THE DOCTOR,

HERBERT'SREMAINS.

CHAPTER XIV. P. I.

AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.

CHAPTER XV. P. I.

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

CHAPTER XVI. P. I.

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.

INTERCHAPTER II.

ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO.

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

BENEDETTOVARCHI.

CHAPTER XVII. P. I.

THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE.

CHAPTER XVIII. P. I.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

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

HERODOTUS.

CHAPTER XIX. P. I.

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.

CHAPTER XX. P. I.

HOW TO MAKE GOLD.

CHAPTER XXI. P. I.

A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER XXII. P. I.

Τὸν δ᾿ ἀπαμειβόμενος.

CHAPTER XXIII. P. I.

ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS.

CHAPTER XXIV. P. I.

QUACK AND NO QUACK, BEING AN ACCOUNT OF DR. GREEN AND HIS MAN KEMP. POPULAR MEDICINE, HERBARY, THEORY OF SIGNATURES, WILLIAM DOVE, JOHN WESLEY, AND BAXTER.

CHAPTER XXV. P. I.

Hiatus valde lacrymabilis.

CHAPTER XXVI. P. I.

DANIEL AT DONCASTER; THE REASON WHY HE WAS DESTINED FOR THE MEDICAL PROFESSION, RATHER THAN HOLY ORDERS; AND SOME REMARKS UPON SERMONS.

Je ne veux dissimuler, amy Lecteur, que je n'aye bien préveu, et me tiens pour deüement adverty, que ne puis eviter la reprehension d'aucuns, et les calomnies de plusieurs, ausquels c'est éscrit désplaira du tout.

CHRISTOFLE DEHERICOURT.

CHAPTER XXVII. P. I.

A PASSAGE IN PROCOPIUS IMPROVED. A STORY CONCERNING URIM AND THUMMIM; AND THE ELDER DANIEL'S OPINION OF THE PROFESSION OF THE LAW.

CHAPTER XXVIII. P. I.

PETER HOPKINS. EFFECTS OF TIME AND CHANGE. DESCRIPTION OF HIS DWELLING-HOUSE.

CHAPTER XXIX. P. I.

A HINT OF REMINISCENCE TO THE READER. THE CLOCK OF ST. GEORGE'S. A WORD IN HONOR OF ARCHDEACON MARKHAM.

There is a ripe season for every thing, and if you slip that or anticipate it, you dim the grace of the matter be it never so good. As we say by way of Proverb that an hasty birth brings forth blind whelps, so a good tale tumbled out before the time is ripe for it, is ungrateful to the hearer.

BISHOPHACKETT.

CHAPTER XXX. P. I.

THE OLD BELLS RUNG TO A NEW TUNE.

If the bell have any sides the clapper will find 'em.

BENJONSON.

CHAPTER XXXI. P. I.

MORE CONCERNING BELLS.

CHAPTER XXXII. P. I.

AN INTRODUCTION TO CERTAIN PRELIMINARIES ESSENTIAL TO THE PROGRESS OF THIS WORK.

A FAMILY PARTY AT A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR'S.

I was in the fourth night of the story of the Doctor and his horse, and had broken it off, not like Scheherezade because it was time to get up, but because it was time to go to bed. It was at thirty-five minutes after ten o'clock, on the 20th of July in the year of our Lord 1813. I finished my glass of punch, tinkled the spoon against its side, as if making music to my meditations, and having my eyes fixed upon the Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me at the head of her own table, I said, “It ought to be written in a Book!”

There had been a heavy thunder-storm in the afternoon; and though the thermometer had fallen from 78 to 70, still the atmosphere was charged. If that mysterious power by which the nerves convey sensation and make their impulses obeyed, be (as experiments seem to indicate) identical with the galvanic fluid; and if the galvanic and electric fluids be the same (as philosophers have more than surmised;) and if the lungs (according to a happy hypothesis) elaborate for us from the light of heaven this pabulum of the brain, and material essence, or essential matter of genius,—it may be that the ethereal fire which I had inhaled so largely during the day produced the bright conception, or at least impregnated and quickened the latent seed. The punch, reader, had no share in it.

I had spoken as it were abstractedly, and the look which accompanied the words was rather cogitative than regardant. The Bhow Begum laid down her snuff-box and replied, entering into the feeling, as well as echoing the words, “Itoughtto be written in a book,—certainly it ought.”

They may talk as they will of the dead languages. Our auxiliary verbs give us a power which the ancients, with all their varieties of mood, and inflections of tense, never could attain. “Itmustbe written in a book,” said I, encouraged by her manner. The mood was the same, the tense was the same; but the gradation of meaning was marked in a way which a Greek or Latin grammarian might have envied as well as admired.

“Pshaw! nonsense! stuff!” said my wife's eldest sister, who was sitting at the right hand of the Bhow Begum; “I say write it in a book indeed!” My wife's youngest sister was sitting diagonally opposite to the last speaker: she lifted up her eyes and smiled. It was a smile which expressed the same opinion as the late vituperative tones; there was as much of incredulity in it; but more of wonder and less of vehemence.

My wife was at my left hand, making a cap for her youngest daughter, and with her tortoiseshell-paper work-box before her. I turned towards her and repeated the words, “Itmustbe written in a book!” But I smiled while I was speaking, and was conscious of that sort of meaning in my eyes, which calls out contradiction for the pleasure of sporting with it.

“Write it in a book?” she replied, “I am sure you wo'nt!” and she looked at me with a frown. Poets have written much upon their ladies' frowns, but I do not remember that they have ever described the thing with much accuracy. When my wife frowns two perpendicular wrinkles, each three quarters of an inch in length, are formed in the forehead, the base of each resting upon the top of the nose, and equi-distant from each other. The poets have also attributed dreadful effects to the frown of those whom they love. I cannot say that I ever experienced any thing very formidable in my wife's. At present she knew her eyes would give the lie to it if they looked at me steadily for a moment; so they wheeled to the left about quick, off at a tangent, in a direction to the Bhow Begum, and then she smiled. She could not prevent the smile; but she tried to make it scornful.

My wife's nephew was sitting diagonally with her, and opposite his mother, on the left hand of the Bhow Begum. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “it ought to be written in a book! it will be a glorious book! write it, uncle, I beseech you!” My wife's nephew is a sensible lad. He reads my writings, likes my stories, admires my singing, and thinks as I do in politics:—a youth of parts and considerable promise.

“Hewillwrite it!” said the Bhow Begum, taking up her snuff-box, and accompanying the words with a nod of satisfaction and encouragement. “He will never be so foolish!” said my wife. My wife's eldest sister rejoined, “he is foolish enough for any thing.”

SHEWING THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE EASILY BE KEPT AWAKE BY HIS OWN IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP BY THEM HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR EFFECT UPON HIS READERS.

Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow.

WEBSTER.

When I ought to have been asleep the “unborn pages crowded on my soul.” The Chapters ante-initial and post-initial appeared in delightful prospect “long drawn out:” the beginning, the middle and the end were evolved before me: the whole spread itself forth, and then the parts unravelled themselves and danced the hays. The very types rose in judgment against me, as if to persecute me for the tasks which during so many years I had imposed upon them. Capitals and small letters, pica and long-primer, brevier and bourgeois, english and nonpareil, minion and pearl, Romans and Italics, black-letter and red, past over my inward sight. The notes of admiration!!! stood straight up in view as I lay on the one side; and when I turned on the other to avoid them, the notes of interrogation cocked up their hump-backs??? Then came to recollection the various incidents of the eventful tale. “Visions of glory spare my aching sight!” The various personages, like spectral faces in a fit of the vapours, stared at me through my eyelids. The Doctor oppressed me like an incubus; and for the Horse,—he became a perfect night-mare. “Leave me, leave me to repose!”

Twelve by the kitchen clock!—still restless!—One! O Doctor, for one of thy comfortable composing draughts!—Two! here's a case of insomnolence! I, who in summer close my lids as instinctively as the daisy when the sun goes down; and who in winter could hybernate as well as Bruin, were I but provided with as much fat to support me during the season, and keep the wick of existence burning:—I, who, if my pedigree were properly made out, should be found to have descended from one of the Seven Sleepers, and from the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood!

I put my arms out of bed. I turned the pillow for the sake of applying a cold surface to my cheek. I stretched my feet into the cold corner. I listened to the river, and to the ticking of my watch. I thought of all sleepy sounds and all soporific things: the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarine's head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr. Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed revolved with me round and round. Still the Doctor visited me as perseveringly as if I had been his best patient; and, call up what thoughts I would to keep him off, the Horse charged through them all.

At last Morpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's divinity lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the very atmosphere, and the streamy candle-light were all alike somnific;—where he who by strong effort lifted up his head, and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all around him fast asleep. Lettuces, cowslip-wine, poppy-syrup, mandragora, hop-pillows, spiders'-web pills, and the whole tribe of narcotics, up to bang and the black drop, would have failed: but this was irresistible; and thus twenty years after date I found benefit from having attended the course.

SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP.

The wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil hath told us from what gate of the infernal regions they go out, but at which of the five entrances of the town of Mansoul they get in John Bunyan hath not explained. Some have conceited that unembodied spirits have access to us during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting that we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is held by Baxter, and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of corporeal things, (exuviæ scilicet rerum, vel effluvia, as they are called by Vaninus, when he takes advantage of them to explain theFata Morgana) the atomists I say, supposed that these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all bodies,

Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur1

assail the soul when she ought to be at rest; according to which theory all the lathered faces that are created every morning in the looking-glass, and all the smiling ones that my Lord Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be floating up and down the world. Others again opine, as if in contradiction to those who pretend life to be a dream, that dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a bird from a cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a slumbering cat pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse;—(I know not whether he would have admitted the fact as an argument for materialism); and the soul of Hans Engelbrecht not only went to hell, but brought back from it a stench which proved to all the bystanders that it had been there.—Faugh!

1Lucretius.

Whether then my spirit that night found its way out at the nose, (for I sleep with my mouth shut) and actually sallied out seeking adventures; or whether the spectrum of the Horse floated into my chamber; or some benevolent genius or dæmon assumed the well-known and welcome form; or whether the dream were merely a dream,—

so however it was that in the visions of the night I mounted Nobs. Tell me not of Astolfo's hippogriff, or Pacolet's wooden steed; nor

nor of Alborak, who was the best beast for a night-journey that ever man bestrode. Tell me not even of Pegasus! I have ridden him many a time; by day and by night have I ridden him; high and low, far and wide, round the earth, and about it, and over it, and under it. I know all his earth-paces, and his sky-paces. I have tried him at a walk, at an amble, at a trot, at a canter, at a hand-gallop, at full gallop and at full speed. I have proved him in themanégewith single turns and themanégewith double turns, his bounds, his curvets, hispirouettes, and hispistes, hiscroupadeand hisbalotade, his gallop-galliard and his capriole. I have been on him when he has glided through the sky with wings outstretched and motionless, like a kite or a summer cloud; I have bestrode him when he went up like a bittern with a strong spiral flight, round, round and round, and upward, upward, upward, circling and rising still; and again when he has gone full sail, or full fly, with his tail as straight as a comet's behind him. But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is nothing to Nobs.

2Calderon.

Where did we go on that memorable night? What did we see?—What did we do?—Or rather what did we not see! and what did we not perform!

A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

Tel condamne mon coq-à-l'âne qui un jour en justifiera le bon sens.

LAPRETIEUSE.

I went down to breakfast as usual overflowing with joyous thoughts. For mirth and for music the skylark is but a type of me. I warbled a few wood notes wild, and then full of the unborn work, addressed myself to my wife's eldest sister, and asked if she would permit me to dedicate the Book to her. “What book?” she replied. “The History,” said I, “of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his Horse Nobs.” She answered, “No indeed! I will have no such nonsense dedicated to me!”—and with that she drew up her upper lip, and the lower region of the nose. I turned to my wife's youngest sister: “Shall I have the pleasure of dedicating it to you?” She raised her eyes, inclined her head forwards with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline the honour. “Commandante,” said I, to my wife and Commandress, “shall I dedicate it then to you?” My Commandante made answer, “not unless you have something better to dedicate.”

“So Ladies!” said I; “the stone which the builders rejected,”—and then looking at my wife's youngest sister—“Oh, it will be such a book!” The manner and the tone were so much in earnest that they arrested the bread and butter on the way to her mouth; and she exclaimed, with her eyes full of wonder and incredulity at the same time, “Why you never can be serious?” “Not serious?” said I; “why I have done nothing but think of it and dream of it the whole night.” “He told me so,” rejoined my Commandante, “the first thing in the morning.” “Ah Stupey!” cried my wife's eldest sister, accompanying the compliment with a protrusion of the head, and an extension of the lips, which disclosed not only the whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms that had been made in it by the tooth drawer;hiatus valde lacrymabiles.

“Two volumes,” said I, “and this in the title-page!” So taking out my pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the mysterious monogram, erudite in its appearance as the digamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy.

logo

It past from hand to hand. “Why he is not in earnest?” said my wife's youngest sister. “He never can be,” replied my wife. And yet beginning to think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick turn of the eye,—“a pretty subject indeed for you to employ your time upon! You,—vema whehaha yohu almad otenba twandri athancod!” I have thought proper to translate this part of my Commandante's speech into the Garamna tongue.

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