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First Essay |
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PREFACE
TO THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA
BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA
This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been in a
declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to
nature.
To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing,
if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted; and a two
years' and a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a
phantom.
I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard
objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they
are, I grant you -- a sort of unlicked, incondite things -- villainously
pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They
had not been his, if they had been other than such; and better it
is, that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than
to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him.
Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did not know,
that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only (historically)
of another; as in a former Essay (to save many instances) -- where
under the first person (his favorite figure) he shadows forth the
forlorn estate of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from
his friends and connections -- in direct opposition to his own early
history.
My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those
who did not like him, hated him; and some, who once liked him
afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself
too little concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He
observed neither time nor place, and would e'en out with what came
uppermost. With the severe religionist lie would pass for a freethinker;
while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or
persuaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few understood
him; and I am not certain that at all times he quite understood
himself. He too much affected that dangerous figure -- irony.
He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred.
-- He would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest;
and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand
it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal
habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, forbade
him to be all orator; and he seemed determined that no one
else should play that part when he was present. He was petit and
ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes
in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger,
sit silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow; till some unlucky
occasion provoking it, be would stutter out some senseless pun (not
altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped
his character for the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but
nine times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send away a
whole company his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his
utterance, and his happiest impromptus had the appearance of
effort. He has been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth
he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He
chose his companions for some individuality of character which they
manifested. -- Hence, not many persons of science, and few professed
literati, were of his councils. They were, for the most part, persons
of an uncertain fortune; and, as to such people commonly nothing
is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though moderate)
income, he passed with most of them for a great miser. To my
knowledge this was a mistake. His intimados, to confess a truth,
were in the world's eye a ragged regiment. He found them floating
on the surface of society; and the colour, or something else, in the
weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him -- but they were good
and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared for the
society of what are called good people. If any of these were
scandalised (and offences were sure to arise), he could not help it.
When be has been remonstrated with for not making more concessions
to the feeling of good people, he would retort by asking,
what one point did these good people ever concede to him? He
was temperate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little
on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed
he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would say,
as a solvent of speech. Marry -- as the friendly vapour ascended,
how his Prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments,
which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded
a statist!
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that
my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow
obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the approaches
of age and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how
slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him
latterly on this subject, he expressed himself with a pettishness,
which I thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his
suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children
belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and
curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to him. "They
take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He
had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like
anything important and parochial. He thought that he
approached nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general
aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character,
and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should so
entitle him. He herded always, while it was possible, with
people younger than himself. He did not conform to the
march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His
manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man.
The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoulders.
The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented
the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses; but such
as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings.
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Index |
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First Essay |
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