Sheer Lane, February 10, 1710.
After having applied my mind with more than ordinary attention to
my studies, it is my usual custom to relax and unbend it in the
conversation of such as are rather easy than shining companions. This I
find particularly necessary for me before I retire, to rest, in order to
draw my slumbers upon me by degrees, and fall asleep insensibly. This is
the particular use I make of a set of heavy honest men, with whom I have
passed many hours with much indolence, though not with great pleasure.
Their conversation is a kind of preparative for sleep; it takes the
mind down from its abstractions, leads it into the familiar traces of
thought, and lulls it into that state of tranquillity, which is the
condition of a thinking man, when he is but half-awake. After this, my
reader will not be surprised to hear the account which I am about to
give of a club of my own contemporaries, among whom I pass two or three
hours every evening. This I look upon as taking my first nap before I go
to bed. The truth of it is, I should think myself unjust to posterity,
as well as to the society at "The Trumpet," of which I am a member, did
not I in some part of my writings give an account of the persons among
whom I have passed almost a sixth part of my time for these last forty
years. Our club consisted originally of fifteen; but, partly by the
severity of the law in arbitrary times, and partly by the natural
effects of old age, we are at present reduced to a third part of that
number: in which, however, we have this consolation that the best
company is said to consist of five persons. I must confess, besides the
aforementioned benefit which I meet with in the conversation of this
select society, I am not the less pleased with the company, in that I
find myself the greatest wit among them, and am heard as their oracle in
all points of learning and difficulty.
Sir Jeoffery Notch, who is the oldest of the club, has been in
possession of the right-hand chair time out of mind, and is the only man
among us that has the liberty of stirring the fire. This our foreman is
a gentleman of an ancient family, that came to a great estate some
years before he had discretion, and run it out in hounds, horses, and
cock-fighting; for which reason he looks upon himself as an honest,
worthy gentleman, who has had misfortunes in the world, and calls every
thriving man a pitiful upstart.
Major Matchlock is the next senior, who served in the last civil wars,
and has all the battles by heart. He does not think any action in Europe
worth talking of, since the fight of Marston Moor; and every night tells
us of his having been knocked off his horse at the rising of the London
apprentices; for which he is in great esteem among us.
Honest old Dick Reptile is the third of our society. He is a
good-natured indolent man, who speaks little himself, but laughs at our
jokes; and brings his young nephew along with him, a youth of eighteen
years old, to show him good company, and give him a taste of the world.
This young fellow sits generally silent; but whenever he opens his
mouth, or laughs at anything that passes, he is constantly told by his
uncle, after a jocular manner, "Ay, ay, Jack, you young men think us
fools; but we old men know you are."
The greatest wit of our company, next to myself, is a Bencher, of the
neighbouring Inn, who in his youth frequented the ordinaries about
Charing Cross, and pretends to have been intimate with Jack Ogle. He has
about ten distichs of Hudibras without book, and never leaves the club
till he has applied them all. If any modern wit be mentioned, or any
town-frolic spoken of, he shakes his head at the dulness of the present
age, and tells us a story of Jack Ogle.
For my own part, I am esteemed among them, because they see I am
something respected by others; though at the same time I understand by
their behaviour, that I am considered by them as a man of a great deal
of learning, but no knowledge of the world; insomuch, that the
Major sometimes, in the height of his military pride, calls me the
philosopher; and Sir Jeoffery, no longer ago than last night, upon a
dispute what day of the month it was then in Holland, pulled his pipe
out of his mouth, and cried, "What does the Scholar say to it?"
Our club meets precisely at six o'clock in the evening; but I did not
come last night till half an hour after seven, by which means I
escaped the battle of Naseby, which the Major usually begins at about
three-quarters after six. I found also, that my good friend the Bencher
had already spent three of his distichs; and only waiting an opportunity
to hear a sermon spoken of that he might introduce the couplet where "a
stick" rhymes to "ecclesiastic." At my entrance into the room, they were
naming a red petticoat and a cloak, by which I found that the Bencher
had been diverting them with a story of Jack Ogle.
I had no sooner taken my seat, but Sir Jeoffery, to show his good will
towards me, gave me a pipe of his own tobacco, and stirred up the
fire. I look upon it as a point of morality, to be obliged by those who
endeavour to oblige me; and therefore, in requital for his kindness, and
to set the conversation a-going, I took the best occasion I could to put
him upon telling us the story of old Gantlett, which he always does
with very particular concern. He traced up his descent on both sides for
several generations, describing his diet and manner of life, with his
several battles, and particularly that in which he fell. This Gantlett
was a game-cock, upon whose head the knight, in his youth, had won five
hundred pounds, and lost two thousand. This naturally set the Major upon
the account of Edge-hill fight, and ended in a duel of Jack Ogle's.
Old Reptile was extremely attentive to all that was said, though it was
the same he had heard every night for these twenty years, and upon all
occasions winked upon his nephew to mind what passed.
This may suffice to give the world a taste of our innocent conversation,
which we spun out till about ten of the clock, when my maid came with a
lantern to light me home. I could not but reflect with myself, as I was
going out, upon the talkative humour of old men, and the little figure
which that part of life makes in one who cannot employ this natural
propensity in discourses which would make him venerable. I must own,
it makes me very melancholy in company, when I hear a young man begin a
story; and have often observed, that one of a quarter of an hour long in
a man of five-and-twenty, gathers circumstances every time he tells it,
till it grows into a long Canterbury tale of two hours by that time he
is three-score.
The only way of avoiding such a trifling and frivolous old age is to lay
up in our way to it such stores of knowledge and observation as may make
us useful and agreeable in our declining years. The mind of man in
a long life will become a magazine of wisdom or folly, and will
consequently discharge itself in something impertinent or improving. For
which reason, as there is nothing more ridiculous than an old trifling
story-teller, so there is nothing more venerable than one who has turned
his experience to the entertainment and advantage of mankind.
In short, we, who are in the last stage of life, and are apt to indulge
ourselves in talk, ought to consider if what we speak be worth being
heard, and endeavour to make our discourse like that of Nestor, which
Homer compares to the flowing of honey for its sweetness.
I am afraid I shall be thought guilty of this excess I am speaking of,
when I cannot conclude without observing that Milton certainly thought
of this passage in Homer, when, in his description of an eloquent
spirit, he says--
"His tongue dropped manna."