"Upon hearing a celebrated performer go through a hard composition, and hearing it remarked that it was very difficult, Dr. Johnson said, "I would it had been impossible.""
NEATNESS IN EXCESS [Sidenote: _Samuel Johnson_]
"I asked Mr. Johnson if he ever disputed with his wife. "Perpetually,"
said he; "my wife had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling." I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner. "So often," replied he, "that at last she called to me and said, "Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking G.o.d for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest not eatable."""
A YOUNG LADY"S "NEEDS"
[Sidenote: _Samuel Johnson_]
"During a visit of Miss Brown"s to Streatham, Dr. Johnson was inquiring of her several things that she could not answer; and, as he held her so cheap in regard to books, he began to question her concerning domestic affairs,--puddings, pies, plain work, and so forth. Miss Brown, not at all more able to give a good account of herself in these articles than in the others, began all her answers with "Why, sir, one need not be obliged to do so,--or so," whatever was the thing in question. When he had finished his interrogatories, and she had finished her "need nots,"
he ended the discourse with saying, "As to your needs, my dear, they are so very many that you would be frightened yourself if you knew half of them.""
"IRENE"
[Sidenote: _Samuel Johnson_]
"I was told," wrote Sir Walter Scott, "that a gentleman called Pot, or some such name, was introduced to Johnson as a particular admirer of his. The doctor growled and took no further notice. "He admires in especial your _Irene_ as the finest tragedy of modern times;" to which the Doctor replied: "If Pot says so, Pot Lies!" and relapsed into his reverie.
ODE TO PEACE [Sidenote: _Hood_]
WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF MY MISTRESS"S GRAND ROUT
O Peace! oh come with me and dwell-- But stop, for there"s the bell.
O peace! for thee I go and sit in churches, On Wednesday, when there"s very few In loft or pew-- Another ring, the tarts are come from Birch"s.
O Peace! for thee I have avoided marriage-- Hush! there"s a carriage.
O Peace! thou art the best of earthly goods-- The five Miss Woods.
O Peace! thou art the G.o.ddess I adore-- There come some more.
O Peace! thou child of solitude and quiet-- That"s Lord Drum"s footman, for he loves a riot.
O Peace!-- Knocks will not cease.
O Peace! thou wert for human comfort planned-- That"s Weippert"s band.
O Peace! how glad I welcome thy approaches-- I hear the sound of coaches.
O Peace! O Peace!--another carriage stops-- It"s early for the Blenkinsops.
O Peace! with thee I love to wander, But wait till I have showed up Lady Squander; And now I"ve seen her up the stair, O Peace!--but here comes Captain Hare.
O Peace! thou art the slumber of the mind, Untroubled, calm, and quiet, and unbroken-- If that is Alderman Guzzle from Portsoken, Alderman Gobble won"t be far behind.
O Peace! serene in worldly shyness-- Make way there for his Serene Highness!
O Peace! if you do not disdain To dwell amongst the menial train, I have a silent place, and lone, That you and I may call our own, Where tumult never makes an entry-- Susan, what business have you in my pantry?
O Peace!--but there is Major Monk, At variance with his wife. O Peace!-- And that great German, Van der Trunk, And that great talker, Miss Apreece.
O Peace! so dear to poets" quills-- They"re just beginning their quadrilles.
O Peace! our greatest renovator-- I wonder where I put my waiter.
O Peace!--but here my ode I"ll cease!
I have no peace to write of Peace.
LETTERS FROM THACKERAY [Sidenote: _Thackeray_]
_Tuesday, November 1848_.
GOOD-NIGHT, MY DEAR MADAM,
Since I came home from dining with Mr. Morier, I have been writing a letter to Mr. T. Carlyle and thinking about other things as well as the letter all the time; and I have read over a letter I received to-day which apologizes for everything and whereof the tremulous author ceaselessly doubts and misgives. Who knows whether she is not converted by Joseph Bullar by this time. She is a sister of mine, and her name is G.o.d bless her.
_Wednesday_.--I was at work until seven o"clock; not to very much purpose, but executing with great labour and hardship the day"s work.
Then I went to dine with Dr. Hall, the crack doctor here, a literate man, a traveller, and otherwise a kind bigwig. After dinner we went to hear Mr. Sortain lecture, of whom you may perhaps have heard me speak, as a great, remarkable orator and preacher of the Lady Huntingdon Connexion. (The paper is so greasy that I am forced to try several pens and manners of handwriting, but none will do.) We had a fine lecture, with brilliant Irish metaphors and outbursts of rhetoric, addressed to an a.s.sembly of mechanics, s...o...b..ys, and young women, who could not, and perhaps had best not, understand that flashy speaker. It was about the origin of nations he spoke, one of those big themes on which a man may talk eternally and with a never-ending outpouring of words; and he talked magnificently, about the Arabs for the most part, and tried to prove that because the Arabs acknowledged their descent from Ishmael, or Esau, therefore the Old Testament history was true. But the Arabs may have had Esau for a father and yet the bears may not have eaten up the little children for quizzing Elisha"s bald head. As I was writing to Carlyle last night (I haven"t sent the letter as usual, and shall not most likely), Saint Stephen was pelted to death by Old Testaments, and our Lord was killed like a felon by the law, which He came to repeal. I was thinking about Joseph Bullar"s doctrine after I went to bed, founded on what I cannot but think a blasphemous asceticism, which has obtained in the world ever so long, and which is disposed to curse, hate, and undervalue the world altogether. Why should we? What we see here of this world is but an expression of G.o.d"s will, so to speak--a beautiful earth and sky and sea--beautiful affections and sorrows, wonderful changes and developments of creations, suns rising, stars shining, birds singing, clouds and shadows changing and fading, people loving each other, smiling and crying, the multiplied phenomena of Nature, multiplied in fact and fancy, in Art and Science, in every way that a man"s intellect or education or imagination can be brought to bear.--And who is to say that we are to ignore all this, or not value them and love them, because there is another unknown world yet to come? Why, that unknown future world is but a manifestation of G.o.d Almighty"s Will, and a development of Nature, neither more nor less than this in which we are, and an angel glorified or a sparrow on a gutter are equally parts of His creation. The light upon all the saints in heaven is just as much and no more G.o.d"s work, as the sun which shall shine to-morrow upon this infinitesimal speck of creation, and under which I shall read, please G.o.d, a letter from my kindest Lady and friend. About my future state I don"t know; I leave it in the disposal of the awful Father--but for to-day I thank G.o.d that I can love you, and that you yonder and others besides are thinking of me with a tender regard. Hallelujah may be greater in degree than this, but not in kind, and countless ages of stars may be blazing infinitely, but you and I have a right to rejoice and believe in our little part and to trust in to-day as in to-morrow.
G.o.d bless my dear lady and her husband. I hope you are asleep now, and I must go too, for the candles are just winking out.
_Thursday_.--I am glad to see among the new inspectors, in the Gazette in this morning"s papers, my old acquaintance Longueville Jones, an excellent, worthy, lively, accomplished fellow, whom I like the better because he flung up his fellow and tutorship at Cambridge in order to marry on nothing a year. He worked in Galignani"s newspaper for ten francs a day, very cheerfully, ten years ago, since when he has been a schoolmaster, taken pupils, or bid for them, and battled manfully with fortune. William will be sure to like him, I think, he is so honest and cheerful. I have sent off my letters to Lady Ashburton this morning, ending with some pretty phrases about poor old C.B., whose fate affects me very much, so much that I feel as if I were making my will and getting ready to march too. Well, ma"am, I have as good a right to presentiments as you have, and to sickly fancies and despondencies; but I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ"s Christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, asceticism, Bullarism. I wonder will He come again and tell it us? We are taught to be ashamed of our best feelings all our life. I don"t want to blubber upon everybody"s shoulders; but to have a good will for all, and a strong, very strong regard for a few, which I shall not be ashamed to own to them.... It is near upon three o"clock, and I am getting rather anxious about the post from Southampton via London. Why, if it doesn"t come in, you won"t get any letter to-morrow, no, nothing--and I made so sure. Well, I will try and go to work, it is only one more little drop. G.o.d bless you, dear lady.
_Friday_.--I have had a good morning"s work, and at two o"clock comes your letter; dear friend, thank you. What a coward I was! I will go and walk and be happy for an hour, it is a grand frosty sunshine. To-morrow morning early back to London.
Madam"s letter made a very agreeable appearance upon the breakfast-table this morning when I entered that apartment at eleven o"clock. I don"t know how I managed to sleep so much, but such was the fact--after a fine broiling hot day"s utter idleness, part of which was spent on a sofa, a little in the Tuillery gardens, where I made a sketch that"s not a masterpiece, but p"raps Madam will like to see it: and the evening very merrily with the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Journal des Debats_, and Jules Janin at a jolly little restaurateur"s at the Champs Elysees at the sign of the Pet.i.t Moulin Rouge. We had a private room and drank small wine very gaily, looking out into a garden full of green arbours, in almost every one of which were gentlemen and ladies in couples come to dine _au frais_, and afterwards to go and dance at the neighbouring dancing garden of Mabille. Fiddlers and singers came and performed for us: and who knows I should have gone to Mabille too, but there came down a tremendous thunderstorm, with flashes of lightning to illuminate it, which sent the little couples out of the arbours, and put out all the lights of Mabille. The day before I pa.s.sed with my aunt and cousins, who are not so pretty as some members of the family, but are dear good people, with a fine sense of fun, and we were very happy until the arrival of two newly married sn.o.bs, whose happiness disgusted me and drove me home early to find three acquaintances smoking in the moonlight at the hotel door, who came up and pa.s.sed the night in my rooms. No, I forgot, I went to the play first; but only for an hour--I couldn"t stand more than an hour of the farce, which made me laugh while it lasted, but left a profound black melancholy behind it. Janin said last night that life was the greatest of pleasures to him; that every morning, when he woke, he was thankful to be alive; that he was always entirely happy, and had never known any such thing as blue devils, or repentance, or satiety. I had great fun giving him authentic accounts of London. I told him that to see the people boxing in the streets was a constant source of amus.e.m.e.nt to us; that in November you saw every lamp-post on London Bridge with a man hanging from it who had committed suicide--and he believed everything. Did you ever read any of the works of Janin?--No?
well, he has been for twenty years famous in France, and he on his side has never heard of the works of t.i.tmarsh, nor has anybody else here, and that"s a comfort. I have got very nice rooms, but they cost ten francs a day: and I began in a dignified manner with a _domestique de place_, but sent him away after two days: for the idea that he was in the anteroom ceaselessly with nothing to do made my life in my own room intolerable, and now I actually take my own letters to the post. I went to the exhibition: it was full of portraits of the most hideous women, with inconceivable spots on their faces, of which I think I"ve told you my horror, and scarcely six decent pictures in the whole enormous collection; but I had never been in the Tuilleries before, and it was curious to go through the vast dingy rooms by which such a number of dynasties have come in and gone out--Louis XVI., Napoleon, Charles X., Louis Philippe, have all marched in state up the staircase with the gilt bal.u.s.trades, and come tumbling down again presently.--Well, I won"t give you an historical disquisition in the t.i.tmarsh manner upon this, but reserve it for _Punch_--for whom on Thursday an article that I think is quite unexampled for dullness even in that journal, and that beats the dullest Jerrold. What a jaunty, off-hand, satiric rogue I am to be sure--and a gay young dog! I took a very great liking and admiration for Clough. He is a real poet, and a simple, affectionate creature. Last year we went to Blenheim--from Oxford (it was after a stay at Cl----ved----n C----rt, the seat of Sir C---- E----n B----t), and I liked him for sitting down in the inn yard and beginning to teach a child to read off a bit of _Punch_, which was lying on the ground.
Subsequently he sent me his poems, which were rough but contain the real, genuine, sacred flame I think. He is very learned: he has evidently been crossed in love: he gave up his fellowship and university prospects on religious scruples. He is one of those thinking men who, I dare say, will begin to speak out before many years are over, and protest against Gothic Christianity--that is, I think he is. Did you read in F. Newman"s book? There speaks a very pious, loving, humble soul I think, with an ascetical continence too--and a beautiful love and reverence. I"m a publican and sinner, but I believe those men are on the true track.
And is W. Bullar going to work upon you with his "simple mysticism"? I don"t know about the unseen world; the use of the seen world is the right thing I"m sure!--it is just as much G.o.d"s world and creation as the Kingdom of Heaven with all the angels. How will you make yourself most happy in it? How secure at least the greatest amount of happiness compatible with your condition? by despising to-day, and looking up cloudward? Pish. Let us turn G.o.d"s to-day to its best use, as well as any other part of the time He gives us. When I am on a cloud a-singing, or a pot boiling--I will do my best, and, if you are ill, you can have consolations; if you have disappointments, you can invent fresh sources of hope and pleasure. I"m glad you saw the Crowes, and that they gave you pleasure;--and that n.o.ble poetry of Alfred"s gives you pleasure (I"m happy to say, ma"am, I"ve said the very same thing in prose that you like--the very same words almost). The bounties of the Father I believe to be countless and inexhaustible for most of us here in life; Love the greatest. Art (which is an exquisite and admiring sense of nature) the next.--- By Jove! I"ll admire, if I can, the wing of a c.o.c.k-sparrow as much as the pinion of an archangel; and adore G.o.d, the Father of the earth, first; waiting for the completion of my senses, and the fulfilment of His intentions towards me afterwards, when this scene closes over us. So, when Bullar turns up his eye to the ceiling, I"ll look straight at your dear, kind face and thank G.o.d for knowing that, my dear; and, though my nose is a broken pitcher, yet, Lo and behold, there"s a well gushing over with kindness in my heart where my dear lady may come and drink. G.o.d bless you,--and William and little Magdalene.
ODOURS AND MOUSTACHES [Sidenote: _Montaigne_]
The simplest and merely natural smells are most pleasing unto me; which care ought chiefly to concerne women. In the verie heart of Barbarie, the Scithian women, after they have washed themselves, did sprinkle, dawbe, and powder all their bodies and faces over with a certain odoriferous drug that groweth in their countrie: which dust and dawbing being taken away, when they come neere men, or their husbands, they remaine verie cleane, and with a verie sweet savouring perfume. What odour soever it be, it is strange to see what hold it will take on me, and how apt my skin is to receive it. He that complaineth against nature, that she hath not created man with a fit instrument, to carrie sweet smells fast-tied to his nose, is much to blame; for they carrie themselves. As for me in particular, my mostachoes, which are verie thick, serve me for that purpose. Let me but approach my gloves or my hand kercher to them, their smell will sticke upon them a whole day.
They manifest the place I come from. The close-smacking, sweetnesse-moving, love-alluring, and greedi-smirking kisses of youth, were heretofore wont to sticke on them many houres after; yet I am little subject to those popular diseases that are taken by conversation and bred by the contagion of the ayre: And I have escaped those of my time of which there hath beene many and severall kinds, both in the Townes, about me, and in our Armie: We read of Socrates that during the time of many plagues and relapses of the pestilence, which so often infested the Citie of Athens, he never forsooke or went out of the Towne: yet was he the only man that was never infected, or that felt any sickness.
FROM THE BALLAD a-LA-MODE [Sidenote: _Austin Dobson_]
"Ah, Phillis! cruel Phillis!
(I heard a shepherd say) You hold me with your eyes, and yet You bid me--Go my way!"
"Ah, Colin! foolish Colin!
(The maiden answered so) If that be all, the ill is small, I close them--You may go!"
But when her eyes she opened (Although the sun it shone), She found the shepherd had not stirred-- "Because the light was gone!"
Ah, Cupid! wanton Cupid!
"Twas ever thus your way: When maids would bid you ply your wings, You find excuse to stay!
DREAMTHORP [Sidenote: _Alexander Smith_]