DECEMBER 17. (Sunday.)
On this day, from a sense of propriety no doubt, as well as from having nothing else to do, all the crew in the morning betook themselves to their studies. The carpenter was very seriously spelling a comedy; Edward was engaged with “The Six Princesses of Babylon;” a third was amusing himself with a tract “On the Management of Bees;” another had borrowed the cabin-boy’s “Sorrows of Werter,” and was reading it aloud to a large circle—some whistling—and others yawning; and Werter’s abrupt transitions, and exclamations, and raptures, and refinements, read in the same loud monotonous tone, and without the slightest respect paid to stops, had the oddest effect possible. “She did not look at me; I thought my heart would burst; the coach drove off; she looked out of the window; was that look meant for me? yes it was; perhaps it might be; do not tell me that it was not meant for me. Oh, my friend, my friend, am I not a fool, a madman?” (This part is rather stupid, or so, you see, but no matter for that; where was I? oh!) “I am now sure, Charlotte loves me: I prest my hand on my heart; I said ‘Klopstock;’ yes, Charlotte loves me; what! does Charlotte love me? oh, rapturous thought! my brain turns round:—Immortal powers!—how!—what!—oh, my friend, my friend,” &c. &c. &c. I was surprised to find that (except Edward’s Fairy Tale) none of them were reading works that were at all likely to amuse them (Smollett or Fielding, for instance), or any which might interest them as relating to their profession, such as voyages and travels; much less any which had the slightest reference to the particular day. However, as most of them were reading what they could not possibly understand, they might mistake them for books of devotion, for any thing they knew to the contrary; or, perhaps, they might have so much reverence for all books in print, as to think that, provided they did but read something, it was doing a good work, and it did not much matter what. So one of Congreve’s fine ladies swears Mrs. Mincing, the waiting maid, to secrecy, “upon an odd volume of Messalina’s Poems.” Sir Dudley North, too, informs us, (or is it his brother Roger? but I mean the Turkey merchant: ):—that at Constantinople the respect for printed books is so great, that when people are sick, they fancy that they can be read into health again; and if the Koran should not be in the way, they will make a shift with a few verses of the Bible, or a chapter or two of the Talmud, or of any other book that comes first to hand, rather than not read something. I think Sir Dudley says, that he himself cured an old Turk of the toothache, by administering a few pages of “Ovid’s Metamorphoses;” and in an old receipt-book, we are directed for the cure of a double tertian fever, “to drink plentifully of cock-broth, and sleep with the Second Book of the Iliad under the pillow.” If, instead of sleeping with it under the pillow, the doctor had desired us to read the Second Book of the Iliad in order that we might sleep, I should have had some faith in his prescription myself.