Chapter II: Part 2

Of Lord Kenyon, another judge of like inhospitable tendencies, someone said that in his house it was always Lent in the kitchen and Passion Week in the parlour. On another occasion it was remarked that 'in his lordship's kitchen the fire is dull, but the spits are always bright;' to which Jekyll, pretending to be angry, replied, 'Spits! in the name of common-sense, don't talk about his spits--for nothing turns on them!' When his lordship died, the words 'Mors Janua _Vita_' were by an error of the undertaker painted on the coffin; but, someone commenting on the substitution of 'Vita' for 'Vitae,' Lord Ellenborough protested that there was no mistake. Kenyon, he declared, had directed that it should be 'Vita,' so that his estate might be saved the expense of a diphthong.

Most people know the story of Foote and Lord Stormont, the latter of whom had asked the former to dinner, and had placed before him wine served in the smallest of decanters and dispensed in the smallest of glasses. The peer enlarged upon the growth and age of the liquor; whereupon the player, holding up one of the glasses, demurely said, 'It is very little of its age!' This recalls an experience of Theodore Hook, when invited to dine with an unnamed nobleman, at the Star and Garter, Richmond. There were four of the party, and when covers were removed it was found that the fare consisted of four loin chops, four mealy potatoes, and a pint of sherry. These things despatched, the peer asked Hook for a song, and the wit responded with, of all things in the world, the National Anthem, which he gave correctly until, arriving at the line 'Happy and glorious,' he added--as if under the influence of drink--'A pint between four of us--God save the King!' A different form of stinginess, it would seem, was shown by Brigham Young, when (if we may believe the tale) he gave as a reason for marrying a certain male-garbed lady-doctor, that he would be able to have her clothes 'made down' for his boys.

The mean host has always been a special target for the scorn of his fellows. It was a Greek satirist who related how

'A miser in his chamber saw a mouse,
And cry'd, dismay'd, "What dost thou in my house?"
She, with a laugh, "Good landlord, have no fear,
'Tis not for board, but lodging, I came here."'

And since then the flood of banter has rolled on. Herrick complains of an unknown person that he invited him home to eat, and showed him there much plate but little meat. Garrick (who had evidently again forgotten the mote and the beam) wrote of a certain nobleman who had built a big mansion:

'A little house would best accord
With you, my very little lord!
And then exactly matched would be
Your house and hospitality!'

Much in the same way, Richard Graves wrote of the master of a house which was well kept but not open to company:

'If one may judge by rooms so neat,
It costs you more in mops than meat!'

Note, again, Egerton Warburton's versification of a remark attributed to Lord Alvanley. A gentleman had drawn attention to the fact that his house was furnished _a la_ Louis Quatorze:

'"Then I wish," said a guest, "when you ask us to eat,
You would furnish your board _a la_ Louis Dixhuit.
The eye, can it feast when the stomach is starving?
Pray less of your gilding and more of your carving."'

John Headley, describing dinner at one Lady Anne's, tells us that

'A silver service loads the board,
Of eatables a slender hoard;'

and the sarcasm reminds one of the address with which Theodore Hook once bore himself under somewhat similar circumstances. Invited to dine with an old lady, he was horrified when the servant, lifting the cover, displayed a couple of chops. 'Mr. Hook,' said the hostess, 'you see your dinner.' 'Thank you, ma'am,' observed Hook; 'but where's yours?'

The niggardliness which displays itself in smaller subscriptions to public or private objects than the donor's means will justify has naturally met with keen reproach. Herrick has a quatrain directed against the failing; and everyone remembers the lines about the man who declared that at the sound of woe his hand was always open:

'Your hand is open, to be sure,
But there is nothing in it.'

Perhaps the happiest satire on meanness of this sort is contained in the anonymous couplet 'On Close-fist's Subscription':

'The charity of Close-fist, give to fame:
He has at last subscribed--how much?--his name.'

DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD.

A leading Review lately contained a contribution entitled 'The Old School of Classics and the New.' It was, as regards its literary form, a 'Dialogue of the Dead'--a discussion supposed to take place between the famous scholars Bentley and Madvig, with a brief intervention on the part of Euripides and Shakespeare. It was written with much smartness, and one could wish that such lucubrations were more common nowadays than they are. Not that they are by any means rare. It was only the other day that Mr. Marion Crawford published a work which had the conventional shape of fiction, but which was really little more than a series of colloquies in which some famous men of the past took part, talking throughout with a characteristic flavour which did the author considerable credit. Dialogues of the dead, pure and simple, have also been written of recent years by Mr. H. D. Traill, some of the best of whose efforts were republished in a volume called 'The New Lucian.'

In the less immediate past, dialogue-writing after the fashion of the witty and audacious Syrian was not very frequently adventured. Just twenty years ago some writer or writers supplied to a weekly miscellany a few imaginative conversations between deceased worthies; but these were not particularly brilliant. They were in verse--in the heroic couplet, to which a good deal of point might have been imparted; but advantage was not taken of the opportunity. There was one 'dialogue' in which Shakespeare, Thackeray, and a critic were supposed to be engaged, and in the course of which Thackeray was made to say to the critic:

'Don't crack your jokes, but flit.'

To which the critic:

'Your pardon, sir; I took you for a wit.'

To which Thackeray again:

'Did you, indeed? Then, compliments to pass,
I took you just for what you are--an ass.'

But this, which one hesitates to pronounce Thackerayan, was surely even trite. However, these dialogues at least remind us of what English society was saying and doing in the year of grace 1868. Thus, Thackeray tells Shakespeare that his dramas are played but scarcely acted:

'For I won't deny
That people now are tickled through the eye.
No one to thought a deep attention lends,
And if a play's successful it depends
Far less upon the language than the scene.'

Again, in another colloquy, Meyerbeer informs Mozart that

'The "Traviata" and the "Trovatore"
Of "Il Barbiere" have eclipsed the glory.
As Margarita Patti fills the stage,
And Marta sung by Nilsson is the rage.'

He who dips into _Colburn's New Monthly_ for the year 1822 or thereabouts will be rewarded (or otherwise) by coming across a 'Dialogue of the Dead' in prose, and there may be other such fugitive lucubrations. But so far as the English literature of the past is concerned, 'dialogues of the dead' were written by only two persons worthy of celebration--Walter Savage Landor and George, Lord Lyttelton, the author of 'Letters from a Persian in England to his friend in Ispahan.' Landor's 'Imaginary Conversations' are among those numerous works which everybody is supposed to have read, and, having read them, to admire. And unfortunate indeed would be he who could not recognise and appreciate the varied beauty and charm of these prose masterpieces. Here Menelaus and Helen, AEsop and Rhodope, Tiberius and Vipsania, Leofric and Godiva, Roger Ascham and Jane Grey, and a hundred other heroes and heroines of the past, converse not only with dramatic appropriateness, but with rhetorical force--with amplitude of thought and spontaneity of image. By the side of such a wonderful flower-show (as one of our poets said of a selection from a brother poet's lyrics), Lyttelton's trim parterre shows, no doubt, but dimly; nevertheless, to that accomplished nobleman there is due something more than the small credit of having been Landor's predecessor in this form of English composition. Of that form Lyttelton says, in the preface to his 'Dialogues,' that

'It sets before us the history of all times and all nations,
presents to the choice of a writer all characters of remarkable
persons which may be best opposed to, or compared with, each other;
and is, perhaps, one of the most agreeable methods that can be
employed of conveying to the mind any critical, moral, or political
observations.'

Lyttelton brings together in his work such people as Plato and Fenelon, Lucian and Rabelais, Addison and Swift, Boileau and Pope; and, if he scarcely has the power to make these masters talk as we know they wrote, still he puts into their mouths much which it might be worth the while of the modern reader to assimilate.

Early in the eighteenth century there appeared a little _brochure_ called 'English Lucian,' but it proved to be nothing more edifying than a few 'modern dialogues' between a vintner and his wife, between 'a reformer of manners,' his wife and a captain of the guards, and between a Master of Arts and 'a lady's woman.' Of the humorous satire of Lucian himself there was no jot or tittle.

The works of Lucian have, in various ways, found many translators in England--notably Dr. Thomas Francklin, who prefaced his version with a dialogue (in prose) in which Lucian and Lyttelton, after an exchange of compliments, proceed to discuss the writings of the former at some length and with much dulness. Dulness is certainly not the characteristic of the rhyming paraphrases of certain dialogues of Lucian which Charles Cotton wrote and published late in the seventeenth century under the title of 'Burlesque upon Burlesque, or the Scoffer Scoft.' 'We bring you here,' said Cotton, 'a fustian-piece, Writ by a merry Wag of Greece'--'a piece of raillery writ,' as he went on to say, 'when Paganism was in fashion':

'Wherein his meaning further is
To take away th' authorities
Of lies and fables, which did pigeon
The rabble into false religion.'

Herein the mission and the achievement of Lucian--first and greatest of the writers of 'Dialogues of the Dead'--are not inaptly stated. Fontenelle and Fenelon both derived inspiration for their 'Dialogues' from the brilliant pages of the Syrian, and within recent years his abounding merits have been sung in eloquent prose by Mr. Froude. There is yet room, however, for someone who shall prove himself the 'new Lucian' indeed, by writing dialogues in which the illustrious dead shall be made to express themselves (as they have not yet been made to do in English colloquy) with superlative sarcasm and inimitable scorn.

SERMONS IN FLOWERS.

Every year a 'flower-sermon' is preached in London, in accordance with an admirable custom; and the orator, we may be sure, has no difficulty in 'improving the occasion.' The materials lie rich and ready to his hand. The Laureate, indeed, has asked to what uses we shall put the wildweed flower which simply blows, and has inquired further if there be any moral shut within the bosom of the rose. He was answered long ago by Horace Smith:

'Your voiceless lips, O Flowers! are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book;'

and a living poetess has assured us, likewise, that flowers will preach to us if we will hear, the rose telling us that all her loveliness is born upon a thorn, and the poppy urging that, though her scarlet head is held in scorn,

'Yet juice of subtle virtues lies
Within my cup of curious dyes.'

There is one lesson which the flowers have been made to teach with rather wearisome iteration. The poets have never been tired of dwelling upon their brief existence and seeing in it a reflection of our own. This rather trite melody has been sounded from the earliest to the latest times. Drummond of Hawthornden draws attention to the flower 'which lingeringly doth fade,' and sees in it a type of his own life, which 'scarce shows now what it hath been.' Herrick, apostrophizing blossoms, deduces from them the fact that all things have their end, though ne'er so brave. 'Fade, flowers, fade!' cries Waller; ''Tis but what we must in our autumn do.' And so Dryden:

'The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time...
Such is your blooming youth, and withering so.'

'Youth's withered flowers' made John Clare sigh to think that in him they would never bloom again.

But this, which may be said to be the orthodox teaching of the flowers, has found many influential questioners, who have dwelt upon the brighter side of the contention. And it is pleasant to listen to their more cheerful voices. 'Not an opening blossom breathes in vain,' wrote Thomson; and the sentiment is heartily corroborated by Mr. Lowell:

'There never yet was flower fair in vain;
Let classic poets rhyme it as they will.'

If the flowers have a short career, they make no complaint of it, says Landor:

'Fast fall the leaves; this never says
To that, "Alas! how brief our days!"
All have alike enjoyed the sun,
And each repeats, "So much is won."'

They enjoy life, and they help to make it enjoyable for others.

'Gay without toil and lovely without art,
They spring to clear the sense and glad the heart.'

So Mrs. Barbauld; while Mrs. Howitt similarly proclaims it to be their business as well as pleasure to minister delight to man, to beautify the earth.

The present Lord Lytton has remarked of flowers that their scent outlives their bloom, and has expressed the aspiration that, in like manner, his mortal hours may 'grow sweeter towards the tomb.' But the main point made by the more optimistic observers of Nature is that, though blossoms fade, they revive again, in equal beauty, by-and-by. 'Ye are to me,' wrote Horace Smith, 'a type of resurrection and second birth.' To W. C. Bryant the delicate flower, arising from the shapeless mould, seemed

'An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.'

Mrs. Hemans--a little unnecessarily, perhaps--dwells upon the fact that though the flowers sleep in dust through the wintry hours, they break forth in glory in the spring. For Longfellow, as for Horace Smith, they are 'emblems of our own great resurrection.' George Morine, in verses little known, reminds us that while cities fall away, and arts flourish and decay, these 'frailer things' will continue to adorn the world 'unchangingly the same.' Though covered for a time by 'the wee white fairies of the snow,' they come back, says Gerald Massey, 'with their fragrant news,' and tell in a thousand hues their dream of beauty. For their annual disappearance from our midst, Thomas Westwood gives a poetical explanation:

'Wearied out with shine and shade,
It rejoiced them, one and all,
To escape from daylight's ken
To their chambers subterrain,
There to rest awhile, and then
Weave them fresh, and weave them fair,
And their fragrant spells prepare.'

Alas! there are those who must needs draw a melancholy moral from the most consolatory phenomena. And so Charlotte Smith, while admitting that

'Another May new buds and flowers shall bring,'

must needs exclaim,

'Ah! why has happiness no second Spring?'

And the dismal reflection finds an echo in the heart of D. M. Moir:

'Green Spring again shall bid
Your boughs with bloom be crown'd;
But alas! to Man,
In earth's brief span,
No second Spring comes round!'

The truth is, the imagination derives from Nature precisely what the former's capacity and quality admit of. As the Laureate said, years ago, any man may find in bud, or blade, or bloom, a meaning suited to his mind. Spenser, pondering on the rose and its thorns, and other such floral combinations, was led to remark that

'Every sweet with sour is tempered still.'

Equally impressed was he by the bounteous ease with which Nature scatters flowers all over the world. In Barry Cornwall's view, this facile profusion is Earth's expression of gratitude for the effulgence of the Sun:

'When on earth he smileth, she bursts forth
In beauty like a bride, and gives him back,
In sweet repayment for his warm bright love,
A world of flowers.'

Beddoes had a quaint and curious fancy that 'when the dead awake or talk in sleep' the flowers 'hear their thoughts, and write them on their leaves, for heaven to look on.' Campbell seems to have loved flowers most for the associations they called up. 'I dote upon you,' he wrote, in an address to them, 'for ye waft me to summers of old;'

'I love you for lulling me back into dreams
Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams.'

And we find another Scotchman, William Anderson, giving utterance to a similar expression of feeling.

There is a lesson which the flowers have taught to at least two of our poets, which, though it may have sympathizers, will scarcely find many practical adherents. It is embodied in a little lyric by Mrs. Webster, in which that lady, celebrating the beauty of a solitary blossom, describes how it is seen and gathered, and adds, ironically:

'Why should a flower be fair for its own?
Choose it, pluck it to die.'

But the moral has been pointed even more effectively by the Rev. Gerard Lewis in some excellent verses. 'A gathered flower,' he says, 'is but a fading thing':

'Let woman's beauty wear the sterling gold,
The imperishable gem.
They give to her a brightness manifold,
She adds a charm to them.

'But flowers that strew the earth with fragrant grace,
As stars the welkin fill,
Look loveliest, live the longest, in their place;
To pluck them is to kill.'

That is true, and yet the gathering of flowers will go on. And, after all, what more can a blossom desire than to 'exist beautifully' and exhale its sweetness, whether it lies hidden by the wayside hedge, or decks the bosom of a woman as sweet and beautiful as itself?

'DON QUIXOTE' IN ENGLAND.

The announcement that Mr. W. G. Wills had completed his dramatic version of 'Don Quixote' naturally excited much interest, and no doubt set many minds at play upon the general subject of the history of 'Don Quixote' in this country. That the renowned romance has appeared in many prose translations, from that of Shelton in 1620 to that of Mr. Ormsby only two or three years ago, is known to most people. It will be remembered that an early English version was prepared by the nephew of Milton; the once-famous Peter Motteux made himself responsible for one 'by several hands'; that by Jarvis, which dates from the middle of last century, has lately been reproduced by Professor Morley; and then there are those by Smollett, the novelist, and Mr. A. J. Duffield. There is no lack of them, any more than there has been of pictorial illustrations. Shelton's translation, revised by Stevens, was republished with 'cuts' by Coypel. When Lockhart prefixed his well-known essay to Motteux's version, the work was accompanied by etchings by De Los Rios. Jarvis's rendering exercised successively the skill of Westall, Cruickshank, Johannot, Dore, and Mr. A. B. Houghton; another was illuminated by R. Smirke, R.A.; and in later years there have been the drawings contributed by Sir John Gilbert and by Kenny Meadows.

So much for the story as it has been read in English and adorned by English (and other) artists. But how about Mr. Wills's predecessors? How about 'Don Quixote's' previous connection with the English stage? Well, it was scarcely to be expected that so popular a tale would never excite the attention of the playwright or the musician. Sooner or later, everything which has vogue finds its way, somehow, to the boards, and it is a little surprising that seventy-four years should have elapsed, after the publication of the first English translation, before 'Don Quixote' received the distinction of dramatization. Was it, indeed, a distinction? There's the rub. The dramatist was Thomas d'Urfey; and what could be looked for from that free-speaking worthy? The original is not without a certain breadth in certain passages, and what Cervantes made broad D'Urfey might be trusted to make broader. That, again, was only according to the practice of the day; and if the virtuous Collier fulminated against the trilogy which D'Urfey wrought out of the epical extravaganza--if some ladies of the time were found to object to the coarser humours of Mary the Buxom (a creation on which D'Urfey prided himself)--there can be no doubt of the success of the venture. The third of the three plays had not, it seems, quite the acceptability of the other two, but the author's explanation of its virtual failure--that the piece was not adequately presented--was possibly, for once, well founded, and the fact that the third play was produced at all speaks volumes for the triumphs of its precursors.

A 'Don Quixote'--probably D'Urfey's 'second part'--held the stage, more or less firmly, till the eighteenth century was well upon its way; and then there suddenly appeared a rival, in the shape of a farce or vaudeville by Fielding, entitled 'Don Quixote in England,' and bringing both the Don and Sancho upon English soil. The author was well aware of his temerity, and, indeed, apologized for it. The piece, he pleaded, was

'originally writ for his private amusement, as it would, indeed,
have been little less than Quixotism itself to hope any other
fruits from attempting characters wherein the inimitable Cervantes
so far excelled.'

He found it, he says, infinitely more difficult than he imagined to give his knight an opportunity of displaying himself in a different manner from that wherein he appears in the romance. However, he was induced to allow his work to be performed, and then it was seen that he had brought the Don and Sancho to an English inn, where the landlord, Guzzle, tries in vain to get the former to pay his bill, and whither comes one Dorothea Loveland to meet her sweetheart, Fairlove, spending the interval between her coming and his arrival in persuading the Don that she is a persecuted princess and that her maid Jezebel is Dulcinea. Dorothea is promised by her father to one Squire Badger, but the squire proves to be a sot, and at the Don's especial request the lady and her lover are united. The piece is by no means without humour, and it would deserve to live in remembrance if only because it was for 'Don Quixote in England' that Fielding wrote the song of 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' which consisted of two verses only until Richard Leveridge added five more and wrote the music for the whole.

'Don Quixote' has made other appearances on the English boards, but none of any very great importance. There was an entertainment written in verse, and 'sung at Marybone Gardens,' for which Dr. Arnold wrote the music, and in which the Don, Sancho, Nicholas, Teresa, and Maritornes figure. There was a pantomime at Covent Garden, 'Harlequin and Quixote; or, The Magic Arm,' for which Reeve composed the melodies, and in which Harlequin, the son of Inca, carries off Columbine, the daughter of a Spanish grandee, to whom Don Quixote is affianced. There was, too, a 'ballad-farce' called 'Don Quixote in Barcelona; or, The Beautiful Moor,' which, however, was never represented; and there were at least two other efforts of the kind, an 'opera-comedy' and a 'farce-comedy,' which had the illustrious Sancho for their hero, portraying him in the character of 'the mock Governor' of Barataria.

It was, no doubt, inevitable that 'Don Quixote,' having been translated into English prose, should make its appearance also in English verse. And so it did--early in the eighteenth century--in the form of 'The Life and Notable Adventures of that Renown'd Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Merrily translated into Hudibrastick Verse.' Mr. Edward Ward was the perpetrator of this work, in which various episodes of the original were reproduced with a vulgarity, not to say a coarseness, not unworthy of the great D'Urfey himself. The bard was tolerable enough in such passages as this, descriptive of the knight's appearance:

'The Don himself that rul'd the Roast
(Whose Fame we are about to Boast),
Did by his solid Looks appear
Not much behind his Fiftieth year.
In Stature he was Lean and Tall,
Big Bon'd, and very Strong withall;
Sound Wind and Limb, of healthful Body,
Fresh of Complection, somewhat Ruddy;
Built for a Champion ev'ry way,
But turn'd with Age a little Grey.'

But, as a whole, 'Don Quixote,' as rendered into rhyme by Mr. Ward, cannot be recommended for general perusal.

There is, however, a 'Quixote' literature apart from 'Don Quixote' itself. The great romance suggested more than one English counterpart, such as 'The Spiritual Quixote,' by Richard Graves, and 'The Female Quixote,' by Mrs. Lennox. The latter, published in the middle of last century, was devoted to the adventures of one Arabella. Of her we read that, supposing the fictions of the Scuderi school to be 'real pictures of life,' 'from them she drew all her notions and expectations.' She became, in fact, quite a monomaniac upon the subject, and, as a sample, is for ever expecting that her lover, Glanville, will speak and act like the heroes of her favourite tales. In the end she throws herself into a river, gets brain-fever, and is brought back to sanity by a benevolent divine. Then there is 'The Amiable Quixote; or, The Enthusiasm of Friendship,' a novel issued later in the century, and having for central figure a young gentleman named Bruce, who

'found in the slightest acquaintance some virtue or some
recommendation. As soon as the enthusiasm of friendship was
excited, it overwhelmed his discretion and clouded his
perspicacity.'

But this work owed very little to 'Don Quixote'--not more than did 'Tarrataria; or, Don Quixote the Second,' a romantic poetical medley in two cantos, which appeared in the interval between the two stories just noticed. Early in this century there was issued, for a short space, a literary miscellany, called _The Knight Errant_, edited by 'Sir Hercules Quixote, K.E.,' who, said the prospectus,

'following the example of his illustrious namesake and ancestor of
La Mancha, has, with the assistance of his friends, commenced an
era of Civil Knight Errantry, and zealously devoted himself to the
comforting of distressed Damsels and disconsolate Widows, the
fathering of wronged and destitute Orphans, the promotion of Virtue
and chivalrous feeling generally'--

and so on, and so on. To 'Don Quixote,' in some form or other, there will, of course, be literary allusions to the end of time.

BEDSIDE BOOKS.

To begin with, ought there to be any such things? Ought we to accustom ourselves to having books by our bedside? Ought not 'early to bed and early to rise' to be the motto of every well-conducted person, and is not reading in bed calculated to render the carrying out of that axiom virtually impossible? This is the problem we have first to solve, and it may be said at once that this discourse does not apply _virginibus puerisque_. Girls and boys, young men and young women, are hereby solemnly exhorted to abjure all nocturnal or matutinal reading of the kind suggested. To them all the lines in the copybooks apply unreservedly. Nay, even for those of mature years it may be allowed that bed is not the proper place for intellectual study. Let the hours for reading and for repose be kept rigidly apart, if the reading is to be systematic and prolonged. So far, everybody is agreed. To make a habit of perusing books in bed is to encourage laziness, and to encourage laziness is (we all know) to sap the foundations of the moral nature. That way destruction lies.

And I am bound to say that habitual, sustained reading in bed is quite as uncomfortable for the human frame as it is dangerous to the human character. It cannot be undertaken with entire success. It looks easy to do, but it is not. If you are sceptical, try it. You begin swimmingly enough. You lie down, say, on your back, settle your head cosily on to the pillow, and perhaps, to start with, hold the book before you in both hands: For a time all goes well, but not for long. The position of the arms becomes fatiguing. You withdraw one from the book and commence again. But the utilized arm speedily grows weary, and the chances are that you drop the volume and go off to sleep, leaving gas, lamp, or candle alight--which is not very safe and not very healthy--nay, is positively unhealthy and unsafe. Perchance you try the effect of reclining on one side, leaning on one arm, and holding the book by means of the other. That, also, is charming for the moment, but has a similar tendency to tire very readily. Your elbow--the one on which your weight is thrown--soon gives signs of boredom. 'I don't like this at all,' it says virtually; and perhaps you turn round and try the other for a spell. But in these matters one elbow is very like its brother, and before long you are on the look-out for another attitude.

What may be called the last infirmity of the determined reader in bed is his final decision to sit up and read in that fashion. Nothing could be better--for a certain more or less brief period. At the expiration of a few minutes, you realize that you are getting a sort of cramp in the knees; moreover, there is a disagreeable strain on your head; you are stooping too much, and bending your spine, and altogether making a toil of pleasure. The situation, it need hardly be said, is still less attractive when the weather is cold, and the effort to keep warm is added to the endeavour to read. You have wrapped yourself up, but apparently not to much purpose. You are conscious of growing chillier and chillier every moment. And, indeed, a very low temperature is usually fatal to the cultivation of bedside books. Even if you lie down, and almost smother yourself in the clothes, you are bound to obtrude one hand out of shelter, or how is the book to be held up? And how quickly that hand gets cold--and how often one's two hands have to be alternated for the purpose in view--and what a nuisance it is to have to make the continual change! One begins to think that, under the circumstances, reading is not so pleasant as one fancied, and that sleep (as the poet says) is the only certain knot of peace.

One thing is incontrovertible, and that is, that bedside books, if they are to be acceptable, must be, in the first place, small in size and, therefore, not very weighty. The hand must be asked to hold as little as possible. Bed is not the place for heavy tomes; it is the appropriate _locale_ of the duodecimo. And yet the type must not be too small, or the eyesight will suffer, unless the reader can command plenty of illumination--which is not always the case. And the book must be not only fairly diminutive, but bound and stitched in such a way as to allow the hand to clutch it and hold it with ease. There must be no unnecessary extension of the palm and fingers, for it adds so much to the fatigue. Unhappily, every volume does not fulfil this requirement, and the requisite selection must be made with care. Moreover, the ideal bedside book should be not only small, and light, and agreeable to the touch, but distinguished by special internal characteristics. Not only must the print be legible; the matter it furnishes must be in brief instalments. What is wanted is a series of short somethings which the mind can readily grasp and as easily retain. Sustained reading is for the library or the study; the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, what you desire is simply a number of brevities, at any one of which you can glance with the certainty of being interested.

Wherefore, such works as novels must be discouraged in the bedside library. There is nothing to be gained by perusing a romance, by bits, in such fragments of time as the intending sleeper is inclined or able to accord to it. Keep a novel beside you, if you like, to turn to if the night should prove an obstinately sleepless one, and to that end let the tale be by 'Miss Braddon or Gaboriau'--one which shall really fix your imagination fast, and finish, perhaps, by sending you to rest. But for ordinary uses let the book which you take up be one of 'Jewels, five words long,' or thereabouts! Let it be a volume of short essays--let it be, for instance, Bacon's, or the 'Roundabout Papers,' now accessible in a handy form. Let it be a volume of brief verse, such as Mr. Gilbert's 'Bab Ballads,' or Mr. Lang's 'Ballades in Blue China,' or Calverley's immortal 'Fly Leaves;' or let it be a collection of more serious lyrics--say, Mr. Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury,' or the selections from Lord Tennyson and Mr. Matthew Arnold. Or, if you like, let it be a treasury of maxims, such as those by Vauvenargues or Chamfort; or a series of select passages, such as those from the works of Lord Beaconsfield or Heine: or let it be a casquet of choice anecdotes, of which happily the supply is large--that incomparable volume of Dean Ramsay's, for example, or even the triter production by Mark Lemon. There is a whole world from which to choose.

Only, take care that, whatever the literature is, it is not disturbing. The mission of the bedside book is to soothe the mind, not irritate it. When one lies down after a hard day's work, one's desire is not that the brain should be stimulated, but that it should be refreshed. It needs, not exercise, but diversion. It wants to be prepared for sleep. And if a book will effect that object, while at the same time adding to the stock of one's ideas--humorous or sentimental, it does not matter which--that volume is to be thanked and cherished. The difficulty of putting down one's book and extinguishing the light before the exposition of sleep comes upon one, must be left to be dealt with by the individual man. I have heard of a popular vocalist who was wont, when he had read sufficiently, to extinguish the candle by plumping down upon it whatever book he happened to have in his hand. But this is a rough and ready mode which cannot be generally recommended--at any rate, not in those cases where the book is one's own! Some other means must be discovered. And let them be efficacious, for when any element of danger or unhealthiness is allowed to attend the use of bedside books, the sooner that use is discontinued the better.

THEIR MUCH SPEAKING.

The 'dreary drip of dilatory declamation' to which Lord Salisbury, in one of his happiest phrases, once drew attention, shows no sign of exhaustion, or even of diminution; and the Conservative chief has followed up his admirable epigram by picturing the time when, all rational discussion and all beneficial legislation being out of the question, the House of Commons may become a mere mechanical puppet-show, and may present the spectacle of 'a steam Irish Party, an electric Ministry, and a clockwork Speaker.' It is certain that there never was so much talk in the Lower House as at the present moment; but it is also certain that the complaint of 'much speaking' has before now been frequently preferred against both Chambers. Politicians have always been a wordy race, and many a sharp shaft has been aimed at their besetting weakness. A last-century satirist once wrote:

'"Do this," cries one side of St. Stephen's great hall;
"Do just the reverse," the minority bawl....
And what is the end of this mighty tongue-war?
--Nothing's done for the State till the State is done for!'

And, unfortunately, the quality of the talk has often been as poor as the quantity was considerable. It was, we believe, a pre-Victorian pen which perpetrated this couplet on the House of Commons:

'To wonder now at Balaam's ass were weak:
Is there a night that asses do not speak?'

Fun has constantly been made of the typical drawbacks of political oratory--of the dull men, of the heavy, of the shallow, of the unintelligible, and what not. We have been told how 'a lord of senatorial fame' was known at once by his portrait, because the painter had so 'play'd his game' that it 'made one even yawn at sight.' It has been said of an M.P., that his speeches 'possessed such remarkable weight' that it was 'really a trouble to bear them.' Of a third it was written that his discourses had some resemblance to an hour-glass, because, the longer time they ran, the shallower they grew. Of yet another orator we read that his reasoning was really deep, his argument profound, 'for deuce a bit could anybody see the ground.' Nor have certain historical personages been able to escape the lash. When Admiral Vernon was appointed to take charge of the herring fishery, Horace Walpole wrote:

'Long in the Senate had brave Vernon rail'd,
And all mankind with bitter tongue assail'd;
Sick of his noise, we wearied Heav'n with pray'r
In his own element to place the tar.
The gods at length have yielded to our wish,
And bade him rule o'er Billingsgate and fish.'

From which it will be gathered anew that a somewhat bitter style of debate is no novelty in this country--that strong language has been heard in the House of Commons _ante Agamemnona_.

Within living memory a member has dared to suggest that certain of his opponents had come into the House not wholly sober. Who does not remember the epigrams which were based on Pitt's addiction, real or supposed, to intoxicating liquors? Porson is said to have composed one hundred such 'paper pellets' in one night, as, for example:

'"Who's up?" inquired Burke of a friend at the door;
"Oh, no one," said Paddy, "tho' Pitt's on the floor."'

After this, most other insinuations become almost harmless; and the accusation of mere twaddling, such as that which was brought against Mr. Urquhart in the following lines, seems, by comparison, trivial:

'When Palmerston begins to speak,
He moves the House--as facts can prove.
Let Urquhart rise, with accents weak,
The House itself begins to move.'

By the side of twaddling, again, mere rambling grows venial. One of H. J. Byron's burlesque heroes says of Cerberus:

'My dog, who picks up everything one teaches,
Has got "three heads," like Mr. Gladstone's speeches.
But, as might naturally be expected,
His are considerably more connected.'

But it is against Parliamentary long-windedness, in particular, that most sarcasm, whether in verse or in prose, has been directed. Everybody remembers Moore's comparison of the Lord Castlereagh of his time to a pump, which up and down its awkward arm doth sway,

'And coolly spout, and spout, and spout away,
In one weak, washy, everlasting flood.'

This has always been a stock quotation to use against oratory of the 'dreary' and 'dilatory' order. Then, Brougham had the good sense to recognise his own sins in respect to 'much speaking.' _Punch_ made someone ask himself 'if Brougham thinks as much as he talks;' but the Lord Chancellor removed the pungency from gibes of that sort by writing his own epitaph, in which he declares that

'My fate a moral teaches,
The ark in which my body lies
Would not contain one-half my speeches.'

It was asserted of Lord George Bentinck that true sportsmen 'loved his prate,' because his speech recalled the 'four-mile course,' his arguments the 'feather-weight.' One is reminded, in this connection, of the preacher of whom it was observed that he 'so lengthily his subject did pursue,' that it was feared 'he had, indeed, eternity in view.' And, perhaps, a long discourse is none the more acceptable when it is palpable to the hearers that the discourser has committed it to memory, and is bound to go on to the bitter end. Possibly this adds to the feeling of exasperation. Nevertheless, there are those who must learn their speeches by heart, or else not speak at all. As Luttrell contended that Lord Dudley had said of himself:

'In vain my affections the ladies are seeking;
If I give up my heart, there's an end to my speaking.'

However, it is, perhaps, scarcely fair of laymen to dwell too sternly on the joy which so many legislators seem to feel in hearing their own voices. Man is a talking animal, and can 'hold forth' outside the Houses of Parliament as well as in. And though in the term 'man' we may include woman, let us give no countenance to the old calumny, that the fairer and weaker is also the more talkative sex. There are some old lines to the effect that Nature wisely forbade a beard to grow on woman's chin,

'For how could she be shaved, whate'er the skill,
Whose tongue would never let her chin be still?'

There is also a certain epitaph on an old maid,

'Who from her cradle talk'd till death,
And ne'er before was out of breath,'

and of whom it was opined that in heaven she'd be unblest, because she loathed a place of rest. But these flouts and sneers are as cheap as they are venerable. Let the ladies take heart. Men have been censured for their 'much speaking' at least as frequently as women. Prior declared of one Lysander that he ought to possess the art of talk, if he did not, for he practised 'full fourteen hours in four-and-twenty.' And we owe to a more recent writer this paraphrase of an epigram by Macentinus:

'Black locks hath Gabriel, beard that's white--
The reason, sir, is plain:
Gabriel works hard from morn till night,
More with his jaw than brain.'

It is well that satire should go that way for a change. All the talking is not done by women or by Parliament. There is, at times, as much chatter in the smoking-room as in the boudoir and the Senate. Tongues, as well as beards, 'wag all,' when we are 'merry in hall.'

PEERS AND POETRY.

The succession of the Hon. J. Leicester Warren to the barony of De Tabley was something more than a change in the _personnel_ of the House of Lords; it amounted to a conspicuous addition to the Chamber's intellectual power, and especially to the number of its poetic votaries. The author of 'Philoctetes' and 'Orestes,' of 'Rehearsals' and 'Searching the Net,' is no mere versifier. He has felt the influence of the old Greek dramatists, and apparently also that of Mr. Swinburne; but, for all that, his work has undoubted individuality, as well as solid interest.

It must be admitted that the House of Lords does not at this moment contain many hereditary peers who are also poets. Lord Tennyson, of course, is an ennobled commoner, and the Bishop of Derry (Dr. Alexander), who has written so much excellent verse, both in the thoughtful and in the imaginative vein, is no longer one of the spiritual lords. But there is Lord Lytton, there is Lord Southesk, and there is Lord Rosslyn; and by all of these Lord de Tabley will be welcomed as a brother in the literary art. What Lord Lytton has done in poetry, need scarcely be recapitulated. He would be remembered as 'Owen Meredith' if, since his accession to the peerage, he had not made a new reputation as the author of 'Fables in Song,' 'Glenaveril,' and other performances. As 'Owen Meredith' he was, no doubt, more fresh and spontaneous than he has ever been as Lord Lytton; but his poetic work, as a whole, is of good quality, and some of it will find its way down the stream of time. Equally certain may we be that the 'Jonas Fisher' of Lord Southesk, with its unquestionable vigour, both of satire and of sentiment, will remain alive, whatever may be the fate of the author's 'Greenwood's Farewell' and 'Meda Maiden.' Lord Rosslyn, it will be remembered, was one of the most successful of the Jubilee Laureates; but, even before that, he had made himself esteemed by many trustworthy judges as the producer of numerous good sonnets.

''Tis ridiculous,' says Selden, 'for a lord to print verses; 'tis well enough to make them to please himself, but to make them public is foolish.' He goes on to add that

'If a man in his private chamber twists his band-strings, or plays
with a rush to please himself, 'tis well enough; but if he should
go into Fleet Street, and sit upon a stall, and twist a
band-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street
would laugh at him.'

No doubt they would have done so in Selden's time; and much more readily would they do so now. But that is scarcely to the point. _Pace_ Master Selden, there is nothing ridiculous in a lord printing his verses--if they be but good enough for the process. A peer is not necessarily a poet, but a poet is none the worse for being a peer. Nay, there are even certain kinds of verse in which a peer may, other things being equal, be actually expected to excel. There is nothing to prevent his being--as Byron was--a poet of passion; there is every reason why, if he have the requisite literary capacity, he should shine in the poetry of the library, the _salon_, and the boudoir. He has usually the education for the first, and the leisure for the other two. He generally has culture, he always has breeding, he often has gallantry; and, with these endowments, the poetry _par excellence_ of the peerage is well within his reach.

Considerable, indeed, would be the loss to English literature if by any chance the productions of our noble poets should disappear. Apart from Byron, who, of course, stands a head and shoulders above all his brethren, there is that Henry, Earl of Surrey, who ranks highest of all poets between Chaucer and Spenser, and who did so much to popularize in England both blank verse and the sonnet. But for Surrey both those accomplishments, since so popular among us, might have been long in establishing themselves in English poetry. The other poet-peers of the sixteenth century were admittedly not of the first class. Yet Buckhurst's share in 'The Mirror for Magistrates' and in the tragedy of 'Gorboduc' was of undoubted value, both intrinsic and relative; and the world of letters would not willingly let die the work, slight as it was, of Lord Vaux, the Earls of Essex and Oxford, the Earls of Ancrum and Stirling, Lord Brooke, and Francis Bacon, although the great Chancellor wrote but one lyric of any moment--the well-known lines upon 'The World.' Lord Vaux's 'Of a Contented Mind,' Lord Essex's 'There is None, O None but You,' Lord Oxford's 'If Woman could be Fair and yet not Fond,' are among the treasures of our verse; while the tragedies of Lord Stirling and Lord Brooke, and the sonnets of Lord Ancrum, are at least curious and interesting, if they are not substantively great.

And when we come to the noble poets of the Stuart and the early Georgian period, we find that the national indebtedness is not less marked. Who would be prepared to surrender the spirited effusions of Montrose? And is there not much to be said for the outcome, flimsy and over-free as it often was, of that mob of noblemen who wrote with ease--including the Earls of Roscommon, Dorset, and Rochester, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire? Had these writers not at least the virtues of lightness and of brightness? Did not Dorset pen the lines, 'To all you ladies now on land?' Did not Buckinghamshire produce 'The Election of the Laureat'--the prototype of Leigh Hunt's 'Feast of the Poets,' and of a still more recent _jeu d'esprit_ by Mr. Robert Buchanan? The great Lord Peterborough is even now less remembered for his military triumphs than for his 'Song by a Person of Quality;' while Chesterfield, if thought of most frequently in connection with his letters and his essays, still lives in poetry as the author of some admirable society verses. Horace Walpole claims mention in the list as Earl of Orford, and room must fairly be made, too, for Lords Lansdowne, Halifax, Nugent, Lyttelton, Egremont, and De la Warre, most of whom left behind them a few fugitive pieces which deserve to be embalmed in poetical collections.

The annals of nineteenth-century song will commemorate, besides Byron, those agreeable versifiers--Lord Holland, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Winchilsea, and those cultured translators--Lord Strangford, Lord Ellesmere, and Lord Derby. It would scarcely be fair to include among noble poets Lord Macaulay, Lord Houghton, or the first Lord Lytton, for they, like Lord Tennyson, were created peers, and won their laurel-wreaths in the character of commoners. In the same way, I have taken no account of the poetical peeresses, or I should have had to dwell upon the achievements of such ladies as Sidney's sister, Lady Pembroke; the Duchess of Newcastle, the Countess of Winchilsea, the Baroness Nairne, and so on. Enough, indeed, has been said to show how prominent a part the peerage has played in the history of English poetry--not, indeed, in the front rank, in which (omitting Lord Tennyson) it is represented only by Byron, but in the second, where Montrose (for example) is eminent, and wherever, in short, the rhetorical, the amatory, and the witty elements are in the ascendant.

THE PRAISE OF THAMES.

Afluent versifier of to-day has complained that, though many a poet has 'dearer made the names' of Tweed and Nith and Doon, and what not, no one has 'sung our Thames;' and he goes on especially to rate 'green Kent and Oxfordshire and Middlesex,' because those counties have offered, he says, no rhythmical tribute to our premier stream. Now, the Thames has not, perhaps, found many laureates of late. The glories of Henley may be celebrated annually in the comic or 'society' press, but in these times we hear more, no doubt, of sewage and steam-launches than of any other phenomena of the Thames. We are a practical generation, with a keen eye to business, and disposed to take not only as read, but as written, the praises which might well be bestowed upon the river even as it is.

If, however, the Thames does not often or greatly inspire the rhymers of to-day, it cannot, certainly, be described as songless. On the contrary, it has received from the poets more magnificent and more frequent eulogium than any of its compeers. If one goes back even so far as Spenser, one finds that writer picturing it in one poem as 'noble Thamis'--a 'lovely bridegroom,' 'full, fresh and jolly,' 'all decked in a robe of watchet hew,' and adorned by a coronet 'in which were many towres and castels set;' while, in another work from the same hand, it figures as a 'gentle river,' is characterized as 'christall Thamis,' and is lauded for its 'pure streames' and 'sweete waters.' Chapman, in his 'Ovid's Banquet of Sense,' discourses eloquently of the 'wanton Thamysis that hastes to greet The brackish coast of old Oceanus':

'And as by London's bosom she doth fleet,
Casts herself proudly through the bridge's twists,
Where, as she takes again her crystal feet,
She curls her silver hair like amourists,
Smooths her bright cheeks, adorns her brow with ships,
And, empress-like, along the coast she trips'--

a description almost as impressive as the thing described. Among the lovers of the Thames must be ranked, too, Herrick, who, in one of his pieces, sends to his 'silver-footed Thamasis' his 'supremest kiss.' 'No more,' he regrets, will he 'reiterate' its strand, whereon so many stately structures stand; no more, in the summer's sweeter evenings, will he go to bathe in it, as thousand others do:

'No more shall I along thy christall glide,
The barge with boughes and rushes beautifi'd....
To Richmond, Kingstone, and to Hampton Court.
Never againe shall I with finnie ore
Cut from or draw unto the faithfull shore,
And landing here, or safely landing there,
Make way to my beloved Westminster.'

Milton, in his 'Vacation Exercise,' bestows upon the Thames the epithet of 'Royal-towered.' How Denham celebrated it is well known to most. In his view it was 'the most loved of all the Ocean's sons,' and he commended it especially for its freedom from sudden and impetuous wave, from the unexpected inundations which spoil the mower's hopes and mock the ploughman's toil.

'Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full'--