Chapter XXII: Part 22

It is this ignorance of their true strength which has betrayed the Evangelicals into errors of policy which have been fraught with serious injury. As Protestants, they ought to have been the most liberal party in the Church; the most desirous to secure the greatest liberty compatible with loyalty to truth; the most ready to welcome every advance in scholarship that might help to a more thorough understanding of the Word of God; the most candid in examining and pronouncing upon the conclusions which modern Biblical criticism has reached; the most anxious to establish cordial relations with Nonconformists outside the pale of the Church. Unhappily, the very opposite of this has been the case. They have left to others the duty of practically developing those Protestant principles of which they claim to be the representatives, and have again and again employed their influence in favour of the party of reaction. The spectacle which they have presented in the ecclesiastical controversies of the last few years has, indeed, been humiliating in the extreme. They have been the most timid in every panic,--the first to raise the cry of danger,--the most eager in the assault, whether upon Rationalists within or Dissenters outside the Church--the facile instruments of the High Church party, whose leaders have gladly accepted their aid, knowing well that any prestige or advantage that might be secured must remain with those who were the consistent champions of authority. At present they are the most zealous champions of the Establishment, and their organ the most Erastian in its tone of any of the journals of the day. Yet there is no party which owes so little to the Establishment, or would have so glorious a future before it if the union between the Church and the State were dissolved. Except during the brief interval when Lord Palmerston scattered mitres so lavishly in its ranks, it has had but a scant share of the higher honours of that Church which owes so much to the devoted labours of its members. Even of the more important parochial charges, but a small proportion is held by the Evangelicals, many of whose ablest men are the incumbents of churches dependent entirely upon voluntary contributions for their support. If the Evangelical leaders would make a careful estimate of the exact position of the two parties in the Church, and of the amount of the national revenues which go to the maintenance of that which they are continually telling us is deadly error as compared with that which is devoted to the support of their own principles, we think they would be inclined to doubt the wisdom of the position they take in relation to the Establishment. That they who ought to have the most confident faith in the spiritual forces of the Church, and whose own experience affords ample proof that that faith would not be misplaced, should cling the most tenaciously to the union with the State, with all its painful and compromising conditions, is surely a strange phenomenon. Yet this is not the worst of the case. Unfortunately, their zeal for the Establishment is not allied with charity, and their characteristic intolerance marks their treatment of those Nonconformists who feel themselves constrained to seek the dissolution of an alliance which they believe to be contrary to the mind of Christ and injurious to the interests of truth. Apparently unable to understand that this difference of opinion is perfectly consistent with the preservation of Christian unity and mutual respect, they have resented the assertion of Nonconformist principles as a personal injury, and have urged it as a sufficient reason for withdrawing from Christian intercourse with those who have been guilty of so flagrant an offence. They expected that Dissenters would purchase their friendship by unfaithfulness to their own principles, and have been disappointed and indignant when they have discovered their mistake. If Nonconformists will play the _rôle_ of poor relations, content to receive a patronizing notice on the platforms of Bible and Missionary Societies, and for the sake of this to suppress their own convictions, they are willing to be on terms of kindly intercourse with them; but that they should presume on this, and venture to assert their religions equality, is more than they will tolerate. The inevitable result has been a division between two parties who have much in common, and whose union would have been a tower of strength to Evangelical Protestantism.

We should not care to have written thus fully on these points, but for the conviction that we are on the eve of important ecclesiastical changes, and that the character of the future will depend largely upon the position taken by the Evangelical party. The Broad Church dream of comprehension must remain a dream. It is beautiful, and it speaks much for the liberality of men trained amid the influences and associations of an Established Church, that they should have indulged in such a hope. But it cannot be realized. Nonconformists do not wish for a place in the National Church, and could not accept one without the renunciation of all for which they have been contending. And assuredly, the recent meetings at Sion College show that a large and powerful party in the Establishment have no desire for union with them. But if comprehension is impossible, disestablishment must come, and come speedily, and with it will come a new phase of the great struggle. 'I disbelieve,' said Mr. Orby Shipley, himself an able advocate of the separation between Church and State, 'in anything but a change in the contest of the Church militant, a change from a contest against the State without to a contest within, against Puritanism, against Latitudinarianism, against Infidelity, and against what may be termed "Lay-elementarianism in the Church."' The sacerdotal party believes that its position in this struggle will be improved by disestablishment; but if the Evangelicals are loyal to their Protestant principles, we predict that it will find itself mistaken. Disestablishment will remove the one obstacle to hearty co-operation between the two great sections of English Protestantism, and united, they will be fully able to withstand the fierce onslaught with which they are threatened. But if the Evangelicals are to play their part in this controversy, the sooner they choose their position, and resolve to hold it firmly, the better. Two great principles are daily coming more and more directly into conflict, and they must elect to abide by the one or by the other. They must abandon all tamperings with the delusive fancy of an apostolical succession, or of special virtue attaching to Episcopal ordination. They must cease the foolish coquetting in which a few of them seem disposed to indulge with High Church ideas and practices, they must show a broader spirit and cultivate closer relations with those of kindred opinions who do not belong to their party or even to their Church; in short, they must not shrink from the full development of their own principles, and they will soon regain the strength which has been lost by the timid and compromising policy of the past.

Meanwhile it is evident that the Establishment is on the eve of a great crisis. The condemnation of Mr. Purchas has goaded the High Church party, some almost to madness; and should it be followed by a decision against Mr. Bennett, it is not easy to predict the result. Indeed, be the deliverance of the Court what it may, 'there are breakers ahead.' If it be against the Vicar of Frome, it will be fatal to the hopes both of Anglican and Broad Churchmen. It will compel the former to secede, for we believe the body of them to be honest men who will not renounce principles which they hold to be the very essence of Catholic doctrine. It will teach the latter that their dream of comprehension is at an end. On the other hand, a decision in his favour will not conciliate the Ritualists, since it will still leave them subject to the restrictions imposed by the Mackonochie and Purchas judgments, while the Evangelicals in their turn will be placed in extreme perplexity. At present the Church Association is in the ascendant. We wish we could say that its deportment in the hour of victory was such as to assure us in relation to the future of the Evangelical party. We cannot wonder that it is jubilant, but wisdom would have suggested some moderation in the expression of its joy, especially considering that the decision yet to be given may prove that its exultation has been as premature as it certainly is undignified and impolitic. We read the report of the meeting at St. James's Hall to celebrate the victory with extreme pain and sorrow. The evident failure to realise the gravity of the crisis, the unseemly tone adopted towards defeated adversaries, the apparent unconsciousness of the scandal such a strife is bringing upon the Church and upon religion in general, and perhaps more than all, the disposition to rest so much on the power of the law, are all indicative of extreme weakness. Men who can talk in the style of the Dean of Carlisle clearly do not comprehend the spirit of the times or the true position of the party which they represent. They seem to think they can stamp out High Churchism at all events, in its more advanced forms. They do not appear to understand that, could they succeed, they would secure the downfall of that Establishment which they love 'not wisely and too well.' If they would think less of law, and remember that the true weapons of their warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, they would take a position more in harmony with their principles, and be more sure of ultimate success.

ART. IV.--_Ingoldsby._

(1.) _The Life and Letters of the Rev. Richard Harris Barham._ By his Son. London: Bentley.

(2.) _The Ingoldsby Legends._ By THOMAS INGOLDSBY, Esq. London: Bentley.

(3.) _The Bentley Ballads._ Edited by JOHN SHEEHAN. London: Bentley.

'Ingoldsby,' like Odysseus, has become a name. The word, used as a _nom de plume_ by a facile versifier, has come to indicate the kind of verse which he produced, and in which he has had hundreds of inferior imitators. Mr. Carlyle, who objects utterly to the whole herd of

'Corvos poëtas et poëtrias picas,'

as being the emptiest shams the world has ever seen, would probably regard the 'Ingoldsby Legends' as fathom-deep below contempt; but with the highest respect for the philosopher of Chelsea, we hold such things worth notice, and do not intend to allow his virtue to prevent our reference to 'cakes and ale.' Indeed, there are times when the laughing philosopher does considerable service in the removal of abuses and prejudices; and if our Democritus writes in rhyme, it does not appear that he is any the worse. The world, probably, would be none the less happy for more true mirth than we at present get. There are laughters hideous and contemptible--aye, and even pathetic. Ruin and cynicism, and scorn and spite, have their hyæna laugh; but it differs wholly from the pleasant laughter of the man to whom the world brings always joyous impulses. We English are, assuredly, a humorous race, more humorous, in all likelihood, than any other; this is shown, not only in Chaucer, Shakspeare, Butler, Sterne, Dickens, but in the incidents of our country and city life, in the quaint colloquy and light chaff of the market-place and the way-side. 'Merry England,' is an ancient phrase; and there is much merriment in our modern England that is not always observed by philosophers and politicians. We happen to have walked through most English counties, and to have enjoyed the marvellous differences of humour which exist through the breadth of the land. We have tracked Shakspeare through Central Warwick; have trodden the paths of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Wilson, in the realm of lakes; have talked with moormen on Dartmoor, and with shrimpers at Poulton-le-Sands. Everywhere we have encountered a joyous humour, inextinguishable by poverty and toil--a humour clearly designed to lighten men's hearts in their passage through a world of many troubles. Recognising this, we think that any form of humour is worth cultivation, and that a writer like Barham, who, to many grave thinkers, might seem a lover of ineffable nonsense, was not without his use in the world.

Three things may be affirmed in his favour. He caused good honest laughter, by telling stories in a ridiculous style, without writing a word to which the most absolute purist could object. He ridiculed foolish and superstitious legends, blowing them away as the winds of the vernal equinox blow the dead wood from the trees. And he proved that the position of a minister of religion, doing his duty in a manner thoroughly conscientious, was not inconsistent with a pleasant mirthfulness of temper. Of him we may say, as Rosaline of Biron--

'A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal.'

And, with all his merriment, Barham did not for a moment neglect his clerical duty; indeed, there are indications that he was a remarkably good specimen of the parson of the parish. If we found any fault with this biography, which is, for the most part, well executed, it is that Barham's life as a clergyman is too slightly indicated. His friend, Mr. Hughes, father of the member for Frome, wrote of him thus in the _New Monthly_:--

'It is not always an easy task to do as you would be done
by; but to think as you would be thought of and thought
for, and to feel as you would be felt for, is perhaps more
difficult, as superior powers of tact and intellect are
here required to second good intentions. These faculties,
backed by an uncompromising love of truth and fair
dealing, indefatigable good nature, and a nice sense of
what was due to every one in the several relations of life,
both gentle and simple, rendered our late friend
invaluable, either as an adviser or peacemaker, in matters
of difficult and delicate handling. How he managed to get
through his more important duties is a marvel. Certain it
is that they were well and punctually performed in every
point relating to cathedral matters, as well as his
engagements as a parochial incumbent and priest of the
Household, which, I believe, was the nature of his office
at the Chapel Royal.'

This testimony from one who knew him well, makes us regret that more of Barham's parochial life has not been revealed to us. Often there is a curious difference between the practical and the literary half of a man's career. _A priori_, one would not expect the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert' to be the work of a Canon of St. Paul's. More information as to Barham's clerical career would have been intensely interesting to the psychological student; but his filial biographer has refrained from entering on the subject to any extent. We are not certain as to his motive. Perhaps he thought it hopeless to persuade the world that a good parson could be a lover of fun. Well, another lover of fun was one Sydney Smith, well known to all of us, also a Canon of St. Paul's. Smith was a resolute Whig, Barham a high Tory, yet were they excellent good friends. Here is proof. Barham sent Smith some game: here is the other Canon's epigrammatic ironic reply:--

'Many thanks, my dear sir, for your kind present of game.
If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world, it
is the roast pheasant and bread sauce--barn-door fowls for
Dissenters, but for the real Churchman, the thirty-nine
times articled clerk--the pheasant, the pheasant!

'Ever yours,
'SYDNEY SMITH.'

The pheasant for rectors, the fowl for Dissenters--a characteristic bit of chaff from Peter Plymley to Tom Ingoldsby. In these days, after wonderful rapidity of movement, when the questions which troubled the last generation have been merged in others far deeper and wider, it is pleasant to think of Whig and Tory in the same cathedral precinct--Tory sending Whig some game, and Whig replying with a gibe at all dwellers without the orthodox limits. Few years have passed, yet the atmosphere is marvellously clearer; there is not precisely the same relation between Conformist and Nonconformist. The pheasant and the barn-door fowl are rather more equally distributed, perhaps.

Mr. Barham's son and biographer thus states his determination not to record his father's clerical life. 'With the details of his experience as a clergyman, rarely suitable for publication as such particulars are, I do not propose to deal. Of course, an outline will be given of his professional progress; but the reader must, once for all, be requested to bear in mind that it is intended, in the following pages, simply to throw together some slight records of his leisure hours and recreative pursuits.' This design has been very well executed; but we certainly think that more might be done. However, we must perforce accept the editor's view of the matter, and learn what we can of his father by sidelong glimpses of him. Taken solely as a man of letters, Barham is well worth study. Taken as husband and father, he is delightful. His correspondence with his children is equal to Tom Hood's letters to infant friends, though in quite a different style. His nonsense, prose or verse, was always pleasant nonsense. Thus he writes to his daughter Fanny:

'What do you think of Mr. Sydney Smith having offered me
his residentiary house to live in, together with a garden
at the back--magnificent for London--containing three
polyanthus roots, a real tree, a brown box border, a
snuff-coloured jessamine, a shrub which is either a dwarf
acacia or an overgrown gooseberry bush, eight broken
bottles, and a tortoiseshell tom-cat asleep in the sunniest
corner; the whole, as George Robins would say, capable of
the greatest improvement; with a varied and extensive
prospect of the back of the Oxford Arms, and a fine hanging
wood (the new drop at Newgate) in the distance, all being
situate in the midst of a delightful neighbourhood, and
well worth the attention of any capitalist wishing to make
an investment....

There is work enough cut out for you, I promise you, when
you get back: eighteen jars of onions to pickle, as many
double-damson cheeses to press, some dozen niggers to boil
into black currant jelly, and jams and marmalades to make
without end; for, unfortunately for you and all other
females connected with the family, the new house is
provided with that domestic curse, a roomy store-closet.
So, my dear old Fan, make hay or dirt pies, which is the
same thing, while you can, in comfort.'

_Pater peramans_, evidently. Here again is a pleasant piece of chaff addressed to the same young lady, on 'having nothing to say' in a letter:--

'As your correspondence increases, my dear girl, you will
find that this having nothing to say, and being obliged to
say it, will be one of the great and incipient stumbling
blocks of your literary life. Nothing, in fact, is so
difficult to express--that is, with any degree of
propriety--as nothing; and when once you have attained a
proficiency in this, your education may be considered to be
to a certain extent completed. Till then many people may
think, and may assure you, that you know nothing, but do
not believe them. You may know, and I dare say do, very
little; but to be thoroughly acquainted with nothing
requires not only a great deficiency of talent far below
the common run of intellect, but also a want of application
which, though it is possible you may possess it in a very
considerable degree, I have never yet seen in you to the
extent absolutely requisite.'

So easy and regular was the course of Barham's life, that there is really nothing to say about it. As landowner, Canon of St. Paul's, parson of a City church, he moved pleasantly in society, and had only to encounter life's inevitable troubles. We remember him in our hot youth, at the long-extinct Chapter Coffee-house in St. Paul's churchyard, whose landlord bore the appropriate name of Faithful, improvising marvellous verses over a glass of antique port. Perhaps his life was almost too facile; perhaps men of serious temperament would regard such productions as the 'Ingoldsby Legends' as things intolerable: but Barham had his mission, depend on it, and if you go to a 'Penny Reading' in the country any winter evening, the chances are that you will get selections from 'Pickwick' or from 'Ingoldsby,' whatever else may greet your ear. Everybody knows Sam Weller and Tiger Tim--both typical man-servants:--

'Tiger Tim was clean of limb,
His boots were polished, his jacket was trim;
With a very smart tie in his smart cravat,
And a smart cockade on the top of his hat;
Tallest of boys, or shortest of men,
He stood in his stockings just four foot ten;
And he asked, as he held the door on the swing,
"Pray, did your lordship please to ring?"'

Everybody also recollects that rascally 'Jackdaw of Rheims'--related, doubtless, to the _graculus superbus_ of Phaedrus--who stole the Cardinal's ring just as his Latin predecessor stole the peacock's feathers. There is no _reductio ad absurdum_ extant equal to this whimsical legend. Excommunication, which was slightly damaged in value by the curse of Ernulphus, came to a ridiculous end when the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims tonitrated his worst maledictions at a thievish jackdaw. 'Maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo, manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando, quiescendo,' &c., &c.

'The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,
He called for his candle, his bell, and his book.
In holy anger and pious grief,
He solemnly cursed the rascally thief.
He cursed him at board, he cursed him in bed,
Prom the sole of his foot to the crown of his head;
He cursed him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in fright;
He cursed him in eating, he cursed him in drinking.
He cursed him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking,
He cursed him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He cursed him in walking, in riding, in flying,
He cursed him in living, he cursed him in dying:
Never was heard such a terrible curse.
But what gave rise
To no little surprise--
Nobody seemed one penny the worse.'

When after awhile the mystery was out--when the poor little comminated jackdaw presented himself in a sad state, so that of the cathedral officers, sacristans, and vergers, and the like, it is recorded,

'That heedless of grammar, they all cried,
"That's him!"'

the absurdity reached its climax. For our own part, though these humours are not of the highest or deepest order, we laugh at them. Life has its follies; Shakspeare had his clowns. In the old forgotten coaching days, there was wonderful humour at the wayside inns. Sam Weller was possible then: a railway porter has no time to be humorous. Of the Ingoldsby humour, as practised by Barham himself, there is this to be said: it was always harmless, and it was directed against absurdity and nonsense. Ingoldsby has had disciples, who have not disgraced their master, yet who have never quite equalled him in certain peculiar points. There is Hood's admirable story of 'Miss Killmannsegg,' wherein, if we remember aright, he depicts certain folks as--

'Washing, their hands with invisible soap
In imperceptible water.'

There is Praed's 'Red Fisherman:'--

'All alone, by the side of the pool,
A tall man sat on a three-legged stool,
Kicking his heels on the dewy sod,
And putting in order his reel and rod.
Red were the rags his shoulders wore,
And a high red cap on his head he bore;
His arms and his legs were long and bare,
And two or three locks of long red hair
Were tossing about his scraggy neck,
Like a tattered flag o'er a splitting wreck.
It might be time, or it might be trouble,
Had bent that stout back nearly double;
Sunk in their deep and hollow sockets
That blazing couple of Congreve rockets,
And shrunk and shrivelled that tawny skin,
Till it hardly covered the bones within.
The line the Abbot saw him throw
Had been fashioned and formed long ages ago,
And the hands that worked his foreign vest
Long ages ago had gone to rest:
You would have sworn, as you looked on them,
He had fished in the flood--with Ham and Shem.'

Then, again, there is Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin,' a rare old story rarely versified:--

'Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And eat the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.'

There is vast difference between the three writers; the courtly epigram of Praed, and the scholarly variety of Browning, differ widely from the style of the master whom they imitate. But it is a high testimony to the literary value of what we may call the Ingoldsby method, that men so original and so desperate have tried their hands at it. A glance at the 'Bentley Ballads' shows that the same thing has been done by a great number of very different men; Sheehan and Creasy, Maginn and Mahony, Sam Lover the versatile, whom we remember delighting us with improvisations at Barnes-terrace just above the Thames, Tom Ingoldsby's son who follows his father with filial felicity, have done excellently well in this style of spirit and humour.

Indeed, to succeed in it to a certain degree, demands only abundance of animal spirits and a capacity for rhythm and rhyme. But it is clear that Barham had more than this. What, indeed, makes him perfect and absolute master of his craft, is his power of invariably catching the whimsical aspects, the humorous sides, of an event. Hood was too fond of a pun, Praed was too fine a gentleman, Browning is too subtle and curious, to attain the precise humour of Ingoldsby. Wherever we open the 'Legends' we find the frolicsome fancy of their author fresh and facile. Take the description of Winifred and David Pryce, in 'Look at the Clock!' It is a picture easily realized in the Principality:--

'Winifred Pryce was tidy and clean,
Her gown was a flowered one, her petticoat green,
Her buckles were bright as her milking cans,
And her hat was a beaver, and made like a man's;
Her little red eyes were deep set in their socket-holes,
Her gown-tail was turned up, and tucked through the pocket holes:
A face like a ferret
Betokened her spirit:
To conclude, Mrs. Pryce was not over young,
Had very short legs, and a very long tongue.

Now David Pryce
Had one darling vice;
Remarkably partial to anything nice,
Nought that was good to him came amiss,
Whether to eat, or to drink, or to kiss!
Especially ale--
If it was not too stale
I really believe he'd have emptied a pail;
Not that in Wales
They talk of their ales;
To pronounce the word they make use of might trouble you,
Being spelt with a C, two R's and a W.'

Now in this there is absolutely nothing that will bear analysis; it is the laughing spirit of the man that carries you on, amusing you in spite of yourself, in spite of your decided feeling that really there is nothing to laugh at. But, somehow, what with the ready jingle of the rhyme, and the perfect good humour of the ridicule, amused you are.

Barham's loudest fun was generated when he had to deal with obsolete and obsolescent superstitions. He loved to laugh at the vulgar idea of the Devil--the fiend with horns, tail, and hoofs, whom Cuvier ruthlessly dismissed as 'a graminivorous animal.' Thus, in the 'Lay of Saint Cuthbert,' we find him describing a group of demons at dinner:--

'Few ate more hearty
Than Madame Astarte,
And Hecate, considered the belles of the party.

Between them was seated Leviathan, eager
To do the polite, and take wine with Belphegor:
Here was Morbleu (a French devil) supping soup-meagre,
And there, munching leeks, Davy Jones of Tredegar--

* * * * *

Here's Lucifer lying blind drunk with Scotch ale,
While Beelzebub's tying huge knots in his tail'--

and so on _ad libitum_. Again, in the 'Lay of Saint Abelard,' he gives us 'Old Nick' defeated by a saintly personage. It was--

'In good King Dagobert's palmy days,
When saints were many and sins were few,
Old Nick, 'tis said,
Was sore bested
One evening--and could not tell what to do.

He had been east and he had been west,
And far had he journeyed o'er land and sea;
For women and men
Were warier then,
And he could not catch one where he'd now catch three.

He had been north and he had been south,
From Zembla's shores unto fair Peru,
Ere he filled the sack
Which he bore on his back--
Saints were so many and sins so few.

The way was long, and the day was hot;
His wings were weary; his hoofs were sore;
And scarce could he trail
His nerveless tail
As it furrowed the sand on the Red Seashore.

The day had been hot, and the way was long;
Hoof-sore, and weary, and faint, was he;
He lowered his sack,
And the heat of his back.
As he leaned on a palm-tree, blasted the tree.'

Demons and saints were the favourite themes of Tom Ingoldsby's laughter; he jeered alike the Romish miracle-monger and the anthropomorphic fiend. A volume might be written on the way in which the popular and vulgar idea of the devil has gradually arisen. It is clear from 'Paradise Lost,' that Milton favored the mediæval notion that the Pagan divinities were really fiends; and it can scarcely be doubted that the hirsute Pan gave the first sitting for that portrait of the devil which Coleridge completed, when he wrote

'His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
With a hole behind for his tail to come through.'

At such matters we can smile contemptuously; but in earlier centuries, when the Pagan superstition had still some vitality left in it, it was a serious matter to the Christian convert. Pan might meet him at the corner of a lonely woodland, and strike him with a panic dread. Worse than all he might be allured by the terrible enticements of Venus. To this day, Friday has a tradition of ill-luck, because it is _dies veneris--vendredi_. That the goddess of evil pleasure still came among men as a female fiend was a firm belief of the Middle Ages. Hence have we the legend of the Venusberg, chosen as a theme by more than one living poet, the version we prefer being unquestionably Lord Houghton's; hence also that of the betrothal ring inadvertently placed by a bridegroom on the finger of a statue of Venus, which finger, on his return, he finds bent, and the ring irremovable. This latter story is told with prosaic prolixity in the final volume of Mr. Morris's 'Earthly Paradise.' It must be remembered that the change from Paganism to Christianity was often effected in curious ways; that the worship of Apollo, the sun-god, was, by a play upon words, diverted to Elias the prophet; that temples of Venus were, as a rule, dedicated to the Virgin. Probably that worship of the Virgin Mary to which Romanists cling so fondly originated in a weak desire to satisfy proselytes by giving them one goddess in exchange for another. Any way, the belief in Venus endured so long that, in 1614, in the good city of Frankfort, a learned lawyer named Kornman, published a work called 'Mons Veneris,' which dealt with the legends about her as if they were based on fact. Of such legends let us name one only; an English story, told by William of Newbury. In the reign of Henry I., a peasant passed at midnight, near a hill, not far from the town of Burlington. To his amazement, he heard sounds of revelry therefrom, and saw a door open in the hillside, and, entering, beheld a vast chamber, where men and women held high festival. A cup was handed him, full of some liquid, which doubtless would have the effect of Circe's magic wine: with singular presence of mind, our peasant threw away the wine, and ran off with the cup. All the rabble rout of Venus pursued him, but the swift-footed ploughman brought his prize safely to Burlington. Somebody (probably the mayor, who should have been knighted for it) sent the cup to the King, and the King made it a present to the Queen of King David of Scotland; but King William of Scotland returned it to Henry II. of England. Whether it is still among the royal plate is a point to be determined by 'Notes and Queries.'

The growth of letters and of science changes all this; just as Venus vanished a few centuries ago, Old Bogy also--the foe of our infancy--has vanished from modern nurseries, nor do very many children of elder growth believe in an archdemon of the graminivorous type. Hence the fun of 'Ingoldsby' that ridiculed superstition of this sort is likely to lose its interest in time. We fear, however, that his laughing caricature of Romish absurdities--as in 'The Jackdaw of Rheims'--will scarcely lose its point at present. The Pope may be reduced to 'the Vatican, and a garden,' but the Papal superstition still clings closely to multitudes of men, especially of the Celtic race. That race, as M. John Lemoinne has just said of his French kindred, is feminine, and seems unable to accept a manly religion.

The 'Ingoldsby Legends' are peculiarly adapted to the palate of youth. They make fun out of trifles and vulgarities. One can hardly understand a man of high culture caring much about them after forty. Then the humour of Shakspeare's clowns, of Cervantes, and Sterne, and Elia, becomes more enjoyable than the 'Ingoldsby Legends' or the 'Pickwick Papers.' Then you prefer Autolycus to Sam Weller. The strong point of Ingoldsby is his gay high-spirited boyishness; but this quality is only attractive under certain conditions. It may, perhaps, be roughly stated that a man will care to read Ingoldsby so long as he cares to play cricket. It is, in fact, the eager buoyancy and rather perspiring fun of the cricket-field which one finds in the rollicking strophes of the 'Legends.' When their writer knocks over a saint or a demon as if he were a wicket, you almost expect to hear the shout of, 'How's that, umpire?' Indeed, the book is a _loud_ book, scarcely to be tolerated, one might think, in a quiet library. Yet was its author a quiet haunter of libraries, and we find in one of his letters how he received in one a royal visitor:--

'What think you of a visit from, and confabulation with,
the Queen of the Belgians. On Saturday, I was in the
library at St. Paul's, my custom always in an afternoon,
with a book-binder's 'prentice and a printer's devil,
looking out fifty dilapidated folios for rebinding. I had
on a coat which, from a foolish prejudice in the multitude
against patched elbows, I wear nowhere else, my hands and
face encrusted with the dust of years, and wanting only the
shovel--I had the brush--to sit for the portrait of a
respectable master chimney sweeper, when the door opened,
and in walked the Cap of Maintenance, bearing the sword of,
and followed by, the Lord Mayor in full fig, with the
prettiest and liveliest little Frenchwoman leaning on his
arm. Nobody could get at the lions but myself. I was fairly
in for it, and was thus presented in the most _recherché_,
if not the most expensive, court-dress that I will venture
to say the eyes of royalty were ever greeted withal.
_Heureusement pour moi_, she spoke excellent English,
however, and rattled on with a succession of questions
which I answered as best I might. They were sensible,
however, showed some acquaintance with literature, and a
very good knowledge of dates.'

Her lively Majesty might have been felicitated on finding Tom Ingoldsby as a guide to the library of the great cathedral. But to return to the 'Legends.' Besides their extreme boyishness, their redundancy of pulsation, there is a deficiency in them which must prevent their becoming classic. They are devoid of poetry. Master of the grotesque as he was, Barham had no mastery of the picturesque. Keen to see and seize the humorous aspects of affairs, he had none of that deeper humour which creates character. A real poet who had written some fifty or more eccentric legends, could not have helped inventing or describing certain individual characters in the course of his work. He must have done it unconsciously, must have done it if even he had tried to avoid it. There are two tests on the very surface of the true poet. If he describes a scene, you see it; if he describes a man, you know him. Barham's grotesque descriptions are often remarkable; indeed, his legends somewhat remind us of the hideous gurgoyles of old churches, wherein tradition sayeth the old ecclesiastic architects depicted their enemies, making of them waterspouts, that during rain they might seem to vomit. The men who carved those gurgoyles could not have sculptured an Apollo; and of Barham it may be said that, though he wrote laughable stories with supreme felicity, he never produced a line of poetry. He appears, indeed, to have regarded only the surface of life. There is nothing in his published works to show that he had an original idea, or that he cared about ideas. Of course, having given us the 'Ingoldsby Legends'--a piece of work absolutely unique, and quite unlikely to meet with a readable rival--he will be forgiven if he had a contempt for ideas; but one feels some desire to know whether such fertility of fun was not the upper stratum of something stronger and finer. Tom Hood's fun, for example, grows out of his profound melancholy, as under Etna's laughing vines the volcanic fire is sleeping. Shakspeare's fun grows out of his masterful knowledge of the world, of men, of women. In a play of his you seem in some city of chivalry and romance, where the great knight passes to deeds of high emprise, and the lovely lady smiles on him from her balcony, and the troubadour sings of 'the Lord of Oc and No;' and all the while you hear the chaffer of the market-place, the chatter of street gossips, the insignificant laughter of loitering louts. Fun that has no root in something deeper seems morbid and hysterical; and we cannot help believing that there was more in Barham than his writings reveal, than his most intimate friends knew, than perhaps he knew or even guessed himself.

Dr. Maginn, a man like yet unlike Tom Ingoldsby, wrote these four lines--part of a poem which we have no means of obtaining:--

'For those who read aright are well aware
That Falstaff, revelling his rough mates between,
Oft in his heart felt less the load of care,
Than Jaques, sighing in the forest green.'

Maginn had, if we may judge from appearances, higher poetic instincts than Barham; his 'Homeric Ballads' are a very remarkable contribution to the literature of Homeric translation; but he unwisely expended himself upon periodical writing, and has left nothing behind him worthy of his powers. It is, we think, a subject for congratulation, that the cheap magazines of the day are so anxious to please the populace, that a first-rate writer has absolutely no chance with them, and is obliged to do work worthier of him. The shilling magazine has to suit the taste of the railway reader, who wants to be amused during the hour in which Great Western or Great Northern accepts him as a parcel to be delivered at a friend's house by dinner-time. How this is done we need not say, as anybody who likes to expend a shilling can judge for himself; but it is so done as to render it absurd for men of the calibre of Barham and Maginn to write for the majority of these magazines. This we take to be an advantage. Such men are obliged to work harder--and better.

Another instance of a man with something nobler in him and better than he ever gave the world, or even his friends, is Theodore Hook. Until his private diary came into the hands of those who knew him best, they had no knowledge of the depths of passionate remorse for a wasted life which lay beneath the too brilliant surface of his character. 'In every page,' wrote Lockhart,

'We trace the disastrous influence of both the grand
original errors perpetually crossing and blackening the
picture of superficial gaiety--indications, not to be
mistaken, of a conscience ill at ease; of painful
recollections and dark anticipations rising irrepressibly,
not to be commanded down; of good, gentle, generous
feelings, converted by stings and dartings of remorse into
agonies of torture. If we were to choose a motto for this
long line of volumes, it would be a maxim so familiar to
himself, that it is repeated over and over in his tales of
fiction--hardly omitted in any one of them--"Wrong never
comes right."'

Theodore Hook laboured under the double disadvantage of an irremovable load of debt, and of an illicit connection which effectually prevented his marrying a woman who might have directed his marvellous powers into their true channel. The consequence was that he lived a false factitious life; worked terribly hard to produce income necessary for him to meet wealthy peers on apparently equal terms; was always pestered by money-lenders; yet all the while his daring spirit maintained an external gaiety unquenchable. At the very time when his spirit seemed highest, when his wit was memorably brilliant, when at club or country house he was amazing every one by his victorious vivacity, there occur in his diary entries that show a broken spirit, a wounded heart, an infinite regret for the past and despair of the future. Such was the inner condition of a man whose conversation had such unique sparkle, that men dined at the Athenæum for the chance of being allowed to draw their chairs to his little table in a favourite corner (Temperance Corner) after dinner--so that the diners at that club fell off more than 300 a year after his disappearance from his wonted seat.

It is unfortunate that the early career of men of letters is often turned awry by the well-meant interference of their relations. A boy of genius, who happens to appear in the midst of a steady, stolid, respectable family, is usually regarded as a 'black sheep.' They try to make him work in some regular groove, and, of course, he fails. If they are very determined, he quarrels with them, and then, too often, he runs headlong into debt, or love, or both, and burdens himself in such a way that he has to toil for freedom through the best years of his life, and possibly never emancipates himself. Of course, it is always hard to say whether the young gentleman is right who fancies himself a genius. Dr. Holmes, in his latest novel, has a capital sketch of a young poetaster who 'eventuates' behind the counter of a store. Such youths require Darwinian compression; but there are just a few of higher mould, with the irrepressible vocation for pen and ink which nothing can cure, who would do better if some way could be devised to give them a chance in literature. Perhaps when the school boards have leisure to consider the subject, they will try to discover a way of developing those latent powers, mathematical as well as poetical, which often exist in regions wholly unexpected. Inspectors of schools might be directed, after they have registered the triumphs of the clever boys, to investigate the habits of the stupid ones. A great poet or mathematician is almost certain to seem stupid in his boyhood.

It may appear that we have tried the 'Ingoldsby Legends' by too high a test; and, indeed, it is a very unpretentious production. Its originator was wholly modest, and did not dream of placing himself in the foremost seats of the literary amphitheatre. He knew the true value of his invention. It is designed for those who would rather laugh than think. It may amuse children at any rate, and there are certain fortunate folk who, to the end of their lives, can be children now and then--can listen to merry rhyming, can believe for the moment that in Fairyland there are mock turtles and March hares, that the dogs there have no ears because the dog's ears have been used up on the little boys' Latin grammars, and the sheep no eyes because the little girls have used up all their sheep's eyes in looking at their sweethearts; can imagine that in Ghostland one may dine comfortably with one's doppelganger. There are times--'weird winter nights,' as Shelley calls them, warmed with merriment, and joyous summer days in which the nightingale seems ebrious with ozone--when there is a necessity for nonsense of one sort or another. It is this necessity which Ingoldsby and his followers supply. Possibly some good is effected by the fact that the occupants of lofty positions have deigned to play with these toys; that the occupants of deaneries and canonries (ecclesiastic port-wineries, if we may venture to coin a phrase) have found in such matters Attic salt for their filberts.

_Apropos_ of Ghostland, just named, Barham was a great lover of spectral stories, and the reader who cares about such will find in his memoir some of the best we have ever seen. As to anecdotes, the book is brimming over with them. Of course, one meets with one or two that have been met before; but an old story, like an old friend or an old coat, is sometimes more enjoyable than a new one. Barham was at Paul's School with some men as well known as himself, among them being Sir Frederick Pollock, Nestor of lawyers, and Richard Bentley, Nestor of publishers. Another of his comrades was Charles Diggle, afterwards Governor of Sandhurst College. Of him and Barham we find a good story:--

'The two boys having in the course of one of their walks
discovered a Quaker's meeting-house, forthwith procured a
penny tart of a neighbouring pastry-cook; furnished with
this, Diggle marched boldly into the building, and holding
up the delicacy in the midst of the grave assembly said,
with perfect solemnity,

'"Whoever speaks first shall have this pie."

'"Friend, go thy way," commenced a drab-coloured gentleman,
rising; "go thy way, and----"

'"The pie's yours, sir!" exclaimed Master Diggle, politely;
and placing it before the astounded speaker, hastily made
his escape.'

It was very improper, certainly; and we cannot help hoping that the Head Master of Dean Colet's famous school heard of the impertinence, and administered to the 'nether-urchin' of the future military pedagogue the sharp flogging which he undoubtedly deserved. But one cannot help laughing at these schoolboy absurdities; and the naughtiest boys, if looked after by a schoolmaster like Tom Hood's,

'Who never spoilt the child and spared the rod,
But spoilt the rod and never spared the child,'

often turn out the ablest men. There is incipient power in these wayward vivacities of youth.

Musical amateurs of the present day of the strenuous class that elicited Charles Lamb's verses beginning--

'Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites; for my part
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, or for Handel'

will doubtless deem Lord North an utter barbarian. George III. scolded him for never going to the concerts of ancient music. 'Your brother, the Bishop,' said the King, 'never misses them, my Lord.' 'Sir,' answered the Premier, 'if I were as deaf as my brother, the Bishop, I would never miss them either!'

Of Lord Thurlow we believe it was that Theodore Hook declared that nobody could be as wise as Thurlow _looked_. Whether he had much wisdom is a moot point; but strength of will he possessed in an enviable degree, as the following anecdote shows:--

'Lord Thurlow had applied to George the Third on behalf of
his brother for the Bishopric of Durham, and having
somewhat unexpectedly met with a refusal, he bowed, and was
about to retire without pressing his suit, when the
monarch, wishing to soften his decision as far as possible,
added, "Anything else I shall be happy to bestow upon your
relative, but this, unfortunately, is a dignity never held
but by a man of high rank and family."

'"Then, Sire," returned Lord Thurlow, drawing himself up,
"I must persist in my request--I ask it for the brother of
the Lord High Chancellor of England!"

The Chancellor was firm, and the King was compelled to
yield.'

This we take to have been highly creditable to Thurlow: it was a courageous assertion that the aristocracy of genius is at least equal to the aristocracy of birth. Here is an amusing story of clerical ignorance from Barham's diary:--

'December 3.--Dined for the first time with Dr. Sumner,
Bishop of Llandaff, who told me, as a fact, that Dr. R----,
a fellow of Eton, had some time since ordered one of his
ponds to be cleared out. A great number of carp, tench,
eels, &c., were taken in the course of the operation. The
doctor was at dinner with some friends, who had been
viewing the work, when a servant came in, to inform him
that in draining off the water the men had found a
chalybeate. "Have they indeed?" cried he, with much
interest; "I am very glad to hear it. Tell them to put it
along with the other fish for the present."'

In those days Eton was not famous for its erudition, and a fellow of that famous corporation was likely to be a better judge of the 'other fish' than of the chalybeate. Dr. R---- would probably have known exactly the right way to dress a red mullet from the Avon or a Coniston char.

Here is a good story of Dr. Thomas Hume, an intimate friend of Barham's:--

'They had walked together to the office of one of the
morning newspapers, and there the doctor silently placed
upon the counter an announcement of the death of some
friend, together with five shillings, the usual charge for
the insertion of such advertisements. The clerk glanced at
the paper, tossed it on one side, and said gruffly, "Seven
and six!"

'"I have frequently," replied Hume, "had occasion to
publish these simple notices, and I have never before been
charged more than five shillings."

'"Simple!" repeated the clerk, without looking up; "He's
universally beloved, and deeply regretted! Seven and six."

'Hume produced the additional half crown, and laid it
deliberately by the others, observing, as he did so, with
the same solemnity of tone he had used throughout,
"Congratulate yourself, sir, that this is an expense which
your executors will never be put to."'

We hope that unlucky clerk could understand the rebuke that he received; but to us it appears that sarcasm is generally thrown away on such people. They are pachyderms.

The book contains some capital stories of poor Theodore Hook, that marvellously wasted intellect. His great power lay in _impromptu_, of prose or verse, spoken or written. No man has ever equalled him at a paragraph or a squib, except as to the latter, Garrick and Coleridge. Nobody was ever so exquisite a conversational wit. And certainly no one has ever possessed his power of improvisation in English. He threw off stanza and strophe as fast as a knifegrinder's wheel throws sparks. He scintillated always. Coleridge, after an evening in his company, declared he was as great a genius as Dante. His felicity was invariable. When he was improvising at the piano, after luncheon, at his Fulham villa, enter the ancilla, to say Mr. Winter, the tax collector, has called. Ejaculates Hook:--

'Here comes Mr. Winter, collector of taxes;
I advise you to give him whatever he axes!
He isn't the man to stand nonsense or flummery.
For though his name's Winter, his actions are summary.'

But how could Hook stand the tremendous dissipation to which he foolishly condescended? Here is a specimen of his way of living:--

'After a dinner given by Mr. Stephen Price, of Drury-lane
Theatre, all the guests, with the exception of Cannon and
Theodore Hook, having long since retired, the host, who was
suffering from an incipient attack of gout, was compelled
to allude pretty plainly to the lateness of the hour. No
notice, however, was taken of the hint; and, unable to
endure any longer the pain of sitting up, Mr. Price made
some excuse, and slipped quietly off to bed. On the
following morning he inquired of his servant--"Pray at what
time did those gentlemen go last night?" "Go, sir!" replied
John; "they are not gone, sir; they have just rung for
coffee!"'