; ‘tis a pleasure

to hear him admire himself so wittily.”

“Come, then!” said I, taking up my hat and sword; and, entering

Tarleton’s carriage, we drove to the painter’s abode.

We found him employed in finishing a portrait of Lady Godolphin.

“He, he!” cried he, when he beheld me approach. “By Got, I am glad to

see you, Count Tevereux; dis painting is tamned poor work by one’s self,

widout any one to make _des grands yeux_, and cry, ‘Oh, Sir Godfrey

Kneller, how fine dis is!’”

“Very true, indeed,” said I, “no great man can be expected to waste his

talents without his proper reward of praise. But, Heavens, Tarleton, did

you ever see anything so wonderful? that hand, that arm, how exquisite!

If Apollo turned painter, and borrowed colours from the rainbow and

models from the goddesses, he would not be fit to hold the pallet to Sir

Godfrey Kneller.”

“By Got, Count Tevereux, you are von grand judge of painting,” cried

the artist, with sparkling eyes, “and I will paint you as von tamned

handsome man!”

“Nay, my Apelles, you might as well preserve some likeness.”

“Likeness, by Got! I vill make you like and handsome both. By my shoul

you make me von Apelles, I vill make you von Alexander!”

“People in general,” said Tarleton, gravely, “believe that Alexander

had a wry neck, and was a very plain fellow; but no one can know about

Alexander like Sir Godfrey Kneller, who has studied military tactics so

accurately, and who, if he had taken up the sword instead of the pencil,

would have been at least an Alexander himself.”

“By Got, Meester Tarleton, you are as goot a judge of de talents for de

war as Count Tevereux of de _genie_ for de painting! Meester Tarleton, I

vill paint your picture, and I vill make your eyes von goot inch bigger

than dey are!”

“Large or small,” said I (for Tarleton, who had a haughty custom of

contracting his orbs till they were scarce perceptible, was so much

offended, that I thought it prudent to cut off his reply), “large or

small, Sir Godfrey, Mr. Tarleton’s eyes are capable of admiring your

genius; why, your painting is like lightning, and one flash of your

brush would be sufficient to restore even a blind man to sight.”

“It is tamned true,” said Sir Godfrey, earnestly; “and it did restore

von man to sight once! By my shoul, it did! but sit yourself town, Count

Tevereux, and look over your left shoulder--ah, dat is it--and now,

praise on, Count Tevereux; de thought of my genius gives you--vat you

call it--von animation--von fire, look you--by my shoul, it does!”

And by dint of such moderate panegyric, the worthy Sir Godfrey completed

my picture, with equal satisfaction to himself and the original. See

what a beautifier is flattery: a few sweet words will send the Count

Devereux down to posterity with at least three times as much beauty as

he could justly lay claim to.*

* This picture represents the Count in an undress. The face is

decidedly, though by no means remarkably, handsome; the nose is

aquiline,--the upper lip short and chiselled,--the eyes gray, and the

forehead, which is by far the finest feature in the countenance, is

peculiarly high, broad, and massive. The mouth has but little beauty; it

is severe, caustic, and rather displeasing, from the extreme compression

of the lips. The great and prevalent expression of the face is energy.

The eye, the brow, the turn of the head, the erect, penetrating

aspect,--are all strikingly bold, animated, and even daring. And this

expression makes a singular contrast to that in another likeness to

the Count, which was taken at a much later period of life. The latter

portrait represents him in a foreign uniform, decorated with orders. The

peculiar sarcasm of the month is hidden beneath a very long and thick

mustachio, of a much darker colour than the hair (for in both portraits,

as in Jervas’s picture of Lord Bolingbroke, the hair is left undisguised

by the odious fashion of the day). Across one cheek there is a slight

scar, as of a sabre cut. The whole character of this portrait is widely

different from that in the earlier one. Not a trace of the fire, the

animation, which were so striking in the physiognomy of the youth of

twenty, is discoverable in the calm, sedate, stately, yet somewhat stern

expression, which seems immovably spread over the paler hue and the more

prominent features of the man of about four or five and thirty. Yet,

upon the whole, the face in the latter portrait is handsomer; and, from

its air of dignity and reflection, even more impressive than that in the

one I have first described.--ED.

CHAPTER IX.

A DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER, AND A LONG LETTER; A CHAPTER, ON THE WHOLE,

MORE IMPORTANT THAN IT SEEMS.

THE scenes through which, of late, I have conducted my reader are by

no means episodical: they illustrate far more than mere narration the

career to which I was so honourably devoted.

Dissipation,--women,--wine,--Tarleton for a friend, Lady Hasselton for a

mistress. Let me now throw aside the mask.

To people who have naturally very intense and very acute feelings,

nothing is so fretting, so wearing to the heart, as the commonplace

affections, which are the properties and offspring of the world. We have

seen the birds which, with wings unclipt, children fasten to a stake.

The birds seek to fly, and are pulled back before their wings are well

spread; till, at last, they either perpetually strain at the end of

their short tether, exciting only ridicule by their anguish and their

impotent impatience; or, sullen and despondent, they remain on the

ground, without any attempt to fly, nor creep, even to the full limit

which their fetters will allow. Thus it is with the feelings of the

keen, wild nature I speak of: they are either striving forever to pass

the little circle of slavery to which they are condemned, and so move

laughter by an excess of action and a want of adequate power; or they

rest motionless and moody, disdaining the petty indulgence they _might_

enjoy, till sullenness is construed into resignation, and despair seems

the apathy of content. Time, however, cures what it does not kill; and

both bird and beast, if they pine not to the death at first, grow tame

and acquiescent at last.

What to me was the companionship of Tarleton, or the attachment of

Lady Hasselton? I had yielded to the one, and I had half eagerly, half

scornfully, sought the other. These, and the avocations they brought

with them, consumed my time, and of Time murdered there is a ghost which

we term _ennui_. The hauntings of this spectre are the especial curse

of the higher orders; and hence springs a certain consequence to the

passions. Persons in those ranks of society so exposed to _ennui_ are

either rendered totally incapable of real love, or they love far more

intensely than those in a lower station; for the affections in them are

either utterly frittered away on a thousand petty objects (poor shifts

to escape the persecuting spectre), or else, early disgusted with the

worthlessness of these objects, the heart turns within and languishes

for something not found in the daily routine of life. When this is the

case, and when the pining of the heart is once satisfied, and the object

of love is found, there are two mighty reasons why the love should be

most passionately cherished. The first is, the utter indolence in

which aristocratic life oozes away, and which allows full food for that

meditation which can nurse by sure degrees the weakest desire into the

strongest passion; and the second reason is, that the insipidity and

hollowness of all patrician pursuits and pleasures render the excitement

of love more delicious and more necessary to the “_ignavi terrarum

domini_,” than it is to those orders of society more usefully, more

constantly, and more engrossingly engaged.

Wearied and sated with the pursuit of what was worthless, my heart, at

last, exhausted itself in pining for what was pure. I recurred with a

tenderness which I struggled with at first, and which in yielding to

I blushed to acknowledge, to the memory of Isora. And in the world,

surrounded by all which might be supposed to cause me to forget her, my

heart clung to her far more endearingly than it had done in the rural

solitudes in which she had first allured it. The truth was this; at

the time I first loved her, other passions--passions almost equally

powerful--shared her empire. Ambition and pleasure--vast whirlpools of

thought--had just opened themselves a channel in my mind, and thither

the tides of my desires were hurried and lost. Now those whirlpools had

lost their power, and the channels, being dammed up, flowed back upon

my breast. Pleasure had disgusted me, and the only ambition I had yet

courted and pursued had palled upon me still more. I say, the only

ambition, for as yet that which is of the loftier and more lasting kind

had not afforded me a temptation; and the hope which had borne the name

and rank of ambition had been the hope rather to glitter than to rise.

These passions, not yet experienced when I lost Isora, had afforded

me at that period a ready comfort and a sure engrossment. And, in

satisfying the hasty jealousies of my temper, in deeming Isora unworthy

and Gerald my rival, I naturally aroused in my pride a dexterous orator

as well as a firm ally. Pride not only strengthened my passions, it also

persuaded them by its voice; and it was not till the languid yet deep

stillness of sated wishes and palled desires fell upon me, that the

low accent of a love still surviving at my heart made itself heard in

answer.

I now began to take a different view of Isora’s conduct. I now began

to doubt where I had formerly believed; and the doubt, first allied to

fear, gradually brightened into hope. Of Gerald’s rivalry, at least of

his identity with Barnard, and, consequently, of his power over Isora,

there was, and there could be, no feeling short of certainty. But of

what nature was that power? Had not Isora assured me that it was not

love? Why should I disbelieve her? Nay, did she not love myself? had not

her cheek blushed and her hand trembled when I addressed her? Were these

signs the counterfeits of love? Were they not rather of that heart’s dye

which no skill _can_ counterfeit? She had declared that she could

not, that she could never, be mine; she had declared so with a fearful

earnestness which seemed to annihilate hope; but had she not also, in

the same meeting, confessed that I was dear to her? Had not her lip

given me a sweeter and a more eloquent assurance of that confession than

words?--and could hope perish while love existed? She had left me,--she

had bid me farewell forever; but that was no proof of a want of love,

or of her unworthiness. Gerald, or Barnard, evidently possessed an

influence over father as well as child. Their departure from------might

have been occasioned by him, and she might have deplored, while she

could not resist it; or she might not even have deplored; nay, she might

have desired, she might have advised it, for my sake as well as

hers, were she thoroughly convinced that the union of our loves was

impossible.