Chapter CCXLIV (1)

THE AUTHOR VENTURES TO SPEAK A WORD ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS:—QUOTES BEN SIRACH,—SOLOMON,—BISHOP HACKET,—WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR,—BISHOP REYNOLDS,—MILTON,—&C.

--_Ἀλλὰ σὺ ταῦτα μαθὼν, βιότου ποτί τέρμα
ψυχῇ τῶν ἀγαθῶν τλῆθι χαριζόμενος._

SIMONIDES.

In the thirtieth chapter of the Book called Ecclesiasticus, and at the twenty-fifth verse, are these words

“A cheerful and a good heart will have a care of his meat and diet.”

This is not the text to a sermon, but the beginning of a Chapter. There is no reason why a Chapter as well as a sermon, should not be thus impressively introduced: and if this Chapter should neither be so long as a sermon, nor so dull as those discourses which perchance and (I fear) per-likelihood, it may be thy fortune to hear, O Reader, at thy parish church, or in phrase nonconformist, to sit under at the conventicle, it will be well for thee: for having began to read it, I dare say thou wilt peruse it orally, or ocularly to the end.

A cheerful and a good heart, the Doctor had; aye as cheerful and good a one as ever man was blest with. He held with Bishop Hacket, that melancholy was of all humours the fittest to make a bath for the Devil, and that cheerfulness and innocent pleasure preserve the mind from rust, and the body from putrifying with dulness and distempers; wherefore that Bishop of good and merry memory would sometimes say, he did not like to look upon a sour man at dinner, and if his guests were pleased within, would bid them hang out the white flag in their countenance.

_Udite, udite amici, un cor giocondo
E Rey del Mondo._

And if the poet says true (which I will be sworn he does) our Doctor might be more truly King of the World, than Kehama after he had performed his sacrifice.

His cheerfulness he would not have exchanged for all the bank-bills which ever bore the signature of Abraham Newland, or his successor Henry Hase; he thanked his Maker for it; and that it had been kept from corruption and made so far good as (with all Christian humility) to be self approved; he thanked his heavenly Father also for the free grace vouchsafed him, and his earthly one for having trained him in the way that he should go.

Cheerful and grateful takers the Gods love
And such as wait their pleasures with full hopes;
The doubtful and distrustful man Heaven frowns at.[1]

[Footnote 1: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.]

Being thus cheerful and good, he had that care of his meat and diet which the son of Sirach commends in the text, and notices as an indication of cheerfulness and goodness.

Understand me, Reader: and understand the author of the Wisdom. It was not such a care of his meat and diet as Apicius has been infamed for in ancient, and Darteneuf in modern times; not such as Lucullus was noted for, or Sir William Curtis, with whom Lucullus had he been an English East Indian Governor, instead of a Roman Prætor, might have been well pleased to dine. Read Landor's conversation between Lucullus and Cæsar, if thou art a scholar Reader, and if any thing can make thee think with respect and admiration of Lucullus, it will be the beautiful strain of feeling and philosophy that thou wilt find there. Wouldst thou see another work of first-rate genius, not less masterly in its kind, go and see Chantrey's bust of Sir William Curtis: and when thou shalt have seen what he hath made of that countenance, thou wilt begin to think it not impossible that a silk purse may be made of a sow's ear. Shame on me that in speaking of those who have gained glory by giving good dinners, I should have omitted the name of Michael Angelo Taylor, he having been made immortal for this his great and singular merit!

Long before the son of Sirach, Solomon had spoken to the same effect: “there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in its labour. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God.” “Go thy way said the wisest of monarchs and of men, in his old age, when he took a more serious view of his past life; the honours, pleasures, wealth, wisdom he had so abundantly enjoyed; the errors and miscarriages which he had fallen into; the large experience and many observations he had made, of things natural, moral, domestical: civil, sensual, divine: the curious and critical inquiry he had made after true happiness, and what contribution all things under the sun could afford thereunto:”—“Go thy way,” he said, “eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart!”

“Inasmuch,” says Bishop Reynolds in his commentary upon this passage, “as the dead neither know, nor enjoy any of these worldly blessings; and inasmuch as God gives them to his servants in love, and as comfortable refreshments unto them in the days of their vanity, therefore he exhorteth unto a cheerful fruition of them, while we have time and liberty so to do; that so the many other sorrows and bitterness which they shall meet with in this life, may be mitigated and sweetened unto them. He speaketh not of sensual, epicurean and brutish excess; but of an honest, decent, and cheerful enjoyment of blessings, with thankfulness, and in the fear of God.” “A _merry_ heart” the Bishop tells us might in this text have been rendered a _good_ one; as in other parts of scripture a _sad_ heart is called an _evil_ heart. “It is pleasing unto God,” says the Bishop, “that when thou hast in the fear of his name, and in obedience to his ordinance, laboured, and by his blessing gotten thee thine appointed portion, then thou shouldst, after an honest, cheerful, decent and liberal manner, without further anxiety or solicitousness, enjoy the same. This is the principal boundary of our outward pleasures and delights, still to keep ourselves within such rules of piety and moderation, as that our ways may be pleasing unto God. And this shows us the true way to find sweetness in the creature, and to feel joy in the fruition thereof; namely, when our persons and our ways are pleasing unto God: for piety doth not exclude, but only moderate earthly delights; and so moderate them, that though they be not so excessive as the luxurious and sensual pleasures of foolish epicures, yet they are far more pure, sweet and satisfactory, as having no guilt, no gall, no curse, nor inward sorrow and terrors attending on them.”

Farther the Bishop observes, that food and raiment being the substantiall of outward blessings, Solomon has directed unto cheerfulness in the one, and unto decency and comeliness in the other. He hath advised us also to let the head lack no ointment, such perfumes being an expression of joy used in feasts; “the meaning is,” says the Bishop, “that we should lead our lives with as much freeness, cheerfulness and sweet delight, in the liberal use of the good blessings of God, as the quality of our degree, the decency of our condition, and the rules of religious wisdom, and the fear of God do allow us; not sordidly or frowardly denying ourselves the benefit of those good things which the bounty of God hath bestowed upon us.”

It is the etiquette of the Chinese Court for the Emperor's physicians to apply the same epithet to his disease as to himself—so they talk of his most high and mighty diarrhœa.

At such a point of etiquette the Doctor would laugh—but he was all earnestness when one like Bishop Hacket said, “Do not disgrace the dignity of a Preacher, when every petty vain occasion doth challenge the honour of a sermon before it. If ever there were _τὸ δέον οὐκ ἐν τῶ δεόντι_,—a good work marred for being done unreasonably,”—(in the Doctor's own words, _Grace before a sluttish meal, a dirty table cloth_)—“now it is when grace before meat will not serve the turn, but every luxurious feast must have the benediction of a preacher's pains before it. _Quis te ferat cœnantem ut Lucullus, concionantem ut Cato?_ Much less is it to be endured, that some body must make a sermon, before Lucullus hath made a supper. It is such a flout upon our calling methinks, as the Chaldeans put upon the Jews in their captivity,—they in the height of their jollity must have _one of the Songs of Sion_.”

The Doctor agreed in the main with Lord Chesterfield in his opinion upon political dieteticks.

“The Egyptians who were a wise nation,” says that noble author, “thought so much depended upon diet, that they dieted their kings, and prescribed by law both the quality and quantity of their food. It is much to be lamented, that those bills of fare are not preserved to this time, since they might have been of singular use in all monarchical governments. But it is reasonably to be conjectured, from the wisdom of that people, that they allowed their kings no aliments of a bilious or a choleric nature, and only such as sweetened their juices, cooled their blood, and enlivened their faculties,—if they had any.”

He then shews that what was deemed necessary for an Egyptian King is not less so for a British Parliament. For, “suppose,” he says, “a number of persons, not over-lively at best, should meet of an evening to concert and deliberate upon public measures of the utmost consequence, grunting under the load and repletion of the strongest meats, panting almost in vain for breath, but quite in vain for thought, and reminded only of their existence by the unsavoury returns of an olio; what good could be expected from such a consultation? The best one could hope for would be, that they were only assembled for shew, and not for use; not to propose or advise, but silently to submit to the orders of some one man there, who, feeding like a rational creature, might have the use of his understanding.

“I would therefore recommend it to the consideration of the legislature, whether it may not be necessary to pass an act, to restrain the licentiousness of eating, and assign certain diets to certain ranks and stations, I would humbly suggest the strict vegetable as the properest ministerial diet, being exceedingly tender of those faculties in which the public is so highly interested, and very unwilling they should be clogged, or incumbered.”

“The Earl of Carlisle,” says Osborne, in his Traditional Memorials, “brought in the vanity of ante-suppers, not heard of in our forefathers' time, and for ought I have read, or at least remember, unpractised by the most luxurious tyrants. The manner of which was, to have the board covered at the first entrance of the guests, with dishes, as high as a tall man could well reach, filled with the choicest viands sea or land could afford: and all this once seen, and having feasted the eyes of the invited, was in a manner thrown away, and fresh set on to the same height, having only this advantage of the other, that it was hot.

“I cannot forget one of the attendants of the King, that at a feast made by this monster in excess, eats to his single share a whole pye, reckoned to my Lord at ten pounds, being composed of ambergreece, magisteriall of pearl, musk, &c., yet was so far, (as he told me) from being sweet in the morning, that he almost poisoned his whole family, flying himself, like the Satyr, from his own stink. And after such suppers huge banquets no less profuse, a waiter returning his servant home with a cloak-bag full of dried sweetmeats and confects, valued to his Lordship at more than ten shillings the pound.”

But, gentle and much esteemed Reader, and therefore esteemed because gentle, instead of surfeiting thy body, let me recreate thy mind, with the annexed two Sonnets of Milton, which tell of innocent mirth, and the festive but moderate enjoyment of the rational creature.

TO MR. LAWRENCE.

LAWRENCE, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season, gaining? time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes of Tuscan air?
_He who of these delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise._

TO SYRIAC SKINNER.

CYRIAC, whose grandsire on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause
Pronounc'd, and in his volumes taught our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench;
To day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
_In mirth, that after no repenting draws:_
Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intends, and what the French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,
_And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day
And when God sends a cheerful hour refrains._

_Thou canst cure the body and the mind,
Rare Doctor, with thy two-fold soundest art;
Hippocrates hath taught thee the one kind,
Apollo and the Muse the other part;
And both so well that thou well both dost please,
The mind with pleasure, and the corpse with ease._

DAVIES OF HEREFORD.

FRAGMENTS TO THE DOCTOR.

A LOVE FRAGMENT FOR THE LADIES,—INTRODUCED BY A CURIOUS INCIDENT WHICH THE AUTHOR BEGS THEY WILL EXCUSE.

Now will ye list a little space,
And I shall send you to solace;
You to solace and be blyth,
Hearken! ye shall hear belyve
A tale that is of verity.

ROSWALL AND LILLIAN.

A story was told me with an assurance that it was literally true, of a Gentleman who being in want of a wife, advertised for one, and at the place and time appointed was met by a Lady. Their stations in life entitled them to be so called, and the Gentleman as well as the Lady was in earnest. He however unluckily seemed to be of the same opinion as King Pedro was with regard to his wife Queen Mary of Aragon, that she was not so handsome as she might be good, so the meeting ended in their mutual disappointment. Cœlebs advertised a second time, appointing a different Square for the place of meeting, and varying the words of the advertisement. He met the same Lady,—they recognized each other, could not chuse but smile at the recognition, and perhaps neither of them could chuse but sigh. You will anticipate the event. The persevering Batchelor tried his lot a third time in the newspapers, and at the third place of appointment he met the equally persevering Spinster. At this meeting neither could help laughing. They began to converse in good humour, and the conversation became so agreeable on both sides, and the circumstance appeared so remarkable, that this third interview led to a marriage, and the marriage proved a happy one.

When Don Argentes Prince of Galdasse had been entrapped into the hands of a revengeful woman whose husband he had slain in fair combat, he said to two handsome widows who were charged every day to punish him with stripes, _que par raison là on se se voit une grande beauté n'a pas lieu la cruauté ou autre vice_—and the Chronicler of this generation of the house of Amadis, observes that this assertion _fut bien verifié en ces deux jeunes veufues douées de grande beauté, lesquelles considerans la beauté et disposition de ce jeune chevalier et la vertu de sa personne, presterent l'oreille aux raisons qu'il alleguoit pour son excuse, et aux louanges qu'il leur donnoit de rare et singuliere beauté, de maniere qu'elles eurent pitié de luy._

“I can hardly forbear fancying,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “that if we had a sort of Inquisition, or formal Court of Judicature, with grave Officers and Judges, erected to restrain poetical licence, and in general to suppress that fancy and humour of versification, but in particular that most extravagant passion of Love, as it is set out by Poets, in its heathenish dress of Venus's and Cupids; if the Poets, as ringleaders and teachers of this heresy, were under grievous penalties forbid to enchant the people by their vein of rhyming; and if the People, on the other side, were under proportionable penalties, forbid to hearken to any such charm, or lend their attention to any love-tale, so much as in a play, a novel, or a ballad; we might perhaps see a new Arcadia arising out of this heavy persecution. Old people and young would be seized with a versifying spirit; we should have field conventicles of Lovers and Poets; forests would be filled with romantic Shepherds and Shepherdesses; and rocks resound with echoes of hymns and praises offered to the powers of Love. We might indeed have a fair chance, by this management, to bring back the whole train of Heathen Gods, and set our cold Northern Island burning with as many altars to Venus and Apollo, as were formerly in Cyprus, Delos, or any of those warmer Grecian climates.”

But I promised you, dear Ladies, more upon that subject which of all subjects is and ought to be the most interesting to you, because it is the most important. You have not forgotten that promise, and the time has now come for fulfilling it.

Venus, unto thee for help, good Lady, I do call,
For thou wert wont to grant request unto thy servants all;
Even as thou didst help always Æneas thine own child,
Appeasing the God Jupiter with countenance so mild
That though that Juno to torment him on Jupiter did preace,
Yet for the love he bare to thee, did cause the winds to cease;
I pray thee pray the Muses all to help my memory,
That I may have ensamples good in defence of feminye.[1]

Something has been said upon various ways which lead to love and matrimony; but what I have to say concerning imaginative love was deferred till we should arrive at the proper place for entering upon it.

[Footnote 1: EDWARD MORE.]

More or less, imagination enters into all loves and friendships, except those which have grown with our growth, and which therefore are likely to be the happiest because there can be no delusion in them. Cases of this kind would not be so frequent in old romances, if they did not occur more frequently in real life than unimaginative persons could be induced to believe, or made to understand.

Sir John Sinclair has related a remarkable instance in his Reminiscences. He was once invited by Adam Smith to meet Burke and Mr. Windham, who had arrived at Edinburgh with the intention of making a short tour in the Highlands. Sir John was consulted concerning their route; in the course of his directions he dwelt on the beauty of the road between Dunkeld and Blair;—and added, that instead of being cooped up in a post-chaise, they would do well to get out and walk through the woods and beautiful scenes through which the road passes, especially some miles beyond Dunkeld.

Some three years afterwards Mr. Windham came up to Sir John in the House of Commons and requested to speak to him for a few moments behind the Speaker's chair. “Do you recollect,” said he, “our meeting together at Adam Smith's at dinner?” “Most certainly I do.”

“Do you remember having given us directions for our Highland tour, and more especially to stroll through the woods between Dunkeld and Blair?” “I do.”

Mr. Windham then said, “In consequence of our adopting that advice, an event took place of which I must now inform you. Burke and I were strolling through the woods about ten miles from Dunkeld, when we saw a young female sitting under a tree, with a book in her hand. Burke immediately exclaimed, ‘Let us have a little conversation with this solitary damsel, and see what she is about.’ We accosted her accordingly and found that she was reading a recent novel from the London press. We asked her how she came to read novels, and how she got such books at so great a distance from the metropolis, and more especially one so recently published. She answered that she had been educated at a boarding-school at Perth, where novels might be had from the circulating library, and that she still procured them through the same channel. We carried on the conversation for some time, in the course of which she displayed a great deal of smartness and talent; and at last we were obliged, very reluctantly, to leave her, and proceed on our journey. We afterwards found that she was the daughter of a proprietor of that neighbourhood who was known under the name of the Baron Maclaren. I have never been able,” continued Mr. Windham, “to get this beautiful mountain nymph out of my head; and I wish you to ascertain whether she is married or single.” And he begged Sir John Sinclair to clear up this point as soon as possible, for much of his future happiness depended upon the result of the inquiry.

If not the most important communication that ever took place behind the Speaker's chair, this was probably the most curious one. Sir John lost no time in making the desired inquiry. He wrote to a most respectable clergyman in the neighbourhood where Miss Maclaren lived, the Rev. Dr. Stewart, minister of Moulin; and was informed in reply, that she was married to a medical gentleman in the East Indies of the name of Dick. “Upon communicating this to Mr. Windham,” says Sir John, “he seemed very much agitated. He was soon afterwards married to the daughter of a half-pay officer. I have no doubt, however, that had Miss Maclaren continued single, he would have paid her his addresses.”

This is an example of purely imaginative love. But before we proceed with that subject, the remainder of Sir John Sinclair's story must be given. Some years afterward he passed some days at Duneira in Perthshire, with the late Lord Melville, and in the course of conversation told him this anecdote of Mr. Windham. Upon which Lord Melville said, “I am more interested in that matter than you imagine. You must know that I was riding down from Blair to Dunkeld in company with some friend, and we called at Baron Maclaren's, where a most beautiful young woman desired to speak with me. We went accordingly to the bank of a river near her father's house, when she said, ‘Mr. Dundas, I hear that you are a very great man, and what is much better, a very good man, I will venture therefore to tell you a secret. There is a young man in this neighbourhood who has a strong attachment to me, and to confess the truth, I have a great regard for him. His name is William Dick; he has been bred to the medical profession; and he says, that if he could get to be a surgeon in the East Indies, he could soon make his fortune there, and would send for me to marry him. Now I apply to you, Mr. Dundas, as a great and good man, in hopes that you can do something for us: and be assured that we shall be for ever grateful, if you will procure him an appointment.’”

Mr. Dundas was so much struck with the impressive manner of her address, that he took her by the hand and said, “my good girl, be assured that if an opportunity offers, I shall not forget your application.” The promise was not forgotten. It was not long before an East India Director with whom he was dining, told him that he had then at his disposal an appointment of surgeon in the East India Company's service, and offered it to him for any one whom he would wish to serve in that line. Dundas immediately related his adventure, much to the amusement of the Director. Mr. Dick obtained the appointment, and was soon able to send for his betrothed. She had several offers in the course of the voyage and after her arrival, but she refused to listen to any one. Her husband attained to great eminence in his profession, made a handsome fortune, came home and purchased an estate in the neighbourhood where he was born.

There is no man among those who in that generation figured in public life, of whom a story like this could be so readily believed as of Windham. He was one whose endowments and accomplishments would have recommended him at the Court of Elizabeth,—and whose speeches, when he did not abase himself to the level of his hearers, might have commanded attention in the days of Charles I.

* * * * *

A FRAGMENT ON BEARDS.

Yet have I more to say which I have thought upon, for I am filled as the moon at the full!

ECCLESIASTICUS.

The reader must not expect that we have done with our beards yet; shaving, as he no doubt knows but too well, is one of those things at which we may cut and come again, and in the present Chapter

To shave, or not to shave, that is the question;

a matter which, hath not hitherto been fully considered. The question as relates to the expenditure of time, has been, profitably I trust, disposed of; and that of its effect upon health has been, as Members of Parliament say, poo-pooh'd. But the propriety of the practice is yet to be investigated upon other grounds.

Van Helmont tells us that Adam was created without a beard, but that after he had fallen and sinned, because of the sinful propensities which he derived from the fruit of the forbidden Tree, a beard was made part of his punishment and disgrace, bringing him thus into nearer resemblance with the beasts towards whom he had made his nature approximate; “_ut multorum quadrupedum compar, socius et similis esset, eorundem signaturam præ se ferret, quorum more ut salax, ita et vultum pilis hirtum ostenderet._” The same stigma was not inflicted upon Eve, because even in the fall she retained much of her original modesty, and therefore deserved no such opprobrious mark.

Van Helmont observes also that no good Angel ever appears with a beard, and this, he says, is a capital sign by which Angels may be distinguished,—a matter of great importance to those who are in the habit of seeing them. “_Si apparuerit barbatus Angelus, malus esto. Eudæmon enim nunquam barbatus apparuit, memor casus ob quem viro barba succrevit._” He marvelled therefore that men should suppose the beard was given them for an ornament, when Angels abhor it, and when they see that they have it in common with he-goats. There must be something in his remark; for take the most beautiful Angel that ever Painter designed, or Engraver copied, put him on a beard, and the celestial character will be so entirely destroyed, that the simple appendage of a tail will cacodemonize the Eudæmon.

This being the belief of Van Helmont, who declares that he had profited more by reveries and visions than by study, though he had studied much and deeply, ought he, in conformity to his own belief, to have shaved, or not? Much might be alleged on either side: for to wear the beard might seem in a person so persuaded, a visible sign of submission to the Almighty will, in thus openly bearing the badge of punishment, the mark of human degradation which the Almighty has been pleased to appoint: but, on the other hand, a shaven face might seem with equal propriety, and in like manner denote, a determination in the man to put off, as far as in him lay this outward and visible sign of sin and shame, and thereby assert that fallen nature was in him regenerate,

_Belle est vraiment l'opinion premiere;
Belle est encores l'opinion derniere;
A qui des deux est-ce doncq' que je suis?_[1]

[Footnote 1: PASQUIER.]

Which of the two opinions I might incline to is of no consequence, because I do not agree with Van Helmont concerning the origin of the beard; though as to what he affirms concerning good Angels upon his own alleged knowledge, I cannot contradict him upon mine, and have moreover freely confessed that when we examine our notions of Angels they are found to support him. But he himself seems to have thought both opinions probable, and therefore, according to the casuists, safe; so, conforming to the fashion of his times, without offence to his own conscience, he neither did the one thing, nor the other; or perhaps it may be speaking more accurately to say that he did both; for he shaved his beard, and let his mustachios grow.

Upon this subject, P. Gentien Hervet, Regent of the College at Orleans printed three discourses in the year 1536. In the first of these _De radendâ barbâ_, he makes it appear that we are bound to shave the beard. In the second _De alendâ barbâ_, he proves we ought to let the beard grow. And in the third _De vel radendâ vel alendâ barbâ_ he considers that it is lawful either to shave or cultivate the beard at pleasure. “_Si bien_,” says the Doctor in Theology, M. Jean Baptiste Thiers, in his grave and erudite _Histoire des Perruques_, published _aux depens de l'Autheur_, at Paris in 1690,—_si bien, que dans la pensée de ce sçavant Theologien, le question des barbes, courtes ou longues, est une question tout-a-fait problematique, et où par consequent on peut prendre tel party que l'on veut, pour ou contre._

[The following Extracts were to have been worked up in this Chapter.]

D'Israeli quotes an author who, in his Elements of Education, 1640, says, “I have a favourable opinion of that young gentleman who is curious in fine mustachios. The time he employs in adjusting, dressing and curling them, is no lost time: for the more he contemplates his mustachios, the more his mind will cherish, and be animated by, masculine and courageous notions.”

There are men whose beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's packsaddle.

SHAKSPEARE.

“Human felicity,” says Dr. Franklin, “is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus if you teach a poor young man to shave himself and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it: but in the other case he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths and dull razors; he shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its being done with a good instrument.”

By Jupiter,
Were I the wearer of Antonius' beard
I would not shave 't to day.

SHAKSPEARE.

D'Israeli says that a clergyman who had the longest and largest beard of any Englishman in Elizabeth's reign, gave as a reason for wearing it the motive it afforded “that no act of his life might be unworthy the gravity of his appearance.”

* * * * *

FRAGMENT ON MORTALITY.

When Fuller in his Pisgah Sight of Palestine, comes to the city of Aigalon, where Elon, Judge of Israel, was buried, “of whom nothing else is recorded save his name, time of his rule (ten years), and place of his interment; slight him not he says, because so little is reported of him, it tending much to the praise of his policy in preventing foreign invasions, and domestic commotions, so that the land enjoyed peace, as far better than victory, as health is to be preferred before a recovery from sickness. Yea, times of much doing are times of much suffering, and many martial achievements are rather for the Prince's honour, than the people's ease.”

“To what purpose,” says Norris, “should a man trouble both the world's and his own rest, to make himself great? For besides the emptiness of the thing, the Play will quickly be done, and the Actors must all retire into a state of equality, and then it matters not who personated the Emperor, or who the Slave.”

The Doctor's feelings were in unison with both these passages;—with the former concerning the quiet age in which it was his fortune to flourish; and with the latter in that it was his fortune to flourish in the shade. “It is with times,” says Lord Bacon, “as it is with ways; some are more up hill and down hill, and some are more flat and plain; and the one is better for the liver, and the other for the writer.”

He assented also to the Christian-Platonist of Bemerton when he asked, “to what purpose should a man be very earnest in the pursuit of Fame? He must shortly die, and so must those too who admire him.” But nothing could be more opposed to his way of thinking than what follows in that philosopher,—“Nay, I could almost say, to what purpose should a man lay himself out upon study and drudge so laboriously in the mines of learning? He is no sooner a little wiser than his brethren, but Death thinks him ripe for his sickle; and for aught we know, after all his pains and industry, in the next world, an ideot, or a mechanic will be as forward as he.” In the same spirit Horace Walpole said in his old age, “What is knowledge to me, who stand on the verge, and must leave my old stores as well as what I may add to them,—and how little could that be!”

When Johnson was told that Percy was uneasy at the thought of leaving his house, his study, his books—when he should die,—he replied—“a man need not be uneasy on these grounds, for as he will retain his consciousness, he may say with the Philosopher, _omnia mea mecum porto._”

“Let attention,” says the thoughtful John Miller in his Bampton Lectures, which deserve to be side by side with those of the lamented Van Mildert, “let attention be requested to what seems here an accessory sign of the adaptation of all our heavenly Father's dealings to that which he ‘knows to be in man’—I mean his merciful shortening of the term of this present natural life, subsequently to the period when all-seeing justice had been compelled to destroy the old world for its disobedience.

“I call it merciful, because, though we can conceive no length of day which could enable man with his present faculties to exhaust all that is made subject to his intellect, yet observing the scarcely credible rapidity of some minds and the no less wonderful retention of others, we may well conceive a far severer, nay too severe a test of resignation and patience to arise from length of years. To learn is pleasant; but to be ‘ever learning, and never able to come to sure knowledge of the truth,’ (if it were only in matters of lawful and curious and ardent speculation,) is a condition which we may well imagine to grow wearisome by too great length of time. ‘Hope delayed’ might well ‘make the heart sick’ in many such cases. We may find an infidel amusing himself on the brink of the grave with many imaginary wishes for a little longer respite, that he might witness the result of this or that speculation; but I am persuaded that the heart which really loves knowledge most truly and most wisely will be affected very differently. From every fresh addition to its store (as far as concerns itself,) it will only derive increase to that desire wherewith it longs to become disentangled altogether from a state of imperfection, and to be present in the fulness of that light, wherein ‘every thing that is in part shall be done away.’ Here, then, in one of the most interesting and most important of all points (the shortening of human life) we find a representation in Scripture which may be accounted favourable to its credibility and divine authority on the safest grounds of reason and experience. For certainly, as to the bare matter of fact, such representation corresponds in the strictest manner (as far as we have known and have seen) with the state of life as at present existing; and accepting it as true, we can perceive at once, a satisfactory explanation of it by referring it, as a provision for man's well being, to the wisdom and mercy of an Omnipotent Spirit who knew, and knows ‘what is in man.’”

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FRAGMENT OF SIXTH VOLUME.

Reader, we are about to enter upon the sixth volume of this our Opus; and as it is written in the forms of Herkeru, Verily the eye of Hope is upon the high road of Expectation.

Well begun, says the Proverb, is half done. Horace has been made to say the same thing by the insertion of an apt word which pentametrizes the verse,

_Dimidium facti qui bene cæpit habet._

D. Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor in setting forth the merits of Columbus for having discovered the New World, and thereby opened the way for its conquest by the Spaniards, observes that _el principio en todas las operaciones humanas es el mas dificultoso estado; y assi una vez vencido, se reputa y debe reputarse por la mitad della obra, ò por la principal de ella; y el proseguir despues en lo comenzado no contiene tanta dificultad._

When Gabriel Chappuis dedicated the eighteenth book of Amadis, by him translated from the Spanish, to the Noble and Virtuous Lord Jan Anthoine Gros, Sieur de S. Jouere, &c., he says, after a preamble of eulogies upon the Dedicates and the Book, _Vous recevrez donc, s'il vous plaist ce petit livre d'aussy bon œil que ont fait ceux ausquels j'ay dedié les trois livres precedens, m'asseurant que s'il vous plaist en avoir la lecture, vous y trouverez grande delectation, comme à la verité l'histoire qui y est descrite, et mesmes en tous les precedens et en ceux qui viendront apres, a esté inventée pour delecter; mais avec tant de beaux traits, et une infinité de divers accidens et occurrences qu'il est impossible qu'avec le plaisir et le delectation, l'on n'en tire un grand proffet, comme vous experementerez, moyennant la grace de Dieu._

* * * * *

_J'ay fait le précédent Chapitre un peu court; peut-être que celui-ce sera plus long; je n'en suis pourtant pas bien assuré, nous l'allons voir._

SCARRON.

Deborah's strong affection for her father was not weakened by marriage; nor his for her by the consequent separation. Caroline Bowles says truly, and feelingly and beautifully,

It is not love that steals the heart from love;
'Tis the hard world and its perplexing cares,
Its petrifying selfishness, its pride,
Its low ambition, and its paltry aims.

There was none of that “petrifying selfishness” in the little circle which lost so much when Deborah was removed from her father's parsonage. In order that that loss might be less painfully felt, it was proposed by Mr. Allison that Sunday should always be kept at the Grange when the season or the weather permitted. The Doctor came if he could; but for Mrs. Dove it was always to be a holiday.

“The pleasures of a volatile head,” says Mrs. Carter, “are much less liable to disappointment, than those of a sensible heart.” For such as can be contented with rattles and raree-shows, there are rattles and raree-shows in abundance to content them; and when one is broken it is mighty easily replaced by another. But the pleasures arising from the endearments of social relations, and the delicate sensibilities of friendly affection, are more limited, and their objects incontrovertible; they are accompanied with perpetual tender solicitude, and subject to accidents not to be repaired beneath the Sun. It is no wonder however that the joys of folly should have their completion in a world with which they are to end, while those of higher order must necessarily be incompleat in a world where they are only to begin.[1]

[Footnote 1: From the writing of the latter paragraph I should judge this to be one of the latest sentences Southey ever wrote.—In the MS. it was to have followed c. cxxxv. vol. iv. p. 361.]

* * * * *

FRAGMENT WHICH WAS TO HAVE ANSWERED THE QUESTION PROPOSED IN THE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER.

_Io udii già dire ad un valente uomo nostro vicino, gli uomini abbiano molte volte bisogno sì di lagrimare, come di ridere; e per tal cagione egli affermava essere state da principio trovate le dolorose favole, che si chiamarono Tragedie, accioche raccontate ne' teatri, come in qual tempo si costumava di fare, tirassero le lagrime agli occhi di coloro, che avevano di ciò mestiere; e cosi eglino piangendo della loro infirmita guarissero. Ma come ciò sia a noi non istà bene di contristare gli animi delle persone con cui favelliamo; massimamente colà dove si dimori per aver festa e sollazzo, e non per piagnere; che se pure alcuno è, che infermi per vaghezza di lagrimare, assai leggier cosa fia di medicarlo con la mostarda forte, o porlo in alcun luogo al fumo._

GALATEO, DEL M. GIOVANNI DELLA CASA.

The Reader may remember, when he is thus reminded of it, that I delayed giving an account of Pompey, in answer to the question who he was, till the Dog-days should come. Here we are, (if _here_ may be applied to time) in the midst of them, July 24, 1830.

Horace Walpole speaks in a letter of two or three Mastiff-days so much fiercer were they that season than our common Dog-days. This year they might with equal propriety be called Iceland-Dog-days. Here we are with the thermometer every night and morning below the temperate point, and scarcely rising two degrees above it at middle day. And then for weather;—as Voiture says, _Il pleut pla-ple-pli-plo-plus._

If then as Robert Wilmot hath written, “it be true that the motions of our minds follow the temperature of the air wherein we live, then I think the perusing of some mournful matter, tending to the view of a notable example, will refresh your wits in a gloomy day, and ease your weariness of the louring night:” and the tragical part of my story might as fitly be told now in that respect, as if “weary winter were come upon us, which bringeth with him drooping days and weary nights.” But who does not like to put away tragical thoughts? Who would not rather go to see a broad farce than a deep tragedy? Sad thoughts even when they are medicinal for the mind, are as little to the mind's liking, as physic is grateful to the palate when it is needed most.

* * * * *

FRAGMENT ON HUTCHINSON'S WORKS.[1]

[Footnote 1: A Chapter was to have been devoted to the Hutchinsonian philosophy, and I am inclined to believe that this was a part of it.]

These superstitions are unquestionably of earlier date than any existing records, and commenced with the oldest system of idolatry, the worship of the heavenly bodies. Hutchinson's view is that when Moses brought the Jews out of their captivity, all men believed that “Fire, Light, or the Operation of the Air, did every thing in this material system:” those who believed rightly in God, knew that these secondary causes acted as his instruments, but “those who had fallen and lost communication with the Prophets and the truth of tradition, and were left to reason, (though they reasoned as far as reason could reach) thought the Heavens of a divine nature, and that they not only moved themselves and the heavenly bodies but operated all things on earth; and influenced the bodies, and governed the minds and fortunes of men: and so they fell upon worshipping them, and consulting them for times and seasons.” “The Devil,” he says, “chose right; this was the only object of false worship which gave any temptation; and it had very specious inducements.” And it was because he thus prevailed over “the Children of disobedience,” that the Apostle stiles him “the Prince of the Powers of the Air.” “This made the Priests and Physicians of the antient heathen cultivate the knowledge of these Powers, and afterwards made them star-gazers and observe the motions of those bodies for their conjunctions and oppositions, and all the stuff of their lucky and unlucky days and times, and especially to make advantage of their eclipses, for which they were stiled Magi, and looked upon as acquaintance of their Gods; and so much of the latter as is of any use, and a great deal more, we are obliged to them for.” “But these,” he says, “who thought that the Heavens ordered the events of things by their motions and influences, and that they were to be observed and foreseen by men, robbed God of his chief attributes, and were ordered then, and ought still, to be punished with death.”

Hutchinson is one of the most repulsive writers that ever produced any effect upon his contemporaries. His language is such as almost justified Dr. Parr in calling it the Hutchinsonian jargon; and his system is so confusedly brought forward that one who wishes to obtain even a general knowledge of it, must collect it as he can from passages scattered through the whole of his treatises. Add to these disrecommendations that it is propounded in the coarsest terms of insolent assumption, and that he treats the offence of those who reject the authority of scripture,—that is of his interpretation of Hebrew, and his exposition of the Mosaic philosophy, as “an infectious scurvy or leprosy of the soul which can scarcely be cured by any thing but eternal brimstone.”

The Paradise Lost, he calls, “that cursed farce of Milton, where he makes the Devil his hero:” and of the ancient poets and historians he says that “the mischief which these vermin did by praising their heroes in their farces or princes for conquering countries, and thereby inciting other princes to imitate them were the causes of the greatest miseries that have befallen mankind.” But Sir Isaac Newton was the great object of his hatred. “Nothing but villainy,” he said, “was to be expected from men who had made a human scheme, and would construe every text concerning it, so as to serve their purpose; he could only treat them as the most treacherous men alive. I hope,” he says, “I have power to forgive any crimes which are committed only against myself; I am not required, nor have I any power to forgive treason against the king, much less to forgive any crimes whereby any attempt to dispossess Jehovah Aleim. Nay, if I know of them and do not reveal them, and do not my endeavour to disappoint them in either, I am accessary. I shall put these things where I can upon the most compassionate side; the most favourable wish I can make for them is, that they may prove their ignorance so fully, that it may abate their crimes; but if their followers will shew that he or his accomplices knew anything, I must be forced to make Devils of them. There are many other accidents besides design or malice, which make men atheists,—studying or arguing to maintain a system, forged by a man who does not understand it, and in which there must be some things false, makes a man a villain whether he will or no.

“He, (Newton) first framed a philosophy, which is two thirds of the business of the real scriptures, and struck off the rest. And when he found his philosophy was built upon, and to be supported by emptiness, he was forced to patch up a God to constitute space. His equipage appears to have been the translation of the apostate Jews, and some blind histories of the modern heathen _Deus_, and an empty head to make his _Deus_; Kepler's banter of his powers, and some tacit acknowledgements as he only supposed, of the ignorantest heathens; an air-pump to make, and a pendulum or swing to prove a vacuum; a loadstone, and a bit of amber, or jet, to prove his philosophy; a telescope, a quadrant, and a pair of compasses to make infinite worlds, circles, crooked lines, &c.; a glass bubble, prisms and lenses, and a board with a hole in it, to let light into a dark room to form his history of light and colours; and he seems to have spent his time, not only when young, as some boys do, but when he should have set things right, in blowing his phlegm through a straw, raising bubbles, and admiring how the light would glare on the sides of them.”

No mention of Hutchinson is made in Dr. Brewster's Life of Newton, his system was probably thought too visionary to deserve notice, and the author unworthy of it because he had been the most violent and foul-mouthed of all Sir Isaac's opponents. The Mathematical Principles of Natural philosophy, he called a cobweb of circles and lines to catch flies. “Mathematics,” he said, “are applicable to any _data_, real or imaginary, true or false, more pestilent and destructive positions had been fathered upon that science than upon all others put together, and mathematicians had been put to death, both by Heathens and Christians for attributing much less to the heavenly bodies than Newton had done.” He compared his own course of observations with Newton's. His had been in the dark bowels of the earth, with the inspired light of scripture in his hand,—there he had learnt his Hebrew, and there he had studied the causes and traced the effects of the Deluge. “The opportunities,” he said, “were infinitely beyond what any man can have by living in a box, peeping out at a window, or letting the light in at a hole: or in separating and extracting the spirit from light, which can scarce happen in nature, or from refracting the light, which only happens upon the rainbow, bubbles, &c., or by making experiments with the loadstone, talc or amber, which differ in texture from most other bodies, and are only found in masses of small size; or by arranging a pendulum, which perhaps has not a parallel case in nature: or by the effects produced by spirit or light upon mixing small parcels of extracted fluids or substances, scarce one of which ever happened, or will happen in nature: or by taking cases which others have put, or putting cases which never had, nor ever will have any place in nature: or by forming figures or lines of crooked directions of motions or things, which most of them have no place, so the lines no use in nature, other than to serve hypotheses of imaginary Powers, or courses, which always have been useless, when any other Powers, though false, have been assigned and received; and must all finally be useless, when the true Powers are shewn.”