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POPULAR FALLACIES
This axiom contains a principle of compensation
which disposes us to admit the truth of it. But there is no safe
trusting to dictionaries and definitions. We should more willingly
fall in with this popular language, if we did not find brutality
sometimes awkwardly coupled with valour -- in the same vocabulary.
The comic writers, with their poetical justice, have contributed
not a little to mislead us upon this point. To see a hectoring
fellow exposed and beaten upon the stage, has something in it
wonderfully diverting. Some people's share of animal spirits is
notoriously low and defective. It has not strength to raise a
vapour, or furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These
love to be told that huffing is no art of valour. The truest courage
with them is that which is the least noisy and obtrusive. But
confront one of these silent heroes with the swaggerer of real
life, and his confidence in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions
do not uniformly bespeak non-performance. A modest inoffensive
deportment does not [p 253] necessarily imply valour; neither
does the absence of it justify us in denying that quality. Hickman
wanted modesty -- we do not mean him of Clarissa -- but who ever
doubted his courage? Even the poets -- upon whom this equitable
distribution of qualities should be most binding -- have thought
it agreeable to nature to depart from the rule upon occasion.
Harapha, in the "Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon
the received notions. Milton has made him at once a blusterer,
a giant, and a dastard. But Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving
armies singly before him -- and does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder
insight into this kind of character than either of his predecessors.
He divides the palm more equably, and allows his hero a sort of
dimidiate preeminence: -- " Bully Dawson kicked by half the
town, and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This was
true distributive justice.
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The weakest part of
mankind have this saying commonest in their mouth. It is the trite
consolation administered to the easy dupe, when he has been tricked
out of his money or estate, that the acquisition of it will do
the owner no good. But the rogues of this world -- the prudenter
part of them, at least -- know better; and, if the observation
had been as true as it is old, would not have failed by this time
to have discovered it. They have pretty sharp distinctions of
the fluctuating and the permanent. "Lightly come, lightly
go," is a proverb, which they can very well afford to leave,
when they leave little else, to the losers. They do not always
find manors, got by rapine or chicanery, insensibly to melt away,
as the poets will have it or that all gold glides, like thawing
snow, from the thief's hand that grasps it. Church land, alienated
to lay uses, was formerly denounced to have this slippery quality.
But some portions of it somehow always stuck so fast, that the
denunciators have been vain to postpone the prophecy of refundment
to a late posterity.
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The severest exaction
surely ever invented upon the self-denial of poor human nature!
This is to expect a gentleman to give a treat without partaking
of it; to sit esurient at his own table, and commend the flavour
of his venison upon the absurd strength of his never touching
it himself. On the contrary, we love to see a wag taste his own
joke to his party; to watch a quirk, or a merry conceit, flickering
upon the lips some seconds before the tongue is delivered of it.
If it be good, fresh, and racy [p 254] -- begotten of the
occasion; if he that utters it never thought it before, he is
naturally the first to be tickled with it; and any suppression
of such complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting. What
does it seem to imply, but that your company is weak or foolish
enough to be moved by an image or a fancy, that shall stir you
not at all, or but faintly? This is exactly the humour of the
fine gentleman in Mandeville, who, while he dazzles his guests
with the display of some costly toy, affects himself to "see
nothing considerable in it."
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A speech from the poorer
sort of people, which always indicates that the party vituperated
is a gentleman. The very fact which they deny, is that which galls
and exasperates them to use this language. The forbearance with
which it is usually received, is a proof what interpretation the
bystander sets upon it. Of a kin to this, and still less politic,
are the phrases with which, in their street rhetoric, they ply
one another more grossly -- He is a poor creature. -- He as not
a rag to cover -- -- &c.; though this last, we confess, is
more frequently applied by females to females. They do not perceive
that the satire glances upon themselves. A poor man, of all things
in the world, should not upbraid an antagonist with poverty. Are
there no other topics -- as, to tell him his father was hanged
-- his sister, &c. -- , without exposing a secret, which should
be kept snug between them; and doing an affront to the order to
which they have the honour equally to belong? All this while they
do not see how the wealthier man stands by and laughs in his sleeve
at both.
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A smooth text to the
latter; and, preached from the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience
from the pews lined with satin. It is twice sitting upon velvet
to a foolish squire to be told, that he -- and not perverse nature,
as the homilies would make us imagine, is the true cause of all
the irregularities in his parish. This is striking at the root
of free-will indeed, and denying the originality of sin in any
sense. But men are not such implicit sheep as this comes to. If
the abstinence from evil on the part of the upper classes is to
derive itself from no higher principle, than the apprehension
of setting ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to discharge
them from all squeamishness on that score: they may even take
their fill of pleasures, where they can find them. The Genius
[p 255] of Poverty, hampered and straitened as it is, is
not so barren of invention but it can trade upon the staple of
its own vice, without drawing upon their capital. The poor are
not quite such servile imitators as they take them for. Some of
them are very clever artists in their way. Here and there we find
an original. Who taught the Poor to steal, to pilfer? They did
not go to the great for schoolmasters in these faculties surely.
It is well if in some vices they allow us to be -- no copyists.
In no other sense is it true that the poor copy them, than as
servants may be said to take after their masters and mistresses,
when they succeed to their reversionary cold meats. If the master,
from indisposition or some other cause, neglect his food, the
servant dines notwithstanding.
"O, but (some will say) the force of example
is great." We knew a lady who was so scrupulous on this head,
that she would put up with the calls of the most impertinent visitor,
rather than let her servant say she was not at home, for fear
of teaching her maid to tell an untruth; and this in the very
face of the fact, which she knew well enough, that the wench was
one of the greatest liars upon the earth without teaching; so
much so, that her mistress possibly never heard two words of consecutive
truth from her in her life. But nature must go for nothing: example
must be every thing. This liar in grain, who never opened her
mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a remote inference,
which she (pretty casuist!) might possibly draw from a form of
words -- literally false, but essentially deceiving no one --
that under some circumstances a fib might not be so exceedingly
sinful -- a fiction, too, not at all in her own way, or one that
she could be suspected of adopting, for few servant-wenches care
to be denied to visitors.
This word example reminds us of another fine word
which is in use upon these occasions -- encouragement. "People
in our sphere must not be thought to give encouragement to such
proceedings." To such a frantic height is this principle
capable of being carried, that we have known individuals who have
thought it within the scope of their influence to sanction despair,
and give eclat to -- suicide. A domestic in the family of a county
member lately deceased, for love, or some unknown cause, cut his
throat, but not successfully. The poor fellow was otherwise much
loved and respected; and great interest was used in his behalf,
upon his recovery, that he might be permitted to retain his place;
his word being first pledged, not without some substantial sponsors
to promise for him, that the like should never happen again. His
master was inclinable to keep him, but his mistress thought otherwise;
and John in the end was dismissed, her ladyship declaring that
she "could not think of encouraging any such doings in the
county." [p 256]
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Not a man, woman, or
child in ten miles round Guildhall, who really believes this saying.
The inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in
revenge by somebody, who was disappointed of a regale. It is a
vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the palate,
which knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a
feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is usually
something left for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs
to a class of proverbs, which have a tendency to make us undervalue
money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money
is not health; riches cannot purchase every thing: the metaphor
which makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces
fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the
unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which
imputes dirt to acres -- a sophistry so barefaced, that even the
literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abundance
of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily
believe to have been the invention of some cunning borrower, who
had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbour, which he
could only hope to carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate
any one of these sayings out of the artful metonyme which envelops
it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton,
exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing
foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time
to himself, are not much -- however we may be pleased to scandalise
with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for
us.
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Our experience would
lead us to quite an opposite conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no
test of truth; but warmth and earnestness are a proof at least
of a man's own conviction of the rectitude that which he maintains.
Coolness is as often the result of unprincipled indifference to
truth or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a man's own side
in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting sometimes than the appearance
of this philosophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stammering
law-stationer in Lincoln's Inn -- we have seldom known this shrewd
little fellow engaged in argument where we were not convinced
he had the best of it, if tongue would but fairly have seconded
him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken sense for an
hour together, writhing and labouring to be delivered of the point
of dispute -- the very [p 257] gist of the controversy
knocking at his teeth, which like some obstinate iron-grating
still obstructed its deliverance -- his puny frame convulsed,
and face reddening all over at an unfairness in the logic which
he wanted articulation to expose, it has moved our gall to see
a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, that cared not a button
for the merits of the question, by merely laying his hand upon
the head of the stationer, and desiring him to he calm (your tall
disputants have always the advantage), with a provoking sneer
carry the argument clean from him in the opinion of all the bystanders,
who have gone away clearly convinced that Titubus must have been
in the wrong, because he was in a passion; and that Mr. -----,
meaning his opponent, is one of the fairest, and at the same time
one of the most dispassionate arguers breathing.
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The same might be said
of the wittiest local allusions. A custom is sometimes as difficult
to explain to a foreigner as a pun. What would become of a great
part of the wit of the last age, if it were tried by this test?
How would certain topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have sounded
to a Terentian auditory, though Terence himself had been alive
to translate them? Senator urbanus, with Curruca to boot for a
synonime, would but faintly have done the business. Words, involving
notions, are hard enough to render; it is too much to expect us
to translate a sound, and give an elegant version to a jingle.
The Virgilian harmony is not translatable, but by substituting
harmonious sounds in another language for it. To Latinise a pun,
we must seek a pun in Latin, that will answer to it; as, to give
an idea of the double endings in Hudibras, we must have recourse
to a similar practice in the old monkish doggerel. Dennis, the
fiercest oppugner of puns in ancient or modern times, professes
himself highly tickled with the "a stick" chiming to
"ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun,
a verbal consonance?
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If by worst be only
meant the most far-fetched and startling, we agree to it. A pun
is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol
let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It
is an antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes bounding
into the presence, and does not show the less comic for being
dragged in sometimes by the head and shoulders. What though it
limp a little, or prove defective in one leg -- all the [p 258]
better. A pun may easily be too curious and artificial. Who has
not at one time or other been at a party of professors (himself
perhaps an old offender in that line), where, after ringing a
round of the most ingenious conceits, every man contributing his
shot, and some there the most expert shooters of the day; after
making a poor word run the gauntlet till it is ready to drop;
after hunting and winding it through all the possible ambages
of similar sounds; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at
it, till the very milk of it will not yield a drop further --
suddenly some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a comer, who was
never prentice to the trade, whom the company for very pity passed
over, as we do by a known poor man when a money-subscription is
going round, no one calling upon him for his quota -- has all
at once come out with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent;
so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be denied;
so exquisitely good, and so deplorably bad at the same time, --
that it has proved a Robin Hood's shot; -- any thing ulterior
to that is despaired of; and the party breaks up, unanimously
voting it to be the very worst (that is, best) pun of the evening.
This species of wit is the better for not being perfect in all
its parts. What it gains in completeness, it loses in naturalness.
The more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it has
upon some other faculties. The puns which are most entertaining
are those which will least bear an analysis. Of this kind is the
following, recorded, with a sort of stigma, in one of Swift's
Miscellanies.
An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carrying
a hare through the streets, accosts him with this extraordinary
question: "Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a wig?"
There is no excusing this, and no resisting it.
A man might blur ten sides of paper in attempting a defence of
it against a critic who should be laughter-proof. The quibble
in itself is not considerable. It is only a new turn given, by
a little false pronunciation, to a very common, though not very
courteous inquiry. Put by one gentleman to another at a dinner-party,
it would have been vapid; to the mistress of the house, it would
have shown much less wit than rudeness. We must take in the totality
of time, place, and person; the pert look of the inquiring scholar,
the desponding looks of the puzzled porter; the one stopping at
leisure, the other hurrying on with his burthen; the innocent
though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question,
with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second; the
place -- a public street, not favourable to frivolous investigations;
the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common question)
invidiously transferred to the derivative (the new turn given
to it) in the implied satire; namely, that few of that tribe are
expected [p 259] to eat of the good things which they carry,
they being in most countries considered rather as the temporary
trustees than owners of such dainties,which the fellow was beginning
to understand; but then the wig again comes in, and he can make
nothing of it: all put together constitute a picture: Hogarth
could have made it intelligible on canvass.
Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this
a very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding
member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise.
The same persons shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from
Virgil about the broken Cremona;* because it is made out in all
its parts and leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to
call it cold; because of thousands who have admired it, it would
he difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing
to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty aside,) we
must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. But as some
stories are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal
truth be asserted of this bi-verbal allusion, that it is too good
to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the incident was
invented to fit the line. It would have been better had it been
less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered
by filling up. The nimium Vicina was enough in conscience; the
Cremonae, afterwards loads it. It is in fact a double pun; and
we have always observed that a superfoetation in this sort of
wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom
politic to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second
time; or, perhaps, the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken)
is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The impression,
to be forcible, must be simultaneous and undivided.
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Those who use this proverb
can never have seen Mrs. Conrady.
The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray
from the celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this
heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding characters, the
fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable
mansion.
All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady,
in her pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture.
To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty,
divine Spenser, platonizing, sings
----- "Every Spirit as it is more
pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
*Swift [p 260]
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in, and it more fairly dight
With cheerful grace and amiable sight.
For of the soul the body form doth take:
For soul is form, and doth the body make."
But Spenser, it is clear, never saw
Mrs. Conrady.
These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy;
for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving clause,
which throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to seek as
ever : --
"Yet oft it falls, that many a
gentle mind
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd
Either by chance, against the course of kind,
Or through unaptness in the substance found,
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground,
That will not yield unto her form's direction,
But is perform'd with some foul imperfection."
From which it would follow, that Spenser
had seen somebody like Mrs. Conrady.
The spirit of this good lady -- her previous anima
-- must have stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles which
he speaks of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for a ground,
as the poet calls it, no gentle mind -- and sure her's is one
of the gentlest -- ever had to deal with.
Pondering upon her inexplicable visage -- inexplicable,
we mean, but by this modification of the theory -- we have come
to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be
plain all over, than, amidst a tolerable residue of features,
to hang out one that shall be exceptionable. No one can say of
Mrs. Conrady's countenance, that it would be better if she had
but a nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces in this manner.
We have seen the most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled
in the attempt at a selection. The tout ensemble defies particularising.
It is too complete -- too consistent, as we may say -- to admit
of these invidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles
had picked out here a lip -- and there a chin -- out of the collected
ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole.
We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or
parcel of the countenance in question; to say that this, or that,
is improperly placed. We are convinced that true ugliness, no
less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result of harmony.
Like that too it reigns without a competitor. No one ever saw
Mrs. Conrady, without pronouncing her to be the plainest woman
that he ever met with in the course of his life. The first time
that you are indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in your
existence ever after. You are glad to have seen it -- like Stonehenge.
No one can pretend to forget it. No one ever apologised to her
for [p 261] meeting her in the street on such a day and
not knowing her: the pretext would he too bare. Nobody can mistake
her for another. Nobody can say of her, "I think I ave seen
that face somewhere, but I cannot call to mind where." You
must remember that in such a parlour it first struck you -- like
a bust. You wondered where the owner of the house had picked it
up. You wondered more when it began to move its lips -- so mildly
too! No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her picture.
Lockets are for remembrance; and it would be clearly superfluous
to hang an image at your heart, which, once seen, can never he
out of it. It is not a mean face either; its entire originality
precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces which
improve upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary people,
by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, put a cheat upon
our eyes: juggle our senses out of their natural impressions;
and set us upon discovering good indications in a countenance,
which at first sight promised nothing less. We detect gentleness,
which had escaped us, lurking about an under lip. But when Mrs.
Conrady has done you a service, her face remains the same; when
she has done you a thousand, and you know that she is ready to
double the number, still it is that individual face. Neither can
you say of it, that it would be a good face if it was not marked
by the small pox -- a compliment which is always more admissive
than excusatory -- for either Mrs. Conrady never had the small
pox; or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon its own
merits fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her token; that which
she is known by.
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Nor a lady's age in
the parish register. We hope we have more delicacy than to do
either: but some faces spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries.
And what if the beast, which my friend would force upon my acceptance,
prove, upon the face of it, a sorry Rozinante, a lean, ill-favoured
jade, whom no gentleman could think of setting up in his stables?
Must I, rather than not be obliged to my friend, make her a companion
to Eclipse or Light-foot? A horse-giver, no more than a horse-seller,
has a right to palm his spavined article upon us for good ware.
An equivalent is expected in either case; and, with my own good
will, I would no more be cheated out of my thanks, than out of
my money. Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of
no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank
them for nothing. Our friend Mitis carries this humour of never
refusing a present, to the very point of absurdity -- if it were
possible to couple the ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy,
and real good-nature. [p 262] Not an apartment in his fine
house (and he has a true taste in household decorations), but
is stuffed up with some preposterous print or mirror -- the worst
adapted to his pannels that at may he -- the presents of his friends
that know his weakness; while his noble Vandykes are displaced,
to make room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched artist
of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon his hands
for bad likenesses, finds his account in bestowing them here gratis.
The good creature has not the heart to mortify the painter at
the expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not
vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour,
surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while
the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honourable family,
in favour to these adopted frights, are consigned to the staircase
and the lumber-room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one
by one stript of his favourite old authors, to give place to a
collection of presentation copies -- the flower and bran of modern
poetry. A presentation copy, reader -- if haply you are yet innocent
such favours -- is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent
you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning
of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship;
if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours which
does sell, in return. We can speak to experience, having by us
a tolerable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor
to death -- we are willing to acknowledge, that in some gifts
there is sense. A duplicate out of a friend's library (where he
has more than one copy of a rare author) is intelligible. There
are favours, short of the pecuniary -- a thing not fit to be hinted
at among gentlemen -- which confer as much -- grace upon the acceptor
as the offerer; the kind, we confess, which is most to our palate,
is of those little conciliatory missives, which for their vehicle
generally choose a hamper -- little odd presents of game, fruit,
perhaps wine -- though it is essential to the delicacy of the
latter that it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the
country sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presence
(though a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, -- whose
goodly aspect reflects to us his "plump corpusculum;"
to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him aiding down in
the toast peculiar to the latter; to concorporate him in a slice
of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves;
-- to know him intimately: such participation is methinks unitive,
as the old theologians phrase it. For these considerations we
should be sorry if certain restrictive regulations, which are
thought to bear hard upon the peasantry of this country, were
entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now stands, makes
many friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing his gout) with
a leash of partridges. [p 263] Titius (suspecting his partiality
for them) passes them to Lucius; who in his turn, preferring his
friend's relish to his own, makes them over to Marcius; till in
their ever widening progress, and round of unconscious circum-migration,
they distribute the seeds of harmony over half a parish. We are
well disposed to this kind of sensible remembrances; and are the
less apt to be taken by those little airy tokens -- inpalpable
to the palate -- which, under the names of rings, lockets, keep-sakes,
amuse some people's fancy mightily. We could never away with these
indigestible trifles. They are the very kickshaws and foppery
of friendship.
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Homes there are, we
are sure, that are no homes: the home of the very poor man, and
another which we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of cheap
entertainment, and the benches of ale-houses, if they could speak,
might bear mournful testimony to the first. To them the very poor
man resorts for an image of the home, which he cannot find at
home. For a starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough
to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many shivering
children with their mother, he finds in the depth of winter always
a blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead
of the clamours of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with
a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle which he
can afford to spend. He has companions which his home denies him,
for the very poor man has no visitors. He can look into the goings
on of the world, and speak a little to politics. At home there
are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All interests, real
or imaginary, all topics that should expand the mind of man, and
connect him to a sympathy with general existence, are crushed
in the absorbing consideration of food to be obtained for the
family. Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent.
At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty;
and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's meat before the
common bars, or munches his humbler cold viands, his relishing
bread and cheese with an onion, in a corner, where no one reflects
upon his poverty, he has sight of the substantial joint providing
for the landlord and his family. He takes an interest in the dressing
of it; and while he assists in removing the trivet from the fire,
he feels that there is such a thing as beef and cabbage, which
he was beginning to forget at home. All this while he deserts
his wife and children. But what wife, and what children? Prosperous
men, who object to this desertion, image to themselves some clean
contented family like that which [p 264] they go home to.
But look at the countenance of the poor wives who follow and persecute
their good man to the door of the public-house, which he is about
to enter, when something like shame would restrain him, if stronger
misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground
by want, in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament
has been long effaced by misery, is that a face to stay at home
with is it more a woman, or a wild cat? alas! it is the face of
the wife of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can smile
no longer. What comforts can it share? what burthens can it lighten?
Oh, `tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared together!
But what if there be no bread in the cupboard? The innocent prattle
of his children takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the
children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least
frightful features in that condition, that there is no childishness
in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible old nurse to us
once, do not bring up their children; they drag them up. The little
careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed
betimes into a premature reflecting person. No one has time to
dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe
it, to toss it up and down, to humour it. There is none to kiss
away its tears. If it cries, it can only be beaten. It has been
prettily said that "a babe is fed with milk and praise."
But the aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing; the
return to its little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage attention,
bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had a toy, or knew what
a coral meant. It grew up without the lullaby of nurses, it was
a stranger to the patient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting
novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper offhand contrivance
to divert the child; the prattled nonsense (best sense to it),
the wise impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt story interposed,
that puts a stop to present sufferings, and awakens the passion
of young wonder. It was never sung to -- no one ever told to it
a tale of the nursery. It was dragged up, to live or to die as
it happened. It had no young dreams. It broke at once into the
iron realities of life. A child exists not for the very poor as
an object of dalliance; it is only another mouth to be fed, a
pair of little hands to be betimes inured to labour. It is the
rival, till it can be the co-operator, for food with the parent.
It is never his mirth, his diversion, his solace; it never makes
him young again, with recalling his young times. The children
of the very poor have no young times. It makes the very heart
to bleed to overhear the casual street-talk between a poor woman
and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a
condition rather above the squalid beings which we have been contemplating.
It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer [p 265]
holidays (fitting that age); of the promised sight, or play; of
praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching,
of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child,
that should he the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness,
are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come
to he a woman, before it was a child. It has learned to go to
market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is
knowing, acute, sharpened; it never prattles. Had we not reason
to say, that the home of the very poor is no home?
There is yet another home, which we are constrained
to deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home of the poor
man wants; its fireside conveniences, of which the poor dream
not. But with all this, it is no home. It is -- the house of the
man that is infested with many visitors. May we he branded for
the veriest churl, if we deny our heart to the many noble-hearted
friends that at times exchange their dwelling for our poor roof!
It is not of guests that we complain, but of endless, purposeless
visitants; droppers in, as they are called. We sometimes wonder
from what sky the fall. It is the very error of the position of
our lodging; its horoscopy was ill calculated, being just situate
in a medium -- a plaguy suburban mid-space -- fitted to catch
idlers from town or country. We are older than we were, and age
is easily put out of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass
to reckon upon, and we cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly
succeeding impertinences. At our time of life, to be alone sometimes
is as needful as sleep. It is the refreshing sleep of the day.
The growing infirmities of age manifest themselves in nothing
more strongly, than in an inveterate dislike of interruption.
The thing which we are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. We
have neither much knowledge nor devices; but there are fewer in
the place to which we hasten. We are not willingly put out of
our way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had
vast reversions in time future; we are reduced to a present pittance,
and obliged to economise in that article. We bleed away our moments
now as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe
eaten and fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our
good time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein
is the distinction between the genuine guest and the visitant.
This latter takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange.
The guest is domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird
; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at our window, and out
again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturbance and victuals
spoiled. The inferior functions of life begin to move heavily.
We cannot concoct our food with interruptions. Our chief meal,
to be nutritive, must be solitary. With difficulty [p 266]
we can eat before a guest; and never understood what the relish
of public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion fair
play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a visitant stops
the machine. There is a punctual generation who time their calls
to the precise commencement of your dining-hour -- not to eat
-- but to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively,
and we feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel. Others again
show their genius, as we have said, in knocking the moment you
have just sat down to a book. They have a peculiar compassionating
sneer, with which they "hope that they do not interrupt your
studies." Though they flutter off the next moment, to carry
their impertinences to the nearest student that they can call
their friend, the tone of the book is spoiled; we shut the leaves,
and, with Dante's lovers, read no more that day. It were well
if the effect of intrusion were simply co-extensive with its presence;
but it mars all the good hours afterwards. These scratches in
appearance leave an orifice that closes not hastily. "It
is a prostitution of the bravery of friendship," says worthy
Bishop Taylor, "to spend it upon impertinent people, who
are, it may be, loads to their families, but can never ease my
loads." This is the secret of their gaddings, their visits,
and morning calls. They too have homes, which are -- no homes.
Return To Menu
"Good sir, or madam,
as it may be -- we most willingly embrace the offer of your friendship.
We long have known your excellent qualities. We have wished to
have you nearer to us; to hold you within the very innermost fold
of our heart. We can have no reserve towards a person of your
open and noble nature. The frankness of your humour suits us exactly.
We have been long looking for such a friend. Quick -- let us disburthen
our troubles into each other's bosom -- let us make our single
joys shine by reduplication -- But yap, yap, yap! -- what is this
confounded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the
bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg."
"It is my dog,
sir. You must love him for my sake. Here, Test -- Test -- Test!"
"But he has bitten me."
"Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better
acquainted with him. I have had him three years. He never bites
me."
Yap, yap, yap! -- "He is at it again."
"Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does
not like to he kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all
the respect due to myself" [p 267]
"But do you always take him out with you,
when you go a friendship-hunting?
"Invariably. `Tis the sweetest, prettiest,
best-conditioned animal. I call him my test -- the touchstone
by which I try a friend. No one can properly be said to love me,
who does not love him."
"Excuse us, dear sir -- or madam aforesaid
-- if upon further consideration we are obliged to decline the
otherwise invaluable offer of your friendship. We do not like
dogs."
"Mighty well, sir -- you know the conditions
-- you may have worse offers. Come along, Test."
The above dialogue is
not so imaginary, but that, in the intercourse of life, we have
had frequent occasions of breaking off an agreeable intimacy by
reason of these canine appendages. They do not always come in
the shape of dogs; they sometimes wear the more plausible and
human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend,
his partner, his wife, or his children. We could never yet form
a friendship -- not to speak of more delicate correspondences
-- however much to our taste, without the intervention of some
third anomaly, some impertinent clog affixed to the relation --
the understood dog in the proverb. The good things of life are
not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's
holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful
companion is **** if he did not always bring his tall cousin with
him! He seems to grow with him; like some of those double births,
which we remember to have read of with such wonder and delight
in the old "Athenian Oracle," where Swift commenced
author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him!) upon
Sir William Temple. There is the picture of the brother, with
the little brother peeping out at his shoulder; a species of fraternity,
which we have no name of kin close enough to comprehend. When
**** comes, poking in his head and shoulders into your room, as
if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now got him to
yourself -- what a three hours' chat we shall have! -but, ever
in the haunch of him, and before his diffident body is well disclosed
in your apartment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin,
over-peering his modest kinsman, and sure to over-lay the expected
good talk with his insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding
dwarfishness of observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. `Tis
hard when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like Sempronia,
without sitting down to chess with her eternal brother? or know
Sulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card-playing relations?
my friend's brethren of necessity be mine also? must we be hand
in glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Selby the calico
printer, because W. S., who is [p 268] neither, but a ripe
wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a common parentage
with them? Let him lay down his brothers; and `tis odds but we
will cast him in a pair of our's (we have a superflux) to balance
the concession. Let F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle; and Honorius
dismiss his vapid wife, and superfluous establishment of six boys
-- things between boy and manhood -- too ripe for play, too raw
for conversation -- that come impudently staring their father's
old friend out of countenance; will neither aid, nor let alone,
the conference: that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as
we were wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelorhood.
It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content
with these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this
sense keep a dog. But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt;
or Ruspina expects you to cherish and fondle her viper sister,
whom she has preposterously taken into her bosom, to try stinging
conclusions upon your constancy; they must not complain if the
house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have broken off many
excellent matches in her time, if she insisted upon all, that
loved her, loving her dogs also.
An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry,
of Della Cruscan memory. In tender youth, he loved and courted
a modest appanage to the Opera, in truth a dancer, who had won
him by the artless contrast between her manners and situation.
She seemed to him a native violet, that had been transplanted
by some rude accident into that exotic and artificial hotbed.
Nor, in truth was she less genuine and sincere than she appeared
to him. He wooed and won this flower. Only for appearance' sake,
and for due honour to the bride's relations, she craved that she
might have the attendance of her friends and kindred at the approaching
solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be conceded; and
in this solicitude for conciliating the good will of mere relations
he found a presage of her superior attentions to himself, when
the golden shaft should have "killed the flock of all affections
else The morning came; and at the Star and Garter, Richmond --
the place appointed for the breakfasting -- accompanied with one
English friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforcements the
bride should bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had
made. They came in six coaches -- the whole corps du ballet --
French, Italian, men and women. Monsieur de B., the famous pirouetter
of the day, led his fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of
the Seine. The Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the first
and second Buffa were there; and Signor Sc-----, Signora Ch-----
, and Madame V-----, with a countless cavalcade beside of chorusers,
figurantes, at the sight of whom Merry afterward [p 269]
declared, that "then for the first time it struck him seriously,
that he was about to marry -- a dancer." But there was no
help for it. Besides, it was her day; these were, in fact, her
friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was all
very natural. But when the bride -- handing out of the last coach
a still more extraordinary figure than the rest -- presented to
him as her father -- -- the gentleman that was to give her away
-- no less a person than Signor Delpini himself -- with a sort
of pride, as much as to say, See what I have brought to do us
honour! -- the thought of so extraordinary a paternity quite overcame
him; and slipping away under some pretence from the bride and
her motley adherents, poor Merry took horse from the back yard
to the nearest sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to America,
he shortly after consoled himself with a more congenial match
in the person of Miss Brunton; relieved from his intended clown
father, and a bevy of painted Buffas for bridemaids.
Return To Menu
At what precise minute
that little airy musician doffs his night gear, prepares to tune
up his unseasonable matins, we are not naturalists enough to determine.
But for a mere human gentleman -- that has no orchestra business
to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercises --
we take ten, or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this
Christmas solstice), to be the very earliest hour, at which he
can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we
say; for to do it in earnest, requires another half hour's good
consideration. Not but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are
told, and such like gawds, abroad in the world, in summer time
especially, some hours before what we have assigned; which a gentleman
may see as they say, only for getting up. But, having been tempted
once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies,
we confess our curiosity abated. We are no longer ambitious of
being the sun's courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We
hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon
such observances; which have in them, besides, something Pagan
and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated our usual hour,
or got up with the sun (as `tis called), to go a journey, or upon
a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the
long hours after in listlessness and headachs; Nature herself
sufficiently declaring her sense of our presumption, in aspiring
to regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of that celestial
and sleepless traveller. We deny not that there is something sprightly
and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these break of day
excursions. It is flattering to get [p 270] the start of
a lazy world; to conquer death by proxy in his image. But the
seeds of sleep and mortality are in us; and we pay usually in
strange qualms, before night falls, the penalty of the unnatural
inversion. Therefore, while the busy part of mankind are fast
huddling on their clothes, are already up and about their occupations,
content to have swallowed their sleep by wholesale; we chose to
linger a-bed, and digest our dreams. It is the very time to recombine
the wandering images, which night in a confused mass presented;
to snatch them from forgetfulness; to shape, and mould them. Some
people have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they gulp
them too grossly, to taste them curiously. We love to chew the
cud of a foregone vision to collect the scattered rays of a brighter
phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal
tragedies; to drag into day-light a struggling and half-vanishing
night-mare; to handle and examine the terrors, or the airy solaces.
We have too much respect for these spiritual communications, to
let them go so lightly. We are not so stupid, or so careless,
as that Imperial forgetter of his dreams, that we should need
a seer to remind us of the form of them. They seem to us to have
as much significance as our waking concerns; or rather to import
us more nearly as more nearly we approach by years to the shadowy
world whither we are hastening. We have shaken hands with the
world's business; we have done with it; we have discharged ourself
of it. Why should we get up? we have neither suit to solicit,
nor affairs to manage. The drama has shut in upon us at the fourth
act. We have nothing here to expect, but in a short time a sick
bed, and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death by such shadows
as night affords. We are already half acquainted with ghosts.
We were never much in the world. Disappointment early struck a
dark veil between us and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed
grey before our hairs. The mighty changes of the world already
appear as but the vain stuff out of which dramas are composed.
We have asked no more of life than what the mimic images in play-houses
present us with. Even those types have waxed fainter. Our clock
appears to have struck. We are SUPERANNUATED. In this dearth of
mundane satisfaction, we contract politic alliances with shadows.
It is good to have friends at court. The abstracted media of dreams
seem no ill introduction to that spiritual presence, upon which,
in no long time, we expect to be thrown. We are trying to know
a little of the usages of that colony; to learn the language,
and the faces we shall meet with there, that we may be the less
awkward at our first coming among them. We willingly call a phantom
our fellow, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark companionship.
[p 271] Therefore, we cherish dreams. We try to spell in
them the alphabet of the invisible world; and think we know already,
how it shall be with us. Those uncouth shapes, which, while we
clung to flesh and blood, affrighted us, have become familiar.
We feel attenuated into their meagre essences, and have given
the hand of half-way approach to incorporeal being. We once thought
life to be something; but it has unaccountably fallen from us
before its time. Therefore we choose to dally with visions. The
sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why should we get
up?
Return To Menu
We could never quite
understand the philosophy of this arrangement, or the wisdom of
our ancestors in sending us for instruction to these woolly bedfellows.
A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut his silly
eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found out long sixes. -- Hail candle-light!
without disparagement to sun or moon, the kindliest luminary of
the three if we may not rather style thee their radiant deputy,
mild vice-roy of the moon ! -- We love to read, talk, sit silent,
eat, drink, sleep, by candlelight. They are every body's sun and
moon. This is our peculiar and household planet. Wanting it, what
savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering
in caves and unillumined fastnesses! They must have lain about
and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could
have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled
a neighbour's cheek to be sure that he understood it? This accounts
for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a sombre cast
(try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition of those unlantern'd
nights. Jokes came in with candles. We wonder how they saw to
pick up a pin, if they had any. How did they sup? what a melange
of chance carving they must have made of it ! -- here one had
got a leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's shoulder -- there
another had scooped his palm in a kid-skin of wild honey, when
he meditated right mare's milk. There is neither good eating nor
drinking in fresco. Who, even in these civilised times, has never
experienced this, when at some economic table he has commenced
dining after dusk, and waited for the flavour till the lights
came? The senses absolutely give and take reciprocally, Can you
tell pork from veal in the dark? or distinguish Sherris from pure
Malaga? Take away the candle from the smoking man; by the glimmering
of the left ashes, he knows that he is still smoking, hut he knows
it only by an inference; till the restored light, coming in aid
of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the full aroma. Then
how he redoubles his puffs! how he burnishes! [p 272] --
There is absolutely no such thing as reading, but by a candle.
We have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens,
and in sultry arbours; but it was labour thrown away. Those gay
motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teazing, like so
many coquets, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous
of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writer digests
his meditations. By the same light, we must approach to their
perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour. It is a mockery,
all that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true poem
ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are abstracted works
--
"Things that were born, when none
but the still night,
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes."
Marry, daylight -- daylight might furnish
the images, the crude material; but for the fine shapings, the
true turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must be
content to hold their inspiration of the candle. The mild internal
light, that reveals them, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes
out in the sunshine. Night and silence call out the starry fancies.
Milton's Morning Hymn on Paradise, we would hold a good wager,
was penned at midnight; and Taylor's richer description of a sun-rise
smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in these our humble
lucubrations, tune our best measured cadences (Prose has her cadences)
not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, "blessing
the doors;" or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even
now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted, courts our
endeavours. We would indite something about the Solar System.
-- Betty, bring the candles.
Return To Menu
We grant that it is,
and a very serious one -- to a man's friends, and to all that
have to do with him; but whether the condition of the man himself
is so much to be deplored, may admit of a question. We can speak
a little to it, being ourself but lately recovered -- we whisper
of it in confidence, reader -- out of a long and desperate fit
of the sullens. Was the cure a blessing? The conviction which
wrought it, came too clearly to leave a scruple of the fanciful
injuries -- for they were mere fancies -- which had provoked the
humour. But the humour itself was too self-pleasing, while it
lasted -- we know how bare we lay ourself in the confession --
to be abandoned all at once with the grounds of it. We still brood
over wrongs which we know to have been imaginary; and for our
old acquaintance, [p 273] N-----, whom we find to have
been a truer friend than we took him for, we substitute some phantom
-- a Caius or a Titius -- as like him as we dare to form it, to
wreak our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to
fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect; to forego the idea
of having been ill-used and contumaciously treated by an old friend.
The first thing to aggrandise a man in his own conceit, is to
conceive of himself as neglected. There let him fix if he can.
To undeceive him is to deprive him of the most tickling morsel
within the range of self-complacency. No flattery can come near
it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of an injustice; but supremely
blest, who thinks all his friends in a conspiracy to depress and
undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we sing not to the profane)
far beyond the reach of all that the world counts joy -- at enduring
satisfaction in the depths, where the superficial seek it not,
of discontent. Were we to recite one half of this mystery, which
we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all the world would
be in love with disrespect; we should wear a slight for a bracelet,
and neglects and contumacies would be the only matter for courtship.
Unlike to that mysterious book in the Apocalypse, the study of
this mystery is unpalatable only in the commencement. The first
sting of a suspicion is grievous; but wait -- out of that wound,
which to flesh and blood seemed so difficult, there is balm and
honey to be extracted. Your friend passed you on such or such
a day -- having in his company one that you conceived worse than
ambiguously disposed towards you, passed you in the street without
notice. To be sure he is something shortsighted; and it was in
your power to have accosted him. But facts and sane inferences
are trifles to a true adept in the science of dissatisfaction.
He must have seen you; and S-----, who was with him, must have
been the cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it may.
But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of it and you are
a made man from this time. Shut yourself up, and -- rejecting,
as an enemy to your peace, every whispering suggestion that but
insinuates there may be a mistake -- reflect seriously upon the
many lesser instances which you had begun to perceive in proof
of your friend's disaffection towards you. None of them singly
was much to the purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive;
and you have this last affront to clench them. Thus far the process
is any thing but agreeable. But now to your relief comes in the
comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind feelings you
have had for your friend; what you have been to him, and what
you would have been to him, if he would have suffered you; how
you defended him in this or that place; and his good name -- his
literary reputation, and so forth, was always dearer to you than
your own! Your heart [p 274] spite of itself, yearns towards
him. You could weep tears of blood but for a restraining pride.
How say you? do you not yet begin to apprehend a comfort? some
allay of sweetness in the bitter waters? Stop not here, nor penuriously
cheat yourself of your reversions. You are on vantage ground.
Enlarge your speculations, and take in the rest of your friends,
as a spark kindles more sparks. Was there one among them, who
has not to you proved hollow, false, slippery as water? Begin
to think that the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality.
That the very idea of friendship, with its component parts, as
honour, fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single bosom.
Image yourself to yourself, as the only possible friend in a world
incapable of that communion. Now the gloom thickens. The little
star of self-love twinkles, that is to encourage you through deeper
glooms than this. You are not yet at the half point of your elevation.
You are not yet, believe me, half sulky enough. Adverting to the
world in general, (as these circles in the mind will spread to
infinity) reflect with what strange injustice you have been treated
in quarters where, (setting gratitude and the expectation of friendly
returns aside as chimeras,) you pretended no claim beyond justice,
the naked due of all men. Think the very idea of right and fit
fled from the earth, or your breast the solitary receptacle of
it, till you have swelled yourself into at least one hemisphere:
the other being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the
world aforesaid. To grow bigger every moment in your own conceit,
and the world to lessen: to deify yourself at the expense of your
species; to judge the world -- this is the acme and supreme point
of your mystery -- these the true -- PLEASURES OF SULKINESS. We
profess no more of this grand secret than what ourself experimented
on one rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in our study.
We had proceeded to the penultimate point, at which the true adept
seldom stops, where the consideration of benefit forgot is about
to merge in the meditation of general injustice -- when a knock
at the door was followed by the entrance of the very friend, whose
not seeing of us in the morning, (for we will now confess the
case our own), an accidental oversight, had given rise to so much
agreeable generalization! To mortify us still more, and take down
the whole flattering superstructure which pride had piled upon
neglect, he bad brought in his hand the identical S-----, in whose
favour we had suspected him of the contumacy. Asseverations were
needless, where the frank manner of them both was convictive of
the injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that they perceived
our embarrassment; but were too proud, or something else, to confess
to the secret of it. We had been but too lately in the condition
of the noble patient in Argos: [p 275]
Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos,
In vacuo laetus sessor plausorque theatro --
and could have exclaimed with equal
reason against the friendly hands that cured us
Pol me occidistis,
amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.
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