MY FIRST FOLLY.

Indian Stories,Damn the Tories,None but he can rule the State,Wise magicians,Politicians,[Pg 222]Foreign lands,Kings and wands,Fiends and fairies,Dromedaries,Laugh at Boodle’s,Cock-a-doodles—How I love a loud debate!”

Then up gets a youth with a visage of truth,An omen of good to our islands,Who promises health and abundance of wealthTo our Oatlands, and Wheatlands, and Ryelands.

[13]“Mr. President,—I had not intended to address you on the present question; but some observations which have been made on the character of George the Third prevent me from remaining silent. If I use any strong expressions, I trust they will be attributed to the violence of my feelings.” (Refers to a paper.) “When I remember, Sir, that in the reign of George the Third the purest blessings of Heaven were shed upon us, and that Mr. Pitt was Prime Minister; that the powers of darkness were scattered before us, and that the combined fleets of France and Spain were defeated—above all, when I reflect that all the nine Muses migrated from Pindus to England, and that Mr. Southey was the Poet Laureate—I cannot help saying that George the Third, who reigned so gloriously, and lived to an advanced period of life, was very wise, very prudent, and very triumphant. In short, Sir, I do not fear to affirm that he was very good.”

And the honourable gentleman halts as systematically as a posthorse knocked up or a timepiece run down. “Very perfect in his lesson!”—“Oh, very! but it’s all

Sigh and simper,Whine and whimper,Kings and princes, Church and State;Cut and dried,Ill applied,Nightly taper,Pen and paper,Audience dozing,How composing!Would ’twere shorter!Milk and water!—How I love a loud debate!”[Pg 223]

But the favourite comes, with his trumpets and drums,And his arms and his metaphors crossed;And the audience—Ο dear!—vociferate “Hear!”Till they’re half of them deaf as a post.

And the honourable gentleman, after making the grand tour in a hand canter, touching cursorily upon Rome, Constantinople, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, and the Red Sea; with two quotations, two or three hundred similes, and two or three hundred thousand metaphors, proceeds to the tune of

[14]“We, Mr. President, have indeed awful examples to direct us or deter. Have we not seen the arms of the mighty overpowered, and the counsels of the wise confounded? Have not the swords of licentious conquest, and the fasces of perverted law, covered Europe with blood, and tears, and mourning? Have not priests and princes and nobles been driven in beggary and exile to implore the protection of rival thrones and hostile altars? Where is the sacred magnificence of Rome? Where the wealth and independence of Holland? Where the proud titles of the German Cæsars? Where the mighty dynasty of Bourbon? But is there yet one nation which has retained unimpaired its moral and political strength? One nation, whose shores have ever been accessible to a suppliant, and never to an enemy? One nation which, while the banners of her foes have been carried in triumph to half the capitals of the world, has seen them only suspended over her shrines as trophies? One nation, which, while so many cities have been a prey to hostile fires, has never seen her streets lighted up but with the blaze of victorious illumination? History and posterity will reply, ‘That country was England.’ Let them not talk to us of their philosophy and their philanthropy, their reason and their rights! We know too well the oratory of their Smithfield meetings, and the orgies of their midnight clubs! We have seen the weapons which arm, and the spirit which nerves them. We have heard the hyæna howl, till the raving which excited dismay provokes nothing but disgust. Amid the railings of disappointed ambition, and the curses of[Pg 224]factious hate; amid the machinations of the foully wicked, and the sophistries of the would-be wise, we will cling to our fathers’ banner—we will rally round our native rock. Mr. President, that banner is the Charta of our rights—that Rock is the British Constitution!”

“Bravo!” “Can’t say I quite caught the line of argument.” “Argument! Fiddlestick! Quite gone out except for opponencies; and then for the language, and the feeling, and the style, and all that sort of thing—oh! nobody can deny that it was all

Oratoric,Metaphoric,Similes of wondrous length;Illustration,Conflagration,Ancient Romans,House of Commons,Clever UrielAnd Ithuriel,Good old king,Everything!—How I love a loud debate!”

With his sayings and saws, his hems and his haws,Another comes up to the scratch;While Deacon and Law unite in a yaw![Yawning.And the President looks at his watch.

And the honourable gentleman, after making a long journey and plunging up to his knees in dirt, bog, and quagmire; after taking up many strong positions and much valuable time, after bruising the Bishops and the table, and twisting his argument and his sleeve in twenty different ways, proceeds to wake the members with a joke.

[15]“Mr. President,—I am out of all patience when I hear the poor abused because they wish to reform the Constitution. Why, when you have taken from them all they have got, and all they hope to get, what can they do? Why, they complain, to be sure; and as soon as they complain, like the poor fellow who was tried for stealing a pair of leather breeches, and found guilty of manslaughter,[Pg 225]the unfortunate rabble—though why they are called rabble the Attorney-General only knows, I’m sure I don’t—but, as I said before, the unfortunate rabble are prosecuted uponex officioinformations, or persecuted by a Bridge Street gang, which I look upon as a combination of fiends against our Constitution—that is, what we’ve got left of it, which to be sure is but little, whatever the honourable gentlemen opposite may think, who seem to be very much amused at the idea—but as I said before, the unfortunate rabble, like the poor fellow who was tried for stealing a pair of leather breeches and found guilty of manslaughter, is tried for high treason and found guilty of being ragged, and so is hung, fined, imprisoned, or sent to Botany Bay, or Australasia as the Vice-Chancellor calls it, according to the will and pleasure of His Majesty’s Attorney and Solicitor-General. But the honourable gentleman would let the poor starve, while the rich take coffee and snuff, talk religion, and buy into the stocks; provided my Lord this and my Lord that may keep their mistresses and their boroughs, all the scum, all thecanaillemay be cut down by the dozen. The honourable gentleman cares no more for the poor than the country gentleman did—a good, honest, well-meaning man—who lost so many turnips that he wanted to make turnip-stealing a capital offence. The country gentleman and the honourable gentleman argue on the same ground—they are on the same bench—there they are!”

“Bravo!” “Bravo!” “Pray, Sir, how long has that young gentleman been on his legs?”—“Really I can’t tell, 1 was so much amused at his

Admirable,Bang the table,‘Sir, although its getting late,’Opposition,Repetition,Endless speeches,Leather breeches,Taxes, hops,Turnip-tops,Leather ’em, lather ’em,Omnium-gatherum—How I love a loud debate!”[Pg 226]

Mr. Punnett, whose vows are put up for the HouseAs if he was born to the trade,Would chafe if we close with the ayes and the noes,And break up before we have—prayed!

And accordingly, after the honourable gentleman has abused,ad libitum, all persons not freeholders who wish to have votes, and told us, “as for such people, now we have got ’em down, keep ’em down;” he is succeeded by the laureate jester of the society. The honourable gentleman plunges into a sea of puns, passes a few modest strictures on the freedom of the press, likens Frederick the Great to a thief, and Mr. Bartholomew to the devil; and at last betakes himself, like all poets, to abusing his friends.

[16]“Not being disposed, Mr. President, to pun it in a decidedly personal manner through any more of the honourable gentleman’s speech, I proceed to say a few words in reply to my honourable friend who preceded him. But I conceive, Mr. President, when I see how much the table of the House has suffered from the fist of the honourable gentleman, I may be somewhat afraid of the knock-down arguments of my honourable friend. Let him not commit violence on our persons or our property; let him not frighten the freshman or annihilate the Soph. He is already the Ord of this House, let him not make himself the Lord of it; we give him an inch, let him not take an ‘L.’ But I conceive, Sir, that my honourable friend will attend to no suggestion of mine. He is a Republican, a Radical, a Revolutionist, a Fury, a Firebrand; but, however hot may be the doctrines he now advocates, I would whisper in his ear: ‘You were once something far more reasonable; yes, though you may now be a rioter or a regicide, yet, as the poet says, You were a Whig, and thereby hangs a tale!’ I have detained the House too long, and will make haste to conclude. I have been censured for mixing too much of the ludicrous with the debates of the House. It has been said of me that the thread of my argument is drawn from the tassel of my cap, that the point of my jokes is drawn from the belles of Barnwell. Mr. President, I[Pg 227]plead guilty to the charges, and the House must be well aware that the insignia of my profession were never anything but the cap and bells!”

Quite divinePeregrine,Never shall we see his mate;Fun and flams,Epigrams,Leering, lying,Versifying,Nodding, noting,Quibbling, quoting,‘Thief!’ and ‘Bore!’‘Lie!’ no more—How I love a loud debate!”

Then up gets the glory of us and our story,Who does all by logic and rule,Who can tell the true diff’rence ’twixt twopence and threepence,And prove Adam Smith quite a fool.

[17]“Mr. President,—I had intended to have addressed the meeting at considerable length, but as the ground I meant to occupy has been entirely and successfully anticipated by my honourable friends, I shall not dwell upon the crying and terrible demand there is for Parliamentary Reform, but shall confine my observations to the existing aggression of France upon Spain. For it is not so much the question whether France or Spain shall be victorious; it is not so much the question whether that ‘alter Achilles,’ the Duke d’Angoulême, with his miserable and half-starved myrmidons, or General Mina and his patriots, shall be vanquished; the question is, whether the nefarious and accursed principles of foreign aggression and tyranny, the principles of despotism and usurpation, shall triumph eternally over the principles of freedom; whether worse than Scythian ignorance and barbarism shall crush the progress of science and enlightened understanding; whether that holy knot of confederated despots (who I trust in heaven will ere long meet their well-earned reward of the halter)—whether they are to dictate laws and constitutions to the rest of mankind; whether that hellish power which has crushed the[Pg 228]freedom and trampled on the genius of Italy shall crush the freedom and trample on the genius of the rest of the world; whether we, who boast ourselves freeborn Englishmen, shall tamely look on and see the rights of nations and the rights of man assaulted and violated; whether we are to listen with submission and humility to the insolent decrees of the Autocrat of the Russias; whether we are to cringe and subscribe to the proclamation of a semi-barbarian who dares to issue his mandate to the world—a mandate which is nothing but an ignorant tissue of Syrio-Calmuc jargon and cacophony.”

But Lord! Sir, you ask a more difficult taskThat aught in the son-shop of Burchill,If you ask me to dish up, like many a Bishop,The eminent words of the Church-ill!

[18]“Mr. President,—The honourable opener of this debate called Mr. Pitt an unfortunate man; now I think him a very fortunate man. He went about, like Jeremy Diddler, borrowing sixpence from every one who was fool enough to lend him, and died before he was called on to refund. We have heard the prosperous state of the country referred to. Now, Sir, everybody that can pay for his passage is going to the Cape; for though a man likes his bed, he leaves it when he finds it full of fleas. The distresses of England have also been alluded to. Now, Sir, with regard to Lord George Gordon’s riots, they were like Tom Thumb’s giants—the Minister made the riots first, and then he quelled them.”

“Does any other honourable gentleman wish to address the House? I shall proceed to put the question. It is carried that Parliamentary Reform would not be beneficial, by a majority of 77 to 13. (Hear! hear! hear!) There is a motion on the boards, ‘That an adequate supply of chairs for the reading-room be provided—proposed by Mr. Moore, of Caius.’”

[19]“Mr. President,—It is not often that I rise to address this society; nor should I on the present occasion, but that I see so strong a necessity for interference, that I[Pg 229]should deem it a dereliction of my duty were I to remain silent. In those things which regard our intellectual and moral improvement, this society should be more especially attentive to its interests; but I have observed with regret and concern that there is by no means an adequate supply of chairs in our reading-room, and I therefore move that a fit supply be immediately procured.”

[20]“Mr. President,—I have observed with great satisfaction the interest which the honourable gentleman takes in the welfare of this society; but as in an inn, where there are nine beds, and ten travellers to sleep in them, one bed must carry double or one traveller must go without; so, in the present case, if upon any occasion the honourable gentleman should find ten chairs in the reading-room occupied by ten individuals, I should recommend him to make them determine by lot which of them shall hold him on his knees!”

“Well, Sir, what do you think of the Union?”—“Why, Sir, I think it’s all

Bow, wow,What a row,Money lost, and laurels earned;Constitution,Elocution,Whig and Tory,Oratory,Hauling, bawling,‘Order’ calling,Headache, dizziness,No more business—Sirs, the meeting is adjourned.”[Pg 230]

“L’imagination grossit souvent les plus petits objets par une estimation fantastique jusqu’à remplir notre âme.”—Pensées de Pascal.

“I have spent all my golden time,In writing many a loving rime:I have consumed all my youthIn vowing of my faith and trueth;Ο willow, willow, willow tree,Yet can I not beleeved bee.”—Old Ballad.

“Doyou take trifle?” said Lady Olivia to my poor friend Halloran.

“No, Ma’am, I am reading philosophy,” said Halloran; waking from a fit of abstraction, with about as much consciousness and perception as exists in a petrified oyster, or an alderman dying of a surfeit. Halloran is a fool.

A trifle is the one good thing, the sole and surpassing enjoyment. He only is happy who can fix his thoughts, and his hopes, and his feelings, and his affections, upon those fickle and fading pleasures, which are tenderly cherished and easily forgotten, alike acute in their excitement and brief in their regret. Trifles constitute mysummum bonum. Sages may crush them with the heavy train of argument and syllogism; schoolboys may assail them with the light artillery of essay and of theme; Members of Parliament may loathe, doctors of divinity may contemn—bag wigs and big wigs, blue devils and blue stockings, sophistry and sermons, reasonings and wrinkles, Solon, Thales, Newton’s “Principia,” Mr. Walker’s “Eidouranion,” the King’s Bench, the bench of Bishops—all these are serious antagonists; very serious! But I care not; I defy them; I dote upon trifles; my name is Vyvyan Joyeuse, and my motto is “Vive la Bagatelle!”

There are many persons who, while they have a tolerable taste for the frivolous, yet profess remorse and penitence for their indulgence of it; and continually court and embrace[Pg 231]new day-dreams, while they shrink from the retrospect of those which have already faded. Peace be to their everlasting laments and their ever-broken resolutions! Your true trifler, meaning your humble servant, is a being of a very different order. The luxury which I renew in the recollection of the past is equal to that which I feel in the enjoyment of the present, or create in the anticipation of the future. I love to count and recount every treasure I have flung away, every bubble I have broken; I love to dream again the dreams of my boyhood, and to see the visions of departed pleasures flitting, like Ossian’s ghosts, around me, “with stars dim twinkling through their forms.” I look back with delight to a youth which has been idled away, to tastes which have been perverted, to talents which have been misemployed; and while in imagination I wander back through the haunts of my old idlesse, for all the learning of a Greek professor, for all the morality of Sir John Sewell, I would not lose one single point of that which has been ridiculous and grotesque, nor one single tint of that which has been beautiful and beloved.

Moralists and misanthropists, maidens with starched morals and matrons with starched frills, ancient adorers of Bohea and scandal, venerable votaries of whispering and of whist, learned professors of the compassionate sneer and the innocent innuendo, eternal pillars of gravity and good order, of stupidity and decorum—come not near me with your spare and spectacled features, your candid and considerate criticism. In you I have no hope, in me you have no interest. I am to speak of stories you will not believe, of beings you cannot love; of foibles for which you have no compassion, of feelings in which you have no share.

Fortunate and unfortunate couples, belles in silks and beaux in sentimentals, ye who have wept and sighed, ye who have been wept for and sighed for, victims of vapours and coiners of vows, makers and marrers of intrigue, readers and writers of songs—come to me with your attention and your salts, your sympathy and your cambric; your griefs, your raptures, your anxieties, all have been mine; I know your blushing and your paleness, your self-deceiving and your self-tormenting.[Pg 232]

so com’è inconstanta e vagaTimida, ardita vita degli amanti,Ch’un poco dolce molto amaro appoggia;Ε so i costumi, e i lor sospiri, e i cantiE’l parlar rotto, e’l subito silenzio,E’l brevissimo riso, e i lunghi pianti;E qual è ’l mel temprato con l’assenzio.

All these things are so beautiful in Italian! But I need not have borrowed a syllable from Petrarch, for shapes of shadowy beauty, smiles of cherished loveliness, glances of reviving lustre, are coming in the mist of memory around me! I am writing “an ower true tale!”

I never fell seriously in love till I was seventeen. Long before that period I had learned to talk nonsense and tell lies, and had established the important points that a delicate figure is equivalent to a thousand pounds, a pretty mouth better than the Bank of England, and a pair of bright eyes worth all Mexico. But at seventeen a more intricate branch of study awaited me.

I was lounging away my June at a pretty village in Kent, with little occupation beyond my own meditations, and no company but my horse and dogs. My sisters were both in the South of France; and my uncle, at whose seat I had pitched my camp, was attending to the interests of his constituents and the wishes of his patron in Parliament. I began after the lapse of a week to be immensely bored; I felt a considerable dislike of an agricultural life, and an incipient inclination for laudanum. I took to playing backgammon with the rector. He was more than a match for me, and used to grow most unclerically hot when the dice, as was their duty, befriended the weaker side. At last, at the conclusion of a very long hit, which had kept Mrs. Penn’s tea waiting full an hour, my worthy and wigged friend flung deuce-ace three times in succession, put the board in the fire, overturned Mrs. Penn’s best china, and hurried to his study to compose a sermon on patience.

Then I took up reading. My uncle had a delightful library, where a reasonable man might have lived and died. But I confess I never could endure a long hour of lonely reading. It is a very pretty thing to take down a volume of Tasso or Racine, and study accent and cadence for the[Pg 233]benefit of half a dozen listening belles, all dividing their attention between the work and the work-basket, their feelings and their flounces, their tears and their trimmings, with becoming and laudable perseverance. It is a far prettier thing to read Petrarch or Rousseau with a single companion, in some sheltered spot so full of passion and of beauty that you may sit whole days in its fragrance and dream of Laura and Julie. If these are out of the way, it is endurable to be tied down to the moth-eaten marvels of antiquity, poring to-day that you may pore again to-morrow, and labouring for the nine days’ wonder of some temporary distinction, with an ambition which is almost frenzy, and an emulation which speaks the language of animosity. But to sit down to a novel or a philosopher, with no companion to participate in the enjoyment and no object to reward the toil, this indeed—oh! I never could endure a long hour of lonely reading; and so I deserted Sir Roger’s library, and left his Marmontel and his Aristotle to the slumbers from which I had unthinkingly awakened them.

At last I was roused from a state of most Persian torpor by a note from an old lady, whose hall, for so an indifferent country-house was by courtesy denominated, stood at the distance of a few miles. She was about to give a ball. Such a thing had not been seen for ten years within ten miles of us. From the sensation produced by the intimation you might have deemed the world at an end. Prayers and entreaties were offered up to all the guardians and all the milliners; and the old gentlemen rose in a passion, and the old lace rose in price. Everything was everywhere in a flurry; kitchen, and parlour, and boudoir and garret—Babel all!Ackermann’s Fashionable Repository, theLadies’ Magazine, theNew Pocket-book—all these, and all other publications whose frontispieces presented the “fashions for 1817,” personified in a thin lady with kid gloves and a formidable obliquity of vision, were in earnest and immediate requisition. Needles and pins were flying right and left; dinner was ill-dressed that dancers might be well-dressed; mutton was marred that misses might be married. There was not a schoolboy who did not cut Homer and capers; nor a boarding-school beauty who did[Pg 234]not try on a score of dancing shoes, and talk for a fortnight of Angiolini. Every occupation was laid down, every carpet was taken up; every combination of hands-across and down the middle was committed most laudably to memory; and nothing was talked, nothing was meditated, nothing was dreamed, but love and romance, fiddles and flirtation, warm negus and handsome partners, dyed feathers and chalked floors.

In all the pride and condescension of an inmate of Grosvenor Square, I looked upon Lady Motley’s “At Home.” “Yes,” I said, flinging away the card with a tragedy twist of the fingers, “yes: I will be there. For one evening I will encounter the tedium and the taste of a village ball. For one evening I will doom myself to figures that are out of date, and fiddles that are out of tune; dowagers who make embroidery by wholesale, and demoiselles who make conquests by profession: for one evening I will endure the inquiries about Almack’s and St. Paul’s, the tales of the weddings that have been and the weddings that are to be, the round of courtesies in the ball-room and the round of beef at the supper-table: for one evening I will not complain of the everlasting hostess and the everlasting Boulanger, of the double duty and the double bass, of the great heiress and the great plum-pudding:

Come one, come all,Come dance in Sir Roger’s great hall.”

And thus, by dint of civility, indolence, quotation, and antithesis, I bent up each corporal agent to the terrible feat, and “would have the honour of waiting upon her ladyship,”—in due form.

I went: turned my uncle’s one-horse chaise into the long old avenue about an hour after the time specified, and perceived by the lights flashing from all the windows, and the crash of chairs and carriages returning from the door, that the room was most punctually full, and the performers most pastorally impatient. The first face I encountered on my entrance was that of my old friend Villars; I was delighted to meet him, and expressed my astonishment at finding[Pg 235]him in a situation for which his inclination, one would have supposed, was so little adapted.

“By Mercury,” he exclaimed, “I am metamorphosed—fairly metamorphosed, my good Vyvyan; I have been detained here three months by a fall from Sir Peter, and have amused myself most indefatigably by humming tunes and reading newspapers, winding silk and guessing conundrums. I have made myself the admiration, the adoration, the very worship of all the coteries in the place; am reckoned very clever at cross purposes, and very apt at ‘What’s my thought like?’ The squires have discovered I can carve, and the matrons hold me indispensable at loo. Come! I am of little service to-night, but my popularity may be of use to you. You don’t know a soul! I thought so—read it in your face the moment you came in. Never saw such a—— There, Vyvyan, look there! I will introduce you.” And so saying my companion half limped, half danced with me up to Miss Amelia Mesnil, and presented me in due form.

When I look back to any particular scene of my existence, I can never keep the stage clear of second-rate characters. I never think of Mr. Kean’s Othello without an intrusive reflection upon the subject of Mr. Cooper’s Cassio; I never call to mind a gorgeous scattering forth of roses from Mr. Canning, without a painful idea of some contemporary effusion of poppies from Mr. Hume. And thus, beautiful Margaret, it is in vain that I endeavour to separate your fascination from the group which was collected around you. Perhaps that dominion, which at this moment I feel almost revived, recurs more vividly to my imagination, when the forms and figures of all by whom it was contested are associated in its renewal.

First comes Amelia the magnificent, the acknowledged belle of the county, very stiff and very dumb in her unheeded and uncontested supremacy; and next, the most black-browed of fox-hunters, Augusta, enumerating the names of her father’s stud, and dancing as if she imitated them; and then the most accomplished Jane, vowing that for the last month she had endured immenseennui, that she thinks Lady Olivia prodigiouslyfade, that her cousin[Pg 236]Sophy is quitebrillanteto-night, and that Mr. Peters plays the violinà merveille.

“I am bored, my dear Villars—positively bored! The light is bad and the music abominable; there is no spring in the boards and less in the conversation; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing worth looking at in the room.”

I shook hands with my friend, bowed to three or four people, and was moving off. As I passed to the door I met two ladies in conversation. “Don’t you dance any more, Margaret?” said one. “Oh no,” replied the other, “I am bored, my dear Louisa—positively bored! The light is bad and the music abominable; there is no spring in the boards and less in the conversation; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing worth looking at in the room.”

I never was distanced in a jest. I put on the look of a ten years’ acquaintance and commenced parley. “Surely you are not going away yet! You have not danced with me, Margaret: it is impossible you can be so cruel!” The lady behaved with wonderful intrepidity. “She would allow me the honour—but I was very late; really I had not deserved it.” And so we stood up together.

“Are you not very impertinent?”

“Very; but you are very handsome. Nay, you are not to be angry; it was a fair challenge and fairly received.”

“And you will not even ask my pardon?”

“No! it is out of my way! I never do those things; it would embarrass me beyond measure. Pray let us accomplish an introduction: not altogether a usual one, but that matters little. Vyvyan Joyeuse—rather impertinent, and very fortunate—at your service.”

“Margaret Orleans—very handsome, and rather foolish—at your service!”

Margaret danced like an angel. I knew she would. I could not conceive by what blindness I had passed four hours without being struck. We talked of all things that are, and a few beside. She was something of a botanist, so[Pg 237]we began with flowers; a digression upon China roses carried us to China—the Mandarins with little brains, and the ladies with little feet—the Emperor—the Orphan of China—Voltaire—Zayre—criticism—Dr. Johnson—the Great Bear—the system of Copernicus—stars—ribbons—garters—the Order of the Bath—sea-bathing—Dawlish—- Sidmouth—Lord Sidmouth—Cicero—Rome—Italy—Alfieri—Metastasio—fountains—groves—gardens; and so, as the dancing concluded, we contrived to end as we began, with Margaret Orleans and botany.

Margaret talked well on all subjects and wittily on many. I had expected to find nothing but a romping girl, somewhat amusing, and very vain. But I was out of my latitude in the first five minutes, and out of my senses in the next. She left the room very early, and I drove home, more astonished than I had been for many years.

Several weeks passed away, and I was about to leave England to join my sisters on the Continent. I determined to look once more on that enslaving smile, whose recollection had haunted me more than once. I had ascertained that she resided with an old lady who took two pupils, and taught French and Italian, and music and manners, at an establishment called Vine House. Two days before I left the country, I had been till a late hour shooting at a mark with a duelling pistol, an entertainment, of which, perhaps from a lurking presentiment, I was very fond. I was returning alone when I perceived, by the light of an enormous lamp, a board by the wayside bearing the welcome inscription, “Vine House.” “Enough,” I exclaimed, “enough! One more scene before the curtain drops. Romeo and Juliet by lamplight!” I roamed about the dwelling-place of all I held dear, till I saw a figure at one of the windows in the back of the house, which it was quite impossible to doubt. I leaned against a tree in a sentimental position, and began to chant my own rhymes thus:—

Pretty coquette, the ceaseless playOf thine unstudied wit,And thy dark eye’s remembered rayBy buoyant fancy lit,[Pg 238]And thy young forehead’s clear expanse,Where the locks slept, as through the dance,Dreamlike, I saw thee flit,Are far too warm, and far too fair,To mix with aught of earthly care;But the vision shall come when my day is done,A frail and a fair and a fleeting one!And if the many boldly gazeOn that bright brow of thine,And if thine eye’s undying raysOn countless coxcombs shineAnd if thy wit flings out its mirth,Which echoes more of air than earth,For other ears than mine,I heed not this; ye are fickle things,And I like your very wanderings;I gaze, and if thousands share the bliss,Pretty capricious! I heed not this.In sooth I am a wayward youth,As fickle as the sea,And very apt to speak the truth,Unpleasing though it be;I am no lover; yet, as longAs I have heart for jest or song,An image, sweet, of thee,Locked in my heart’s remotest treasures,Shall ever be one of its hoarded pleasures;This from the scoffer thou hast won,And more than this he gives to none.

And if the many boldly gazeOn that bright brow of thine,And if thine eye’s undying raysOn countless coxcombs shineAnd if thy wit flings out its mirth,Which echoes more of air than earth,For other ears than mine,I heed not this; ye are fickle things,And I like your very wanderings;I gaze, and if thousands share the bliss,Pretty capricious! I heed not this.

In sooth I am a wayward youth,As fickle as the sea,And very apt to speak the truth,Unpleasing though it be;I am no lover; yet, as longAs I have heart for jest or song,An image, sweet, of thee,Locked in my heart’s remotest treasures,Shall ever be one of its hoarded pleasures;This from the scoffer thou hast won,And more than this he gives to none.

“Are they your own verses?” said my idol at the window.

“They are yours, Margaret! I was only the versifier; you were the muse herself.”

“The muse herself is obliged to you. And now what is your errand? For it grows late, and you must be sensible—no, that you never will be—but you must be aware that this is very indecorous.”

“I am come to see you, dear Margaret—which I cannot without candles—to see you, and to tell you that it is impossible I can forget——”

“Bless me! what a memory you have. But you must take another opportunity for your tale; for——”

“Alas! I leave England immediately.[Pg 239]”

“A pleasant voyage to you! There, not a word more; I must run down to coffee.”

“Now may I never laugh more,” I said, “if I am baffled thus.” So I strolled back to the front of the house and proceeded to reconnoitre. A bay-window was half open, and in a small neat drawing-room I perceived a group assembled: an old lady, with a high muslin cap and red ribbons, was pouring out the coffee; her nephew, a tall awkward young gentleman, silting on one chair and resting his legs on another, was occupied in the study of Sir Charles Grandison; and my fair Margaret was leaning on a sofa, and laughing immoderately. “Indeed, miss,” said the matron, “you should learn to govern your mirth; people will think you came out of Bedlam.”

I lifted the window gently, and stepped into the room. “Bedlam, madam!” quoth I, “I bring intelligence from Bedlam; I arrived last week.”

The tall awkward young gentleman stared; and the aunt half said, half shrieked, “What in the name of wonder are you?”

“Mad, madam! very particularly mad! Mad as a hare in March or a Cheapside blood on Sunday morning. Look at me! do I not foam? Listen to me! do I not rave? Coffee, my dear madam, coffee; there is no animal so thirsty as your madman in the dog-days.”

“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.

“My good sir,” I began. But my original insanity began to fail me, and I drew forthwith upon Ossian’s. “Fly! receive the wind and fly; the blasts are in the hollow of my hand, the course of the storm is mine!”

“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.

“I look on the nations and they vanish; my nostrils pour the blast of death; I come abroad on the winds; the tempest is before my face; but my dwelling is calm, above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant.”

“Do you mean to insult us?” said the old lady.

“Ay! do you mean to insult my aunt?—really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.[Pg 240]

“I shall call in my servants,” said the old lady.

“I am the humblest of them,” said I, bowing.

“I shall teach you a different tune,” said the tall awkward young gentleman, “really!”

“Very well, my dear sir; my instrument is the barrel-organ;” and I cocked my sweet little pocket companion in his face, “Vanish, little Kastril; for by Hannibal, Heliogabalus, and Holophernes, time is valuable, madness is precipitate, and hair-triggers are the word! Vanish!”

“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman, and performed anentrechatwhich carried him to the door: the old lady had disappeared at the first note of the barrel-organ. I locked the door, and found Margaret in a paroxysm of laughter. “I wish you had shot him,” she said, when she recovered; “I wish you had shot him: he is a sad fool.”

“Do not talk of him; I am speaking to you, beautiful Margaret, possibly for the last time! Will you ever think of me? Perhaps you will. But let me receive from you some token that I may dote upon in other years; something that may be a hope to me in my happiness, and a consolation in calamity; something—nay! I never could talk romance; but give me one lock of your hair, and I will leave England with resignation.”

“You have earned it like a true knight,” said Margaret; and she severed from her head a long glossy ringlet. “Look!” she continued, “you must to horse, the country has risen for your apprehension.” I turned towards the window. The country had indeed risen. Nothing was to be seen but gossoons in the van and gossips in the rear, red faces and white jackets, gallants in smock-frocks and gay damsels in grogram. Bludgeons were waving, and torches were flashing, as far as the gaze could reach. All the chivalry of the place was arming and chafing, and loading for a volley of pebbles and oaths together.

I kneeled down and kissed her hand. It was the happiest moment of my life! “Now,” said I, “au revoir, my sweet Margaret!” and in a moment I was in the lane.[Pg 241]

“Gentlemen, be pleased to fall back! Farther yet—a few paces farther! Stalwart kern in buckskin, be pleased to lay down your cat-o’-nine-tails! Old knight of the plush jerkin, ground your poker! So, fair damsel with the pitchfork, you are too pretty for so rude an encounter! Most miraculous Magog with the sledge-hammer, flit! Sooty Cupid with the link, light me from Paphos. Ha! tall friend of the barrel-organ, have you turned staff officer? Etna and Vesuvius! Wild fire and wit! Blunderbusses and steam! Fly! Ha! have I not Burgundy in my brain, murder in my plot, and a whole train of artillery in my coat-pocket?” Right and left the ranks opened for my egress, and in a few minutes I was alone on the road, and whistling “Lillibullero.”

This was my first folly. I looked at the lock of hair often, but I never saw Margaret again. She has become the wife of a young clergyman, and resides with him on a small living in Staffordshire. I believe she is very happy, and I have forgotten the colour of her eyes.

“Peregrine,” said Lady Mary, “write.”“I will make a point of it, may it please you ladyship.”

“Ο mes enfans! quelles âmes que celles qui ne sont inquiètes que des mouvemens de l’écliptique, ou que des mœurs et des arts des Chinois!”Marmontel.

“Ο mes enfans! quelles âmes que celles qui ne sont inquiètes que des mouvemens de l’écliptique, ou que des mœurs et des arts des Chinois!”

Marmontel.

Howfar our happiness may be advanced or endangered by the indulgence of a lively interest in all things and persons that chance throws in our way, is a point on which I never could make up my mind. I have seen the man of feeling rapt up in the fervour of his affection or the[Pg 242]enthusiasm of his benevolence, and I have believed him perfectly happy; but I have seen him again when he has discovered that his affection had been wasted on a fool, and his benevolence lavished on a scoundrel, and I have believed him the most wretched of men. Again, I have looked on the man of the world in an hour of trouble or embarrassment, and I have envied his philosophy and his self-command; but I have marked him too in the day of revel and exultation, and I have shrunk from the immobility of his features and the torpor of his smile.

I could never settle it to my satisfaction. Acute pleasure seems to be always the forerunner of intense pain, and weariness the inseparable demon which dogs the steps of gratification. I have examined all ranks and all faces; I have looked into eyes and I have looked into folios; I have lost patience and I have lost time; I have made inquiries of many and enemies of not a few; and drawn confessions and conclusions from demoiselles who never had feelings, and from dowagers who have survived them, from bards who have nourished them in solitude, and from barristers who have crushed them in Westminster Hall. The choice spirit who is loudest at his club to-night will be dullest in his chambers to-morrow, and the girl who is merriest at the dance will infallibly be palest at the breakfast-table. How shall I decide? The equability which lives, or the excitement which dies? The beef without the mustard, or the mustard without the beef?

Chance, or my kind stars, for I am very often inclined to believe in their agency, especially on fine moonlight nights, has flung me into a circle of acquaintance, where the pleasures and the pains attendant upon these different tempers of mind are continually forced upon my notice, and hold me delightfully balanced, like Mahomet’s coffin, between earth and ether. Davenant Cecil is a being as thoroughly made up of sympathies and affections as ever was a puppet of springs or a commentator of absurdities. He never experienced, he never could endure five minutes of calm weather; he is always carried up into the heaven and down again into the deep; every hope, every exertion,[Pg 243]every circumstance, be it of light or of grave import, is to him equally productive of its exaltation or its depression; like the Proserpina of fable he is in Olympus half the year, and in Tartarus the other. Marmaduke Villars has about as much notion of raptures and enthusiasm as a Mohawk chief entertains of turtle soup, or a French milliner of the differential calculus. Except that he prefers claret to port, and Drury Lane to Covent Garden, and eau de Montpellier to eau de Cologne, I doubt whether he is conscious of any predilection for one thing or any aversion to another. Marmaduke is like Ladurlad in everything except “the fire in his heart, and the fire in his brain;” and Davenant is the Sorcerer Benshee, who rode on a fast horse, and talked with many, and jested with many, and laughed loudly, and wept wildly for the things he saw; yet was he bound by his compact to the fiend to sit at no table, and to lie on no couch, and to speed forward by night and by day, sleeping never, and resting never, even till his appointed hour.

A short time ago Davenant and myself received an invitation to spend a few days with Villars. His favourite hunter, Sir Peter, had thrown him or fallen with him, I forget which, and after being a little put to rights, as he expressed it, at the little country place where the accident happened, he had been removed to the Hall, and ordered to keep himself quiet. There seemed to be some chance of his compliance with this admonition, as the rest of his family were all absent, and there was not a house within five miles; but in order to counteract these favourable symptoms as much as possible, he summoned us to his sofa. Cecil and Villars are the antipodes of one another; and, as is commonly the case, are the fondest friends upon all occasions, because they never can agree upon one.

We went accordingly, and were rejoiced to find our friend, pale to be sure, and very intimate with crutches, but still apparently free from pain, and enjoying that medicinal level of spirits which is a better preservative against fever than you will easily find from the lancet or the draught. He congratulated himself upon the safety of his nose,[Pg 244]which Mr. Perrott the apothecary had pronounced broken, and only lamented the loss of his boot, which it had been necessary to cut from his leg. In a short time we quite forgot that he was in the slightest degree damaged, and conversed on divers topics without any intrusive compassion for his flannel and his slipper.

And first, as in duty bound, we began to discuss theQuarterly Magazine, and its past success, and its future hopes, and its patrons, and its contributors. Davenant was wonderfully angry because some “fathomless blockheads” found obscurities in his lyrical poem. “If there were any descendings into the deep fountains of thought, any abstruse researches ‘into the mind of man’—in short, to speak plainly, if there were anything in the poem which a man might be very proud to risk his reputation upon, then one might be prepared for darkness and coldness in this improving and understanding age; but a mere fancy piece like this, as simple in design as it is in execution—you know, Marmaduke, that incapacity to comprehend must be either gross stupidity or supreme affectation.”

“I think much may be said for the ‘blockheads,’” observed Marmaduke, shaking his head.

“You think no such thing,” said Davenant, “and you feel that you think no such thing: I shall detest you, Villars, if you ‘write yourself down an ass,’ merely for the sake of telling me I am one.”

“You know, my dear Davenant,” said Villars, “you know you never detested any body in your life, except, perhaps, a few of the commentators upon Shakespeare, and the critic who considered Campbell the first poet of the day and Wordsworth the second. But seriously, I cannot conceive why you are ruffled about your verses; you know they are admired, as Mr. Rigge says of his soap, by all the best judges; not to go out of our own circle, you know Lady Mary, and Tristram, and Gerard, who are worth all the world, think them about the best things going; nay, I am not clear that our good friend Joyeuse has not some suspicion of the kind, only he never speaks a word of truth upon any subject. And, loaded as you are with all these accumulated commendations, you want[Pg 245]to add the weight of my valueless voice to your burthen, and to——”

“There never was a man more mistaken; what should I care for your opinion? It is not worth a straw, it is not worth ‘Gertrude of Wyoming’ to me. But I am in a passion when I see a tolerably clever man making a fool of himself wilfully. I read the poem to your sister, and she understood it perfectly.”

“Then you persuaded her first that she was a clever girl, and she thought her comprehension would confirm the idea. I will wager a beauty against a bottle, or a haunch of venison against a page of rhyme, or ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ against ‘The Excursion,’ or any other boundless odds which you like to suggest, that with the same object in view she shall admire the Iliad or dote upon the Koran.”

“There is no answer to such an argument. All I know is, that Amelia found nothing difficult in the poem.”

“What! she told you so, I suppose.”

“No; her eyes did.”

“Then her eyes lied confoundedly. Never, my dear Davenant—never, while you live, believe in the language of the eyes. I would rather believe in the miracles of Apollonius, or the infallibility of the Pope of Rome, or the invincibility of the French army. I believed a pretty piercing pair once, which told me the wearer was very fond of a particular person, and I cultivated my whiskers accordingly, and did double duty at my glass. By Paphos and its patroness, she went off in a month with a tall captain of fusiliers, and left me to despondency and the new novel.”

“And you longed to be so deceived again,” said Davenant.

“No; it was very fatiguing. Never, while you live, believe in the language of the eyes. But you will, because you were born to be a fool, and you must fulfil your destiny. As Rousseau says—he is somewhere about the room——”

“I have him in my hand,” said Davenant; “what a delightful little book! I dote upon the size, and the binding, and the type, and the[Pg 246]——”

“Yes; he was of great service to me a fortnight ago, when my hurt was rather annoying at night. My people prescribed opium, and I used to take Jean Jacques instead. But this way is my treasure-house of reading:eh! le voici!” And he led us up to a bookcase where was conspicuously placed an immense edition of Voltaire, and began taking down the volumes and expressing the dotage of his delight with wonderful rapidity. “Ah! Alzire! charming—and Merope; you are going to talk about Shakespeare, Davenant. Hold your tongue!—a noisy, gross, fatiguing—no, no: the French stage for me!—Eh! ma belle Zaïre!—the French stage for me!—tout dort, tout est tranquille, et—and Candide! oh! I could laugh for a century.Et puis—la Pucelle! oh, pour le coup——”

Andle coupcame with a vengeance; for Davenant, who hates a French play worse than poison, had just found something overpoweringly ridiculous in the woes of “L’Orphelin de la Chine,” and bursting into an ungovernable shriek of laughter, dropped some six or seven quarto volumes upon the wounded foot of our unfortunate stoic. He fell on the floor, in agony, and almost in a passion.

“Damnation!—n’importe!My sweet Davenant, how could you—— Peregrine, my good fellow, do pull the bell! Horrible! Why, Cecil, how out of your wits you look!Ave Maria! Vive la bagatelle!Why you look like adiable!—like a physician called in too late—mort de ma vie!—or like a—monstre!—like a wood demon at the English Opera House. Ring again, Courtenay! Ha, ha!—I played one myself once—Oh! que c’est affreux!—for a wager, ha, ha!—Oh!—with a long torch, ha, ha!—fire and brimstone!—with long black hair—peste!—but it would never stand on end like yours!oh que non!Ring again, Courtenay!—Eh! Perpignan!here has been a fall! a fall,—as they say upon ‘Change.Cher Perpignan: take me to bed, Perpignan; take it easy—doucement!Ah! the wood demon, Davenant! I shall never get over it!—ha, ha!—Oh!—--”

And thus was Marmaduke carried off, laughing, and screaming, and jesting, and swearing, by turns. His medical attendant was summoned, and we saw him no more[Pg 247]that night; he sent us word that he was as well as could be expected, but that he should never get over the wood demon, in spite of which consolatory intelligence Davenant wore a Tyburn countenance the whole evening.

We met, however, the next morning, and proceeded most laudably to remember nothing of the accident but its absurdity. “I never found Voltaire heavy before,” said Villars, shaking Davenant by the hand; “but you poets of the Lake are so horribly in the habit of taking liberties with your own feet that you have no compassion at all for those of your friends. Mercy upon my five toes! they will not meet in a boot for a twelvemonth; and now,àpropos de bottes, we must have some breakfast.”

Rain confined us to the house, the newspapers were full of advertisements, and the billiard-table was undergoing repair. Davenant endeavoured to define intensity, and I endeavoured to sleep; Marmaduke struck his sister’s tambourine, and the great clock struck one. We began to feel as uncomfortably idle as a gaol-bird who has just been put in, or a Minister who has just been turned out. At last some notice was taken of two miniatures of our friend and his sister, which had been done many years ago, and now hung on opposite sides of the mantelpiece, gazing tenderly at one another in all the holiday magnificence which was conferred by laced cap and pink ribbons upon the one, and by sky-blue jacket and sugar-loaf buttons upon the other. Hence we began to talk of painting, and of “Raphael, Correggio, and stuff,” until it was determined that we should proceed to make a pilgrimage through a long gallery of family portraits, which Marmaduke assured us had been covered with commendations and cobwebs ever since he left his cradle. He hobbled before us on his crutches, and made a very sufficient cicerone. Marmaduke has no wit; but he has a certain off-hand manner which often passes for it, and is sometimes as good a thing.

“That old gentleman,” he began, pointing to a magnificent fellow in rich chain armour, whose effigies occupied one end of the gallery, “that old gentleman is the founder of the family. Blessings on his beard! I almost fancy it[Pg 248]has grown longer since I saw it last. He fought inordinately at Harfleur and Agincourt, was eminently admired and bruised, won a whole grove of laurels, and lost three fingers and a thumb. See, over his head is the crest which was his guerdon; a little finger rampant, and the motto blazoned gorgeously round, ‘Mon doyt est mon droit!’”

“A splendid servant of the sword,” said Davenant; “what a glorious scope of forehead, and what a lowering decision in the upper lip. A real soldier! He would have cleft down a dozen of your modern malefigurantes!”

“Perhaps so,” replied Villars; “but you see he made a bad hand of it, notwithstanding. His nephew, there, is something more soberly habited, but he was not a jot less mad. Who would dream of such a frenzy in sackcloth and sad countenance? He was a follower of Wyckliffe before it was the fashion, and——”

“An excellent piece of workmanship too! I like to see some fury in a man’s faith. Who can endure a minister of the gospel mounting his pulpit at Marylebone, with his well-ordered bands, and his clean manuscript, and his matter-of-fact disquisition, and his matter-of-course tone! That bald apostle has lips I could have listened to: he might have been an enthusiast, or a bigot, or a madman, or e’en what you will; but he has a show of zeal, and an assumption of authority; there is fire about the old man!”

“There was once,” said Marmaduke, “for he was burned in Smithfield. Come hither, here is a young fellow you will admire—Everard the Beautiful (by the way, they say he is like me), who fell in love with the pretty Baroness de Pomeroy. He used to sing under her balcony at midnight, out of pure gallantry, and out of all tune: catching sighs from the high window, and colds from the high wind. He was full three years wailing and whispering, and dreaming and dying, and smarting in the left breast, and sonneting in the left turret. At last came the fifth act of the drama, death and happiness blended together with strict poetic propriety; the fates threw him into her arms one night, and the baron threw him into the moat one morning.[Pg 249]”

“I loathe and detest that eternal sneer of yours. You believe and feel, Marmaduke, although you are too weak to confess it, that the life you have described, a turbid unresting sea of passion and anxiety, and hope and fear, and brief calm and long madness, is worth—oh! twenty times over—the sleepy river of a pedant’s philosophy, or the dirty ditch-water of your own clumsy indifference.”

“Why, my dear Davenant,” said Marmaduke, quietly, “you know love has its ditch-water occasionally; my poor ancestor found it so. But pass on. Here is a courtier of Queen Elizabeth’s day, lying on the green sward in despondency and an attitude, with a myriad of cares and a bunch of daffy-down-dillies in his bosom. There is your true cavalier; a health to short wit and long spurs, blue eyes and white satin! The race has been quite extinct since rapiers went out and political economists came in.”

“I wish,” muttered Cecil, “I wish I had lived with those men. To have had Spenser for my idol, or Sydney for my friend—to have held Leicester’s mantle at court, or Raleigh’s back-hand at tennis—to have stormed a town with Drake, or a bottle with Shakespeare—by Elizabeth’s ruff, it would have been worth an eternity! That was your age for choice spirits!”

“You will find very choice spirits at the Hummums,” said Marmaduke; “but we are getting into the Great Rebellion. It abounded in good subjects—for the pencil, I mean, not for the prince. Never was the land so sorely plagued with dire confusion and daubed canvas. There is silly Sir Lacy who lost his head, and was none the poorer; and sillier Sir Maurice, who lost his lands, and was many acres the poorer: and there is honest Sir Paul, who came in with the Restoration, and wrote my favourite song. Ha, Davenant!

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