Chapter 6

AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.

“This account of Textor's Dialogues,” says a critical Reader, “might have done very well for the Retrospective Review, or one of the Magazines, or D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature. But no one would have looked for it here, where it is completely out of place.”

“My good Sir, there is quite enough left untouched in Textor to form a very amusing paper for the journal which you have mentioned, and the Editor may thank you for the hint. But you are mistaken in thinking that what has been said of those Dialogues is out of place here. May I ask what you expected in these volumes?”

“What the Title authorized me to look for.”

“Do you know, Sir, what mutton broth means at a city breakfast on the Lord Mayor's Day, mutton broth being the appointed breakfast for that festival? It means according to established usage—by liberal interpretation—mutton broth and every thing else that can be wished for at a breakfast. So, Sir, you have here not only what the title seems to specify, but every thing else that can be wished for in a book. In treating of the Doctor, it treatsde omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. It is the Doctor &c., and that &c., like one of Lyttleton's, implies every thing that can be deduced from the words preceding.

“But I maintain that the little which has been said of comical old Textor (for it is little compared to what his Dialogues contain) strictly relates to the main thread of this most orderly and well compacted work. You will remember that I am now replying to the question proposed in the third chapter P. I. ‘Who was the Doctor?’ And as he who should undertake to edite the works of Chaucer, or Spenser, or Shakespear would not be qualified for the task, unless he had made himself conversant with the writings of those earlier authors, from whose storehouses (as far as they drew from books) their minds were fed; so it behoved me (as far as my information and poor ability extend) to explain in what manner so rare a character as Dr. Dove's was formed.

“Quo semel est imbuta recens,—you know the rest of the quotation, Sir. And perhaps you may have tasted water out of a beery glass,—which it is not one or two rinsings that can purify.

“You have seen yew trees cut into the forms of pyramids, chess-kings, and peacocks:—nothing can be more unlike their proper growth—and yet no tree except the yew could take the artificial figures so well. The garden passes into the possession of some new owner who has no taste for such ornaments: the yews are left to grow at their own will; they lose the preposterous shape which had been forced upon them, without recovering that of their natural growth, and what was formal becomes grotesque—a word which may be understood as expressing the incongruous combination of formality with extravagance or wildness.”

The intellectual education which young Daniel received at home was as much out of the ordinary course as the book in which he studied at school. Robinson Crusoe had not yet reached Ingleton. Sandford and Merton had not been written, nor that history of Pecksey and Flapsey and the Robin's Nest, which is the prettiest fiction that ever was composed for children, and for which its excellent authoress will one day rank high among women of genius when time shall have set its seal upon desert. The only book within his reach, of all those which now come into the hands of youth, was the Pilgrim's Progress, and this he read at first without a suspicion of its allegorical import. What he did not understand was as little remembered as the sounds of the wind, or the motions of the passing clouds; but the imagery and the incidents took possession of his memory and his heart. After a while Textor became an interpreter of the immortal Tinker, and the boy acquired as much of the meaning by glimpses as was desirable, enough to render some of the personages more awful by spiritualizing them, while the tale itself remained as a reality. Oh! what blockheads are those wise persons who think it necessary that a child should comprehend every thing it reads!

THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING WISDOM OF MAKING CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE.

“What, Sir,” exclaims a Lady, who is bluer than ever one of her naked and woad-stained ancestors appeared at a public festival in full dye,—“what, Sir, do you tell us that children are not to be made to understand what they are taught?” And she casts her eyes complacently toward an assortment of those books which so many writers, male and female, some of the infidel, some of the semi-fidel, and some of the super-fidel schools have composed for the laudable purpose of enabling children to understand every thing.—“What, Sir,” she repeats, “are we to make our children learn things by rote like parrots, and fill their heads with words to which they cannot attach any signification?”

“Yes, Madam, in very many cases.”

“I should like, Sir, to be instructed why?”

She says this in a tone, and with an expression both of eyes and lips which plainly show, in direct opposition to the words, that the Lady thinks herself much fitter to instruct, than to be instructed. It is not her fault. She is a good woman, and naturally a sensible one, but she has been trained up in the way women should not go. She has been carried from lecture to lecture, like a student who is being crammed at a Scotch University. She has attended lectures on chemistry, lectures on poetry, lectures on phrenology, lectures on mnemonics; she has read the latest and most applauded essays on Taste: she has studied the newest and most approved treatises practical and theoretical upon Education: she has paid sufficient attention to metaphysics to know as much as a professed philosopher about matter and spirit; she is a proficient in political economy, and can discourse upon the new science of population. Poor Lady, it would require large draughts of Lethe to clear out all this undigested and undigestible trash, and fit her for becoming what she might have been! Upon this point however it may be practicable to set her right.

“You are a mother, Madam, and a good one. In caressing your infants you may perhaps think it unphilosophical to use what I should call the proper and natural language of the nursery. But doubtless you talk to them; you give some utterance to your feelings; and whether that utterance be in legitimate and wise words, or in good extemporaneous nonsense it is alike to the child. The conventional words convey no more meaning to him than the mere sound; but he understands from either all that is meant, all that you wish him to understand, all that is to be understood. He knows that it is an expression of your love and tenderness, and that he is the object of it.

“So too it continues after he is advanced from infancy into childhood. When children are beginning to speak they do not and cannot affix any meaning to half the words which they hear; yet they learn their mother tongue. What I say is, do not attempt to force their intellectual growth. Do not feed them with meat till they have teeth to masticate it.

“There is a great deal which they ought to learn, can learn, and must learn, before they can or ought to understand it. How many questions must you have heard from them which you have felt to be best answered, when they were with most dexterity put aside! Let me tell you a story which the Jesuit Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When he was a little boy he asked a Dominican Friar what was the meaning of the seventh commandment, for he said he could not tell what committing adultery was. The Friar not knowing how to answer, cast a perplexed look round the room, and thinking he had found a safe reply pointed to a kettle on the fire, and said the Commandment meant that he must never put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very next day, a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold there was little Manuel running about the room holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery!’”

USE AND ABUSE OF STORIES IN REASONING, WITH A WORD IN BEHALF OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS AND IN REPROOF OF THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE.

My particular inclination moves me in controversy especially to approve his choice that said,fortia mallem quam formosa.

DR. JACKSON.

I ended that last chapter with a story, and though “I say it who should not say it,” it is a good story well applied. Of what use a story may be even in the most serious debates may be seen from the circulation of old Joes in Parliament, which are as current there as their sterling namesakes used to be in the city some threescore years ago. A jest though it should be as stale as last weeks newspaper, and as flat as Lord Flounder's face, is sure to be received with laughter by the Collective Wisdom of the Nation: nay it is sometimes thrown out like a tub to the whale, or like a trail of carrion to draw off hounds from the scent.

The Bill which should have put an end to the inhuman practice of employing children to sweep chimneys, was thrown out on the third reading in the House of Lords (having passed the Commons without a dissentient voice) by a speech from Lord Lauderdale, the force of which consisted in, literally, a Joe Millar jest. He related that an Irishman used to sweep his chimney by letting a rope down, which was fastened round the legs of a goose, and then pulling the goose after it. A neighbour to whom he recommended this as a convenient mode objected to it upon the score of cruelty to the goose: upon which he replied, that a couple of ducks might do as well. Now if the Bill before the house had been to enact that men should no longer sweep chimneys but that boys should be used instead, the story would have been applicable. It was no otherwise applicable than as it related to chimney-sweeping: but it was a joke, and that sufficed. The Lords laughed; his Lordship had the satisfaction of throwing out the Bill, and the home Negro trade has continued from that time, now seven years, till this day, and still continues. His Lordship had his jest, and it is speaking within compass to say that in the course of those seven years two thousand children have beensacrificedin consequence.

The worst actions of Lord Lauderdale's worst ancestor admit of a better defence before God and Man.

Had his Lordship perused the evidence which had been laid before the House of Commons when the Bill was brought in, upon which evidence the Bill was founded? Was he aware of the shocking barbarities connected with the trade, and inseparable from it? Did he know that children inevitably lacerate themselves in learning this dreadful occupation? that they are frequently crippled by it? frequently lose their lives in it by suffocation, or by slow fire? that it induces a peculiar and dreadful disease? that they who survive the accumulated hardships of a childhood during which they are exposed to every kind of misery, and destitute of every kind of comfort, have at the age of seventeen or eighteen to seek their living how they can in some other employment,—for it is only by children that this can be carried on? Did his Lordship know that girls as well as boys are thus abused? that their sufferings begin at the age of six, sometimes a year earlier? finally that they are sold to this worst and most inhuman of all slaveries, and sometimes stolen for the purpose of being sold to it?

I bear no ill-will towards Lord Lauderdale, either personally or politically: far from it. His manly and honorable conduct on the Queen's trial, when there was such an utter destitution of honor in many quarters where it was believed to exist, and so fearful a want of manliness where it ought to have been found, entitles him to the respect and gratitude of every true Briton. But I will tell his Lordship that rather than have spoken as he did against an act which would have lessened the sum of wickedness and suffering in this country,—rather than have treated a question of pure humanity with contempt and ridicule,—rather than have employed my tongue for such a purpose and with such success, I would———But no: I will not tell him how I had concluded. I will not tell him what I had added in the sincerity of a free tongue and an honest heart. I leave the sentence imperfect rather than that any irritation which the strength of my language might excite should lessen the salutary effects of self-condemnation.

James Montgomery! these remarks are too late for a place in thy Chimney Sweepers' Friend: but insert them I pray thee in thy newspaper, at the request of one who admires and loves thee as a Poet, honors and respects thee as a man, and reaches out in spirit at this moment a long arm to shake hands with thee in cordial good will.

My compliments to you Mr. Bowring! your little poem in Montgomery's benevolent album is in a strain of true poetry and right feeling. None but a man of genius could have struck off such stanzas upon such a theme. But when you wrote upon Humanity at Home, the useful reflection might have occurred that Patriotism has no business abroad. Whatever cause there may be to wish for amendment in the government and institutions of other countries, keep aloof from all revolutionary schemes for amending them, lest you should experience a far more painful disappointment in their success than in their failure. No spirit of prophecy is required for telling you that this must be the result. Lay not up that cause of remorse for yourself, and time will ripen in you what is crude, confirm what is right, and gently rectify all that is erroneous; it will abate your political hopes, and enlarge your religious faith, and stablish both upon a sure foundation. My good wishes and sincere respects to you Mr. Bowring!

ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO.

Io'l dico dunque, e dicol che ognun m'ode.

BENEDETTOVARCHI.

Whether the secret of the Freemasons be comprized in the mystic word above is more than I think proper to reveal at present. But I have broken no vow in uttering it.

And I am the better for having uttered it.

Mahomet begins some of the chapters of the Koran with certain letters of unknown signification, and the commentators say that the meaning of these initials ought not to be enquired. So Gelaleddin says, so sayeth Taleb. And they say truly. Some begin with A. L. M. Some with K. H. I. A. S.: some with T. H.;—T. S. M.;—T. S. or I. S. others with K. M.;—H. M. A. S. K.;—N. M.;—a singleKaf, a singleNunor a singleSad, andsadwork would it be either forKafferor Mussulman to search for meaning wherenoneis. Gelaleddin piously remarks that there is only One who knoweth the import of these letters—I reverence the name which he uses too much to employ it upon this occasion. Mahomet himself tells us that they are the signs of the Book which teacheth the true doctrine,—the Book of the Wise,—the Book of Evidence, the Book of Instruction. When he speaketh thus of the Koran he lieth like an impostor as he is: but what he has said falsely of that false book may be applied truly to this. It is the Book of Instruction inasmuch as every individual reader among the thousands and tens of thousands who peruse it will find something in it which he did not know before. It is the Book of Evidence because of its internal truth. It is the Book of the Wise, because the wiser a man is the more he will delight therein; yea, the delight which he shall take in it will be the measure of his intellectual capacity. And that it teacheth the true doctrine is plain from this circumstance, that I defy the British Critic, the Antijacobin, the Quarterly and the Eclectic Reviews,—aye, and the Evangelical, the Methodist, the Baptist and the Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, with the Christian Observer to boot, to detect any one heresy in it. Therefore I say again

Aballiboozobanganorribo,

and like Mahomet I say that it is the Sign of the Book; and therefore it is that I have said it;

1MOLZA.

Happen it may,—for things not less strange have happened, and what has been may be again;—for may be and has been are only tenses of the same verb, and that verb is eternally being declined:——Happen I say it may; and peradventure if it may it must; and certainly if it must it will:—but what with indicatives and subjunctives, presents, præterperfects and paulo-post-futura, the parenthesis is becoming too long for the sentence, and I must begin it again. A prudent author should never exact too much from the breath or the attention of his reader,—to say nothing of the brains.

Happen then it may that this Book may outlive Lord Castlereagh's Peace, Mr. Pitt's reputation (we will throw Mr. Fox's into the bargain); Mr. Locke's Metaphysics, and the Regent's Bridge in St. James's Park. It may outlive the eloquence of Burke, the discoveries of Davy, the poems of Wordsworth, and the victories of Wellington. It may outlive the language in which it is written; and in heaven knows what year of heaven knows what era, be discovered by some learned inhabitant of that continent which the insects who make coral and madrepore are now, and from the beginning of the world have been, fabricating in the Pacific Ocean. It may be dug up among the ruins of London, and considered as one of the Sacred Books of the Sacred Island of the West,—for I cannot but hope that some reverence will always be attached to this most glorious and most happy island when its power and happiness and glory like those of Greece shall have passed away. It may be decyphered and interpreted, and give occasion to a new religion called Dovery or Danielism, which may have its Chapels, Churches, Cathedrals, Abbeys, Priories, Monasteries, Nunneries, Seminaries, Colleges and Universities;—its Synods, Consistories, Convocations and Councils;—its Acolytes, Sacristans, Deacons, Priests, Archdeacons, Rural Deans, Chancellors, Prebends, Canons, Deans, Bishops, Archbishops, Prince Bishops, Primates, Patriarchs, Cardinals and Popes;—its most Catholic Kings, and its Kings most Dovish or most Danielish. It may have Commentators and Expounders—(who can doubt that it will have them?) who will leave unenlightened that which is dark, and darken that which is clear. Various interpretations will be given, and be followed by as many sects. Schisms must ensue; and the tragedies, comedies and farces, with all the varieties of tragi-comedy and tragi-farce or farcico-tragedy which have been represented in this old world, be enacted in that younger one. Attack on the one side, defence on the other; high Dovers and low Dovers; Danielites of a thousand unimagined and unimaginable denominations; schisms, heresies, seditions, persecutions, wars,—the dismal game of Puss-catch-corner played by a nation instead of a family of children, and in dreadful earnest, when power, property and life are to be won and lost!

But without looking so far into the future history of Dovery, let me exhort the learned Australian to whom the honour is reserved of imparting this treasure to his countrymen, that he abstain from all attempts at discovering the mysteries of Aballiboozobanganorribo! The unapocalyptical arcana of that stupendous vocable are beyond his reach;—so let him rest assured. Let him not plunge into the fathomless depths of that great word, let him not attempt to soar to its unapproachable heights. Perhaps,—and surely no man of judgement will suppose that I utter any thing lightly,—perhaps if the object were attainable, he might have cause to repent its attainment. If too “little learning be a dangerous thing,” too much is more so;

Il saper troppo qualche volta nuoce.2

2MOLZA.

“Curiosity,” says Fuller, “is a kernel of the Forbidden Fruit, which still sticketh in the throat of a natural man, sometimes to the danger of his choaking.”

There is a knowledge which is forbidden because it is dangerous. Remember the Apple! Remember the beautiful tale of Cupid and Psyche! Remember Cornelius Agrippa's library; the youth who opened in unhappy hour his magical volume; and the choice moral which Southey, who always writes so morally, hath educed from that profitable story! Remember Bluebeard! But I am looking far into futurity. Bluebeard may be forgotten; Southey may be forgotten; Cornelius Agrippa may be no more remembered; Cupid and Psyche may be mere names which shall have outlived all tales belonging to them;—Adam and Eve—Enough.

Eat beans, if thou wilt, in spite of Pythagoras. Eat bacon with them, for the Levitical law hath been abrogated: and indulge in black-puddings, if thou likest such food, though there be Methodists who prohibit them as sinful. But abstain from Aballiboozobanganorribo.

THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE.

A fastidious taste is like a squeamish appetite; the one has its origin in some disease of mind, as the other has in some ailment of the stomach. Your true lover of literature is never fastidious. I do not mean thehelluo librorum, the swinish feeder, who thinks that every name which is to be found in a title-page, or on a tomb-stone, ought to be rescued from oblivion; nor those first cousins of the moth, who labour under a bulimy for black-letter, and believe every thing to be excellent which was written in the reign of Elizabeth. I mean the man of robust and healthy intellect, who gathers the harvest of literature into his barns, threshes the straw, winnows the grain, grinds it at his own mill, bakes it in his own oven, and then eats the true bread of knowledge. If he bake his loaf upon a cabbage leaf, and eat onions with his bread and cheese, let who will find fault with him for his taste,—not I!

The Doves, father as well as son, were blest with a hearty intellectual appetite, and a strong digestion: but the son had the more catholic taste. He would have relished caviare; would have ventured upon laver undeterred by its appearance—and would have liked it.

1BEAUMONTand FLETCHER.

He would have eaten sausages for breakfast at Norwich, Sally Luns at Bath, Sweet Butter in Cumberland, Orange Marmalade at Edinburgh, Findon Haddocks at Aberdeen, and drunk punch with Beef steaks to oblige the French if they insisted upon obliging him with adejeûner a l'Angloise.

A good digestion turneth all to health.2

2HERBERT.

He would have eaten squab-pye in Devonshire, and the pye which is squabber than squab in Cornwall; sheep's head with the hair on in Scotland, and potatoes roasted on the hearth in Ireland; frogs with the French, pickled herrings with the Dutch, sour-krout with the Germans, maccaroni with the Italians, aniseed with the Spaniards, garlic with any body; horse-flesh with the Tartars; ass-flesh with the Persians; dogs with the North Western American Indians, curry with the Asiatic East Indians, birds' nests with the Chinese, mutton roasted with honey with the Turks, pismire cakes on the Orinoco, and turtle and venison with the Lord Mayor; and the turtle and venison he would have preferred to all the other dishes, because his taste, though catholic, was not indiscriminating. He would have tried all, tasted all, thriven upon all, and lived contentedly and cheerfully upon either, but he would have liked best that which was best. And his intellectual appetite had the same happy catholicism.

He would not have said with Euphues, “if I be in Crete, I can lie; if in Greece, I can shift; if in Italy, I can court it:” but he might have said with him, “I can carouse with Alexander; abstain with Romulus; eat with the Epicure; fast with the Stoic; sleep with Endymion; watch with Chrysippus.”

The Reader will not have forgotten I trust, (but if he should I now remind him of it,) that in the brief inventory of Daniel's library there appeared some odd volumes of that “book full of Pantagruelism,” the inestimable life of the Great Gargantua. The elder Daniel could make nothing of this book; and the younger, who was about ten years old when he began to read it, less than he could of the Pilgrim's Progress. But he made out something.

Young Daniel was free from all theismsin Lily, and from rhotacism to boot; he was clear too of schism, and all the worseismswhich have arisen from it: having by the blessing of Providence been bred up not in any denomination ending inistorinian, orerianorarian, but as a dutiful and contented son of the church of England. In humour however he was by nature a Pantagruelist. And indeed in his mature years he always declared that one of the reasons which had led him to reject the old humoral pathology was that it did not include Pantagruelism, which he insisted depended neither upon heat or cold, moisture or dryness, nor upon any combination of those qualities; but was itself a peculiar and elementary humour; a truth he said, of which he was feelingly and experimentally convinced, and lauded the Gods therefore.

Mr. Wordsworth in that Poem which Mr. Jeffrey has saidwon't do—(Mr. Jeffrey is always lucky in his predictions whether as a politician or a critic,—bear witness Wellington! bear witness Wordsworth and Southey! bear witness Elia and Lord Byron!) Mr. Wordsworth in that Poem which

Mr. Wordsworth in that noble Poem observes,

Among the Emblems of Daniel Heinsius (look at his head, Reader, if thou hast a collection of portraits to refer to, and thou wilt marvel how so queer a conceit should have entered it, for seldom has there been a face more gnarled and knotted with crabbed cogitation than that of this man, who was one of the last of the Giants;)—among his emblems, I say, is one which represents Cupid sowing a field, and little heads springing out of the ground on all sides, some up to the neck, others to the shoulders, and some with the arms out. If the crop were examined I agree with Mr. Wordsworth that Poets would be found there as thick as darnel in the corn;—and grave counsellors would not be wanting whose advice would be that they should be weeded out.

The Pantagruelists are scarcer. Greece produced three great tragic Poets, and only one Aristophanes. The French had but one Rabelais when the seven Pleiades shone in their poetical hemisphere. We have seen a succession of great Tragedians from Betterton to the present time; and in all that time there has been but one Grimaldi in whom the Pantagruelism of Pantomime has found its perfect representative.

And yet the Reader must not hastily conclude that I think Pantagruelism a better thing than Poetry, because it is rarer; that were imputing to me the common error of estimating things by their rarity rather than their worth, an error more vulgar than any which Sir Thomas Brown has refuted. But I do hold this, that all the greatest Poets have had a spice of Pantagruelism in their composition, which I verily believe was essential to their greatness. What the world lost in losing the Margites of Homer we know not, we only know that Homer had there proved himself a Pantagruelist. Shakespear was a Pantagruelist; so was Cervantes; and till the world shall have produced two other men in whom that humour has been wanting equal to these, I hold my point established.

Some one objects Milton. I thank him for the exception; it is just such an exception as proves the rule; for look only at Milton's Limbo and you will see what a glorious Pantagruelist he might have been,—if the Puritans had not spoilt him for Pantagruelism.

ALL'S WELL THAN ENDS WELL.

Τὰ δ᾿ἄν ἐπιμνησϑῶ,--ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου ἐξαναγκαζὀμενος ἐπιμνησϑῄσομαι.

HERODOTUS.

If William Dove had been installed in office with cap and bells and bauble, he would have been a Professor of Pantagruelism, and might have figured in Flógel's History of such Professors with Tyll Eulenspiegel, Piovano Arlotto, and Peter the Lion; and in Douce's Illustrations of Shakespear with Muckle John, Rees Pengelding and Robin Rush. The humour lay latent till the boy his nephew hit the spring by reading to him some of those chapters in Rabelais which in their literal grotesqueness were level to the capacity of both. These readings led to a piece of practical Pantagruelism, for which William would have been whipt if he had worn a Fool's coat.

One unlucky day, Dan was reading to him that chapter wherein young Gargantua relates the course of experiments which he had made with a velvet mask, a leaf of vervain, his mother's glove, a lappet worked with gold thread, a bunch of nettles, and other things more or less unfit for the purpose to which they were applied. To those who are acquainted with the history of Grandgousier's royal family, I need not explain what that purpose was; nor must I to those who are not, (for reasons that require no explanation) farther than to say, it was the same purpose for which that wild enigma (the semi-composition of the Sphinx's Ghost) was designed,—that enigma of all enigmas the wildest,

“On which was written Ρῆγμάρωλ.”

William had frequently interrupted him with bursts of laughter; but when they came to that crowning experiment in which Gargantua thought he had found thebeau idealof what he was seeking, William clapt his hands, and with an expression of glee in his countenance worthy of Eulenspiegel himself exclaimed, “thou shalt try the Goose, Dan! thou shalt try the Goose!”

So with William's assistance the Goose was tried. They began with due prudence, according to rule, by catching a Goose. In this matter a couple of Ducks Lord Lauderdale knows would not have answered as well. The boy then having gone through the ceremony which the devotees of Baal are said to have performed at the foot of his Image, as the highest act of devotion, (an act of super-reverence it was;) and for which the Jews are said to have called him in mockery Baalzebul, instead of Baalzebub;—cried out that he was ready. He was at that moment in the third of those eight attitudes which form aRik'ath. My Readers who are versed in the fashionable Poets of the day (thisday I mean—their fashion not being insured for tomorrow)—such Readers, I say, know that a rose is called a ghul, and a nightingale a bulbul, and that this is one way of dressing up English Poetry in Turkish Costume. But if they desire to learn a little more of what Mahometan customs are, they may consult D'Ohsson'sTableauof the Ottoman Empire, and there they may not only find the eight attitudes described, but see them represented. Of the third attitude orRukeouas it is denominated, I shall only say that the Ancients represented one of their Deities in it, and that it is the very attitude in whichAs in præsenticommitted that notorious act for which he is celebrated in scholastic and immortal rhyme, and for which poor Syntax bore the blame.Verbum sit sat sapienti.During the reign of Liberty and Equality, a Frenchman was guillotined for exemplifying it under Marat's Monument in thePlace du Carousal.

The bird was brought, but young Daniel had not the strength of young Gargantua; the goose, being prevented by William from drawing back, prest forward; they were by the side of the brook and the boy by this violent and unexpected movement was, as the French would say in the politest and most delicate of all languages,culbuté, or in sailors' English capsized into the water. The misfortune did not end there; for falling with his forehead against a stone, he received a cut upon the brow which left a scar as long as he lived.

It was not necessary to prohibit a repetition of what William called thesperiment. Both had been sufficiently frightened; and William never felt more pain of mind than on this occasion, when the Father with a shake of the head, a look of displeasure and a low voice told him he ought to have known better than to have put the lad upon such pranks!

The mishap however was not without its use. For in after life when Daniel felt an inclination to do any thing which might better be left undone, the recollection that he hadtried the gooseserved as a salutary memento, and saved him perhaps sometimes from worse consequences.

A CONVERSATION WITH MISS GRAVEAIRS.

Operi suscepto inserviendum fuit;so Jacobus Mycillus pleadeth for himself in his translation of Lucian's Dialogues, and so do I; I must and will perform my task.

BURTON.

“It does not signify, Miss Graveairs! you may flirt your fan, and overcloud that white forehead with a frown; but I assure you the last chapter could not be dispensed with. The Doctor used to relate the story himself to his friends; and often alluded to it as the most wholesome lesson he had ever received. My dear Miss Graveairs, let not those intelligent eyes shoot forth in anger arrows which ought to be reserved for other execution. You ought not to be displeased; ought not, must not, can not, shall not!”

“But you ought not to write such things, Mr. Author; really you ought not. What can be more unpleasant than to be reading aloud, and come unexpectedly upon something so strange that you know not whether to proceed or make a full stop, nor where to look, nor what to do? It is too bad of you, Sir, let me tell you! and if I come to any thing more of the kind, I must discard the book. It is provoking enough to meet with so much that one does not understand; but to meet with any thing that one ought not to understand is worse. Sir, it is not to be forgiven; and I tell you again that if I meet with any thing more of the same kind I must discard the book.”

“Nay, dear Miss Graveairs!”

“I must Mr. Author; positively I must.”

“Nay, dear Miss Graveairs! Banish Tristram Shandy! banish Smollett, banish Fielding, banish Richardson! But for the Doctor,—sweet Doctor Dove, kind Doctor Dove, true Doctor Dove, banish not him! Banish Doctor Dove, and banish all the world!—Come, come, good sense is getting the better of preciseness. That stitch in the forehead will not long keep the brows in their constrained position; and the incipient smile which already brings out that dimple, is the natural and proper feeling.”

“Well, you are a strange man!”

“Call me a rare one, and I shall be satisfied. ‘O rare Ben Jonson’ you know was epitaph enough for one of our greatest men.”

“But seriously why should you put any thing in your book, which if not actually exceptionable exposes it at least to that sort of censure, which is most injurious?”

“That question, dear Madam, is so sensibly proposed that I will answer it with all serious sincerity. There is nothing exceptionable in these volumes; ‘Certes,’ as Euphues Lily has said, ‘I think there be more speeches here which for gravity will mislike the foolish, than unseemly terms which for vanity, may offend the wise.’ There is nothing in them that I might not have read to Queen Elizabeth if it had been my fortune to have lived in her golden days; nothing that can by possibility taint the imagination, or strengthen one evil propensity, or weaken one virtuous principle. But they are not composed like a forgotten novel of Dr. Towers's to be read aloud in dissenting families instead of a moral essay, or a sermon; nor like Mr. Kett's Emily to complete the education of young ladies by supplying them with an abstract of universal knowledge. Neither have they any pretensions to be placed on the same shelf with Cœlebs. But the book is a moral book; its tendency is good, and the morality is both the wholesomer and pleasanter because it is not administered as physic, but given as food. I don't like morality in doses.”

“But why, my good Mr. Author, why lay yourself open to censure?”

“Miss Graveairs, nothing excellent was ever produced by any author who had the fear of censure before his eyes. He who would please posterity must please himself by chusing his own course. There are only two classes of writers who dare do this, the best and the worst,—for this is one of the many cases in which extremes meet. The mediocres in every grade aim at pleasing the public, and conform themselves to the fashion of their age whatever it may be.”

My Doctor, like the Matthew Henderson of Burns, was a queer man, and in that respect I his friend and biographer, humbly resemble him. The resemblance may be natural, or I may have caught it,—this I pretend not to decide, but so it is. Perhaps it might have been well if I had resolved upon a farther designation of Chapters, and distributed them into Masculine and Feminine; or into the threefold arrangement of virile, feminile and puerile; considering the book as a family breakfast, where there should be meat for men, muffins for women, and milk for children. Or I might have adopted the device of the Porteusian Society, and marked my Chapters as they (very usefully) have done the Bible, pointing out what should be read by all persons for edification, and what may be passed over by the many, as instructive or intelligible only to the learned.

Here however the book is,—

Ladies and Gentlemen, my gentle Readers, one of our liveliest and most popular old Dramatists knew so well the capricious humour of an audience that he made his Prologue say

But I, gentle Readers, have set before you a table liberally spread. It is not expected or desired that every dish should suit the palate of all the guests, but every guest will find something that he likes. You, Madam, may prefer those boiled chicken, with stewed celery,—or a little of that fricandeau;—the Lady opposite will send her plate for some pigeon pye. The Doctor has an eye upon the venison—and so I see has the Captain.—Sir, I have not forgotten that this is one of your fast days—I am glad therefore that the turbot proves so good,—and that dish has been prepared for you. Sir John, there is garlic in the fricassee. The Hungarian wine has a bitterness which every body may not like; the Ladies will probably prefer Malmsey. The Captain sticks to his Port, and the Doctor to his Madeira.—Sir John I shall be happy to take Sauterne with you.—There is a splendid trifle for the young folks, which some of the elders also will not despise:—and I only wish my garden could have furnished a better dessert; but considering our climate, it is not amiss.—Is not this entertainment better than if I had set you all down to a round of beef and turnips?

1MIDDLETONand ROWLEY'SSpanish Gipsey.

2BENJONSON.

Like such a dinner I would have my book,—something for every body's taste and all good of its kind.

It ought also to resemble the personage of whom it treats; and

3BURNS.

Some whiggish sots I dare say will blame him, and whiggish sots they will be who do!

“En un mot; mes amis, je n'ai entrepris de vous contenter tous en general, ainsi uns et autres en particulier; et par special, moymême.”4

4PASQUIER.

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