Chapter 1 (1)

"A century or two ago, there was a class of dependents or hangers-on to the great families in Ireland, denominated 'running-footmen,' who may truly be looked upon as originals in their singular, laborious, and sometimes even dangerous calling. Though ostensibly mere letter-carriers, or light-parcel bearers, across the difficult parts of the country, as yet inaccessible to carriages, or even quadrupeds, (or rendered passable by that style of road-making which the _Colossus of Roads_, Macadam, pretended was _his_ discovery,) the running-footmen had occasionally charges of more serious import. They were often suspected of being the agents by whom political measures of local warfare were transmitted from baronial sovereigns to their distant clanships or allies,--of being walking, or rather running, telegraphs (for their speed was prodigious) of some plot of treason against the rights of the invader, and often cruelly and unjustly sacrificed to his fury, when intercepted on their secret but seldom hostile missions. They carried their notions of honour on the point of their trust, whatever it might be, to a romantic scrupulosity. No matter whether it was a love-letter or a challenge, a purse or a process, a curse or a blessing, the faithful runner never revealed it to any one but the person for whom it was intended. Though journeying by the most difficult passes, and undergoing the most severe privations, those extraordinary fellows seldom failed in their undertakings. This may be partially accounted for by the reverence they were held in by their own people; for as the lower Irish still continue to believe in the strange notion of their Oriental ancestors, that the souls of 'innocents' (in plainer English, 'fools,') are in heaven, and that their 'muddy vesture of decay' on earth is entitled to superstitious respect, these motleys, in either their real or assumed garb of folly, were treated with a kind of familiar or affectionate reverence wherever they went amongst their own countrymen. On the other hand, the paths of their treading, when they went out upon distant journeys, were so little known to the hostile strangers, that they ran but little chance of receiving injury at their hands, or even meeting with them. Such were the running-footmen of other days; but they are gone,--their _race_ is ended,--and those who pride themselves upon their descent from the stock seem to have retained but few of the qualifications of their ancestors. Everything romantic and happy in Ireland seems to be dwindling away. No longer do we hear the pleasant announcements of 'Blind Connal the harper, sir,' and 'Miss Biddy Maquillian the fiddler, my lady,' and 'Dermot O'Dowd the piper, boys,' and ----"

I had just read so far in some work or other which I had carelessly taken up for a peep after dinner one day, when a loud knock at the door of my apartment made me close the book, and say "Come in!" The door slowly opened; but, as nobody entered, I demanded "Who's there?"

"It's me, masther; Darby, yir honor."--"What do you want?" inquired I.--"Nothing, sir," said he, "but I've got a letther for ye, sir."--"From whom?" said I.--"Faix, I don't know, sir," replied he archly; "for I haven't read it yit; but here it is."--"Why don't you come in and give it to me?" demanded I.--"I'm afraid, sir," said he, "that my brogues would dirty the carpet, and set all the girls in the kitchen a-laughing at me for comin' into the drawin'-room; and sure a purtier room a man need never wish to come into."--"Oh! very well," said I, rising; "you shall have your way, Darby."--"Am I to wait for an answer, sir?" said he, giving me the letter.--"No," replied I; "I'll ring if it be necessary."--"Thank yir honor," said Darby, and turned to descend the stairs with the furtive caution of a cat when stealing upon its prey, lest he should make his brogues audible. A loud crash, succeeded by a louder laugh, through which I distinctly heard, "_Merry bad look to yiz all!_" convinced me that Darby's coming up stairs with the letter was a contrivance of the other servants to play some trick upon him, which their merriment seemed to show had succeeded; but into which as I did not care to inquire, I sate down, opened my letter, and began to read. I had not proceeded far before I found it related to business of the most serious consequence, and required that I should write _instanter_ to a friend, who was on a visit at Bally----, (nearly forty miles distant across the country,) and have an answer by immediate return of post. There was no time to be lost; so I wrote my letter as speedily as possible, folded, sealed, and directed it, then rang the bell with unusual impatience. It was promptly answered; but this time there was no knock at the door before it opened, for it was Eileen, my usual attendant, that presented herself, with a face whose natural health, cheerfulness, and rustic beauty were considerably heightened by the flush of recent merriment.

"What have you been doing with Darby, Eileen?" said I.--"_Oh, widdy-eelish!_" (her constant ejaculation) said she laughing, "nothing at all, sir; only he said he wanted to see the drawin'-room, so we sent him up with the letter, and he slipped his foot as he came down, sir; that's all."--"You know I don't like those tricks, Eileen," said I, with all the severity I could muster against her smothered laughter.--"No, sir; I know, sir; but when an _omadhaun_ like that--"--"Silence!" said I. "I want to send a letter by the post: what o'clock is it?"--"Half an hour too late, sir," said Eileen, resuming her gravity; "and there'll be no post to-morrow."--"No post to-morrow!" echoed I.--"No sir; tomorrow's Saturday, you know."--"Confusion!" said I, "it will be so indeed. What's to be done?"--"I don't know, sir," replied Eileen despondingly; "how far is it?"--"Oh! nearly forty miles across the country," cried I; "and I want an answer immediately."--"Can't Darby _run_ across with it?" said Eileen.--"_Run_ across with it!" cried I; "is the girl out of her senses? Run across forty miles, as if it were nothing more than a hop-step-and-jump!"--"He'll do it in that same, sir," said Eileen seriously, "if ye'll only tell him what it is."--"_Who_'ll do it?" cried I impatiently.--"Why, Darby, sir," said she; "Darby in the kitchen, that's known all the country round for Darby the Swift."--"What!" cried I, "that fellow that brought me the letter just now? Impossible!"--"There's nothing impossible to God, sir, you know,--glory be to his name!" said Eileen, "and so the _crathur_ has the gift of it: he'll do it, I warrant ye." I looked up in Eileen's face, and saw there was something beyond common opinion pleading for Darby; so, waiving all farther parley, I desired her to go down stairs and send him to me instantly. Eileen curtsied, and, retiring, shut the door; but immediately opened it again, saying "You don't want him the night, sir, do ye? for," added she with a loud laugh, "I think he has broken his shin-bone."--"Send him to me immediately," said I peremptorily; upon which Eileen, exclaiming "_Oh, widdy-eelish!_" made her exit.

Now it was evident from her last words that Eileen, in conjunction with others, had done some injury to poor Darby in their gambols; but as he is just coming up stairs, and will make a long pause before he presumes to knock at the door a second time, allow me, gentle reader, _ad interim_, to present you with a portrait of my servant, or follower, "DARBY RYAN," nick-named "_The Swift_."

Darby Ryan was about thirty years of age, middle-sized, not over stout, and tolerably well made. His hair, both in texture and tint, resembled the _raddled_ back of a fawn-coloured goat, and waved in shaggy luxuriance everywhere save on his forehead, in the middle of which it timidly descended in a close-cropped peak, till it nearly united itself with two enormous dark-coloured eyebrows. His eyes were small, and the blackest I have ever seen; with a gleam of fire occasionally, that lent them more archness than ferocity. Some thought he squinted, and said that, though under _one_ master's direction, his _two pupils_ went contrary ways; but I believe this was all slander, and only set forth by jealous people, who themselves, it is said, are rather queer in their optics. A _fracas_ in a hurling-match had left his nose little more than a one-arched bridge, by which, if you please, we will pass along to his mouth, where, if I had the time, I could find ample _room_ for _rum_ination, &c. But Darby has knocked at my door, and I am forced to say "Come in!"--"Did yir honor want me, sir? or is it only the _caileen_'s fun, and the rest of them, in the kitchen?" said Darby, opening the door, but remaining outside as before. "Come in," said I encouragingly, "and take a seat for a moment; I'll tell you what I want with you." The girl's fears for the carpet were quite right; for Darby, making a bow to me on his entrance, scraped about a pound of mud off his brogues, which would have discomfited him quite if I had not proceeded with "Do you know the road to Bally----? Can you find your way to it safely, Darby?"

"Can a duck swim, yir honor?" said Darby, emboldened by degrees.

"Oh! very well, I understand you," said I. "Now, mark me: I want you to take this letter to a friend of mine, who is on a visit with the clergyman there, and bring me an answer as speedily as possible. Are you so quick-footed as they say?"

"Quick-_futted_!" said Darby, seating himself on the very corner of the nearest chair; "where there's a will there's a way, as the sayin' is: but I was never counted slow anyhows but oncet, and that was when I made the clock stop of its own accord on a Patrick's Day, and sure, when we broke up our party, we found it was two days afterwards."

"Well, take care and be more sparing of your time for the present," said I, anxious to despatch him.

"You may rely on it, sir," said he; "I'll spare _nather_ time nor trouble in the doin' of it, although it is letter-carryin'."

"Letter-carrying!" said I; "and pray what is there disgraceful in the calling?"

"Oh! nothing at all disgraceful in the _calling_, sir," said Darby, "as yir honor says, but quite the reverse, if the letters are not paid aforehand."

"You would not surely appropriate the postage to yourself?" said I, looking severely, though I did not exactly comprehend him.

"Is it me, sir?--_Pop_eriate the king's pocket money in that way, poor ould gentleman! I'm not in parliament yet, nor ever had a fine situation under government, like yir honor."

"Be not impertinent, sir," said I sharply; "I'd have you know and keep your distance." Darby rose immediately from the chair, of which about this time he had occupied nearly one half, saying,

"Any distance you like for a short time, sir; for it's myself would grieve to part you for ever. What's the word of command, sir, and I'm off?--Right or left, north or south, Darby Ryan's yir man 'gainst wind or tide, as was said of one of my posteriors----"

"Your ancestors you mean," said I smiling.

"My _aunt's sisters_, yir honor! Faith and he wasn't one of her _sisters_, nor one of my _four_ fathers either,--for he was neither my godfather, nor my own father, nor my grandfather, nor my great-grandfather; but, as I said afore, one of my pos--pos--pos--_terity_, (I have the word now, divil take it!) that was christened RYAN THE RACER, for bein' runnin' futtman ages ago to the first quality in the country."

By this time I began to perceive that, however quick Darby's heels might be, they had a formidable rival in his tongue; so I endeavoured to check _it_ at once by saying, "I have no time now to attend to any stories about your ancestry or relations; I merely wish to know can you take this letter to its direction, and speedily bring me an answer to it: in a word, can you set our immediately, and travel all night?"--"All night, yir honor! is it all night that's in yir mind?" said Darby, evidently hurt at my inquiry: "Gog's blud!" he continued half apart, "I was never taken for a turkey afore."--"A turkey!" said I, quite at a loss to understand him.--"Yes, yir honor," said Darby, "a turkey--the very worst _baste_ on the road for a long stretch (barrin' his neck) that ever was christened! Did yir honor ever hear of the wager 'tween the goose and him?"--"Never," said I sullenly.--"Then I'm glad of it, masther," said Darby rejoicingly, "for it gives me the pleasure of tellin' it to yir honor. You see, sir, that oncet upon a time there was an ould cock-turkey----"--"Cock and a bull!" said I, losing all patience; "go down stairs! I don't want you at all."--"No sir; I know you don't, sir," said Darby with most provoking perseverance; "but I thought ye'd like to hear how an ould gander sarved the bull-turkey, big as he was."--"Well, then," said I in despair, "go on."--"Thank ye, sir," said Darby, and then continued, while I from time to time anxiously looked at my watch, stirred the fire, or fidgeted myself in twenty different ways, in the hope of interrupting him; but all to no purpose. "Then you see, sir, oncet upon a time an ould cock-turkey lived in the barony of Brawny, or, let me see, was it in Inchebofin, or Tubbercleer?--faix! an' it's myself forgets that same at the present writin',--but Jim Gurn--you know Jim Gurn, yir honor, Jim Gurn the nailor that lives hard by,--him that fought his black and tan t'other day 'gainst Tim Fagan's silver-hackle,--oh! Jim is the boy that'll tell ye the _ins_ and _outs_ of it any day yir honor wud pay him a visit, 'caze Jim's in the way of it. Well, as I was relatin', the turkey was a parson's bird, and as proud as Lucifer, bein' used to the best of livin'; while the gander was only a poor _commoner_, for he was a _Roman_, and _oblidged_ to live upon what he could get by the road-side. These two fowls, yir honor, never could agree any how,--never could put up their horses together on any blessed pint,--till one day a big row happened betwune them, when the gander challenged the turkey to a steeple-chase across the country, day and dark, for twenty-four hours. Well, to my surprise,--tho' I wasn't there at the time, but Jim Gurn was, who gave me the whole history,--to my surprise, the turkey didn't say _no_ to it, but was quite agreeable all of a suddent; so away they started from Jim Gurn's dunghill one Sunday after mass, for the gander wouldn't stir a step afore prayers. Well, to be sure, to give the divil his due, the turkey took the lead in fine style, and was soon clane out of sight; but the gander kept movin' on, no ways downhearted, after him. About night-fall it was his business to pass through an ould archway acrass the road; and as he was stoopin' his head to get under it,--for yir honor knows a gander will stoop his head under a doorway if it was only as high as the moon,--who should he see comfortably sated in an ivy bush but the turkey himself, tucked in for the night. The gander, winkin' to himself, says, 'Is it there ye are, honey?'--but he kept never mindin' him for all that, but only walked bouldly on to his journey's end, where he arrived safe and sound next day, afore the turkey was out of his first sleep: 'caze why, ye see, sir, a goose or a gander will travel all night; but in respect of a turkey, once the day falls in, divil another inch of ground he'll put his futt to, barrin' it's to roost in a tree or the rafters of a cow-house! Oh! maybe the parson's bird wasn't ashamed of himself! Jim Gurn says he never held his head up afterward, tho' to be sure he hadn't long to fret, for Christmas was nigh at hand, and he had to stand sentry by the kitchen fire one day without his body-clothes 'till he could bear it no longer; so they _dished_ him _intirely_. _Them_ that _ett_ him said he was as tough as leather, no doubt from the grief: but, divil's cure to him! what bisness had he to be so proud of himself, the spalpeen!"

Darby _at length_ came to a pause. I paused also for a minute to understand the application of his anecdote; but it was evident: he wished to impress me by his parable that he was fitted for the task I had allotted him; so I inquired what money he would want on the road.

"Maybe yir honor wouldn't think half-a-crown too much? said he diffidently.

"Half-a-crown!" exclaimed I, amazed at the modesty of his demand: "here are ten shillings; and, if you be quick in your errand, I will give you something extra on your return."

"Musha, an' long life to yir honor!" said Darby, scraping the carpet again; "may the grass never grow on the pathway to yir dwellin', nor a baste or Christian ever die belongin' t' ye, barrin' it's for the use of the kitchen!"

"Well, now prepare for the road," said I impatiently, "and be off at once."

"An' that I will, sir, in the twinklin' of a bedstead; only, you see, I've just got to run up to Tim Fallon the barber's to take the stubble off of my chin. Tim--(you know Tim Fallon, yir honor.)--Tim won't keep me long, anyhow, for it's late in the day, and his tongue must be dry by this; but if ye wud hear him of a mornin, oh! it's a _trate_, for Tim was once a play-acthur afore he grew a barber, an' by that same a good barber he is. Did he ever _lather_ yir honor?"--I made no reply. "After that," continued Darby, "I'll just step home and put on my Sunday clothes, and then won't I be as fresh as a two-year ould to do yir honor's biddin'!"

"Well, well, lose no time," said I impatiently.

"Sorrow a minute," said Darby: "I'll be there and back agin in the shoot of a wishin' star. Maybe yir honor knows what a wishin' star is?"--I shook my head. "Well, then," continued Darby, "yir honor, no doubt, has been out o'doors of a fine starlight night?"--I nodded assent. "Well then, agin, I'll tell ye what a wishin' star is. Did ye ever sit yir heart upon havin' of anything sir?" "Yes," said I morosely.--"Might I be so bould as to ax in regard to what, sir?" inquired Darby.--"Why, in regard, as you call it, to the letter I have given you just now," replied I; "I wish to have it delivered as quickly as possible."

"Oh! that bein' the case, sir," said Darby somewhat disconcerted, "I'm off at once."--"At once be it, then," said I, opening the door for him.--"I've only, then, to give the letther, sir," said he lingeringly, "to the gentleman at the clargy's? But ye didn't tell me whether it was the priest or the parson he's stoppin' with."--"The parson," said I, with all the patience I could command.--"Oh, very well, sir. God take care of ye till I come back!" So saying, he shut the door after him; but, before I could seat myself in my chair, he opened it again, inquiring "If he left his hat in the drawin'-room?" The only answer I made was by taking up the _caubeen_, which lay on the carpet, and flinging it in his face, out of all patience. "Thank yir honor," said Darby, and retired again, as I hoped, to proceed on his journey, But, alas! I was mistaken. Five minutes had scarcely elapsed when he presented himself once more, with a request that I might allow him to take _Squib_, my pointer dog, with him as a companion. "The road's so drary," said he, "by one's self, you know, yir honour."--"Well, take him, in God's name," said I, hastily shutting the door after him, and glad to be rid of him at any concession.

I again resumed my seat, and opened the volume I had been reading; but I had not got through more than twenty or thirty pages of marvellous matter, when I thought I heard Darby's voice in the yard. On going to the window, I found that it was indeed _he_, and "_as spruce as a Scotch fir_," to use one of his own expressions.

"Not gone yet!" exclaimed I, furiously throwing up the sash. But it was of no use, for he replied with the most perfect coolness, "Oh, yes, sir, I _was_ gone half an hour ago; only, you see, I've come back for the _clieve_ that's to carry _Squib_ to the place where he'll find divarsion in runnin' about in the pleasure-grounds hard by Squire Markhim's inclosure; 'twould kill the baste (God pard'n me for callin' him so, for he's more like a Christian,) to walk him so far: and maybe I'll not bring ye home a brace or two of birds that he'll point at without seein', and a _blue peter_ or so, if yir honor wud only just give me a charge or two of powder and shot."

"Do you wish to get into the hands of the police?" said I.

"Ah! then, is it the Peelers," said Darby contemptuously, "that yir honor manes? Divil a one o' them will be out of his _flay_-park by the time I'm crossing the _Callas_ with Squib and Pat Fagan's ould carbine, that he'll lend me out o' the bog-hole, where he keeps it from the rust and the guagers: and sure, while we're oilin' it with a bit of goose-grace, that it mayn't burst intirely the first goin' off, I can have a bit of gossip with the ould woman in the chimly corner over the _greeshah_, and find out everything about the gintleman in the neighb'rhood that I'm takin' the letther to; for poor Katty Fagan, ever since she lost the brindled heifer, and young Jemmeen her grandson, that they cut out for a priest, and another calf that she won at a weddin' raffle, all in the typhus s_a_son,--you recollect the typhus, yir honor?"

"Oh, curse you and the typhus together!" said I.--"Well, an' it's myself that never could spake a good word for it either, masther, bad look to 't!" said Darby: "but, be that as it may, ever since that time Katty knows more of every other body's bisness nor her own; so I'll lose nothin' by callin' to ax her how she is at laste, thov' it is a mile or two out o' my way."

By this time, reader, you may conclude my power of endurance was pretty nigh exhausted; so, raking down a pair of pistols that hung over the fire-place, I said, "The only powder and shot, my good fellow, that I can spare you at present, are contained in these two barrels; you are welcome to them, and shall have them on the spot, if you do not depart immediately!"--"Ah! then it's myself that wud _depart_ imm_a_diately, sure enough, sir," said Darby, "if yir honor wud only pull the trigger; but keep yir hands off o' them, masther avick, for, charge or no charge, they might go aff and spile my beauty for ever: the divil, they say, can fire an empty charge as well as a full one!"--"Well, then," said I, "take your choice: _go off_ this moment, or one of these shall!"--"Oh, then, sure that's no choice at all, at all, sir," replied Darby; "so I suppose I must go my ways. Well, then, wid ye be wid ye, for I can't always be wid ye. Is there anything else I can do for ye, sir, on the road?"--"Nothing," said I: "begone!"--"Thank ye, sir," said he, and retired.

"Thank Heaven!" said I, "the fellow has at last set out on his journey." So I again turned to the marvellous volume, and was about halfway through the pedestrian exploits of Collier and his sister, who, to use the words of the writer, "thought nothing of putting a pot of _pink-eyes_ down to boil, and _stepping_ to the next market-town (about nine miles distant) for a halfpenny-worth of salt (returning, too, again) before the white horses were on the praties," when Eileen presented herself in such a convulsion of laughter that it was some moments before she could reply to my question of "What's the matter?" At length, terminating with a long-drawn sigh, and her usual "_widdy-eelish_," she replied, "Nothing's the matter, sir; only--only--" (laughing again) "only Darby, sir."--"Darby!" exclaimed I, "what of _him_?"--"He wants to know, sir," said she, "if you will allow him to take a _horse_ with him."--"A _horse_!" exclaimed I; "devil take the fellow! what does he mean?"--"Why, I mane, to be sure," said Darby from the bottom of the stairs, at the same time at the top of his voice, "a _horse_ from the young ash-plants in the ould garden. I'll cut the crookedest I can find, though a straight one would do me betther."--"What is it he wants?" said I, turning to Eileen, who was in a perfect _kink_ of laughter.--"Oh! widdy-eelish," replied she, "I suppose the crather means a pole to help him over the bogs."--"Let me talk to the rascal myself," said I, going to the door in a deuce of a rage.

"Yir sarvant, sir," said Darby, taking his hat off and making a scrape that cost _him_ his equilibrium, and _me_ my gravity, for I could not but sympathise with Eileen's outrageous laughter. "Is it possible that you are here yet?" inquired I, endeavouring to be as severe as possible.

"Oh, never fear, sir, but I'll be off presently," said he: "my walk's waitin' for me on the road; I'll overtake it imm_a_diately."

"I'm sorry that you have undertaken it at all," said I in a tone of unusual displeasure.

"Undertaken, sir! undertake--undertaker!" said Darby rather indignantly; "I never was an undertaker but oncet, and that was at my ould father's funeral, when I was one of the nine bearers. That was a beautiful sight, to be sure," said he, kindling into rapture as he proceeded; "Ah! that was the beautiful sight, agrah! I seen many a lord's berrin', but none to come up to that. Oh! it would do any one's heart good to see us walkin' in _possession_ to the Abbey,--it was so d_a_cent, and all of a piece, like a magpie, white and black from beginnin' to end! Oh! it was a beautiful sight, anyhow," added he with a deep sigh.

"Did you, then, rejoice in your father's death?" said I harshly.

"Why, not exactly rejoice in his death," replied Darby, wiping away a tear from his already suffused eye, "for he was a kind ould body to them he liked, though he didn't sp_a_ke to me good or bad for three years afore he died: but never mind; maybe I wasn't hearty at his wake!"

"At his wake!" said I, with a look of disgust.

"Yes, yir honor!" replied he after a pause of surprise,--"at his wake, to be sure; and where can a body be so alive to fun of all sorts as at a well-conducted dead body's wake? Isn't there smokin', and drinkin', and story-tellin', and now and then a bit of dancin' in the other room with the young ones, to shake off the grief, eh? And didn't I get seven goold guineas from 'Turney Gubbins, that was one of his exec_u_tors, and the ould mare that used to take him from town to town when he took to _fair_ bisness, and the bracket hen that lays yir honor's eggs now, that was the mother of all the p_a_ceable fightin' cocks in the county; and, moreover, his white waistcoat and breeches when he was in the Yeomen, that Ned Fallon the tailor says he'll die any day for me into a second mournin'?"

"And what did you with the seven guineas?" said I: "did you turn them to any account?"

"Oh, the Lord bless yir honor!" said Darby sheepishly; "it's very hard to know what to do with a large sum of money now-a-days: it's dangerous keepin' by you, you know, sir; so _I put it out to interest_!"

"And pray what security did you get?" said I, suspecting something, from the fellow's roguish leer.

"Security, sir?" said Darby; "they tould me it was _collatheral_, I think, yir honor; _collatheral_ was the word."

"_Collateral_!" said I, somewhat surprised at his knowledge of the term.

"Yes, sir," replied he, scratching his head with one hand, and thrusting the other into his breeches pocket, "_I laid it out in_ HOUSES. But, for all that, half an hour afore I die I'll have as much money as'll do me all the days o' my life!"

I could not but smile at the fellow's satirical humour upon his own folly; and, as it was the first time I had ever admitted him to such familiar converse, I patiently listened while he continued to tell me how he "ran through his fortune" in less than three weeks; hoping, however, that he would soon make an end of his recital, and set out with my letter, for the day now began to decline.

"You see, yir honor, this was the way it happened," said Darby. "_Nawthin'_ would save me but I should give a TAY-PARTY at the Three Blacks one evenin' after a hurlin'-match--Did yir honor ever hurl a bit? Oh! then sure it's the finest divarsion that any one cud sit his mind upon, barrin' it doesn't ind in a row, as mostly for the best part it does. But never mind that,--it's fine fun, anyhow; though by it I _did_ get this _clink_ on the nose, that made me lave off snuff-takin' ever since as a dirty habit! Oh! a hurlin'-match is a grate sight, and many a good clergy I've seen strip to the work. There was Father M'Gauvran--yir honor has heard of Father M'Gauvran, that got a son an' heir for Pat Mac Gavany, by givin' his wife an ould _surplus_ that he had by him for some time? Oh! it would raise the cockles of yir heart to see how he _wud_ whip a ball along. He was a _grate_ hurler, anyhow; _he_ was the boy at the _bawke_!"

Conceiving that Darby would not terminate before midnight (if he ever would at all), I interrupted him, saying, "When you return, I shall be very happy to hear the particulars of your TAY-PARTY, but for the present I must decline the narrative. Set out, if you mean to go: when you come back, I will listen vary attentively to the whole recital."

"Oh, then I suppose I'm tiring yir honor! But stop a bit,--I'll be here in the turn of a snipe;" saying which, he disappeared. I had not been long left to my own reflections before he came up stairs, and, without any of his previous knocks and delays, he entered my room hurriedly, and, throwing down a small book on the table before me, said, "There, sir; I hope _that_ will amuse you while I am away: it's an account of my _tay-party_, by _Lame_ Kelly the poet, that wudn't get drunk that night _acause_ he sed he wud write it afore his next sleep. Read it, masther," said Darby; "and never mind the jokes upon me."--"Go your ways," said I.--"I've only _one_ way to go, sir," said Darby.--"Well, then," said I, "in God's name take _that_."--"In God's name be it, then," replied Darby, and ultimately left me.

SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. II.

JAQUES.

"As he passed through the fields,
and saw the animals around him,--'Ye,' said he,
'are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among
you burthened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings,
envy your felicity, for it is not the felicity of man.
I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear
pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils
recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated.
Surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar
sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.'

"With observations like these the prince
amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a
plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him
to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and
to receive some solace of the miseries of life from
consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and
the eloquence with which he bewailed them."--RASSELAS,
chap. ii.

This remark of Dr. Johnson on the consolation derived by his hero from the eloquence with which he gave vent to his complaints is perfectly just, but just only in such cases as those of Rasselas. The misery that can be expressed in flowing periods cannot be of more importance than that experienced by the Abyssinian prince enclosed in the Happy Valley. His greatest calamity was no more than that he could not leave a place in which all the luxuries of life were at his command. But, as old Chremes says in the Heautontimorumenos,

"Miserum? quem minus credere 'st?
Quid reliqui 'st, quin habeat, quæ quidem in homine dicuntur bona?
Parentes, patriam incolumem, amicos, genu', cognatos, divitias:
Atque hæc perinde sunt ut illius animus qui ea possidet;
Qui uti scit, ei bona; illi, qui non utitur rectè, mala."[97]

On which, as

"Plain truth, dear Bentley, needs no arts of speech,"

I cannot do better than transcribe the commentary of Hickie, or some other grave expositor from whose pages he has transferred it to his own. "'Tis certain that the real enjoyment arising from external advantages depends wholly upon the situation of the mind of him who possesses them; for if he chance to labour under any secret anguish, this destroys all relish; or, if he know not how to use them for valuable purposes, they are so far from being of any service to him, that they often turn to real misfortunes." It is of no consequence that this profound reflection is nothing to the purpose in the place where it appears, because Chremes is not talking of any secret anguish, but of the use or abuse made of advantages according to the disposition of the individual to whom they have been accorded; and the anguish of Clinia was by no means secret. He feared the perpetual displeasure of his father, and knew not whether absence might not have diminished or alienated the affections of the lady on whose account he had abandoned home and country; but the general proposition of the sentence cannot be denied. A "fatal remembrance"--to borrow a phrase from one of the most beautiful of Moore's melodies--may render a life, apparently abounding in prosperity, wretched and unhappy, as the vitiation of a single humour of the eye casts a sickly and unnatural hue over the gladsome meadow, or turns to a lurid light the brilliancy of the sunniest skies.

Rasselas and Jaques have no secret anguish to torment them, no real cares to disturb the even current of their tempers. To get rid of the prince first:--His sorrow is no more than that of the starling in the Sentimental Journey. He cannot get out. He is discontented, because he has not the patience of Wordsworth's nuns, who fret not in their narrow cells; or of Wordsworth's muse, which murmurs not at being cribbed and confined to a sonnet. He wants the philosophy of that most admirable of all jail-ditties,--and will not reflect that

"Every island is a prison,
Close surrounded by the sea;
Kings and princes, for that reason,
Prisoners are as well as we."

And as his calamity is, after all, very tolerable,--as many a sore heart or a wearied mind, buffeting about amid the billows and breakers of the external world, would feel but too happy to exchange conditions with him in his safe haven of rest,--it is no wonder that the weaving of sonorous sentences of easily soothed sorrow should be the extent of the mental afflictions of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Who or what Jaques was before he makes his appearance in the forest, Shakspeare does not inform us,--any farther than that he had been a _roué_ of considerable note, as the Duke tells him, when he proposes to

"Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.
_Duke._ Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.
_Jaques._ What, for a counter, would I do but good?
_Duke._ Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin;
For thou thyself hast been a libertine
As sensual as the brutish sting itself;
And all the embossed sores and headed evils
That thou with licence of free foot hast caught,
Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world."

This, and that he was one of the three or four loving lords who put themselves into voluntary exile with the old Duke, leaving their lands and revenues to enrich the new one, who therefore gave them good leave to wander, is all we know about him, until he is formally announced to us as the melancholy Jaques. The very announcement is a tolerable proof that he is not soul-stricken in any material degree. When Rosalind tells him that he is considered to be a melancholy fellow, he is hard put to it to describe in what his melancholy consists. "I have," he says,

"Neither the scholar's melancholy, which
Is emulation; nor the musician's, which is
Fantastical; nor the courtier's which is proud;
Nor the soldier's,
Which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which
Is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice;
Nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is
A melancholy of mine own, compounded
Of many simples, extracted from many objects,
And indeed
The sundry contemplation of my travels,
In which my often rumination wraps me
In a most humorous sadness."[98]

He is nothing more than an idle gentleman given to musing, and making invectives against the affairs of the world, which are more remarkable for the poetry of their style and expression than the pungency of their satire. His famous description of the seven ages of man is that of a man who has seen but little to complain of in his career through life. The sorrows of his infant are of the slightest kind, and he notes that it is taken care of in a nurse's lap. The griefs of his schoolboy are confined to the necessity of going to school; and he, too, has had an anxious hand to attend to him. His shining morning face reflects the superintendence of one--probably a mother--interested in his welfare. The lover is tortured by no piercing pangs of love, his woes evaporating themselves musically in a ballad of his own composition, written not to his mistress, but fantastically addressed to her eyebrow. The soldier appears in all the pride and the swelling hopes of his spirit-stirring trade,

"Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth."

The fair round belly of the justice lined with good capon lets us know how he has passed his life. He is full of ease, magisterial authority, and squirely dignity. The lean and slippered pantaloon, and the dotard sunk into second childishness, have suffered only the common lot of humanity, without any of the calamities that embitter the unavoidable malady of old age.[99] All the characters in Jaques's sketch are well taken care of. The infant is nursed; the boy educated; the youth tormented with no greater cares than the necessity of hunting after rhymes to please the ear of a lady, whose love sits so lightly upon him as to set him upon nothing more serious than such a self-amusing task; the man in prime of life is engaged in gallant deeds, brave in action, anxious for character, and ambitious of fame; the man in declining years has won the due honours of his rank, he enjoys the luxuries of the table and dispenses the terrors of the bench; the man of age still more advanced is well to do in the world. If his shank be shrunk, it is not without hose and slipper,--if his eyes be dim, they are spectacled,--if his years have made him lean, they have gathered for him wherewithal to fatten the pouch by his side. And when this strange eventful history is closed by the penalties paid by men who live too long, Jaques does not tell us that the helpless being,

"Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,"

is left unprotected in his helplessness.

Such pictures of life do not proceed from a man very heavy at heart. Nor can it be without design that they are introduced into this especial place. The moment before, the famished Orlando has burst in upon the sylvan meal of the Duke, brandishing a naked sword, demanding with furious threat food for himself and his helpless companion,

"Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger."

The Duke, struck with his earnest appeal, cannot refrain from comparing the real suffering which he witnesses in Orlando with that which is endured by himself and his "co-mates, and partners in exile." Addressing Jaques, he says,

"Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy.
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in."[100]

But the spectacle and the comment upon it lightly touch Jaques, and he starts off at once into a witty and poetic comparison of the real drama of the world with the mimic drama of the stage, in which, with the sight of well-nurtured youth driven to the savage desperation of periling his own life, and assailing that of others,--and of weakly old age lying down in the feeble but equally resolved desperation of dying by the wayside, driven to this extremity by sore fatigue and hunger,--he diverts himself and his audience, whether in the forest or theatre, on the stage or in the closet, with graphic descriptions of human life; not one of them, proceeding as they do from the lips of the _melancholy_ Jaques, presenting a single point on which true melancholy can dwell. Mourning over what cannot be avoided must be in its essence common-place: and nothing has been added to the lamentations over the ills brought by the flight of years since Moses, the man of God,[101] declared the concluding period of protracted life to be a period of labour and sorrow;--since Solomon, or whoever else writes under the name of the Preacher, in a passage which, whether it is inspired or not, is a passage of exquisite beauty, warned us to provide in youth, "while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burthen, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern;"--or, to make a shorter quotation, since Homer summed up all these ills by applying to old age the epithet of [Greek: lygros],--a word which cannot be translated, but the force of which must be felt. Abate these unavoidable misfortunes, and the catalogue of Jaques is that of happy conditions. In his visions there is no trace of the child doomed to wretchedness before its very birth; no hint that such a thing could occur as its being made an object of calculation, one part medical, three parts financial, to the starveling surgeon, whether by the floating of the lungs, or other test equally fallacious and fee-producing, the miserable mother may be convicted of doing that which, before she had attempted, all that is her soul of woman must have been torn from its uttermost roots, when in an agony of shame and dread the child that was to have made her forget her labour was committed to the cesspool. No hint that the days of infancy should be devoted to the damnation of a factory, or to the tender mercies of a parish beadle. No hint that philosophy should come forward armed with the panoply offensive and defensive of logic and eloquence, to prove that the inversion of all natural relations was just and wise,--that the toil of childhood was due to the support of manhood,--that those hours, the very labours of which even the etymologists give to recreation, should be devoted to those wretched drudgeries which seem to split the heart of all but those who derive from them blood-stained money, or blood-bedabbled applause. Jaques sees not Greensmith squeezing his children by the throat until they die. He hears not the supplication of the hapless boy begging his still more hapless father for a moment's respite, ere the fatal handkerchief is twisted round his throat by the hand of him to whom he owed his being. Jaques thinks not of the baby deserted on the step of the inhospitable door, of the shame of the mother, of the disgrace of the parents, of the misery of the forsaken infant. His boy is at school, his soldier in the breach, his elder on the justice-seat. Are these the woes of life? Is there no neglected creature left to himself or to the worse nurture of others, whose trade it is to corrupt,--who will teach him what was taught to swaggering Jack Chance, found on Newgate steps, and educated at the venerable seminary of St. Giles's Pound, where

"They taught him to drink, and to thieve, and fight,
And everything else but to read and write."

Is there no stripling short of commons, but abundant in the supply of the strap or the cudgel?--no man fighting through the world in fortuneless struggles, and occupied by cares or oppressed by wants more stringent than those of love?--or in love itself does the current of that bitter passion never run less smooth than when sonnets to a lady's eyebrow are the prime objects of solicitude?--or may not even he who began with such sonneteering have found something more serious and sad, something more heart-throbbing and soul-rending, in the progress of his passion? Is the soldier melancholy in the storm and whirlwind of war? Is the gallant confronting of the cannon a matter to be complained of? The dolorous flight, the trampled battalion, the broken squadron, the lost battle, the lingering wound, the ill-furnished hospital, the unfed blockade, hunger and thirst, and pain, and fatigue, and mutilation, and cold, and rout, and scorn, and slight,--services neglected, unworthy claims preferred, life wasted, or honour tarnished,--are all passed by! In peaceful life we have no deeper misfortune placed before us than that it is not unusual that a justice of peace may be prosy in remark and trite in illustration. Are there no other evils to assail us through the agony of life? And when the conclusion comes, how far less tragic is the portraiture of mental imbecility, if considered as a state of misery than as one of comparative happiness, as escaping a still worse lot! Crabbe is sadder far than Jaques, when, after his appalling description of the inmates of a workhouse,--(what would Crabbe have written _now_?)--he winds up by showing to us amid its victims two persons as being

"_happier_ far than they,
The moping idiot, and the madman gay."

If what he here sums up as the result of his life's observations on mankind be all that calls forth the melancholy of the witty and eloquent speaker, he had not much to complain of. Mr. Shandy lamenting in sweetly modulated periods, because his son has been christened Tristram instead of Trismegistus, is as much an object of condolence. Jaques has just seen the aspect of famine, and heard the words of despair; the Duke has pointed out to him the consideration that more woful and practical calamities exist than even the exile of princes and the downfall of lords; and he breaks off into a light strain of satire, fit only for jesting comedy. Trim might have rebuked him as he rebuked the prostrate Mr. Shandy, by reminding him that there are other things to make us melancholy in the world: and nobody knew it better, or could say it better, than he in whose brain was minted the hysteric passion of Lear choked by his button,--the farewell of victorious Othello to all the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war,--the tears of Richard over the submission of roan Barbary to Bolingbroke,--the demand of Romeo that the Mantuan druggist should supply him with such soon-speeding gear that will rid him of hated life

"As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb,"--

the desolation of Antony,--the mourning of Henry over sire slain by son, and son by sire,--or the despair of Macbeth. I say nothing of the griefs of Constance, or Isabel, or Desdemona, or Juliet, or Ophelia, because in the sketches of Jaques he passes by all allusion to women; a fact which of itself is sufficient to prove that his melancholy was but in play,--was nothing more than what Arthur remembered when he was in France, where

"Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,
Only for wantonness."

Shakespeare well knew that there is no true pathetic, nothing that can permanently lacerate the heart, and embitter the speech, unless a woman be concerned. It is the legacy left us by Eve. The tenor of man's woe, says Milton, with a most ungallant and grisly pun, is still from _wo_-man to begin; and he who will give himself a few moments to reflect will find that the stern trigamist is right. On this, however, I shall not dilate. I may perhaps have something to say, as we go on, of the ladies of Shakspeare. For the present purpose, it is enough to remark with Trim, that there are many real griefs to make a man lie down and cry, without troubling ourselves with those which are put forward by the poetic mourner in the forest of Arden.

Different indeed is the sight set before the eyes of Adam in the great poem just referred to, when he is told to look upon the miseries which the fall of man has entailed upon his descendants. Far other than the scenes that flit across this melancholy man by profession are those evoked by Michael in the visionary lazar-house. It would be ill-befitting, indeed, that the merry note of the sweet bird warbling freely in the glade should be marred by discordant sounds of woe, cataloguing the dreary list of disease,

"All maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heartsick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums;"

while, amid the dire tossing and deep groans of the sufferers,

"----Despair
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch;
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike."

And equally ill-befitting would be any serious allusion to those passions and feelings which in their violence or their anguish render the human bosom a lazar-house filled with maladies of the mind as racking and as wasting as those of the body, and call forth a supplication for the releasing blow of Death as the final hope, with an earnestness as desperate, and cry as loud as ever arose from the tenement, sad, noisome, and dark, which holds the joint-racked victims of physical disease. Such themes should not sadden the festive banquet in the forest. The Duke and his co-mates and partners in exile, reconciled to their present mode of life, ["I would not change it," says Amiens, speaking, we may suppose, the sentiments of all,] and successful in having plucked the precious jewel, content, from the head of ugly and venomous Adversity, are ready to bestow their woodland fare upon real suffering, but in no mood to listen to the heart-rending descriptions of sorrows graver than those which form a theme for the discourses which Jaques in mimic melancholy contributes to their amusement.