TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN THE DOCTOR'S
LIFE. A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED. THE AUTHOR PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH
THE FEELINGS OF HIS READERS. ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL. THE
SCAFFOLD A STAGE. DON RODRIGO CALDERON. THISTLEWOOD. THE WORLD A
MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN CHARACTER.
This breaks no rule of order.
If order were infringed then should I flee
From my chief purpose, and my mark should miss.
Order is Nature's beauty, and the way
To Order is by rules that Art hath found.
GWILLIM.
The question “Who was the Doctor?” has now methinks been answered,
though not fully, yet sufficiently for the present stage of our
memorials, while he is still a bachelor, a single man, an imperfect
individual, half only of the whole being which by the laws of nature,
and of Christian polity it was designed that man should become.
The next question therefore that presents itself for consideration
relates to that other, and as he sometimes called it better half,
which upon the union of the two moieties made him a whole man.—Who was
Mrs. Dove?
The reader has been informed how my friend in his early manhood when
about-to-be-a-Doctor, fell in love. Upon that part of his history I
have related all that he communicated, which was all that could by me
be known, and probably all there was to know. From that time he never
fell in love again; nor did he ever run into it; but as was formerly
intimated, he once caught the affection. The history of this
attachment I heard from others; he had suffered too deeply ever to
speak of it himself; and having maturely considered the matter I have
determined not to relate the circumstances. Suffice it to say that he
might at the same time have caught from the same person an insidious
and mortal disease, if his constitution had been as susceptible of the
one contagion, as his heart was of the other. The tale is too painful
to be told. There are authors enough in the world who delight in
drawing tears; there will always be young readers enough who are not
unwilling to shed them; and perhaps it may be wholesome for the young
and happy upon whose tears there is no other call.
Not that the author is to be admired, or even excused, who draws too
largely upon our lacrymal glands. The pathetic is a string which may
be touched by an unskilful hand, and which has often been played upon
by an unfeeling one.
For my own part, I wish neither to make my readers laugh or weep. It
is enough for me, if I may sometimes bring a gleam of sunshine upon
thy brow, Pensoso; and a watery one over thy sight, Buonallegro; a
smile upon Penserosa's lips, a dimple in Amanda's cheek, and some
quiet tears, Sophronia, into those mild eyes, which have shed so many
scalding ones! When my subject leads me to distressful scenes, it will
as Southey says, not be
—my purpose e'er to entertain
The heart with useless grief; but, as I may,
Blend in my calm and meditative strain
Consolatory thoughts, the balm for real pain.[1]
[Footnote 1: Tale of PARAGUAY.]
The maxim that an author who desires to make us weep must be affected
himself by what he writes, is too trite to be repeated in its original
language. Both authors and actors however can produce this effect
without eliciting a spark of feeling from their own hearts; and what
perhaps may be deemed more remarkable, they can with the same success
excite merriment in others, without partaking of it in the slightest
degree themselves. No man ever made his contemporaries laugh more
heartily than Scarron, whose bodily sufferings were such that he
wished for himself
_à toute heure
Ou la mort, ou santé meilleure:_
And who describes himself in his epistle to Sarazin, as
_Un Pauvret
Tres-maigret;
Au col tors,
Dont le corps
Tout tortu,
Tout bossu,
Suranné,
De'charné,
Est reduit
Jour et nuit,
A souffrir
Sans guerir
Des tourmens
Vehemens._
It may be said perhaps that Scarron's disposition was eminently
cheerful, and that by indulging in buffoonery he produced in himself a
pleasurable excitement not unlike that which others seek from strong
liquors, or from opium; and therefore that his example tends to
invalidate the assertion in support of which it was adduced. This is a
plausible objection; and I am far from undervaluing the philosophy of
Pantagruelism, and from denying that its effects may, and are likely
to be as salutary, as any that were ever produced by the proud
doctrines of the Porch. But I question Scarron's right to the
appellation of a Pantagruelist; his humour had neither the heighth nor
the depth of that philosophy.
There is a well-known anecdote of a physician, who being called in to
an unknown patient, found him suffering under the deepest depression
of mind, without any discoverable disease, or other assignable cause.
The physician advised him to seek for cheerful objects, and
recommended him especially to go to the theatre and see a famous actor
then in the meridian of his powers, whose comic talents were
unrivalled. Alas! the comedian who kept crowded theatres in a roar was
this poor hypochondriac himself!
The state of mind in which such men play their part, whether as
authors or actors, was confessed in a letter written from Yarmouth
Gaol to the Doctor's friend Miller, by a then well-known performer in
this line, George Alexander Stevens. He wrote to describe his distress
in prison, and to request that Miller would endeavour to make a small
collection for him, some night at a concert; and he told his sad tale
sportively. But breaking off that strain he said; “You may think I can
have no sense, that while I am thus wretched I should offer at
ridicule! But, Sir, people constituted like me, with a
disproportionate levity of spirits, are always most merry when they
are most miserable; and quicken like the eyes of the consumptive,
which are always brightest the nearer a patient approaches to
dissolution.”
It is one thing to jest, it is another to be mirthful. Sir Thomas More
jested as he ascended the scaffold. In cases of violent death, and
especially upon an unjust sentence, this is not surprizing; because
the sufferer has not been weakened by a wasting malady, and is in a
state of high mental excitement and exertion. But even when
dissolution comes in the course of nature, there are instances of men
who have died with a jest upon their lips. Garci Sanchez de Badajoz
when he was at the point of death desired that he might be dressed in
the habit of St. Francis; this was accordingly done, and over the
Franciscan frock they put on his habit of Santiago, for he was a
knight of that order. It was a point of devotion with him to wear the
one dress, a point of honour to wear the other; but looking at himself
in this double attire, he said to those who surrounded his death-bed,
“The Lord will say to me presently, my friend Garci Sanchez, you come
very well wrapt up! (_muy arropado_) and I shall reply, Lord, it is no
wonder, for it was winter when I set off.”
The author who relates this anecdote, remarks that _o morrer com graça
he muyto bom, e com graças he muyto māo_: the observation is good but
untranslateable, because it plays upon the word which means grace as
well as wit. The anecdote itself is an example of the ruling humour
“strong in death;” perhaps also of that pride or vanity, call it which
we will, which so often, when mind and body have not yielded to
natural decay, or been broken down by suffering, clings to the last in
those whom it has strongly possessed. Don Rodrigo Calderon whose fall
and exemplary contrition served as a favourite topic for the poets of
his day, wore a Franciscan habit at his execution, as an outward and
visible sign of penitence and humiliation; as he ascended the
scaffold, he lifted the skirts of the habit with such an air that his
attendant confessor thought it necessary to reprove him for such an
instance of ill-timed regard to his appearance. Don Rodrigo excused
himself by saying that he had all his life carried himself gracefully!
The author by whom this is related calls it an instance of illustrious
hypocrisy. In my judgement the Father Confessor who gave occasion for
it deserves a censure far more than the penitent sufferer. The
movement beyond all doubt was purely habitual, as much so as the act
of lifting his feet to ascend the steps of the scaffold; but the
undeserved reproof made him feel how curiously whatever he did was
remarked; and that consciousness reminded him that he had a part to
support, when his whole thoughts would otherwise have been far
differently directed.
A personage in one of Webster's Plays says,
I knew a man that was to lose his head
Feed with an excellent good appetite
To strengthen his heart, scarce half an hour before,
And if he did, it only was to speak.
Probably the dramatist alluded to some well known fact which was at
that time of recent occurrence. When the desperate and atrocious
traitor Thistlewood was on the scaffold, his demeanour was that of a
man who was resolved boldly to meet the fate he had deserved; in the
few words which were exchanged between him and his fellow criminals he
observed, that the grand question whether or not the soul was immortal
would soon be solved for them. No expression of hope escaped him, no
breathing of repentance; no spark of grace appeared. Yet (it is a
fact, which whether it be more consolatory or awful, ought to be
known,) on the night after the sentence, and preceding his execution,
while he supposed that the person who was appointed to watch him in
his cell, was asleep, this miserable man was seen by that person
repeatedly to rise upon his knees, and heard repeatedly calling upon
Christ his Saviour, to have mercy upon him, and to forgive him his
sins!
All men and women are verily, as Shakespear has said of them, merely
players,—when we see them upon the stage of the world; that is when
they are seen any where except in the freedom and undressed intimacy
of private life. There is a wide difference indeed in the performers,
as there is at a masquerade between those who assume a character, and
those who wear dominos; some play off the agreeable, or the
disagreeable for the sake of attracting notice; others retire as it
were into themselves; but you can judge as little of the one as of the
other. It is even possible to be acquainted with a man long and
familiarly, and as we may suppose intimately, and yet not to know him
thoroughly or well. There may be parts of his character with which we
have never come in contact,—recesses which have never been opened to
us,—springs upon which we have never touched. Many there are who can
keep their vices secret; would that all bad men had sense and shame
enough to do so, or were compelled to it by the fear of public
opinion! Shame of a very different nature,—a moral
shamefacedness,—which if not itself an instinctive virtue, is near
akin to one, makes those who are endowed with the best and highest
feelings, conceal them from all common eyes; and for our performance
of religious duties,—our manifestations of piety,—we have been warned
that what of this kind is done to be seen of men, will not be rewarded
openly before men and angels at the last.
If I knew my venerable friend better than I ever knew any other man,
it was because he was in many respects unlike other men, and in few
points more unlike them than in this, that he always appeared what he
was,—neither better nor worse. With a discursive intellect and a
fantastic imagination, he retained his simplicity of heart. He had
kept that heart unspotted from the world; his father's blessing was
upon him, and he prized it beyond all that the world could have
bestowed. Crowe says of us,
Our better mind
Is as a Sunday's garment, then put on
When we have nought to do; but at our work
We wear a worse for thrift!
It was not so with him: his better mind was not as a garment to be put
on and off at pleasure; it was like its plumage to a bird, its beauty
and its fragrance to a flower, except that it was not liable to be
ruffled, nor to fade, nor to exhale and pass away. His mind was like a
peacock always in full attire; it was only at times indeed, (to pursue
the similitude,) that he expanded and displayed it; but its richness
and variety never could be concealed from those who had eyes to see
them.
—His sweetest mind
'Twixt mildness tempered and low courtesy,
Could leave as soon to be, as not be kind.
Churlish despite ne'er looked from his calm eye,
Much less commanded in his gentle heart;
To baser men fair looks he would impart;
Nor could he cloak ill thoughts in complimental art.[2]
What he was in boyhood has been seen, and something also of his
manlier years; but as yet little of the ripe fruits of his
intellectual autumn have been set before the readers. No such banquet
was promised them as that with which they are to be regaled. “The
booksellers,” says Somner the antiquary, in an unpublished letter to
Dugdale, “affect a great deal of title as advantageous for the sale;
but judicious men dislike it, as savouring of too much ostentation,
and suspecting the wine is not good where so much bush is hung out.”
Somebody, I forget who, wrote a book upon the titles of books,
regarding the title as a most important part of the composition. The
bookseller's fashion of which Somner speaks has long been obsolete;
mine is a brief title promising little, but intending much. It
specifies only the Doctor; but his gravities and his levities, his
opinions of men and things, his speculations moral and political,
physical and spiritual, his philosophy and his religion, each blending
with each, and all with all, these are comprised in the &c. of my
title page,—these and his Pantagruelism to boot. When I meditate upon
these I may exclaim with the poet:—
Mnemosyne hath kiss'd the kingly Jove,
And entertained a feast within my brain.[3]
These I shall produce for the entertainment of the idle reader, and
for the recreation of the busy one; for the amusement of the young,
and the contentment of the old; for the pleasure of the wise, and the
approbation of the good; and these when produced will be the monument
of Daniel Dove. Of such a man it may indeed be said that he
Is his own marble; and his merit can
Cut him to any figure, and express
More art than Death's Cathedral palaces,
Where royal ashes keep their court![4]
Some of my contemporaries may remember a story once current at
Cambridge, of a luckless undergraduate, who being examined for his
degree, and failing in every subject upon which he was tried,
complained that he had not been questioned upon the things which he
knew. Upon which the examining master, moved less to compassion by the
impenetrable dulness of the man than to anger by his unreasonable
complaint, tore off about an inch of paper, and pushing it towards
him, desired him to write upon that all he knew!
[Footnote 2: PHINEAS FLETCHER, 186.]
[Footnote 3: ROBERT GREEN.]
[Footnote 4: MIDDLETON.]
And yet bulky books are composed, or compiled by men who know as
little as this poor empty individual. Tracts and treatises and tomes,
may be, and are written by persons, to whom the smallest square sheet
of delicate note paper, rose-coloured, or green, or blue, with its
embossed border, manufactured expressly for ladies' fingers and crow
quills, would afford ample room, and verge enough, for expounding the
sum total of their knowledge upon the subject whereon they undertake
to enlighten the public.
Were it possible for me to pour out all that I have taken in from him,
of whose accumulated stores I, alas! am now the sole living
depository, I know not to what extent the precious reminiscences might
run.
_Per sua gratia singulare
Par ch' io habbi nel capo una seguenza,
Una fontana, un fiume, un lago, un mare,
Id est un pantanaccio d'eloquenza._[5]
[Footnote 5: MATTEO FRANZESI.]
Sidronius Hosschius has supplied me with a simile for this stream of
recollections.
_Æstuat et cursu nunquam cessante laborat
Eridanus, fessis irrequietus aquis;
Spumeus it, fervensque, undamque supervenit unda;
Hæc illam, sed et hanc non minus ista premit.
Volvitur, et volvit pariter, motuque perenni
Truditur à fluctu posteriore prior._
As I shall proceed
_Excipiet curam nova cura, laborque laborem,
Nec minus exhausto quod superabit erit._
But for stores which in this way have been received, the best
compacted memory is like a sieve; more of necessity slips through than
stops upon the way; and well is it, if that which is of most value be
what remains behind. I have pledged myself, therefore, to no more than
I can perform; and this the reader shall have within reasonable
limits, and in due time, provided the performance be not prevented by
any of the evils incident to human life.
At present, my business is to answer the question “Who was Mrs. Dove?”