Chapter III: Peregrine Courtenay to the Public (2)

When I look back to any particular scene of my existence, I can never keep the stage clear of second-rate characters. I never think of Mr. Kean’s Othello without an intrusive reflection upon the subject of Mr. Cooper’s Cassio; I never call to mind a gorgeous scattering forth of roses from Mr. Canning, without a painful idea of some contemporary effusion of poppies from Mr. Hume. And thus, beautiful Margaret, it is in vain that I endeavour to separate your fascination from the group which was collected around you. Perhaps that dominion, which at this moment I feel almost revived, recurs more vividly to my imagination, when the forms and figures of all by whom it was contested are associated in its renewal.

First comes Amelia the magnificent, the acknowledged belle of the county, very stiff and very dumb in her unheeded and uncontested supremacy; and next, the most black-browed of fox-hunters, Augusta, enumerating the names of her father’s stud, and dancing as if she imitated them; and then the most accomplished Jane, vowing that for the last month she had endured immense _ennui_, that she thinks Lady Olivia prodigiously _fade_, that her cousin Sophy is quite _brillante_ to-night, and that Mr. Peters plays the violin _à merveille_.

“I am bored, my dear Villars--positively bored! The light is bad and the music abominable; there is no spring in the boards and less in the conversation; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing worth looking at in the room.”

I shook hands with my friend, bowed to three or four people, and was moving off. As I passed to the door I met two ladies in conversation. “Don’t you dance any more, Margaret?” said one. “Oh no,” replied the other, “I am bored, my dear Louisa--positively bored! The light is bad and the music abominable; there is no spring in the boards and less in the conversation; it is a lovely moonlight night, and there is nothing worth looking at in the room.”

I never was distanced in a jest. I put on the look of a ten years’ acquaintance and commenced parley. “Surely you are not going away yet! You have not danced with me, Margaret: it is impossible you can be so cruel!” The lady behaved with wonderful intrepidity. “She would allow me the honour--but I was very late; really I had not deserved it.” And so we stood up together.

“Are you not very impertinent?”

“Very; but you are very handsome. Nay, you are not to be angry; it was a fair challenge and fairly received.”

“And you will not even ask my pardon?”

“No! it is out of my way! I never do those things; it would embarrass me beyond measure. Pray let us accomplish an introduction: not altogether a usual one, but that matters little. Vyvyan Joyeuse--rather impertinent, and very fortunate--at your service.”

“Margaret Orleans--very handsome, and rather foolish--at your service!”

Margaret danced like an angel. I knew she would. I could not conceive by what blindness I had passed four hours without being struck. We talked of all things that are, and a few beside. She was something of a botanist, so we began with flowers; a digression upon China roses carried us to China--the Mandarins with little brains, and the ladies with little feet--the Emperor--the Orphan of China--Voltaire--Zayre--criticism--Dr. Johnson--the Great Bear--the system of Copernicus--stars--ribbons--garters--the Order of the Bath--sea-bathing--Dawlish--- Sidmouth--Lord Sidmouth--Cicero--Rome--Italy--Alfieri--Metastasio--fountains--groves--gardens; and so, as the dancing concluded, we contrived to end as we began, with Margaret Orleans and botany.

Margaret talked well on all subjects and wittily on many. I had expected to find nothing but a romping girl, somewhat amusing, and very vain. But I was out of my latitude in the first five minutes, and out of my senses in the next. She left the room very early, and I drove home, more astonished than I had been for many years.

Several weeks passed away, and I was about to leave England to join my sisters on the Continent. I determined to look once more on that enslaving smile, whose recollection had haunted me more than once. I had ascertained that she resided with an old lady who took two pupils, and taught French and Italian, and music and manners, at an establishment called Vine House. Two days before I left the country, I had been till a late hour shooting at a mark with a duelling pistol, an entertainment, of which, perhaps from a lurking presentiment, I was very fond. I was returning alone when I perceived, by the light of an enormous lamp, a board by the wayside bearing the welcome inscription, “Vine House.” “Enough,” I exclaimed, “enough! One more scene before the curtain drops. Romeo and Juliet by lamplight!” I roamed about the dwelling-place of all I held dear, till I saw a figure at one of the windows in the back of the house, which it was quite impossible to doubt. I leaned against a tree in a sentimental position, and began to chant my own rhymes thus:--

Pretty coquette, the ceaseless play
Of thine unstudied wit,
And thy dark eye’s remembered ray
By buoyant fancy lit,
And thy young forehead’s clear expanse,
Where the locks slept, as through the dance,
Dreamlike, I saw thee flit,
Are far too warm, and far too fair,
To mix with aught of earthly care;
But the vision shall come when my day is done,
A frail and a fair and a fleeting one!

And if the many boldly gaze
On that bright brow of thine,
And if thine eye’s undying rays
On countless coxcombs shine
And if thy wit flings out its mirth,
Which echoes more of air than earth,
For other ears than mine,
I heed not this; ye are fickle things,
And I like your very wanderings;
I gaze, and if thousands share the bliss,
Pretty capricious! I heed not this.

In sooth I am a wayward youth,
As fickle as the sea,
And very apt to speak the truth,
Unpleasing though it be;
I am no lover; yet, as long
As I have heart for jest or song,
An image, sweet, of thee,
Locked in my heart’s remotest treasures,
Shall ever be one of its hoarded pleasures;
This from the scoffer thou hast won,
And more than this he gives to none.

“Are they your own verses?” said my idol at the window.

“They are yours, Margaret! I was only the versifier; you were the muse herself.”

“The muse herself is obliged to you. And now what is your errand? For it grows late, and you must be sensible--no, that you never will be--but you must be aware that this is very indecorous.”

“I am come to see you, dear Margaret--which I cannot without candles--to see you, and to tell you that it is impossible I can forget----”

“Bless me! what a memory you have. But you must take another opportunity for your tale; for----”

“Alas! I leave England immediately.”

“A pleasant voyage to you! There, not a word more; I must run down to coffee.”

“Now may I never laugh more,” I said, “if I am baffled thus.” So I strolled back to the front of the house and proceeded to reconnoitre. A bay-window was half open, and in a small neat drawing-room I perceived a group assembled: an old lady, with a high muslin cap and red ribbons, was pouring out the coffee; her nephew, a tall awkward young gentleman, silting on one chair and resting his legs on another, was occupied in the study of Sir Charles Grandison; and my fair Margaret was leaning on a sofa, and laughing immoderately. “Indeed, miss,” said the matron, “you should learn to govern your mirth; people will think you came out of Bedlam.”

I lifted the window gently, and stepped into the room. “Bedlam, madam!” quoth I, “I bring intelligence from Bedlam; I arrived last week.”

The tall awkward young gentleman stared; and the aunt half said, half shrieked, “What in the name of wonder are you?”

“Mad, madam! very particularly mad! Mad as a hare in March or a Cheapside blood on Sunday morning. Look at me! do I not foam? Listen to me! do I not rave? Coffee, my dear madam, coffee; there is no animal so thirsty as your madman in the dog-days.”

“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.

“My good sir,” I began. But my original insanity began to fail me, and I drew forthwith upon Ossian’s. “Fly! receive the wind and fly; the blasts are in the hollow of my hand, the course of the storm is mine!”

“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.

“I look on the nations and they vanish; my nostrils pour the blast of death; I come abroad on the winds; the tempest is before my face; but my dwelling is calm, above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant.”

“Do you mean to insult us?” said the old lady.

“Ay! do you mean to insult my aunt?--really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman.

“I shall call in my servants,” said the old lady.

“I am the humblest of them,” said I, bowing.

“I shall teach you a different tune,” said the tall awkward young gentleman, “really!”

“Very well, my dear sir; my instrument is the barrel-organ;” and I cocked my sweet little pocket companion in his face, “Vanish, little Kastril; for by Hannibal, Heliogabalus, and Holophernes, time is valuable, madness is precipitate, and hair-triggers are the word! Vanish!”

“Eh, really!” said the tall awkward young gentleman, and performed an _entrechat_ which carried him to the door: the old lady had disappeared at the first note of the barrel-organ. I locked the door, and found Margaret in a paroxysm of laughter. “I wish you had shot him,” she said, when she recovered; “I wish you had shot him: he is a sad fool.”

“Do not talk of him; I am speaking to you, beautiful Margaret, possibly for the last time! Will you ever think of me? Perhaps you will. But let me receive from you some token that I may dote upon in other years; something that may be a hope to me in my happiness, and a consolation in calamity; something--nay! I never could talk romance; but give me one lock of your hair, and I will leave England with resignation.”

“You have earned it like a true knight,” said Margaret; and she severed from her head a long glossy ringlet. “Look!” she continued, “you must to horse, the country has risen for your apprehension.” I turned towards the window. The country had indeed risen. Nothing was to be seen but gossoons in the van and gossips in the rear, red faces and white jackets, gallants in smock-frocks and gay damsels in grogram. Bludgeons were waving, and torches were flashing, as far as the gaze could reach. All the chivalry of the place was arming and chafing, and loading for a volley of pebbles and oaths together.

I kneeled down and kissed her hand. It was the happiest moment of my life! “Now,” said I, “_au revoir_, my sweet Margaret!” and in a moment I was in the lane.

“Gentlemen, be pleased to fall back! Farther yet--a few paces farther! Stalwart kern in buckskin, be pleased to lay down your cat-o’-nine-tails! Old knight of the plush jerkin, ground your poker! So, fair damsel with the pitchfork, you are too pretty for so rude an encounter! Most miraculous Magog with the sledge-hammer, flit! Sooty Cupid with the link, light me from Paphos. Ha! tall friend of the barrel-organ, have you turned staff officer? Etna and Vesuvius! Wild fire and wit! Blunderbusses and steam! Fly! Ha! have I not Burgundy in my brain, murder in my plot, and a whole train of artillery in my coat-pocket?” Right and left the ranks opened for my egress, and in a few minutes I was alone on the road, and whistling “Lillibullero.”

This was my first folly. I looked at the lock of hair often, but I never saw Margaret again. She has become the wife of a young clergyman, and resides with him on a small living in Staffordshire. I believe she is very happy, and I have forgotten the colour of her eyes.

POINTS.

“Peregrine,” said Lady Mary, “write.”
“I will make a point of it, may it please you ladyship.”

“Ο mes enfans! quelles âmes que celles qui ne sont inquiètes que
des mouvemens de l’écliptique, ou que des mœurs et des arts des
Chinois!”

MARMONTEL.

How far our happiness may be advanced or endangered by the indulgence of a lively interest in all things and persons that chance throws in our way, is a point on which I never could make up my mind. I have seen the man of feeling rapt up in the fervour of his affection or the enthusiasm of his benevolence, and I have believed him perfectly happy; but I have seen him again when he has discovered that his affection had been wasted on a fool, and his benevolence lavished on a scoundrel, and I have believed him the most wretched of men. Again, I have looked on the man of the world in an hour of trouble or embarrassment, and I have envied his philosophy and his self-command; but I have marked him too in the day of revel and exultation, and I have shrunk from the immobility of his features and the torpor of his smile.

I could never settle it to my satisfaction. Acute pleasure seems to be always the forerunner of intense pain, and weariness the inseparable demon which dogs the steps of gratification. I have examined all ranks and all faces; I have looked into eyes and I have looked into folios; I have lost patience and I have lost time; I have made inquiries of many and enemies of not a few; and drawn confessions and conclusions from demoiselles who never had feelings, and from dowagers who have survived them, from bards who have nourished them in solitude, and from barristers who have crushed them in Westminster Hall. The choice spirit who is loudest at his club to-night will be dullest in his chambers to-morrow, and the girl who is merriest at the dance will infallibly be palest at the breakfast-table. How shall I decide? The equability which lives, or the excitement which dies? The beef without the mustard, or the mustard without the beef?

Chance, or my kind stars, for I am very often inclined to believe in their agency, especially on fine moonlight nights, has flung me into a circle of acquaintance, where the pleasures and the pains attendant upon these different tempers of mind are continually forced upon my notice, and hold me delightfully balanced, like Mahomet’s coffin, between earth and ether. Davenant Cecil is a being as thoroughly made up of sympathies and affections as ever was a puppet of springs or a commentator of absurdities. He never experienced, he never could endure five minutes of calm weather; he is always carried up into the heaven and down again into the deep; every hope, every exertion, every circumstance, be it of light or of grave import, is to him equally productive of its exaltation or its depression; like the Proserpina of fable he is in Olympus half the year, and in Tartarus the other. Marmaduke Villars has about as much notion of raptures and enthusiasm as a Mohawk chief entertains of turtle soup, or a French milliner of the differential calculus. Except that he prefers claret to port, and Drury Lane to Covent Garden, and eau de Montpellier to eau de Cologne, I doubt whether he is conscious of any predilection for one thing or any aversion to another. Marmaduke is like Ladurlad in everything except “the fire in his heart, and the fire in his brain;” and Davenant is the Sorcerer Benshee, who rode on a fast horse, and talked with many, and jested with many, and laughed loudly, and wept wildly for the things he saw; yet was he bound by his compact to the fiend to sit at no table, and to lie on no couch, and to speed forward by night and by day, sleeping never, and resting never, even till his appointed hour.

A short time ago Davenant and myself received an invitation to spend a few days with Villars. His favourite hunter, Sir Peter, had thrown him or fallen with him, I forget which, and after being a little put to rights, as he expressed it, at the little country place where the accident happened, he had been removed to the Hall, and ordered to keep himself quiet. There seemed to be some chance of his compliance with this admonition, as the rest of his family were all absent, and there was not a house within five miles; but in order to counteract these favourable symptoms as much as possible, he summoned us to his sofa. Cecil and Villars are the antipodes of one another; and, as is commonly the case, are the fondest friends upon all occasions, because they never can agree upon one.

We went accordingly, and were rejoiced to find our friend, pale to be sure, and very intimate with crutches, but still apparently free from pain, and enjoying that medicinal level of spirits which is a better preservative against fever than you will easily find from the lancet or the draught. He congratulated himself upon the safety of his nose, which Mr. Perrott the apothecary had pronounced broken, and only lamented the loss of his boot, which it had been necessary to cut from his leg. In a short time we quite forgot that he was in the slightest degree damaged, and conversed on divers topics without any intrusive compassion for his flannel and his slipper.

And first, as in duty bound, we began to discuss the _Quarterly Magazine_, and its past success, and its future hopes, and its patrons, and its contributors. Davenant was wonderfully angry because some “fathomless blockheads” found obscurities in his lyrical poem. “If there were any descendings into the deep fountains of thought, any abstruse researches ‘into the mind of man’--in short, to speak plainly, if there were anything in the poem which a man might be very proud to risk his reputation upon, then one might be prepared for darkness and coldness in this improving and understanding age; but a mere fancy piece like this, as simple in design as it is in execution--you know, Marmaduke, that incapacity to comprehend must be either gross stupidity or supreme affectation.”

“I think much may be said for the ‘blockheads,’” observed Marmaduke, shaking his head.

“You think no such thing,” said Davenant, “and you feel that you think no such thing: I shall detest you, Villars, if you ‘write yourself down an ass,’ merely for the sake of telling me I am one.”

“You know, my dear Davenant,” said Villars, “you know you never detested any body in your life, except, perhaps, a few of the commentators upon Shakespeare, and the critic who considered Campbell the first poet of the day and Wordsworth the second. But seriously, I cannot conceive why you are ruffled about your verses; you know they are admired, as Mr. Rigge says of his soap, by all the best judges; not to go out of our own circle, you know Lady Mary, and Tristram, and Gerard, who are worth all the world, think them about the best things going; nay, I am not clear that our good friend Joyeuse has not some suspicion of the kind, only he never speaks a word of truth upon any subject. And, loaded as you are with all these accumulated commendations, you want to add the weight of my valueless voice to your burthen, and to----”

“There never was a man more mistaken; what should I care for your opinion? It is not worth a straw, it is not worth ‘Gertrude of Wyoming’ to me. But I am in a passion when I see a tolerably clever man making a fool of himself wilfully. I read the poem to your sister, and she understood it perfectly.”

“Then you persuaded her first that she was a clever girl, and she thought her comprehension would confirm the idea. I will wager a beauty against a bottle, or a haunch of venison against a page of rhyme, or ‘The Pleasures of Hope’ against ‘The Excursion,’ or any other boundless odds which you like to suggest, that with the same object in view she shall admire the Iliad or dote upon the Koran.”

“There is no answer to such an argument. All I know is, that Amelia found nothing difficult in the poem.”

“What! she told you so, I suppose.”

“No; her eyes did.”

“Then her eyes lied confoundedly. Never, my dear Davenant--never, while you live, believe in the language of the eyes. I would rather believe in the miracles of Apollonius, or the infallibility of the Pope of Rome, or the invincibility of the French army. I believed a pretty piercing pair once, which told me the wearer was very fond of a particular person, and I cultivated my whiskers accordingly, and did double duty at my glass. By Paphos and its patroness, she went off in a month with a tall captain of fusiliers, and left me to despondency and the new novel.”

“And you longed to be so deceived again,” said Davenant.

“No; it was very fatiguing. Never, while you live, believe in the language of the eyes. But you will, because you were born to be a fool, and you must fulfil your destiny. As Rousseau says--he is somewhere about the room----”

“I have him in my hand,” said Davenant; “what a delightful little book! I dote upon the size, and the binding, and the type, and the----”

“Yes; he was of great service to me a fortnight ago, when my hurt was rather annoying at night. My people prescribed opium, and I used to take Jean Jacques instead. But this way is my treasure-house of reading: _eh! le voici!_” And he led us up to a bookcase where was conspicuously placed an immense edition of Voltaire, and began taking down the volumes and expressing the dotage of his delight with wonderful rapidity. “Ah! Alzire! charming--and Merope; you are going to talk about Shakespeare, Davenant. Hold your tongue!--a noisy, gross, fatiguing--no, no: the French stage for me!--_Eh! ma belle Zaïre!_--the French stage for me!--_tout dort, tout est tranquille, et_--and Candide! oh! I could laugh for a century. _Et puis--la Pucelle! oh, pour le coup_----”

And _le coup_ came with a vengeance; for Davenant, who hates a French play worse than poison, had just found something overpoweringly ridiculous in the woes of “L’Orphelin de la Chine,” and bursting into an ungovernable shriek of laughter, dropped some six or seven quarto volumes upon the wounded foot of our unfortunate stoic. He fell on the floor, in agony, and almost in a passion.

“Damnation!--_n’importe!_ My sweet Davenant, how could you---- Peregrine, my good fellow, do pull the bell! Horrible! Why, Cecil, how out of your wits you look! _Ave Maria! Vive la bagatelle!_ Why you look like a _diable_!--like a physician called in too late--_mort de ma vie!_--or like a--_monstre_!--like a wood demon at the English Opera House. Ring again, Courtenay! Ha, ha!--I played one myself once--_Oh! que c’est affreux!_--for a wager, ha, ha!--Oh!--with a long torch, ha, ha!--fire and brimstone!--with long black hair--_peste!_--but it would never stand on end like yours! _oh que non!_ Ring again, Courtenay!--_Eh! Perpignan!_ here has been a fall! a fall,--as they say upon ‘Change. _Cher Perpignan_: take me to bed, Perpignan; take it easy--_doucement!_ Ah! the wood demon, Davenant! I shall never get over it!--ha, ha!--Oh!----”

And thus was Marmaduke carried off, laughing, and screaming, and jesting, and swearing, by turns. His medical attendant was summoned, and we saw him no more that night; he sent us word that he was as well as could be expected, but that he should never get over the wood demon, in spite of which consolatory intelligence Davenant wore a Tyburn countenance the whole evening.

We met, however, the next morning, and proceeded most laudably to remember nothing of the accident but its absurdity. “I never found Voltaire heavy before,” said Villars, shaking Davenant by the hand; “but you poets of the Lake are so horribly in the habit of taking liberties with your own feet that you have no compassion at all for those of your friends. Mercy upon my five toes! they will not meet in a boot for a twelvemonth; and now, _àpropos de bottes_, we must have some breakfast.”

Rain confined us to the house, the newspapers were full of advertisements, and the billiard-table was undergoing repair. Davenant endeavoured to define intensity, and I endeavoured to sleep; Marmaduke struck his sister’s tambourine, and the great clock struck one. We began to feel as uncomfortably idle as a gaol-bird who has just been put in, or a Minister who has just been turned out. At last some notice was taken of two miniatures of our friend and his sister, which had been done many years ago, and now hung on opposite sides of the mantelpiece, gazing tenderly at one another in all the holiday magnificence which was conferred by laced cap and pink ribbons upon the one, and by sky-blue jacket and sugar-loaf buttons upon the other. Hence we began to talk of painting, and of “Raphael, Correggio, and stuff,” until it was determined that we should proceed to make a pilgrimage through a long gallery of family portraits, which Marmaduke assured us had been covered with commendations and cobwebs ever since he left his cradle. He hobbled before us on his crutches, and made a very sufficient cicerone. Marmaduke has no wit; but he has a certain off-hand manner which often passes for it, and is sometimes as good a thing.

“That old gentleman,” he began, pointing to a magnificent fellow in rich chain armour, whose effigies occupied one end of the gallery, “that old gentleman is the founder of the family. Blessings on his beard! I almost fancy it has grown longer since I saw it last. He fought inordinately at Harfleur and Agincourt, was eminently admired and bruised, won a whole grove of laurels, and lost three fingers and a thumb. See, over his head is the crest which was his guerdon; a little finger rampant, and the motto blazoned gorgeously round, ‘_Mon doyt est mon droit!_’”

“A splendid servant of the sword,” said Davenant; “what a glorious scope of forehead, and what a lowering decision in the upper lip. A real soldier! He would have cleft down a dozen of your modern male _figurantes_!”

“Perhaps so,” replied Villars; “but you see he made a bad hand of it, notwithstanding. His nephew, there, is something more soberly habited, but he was not a jot less mad. Who would dream of such a frenzy in sackcloth and sad countenance? He was a follower of Wyckliffe before it was the fashion, and----”

“An excellent piece of workmanship too! I like to see some fury in a man’s faith. Who can endure a minister of the gospel mounting his pulpit at Marylebone, with his well-ordered bands, and his clean manuscript, and his matter-of-fact disquisition, and his matter-of-course tone! That bald apostle has lips I could have listened to: he might have been an enthusiast, or a bigot, or a madman, or e’en what you will; but he has a show of zeal, and an assumption of authority; there is fire about the old man!”

“There was once,” said Marmaduke, “for he was burned in Smithfield. Come hither, here is a young fellow you will admire--Everard the Beautiful (by the way, they say he is like me), who fell in love with the pretty Baroness de Pomeroy. He used to sing under her balcony at midnight, out of pure gallantry, and out of all tune: catching sighs from the high window, and colds from the high wind. He was full three years wailing and whispering, and dreaming and dying, and smarting in the left breast, and sonneting in the left turret. At last came the fifth act of the drama, death and happiness blended together with strict poetic propriety; the fates threw him into her arms one night, and the baron threw him into the moat one morning.”

“I loathe and detest that eternal sneer of yours. You believe and feel, Marmaduke, although you are too weak to confess it, that the life you have described, a turbid unresting sea of passion and anxiety, and hope and fear, and brief calm and long madness, is worth--oh! twenty times over--the sleepy river of a pedant’s philosophy, or the dirty ditch-water of your own clumsy indifference.”

“Why, my dear Davenant,” said Marmaduke, quietly, “you know love has its ditch-water occasionally; my poor ancestor found it so. But pass on. Here is a courtier of Queen Elizabeth’s day, lying on the green sward in despondency and an attitude, with a myriad of cares and a bunch of daffy-down-dillies in his bosom. There is your true cavalier; a health to short wit and long spurs, blue eyes and white satin! The race has been quite extinct since rapiers went out and political economists came in.”

“I wish,” muttered Cecil, “I wish I had lived with those men. To have had Spenser for my idol, or Sydney for my friend--to have held Leicester’s mantle at court, or Raleigh’s back-hand at tennis--to have stormed a town with Drake, or a bottle with Shakespeare--by Elizabeth’s ruff, it would have been worth an eternity! That was your age for choice spirits!”

“You will find very choice spirits at the Hummums,” said Marmaduke; “but we are getting into the Great Rebellion. It abounded in good subjects--for the pencil, I mean, not for the prince. Never was the land so sorely plagued with dire confusion and daubed canvas. There is silly Sir Lacy who lost his head, and was none the poorer; and sillier Sir Maurice, who lost his lands, and was many acres the poorer: and there is honest Sir Paul, who came in with the Restoration, and wrote my favourite song. Ha, Davenant!

“‘For prince or for prig,
Long locks or flowery wig,
I don’t care a fig!--
Fill the glasses.
So I may hold my land,
And my bottle in my hand,
And moisten life’s sand
While it passes.’”

There was a curious portrait a little farther on--a beautiful and interesting woman, as far as neck and bosom could give us any information; but in place of her countenance was painted a thick black veil. I asked for her history. “Oh,” said Villars, “that damosel was called Priscilla the Penniless. She was wonderfully killing, but of course that is not the reason she is veiled. Her uncle, the existing head of the family, struck her face out of the picture, and her name out of his will, because she married a young Roundhead, who had no merit but his insolence and no fortune but his sword.”

“What a detestable fool!” said Davenant, meaning the uncle.

“I think she was,” said Marmaduke, meaning the niece. “_Mais allons_; let me show you one more set of features, and we will adjourn. Here is my earliest and most complete idea of feminine beauty. Down on your knees, Davenant, and worship. The fairy-like symmetry of the shape, and the pretty threatening of the right arm, and the admirable nonchalance of the left, and the studied tranquillity of the black hair, and the eloquent malignity of the dark eyes, and the exquisite caprice of the nose, and the laughing scorn of her little lips! By Venus’ dimple, Davenant, I have stood here, and talked rhapsodies to her for hours.”

“Pray give us one now,” said Cecil, laughing.

“I will. Fairest of Nature’s works! perfection in duodecimo! I speak to you, and you do not hear; I question you, and you do not answer: but I read your taste in your dress, and your character in your countenance. You are the brightest of all earthly beauties. You would call me a blockhead if I called you a goddess; you are fashioned for a drawing-room, and not for Olympus--for champagne, and not for nectar; you are born for conquest and for mirth, to busy your delicate brain with the slaves of to-day, and to snap your delicate fingers at the slaves of yesterday; epigrams only are indited to your charms, witticisms only are uttered in your presence; you think laughter the elixir vitæ, and a folio of theology poison; you look with contempt on the Damon who has died for your sake, and with kindness on the fool who bows to the ground and vows he is ‘yours entire,’ head and hand, pen and pistol, from infancy to age, and from shining ringlet to shoe-ribbon!”

“Admirable!” cried Cecil, “and after all the woman is nothing extraordinary.”

“_Chacun a son goût_,” said Villars.

“She has no poetry about her,” said the first.

“I never write poetry about anybody,” said the second.

“She is not guilty of intellect,” said the reviler.

“She is guilty of coquetry,” said the admirer.

“She would never understand Milton,” said the poet.

“She would dance divinely,” said the fashionable.

“You are over head and ears in love,” said Davenant, laughing immensely.

“She died anno Domini seventeen hundred!” said Marmaduke, with inestimable gravity; and so we left the gallery.

We parted from our friend the next morning. If perfect indifference and composure in all trials and temptations can constitute happiness, Villars will be a happy man; but there is something repulsive in his very happiness. Which shall I prefer? Marmaduke, with his unsunned and unclouded weather, or Davenant, with his eternal alternation of bright glow and fleeting shower?

I could never settle the point.

LEONORA.

Poor Alonzo! He was the best friend that ever drank Xeres: he picked me out of the Guadalquivir, when I deemed I had said my last prayer.

It was a very conciliating introduction. I never in my life made a friend of a man to whom I was introduced in a formal kind of way, with bows from both parties, and cordiality from neither. I love something more stirring, more animated; the river of life is at best but a quiet stupid stream, and I want an occasional pebble to ruffle its surface withal. The most agreeable introductions that ever fell to my lot were these--my introduction to Pendragon, who was overturned with me in the York Mail; my introduction to Eliza, who contrived to faint in my arms on board the _Albion_ packet; and my introduction to Alonzo, who picked me out of the Guadalquivir.

I was strolling beside it on a fine moonlight night, after a brilliant and fatiguing party, at which the Lady Isidora had made ten conquests, and Don Pedro had told twenty stories: I was tired to death of dancing and iced waters, glaring lights and lemonade; and as I looked on the sleepy wave, and the dark trees, and the cloudless sky, I felt that I could wander there for ever, and dream of poetry, and--two or three friends.

The sound of a guitar and a sweet voice waked me; I do not know why I always associate the ideas of pleasant tones and bright eyes together; but I cannot help it, and of course I was very anxious to see the musician of the Guadalquivir. I clambered, by the aid of cracked stones, and bushes which hung to them, to the summit of a low wall; and looking down perceived a cavalier sitting with a lady under a grove of sycamores. The cavalier seemed to have seen hardly seventeen winters; he was slender and tall, with a ruddy complexion, black hair, and a quick merry eye. The lady appeared full five years older; her eyes were as quick, and her ringlets as black, and her complexion as warm, but more delicate: they were evidently brother and sister; but that was a matter of indifference to me.

I heard a Spanish song upon the fall of the Abencerrage, and another upon the exploits of the Cid: then the lady began an Italian ditty, but she had not accomplished the first stanza when a decayed stone gave way, and carried me through all the intricacies of bush and bramble into the cold bed of the river. I could not swim a stroke.

I remember nothing more until the minute when I opened my eyes, and found myself in a pretty summer-house, very wet and very cold, with Alonzo and his sister leaning over me. “For the love of heaven” were the first words I heard, “run, Alonzo, to call the servants.”

“I wait,” said Alonzo, “to hear him speak. If he be a Frenchman he goes to the bottom again.”

The Fates be thanked that I was born in Derbyshire, and called Sir Harry my father; if I had bathed in the Seine instead of the Derwent, I had rued my parentage bitterly. Alonzo detested the French.

From that time we were always together. They were orphans, and had scarcely a relation in the world except an aunt who had gone to the cloister, and an uncle who had crossed the sea, and a rich cousin who had betaken himself St. Jerome knew whither; but Alonzo, who had a much nearer concern in the matter, seemed to know little enough about it. They had travelled much, and Leonora was mistress apparently of the literature of all Europe; yet they went rarely into company, for they doted upon one another with a love so perfect and so engrossing, that you might have fancied them, as they fancied themselves, alone in the world, with no toil and no pleasure, but solitary walks, and songs of tenderness, and gazings upon one another’s eyes. If ever perfection existed in woman, it existed here. I do not know why I did not fall in love with Leonora; but to be sure I was in love with five or six at a time.

A few months flew delightfully away. Leonora taught me Spanish, and Alonzo taught me to swim. Every morning was occupied with romantic excursions by water or by land, and every evening was beguiled with literary conversation or music from the loveliest voice and the most eloquent strings that ever I had the fortune to listen to. And when we parted, we parted with warm hearts, and pleasant anticipations, and affectionate tears. In two brief years those hearts were separated, and those anticipations were blighted for ever, and those tears were exchanged for tears of bitterness and of mourning.

The troubles of Spain commenced; and my poor Alonzo joined the Patriots, and fell in his first campaign. Leonora had been--not a heroine, for I hate heroines--but a noble woman. She herself had decorated the young victim whom she sacrificed to her country’s good; she had embroidered the lace on his uniform with her own hand; she had given him the scarf which was found turned round his arm on the field; and she had smiled mournfully as she bade him wear it till some one more beautiful or more beloved had chosen him for her knight. And when he had girded on his father’s sword, and lingered with his hand upon his courser’s mane, she had said “farewell” in a firm voice, and wept while she said it.

It was on a journey to Scotland that I passed through the small village in which the Spanish lady had shrouded her fading beauty and her breaking heart. I sent up my name to her, and was admitted into her little drawing-room immediately. Oh! how altered she seemed that day. All the colour had disappeared from her cheek, and all the freshness from her lip; she had still the white hand and arm, which I had seen running so lightly over the strings of her theorbo, but they were wasted terribly away; and though her long dark locks were braided as carefully as they had been in happier days, they did not communicate the idea of brightness and brilliancy which they had been wont to scatter over her countenance. She endeavoured to rise from the sofa as I entered; but the effort was too great for her, and she sat down without speaking. She was evidently dying; and the contrast between the parting and the meeting, and the vague vision of the past and the melancholy reality of the present, struck me so forcibly and so sadly, that I stayed with my hand on the door and burst into tears.

“We are not to weep thus,” she said; “he fell like a true Spaniard, and I only regret that I was not born a man, that I might have put my rifle to my shoulder and died with my hand in his. Pray sit down; it is a long time since I have seen any friend who can talk to me of the old days.”

I suggested that she ought to endeavour to think less of the losses she had endured, and to dwell more cheerfully on the tranquillity which might yet be in store for her. “I should despise you now,” she answered, “if I could think this advice came from your heart. What! you would have me forget him, whose life was my dearest pleasure, and whose death is my greatest pride. Look at this ring,” and she took off a small gold one, and made me remark its motto--_fiel a la muerte_; “he would not have bade me wear this in remembrance of him, if he had not known that he was doomed to perish, if he had not known too that I should be happy afterwards in thinking and dreaming of him.” Then she began to recall minutely every scene and circumstance of our intimacy; inquiring about every study or amusement we had meditated or enjoyed together, whether I had bettered my flute-playing, whether I had studied landscape, whether I had finished Calderon. She wearied herself with talking; and then, leaning her head on the cushions, desired me to take up a book from the table and read to her, that she might hear whether my pronunciation was improved.

I took up the first that presented itself; it was only a manuscript book, containing many scraps and fragments from different authors in her brother’s writing. I laid it down again, and took up the next: it was a Dante which I had given her: I opened it at random and began to read the story of Francesca. When I came to the celebrated lines--

Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria----

“I do not believe a word of it” she said. “I would not lose my recollection for all Mexico.”

I took leave of her soon: for I saw that my presence agitated and wearied her. When I had parted from her before, she had given me a miniature of herself, which she had painted in all the glow of health and spirits, and ardent affections, which then so well became her. Now she gave me another which had been her task or pleasure in sickness and solitude. I do not know why I turn from the first with its fine hues and sparkling lustre, to gaze upon the paleness and languor of the other, with a deeper feeling of melancholy delight.

When I returned from Scotland after the lapse of two months, Leonora was dead. I found the sexton of the village, and desired him to point out to me the spot where she rested. There was a small marble slab over her remains, with the brief inscription, “Leonora.--Addio!” I stood for a few minutes there, and began to moralize and murmur. “It seems only yesterday,” I said, “that she was moving and breathing before me, with all the buoyancy and beauty of her blameless form and her stainless spirit; and now she lies in her purity and her loveliness.”

“She lies in a pretty grave,” said the old sexton, looking with apparent satisfaction on his handiwork.

“She does, indeed, good Nicholas; and her loveliness is but little to the purpose!”

DAMASIPPUS.

DAMASIPPUS. SYRINX. CYANE. GETA. MARSYAS. A MESSENGER.

_Scene_--ROME. _A Cook’s Shop._ _Time_--NIGHT.

DAM. [_entering._] Hilloa! black dweller in darkness! Hilloa! monarch of perfumes and placentæ! How long am I to kick my royal feet before thy damnable dwelling-place, like a half-buried ghost before Charon, or a half-witted Grecian before Troy? Shrivelled imp of Hades, answer me! Was it for me--for me, reptile, the lord of all misrule, the bosom friend of every felon and flagon in Rome, the deepest drinker that ever kissed Chian--saving always the Emperor, whom the Fates and the Furies preserve!--was it for me to stand for an hour, roaring “Syrinx, Syrinx,” louder than ever poet cried Evoe! over his sour verses and sour vinegar, with not a hand of those who live by me to take the bolt from the door and the seal from the bottle? Now, by Pollux----

SYR. Prince of patrons----

DAM. I tell thee, foul fiend, all Rome has been at my heels, hooting and hallooing, sweating and swearing, making a very chaos of greasy caps and grievous imprecations, red flambeaux and faces almost as red, cooks and cobblers, slaves and centurions, money borrowers and money lenders. By Pollux, again I say, Themison is not more weary when he has prescribed for his twentieth patient, nor Palemon, when the last disputant of his hundred has murthered grammar and great Julius together.

SYR. Merciful lord----

DAM. Hecate! We are come to a pretty pass, when a man of my blood may not walk in the dark, and swear in a mask, and kiss a girl in the Capitol, and cudgel a usurer in the Suburra--but fathers, and brothers, and cousins--ay, by the gods of the hearthstone! and mothers and aunts to boot--must start up, like the Argonaut’s harvest, scouring and screaming in all the streets of Rome and all the dialects of its provinces. Marry, hang them! Is there no respect or reverence for my this year’s chariot, or my last year’s fasces? Nay, then, honour may hide in a cloaca, and fashion walk a-foot; patricians shall patronize the tunic, and consulships be sold for an as.

SYR. Most munificent of revellers----

DAM. And for thee, scum of Ethiopia, for thee to keep thy supporter and thy sovereign lingering thus long before thy threshold, and listening to the cries, and the curses, and the distant murmurs of a mob. May I never fling Venus again, may I never lip Mela’s Falernian, may the black plague poison my pickles, may the green jacket fail in the circus, if ever I danced the client so long--no, not before the Emperor’s gate--no, not under Triphenion’s window, though she be witty, and wicked, and gay, and golden-haired, the fairest and the fondest of the daughters of Corinth! Epona! belike thou hast forgotten me; there is nothing to be remembered in my forehead and my features! Look at me, villain, slave--who am I?

SYR. My most admirable and excellent master, I lick thy foot. Thou art the supreme of sin and song, the chief choice of charioteers, the love of all thy slaves, the envy of all the Senate, priest of pledgings and king of cups, the Mars of midnight, the Cupid of costume, the Jupiter of all joviality!

DAM. Excellent well! I had not deemed thy recollection so good; marry, thou mayest perhaps recollect the far-back landing, and the lorn look, and the chalked sole, and the bored ear; and thou mayest perhaps have some slight vision of thrushes fried to dust, and boars burned to powder, and the inflicted scourge, and the threatened crucifixion. I thought that withered skin of thine had undergone metempsychosis, or that thou hadst found the two springs of Lethe in Vindicta and Vertigo.

SYR. Prince of men, it is not so lightly that I forget my native dust, or the hand that raised me from it. All I have is thine own; take of it to eat or to drink, or to wear or to waste; set thy slipper on my head, and crush my brains beneath thee; give me thy dagger, and let me pledge a health to thee in my best heart’s blood.

DAM. Honest Syrinx, I forgive thee! let there be new peace and old wine between us. Ha! little Cyane, where hast thou hidden thy mirth and mitra? Come hither, little Cyane! What! I warrant me thou wert afraid of me, because my frown was somewhat grim, and my posture somewhat gladiatorial. But mine anger is vanished; I am as cold as the snows of Hæmus, or the pleadings of Pedo. Sit by me, Cyane; we will have music anon.

CYA. Now, by Venus, I had not dreamed we should see you again, Damasippus! Have you been grieving with the jaundice or grappling with the Gauls? Have you hunted Parnassus and the columns, or cultivated philosophy and a beard? Ah! now I bethink me; there were two tormentors who kept your sweet looks from us; soldier and sophist they were, uncle and father. Tisiphone whip them for it! And what hast thou done with them, dear Damasippus: him of the civic crown, with his sword and buckler, his sour look and sagum; who prated to you of cohorts and conquests, warfare and wounds, Syria and Armenia, Ister and Rhine? and him of the Stoic school, with his good morals and grave face, his short breath and long speeches, who only lived for profitless dispute, and endless enthymeme, and meaningless maxim, and senseless syllogism. Mercury! but they were a valuable pair to all the lovers of laughter.

DAM. They were, Cyane, they were; but they were loathsome poisoners of enjoyment, and detestable marrers of mettle. Here is to the quiet of their encampment. Mine uncle--the gods be thanked for that--is with the Prætor in Spain; and my father--the gods be thanked for that too--is with his ancestors in the Flaminian; and I am here, sweet Cyane--the gods be thanked for that, above all--sufficiently merry and reasonably drunk. I thought I should have died before supper. A hundred plagues have haunted me since daybreak. My head was out of order, and my physician out of town; and my mistress broke an appointment, and my curricle broke down; and the theatres were empty, and the courts were full; and merry Marcus was swearing in the sullens, and solemn Saleius was reciting in the baths. Phœbus blight him for it! Λ decree of the Senate would never stop that eternal babbler; it would be easier to silence the Danube. Does he think that man, whose life is fourscore years, has nothing to study and care for here but warrior and amazon, epic and ode, maidens shrieking in sapphics and heroes howling in hexameters?

CYA. Nay now, sweetest soul of mine, you are very rude to the poets. May I never see a solidus again, if I do not love a poet as I love my own soul! They are all so humble, and so obedient, and so starving. Poor Saleius never fingers a denarius, but it comes straight to us at the Jews’ gate. And then he is so happy and so agreeable, and so fond of his liquor and his laurels; and after his second cup, “Cyane,” says he, “did you never hear my Orestes? Never, I’ll be sworn! Woe for thy education, Cyane; thou wert born among savage barbarians, and suckled by tigresses, and cradled in rocks and stones. But it shall be amended. ‘Learning,’ as Ovid sung before me,

“‘Learning and love are good lustrations,
And purify all rude sensations,’”

And then he throws himself into an attitude thus, takes off his cup with a tragic smack of the lips, and “Cyane,” quoth he, “thou shalt hear sounds which Hercules might have earned by the repetition of his old labours, which Cleopatra might have bought with the brightest jewel in her crown. Their melody might make a client pause when he throws his first glance on the sportula, or a lawyer when the last drop of his clepsydra is putting him into a passion and a gallop. They might wake a Stoic from his mutterings, or a spendthrift from his debauch, or a lover from his dream, or a Christian from his cloud-worship. Listen; I am to recite them at Carus’s to-morrow, and would fain have thy judgment, Cyane, on my voice and manner. By Phœbus, there is some fascination in both, and I could tell thee of some bright-haired ladies who have thought so. Ha!” Upon which I compose my features into a greedy gaze of admiration, and bid Syrinx hold the bottle, and Marsyas hold his tongue; and so my man of loud verses and cheap drink prologuises.

DAM. Let me bathe my lips in the Chian but once more, and so begin, Cyane: thou art an incomparable mimic; Bathyllus is but dirt by thy side.

CYA. What will you have then, sweet Damasippus? Œdipus, the expounder of riddles, or Ajax, the slaughterer of sheep? Medea, with her brats and dragons, or Orestes, with his rags and snakes? for he has stored me with specimens of all.

DAM. The last, I pray thee, the last; let me hear what Orestes says to his tormentors, that I may know how to answer mine. Marry, the fiends in the fish market are becoming so tumultuous now, that a nobleman knows not wherewithal to reply, unless he ransacks the poets for complimentary language.