Chapter II

I like that full fire and expression of eyes,
Where love’s true _materiel_ presides;
With a glance now and then to the jellies and pies,
To ensure us good living besides.
Ye refiners, take _angels_ and _sylphs_ for your pains;
But grant me, ye gods! _flesh and blood and blue veins_,
And dear Dolly—dear Dolly Haynes.

I should not omit mentioning here an incident which at the time extremely amused me. A friend of mine, a barrister, whose extravagant ideas of _refinement_ have frequently proved a source of great entertainment to me, was also a most enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Thomas Moore’s writings, prose and verse. I had read over to him the foregoing rather “of earthy” composition, to which he listened with a shrug of the shoulders and a contraction of the upper lip; and I was desirous of drawing out his opinion thereon by adverting to his own favourite bard.

“Here,” said I, “we have a fine illustration of the natural progress from refinement to sensuality—the amalgamation of which principles is so beautifully depicted by Mr. Thomas Moore in his ‘Loves of the Angels.’”

“Your observation is just,” replied my friend: “I cannot conceive why those elegant amours have been so much carped at—since their only object is to prove that flesh and blood is in very high estimation even with the spirituals.”

“What a triumph to mortality!” replied I.

“And why,” continued he, “should people be so very sceptical as to the _authenticity_ of these angelic love-matches? surely there are no negative proofs; and are we not every day told by the gravest authorities that we are bound at our peril to believe divers matters not an atom more intelligible? For my part, I can’t comprehend why a poet should not be as credible a witness as a bishop on matters that are equally and totally invisible to both of them.”

“True,” observed I, smiling; “and the more so, as poets, generally _residing_ nearer the _sky_ than any other members of society, are likely to get better information.”

“Ay, poor fellows, ‘on compulsion!’” said my friend, with a compassionate sigh.—“But,” resumed he, falling in with my tone, “there is one point which I could have wished that our most melodious of lyrists had cleared up to my satisfaction—_videlicet_, what _gender_ angels really are of?”

“Very little doubt, by logical reasoning, need exist upon that point,” answered I: “Mr. Moore represents his angels in the characters of _gay deceivers_, and those characters being performed by the male sex—_ergo_, angels must be males. You perceive the syllogism is complete?”

“Ay, ay,” said my friend; “but how comes it, then, that when we see a beautiful _woman_, we cry out involuntarily, ‘What an _angel_!’”

“The word _homo_ signifies either man or woman,” replied I; “give a similar latitude to the word _angel_, and you have your choice of sexes! Divers of the classics, and some of the sculptors, perfectly authorise Mr. Moore’s delicious _ambiguity_.”

“That,” said my _Moorish_ friend, “is certainly the fact, and most elegantly has our lyrist handled this question of celestial sexuality: he has paid the highest compliment ever yet conceived to human beauty, by asserting that ethereal spirits, instead of taking up with their own transparent species, prefer the opaque body-colouring of terrestrial dairy-maids—though fastidious casuists may, perhaps, call that a depraved taste.”

“No such thing,” replied I; “it is rather a proof of refined and filtered epicurism. The heathen mythology is crammed with precedents on that point. Every god and goddess in former times (and the sky was then quite crowded with them,)——”

“And may be so still,” interrupted my friend, “for any thing we _know_ to the contrary.”

“They played their several pranks upon our globe,” continued I, “without the slightest compunction: even Jupiter himself frequently became a trespasser on the honour and peace of several very respectable fleshly families. The distinction between the spiritual and corporeal is likewise dexterously touched on by the dramatist Farquhar, who makes one of his characters[29] exclaim to another, ‘I’ll take her _body_, you her _mind_: which has the better bargain?’”

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Footnote 29:

_Archer_ in “The Beaux Stratagem.”

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“But,” rejoined my friend, “modern sentiment, which brings all these matters into collision, had not then been invented: now we can have both in one lot.”

Finally, we determined to consult Mr. Thomas Moore himself upon this most interesting consideration, agreeing that nobody could possibly understand such a refined subject so well as the person who wrote a book about it: we therefore proceeded (as I shall now do) to the next stage of years and of poetry.

The poet and lover was soon fixed at the university of Oxford, where he shortly made fast acquaintance with a couple of hot young Irishmen, who lost no time in easing him of the dregs of his sentimentality, and convinced him clearly that no _rational_ man should ever be in love except when he is _drunk_, in which case it signifies little whom he falls in love with. Thus our youth soon forgot the parsonage, and grew enamoured of the bottle: but having some lees of poetry still remaining within him, the classics and the wine set them a fermenting; and he now wrote drinking-songs, hunting-songs, boating-songs, satires on the shopkeepers’ daughters, and lampoons on the fellows of Jesus and Brazen-nose; answered letters in verse; and, in a word, turned out what the lads called a _genius_.

The reverend private tutor of these young Irishmen wrote one day a letter to our poet in verse, inviting him to “meet at dinner a few fellow-countrymen, just arrived.” The tutor was a hard-going old parson, fond of wine and versification, who had been sent over from Ireland by the father of the two young men above alluded to, with direction to “take care that the lads did not fall into the d——d English _morals_, which would soon turn them into _snow-balls_, and disqualify them ever after from living in their own _proper_ country and _natural society_.” These instructions the tutor faithfully acted up to; and the young poet very much amused the whole party by his humour and turn for rhyming; and was compelled to swear that he would pay them a _visit_, for a couple of years, near Belturbet in Ireland, where they would show him what _living was_. Their father was himself dotingly fond of _poetry_ and the _bag-pipes_; and was induced to send them to Oxford only to please their mother’s brother, who was, most _unfortunately_, an _Englishman_.

My friend’s reply to the parson’s invitation was also in verse, and ran as follows: it was not amiss for a young tipster, and smacked, in some degree, both of Oxford and “Belturbet.”

Please your reverence,—
When parsons and poets their functions unite,
And court the old Muses to sing “an invite,”
The profane and the sacred connected we find,
And are sure of a banquet to every man’s mind.
Though on Pegasus mounted, to Bacchus we fly,
Yet we’ll quaff just like Christians;—our priest tells us why:
“’Tis _moist_ hospitality banishes sin,
For the wine-open’d heart lets benevolence in.”
Then no long canting grace cools our spicy ragout,
While the impatient champagne bristles up his _mousseu_,
Which, darting toward heaven, cries “Come, goblets give!
’Tis my old Pagan cream teaches Christians to live!”
Then the pastor and flock quickly empty the bowl,
And its spirit divides ’twixt the head and the soul.
Though the Jove of our banquet no eagle can boast,
We’ll have plenty of “_kites_ flying” all round our host:
Midst loud peals of laughter, undaunted we’ll sit,
And for flashes of lightning have flashes of wit:
Should his reverence perceive that our _spirits_ are _laid_,
Then hot-pepper’d devils he’ll call to his aid,
And, all Christians surpassing, as Tantalus, see!
The more liquor we quaff, still the drier we’ll be!
But two modes of death sinful mortals should know,
Break their necks from Parnassus, or drown in Bordeaux;
And to which of those deaths I am doom’d from on high,
I’m sure of a parson, who’ll teach me to die.
Then who can refuse to accept of a dinner,
Where the host is from Erin—a priest—_saint_[30]—and sinner?

In fact, this same friend of mine, of whose poetry, or rather versification, I have thus given samples to the reader, is a very peculiar personage: bred to a profession which he never followed, with ample means and no occupation, he has arrived at a ripe age without much increasing his stock of wisdom, or at all diminishing that of his peculiarity. He told me, he found his standard relief against _ennui_ was invoking the Muses, which by ransacking his ideas and puzzling his genius, operated as a stimulus to his brain, and prevented that stagnation of the fluids which our ablest nosologists say is so often the inducement to suicide. My friend argues that the inexhaustible variety of passions, propensities, sentiments, and so forth, inherent to the human frame, and which poets (like noblemen’s fools in days of yore) have a license for dressing in all colours as they think proper, affords to the language of poetry a vast superiority over that of prose: which latter being in its nature but a _hum-drum_ concern, is generally expected to be reasonably correct, tolerably intelligible, and moderately decent;—astringent qualifications, which some of our modern poets appear to have very laudably disregarded.

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Footnote 30:

_St. Ambrose._

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My friend, however, observed, that he himself was not enabled to take other than a limited advantage of this license—inasmuch as he had been frequently jilted by the Muses, who never would do more than _flirt_ with him; and hence, for want of a sufficient modicum of inspiration, he was generally necessitated to put up with the ordinary subjects of verse—such as epigrams, satires, odes on _natal days_, epitaphs on lap-dogs and little children, translations of Greek songs that he never saw, and of Italian poetry that had never existed, &c. It was true, he went on to inform me, he had occasionally flown at higher game in the regions of poesy; but, somehow or other, no bookseller would publish his effusions: one said they were too _flat_; another that they were too _elevated_; a third characterised them as too _wild_ for the critics; and a fourth pronounced them too _tame_ for the ladies. At length, however, the true state of the matter was candidly developed by a very intelligent presbyterian bookseller in the city, who told my friend that he was quite _too late_ as to _poetry_, with which the publishers were crammed and the public farcied. Besides, he said, all the poetic stations in any way productive were already occupied:—for instance, a Poet Fitzgerald (whom Lord Byron calls “Hoarse Fitzgerald”) had, ever since the days of the “Rejected Addresses,” been considered as the writer, reciter, and proprietor of the _fulsome_ line of poetry:—the amatory, celestial, and horticultural departments had long been considered the property of Mr. Thomas Moore; and every dactyl or spondee relating to roses, posies, dew-drops and thorns, grapes, lilies, kisses, blisses, blushes, angels, &c. would be considered as gross plagiarism, emanating from any other pen than that of our justly celebrated lyrist; while, as to historic or Caledonian poetry, Sir Walter Scott had not left an idea unappropriated for any fresh penman: he had raised an obscure people to eternal celebrity, by recording their _murders_ in English versification; and by his “Battle of Waterloo” had proved that his own Muse, in the department of slaughter, was in a very languishing state, probably owing to the extraordinary fatigue she had previously undergone.

My friend was proceeding to detail further the admonitory conversation of this honest bibliopole, when I interrupted him by asking, naturally enough, how he could continue to derive any pleasure from a pursuit in which he admitted himself to have been so very unsuccessful? to which he adroitly replied, “On the very same principle that a bad shot may have just as much amusement as a capital sportsman; perhaps more,—_one_ good hit being as gratifying to him as twenty to an undeviating fowler.” I coincided in my friend’s remark, adding, that the same sort of observation would apply to random jokers as well as rhymesters; and that I have more than once absolutely envied the inordinate happiness of a universal punster when he _chanced_ to say any thing that had a symptom of wit in it.

My friend then, gravely opening his portfolio, selected two of his productions, which he gave me permission to publish, particularly as one of them had been most abruptly rejected by an eminent newspaper, and the other by a magazine of considerable reputation.

The intended Magazine article ran as follows:—but as one of the _attachés_ was a _northern_ gentleman of the Edinburgh Review, it was sent back to my friend with what he called a _tantara rara_.

THE HIGHLANDER.