Chapter III: Part 3

Another order of writers, peculiar to our age, are speculating tradesmen, who, treading on the heels of physicians, write books to puff their wares, and make their title page an advertisement of their shop. Cooks and confectioners recommend the lightness of their pastry by that of their style; and put forward the flavour of their wit, as a specimen of that of their ragouts. Shakspeare speaks of “cutler’s poetry;” but we boast of anthologies of razor-strop manufacturers, venders of lottery tickets, and composers of French wines.

To return, however, from the starting point, where is the vast evil of this teeming multiplicity, and its consequent mediocrity of books? The reviewers have set the fashion of obloquy and vituperation, as if blockheads and dolts were not their best friends, and as necessary to their trade as the evil spirit is said to be to that of the clergy, or thieves and rogues to my Lord Chief Justice. If none but good books appeared, what would become of their essays on “every thing in the world, and all that sort of thing,” which form the “striking article” of their quarterly numbers. Reviewers should know that bad books make good reviews, exactly as “_de mauvais vin on fait de bon vinaigre_.”[17] Without the necessary supply, adieu the opportunity for being witty in print, and of shewing forth your own superiority, and enlivening the town at the small expence of an author’s feelings.

It is something very unreasonable and selfish in the wise and the learned to desire that nothing should be published but what suits themselves. The woollen manufacturer is not restricted to superfine articles, nor the Glasgow weaver to fine muslins. If the whole community must be clothed, even though all cannot afford to dress like gentlemen, by parity of reasoning, the whole should be amused, although all cannot afford to be wits and philosophers. We tolerate the fabrication of Tunbridge toys and glass beads, and boggle about the printing of somniferous essays for aldermen after dinner, of vapid novels for ladies’ maids, and of sentimental mysticism for blue-stocking peeresses. It is no more than fair that such persons should be supplied with their favourite articles, and—

“Porque como las paga el volgo, es justo
Hablar le en necio, para darle gusto.”[18]

LOPEZ DE VEGA.

As for the cant of bad books debasing the intellect and corrupting the morals of the public, the fact is quite the other way: it is the public who debauch the _littérateur_. None read silly and wicked books, but the silly and the wicked: and the charge is a mere confounding of cause and effect. But, were things otherwise, have not the public their taverns and gaming-houses, under the sanction of the highest authorities?

Books are, or ought to be, pictures of the human mind; and if the witty and the wise alone found a reflection of themselves in the productions of the press, the literary world would be as oddly constituted as the political. The virtual representation of the commons would be but a cold type of the general disfranchisement of the reading public. We have no need here of parliamentary returns to prove the fact. No bookseller, who knows what he is about, will have any thing to do with an original thinker, a man of science, a philosopher, or in general with any one whose matter exceeds “two handsome volumes in octavo.” Such works may be excellent, may confer lasting benefits on the species, and entitle their authors to immortal fame; but they don’t sell; or, at best, they make but a slow return of capital. “_Quis leget hæc?_” Mr. Colburn or Mr. Murray would ask; and the answer comes pat, “_vel duo vel nemo, turpe et miserabile._” “Sir, let me see you and your works no more.”

As an article of trade, we may say of books, that bad is the best. The nauseous absurdities of “cheap and nasty” tract societies, the spawn of delirious fanaticism or canting hypocrisy, “go off” better than the soundest works of a judicious churchman, and infinitely exceed the sale of the most popular political economy.

The human intellect, like the livery of London, must be addressed by its own recorder, and he who writes too deeply for his age, might as well write in a foreign language. If you will but write down to the level of the general understanding, shock no prejudice, startle no man’s faith, break no new ground, give none the trouble of thinking, expose no mystery of the human breast, but “amuse the eyes” without “grieving the heart,” you will, if not positively as dull as an oyster, be sure of a third edition, and a place at half the tea-tables of London. The mediocre, the foolish, and the common-place, are the publisher’s best customers; and to deprive them of their appropriate reading, would be as politically unjust, as it is economically impolitic. In literature, as in all things, we want a free trade: no embargoes on stupidity, no protecting duties on right opinions. Why should the harmless literature of nations, and the innocent amusement of the mass, be eclipsed or trampled under foot by an arrogant censorship? ’Twere worse than the three-piled sanctity of a judaical sabbath, or the anti-cake-and-ale virtue stolen from the puritans of the great rebellion.

But the evil of restraint would not stop here. The wisest and the best are sometimes glad to take refuge in a bad book, and to find relief from the dulness of their own thoughts in the absurdities of another’s. It is a rich literary year that produces three first-rate novels, the supply to a moderate consumer, of barely ten days! How then are the public to get through a long summer’s course of watering-places, without the aid of the secondary Scotch novelists, and the third-rate imitators of Lord N. and Lady C. B.? In the long vacation, the chancellor himself might be reduced to the Minerva press, or be compelled to a second perusal of Almacks. Your hungry reader is not nice, or at worst he eats, like Pistol, his unsavoury leek, and grumbles. In this respect dulness has great privileges. Genius never writes in folio, and if it ventures in quarto, the bulk is as much owing to the publisher, as a dandy’s to Stultz’s buckram. Besides, there is a metaphysical length in a bad book, valuable to the literary glutton beyond expression. A volume of S.’s polemics is matter for a week, and a surfeit of all desire for reading for a month afterwards. In short, dulness is in literature, what bread is to a good dinner—it prevents the cayenne and _coulis_ from palsying the palate, and spoiling the digestion. It is the bitter olive to good port, or a Cheshire cheese in a wine merchant’s cellar. Certain philosophers have explained the existence of moral evil, as a necessary point of comparison for relishing the blessings of life; and if so, why may not bad books be tolerated, as contributing to the delight with which we enjoy the few that are worth reading?

The same argument applies equally to error. Truth is “caviare to the general,” and if given undiluted, the scandal would be intolerable. Literature is the food, not the physic of the mind; and till we see the opulent contented with roots and water, we must allow them the luxury of conventional nonsense. Without literary rogues and false prophets, also, there would be no controversy. Truth and error are too unfairly matched if both must have a fair hearing; but when one error is pitted against another, the quarrel is “a very pretty quarrel,” and may afford good sport to the bye-stander. The controversialist puts not up Ajax’s prayer for light; but, like Æneas, is concealed in his cloud, and lives and triumphs in the friendly darkness.

If it be the great defect of Catholicism that it closes the door against all inquiry, pure and unadulterated truth is equally liable to the imputation. Men are better engaged in bowling down each other’s prejudices, than in not thinking at all. If error were not recorded in print, it would not be canvassed, and “_on doit savoir gré à ceux qui osent établir les paradoxes. Si la raison reçue se trouve vraie, on a l’avantage de croire par raison, ce qu’on croyait par habitude; si elle est fausse, on est délivré d’une erreur._”[19] (Condorcet.)

Few, if any books, are so totally worthless as not to contribute sometimes to the reader’s ideas; and what they do not communicate, they may suggest. There are likewise degrees of comparison in absurdity; and as one nail drives out another, a mitigated piece of nonsense is a good cure for that which is more aggravated. One man’s opinion may be true, as it respects another’s, though false to the nature of things. Such opinions are stages on the journey of knowledge; and they may serve the ignorant, though the philosopher despises them.

I have but one more consideration to urge, and that is the value of bad books as an instrument of commerce. What multitudes are supported by the mere manufacture! What type founders, ink makers, painters, engravers, paper makers, and pressmen! what folders, and stitchers, and distributers, tanners, leather-sellers, and binders, find an industrious and honest subsistence out of the small class of writers alone, who print for their own amusement, and whose circulation extends not beyond the presentation copies! How many live by “parsons much bemused in beer,” by visitation charges, _libretti_ for the opera, proceedings of learned societies, experiences of hypochondriacal old gentlemen, and hysterically evangelical ladies; religious novels by persons of quality, and novels of high life by persons who live in low! But enumeration is useless. All the good books in existence would not supply six months’ matter for the London press. It is by the printing of nonsense alone, that booksellers ride in their coaches, that the revenue is supported, and a countless host of sooty artizans maintained in comfort and independence.

I should not feel, therefore, any great qualms of conscience in adding another volume to the mass, even at the risk of its being dull or foolish. A heavy volume is not worse than a heavy visiter, and the book may be laid down without rudeness; while the bore must be endured, until “_il s’ennuye nous d’ennuyer_.” If the purchaser finds, too late, that he has bought folly or impertinence, let him put it in handsome binding; for if gold and frippery will pass such qualities current when incarnated in a coxcomb, they will perhaps do as much for them when embodied in print. At all events the volume will fill a shelf as well as better books; and this, after a time, becomes the destiny of the gravest authors, in the most select libraries. Not, however, that one should write expressly “_afin d’embobiliner les pauvres gens_,” but with a loyal intent to be as little stale, flat, and unprofitable as possible. Of this, however, authors are unfortunately not always the best judges; and moreover there is so much danger in the imputation of setting the Thames on fire, that, what between reviewers, attornies general, and hypocritical readers, they have no great encouragement in putting forth their best wares.

DRAWING CHARACTERS.

“Each cried, that is levell’d at me.”

Molière was accused of putting living characters into his exquisite comedies. The ridicules of society were then so graphic, the Hôtel Rambouillet, the Jesuits, and the Court, all furnished such abundant materials to truth and satire, that the temptation to give to fiction the interest of fact, must have been irresistible. “_C’est une chose étrange qu’on imprime les gens malgré eux_,”[20] observes the immortal author of the “_Précieuses Ridicules_,” in allusion to the accusations made against him. But Molière in drawing characters from the particular species and genus, avoided all personal allusion. Nobody’s history was told,—nobody’s secret was revealed; but his enemies made his fine delineations of life and character, a subject of misrepresentation and persecution, from which the power of the king only could protect him. It was Louis the XIVth, who sheltered him from the wrath of the Tartuffes, and supplied him, from his own observations, with some of the most striking characters in his works; for kings like to be amused, even at the expense of their dearest friends: and, provided their own characters, and conduct, and measures, are held sacred, for the rest, “_Sauve qui peut_.”

Party spirit, which, from a decree of imperial proscription, to a column in the lowest organ of purchaseable ribaldry, stops at no means of blackening its opponent, frequently avails itself of this instrument for bringing the self-love of the gullible to its side: and the legitimate satire on a prevailing vice or folly, is affixed to some particular individual, presumed to have been “put into the book” of the author, who is to be run down at the expence of truth, honesty, and honour. But between the ruffianism that attacks character for the gratifications of base, vindictive, and sordid passions, and that honest and courageous delineator of the peculiar vices or follies of the day, which comes under the head of what Molière calls “_La Satire honnête et permise_,” there is the same difference, as between the hired assassin who way-lays and murders for a stated price, and the gallant soldier, who goes forth in the broad day to combat the enemy of public safety and public rights.

PICTURE FRAMES.

I am a great amateur of old picture frames. Cardinal Fesch, who is considered, even in Italy, very high up in the scale of the cognoscenti, told me some very curious anecdotes concerning them. I think it was his Eminence who pointed out to me the most interesting frame extant. It enshrines a superb picture by Raphael, of a female saint, (I believe St. Eleanora.) It is in white and gold, exquisitely designed and carved by Benvenuto Cellini, who was sent by Pope Clement the VIIth, with the picture and frame to the great personage on whom the Pope bestowed it!—What a present!—and what persons!—Clement the VIIth!—Raphael!—Cellini!—This Pope Clement was a true Medici, in his passionate love for the arts. In passing to mass every morning, through the beautiful Salon of the Belvidere, he always paused and made an offering at the shrine of its divine Apollo. It was he who employed Fra Giovagnolo Montorsoli, to restore the hand of that unrivalled statue; and he was wont to converse with the sculptor while he worked. When his ingenious task was finished, Clement made the artist a Canonico.

The oldest frames are I believe the _Cancelli_, so called, from the skreen work which shuts out the choir from the body of the church, and which they imitated. These frames are divided into compartments, (generally into three,) and the pictures are set in each compartment. They are frequently made with doors; and were used as altarpieces, in private oratories.[21]

The great painters of Italy not only drew the designs for their own frames, but occasionally worked at them. The goldsmith’s art was then in great request: and many eminent painters of the sixteenth century, began life as working goldsmiths. Among these was Francesco Salviati, who had been also a velvet weaver. Some of the finest frames, embossed in silver, and studded with gems, were executed by these artist goldsmiths, who worked at them in the intervals of their more serious occupations: for at that epoch of the triumph of the arts, even the recreations of the artist were sought in the lighter branches of his divine profession. Vasari describes himself, Salviati, and other young artists, as employing their holiday hours in drawing from the best models in Florence; and again re-united in the workshop of the immortal Bacio Bandinelli, where they worked with renovated ambition, and exhaustless zeal; enduring miracles of privation and self-denial, such as it is supposed that the zeal of religion can alone support. At Rome, they continued the same laborious pursuit, animated by the same enthusiasm.[22]

Not all the academic prizes, royal premiums and public exhibitions, could effect thus much for the arts. Founded by power, these institutions belong to mediocrity: the da Vincis, the Michel Angelos, the Raphaels, were beyond them! There are designs for picture frames, by the artists who preceded the epoch of academies, more beautiful in their drawing and execution, than any member of the modern academy of Rome could produce. I have the drawing of one now lying on my table, of the greatest possible beauty in design and workmanship. It combines fruit, birds, and flowers, the heads of animals, trophies, masks, and foliage, in the most perfect drawing; and all so happily blended, as to present nothing incongruous: the perfection of what is called the Arabesque. The art of picture frames fell with all the other arts; wood and plaister of the rudest form, badly gilt, succeeded to the exquisite carving, designs, and precious materials, which were lavished on the frames of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nothing so paltry, so mean, or tasteless, as the modern frame.

ARISTOCRACY.

The notion of an hereditary aristocracy being serviceable to the people by curbing the monarch, is opposed to all fact. The aristocracy is a class constituted, as it were, expressly for servitude. The extravagance of a single individual will lay a noble family for generations at the feet of a minister; and, if this be wanting, the necessity of providing for younger children, at the public expense, works the same consequence. Tacitus tells us, that on the decline of the republic, the consular, patrician, and equestrian orders, rushed headlong into servitude; and he adds, “the more illustrious the family, the more corrupt and eager were the individuals.” In Spain, the aristocracy is entirely gangrened and worthless. In France, before and since the revolution, the highest nobility grasped at personal servitude in the household of the monarch. The indirect good this order has effected in England, may be explained by the homely proverb, that declares the circumstance under which honest men come by their own. Kings granted concessions to the people to oppose them with more effect to the nobility; and the nobility made the people a pretext for opposing the sovereign; but both fought for themselves,—that is, for the power of ruling the state to their own exclusive advantage.

The brightest page in the history of aristocracies, is that which relates the events of the revolution of 1688. Yet, what a tissue of heartless intrigue, corruption, and tergiversation! what underhand correspondencies with the excluded family! what promptitude to overturn the work of their own hands, are displayed in the lives of the great men of that day! Since the revolution, the aristocracy have been the remora of civilization,—a feather-bed between the walls of despotism, and the battery of public opinion. A surplus wheel in the machinery of the state, they would long since have stopped the movements of government, if their subserviency did not adapt them to every impulse from the crown; while, by means of their representatives in the House of Commons, they modify the proceedings of that body. At the moment in which I write, the influence of the aristocracy, in defeating a liberal ministry, in making the corn laws an affair of their peculiar “order,” in opposing a necessary retrenchment of corrupt expenditure, prove to demonstration the futility of the received theory. Should public opinion, however, triumph in the lower house, the aristocracy must submit to reform, or be crushed. An enlightened people, and an anti-national aristocracy, cannot long co-exist.[23]

TEMPER.

There is a sort of fitful gaiety very peculiar to the ill tempered. I have known the most sullen and morose women light up with bursts of brilliant vivacity, which to me, who was aware of the real state of the atmosphere, loaded as it was with thunder and storm, appeared very awful. It was like the precursive lightnings, which manifest to the eye the density and blackness of the coming desolation.

The secret, the charm, the spell, that “makes to-morrow cheerful as to-day,” is the even, spring-like sunshine of the mind, which, though sometimes veiled by the vapour of a passing melancholy, is still seen, pure and bright, through the shadowy medium. This is worth all the explosions of hysterical gaiety in the world. Between the sadness of sensibility and the gloom of morosity, what a difference! But the worst of it is, that, in both instances, the _morale_ goes for so little, and the _physique_ for so much, that the drop or the drachm more or less, in the prescribed dose, makes the surly gay, and the gay sombre.

“There are individuals,” says the unrivalled Madame de Staël (Mademoiselle de Launey,) “whose good and bad humour are equally unbearable.” This was applied to her royal mistress and patroness, the Duchesse de Maine; but it is applicable to half the fine ladies and spoiled children of fashion and fortune, all the world over. There was nothing I dreaded half so much as getting into high favour with Lady ——, when she got into high spirits. Her epilepsy of good humour was insupportable; such tyranny of kindness, such vociferation of gaiety! Running up the great stairs of —— one day, I came against a friend, who was going down. “What are you flying from, in such haste?” he asked.

“From Lady ——’s good humour,” said I.

He told my _mot_, and I lost my friend. How often does indiscretion pass for ingratitude! Yet the indiscreet are never ungrateful, for they are uncalculating; and ingratitude, coming from insensibility, cannot act upon impulse. Strong impulses come of strong feelings; and strong feelings are the source of all that is great and good, not, alas! of all that is wise: and so end my inferences.

IGNORANCE.

Pythagoras, we are told, invented the term philosopher, or “lover of wisdom,” because he could not conscientiously assume the appellation of “soph,” or wise man; and the greatest philosophers, and most knowing, have had the strongest conviction of the uncertainty of science: so that soph and sophism have become terms of contempt. Yet, how obstinate and stiff-necked is the bridling importance of genuine ignorance. How it looks conscious superiority over all! and gives out its oracular nonsense, and trite dogmas, as if they were the dicta of divine inspiration. “When I ope my lips, let no dog bark.”

“The conceit of knowledge,” says Montaigne, “is the plague of man.” What, then, is it of women? A self-supposed infallible woman, with her organic feebleness backing her ignorance, is to be feared and shunned a thousand times more than the wit, and the blue-stocking. I tremble in her presence; and, making my best courtesy, get out of her way as fast as I can. Besides, such women have all (God bless the mark!) a natural antipathy to me; and, without vanity, I may say, “_pour cause_.”

BEAUX OF OLD.

What funny fellows the dandies of the beginning of the last century were! A fine man, then, was like Sir Harry Wildair—“the joy of the playhouse, the life of the park!” Think of one of the fine men of the present day being a joy any where, or the life of any place!

No gentleman, then, walked out (when he did walk, for we find even Squire Western going to visit in a chair,) without a footman after him. Dependence and ostentation are the characteristics of semi-civilization! They are also infallible proofs of mediocrity in individuals, in all times and ages.

METHODISM AND MOLIÈRE.

“It is good to be merry and wise.” It is difficult to be wise and not to be merry. A few years back, when, in Dublin, it was a rage to be “serious,” some very foolish things took place, which, as they belong to the _Chronique Scandaleuse_, shall find no room here. It was then the fashion to give tea and tract-parties, to the exclusion of gay faces and pleasant conversation. I remember, on the same night Mrs. Fry preached at a party at Mrs. ——’s in Merrion-square, La Porte read out a comedy of Molière’s at my _soirée_ in Kildare-street. We both gave “_Les Précieuses Ridicules_,” in our several ways; but my guests went away laughing, and hers yawning. _L’un portant l’autre_, mine had the best of it; and Molière _versus_ Methodism, won the cause.

THE FLYING-FISH.

Naturalists have said that the power of the flying-fish has been given to it for the purpose of avoiding its powerful enemies of the deep. What, then, have the poor herrings done, that they should not fly? for they, too, have their enemies, no less intent upon “swallowing them quick,” than Buonaparte was the bishops, who prayed so fervently against the voracious propensities “of the great leviathan.” But this is not the worst of it; for after all, the gift bestowed, (or said to be given) as a special mark of good, on the flying-fish, was only a _mauvaise plaisanterie_: for he no sooner pops his head above water, than he encounters a new enemy, in certain sea-birds, equally Catholic in their fish-eating devotion; which force the wretched victim back to his native element, leaving it only the choice between becoming a constituent portion of a shark or an albatross. This is a distressing image, and the new-light doctrine is a relief to the fancy, which teaches that the flying-fish launches into the air in pursuit of pleasure, and is led only by an exuberance of temperament to sport in the sunshine, and sparkle in the waters, in all the happy wantonness of a joyous existence.

Who has not felt this buoyancy of spirit, this disposition to fly, when under the strong excitement of health and spirits? “_Portez-vous bien_,” says that true philosopher, St. Evremont, “_voilà à quoi tout doit aboutir_.” “Be well: that is the end to which all things should be directed:” but to this _end_ how many of the elements of life must mingle. It is curious to observe the rapid changes which take place in our existence quite independently of external circumstance,—the light boundings of the spirit, the high beatings of the heart, unassignable to any foreign cause; and then the depressing laboured respiration, and sinking of the soul, though unconscious of a real sorrow. Even our dreams are under the influence of these inexplicable conditions. The aged and the hypochondriac never dream of flying; and even the young and the happy awaken sometimes under the influence of impressions, more painful to feel than easy to account for.

The temperament of genius is peculiarly susceptible to these alterations of organic elasticity and depression. It is a true flying-fish of moral life, sporting in the sunshine, and shrinking under the cloud. Even philosophy itself takes its colour from the constitution. Optimism is the mere creation of a “pleased alacrity and cheer of mind;” and the Epicurean is but another word for a man who digests well; while the Cynic is only to be argued with by calomel. This may appear all very fanciful; but it has a practical corollary of undoubted certainty; and that is,—when you feel misanthropy and disgust creeping on you, instead of penning a diatribe against the nature of things, take a long walk. Air and exercise—a flying-fish excursion into the sunshine, are worth a whole army of syllogisms for harmonizing the pulses of thought. Nature is the poet’s true book of reference. It was Shakspeare’s. The _nature_ of the French poets, even in their Augustine age, was _Versailles_, and the coteries, literary and gallant, _de la cour et la ville_.

TOLERATION.

Du Clos has some admirable things in his excellent memoir of Louis XIV. Here is one:— “_Nulle persécution, beaucoup d’indifférence, et d’oubli, c’est la mort de toutes les sectes._”[24]

Madame D’Epinay, in her _Shew up Book_ of the Church and State society of France, before the Revolution, draws a picture of this author, _peint en charge_. Still he was an admirable writer, and appears to have been an honest man.

OLD-FASHIONED FRIENDS.

What a horrible thing it is to be ashamed of one’s old friends, merely because they are old-fashioned. The other day some “_English epicures_,” top-sawyers of London ton, dined with us, when a dropper-in, from Connaught, took a place (left vacant by a late apology). I had dined with my provincial guest many years back, and thought it the greatest possible honour to be asked to his Castle Rackrent. He then appeared to me a very fine person, and his table a very fine table. But, horror of horrors! what were my feelings when, uncovering the _entrée_ next him, before the soup was removed, he asked one of the most noted Amphitryons of the day, if he should help him to some of the savories; and when, after calling _bouilli_, bully-beef! _petits-pâtés_, mutton-pies! soup, broth! _crême-au-pistache_, “_raspberry crame!_” and _fondue_, “_podden!_” he ended by sending back his glass of ale, not because he “never touched malt,” but, because, as he told the servant, “he preferred his porther out of a _pewther pot_, after the ould fashion.” French cookery has made but slow progress among the “mere Irish,” in the remote provinces; and “the _jug-day_” at Bogmore (far below the original from which it was copied) is still to be found in nearly all its details among the hospitable festivities of the genuine and unmixed descendants of Milesius.

The science of cookery is the science of civilization; and considering the effect which the material, raw or cooked, has upon the digestion, and the digestion on the brain, it is a science of quite as much importance, as any other in the great scale of utility and consideration. When Lord Byron took to vegetable diet, he used to say to one, from whom I had the anecdote, “When you eat beef-steaks, a’n’t you afraid of committing murder?”

IRISH BEGGARS.

“_Souhaiter les bonnes fêtes_” was thought provincial and old fashioned, even in the time of Louis the Fourteenth: in Ireland the custom is as fresh as ever. “Many happy Christmas’s, Easters, and Patrick’s days,” is the wish of the lower orders, and particularly of the mendicity of Dublin. The Irish beggars are perpetual calendars of days appointed by the church to be kept holy. The resources of their eloquence are indeed infinite, and their keen sense of the influence of pathos and humour on the feelings, (beyond the power of words or even facts to express,) is among the many proofs of the shrewdness and innate perceptions of the people, even in the very lowest state of human degradation for what, on the scale of human wretchedness and prostration, is so low as the Irish beggar!

A book might be written on the mendicity of Dublin; which, like the history of the country, would be at once tragical and farcical. The prevalence of a religion which makes charity (uncalculated charity, the most mistaken and frequently the most selfish virtue,) a leading dogma, combines with the poverty of the people, to render beggary an _order_, almost as much tolerated and respected in Ireland as in India. Every quarter, and every street of the capital, had, some twenty years back, its established and privileged female beggar; who, known to the great, and maintained by their servants (for services given), was permitted to exercise the immunity of the court fools of old, and to address their superiors on the occasions of their ingress and egress, with a sort of servile familiarity, often seasoned by humour or tinctured by sarcasm. Generally half mad, and always more than half drunk, their folly or their inebriety was deemed an excuse for their impertinence. Lady M—n—rs, descending the steps of her house to get into her carriage, was addressed by a well known beggar of her neighbourhood in the usual tone of supplication.

“Go away,” said her ladyship, “I will give you nothing.”

“Och! then long life to your ladyship; and it’s often you gave us that, God bless you!” was the reply, in the same tone of imploring misery, as the charity was asked.

The beggar, who frequents Kildare-street, loitering about the portico of its club house, at two or three in the morning, observed the Rev. Mr. —— reel forth, and, before she could lend him her assistance, find his level in the kennel. In that state herself, in which “ladies wish to be who love their” glass, and unable to extricate the reverend gentleman, who—

“All inspired lay beside a sink,
And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink,”

she sat herself in the mud beside him, and began to “_keen_” over him thus:

“Jemmy ——, Jemmy ——; there you lie, machrée, this blessed morning in the gutter, an honour to your cloth and calling; and where are yez all, now, that has’nt left the likes of yez behind, only the Reverend Jemmy in the gutter here. God be wid yez, Denis Bowes! and Charley Ormesby! and rest your souls! for it’s little the likes of you, now, we’ll see again!” Thus sung the modern Bragela!

“The mighty are dispersed at Temora! there is none in Cormac’s hall. Bragela will not hope for your return. She has the arms of him who is no more.”

This sort of apostrophe to old friendships or connexions, is a very common art in the eloquence of Irish mendicity: to awaken your feelings, to seize on your imagination by a sudden reference to some friend, once the daily visitant of your house, or known partizan of your opinions, is a mode of influence frequently resorted to. It was so the other day in my own instance, and by the very Bragela of the Rev. Jemmy.

“Ye have nothing for me the day, my lady? Well, sure you won’t be so, plaze God; and God be with poor Counsellor B——.[25] He took the _could_ (cold) out of my heart and gave me charity on the steps of this very door: and its little the likes of him will ever darken your threshold, lady dear, again, anyhow—rest his sowl! Well, success to Hamilton Rowan, and Counsellor Shiel. Shure there’s life in a muscle, and luck before us yet.—Hurrah for ould Ireland!”

Old friends gone for ever! with Shiel and Hamilton Rowan and ould Ireland! These were well worth the trifle they extorted: and, thus invoked, patriotism “gave, ere charity began!”

OBSOLETISMS.

“Words that wise Raleigh and sage Bacon spake.”

The late Bishop of Ossory (Dr. Kearney), so distinguished by his literary attainments, who, though a bishop, was not ashamed to express his enthusiastic admiration of Shakspeare, frequently told me, that he thought the best commentators on that immortal genius would be found in the upper gallery of an Irish theatre. How many words, that have puzzled the learned for the last century, could find a ready explanation among the catholic gentry, and even lower orders in Connaught and Munster! Language in Ireland stopped short, with every other improvement, at the revolution; and the penal statutes had an equal effect on the liberties and the philology of the people.

Speaking of Anthony (in Anthony and Cleopatra), Philo says,

“His captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fight hath burst
The bucklers on his breast, reneges all temper.”

The word “_renege_,” a _poser_ to the English reader, is used nightly at every catholic card table in the Irish provinces; where at the old fashioned Irish game of five and forty, an old lady “_reneges_” a card (imprudently played) by the licence of the game. In Queen Elizabeth’s time every one wrote _hir_ for _her_; in Ireland it is still pronounced so. Not a phrase, not an idiom, is now in use among the common Irish down to the lowest classes, that may not be found in the most classic authors of Elizabeth’s and James the first’s day.

“Plaze your honour,” an address of courtesy now confined to the Irish spalpeen or cottier, after having passed through the hands of the upper servants and tradesmen of fifty years back, was once an address of respect from lord keepers to lord chamberlains, and from noble to noble, down to the time of Charles the First. The Earl of Middlesex begins all his letters to the Duke of Buckingham (James the First’s favourite) with “My most honoured Lord.” Lord Chancellor Bacon addresses with “If it may please your lordship,” and even in colloquial familiarity, “your honour” was a phrase of courtesy, addressed to both sexes. But obsoletisms are constantly mistaken for vulgarisms. In as much, indeed, as they are exploded forms, which have fallen to the exclusive use of the vulgar, they are so: for the vulgar of all ages are those who stand still, and make no progress either in language or in its source, ideas. The vulgar tongue, is the tongue spoken by the people. Dante and Petrarch were said to write in the vulgar tongue; it is now erudition to be able to read and understand them.

To begin letters with a long, formal, and ceremonious address, was the fashion in England up to the time of Charles the Second, whose court introduced the more refined simplicity of French forms and manners. “Right honourable!” “My singular good lord!” “My right worthy!” and “May it please your grace,” “honour,” “worship,” or “lordship,” were all swept away with stiff stays and cumbrous fardingales; and the letters from “yours, faithfully, Charles Rex,” to Harry Bennet, on the serious subject of Courants, Sarabands, and “small fiddlers that do not play ill on the fiddle,” exhibit a very different formula, from the letters of the discreet and well affected persons of quality of the preceding reign. They, in fact, have all the ease, familiarity, and equality of the charming letters of the Sévigné’s, Coulanges, and De Retz, if not their wit, elegance, or good taste.

I have frequently observed, in the late Marquis of A—— and many of his noble contemporaries, a tendency to pronounce after the old manner, as “_hull_,” for whole; “_marchant_,” for merchant; “_cheney_,” for china; “_showlder_,” for shoulder; “_buzzoms_,” for bosoms, &c.; and this pronunciation answers to the orthography of the great lords and ladies of Whitehall after the restoration, who being “_un peu brouillés avec l’alphabet_,” endeavoured to spell as near to the sounds of words as they could. The Duchess of Cleveland, writing to the king, says, “_I never was so surprized in my hulle life_,” &c. &c. &c. Jonathan Wild quizzes the ordinary of Newgate for falling into this jacobite pronunciation, by spelling _whole_, _hull_.

Many forms of courtesy, rites of hospitality, and traits of habits, manners, and customs, to be found in the old comedies, from the time of Elizabeth to Anne, are still observable in the remote parts of Ireland; a country which, like an old coffer in the country mansion of an old fashioned family, is the exchequer of all the odds and ends and relics of modes long passed, and exploded in modern life.

I remember, in my childhood, dining at the country house of an old catholic family, where, after the chaplain had pronounced an interminable grace, the lady of the mansion rose, and bowing round graciously to her company, pronounced, “much good may it do ye,” which was always followed, at the end of the dinner, by the observation that none of her guests had eaten any thing; indicating the delicacy of their appetites, and the unworthiness of her table.

A few months back, having stopped to change horses at a road-side inn, and the horses having to be sent for to the field, we alighted, and found the family at dinner in the reception room, which was also the kitchen. A wretched man, begging his way to Dublin, half-naked, and half starved, and so faint from want, cold, and exhaustion, as to be scarcely articulate, paused at the threshold, and moving the crown of a leafless hat, said, “Much good may it do ye, genteels!” This form of courtesy, in practice among the gentry not many years back, has now fallen to the very lowest classes of society; and this is the history of manners, as well as of phraseology. In Shakspeare’s time the salutation of the modern Irish beggar to the peasant, was deemed a trait of royal courtesy.

The modern house-maid, who accompanies her lover, the footman, to the upper gallery, flushes at the coarseness of the fine ladies of Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar; and feels her own superiority in modesty and gentility to the lovely Lady Lurewell, or even to the prudent Angelica of Sir Harry Wildair.

Tales, novels, and dramas, are the true sources from which the philosophy of manners can best be drawn, and are illustrative of the progress of society at various and successive epochs. History does nothing in this respect; and modern historians, in this point of view, are infinitely less valuable and useful, than the dryest chronicler of the middle ages. A page of Froissart is worth a volume of Hume, (who, as an historian, by the by, is daily losing ground in public estimation). The literary fiction, which gives cotemporary manners, modes, and prevailing phraseology, has a fair chance of surviving the tale which, placed in a remote epoch, creates a manner and a dialect neither illustrative of the times of which it treats, nor the times in which it is written. This is the fault of the beautiful romance of Ivanhoe, which is written with all the colouring and dialect of Queen Elizabeth’s day, copied, even to set idioms and phrases, from Shakspeare and the play-writers of his time.

English was not spoken in the time of King John; the people spoke Saxon, the upper classes Norman-French. When Shakspeare wrote his play of King John, he did not affect to go back to the style and language of Henry the Fifth, because he could not employ that which was in use when his scene was supposed to take place. He therefore wrote in the language of his own times; and among the many admirable qualities of his inspired authorship, not the least admirable is, that he has given in his dramas, the very tone, accent, idioms, and manner of colloquial communication, from the court to the peasant’s hut.

To know how exactly Shakspeare has copied existing forms, and to account for the rapidity with which he wrote, it is only necessary to read some of the memoirs and chronicles of Henry the Eighth’s and Elizabeth’s day, where dialogues on every state affair, carried on by ministers, secretaries, and Irish Lords Lieutenant, are given verbatim,—all ready to go upon the stage, and to pass for a scene of Shakspeare’s or Ben Jonson’s,—just as a group at the Hague or Cologne, still exhibits a high toned picture of Vandervelt or Rembrandt.

I open at random a volume from the shelf of the bookcase of the dressing-room in which I write, and copy literally a scene and dialogue, meant only to be a simple narrative. It is taken from Campion’s _Historie of Ireland_, written 1571;—the scene is a room at court,—several lords sitting in commission on Gerald Fitzgerald, Earle of Kildare, “a gentleman valiant and well spoken, yet in his latter time overtaken with vehement suspicion of sundrie treasons.” The Cardinal Chancellor Wolsey is his inveterate enemy and chief accuser. It requires no great effort of imagination to conceive the place and persons of this veracious drama. The gloomy gothic chamber, the ponderous costume of the lords, many of whom have been made familiar to posterity by the pencil of Vandyke, the sober splendour of Wolsey’s habit, his scarlet hat, and glittering crucifix, the picturesque habit, and more picturesque person of the Geraldine,—his gigantic form, and stern, bold bearing, waiting in indignant silence for the accusations to be made against him, by a powerful and interested enemy. After a solemn pause, the lords “being diversly affectioned,” the Cardinal Chancellor broke forth in these words:

“I wot well, my lord, that I am not the meetest man at this board to charge you with these treasons; because it hath pleased some of your pew-fellows to report that I am a professed enemy of the Geraldines. I must have leave, notwithstanding your stale slander, to be the mouth of these honourable persons at this time, and to trumpe your treasons in your way, howsoever you take me.

“First, You remember how the lewde Earle, your kinsman, who passeth not whom he serve, might he change his master, sent his confederates with letters of credence to Francis the French king. How many letters?—what precepts?—what threats have been sent you to apprehend him?—and yet not done; why so?—Forsooth, I could not catch him. Nay, nay, Earle, forsooth you would not nighly watch him. If he be justly suspected, why are you partial in so great a charge? If not, why are you fearful to have him tryed? Surely, this juggling and false play little became either an honest man called to such honour, or a nobleman put in such trust. Had you lossed but a cow or a garron of your owne, two hundred kyrneghis (kirns) would have come at your whistle, to rescue the prey from the uttermost edge of Ulster. All the Irish in Ireland must have given you way. But in persuing so weighty a matter as this, merciful God, how nice, how dangerous, how wayward have you bin? I wis, my lord, there be shrewde bogges in the borders, for the Earle of Kildare to fear.”

Whilst the Cardinal was speaking, the Earl chafed and changed colour, and sundry proffers made to answer every sentence as it came. At last he broke out, and interrupted them thus—

“My Lord Chancellor,—I beseech you pardon me. I am short witted, and you, I perceive, intend a long tale. If you proceede in this order, half my purgation wil be loste for lack of carryage. I have no schoole tricks, nor art of memory: except you hear me, while I remember your words, your second process will hammer out the former. What my cousin Desmond hath compassed, as I know not, so I beshrew his naked heart for holding out so long. Cannot the Earle of Desmond shift, but I must be of counsell?—Cannot hee bee hid, except I winke?—If hee bee close, am I his mate?—If hee bee friended, am I a traytour? This is a doughty kind of accusation which they urge against me, wherein they are stabled and mirde, at my first deniall. ‘You would not see him,’ say they;—‘who made them so familiar with mine eye-sight?—As touching my kingdom, my lord, I would that you and I had exchanged kingdoms, but for one moneth, I would trust to gather up more crummes in that space than twice the revenues of my poor earldome. But you are well and warm, and so hold you; and upbraide not me with such an odious storme. I sleep in a cabin, when you lie soft on a bed of downe. I serve under the cope of heaven, when you are served under a canopy. I drink water out of a scull, when you drinke out of golden cuppes. My courser is trained to the field, when your jennet is taught to amble. When you are begraced, and belorded, and crouched and kneeled unto, then I find small grace with our Irish borderers, except I cut them off by the knees.’”

A CHARACTER.

Mr. —— is that sort of man, who has all the faults that help to please, and forbid to serve. His character is a study; his great talent is his power of assimilation. He is never displaced, never out of keeping with times, persons, or circumstances. He dovetails with all opinions and all orders of intellect—a perfect Aristippus. He is like mustard-seed: fling him where you will, he takes root on the surface and flourishes. Sow him in a hot-bed, in a flannel cap, in a lady’s beau-pot, or in a potatoe ridge, _c’est égal_.

THE DÉLAISSÉ.

The most dissipated man, who has once known the distinction of being loved by a woman capable of the intense devotedness which springs from passionate feelings and strong intellect, must feel a dreadful void when he is loved no longer. Deserting, or deserted, he will feel it with remorse, or with mortification. The passing fancy of the light and the foolish leaves no scar behind; the wound closes rapidly, and all is forgotten.

TAVERNS.

“You may be wise in your study in the morning,” (says brow-beating Johnson, to his gape-mouthed admirer Boswell,) “and gay in company at a tavern in the evening.” What a trait of manners! Fancy a man of fashion, or a man of letters, or any man, in the rank of a gentleman, setting forth after dinner, to be “gay at a tavern in an evening.”

The tavern life has now fallen to the lowest classes of society. In the time of Charles, and James the Second, princes of the blood, and the proudest of the peerage, frequented the tavern. In Louis the Fourteenth’s day, men of fashion resorted to places of the same description in France; and ladies of rank, by way of a frolic, sometimes accompanied them to some fashionable auberge in the suburbs, or the Boulevards. In another half century, there will be nothing between the common chop-house, and a magnificent club—between Crockford’s, and “the cheap and nasty.” The improvements of social and domestic life are filling up the intervals. The improvements in female education are also giving a charm to home, which it wanted in those times, when the women were treated as slaves or sultanas in one class; and were deemed in others creatures only fit

“To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.”

SOLEMN BLOCKHEADS.

“Eh! qui ne connoit pas la gravité des sots.”

CHENIER.

Last night I met Mr. —— at Lord A——’s. What a solemn blockhead! Unluckily for him, he has precisely that sort of learning, which draws out fools from their obscurity, and drives them from the secure asylum of their insignificance, to a public exhibition of their inefficiency. Still, such men get on! and, under the present system, make their way to place, and power, and endowment.

For the last twenty years, there was scarcely an instance of a man of very superior genius, or of great intellectual strength, being employed in the public offices of the greatest nation of the earth. A few shrewd, acute clerks worked their way into the subordinate places in the state; but the moment they were found to be too shrewd for their masters, they were got rid of.

There is nothing so fearful as a nation becoming more enlightened than its government. Of such elements was the French revolution composed.

CATHOLIC PETITIONS.

The earliest petition I know of, on behalf of the Roman Catholics is that addressed to James the First, beginning, “Most Puissant Prince, and Orient Monarch!” In this petition the sufferers class their persecutors as being Protestants, Puritans, and atheists, or politicians: a meddler in politics, in the days of the absolute Stuarts, was set down as an atheist.

LAUGHING AND CRYING.

This morning, in describing a scene of distress I had witnessed a few days back, the tears dropped fast from M——’s eyes; and yet I know few firmer intellects; but the finest metals dissolve the easiest. It is extremely difficult to draw tears from blockheads, except when muddled; and then they talk of themselves, and are pathetic. It is easier to make “butchers weep,” than to move the self-sufficient coxcomb who is wrapt up exclusively in his own importance, to the exclusion of all human sympathy. But, after all, I doubt if the gift of laughing heartily be not an equal proof of feeling. Alas! for those who neither laugh nor weep! and doubly alas! for those who are obliged to live with them! There is an immense variety and character in laughs. I have often heard it said of the Countess of C——, that her laugh is even more beautiful than her face. One could write chapters upon this subject; and perhaps I shall do so some of these days, even at the risk of being laughed at for my pedantry, for there really are a great many odd things to be said on the subject. Somebody has written a catalogue of persons who died laughing.

EXPECTATION.

It is pleasant to expect; at least it is so in youth, when temperament and inexperience combine to paint life _en beau_. Expectation is hope coloured by fancy. It is a proof of abundant vitality; and even when disappointment falls over it, like a shadow, it is still worth its purchase.

“Ah! que ne puis-je encore l’attendre.
Dût-il encore ne pas venir.”[26]

This is perfectly in nature. The old seldom expect. It is among the terrible inflictions of age, when humanity loses so many of its attributes, that the heart sends forth none of those shoots of expectation which fill up the intervals of actual enjoyment. The sap is dried, and the trunk is shrivelled—shrunk in its dimensions, and seared on its surface; and the branch, and the flower, and the fruit have withered and dropped. “The spring shall return with its blossoms; but of me not a leaf shall arise,” says Ossian. Alas for the beauty, the truth, and the sadness of this image!

THE DEVOTEE.